A Car Ride with Doreen Giuliano

Last fall I was in a journalism class called Interviews and Profiles at Fordham. For this class, I interviewed Doreen Giuliano, the mother of John Giuca who I previously wrote about in this post. For this interview, I met Doreen at Pace University's Law School in White Plains to attend a panel where she was speaking. The panel was organized by Jeffrey Deskovic on Wrongful Conviction Day, October 2, 2018.

After the panel, it was pouring rain. I had taken the Metro North up to White Plains to meet Doreen and was planning to set up another time with her to talk further. When we began discussing dates and times, she offered to drive me to the train station. Surprised and grateful to be out of the rain, I accepted the offer. Instead of taking me to the train station, Doreen directed her son's girlfriend to drive me home to my apartment in Manhattan. 

The following is an excerpt from the piece that I wrote on Doreen. My entire interview was done in the back of her son's car, and this section of the piece focuses on Doreen's decision to go undercover in order to prove her son's innocence.

DOREEN GIULIANO HAS LIVED IN BROOKLYN HER WHOLE LIFE. You can hear it in her voice, the way the –a at the end of her words sometimes sound more like an –er, and vice versa. Brooklyn is where she grew up and where she raised her two sons, John Giuca and Matthew Giuliano. They lived in a big white house with a white picket fence, and everything was perfect.

 Then, in 2003, when her eldest son John was 20 years old, he was found guilty of murdering a college student after a house party he hosted at their white picket fenced home while Doreen was out of town for the weekend. John was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. 

Now 35, John has maintained his innocence for the past 15 years, and his mother has done everything in her power to get her son a fair trial. 

Immediately following John’s conviction, Doreen went undercover and befriended a jury member she suspected of jury misconduct. She tells me, “I knew the verdict was wrong. And if the verdict was wrong, I wanna know what went wrong behind the scenes. I wasn’t after this big elaborate thing. It just spiraled into this big elaborate thing.” 

Realizing the suspected juror, Jason Allo would not talk with the mother of the man he had just put away for life, Doreen rented an apartment close to his home, dyed her hair platinum blonde, bought some heels and a push up bra, and set out to befriend Jason Allo.  

“I paid for everything” she tells me, “First of all, I was twelve years older than him. So, if he didn’t want to hang out with me, he wanted to hang out with the young girls. So, how could I make him want to hang out with me? You get free food, free beer, and laugh at every stupid joke. Make him feel like the king! I would call up and say I’ve got meatballs, I’ve got salad, I’ve got wine. And he’d say okay, and he only had to walk right around the corner. It was crazy.” 

Jason depended on Doreen for support, he confided in her, and she became a sort of therapist for him. “Jason, I’ve come to realize,” she says, “he was lookin’ for a friend, he had just got out of a 5-year relationship, he was hurting, he wanted to talk, and I would listen and I would laugh, but I hated his fucking guts. I wanted to stab him.”

I am so grateful that I got to know Doreen. Her story is so interesting and though all the hardships she has gone through, she is one of kindest, most positive people I have ever met.