An editor is lucky when a big story is signed, sealed and delivered to him. Or recorded and delivered, as was true last week for an editor who merely punched ”Play” to learn that a pillar of the community was apparently a big- time crook.
”He was the most unlikely guy to do something like this,” said James Rousmaniere, 45, editor of the well-regarded Keene Sentinel in New Hampshire, about the protagonist of a saga that has escaped national attention.
Rousmaniere (pronounced Roo-man-eer), a former Baltimore Sun reporter, learned ”from a source” late Monday that an audio tape was being mailed to him at the office by Leon Dusoe Jr., vice president and senior trust officer at Granite Bank in Keene.
Dusoe, 54, is a man of prominence: member of the United Way board, fundraiser for the New Hampshire Symphony, president of the Keene Country Club and an active member of the United Church of Christ. The editor knows him well-or so he thought-because of the friendship of their children.
By the time Rousmaniere learned he would be getting a tape, Dusoe`s wife had received a letter from Dusoe, whom, she thought, had left Saturday for a convention in Philadelphia. It disclosed the location of a tape left for her. Further, folks at Granite Bank were tipped that he`d left one tape for top executives and one for chums in the trust department.
Rousmaniere, suspecting news of an ample sort, likely was the only newspaper editor to come to work Tuesday with a tape-to-tape recorder. He figured he would need copies.
”Jim, this is Lee Dusoe,” opened the editor`s version of a customized confessional. ”I know this is an unusual way to correspond, but I have several things that I want to bring to your attention, for I know that you will treat it with the utmost respect due to your capacity at the Sentinel.
”I have been embezzling from Granite Bank, and even when I was at the First National Bank of Peterborough, since approximately 1985. It has got to a point now that there`s no way that I can cover my situation, so therefore I am planning to go into hiding until such time that I can sort things out, for I`m sure that I`ll be apprehended sometime along the way.”
Dusoe said he was stealing essentially to cover stock market losses that began with the 1987 crash. He identified accounts from which he had stolen and declared, ”We`re talking about somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 million to $1.25 million of monies” embezzled from Granite Bank. He also disclosed theft from the Peterborough bank.
”Why am I telling you all this?” Dusoe asked on the recording for the editor. ”I don`t know. Maybe it`s because I haven`t been able to tell anyone, and I felt as though I would like to get it off my chest.”
Dusoe said he was taping the message Jan. 2 (”a hell of a way to start the new year”) and planned to split town in several days. He`d hide for as long as he could. ”Thanks again and pray for me,” he concluded.
Rousmaniere reveived the tape at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday and listened with colleagues (”jaws went slack”). Facing a noon deadline at his afternoon paper (circulation 16,500), he assembled his staff and quickly put together a package of stories, including excerpts of a transcript of the tape.
Having talked to the police, and then FBI agents, it was clear ”we had the real thing,” he said. It was a good idea to make a copy: FBI agents surfaced with a subpoena for the tape. Some editors might not have acceded so readily, but Rousmaniere, who was printing a hefty chunk of transcript anyway and who said he ”is not an absolutist” on these issues, gave them a copy.
By week`s end, Dusoe was nowhere to be found, though his car was located in Bedford, N.H., near a regional airport in Manchester. Miffed bank officials were wondering if Dusoe`s tale of stock losses was disingenuous and if he had been stashing big sums somewhere all along.
By Friday, those officials had also gotten a court order to attach as much as $2.5 million in Dusoe assets. They weren`t saying if that $2.5 million figure was based on a belief, presumably following their own initial investigation, that Dusoe might have ripped off more than claimed in the tapes.
Lest one think this is the hottest tale to confront Rousmaniere, he has had the following: Kathleen Crowell Webb, a local girl, recanting her rape testimony against Chicagoan Gary Dotson; a police chief whose missing former drinking buddy was found buried in the front yard of the chief, who by then had married the buddy`s wife; and Audrey Hilley, the ”Black Widow,” who fatally poisoned one husband, then married a Keene fellow but later tricked him into believing that she`d died on a Texas trip, only to return to town as a supposed twin sister who took up with the grieving ”widower.”
Who needs ”Twin Peaks”? We told Tom Kearney, the Sentinel`s executive editor, that some of this, at least the banker`s saga, smacks of ”The Front Page,” the classic about Chicago journalism. He concurred.
”Now all we need,” Kearney said, ”is his giving himself up to the paper.”
– – –
The most inspiring story of the week was way back in Monday`s Wall Street Journal. It disclosed that amid layoffs and pay cuts at his firm, Lawrence Hillbrand, 31, of the bond-arbitrage group of Salomon Inc., received $23 million in salary and bonus for his labors last year.
It seemed fitting that Hillebrand, whose group uses math formulas to discern price relationships among bonds, bond futures and bond options, and who had cut a now head-turning deal with Salomon`s boss to get a percentage of the group`s profits, toils on the 41st floor bond-trading area that inspired part of Tom Wolfe`s ”The Bonfire of the Vanities.”
– – –
On New Year`s Eve, Vanna White was hitched in Aspen to Los Angeles restaurateur George Santo Pietro. We safely assume she didn`t know that hours earlier, lawyers trekked to Cook County Circuit Court for a status report on a lawsuit titled ”George Santo Pietro v. Chicago Sun-Times Inc., and Irv Kupcinet.”
It stems from a Monday, June 1, 1987, Kupcinet item of atypically biting air. One might even wonder if the genteel gossip king had subcontracted to a colleague, the esteemed mobologist Art Petacque:
”A Hollywood report has Vanna (”Wheel of Fortune”) White linked romantically with a George Pietro, a.k.a. George DiPietros Santos,” Kup wrote. ”We don`t want to get Vanna`s vowels in an uproar, but does she know the Real Pietro? He`s well known in Chicago as an alleged con artist with his own `wheel of fortune.` Among his many local scams, Pietro bilked the wife of a millionaire out of $125,000, and also tried to dupe a Chicago hotel out of a huge sum but made restitution after he was seized. During that period, Santos, who also used the name `Jonas Peters,` tooled around town in a white Excalibur.”
”In one of his more recent escapades, Pietro was linked romantically with Linda (”Dynasty”) Evans. She broke it off after she financed him in a West Coast restaurant that cost her a tidy fortune. He passed himself off to her as a Greek restaurateur. He`s Puerto Rican. Just thought you`d like to know, Vanna.”
Well, Pietro (People magazine, normally the bible of froth, throws us for a loop by melding the last two names into ”Santopietro”) filed a libel suit via Chicago attorney Matt Lydon. He cited as false and defamatory the claims of his being a con artist involved in scams; that he bilked a millionaire`s wife of $125,000; tried to dupe the hotel; and contended that ”Linda Evans did not finance plaintiff in a West Coast restaurant which `cost her a tidy fortune` ” or was led to believe he was a Greek. In court papers, Pietro says only that his ”grandparents are of Italian national origin.”
The Sun-Times was initially represented by Sidley & Austin`s Sam Skinner, the capable former U.S. attorney not known as a 1st Amendment specialist to anyone except, perhaps, former Sun-Times publisher and Skinner chum Robert Page. Page is long gone, and Skinner now protects our highways and runways as U.S. secretary of transportation. He was supplanted in this matter by the Washington branch of Baker & Hostetler via lawyers Bruce Sanford and Doug Lee, aided by Chicago`s Levin & Funkhouser.
The defense roundly denies libel and asserts that, as a public figure, Pietro can`t meet the burden of showing malice. Pre-trial discovery, which could include interrogation of Linda Evans, will ensue. If this survives the paper`s likely motion for ”summary judgment,” or a pre-trial dismissal, a trial date will be set.
Hey, forget the main allegations. Linda, did Pietro, a certifiable hunk, say he was Italian, Greek or Puerto Rican?
