Sex, drugs, a dead playboy and a former Penguins winger charged with murder

No sooner had Florida authorities arrested a popular former Pittsburgh Penguins winger, charged him with first-degree murder and tossed him in jail, the titillating story flashed through the sports world.

It was a gripping tale: sex, cocaine, a dead playboy and a murder mystery that took authorities five years before they charged the ex-hockey player. If that wasn’t enough, the accused player’s dad had been killed in a hail of gunfire years earlier in his violent, failed attempt to coerce a TV station to air his son’s game and interview on Hockey Night in Canada.

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It had all the ingredients for a good book and movie. In fact, the story became the subject for both.

Brian “Spinner” Spencer, one of the more popular Penguins of the 1970s, was a grinder who battled for pucks in the corners. Now, in March 1987, he sat in the Palm Beach County Detention Center facing the possible electric chair when I pulled up a chair across from him. We each picked up the telephone on the other side of a bullet-proof window and began to talk.

It would be the only jailhouse interview Spencer would grant before he went to trial, accused of murdering a playboy restaurant owner, the son of a prominent Florida land developer. Spencer’s live-in girlfriend, who happened to be a call girl, told him that she had gotten into an argument with the restaurant owner, a client, regarding payment for her services. Hours after Spencer was seen arguing with the man down a dark, dirt road, the guy turned up dead.

My trip to West Palm Beach that spring brought a plea by defense attorneys to stay away from Spencer and a prosecutor who promised to subpoena me if I did talk to him. It prompted me to hightail it out of Florida once I did. But I also managed to stop by to say hello to second-year Atlanta Braves manager Chuck Tanner and his coaching staff that included Willie Stargell while they were in spring training at West Palm Beach. I also chatted with a visitor that day, Donora, Pa., native Ken Griffey Sr., who told me his son might get drafted in the first round that June. Bosses love two stories for the price of one.

Spinner Spencer, 37, had been retired for seven years after playing his final NHL season with the Penguins in 1978-79, finishing up a year later in the AHL. He moved to Florida and found himself in some serious hot water.

His early NHL career had begun under the most bizarre and tragic of circumstances. Spencer, in his first full NHL season, told his father that his Toronto Maple Leafs would be televised nationally in Canada in a December 12, 1970 game against Chicago and he would be interviewed between periods. But the local station two hours from his father’s home in British Columbia decided to televise a Vancouver Canucks-Oakland Seals game instead.

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Spencer’s father, who had invited family and friends to his home to watch his son that night, drove two hours to the TV station in a fit of rage. Once there, he pulled a gun to force the station off the air. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrived and killed Roy Spencer in a shootout. Spinner Spencer was told of his father’s death later that night and played the next day at Buffalo.

When we met, 17 years later, Roy Spencer’s son was charged with shooting another man twice in the head, leaving him to die in a ditch. The murder of Michael James Dalfo, 29, took place in the early morning hours of Feb. 4, 1982. Five years later, prosecutors decided to give Spinner’s prostitute girlfriend — described by one as Marilyn Monroe-like — full immunity to testify against him in a case that had gone cold.

After Diane de Lena, the call girl, and Dalfo argued over her services, she left and told Spencer that Dalfo frightened her. The two hopped in a car and went looking for Dalfo. They found him outside of his posh condo and forced him into their car, according to the woman’s testimony, and the trio drove to a remote area down a dirt road. The three got out and the two men argued as the scared woman ran back toward the main road, again according to her testimony.

De Lena told prosecutors Spencer drove back down the dirt road by himself and picked her up.

“Where’s Dalfo?” she told prosecutors she asked Spencer.

“He’s back there. He’s not going to cause us trouble anymore,” she said he replied.

A truck driver found Dalfo the next morning with two gunshot wounds to his head.

Lynne Baldwin, an assistant state attorney prosecuting the case, welcomed me into her office and was not bashful providing information on the case. I followed her around the courthouse that day as she went from case to case, talking to me in between courtroom visits. While waiting for her to finish one case, a defense attorney who was not involved with Spencer approached me and warned me not to try to talk to him. It might hurt his case, he said. Spencer’s court-appointed defense lawyers never returned my calls.

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I asked Baldwin how I might interview Spencer, if that was even possible. Go to the jail and sign in, she told me. Once there I approached a group of women gathered outside. They were wives and girlfriends of the incarcerated. I asked how to go about visiting a prisoner. Just sign up, one said, and if they don’t call your name to leave, it means the prisoner agreed to meet with you.

My name wasn’t called to leave. I was among the visitors ushered into an area where, just as you’ve seen on TV, the prisoners were separated by a window, with a phone on either side to talk. I sat down and as Spencer approached, he gave me a look like, who the hell are you? I introduced myself and told him I was writing a story about him. He said he would talk to me, but could not talk about the case, saying only, “The things they’re digging up, certainly I had nothing to do with.”

Still, it was a fascinating interview.

He publicly thanked his fans and begged me to get the message to them to write to him in jail, as more than 600 already had. Twice divorced, he blamed much of his troubles and exit from hockey on women. As he did this, he gently banged the glass that separated us with a huge hand that had landed on many an ice opponent. He railed against “Marriage, and the ability women have to tear you down.”

He talked about his connection with his fans and how much he enjoyed visiting kids in hospitals during his playing days.

“A 12-year-old kid in Buffalo died in my arms,’’ Spencer told me. “I was crying. Here I was able to lead a life in the NHL and here’s a 12-year-old boy who never got a chance. No divorce court could take that away.”

Spencer said he was optimistic about beating the murder rap.

“Now we’re at the repairing stage,” he said. “I have a lot of priorities now to sort through and get on with my life. I’m very optimistic. … I never went into any game feeling I had a chance to lose.”

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I thanked him, closed my notebook, left the jail, packed up, left for the airport and flew home to Pittsburgh earlier than planned. My story appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on April 1, 1987. I was never subpoenaed by Florida authorities. That October, Spencer was tried and found not guilty on all charges and set free. He would have just over seven more months to live.

Spencer and a friend had just purchased cocaine on June 3, 1988. They stopped to grab some cigarettes when the friend told police a robber shot Spinner dead through the heart while he sat in the passenger side of his truck. The culprit then ran off.

Larry Willie Johnson was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the murder. His motivation for killing Spencer remained unclear. A botched robbery was suspected.

(Photo of Brian Spencer: The Associated Press)