LYNN — Attorney Thomas C. Demakis had long since left the building in lower Manhattan when the late Robert Morgenthau’s fame morphed into the sagacious district attorney Adam Schiff on “Law and Order.”
And Demakis doesn’t even watch the show that, in its early years, featured Steven Hill portraying an almost grandfatherly DA who asked probing questions of his staff and dispensed advice in almost the same quiet, but authoritative, manner that defined Morgenthau.
Demakis was an assistant district attorney, a bureau chief, and then a senior trial counsel in Morgenthau’s New York County District Attorney’s office from 1975 through 1981. Demakis’ job was similar to that of Sam Waterston’s character Jack McCoy.
“To tell you the truth, I never watched the show,” he said. “I did hear once that he liked the show, that he liked Steven Hill’s portrayal. He liked that Hill got $25,000 a show. That astounded him.”
If Demakis can’t draw comparisons between real-life crime-fighting and the world of Hollywood police procedural shows, he has enough insight about Morgenthau to be able to say, unequivocally, “he was a great man and a wonderful guy. I loved him, and I loved working for him.
“Do you know that under Morgenthau, the number of homicides in Manhattan went from 668 a year when he took over to only 58 when he retired?”
Morgenthau, who died Sunday, was 10 days away from his 100th birthday. He was born into a politically prominent family. Demakis said he has seen pictures of Morgenthau’s father with the Roosevelts, and above the desk in his Manhattan office, Morgenthau hung a big picture of John F. Kennedy.
“He used to go sailing with JFK,” Demakis said. “In fact, he was one of the people who was with Robert Kennedy (at Kennedy’s home at Hickory Hill, Va.) when he got the call that his brother was shot in Dallas.”
But, “he may have had famous friends, and hobnobbed with famous people, but he was as humble as they come,” Demakis said. “He had a very self-deprecating humor.”
When Morgenthau stepped down in 2009, the district had gone through only four DAs since 1937: Thomas Dewey, Frank Hogan (32 years), Richard Kuh (who was interim director until a permanent replacement for Hogan could be found) and Morgenthau.
“He took what Frank Hogan did,” said Demakis, who was hired by Hogan, “and he improved on it so much. I thought Mr. Hogan was a great guy, and so was Mr. Morgenthau.”
Demakis said that Morgenthau’s background notwithstanding, political influence did not impress him.
“First of all, his office was apolitical,” Demakis said. “It was so apolitical, and we were so protected from all that, that even now, I don’t like talking about politics.
“He was all about talent. He didn’t care what your politics were. He never asked. He wanted bright people working for him.”
One day, Morgenthau told Demakis he was assigning a woman he had just hired to Demakis’ bureau.
“Take good care of her and nurture her; I think she’s going to be special.”
The woman turned out to be Sonia Sotomayor, who was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Barack Obama in 2009.
Morgenthau, like his television counterpart, sought updates from his prosecutors on cases. And, Demakis said, he was very tuned into the fact that DAs shouldn’t take cases to trial unless they thought the defendant was guilty.
“There was a murder case where three were arrested. Two of them we were convinced were guilty. The lawyer for the third one told me her client didn’t do it,” said Demakis. “I kind of trusted her, so I investigated the case in detail for six months and had substantial doubts. So I went to (Morgenthau) and laid it out for him. We went back and forth. And in the end, we had to agree that we shouldn’t be prosecuting and dropped the case.”
One of the other two pleaded guilty and the third was convicted.
In 1978, 11-year-old Marci Klein, daughter of designer Calvin Klein, was kidnapped. Demakis tried the case of the suspect, babysitter Paule Ransey, who was found guilty and sentenced to more than eight years in prison.
“At Christmas, I get this big basket of fruit from Calvin Klein’s company,” Demakis said. “Bob had a strict policy against accepting gifts, and I didn’t know what to do. I sent it back and asked that they give the basket to someone else.
“The next year, the same thing,” said Demakis. “I was starting to think I was going to have to do this every year. So I went to Bob at a company gathering and asked him what I should do.
“He liked to smoke cigars,” Demakis said. “So every year, someone would send him a case of cigars. ‘Do you know what I do? I burn them,'” Demakis said Morgenthau told him with a grin.
Demakis left to become John Kerry’s campaign manager when he ran for lieutenant governor in 1982. He stayed through the early part of 1981.
“Right before I left, John Lennon was shot (by Mark David Chapman),” Demakis said. “I might have had that case.”