Prosecutor says calls tie Gionis to attack
Judge to decide if surgeon will be tried in Wayne-Luby case

April 21, 1989 Byline: Donna Wares, The Orange County Register

A series of early-morning phone calls between surgeon Thomas Gionis and a Beverly Hills private investigator show that the doctor was in constant contact with the trio hired to beat up ex-wife Aissa Wayne, a prosecutor argued Thursday.

Deputy District Attorney Christopher Evans introduced phone records that show six calls were made between the investigator and Gionis' car and home phones on the Sunday morning that two men attacked Wayne and her financier boyfriend.

Seven minutes after the assault, private investigator Oded Daniel Gal called the doctor to report the job was done, Evans said.

"It could have been a coincidence, but every one of those calls had a significance as to what happened," Evans told Orange County Harbor Municipal Court Judge Susanne Shaw.

The prosecutor made his comments Thursday during closing arguments in a preliminary hearing for the surgeon, who is being held at the Orange County Jail without bail.

The judge is expected to decide today whether Gionis, 35, should stand trial on felony conspiracy charges.

Gionis is accused of hiring the private investigator and two armed assailants last year to attack Wayne and financier boyfriend Roger Luby in the garage of Luby's Newport Beach home.

At the time, Gionis and Wayne, 33, the daughter of actor John Wayne, were embroiled in a custody battle over their 2-year-old daughter, Anastasia.

Gionis has pleaded innocent to the charges.

His attorney, F. Lee Bailey, insisted during closing remarks that his client was too smart to get involved in such a dumb plot.

Bailey argued that Gionis was winning the custody war and had no reason to hire two thugs who marched into Luby's "ritzy neighborhood" garage in broad daylight wearing only sunglasses and baseball caps as disguises.

"The length and breadth of their stupidity is almost unfathomable," Bailey told the judge. "If this were pinned on Dr. Gionis, this could have substantially affected the outcome of the custody case."

In January, following a two-month trial, a Superior Court judge awarded the father temporary custody, but the toddler was returned to Wayne after her ex-husband's arrest.

Bailey suggested that Gal -- who was hired by the surgeon to spy on his ex-wife during the custody battle -- was acting as a free agent who paid two men to beat up Wayne and Luby.

Gal, 32, was arrested last week in Switzerland and is awaiting extradition.

Bailey told the judge that the investigator might have had his own, unknown motives for wanting to harm Luby, 53. "Gal paid the thugs by going into his own piggy bank," he said.

The attorney said that Luby -- not Wayne -- was the target of the attack, and that both victims had lied on the witness stand about their early suspicions that a group of lenders the financier was suing might be responsible for the assault.

Wayne, he said, now is using the criminal case as a "back door" to wrest custody of her daughter. "We have no conduct on the part of Dr. Gionis that bespeaks a guilty mind," Bailey said.

The prosecutor disagreed. Evans pointed to the phone calls between Gal and Gionis, to records indicating that Gionis paid the private investigator $40,000 in the weeks before the attack and to the statements of a Simi Valley man who admitted participating in the attack.

Jeffrey Kendall Bouey, 35, testified this week that Gal hired him and his best friend to "teach a lesson" to the wife of a doctor client. Bouey said he did not know the doctor's name.

But he testified that he saw Gal talking on his car phone about 10 a.m. on the morning of the attack while Gal was parked outside Luby's home. After hanging up, Gal reportedly told Bouey that he was talking to the client.

Phone records show that three calls were made between Gal's car phone and Gionis's home and car between 10:03 a.m. and 10:07 a.m., Evans said.

The attack occurred about 11:30 a.m. when two assailants allegedly confronted Wayne and Luby in the garage after the couple returned from a health club.

Wayne and her former boyfriend testified that they were forced to the ground and handcuffed before their faces were bashed into the concrete floor. One of the assailants also hit Luby in the head with a pistol and slashed his right Achilles tendon.

The prosecutor argued that Gionis ordered the attack and had been mad that the assailants botched the job on two previous attempts.

Evans described Gionis as a "check machine." The doctor used his wealth to buy attorneys, expert witnesses, private investigators and eventually two hit men during the custody battle, he said.

Gesturing at Gionis, Evans told the judge: "There's no question that there's a reasonable suspicion that that's the guy who did it over there."

The judge is expected to decide today whether there is probable cause to order Gionis to stand trial at the close of a bail hearing, which began Thursday afternoon.

Gionis has been held at the Orange County Jail without bail since his arrest April 4.

Bouey and Jerrel Lee Hintergardt, 37, of Burbank, the alleged assailants in the case, are being held at the jail in lieu of $1 million bail each.