THE TRIAL
Athens: 1947
23
Five hours before the murder trial of Noelle Page and Larry Douglas was to begin, Room
33 in the Arsakion Courthouse in Athens was overflowing with spectators. The courthouse
is an enormous gray building that takes up an entire square block on University Street and
Stada. Of the thirty courtrooms in the building, only three rooms are reserved for criminal
trials: Rooms 21, 30 and 33. Number 33 had been chosen for this trial because it was the
largest. The corridors outside Room 33 were jammed and police in gray uniforms and gray
shirts were stationed at the two entrances to control the crowd. The sandwich stand in the
corridor was sold out in the first five minutes, and there was a long line in front of the
telephone booth.
Georgios Skouri, the Chief of Police, was personally supervising the security
arrangements. Newspaper photographers were everywhere and Skouri managed to have
his photograph taken with pleasing frequency. Passes to the courtroom were at a premium.
For weeks members of the Greek judiciary had been besieged with requests from friends
and relatives. Insiders who were able to secure them bartered them in exchange for other
favors or sold them to the jackals who were scalping them for as high as five hundred
drachmas apiece.
The actual setting of the murder trial was commonplace. Courtroom 33 on the second
floor of the courthouse was musty and old, the arena of thousands of legal battles that had
taken place over the years. The room was about forty feet wide and three hundred feet
long. The seats were divided into three rows, six feet apart, with nine wooden benches to
each row.
At the front of the courtroom was a raised dais behind a six-foot polished mahogany
partition with high-backed leather chairs for the three presiding judges. The center chair
was for the President of the Court and above it hung a square, dirty mirror reflecting a
section of the courtroom.
In front of the dais was the witness stand, a small raised platform on which was fixed
a reading lectern with a wooden tray to hold papers. On the lectern in gold leaf was the
crucifix, Jesus on the cross with two of his disciples by his side. Against the far wall was
the jury box, filled now with its ten jurors. On the far left was the box where the accused
sat. In front of the defendants’ box was the lawyers’ table.
The walls of the room were of stucco, and there was linoleum on the floor in contrast
to the worn wooden floors in the courtrooms on the first floor. A dozen electric light bulbs
hung from the ceiling, covered with glass globes. In a far corner of the room, the airduct
of an old-fashioned heater ascended into the ceiling. A section of the room had been