RIVERHEAD, N.Y. — When multimillionaire investment banker Robert Theodore Ammon was brutally beaten to death in his East Hampton beach house three years ago, police immediately suspected that his estranged wife's brash, toolbelt-wearing beau had something to do with it.

Detectives tried to place electrician Daniel Pelosi inside Ammon's house on the weekend of Oct. 20, 2001, but the physical evidence just wasn't there. In fact, they couldn't place him anywhere near Long Island's famed East End around the time of the murder.

At least not until Pelosi started talking, prosecutors say.

And if their witnesses are telling the truth, Pelosi talked and talked and talked about how he tried to break every bone in Ammon's body.

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The latest prosecution witness to describe Pelosi's alleged boasts claimed this week not only that the 41-year-old Pelosi admitted beating Ammon to death, but that the defendant offered him $100 for each tooth the witness beat out of jailhouse informants helping prosecutors with their circumstantial case.

Clayton Moultrie — a 39-year-old convicted drug dealer, thief, arsonist and veteran police informant — told Pelosi's mostly female jury that Pelosi confided to him in jail that he wished he had simply used a gun to kill Ammon. Prosecutors plan to argue that marks on Ammon's body are consistent with the use of a stun gun, a weapon Pelosi admits he purchased before the killings.

"I was trying to break every [expletive] bone in the [expletive's] body," Pelosi said in September, according to Moultrie's testimony on Tuesday.

"No one would believe that a person my size could do that," Pelosi allegedly continued. "If I had known what I know now I would have just put one in his head."

Police never recovered the actual murder weapon. They believe that Pelosi tossed it and the computer hard drive of a secret security surveillance system into the waters off Long Island. Without any physical evidence pointing to Pelosi, the defense is trying to raise reasonable doubts and convince jurors that witnesses like Moultrie are drawn to the case by the intense publicity and other motivations.

Although Moultrie was being held without bail for allegedly robbing a man while wielding a baseball bat, prosecutors permitted him to be released on his own recognizance after he helped investigators tape 40 hours of conversations with Pelosi that subsequently were ruled inadmissible.

Moultrie wasn't free for long. He was charged with robbery in South Carolina and is currently incarcerated on Long Island again.

Hoping to avoid opening the door to the 40 hours of taped conversations, defense lawyer Gerald Shargel devoted most of his cross-examination Wednesday to exploring Moultrie's extensive criminal history and on-again, off-again career as a police informant. Noting that it was Moultrie who first approached Pelosi with claims that other inmates at the Suffolk County Jail were snitching on him, Shargel suggested that Moultrie went out of his way to cozy up to police.

"I'm not here to impress nobody. I'm just here to tell the truth," Moultrie said.

At another point, when Moultrie sobbed about his past misdeeds and how they had disappointed his wife and son, Shargel accused him of playacting.

"I do right by my heart. When I do wrong, I'm under the influence of drugs," Moultrie said through tears.

Shargel also accused Moultrie of making up stories about Pelosi because he believed there was a reward (there wasn't), and to avert a move by prosecutors in his many pending criminal cases to have him punished as a "persistent felony offender."

Moultrie smiled and said he was "very aware" of what the the term meant, but denied that his statements to police were motivated by the prospect of freedom.

"I never did it to get out from under charges," Moultrie said.

"So you did it why? For the good of the republic?" Shargel shot back, bringing laughter to the packed courtroom.

'I have a monster in me.'

Because of Moultrie's criminal past and history as an informant, Pelosi's lawyers may be able to convince jurors to pay little or no attention to his testimony. In fact, Shargel has alreadymade a case that prosecutors' reliance on jailhouse snitches who came forward after the trial began merely shows the meagerness of their case.

But inmates aren't the only ones who have testified about incriminating statements Pelosi allegedly made.

A former girlfriend, Tracey Riebenfeld, testified in October that Pelosi initially denied killing Ammon, but then asked her to tell police that he was having sex with her on the night of the killing because he feared Ammon's widow, Generosa, would try to frame him.

Three months later, however, Pelosi visited Riebenfeld again and informed her that he had married Generosa Ammon, who has since died of cancer. The news came as a shock to Riebenfeld, who had been dating Pelosi for months.

According to Riebenfeld, after Pelosi stuffed pillows in the windows of Riebenfeld's basement apartment because he believed police were after him, Pelosi then described the killing to her.

"He said 'I bashed his [expletive] brains in and he cried like a bitch and begged for his life,'" Riebenfeld testified. "I asked him why he did it and he thumped his chest with his hand and said, 'I have a monster in me.'"

Noting that Riebenfield did not tell authorities about the alleged conversation until many months later, the defense argues that she concocted her testimony in revenge for Pelosi jilting her.

Pelosi's father, Robert Pelosi, testified that he believed his son had gotten into trouble when Daniel Pelosi approached him at a family wedding on the Sunday between Ammon's murder and the discovery of his body that Monday.

"He asked me if someone wanted to get rid of something, what could you do?" Robert Pelosi testified. "I told him that in today's world, with DNA, I didn't think it was possible to completely hide anything."

The defense attacked Robert Pelosi's motives for the testimony by insinuating that he blamed his delinquent son for causing the stress that contributed to a fatal aneurysm suffered by his younger brother James, a New York City police officer.

When the trial resumes Nov. 21, prosecutor Janet Albertson will continue her direct examination of the Suffolk County Medical Examiner's Office pathologist who performed the autopsy on Ted Ammon's body. On Monday, Supreme Court Judge Robert Doyle is also expected to rule on whether the defense's cross-examination of Moultrie, the inmate, was enough to justify admitting 40 hours of taped jailhouse conversations.