Murray R. Gold Trials: 1976-92 - Second Trial

At Trial II, beginning October 12, 1976, 55 prosecution witnesses testified to the circumstantial evidence. On cross-examination, an FBI expert on footprints admitted that the bloody heel print "was not made by any" of Gold's shoes. The defense then proved that in 1974 Cat's Paw had distributed 10,000 pairs of heels in Waterbury.

While prosecution and defense counsels were the same in Trial II as in Trial I, the judge was not. Unlike Judge Wall, Judge George Saden refused to admit testimony about Sanford's confession. The jury found Gold guilty of both murders in the first degree. He was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment.

Gold's parents hired attorney Louis Nizer to handle an appeal. Before Connecticut's Supreme Court, he argued that the judge should have let the jury hear the hearsay evidence of Sanford's confession. The law, he asserted, permitted a hearsay confession because the confessor could not be expected to make an untrue statement that might subject him to punishment for a crime.

The five-judge Supreme Court ordered a new trial.