Another Chapter In Gypsy Saga Begins The 11-Year Legal Fight Continues With Witness-Intimidation Trial

Eight members of a Spokane Gypsy family threatened relatives who were helping the city of Spokane defend itself in a $40 million civil rights suit, a prosecutor told a jury Wednesday.

But defense attorneys said the federal government is making a big mistake by intervening in a family fight partly tied to illegal police raids in 1986.

“The U.S. government decided to take the side of the city of Spokane in a huge beef, a huge dispute between the Romani (Gypsy) community and the city,” said defense attorney George Critchlow.

The opening statements came in a witness-intimidation trial expected to last three weeks in U.S. District Court.

It’s the latest saga in a contentious, 11-year-old legal fight that pits members of the Marks family against the city and its police department.

It began on June 18, 1986, when Spokane police raided two Gypsy homes looking for stolen jewelry, and ended up searching more than two-dozen people.

After the state Supreme Court ruled the raids were improper, members of the Marks family filed federal civil rights suits, which are still awaiting a trial date.

In the federal criminal trial, the defendants are accused of accosting Barbara and Johnny Marks, and their children, who sided with the city in the civil rights case.

The defendants are Jimmy Marks and his wife, Jane; their sons, Tommy, David and Michael; Jimmy’s brother, Bobby Marks, and his sons, Richard and Steve.

They are each charged with conspiracy to tamper with witnesses, and two counts of obstruction of justice and witness tampering.

The charges were filed after Assistant City Attorney Rocco Treppiedi, who is defending the city in the civil rights case, asked the FBI in March 1993 to investigate complaints of witness intimidation.

The FBI and Justice Department prosecutors initially declined to get involved in the squabble, but took on the case the following year after a feud between members of the Gypsy family were filmed by a CBS News crew.

The FBI used an informant, David H. Elton III, who was sent to the agency by Treppiedi, Critchlow told the jury.

Elton had done “political consulting work” for Treppiedi, who ran for a seat on the Spokane School Board, Critchlow said. Jimmy Marks ran for the same seat.

Elton, posing as a newspaper reporter, wore a hidden FBI tape recorder and offered names of two fake witnesses during interviews he had with Jimmy Marks, Critchlow said.

“Posing as a journalist, he was sent into the homes in the hopes he could get some dirt on the Gypsies for his friend Rocco Treppiedi,” Critchlow said.

He told jurors they will hear Elton’s tapes, which show Jimmy and Bobby Marks weren’t the least bit interested in contacting the witnesses, and the FBI sting operation fizzled.

“What this case is about is a big fat clash between two cultures,” Critchlow said.

The prosecutor told jurors the case centers on people who are trying to interfere with the judicial process.

“This case is not about racial stereotypes or cultural differences,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Wilson. “This trial is about what’s an ongoing reign of harassment and intimidation of witnesses.”

Jimmy, Jane and Grover Marks are accused of going to the home of Johnny and Barbara Marks on Feb. 27, 1993, and threatening the couple shortly after they had been subpoenaed by Treppiedi.

Jimmy Marks is accused of urinating in the couple’s living room and front yard.

He says he did so in an act of cultural retaliation because Barbara Marks lifted her skirt to defile him and his family.

The second incident occurred on July 21, 1994, while the CBS crew was in Spokane to film a story that focused on Jimmy Marks’ antics. To prove he was outcast from other members of the Gypsy community, Marks agreed to take the news crew to the homes of Barbara and Johnny Marks, and Dorothy Marks.

A melee ensued at the home of Barbara Marks, with various members of the Marks family fighting, screaming and spraying each other with pepper spray or Mace.

Defense attorney Robert Fischer told the jury that the feud between Jimmy Marks, and Barbara and Johnny Marks goes back at least three decades.

It began in the early 1960s when Johnny’s father, Tomma Marks, passed along Gypsy leadership jewelry to his grandson, Jimmy Marks, instead of Johnny Marks. Since then, there have been on-going family disputes over an inter-racial marriage, the moving of ancestors’ bodies from Portland to Spokane and business matters, Fischer said.

, DataTimes