By Leef Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 31, 2006; A01
As a federal jury yesterday found Jay E. Lentz guilty in the kidnapping and death of his ex-wife, the former naval intelligence officer screamed out, "No, no! Reconsider!" ending a tortuous, years-long melodrama that has involved tainted evidence, charges of prosecutorial misconduct and the defendant's own taped remark that he was hiring a hit man to kill witnesses.
After listening to nearly 50 witnesses, a jury in U.S. District Court in Alexandria took four days to reach a verdict, finding Lentz guilty of interstate kidnapping resulting in the 1996 death of Doris Lentz, 32. Her body has not been found.
The charge carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole. Lentz is scheduled to be sentenced June 23.
"Jay Lentz will spend the rest of his life where he belongs -- in prison, for the kidnapping and brutal murder of his ex-wife, Doris Lentz," U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg said in a statement.
Defense attorney Frank Salvato said Lentz, 46, who has spent five years in jail, will appeal the verdict.
"Mr. Lentz intends to fight on, and we'll do everything we can to try to win an appeal and eventually gain his freedom," Salvato said.
Several times during the two-week trial, Lentz was silenced for brief outbursts, but they were nothing compared with yesterday's. According to courtroom observers, Lentz began to yell at the jurors as the verdict was read, pleading with them to reconsider.
U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III warned Lentz that if he could not be quiet, he would be removed from the courtroom. Lentz pointed at the judge's bench and screamed: "What difference does it make? You're in on it, too!"
"It's a great relief," said Doris Lentz's mother, Bernice "Gene" Butt, who attended the beginning of Lentz's retrial but found it too painful to stay. "It's been almost 10 years. I just hope it's finally over."
There has been no shortage of plot twists and suspenseful moments in the case of U.S. v. Jay E. Lentz .
Yesterday's conviction was actually his second. In July 2003, a federal jury found Lentz guilty of the same crime.
But that verdict was thrown out by U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee, who said prosecutors had failed to prove that a kidnapping, as defined by federal law, had taken place.
Then three jurors came forward and said they had viewed two of Doris Lentz's day planners, which had mysteriously and inappropriately shown up in the jury room. The planners contained material that included Doris Lentz's notes about threatening phone calls Jay Lentz allegedly had made to her.
The case then took an even more extraordinary turn: Lee accused the lead prosecutor at the time, Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven D. Mellin, of deliberately planting the day planners in the jury room. The battle reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond, which in September 2004 threw out Lee's finding about Mellin, saying the judge made "a rather broad leap" without evidence.
Although the appeals court later reinstated the conviction, a new trial was ordered for Lentz because the jurors had seen the disputed materials. Lee was taken off the case by the appellate court. Mellin was not on the trial team for the retrial.
Among the most damning evidence presented against Lentz during the retrial was a taped jailhouse phone conversation between the defendant and Salvato, in which Lentz said a "hit guy" was on his way to the jail because he needed witnesses to disappear.
At the time Lentz made the comment, Salvato warned that such a statement would destroy him at his retrial.
The jury apparently agreed with the prosecution's assertion that Lentz lured his ex-wife from her Arlington County home in April 1996 to his house in Fort Washington under the pretense that she would be picking up their daughter, Julia, then 4.
Although her body has not been recovered, her car, the passenger seat spattered with blood, was found in the District. Prosecutors presented forensic evidence suggesting that a small drop of Lentz's blood was found on the upholstery.
Prosecutors repeatedly told the jury that Doris Lentz had feared for her safety, moving into a secure building to keep her ex-husband at bay. Several witnesses testified that Doris told them about threatening statements her ex-husband had made, such as "O.J. can happen again" and "I could kill you, and there would be no body."
"It was a premeditated crime," Assistant U.S. Attorney Erik Barnett told the jury in a closing statement last week: "It was a heinous crime. It was done by someone who was driven by hate and greed and a desire to keep Doris from getting money in their divorce litigation. He was striving for a goal."
On the last day of testimony, the daughter, Julia Lentz, now 14, took the stand briefly on her father's behalf, telling the jury that she remembers her father being emotionally distraught after her mother vanished and that she views him as "very nonviolent."
"It is very sad that a daughter is without her mother and now her father," Barnett told the jury, alluding to Julia during his closing statement. "But the decisions about Julia's future are not yours. They were made 10 years ago by someone else in this courtroom."
Staff writer Jerry Markon contributed to this report.
