Chapter 76 Section 26

Jian En refused to accept it and handed the case to the appeal court, saying that he suspected that the defendant might have withheld more evidence.If so, the entire Warburn case should be reinvented. It was not until December 7, 1988 that the Court of Appeals delivered its decision.The document is 54 pages long, to the effect that Judge Skinner has indeed abused his power, acted arbitrarily, perfunctorily, and favored one side in adjudicating the case. The judge is now ordered to re-hear. "The judge?" Jane was completely disappointed.In most such cases, the case should be referred to another judge.After several painful sleepless nights, Jane decided to go to the Woburn site to re-investigate.

"To the scene?" James Gordon said. "You don't even have a car yourself." Not only did Jane not have a car, but in the past two years, because he had nothing to do, he only lived on the red envelopes from other people's cases. First, his phone was cut off, and then his furniture was removed. On New Year's Day in 1988, the bank confiscated took his house.For a year, Jian En has been living in the office, eating and drinking in the office.Fortunately, this building has everything. You can watch TV in the conference room after get off work, sleep on the couch in Kevin Conway's office at night, and make coffee in the kitchen.Everyone still respects him as the elder of the firm, and they often bring him some food from home.Tom Kelly even led him to restaurants from time to time, and when he had ample money, he would give him two hundred dollar bills behind his wife's back.

Of course, Jane didn't have the money to hire experts, so he had to do the research himself. Kevin Conway became Jane's driver, taking him to Woburn.Every time Kevin returns to the office, he always shakes his head and sighs: "He's gone mad. This guy has gone mad, there's no way out." He recalled the words about "the bottomless black hole" he said seven years ago.It seemed that the Woburn case was indeed open, and never would be.For Jane at least, it's never over. Jane found out that the Yankee Environmental Engineering Company once hired a drilling worker named Lorenz Knox, and now he has moved to the northernmost part of Massachusetts, bordering New Hampshire.Jane finds him at a Christmas party.Lorenz recalled that while they were drilling the well, the tannery's own workers were also busy on the 15 hectares.Lorenz saw with his own eyes that the excavator loaded the dark soil mixed with garbage and other things into a large dump truck.Dump trucks leave with a full load and return empty, several times a day for several days in a row.

On the way back to Boston, Jane said to Kevin: "Have you ever noticed that sometimes you want to see clearly or look for something, and you put your eyes very close, but you can't see anything clearly? " "What are you trying to say?" Kevin asked while driving. "I've been looking for people who dump waste on the ground, why didn't I expect to find someone who cleans up for them. How can I be so stupid?" The man in charge of that cleanup was James Grainge, then an engineer at J. J. Riller Tannery, who was also no longer in Woburn.During the Christmas holidays, Jane and Bill Connolly flew to Vermont with a notary to record the engineer's statement.

At this point, Kevin Conway also began to believe that there was indeed some conspiracy here. After the New Year, Jane Hilleman returned to Judge Skinner's court with his new witnesses.During the hearing period of more than two months, Jian En summoned a total of 26 witnesses and submitted 236 pieces of evidence totaling more than 3,000 pages, including some materials provided by the National Environmental Protection Agency.The EPA has also been investigating the contamination of Woburn's water system for almost a decade, but their staff cannot appear as witnesses in unofficial proceedings because of federal government policy towards state departments.

James Granger told the court that in September 1983, Jack Riller directed him to remove all rubbish from the 15 hectares before the EPA survey team arrived.When they dug up a pile of discolored soil, Mr. Riller was upset, "like it was my fault for finding that soil," James said. Jack Riller asked James to direct the workers to dig three feet to make sure all the discolored soil was dug clean.James is a mechanical maintenance engineer and does not understand chemistry. Later, he heard workers in the leather processing workshop say that the leather with the flesh and hair removed must first be soaked in a chemical solution to remove oil stains.The place where they dug up the discolored soil was once a waste pit where workers dumped spent solvents, which have since been filled with rubbish.On 15 hectares, there are several such waste pits. "But there is not a lot of discolored soil in each place," James continued, "It only takes one truck to load it." Mr. Riller is quite serious, and every time a hole is dug, James has to go back to check whether all the discolored soil They were all cleared up.Then fill it with soil from other places, tamp it down, and sprinkle some fallen leaves, making it look like no one has ever moved it.

They worked there for more than a week, James said.Mr. Riller repeatedly told everyone to keep it secret, and must not leak any news to the outside world. In early March, Jack Riller was summoned again to appear in court.Unlike the calm and aggressive general manager three years ago, the Jack in front of him is already a dying old man.Although the Beeches Group won the lawsuit in the last trial, Mr. Riller may have encountered too many pressures from inside and outside the company. He first suffered from depression, and then there were signs of Alzheimer's disease, memory began to decline, and his mind was sometimes clear , sometimes confused.

Jack responded to Jane Hilleman's questions with a string of "I don't remember" or "Maybe, maybe not."When Jane asked about the Yankee Environmental Engineering report, Jack said he had brought a copy home.Next, to Jane's surprise and to everyone's surprise in the courtroom, Jack said: "Because I keep some tannery materials at home, for example, my own notes and recipe manuals on various machines. " Recipe booklet?Jane cheered up immediately, isn't this the connection point between J. J. Riller Tannery and TCE that he has been looking for all along?Jane En didn't dare to let the surprise out, and still used a calm tone, asking: "Do you mean the chemical reagents for treating leather by the formula?"