Prosecutor Stuns N.Y. Courtroom

A prosecutor, set to deliver her opening statement in the Hamptons slaying of a multimillionaire investment banker, instead stunned the courtroom Wednesday by alleging that the defendant had threatened her children, tried tampering with a juror, and admitted committing the crime.

Assistant District Attorney Janet Albertson made the bombshell charges just before the start of the trial of Daniel Pelosi, 41, delaying the beginning of the case until next Monday and surprising a packed Long Island courtroom.

Pelosi, an electrician, is charged with second-degree murder in the bludgeoning death of Theodore Ammon, who ran the private equity firm Chancery Lane Capital and was chairman of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

"I don't have to have a defendant threaten my own children," Albertson said in a hearing outside the presence of the Suffolk County jury. She added that authorities were considering new charges against Pelosi, including tampering with a potential juror and conspiracy to intimidate a witness.

In addition, the prosecutor said, authorities were investigating Pelosi for allegedly making "direct admissions of the murder to two people." Some of the information had just surfaced in the previous 48 hours, Albertson said.

Defense attorney Gerald Shargel was infuriated by the last-minute allegations, saying that he might press for a mistrial.

"What we heard today was simply outrageous," Shargel said. "They engineered it. They staged it. How can I get a fair trial now?"

State Supreme Court Judge Robert Doyle, after meeting with lawyers, asked the jury if any members had been contacted by anyone involved in the case. All of them said no. He then ordered the panel to return on Monday for opening statements.

Pelosi, as he was handcuffed and led from the courtroom, looked at the ceiling and let out a heavy sigh.

Ammon was found dead in a bedroom of his mansion in October 2001. Three months later, Pelosi, who had installed a security system in the mansion, married the slain man's widow.

If convicted, Pelosi could face 25 years to life in prison. He is being held without bail.

Ammon, whose estate at one time was worth a reported $100 million, was a former general partner at the investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., and a trustee at his alma mater, Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa.

Prosecutors say Ammon suffered fractures to his hands and ribs and was beaten in the head with a blunt object more than 30 times. They say he also was zapped repeatedly with a stun gun; prosecutors say Pelosi had purchased "numerous stun guns" before the killing.

But his defense team has already signaled his intent to challenge whether Ammon was injured by the weapon.

Prosecutors also allege Pelosi's intimate knowledge of the security system allowed him to disable it; the system's computer hard drive was missing when police came to the house.

Albertson claims Pelosi accessed the security system for 21 minutes shortly before 2 a.m., on Oct. 21 - the approximate time Ammon was killed. His body was discovered the following day by a business associate.

Shargel, who successfully defended mob boss John Gotti in the early 1990s, insists that Pelosi was traveling from New York City to his sister's home in Center Moriches - nearly 40 miles from Ammon's East Hampton home - the night Ammon died.

At the time he was killed, he was days away from finalizing a bitter divorce from Generosa Ammon. She married Pelosi just three months after Ammon's death, but the couple later split up. She died of cancer in the summer of 2003.

In one of a series of bizarre turns in the case, Pelosi collected Generosa Ammon's ashes from a Manhattan funeral home and took them to a Manhattan hotel bar where the couple had their first date. A photograph of the "reunion" ran prominently in the New York Post.

The trial is expected to last a minimum of six weeks, although Bergman predicted that it was likely to be closer to eight weeks.

By Frank Eltman