What happened to Frank Armani and Francis Belge after the Buried Bodies case became public?

Once the secret surfaced at the 1974 trial, Armani and Belge faced public outrage, a grand jury weighing possible criminal charges, and an ethics complaint that threatened disbarment. Armani received death threats, carried a gun, lost clients and had a heart attack, while Belge drank heavily, left his practice and moved to Florida. The criminal charges were eventually dropped and the ethics complaint dismissed, on the view that the lawyers had acted correctly under the law.

• Armani found a dead fish in his car, and his wife found an unlit Molotov cocktail in their backyard.
• In 2007 Armani was the featured speaker at an American Bar Association conference attended by about 400 people.

▸In their words

“You have to be an animal not to feel the anguish of the parents, of the family.” Frank Armani · at 24:25 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on Radiolab (2026-10-30). Read the whole episode summary →

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