Twisted Triangle (19 page)

Charlie Price and John Roberts took Margo to buy some make-up and clean underwear before they dropped her at a Holiday Inn in downtown DC. They had offered to take her back to her townhouse, but she said she was too scared to sleep there alone,

vulnerable to another of Gene’s attacks. Their offer only reinforced her sense that they didn’t believe her story.

Gene had said that her testimony was crucial and that if she testifi that they really had lived at the house at Lake Capri, the whole case would crumble and he’d be acquitted, but they’d never discussed what might happen after she lied on the stand. Now, as her mind roamed through the possibilities, she pondered whether the judge would order a mistrial and she’d get fi for lying on the stand, not to mention destroying the Feds’ case.

She had no idea what was going to come next.

Chapter Eight

Mitigating Circumstances

On Friday morning, June 26, the
Washington Post
hit the stands with a headline that read, “FBI Agent Withdraws Charges Against Spouse: Woman Testifi Husband Not Guilty of Theft.” To Margo, it might as well have said, “Agent Lies on Stand.”

The story cited statements from court papers filed by Gene’s attorney, Reid Weingarten, saying that “the marriage broke up because Marguerite Bennett was having an affair with another woman. That fact, the papers said, also was central to her having made the accusations against her husband.”

Even though Margo disagreed with that statement, she was relieved, at least, that Patsy’s identity had not been revealed.

Brian Gettings and Frank Dunham took Margo back to the courthouse around 9 am Friday so that they could advise the judge that Margo had given false testimony under duress.

As they were riding up the escalator, they saw Gene standing at the top, leaning against the wall with an amused smirk.

“I wonder what that was all about,” Frank said.

Afterward, Brian told her to go see her doctor, because none of the federal authorities seemed interested in documenting her injuries, which included multiple bruises on her forehead, back, and knees; the cut on the back of her thigh; her numb thumb; and the scalp burns.

The doctor told her she was lucky she didn’t have more serious problems from the taser.

“Those things aren’t meant to be used on someone’s head,” he said.

Margo got to Quantico around three that afternoon, feeling like a leper. When she walked into a room, everyone stopped talking. In the halls, her colleagues looked down or away, anywhere but her eyes.

After the other instructors left for the weekend, she sat in her empty offi alone with her thoughts.

Margo was concerned about drawing Patsy any further into this mess and thought it would be best in the long run if she could say she had no ties to the famous author. Margo could only imagine the next set of headlines. She didn’t feel right, knowing she could expose Patsy— and her own family— to more bad press.

She’d thought her friendship with Patsy would go on for years and years. But since the attack, she’d realized that Gene was going to try to use Patsy to damage her, that he was willing to do anything to make Margo look like a nut who was unfi to raise their children. Given Patsy’s international celebrity status, she thought it was dangerous and foolish to maintain their friendship.

“This was Virginia,” she later said. “They would not have toler-ated a gay relationship like that, with a woman who had two small children. Had I maintained a relationship with Patsy, it would have been harder for me to say ‘I’m not living a gay lifestyle,’ and there was no way I would have gotten custody of my children. I wouldn’t have even gotten visitation rights. So I was willing to take that part of my life and put it on a shelf, because I had to.”

Margo called Patsy and laid out a condensed version of what Gene had put her through over the past week.

“I told him we were together twice, but that it was over and it was not what he thought it was,” Margo said. “Gene is trying to use you to get to me, and I think it would be best for you and for me if we had no further contact.”

“Do you think he would ever try to hurt me?” Patsy asked. “No, it’s me that he wants. So it’s in your best interest to disassociate yourself from me.”

“Are you really sure this is the right thing to do?” Patsy asked, her voice refl her gradual acceptance of the situation.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, but I know that you’re right,” Patsy said. “Good luck.”

Later, Margo recalled, “It was a very realistic decision to make, and unfortunately that’s what we had to do. She was a megamil-lions book writer and I was still very focused on getting my life back in order.”

Brian was frustrated that the FBI wasn’t investigating Margo’s allegations or making any move to protect her from Gene, so he arranged for a former Fairfax County police captain to give her a polygraph on Saturday morning. She passed.

The next day, Margo met with the same two FBI agents to fi ish giving her statement. She tried to give them as many specifi details hoping to give them verifi proof that she was telling the truth, and also the ammunition they needed to prosecute Gene for the abduction. She said, for example, that on Tuesday, while she was waiting for Gene to finish in court, she’d written a letter to John Hess and a chronology of the events so far. She’d put it into a stamped envelope addressed to John, but never sent it. Gene took it from her that night, saying she could have jeopardized the kids’ safety if “they” had seen her mail it.

On Monday, June 29, Brian called the prosecutors to report that the polygraph proved Margo was telling the truth and that if the bureau didn’t start taking more aggressive action, he was going to send his own people out on the street to do it for them.

Attorney Reid Weingarten filed for a mistrial that same day, saying he could not respond to Margo’s latest allegations in a timely fashion. The judge granted his request and scheduled a new trial for the end of July.

Over the next couple of weeks, the FBI sent agents to Atlanta to look into Gene’s past activities there, and by mid-July, the bu-reau had gathered enough information that they posted two agents at Margo’s house from sundown to sunup in case Gene showed up. One stayed outside in his unmarked car; the other sat on the couch

all night. This lasted a couple of days, until Margo told them that she found this approach too intrusive.

So she and the bureau worked out another arrangement: dur-ing the week, she stayed the night in a secure part of Quantico, an area in the Jefferson Building usually reserved for high-profi or foreign counterintelligence informants. Then, on the weekend, Margo took the girls— along with two agents from the Washington fi offi —to Dianna’s house. Margo was still too scared to stay at the townhouse alone.

Dianna, who had learned about the kidnapping from another agent the week it happened, was devastated. “I almost felt guilty because I hadn’t been there,” she said later. “Of all the times for me not to have gone with her, and then this was the time he pulled this stunt.”

Tony Daniels, the top offi at Quantico, believed the kidnapping story. So did Caroll Toohey.

“I had no reason not to believe it,” Tony later said. “Margo didn’t seem to be the type of person to fabricate something like that.”

Caroll thought it was understandable that a hostage in her situation, who was under Gene’s power and had fallen victim to Stockholm syndrome, would give in to sexual manipulations like Gene’s.

“It’s completely reasonable that she’d go along with sex or anything else really,” he later said. “It’s not even out of the ordinary.” But the rank and file felt differently. While the agents were staying at Dianna’s house, they waited until Margo left the room to express their disbelief to Dianna that Gene, a respected FBI

agent, would do such a thing to his estranged wife. “Do you really believe her?” they kept asking.

Margo and Dianna felt frustrated with the sexist nature of their questions.

After two weeks of alternating between strange beds at Quantico and Dianna’s house, Margo could no longer deal with the instability, so she asked her sister Jackie to come up from Tuscaloosa to be, in effect, her emotional bodyguard for a while.

Jackie was the fi family member or friend in whom she confi about her affair with Patsy, although she didn’t name names.

“I want you to know that Gene’s accusing me of being gay and that I did have a very brief involvement with someone,” Margo said.

She was scared to hear her sister’s response, but Jackie didn’t even blink.

“That doesn’t matter,” she said, waving it off with her hand.

Gene’s second trial was delayed until August 17.

On August 13, Margo got a call from Brian Gettings, saying that the prosecutors wanted to know how she would feel if Gene got a year in prison for pleading guilty to two felonies— filing a false claim with the federal government and obstruction of justice— but was not charged with a violent crime.

“I would feel like my life isn’t worth very much,” she said.

“I understand, but by going forward with this, it would mean you don’t have to come back into court. Can you deal with this?” “Yes,” she said. “Tell them to do what they’re going to do and

get this over with.”

Margo felt she was powerless to say or do anything more to force the prosecution, so she tried to accept the fact that Gene was getting off easy. She fi that the prosecutors had determined that the abduction was too diffi to prove with no witnesses and little, if any, physical evidence. Gene had cleverly made sure of that.

Tony Daniels later speculated as to why Gene was not prosecuted for the kidnapping: “You basically had a he-said, she-said. . . . Nobody saw the assault in the garage, so how do you prosecute a case like that?” Even given the scrapes, burns, and bruises on her body, he said, “There’s a hell of a difference between injuries and a kidnapping.”

As Brian briefed Margo on the plea agreement, she was irked that Gene had made a special point of telling investigators that he would never testify against her if the government tried to prosecute

her. They had already told Gene that Margo was not a target in the investigation, yet he continued to insist that the agreement include his statement. Margo saw this as simply a ploy so that he could claim in the divorce proceedings that he was trying to be reasonable and nice, even after his wife had leveled such horrible allegations against him.

Jerry York’s case was transferred to Georgia, and his wife, Brenda, was granted immunity. Both of them agreed to testify against Gene.

Before he’d abducted Margo, Gene had told George Murray, his former Nickelride partner, that he was innocent of the original two charges involving the home relocation scam, and asked George to be a character witness at his upcoming trial in June.

“You got to tell me you didn’t do this,” George said.

“No, I didn’t do it. They made this up to try to get me,” Gene replied.

George agreed to testify but was never called.

After the kidnapping, Gene called George at his offi in Atlanta one afternoon and told him he was accepting a plea bargain. “Look, I want to let you know I’m pleading guilty,” Gene said. “What?” George said. “You’re telling me you did this? You

swore to me you didn’t.”

George, a Vietnam veteran for whom loyalty to a comrade means everything, was so angry that he spewed expletives at Gene and told him he never wanted to see or talk to him again.

“I’m probably the last person he’d call if he was on fi because he’d know I’d throw gasoline on him,” George later said. “I saw this as a blatant betrayal of trust.”

On August 19, Gene went to court to plead guilty to the two new charges and to offi accept the plea agreement, under which he agreed to resign, “to provide truthful, complete, and forthright information to the FBI at all times during the debrief-ing” of his crime, and to serve one year in prison. He submitted his letter of resignation that same day.

“It has been a pleasure serving with you in happier times,” he wrote to Weldon Kennedy, an associate deputy director for administration at FBI headquarters.