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'Moby Cohen' Makes A Whale Of An Affair

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Daniel Ruth

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 2, 2008

This is an admittedly cynical guess, but do you suppose local mouthpiece Johnny Trevena's efforts to get Gov. Charlie Crist to stick his nose into the Sabrina Aisenberg case has about as much of a chance of succeeding as Jeff Garcia offering to pick up Brett Favre at the airport?

Hasn't this been quite a sight? Two of the Tampa Bay area's most grandstanding criminal defense attorneys, Trevena and Barry Cohen, who never met a mirror they didn't treasure, turning into a couple of hand-wringing Bronte sisters.

This week Cohen conducted a breathless press conference refuting allegations he and his late manservant Johnny Tranquillo conspired to dispose of the body of 5-month-old Sabrina following her disappearance from the Valrico home of her parents, Steve and Marlene Aisenberg, in 1997.

The source of all this melodrama turned out to be two chuckleheaded convicts, Scott D. Overbeck and Trevena's client Dennis Byron, who blew a huge pile of hooey up Cohen's bloomers by claiming malevolent forces within the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office were attempting to induce them to implicate the lawyer and his minions as accessories to a murder.

Enter Captain Ahab and Moby Cohen

This sort of duplicity seemed perfectly plausible to Cohen, who noted one of the sheriff's investigators was none other than former federal prosecutor Tony Peluso.

The theory here was that since the attorney successfully managed to get federal charges of lying to investigators laughed out of court when tapes purportedly revealing the couple admitting their guilt turned out to be more unintelligible than Ozzy Osbourne, Peluso bore some sort of obsessive Captain Ahab-esque grudge against Moby Cohen.

As well it mattered little that Hillsborough Sheriff David Gee took pains to issue a statement noting Cohen never was and is not now the target of any criminal investigation.

To buy into this soap opera, you have to believe a few things.

First, you would have to believe that Cohen would risk disbarment, the loss of his career, his affluence, his influence and the likelihood of prison to engage in a conspiracy with his major domo to obstruct justice, destroy evidence and become an accessory to murder to assist a client.

In Steps Inspector Javert

Now even if you want to think the worst of him, Barry Cohen is no idiot. There is no rational reason to believe he would engage in this sort of criminal behavior. After all, it's not as if he needed the money.

Second, the idea that Peluso is consumed with a "Les Miserables" Inspector Javert crusade against Cohen would appear to be patently ridiculous.

Peluso had nothing to do with the original federal prosecution of the Aisenbergs and indeed successfully represented the government in a civil action brought by Cohen to recover $7 million in legal fees, which eventually were reduced to $2.5 million.

And lastly, why would the current sheriff's investigation into Sabrina's disappearance repeat the very same incompetence, which led to the first charges against the Aisenbergs getting tossed, as Cohen and Trevena have claimed?

And Charlie Crist is supposed to step into this parallel universe of absurdity?

Keyword: Book of Ruth, to read and comment on Daniel Ruth's blog.

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