By Ralph Cipriano

When the government began its prosecution case 15 weeks ago against Vince Fumo, the lead-off witness was a member of Fumo's own family -- his estranged son-in-law, Christian Marrone.

What Marrone had to say about Vince was personal and nasty: Vince was an evil guy, and working for Vince was like being in the Mafia (once you're in, you can't get out). And that was just for starters. Marrone also made plenty of allegations about how Vince was a bad father to Marrone's wife, the former Nicole Fumo, and how Vince was also a would-be animal killer who once ordered a hit on a neighbor's barking dog.

So today, when the defense began presenting its case, the leadoff witness was somebody who would challenge the credibility of Christian Marrone, former Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor.

After Marrone, a Republican lawyer, split from Vince, he went to work for Castor, a fellow Republican. Only to hear Castor tell it, Marrone couldn't get along with Castor either. The former district attorney testified that he ended up firing Marrone, because he was a sneak.

"I realized I made a mistake in hiring him," Castor testified. "I dismissed him because I didn't trust him."

Marrone's offense? Castor said that when he first hired Marrone in 2002 as an assistant district attorney, Marrone offered to help with Castor's campaign for the Republican nomination for state attorney general. Castor described Marrone's offer as "highly unusual" for a new employee. Nevertheless, Castor said he took Marrone up on his offer.

Castor testified that Marrone used his former Fumo political connections to help the suburban Republican gain influence and collect cash from urban Democrats such as labor leaders.

But then Castor said he discovered that Marrone was working on behalf of his political opponent, Tom Corbett, who eventually won the 2004 primary and the general election. So Castor said he waited until two days after he lost the primary to Corbett, and then he canned Marrone.

"I had to learn about it by scuttlebut as it were," Castor complained about Marrone's defection to Corbett. "It was sneaky." Castor said his staff in the district attorney's office was "like family," and that he didn't want to have it sullied by "a guy like that (who was) sneaking around behind my back."

The defense began presenting its case today after the trial was abruptly halted last Thursday by the sudden illness of the defendant. Paramedics had to wheel Fumo out of the courtroom on a gurney, after he turned white and complained of shortness of breath, as well as an anxiety attack. But it was not a heart attack for the former senator, who has already survived two.

After spending two nights in a hospital, Fumo was back at the defense table this morning when the trial resumed, to face a 139-count federal indictment on charges of fraud, obstruction of justice and filing false tax returns. The former state senator, who has pleaded innocent to the charges, still looked pale, but he appeared animated when making points with his lawyers and he also smiled a lot.

It was a noticable contrast to the wan, poker face Fumo had displayed for the past four months at the defense table, as 78 prosecution witnesses took turns whaling on him. Now, after taking all those shots, Vince's lawyers get a chance to tell Vince's side of the story. And Vince himself is expected to take the stand in his own defense, an event that trial spectators have been waiting for.

Castor's testified today was that Vince's son-in-law was outspoken about his bad feelings for Vince. "He was very vehement in claiming he disliked Senator Fumo over family issues," told Dennis Cogan, Fumo's defense lawyer. "He was very forceful on that point."

When government prosecutors got a chance to cross-examine Castor, however, they scored some hits on his credibility. Castor, now a Montgomery County Commissioner. was asked if he was holding campaign meetings with Marrone in the district attorney's office during regular office hours. "Probably," Castor admitted.

Prosecutors also challenged Castor on the sneaky allegation, saying that Marrone wore a Corbett pin on his lapel. The only reason Marrone couldn't continue to support Castor, the prosecution contended, was that Corbett had won the primary, and was now the official choice of the Republican party. The turncoat son-in-law was just being a loyal Republican.

'You fired Mr. Marrone because he supported your political opponent?" the prosecutor asked. 

"That is also false," Castor said, although he conceded, "I was bitter about losing the election." But Castor told the prosecutor he fired Marrone because he was "out campaigning for my opponent, and not telling me that, he was sneaky."

Prosecutors also charged that after Castor had a falling out with Marrone, he encouraged supervisors to give Marrone bad reviews and tuck them in his personnel file. 

"Nope, that's not true," Castor said. He said that plenty of people voluntarily sent along "non-complimentary" appraisals of Marrone's work.

The second witness the defense called was also there to impeach Marrone's credibility. Rita Jensen testified how from September 1998 to March 2000, she was a housekeeper for Fumo, cleaning his 33-room, six-story Spring Garden castle with the nine bathrooms 9 to 5, five days a week.

"They were very neat people," Jensen said of Fumo and his then-wife Jane, before the couple divorced. The main point of Jensen's testimony was that during the year and a half that she cleaned Fumo's castle, she only saw his son-in-law "two or three times."

It was Marrone's testimony that although he was supposed to be working for the state senate, he spent the vast majority of his time during his early months on the job supervising construction at Fumo's castle.

On cross-examination, U.S. Attorney Robert Zauzmer tried to get Jensen to change her story, asking Jensen if it was true that she saw Marrone more often than that, and in fact, used to make Marrone ham sandwiches for lunch.

"No," she said. Maybe he got the menu wrong, the prosecutor suggested. "Forget about that ham sandwich." But Jensen stuck to her story about few sightings of Marrone. And when the prosecutor tried several more lines of questioning, the judge asked him to stop.

The trial is scheduled to resume at 10 a.m. Tuesday.