Twisted Triangle (20 page)

The
Washington Times
, which covered the hearing, ran a story the next day, saying that Gene had pleaded guilty to defrauding the government and coercing his estranged wife into testifying falsely. The story mentioned that Margo had recanted her original statement about the Lake Capri house “because her husband had abducted her and improperly pressured her.” It also quoted Reid Weingarten as saying that Margo initiated the criminal fraud case against Gene to retaliate against him for suing her for divorce.

Even though Gene was not charged with kidnapping, Margo’s allegations were included in Gene’s presentencing report, which was written by federal probation offi Michelle Merrett. She recommended a longer sentence because of the violent means he’d used to obstruct justice and because of his continued denial that he’d abducted or even threatened to harm Margo. She also said she found a “preponderance of evidence” that the abduction had occurred, referring to the sealed reports of Margo’s interviews with the FBI, medical records from the doctor documenting her injuries, and her truthful polygraph test results.

Allison and Lindsey had been seeing a therapist, Molly Ellsworth, since Margo had moved out in October 1992. Although the girls continued their sessions with Molly, Margo relied mostly on her friends Dianna and John for her own emotional support. Julie Hoxie, the counselor Margo was seeing before the abduction, had moved away, and Margo felt that it would be too overwhelming to start over with someone new. John kept her focused at work and listened whenever she needed to talk; Dianna took her shopping, cooked her meals, and generally took care of her.

Margo got some help through the Post Critical Incident Trauma Program, a weeklong group therapy session for agents and nonsworn employees who had been through work-related or

personal crises. This was the fi time she had to tell her story to strangers, which proved to be a very diffi task.

Afterward, a man whose daughter had died of AIDS came up to her.

“I don’t know how you did it, being put in the trunk of a car,” he said. “I would go crazy.”

Margo replied, “I don’t know how you did it, burying your daughter. I’d go crazy.”

In early September 1993, Dianna was selling her house and proposed moving into the basement of Margo’s townhouse, but Margo felt that Dianna should know the truth about her and Patsy before Dianna made her final decision.

Margo, who was still working through her sexuality issues, no longer felt she was heterosexual, but she was still trying to find a way not to be a lesbian. She fi she’d just remain celibate, work hard, stay home, and take care of the kids. Embarrassed and fearful of rejection, she got up the nerve to broach the subject as they were driving to the townhouse one day.

She was surprised and relieved by her friend’s response. “I don’t give a rat’s ass what anybody says,” Dianna said.

For six months after Gene pleaded guilty, his attorneys wran-gled with federal prosecutors over whether he was complying with his pledge to take full responsibility and exhibit adequate contri-tion for the charges against him.

Because of Gene’s refusal to fully admit to his crimes— namely, the abduction—prosecutor Marcia Isaacson pushed for a longer prison term at his sentencing hearing on February 11, 1994, cit-ing the probation offi s recommended sentence of fi seven to sixty-seven months. The maximum penalty for each of the two charges against Gene was fi years in prison, a $250,000 fi or both.

However, Judge Jackson decided to give Gene only one year in prison, the term Gene had agreed to accept in the plea bargain.

The judge faulted attorneys from both sides for putting together such an ill-formed plea agreement, saying he was in the frame of mind to put “a plague on both your houses.”

But, he added, “I fi that there is suffi acceptance of responsibility here, barely suffi ent but suffi nevertheless, to give him credit for acceptance of responsibility and to do so in connection with both of the offenses.”

Before he imposed sentence, the judge asked Gene if he wanted to make a statement, which he did.

“Judge Jackson, I just again want to apologize for all the trouble I have caused,” Gene said. “My life is in ruin. It has ruined the possibilities of me doing too much with my life from now on with the two felony convictions on my record. I have to live with that. What I did back in 1987 was done in anger and with greed and I deeply regret that and I am having to pay for it now. I have had to pay for this with my career, my family situation, everything else. I don’t know how many other ways I can say that I am sorry, but I accept responsibility for what I did. I don’t blame anybody else. . . . The sooner I start it [the sentence], the sooner I can get it over and have some chance to get my life back together and get back to my children.”

A week before Gene was to report to prison, Margo heard someone pounding on her front door one night while she was in the kitchen talking to her father on the phone. She peered through the blinds and saw Gene standing on her front doorstep with a woman.

“Dad, it’s Gene,” she said, her heart pounding so loudly she felt as if it were in her throat. She knew that Gene had seen her looking at him.

“What’s he doing there?” her father asked. “I don’t know. I’ll call you back.”

Margo’s mind raced with possibilities. Had he come to hurt her? Was the woman there as a witness because he wasn’t going to hurt her, or was she there to help him?

“Margo, come to the door,” Gene yelled from outside. “I know you’re in there.”

Paralyzed with fear, Margo didn’t say anything.

“Come to the door,” he said again. “I need to talk to you.” “I am not coming to the door,” she yelled. “Just go away.”

Margo was about to dial 911 when they left. She called her father to let him know she was safe, but it took her all night to calm down.

About a month later, Margo received a letter from the FBI’s retirement fund administrator, notifying her that Gene was cash-ing out his account. Margo talked to her attorney about trying to stop him, but they learned that Gene could cash out as long as he advised her of his intention beforehand. Apparently that’s what he and the woman were there to do that night at the townhouse.

During the negotiations for the plea agreement, Gene had requested that he be allowed to serve his time in a minimum-security prison camp in Petersburg, and the prosecutors agreed to make that recommendation to the judge. Before he left, Gene told his daughters that he was going away “to camp.”

Margo told them the truth, albeit in simple terms because of their age. “I told them Daddy had signed some papers he wasn’t supposed to sign, and the judge said he had to go away for a year,” she later said. “I told them Mommy knew Daddy signed the papers and Mommy knew it was wrong.”

As it turned out, Gene was put into solitary confi apparently at the federal prison in Petersburg, next door to the camp. This was for his own protection, a standard precaution for former law enforcement offi who are considered more vulnerable if housed in the mainstream population. A month later, he was moved to a prison in Atlanta, then was driven to the federal prison in Sandstone, Minnesota, staying anywhere from a day to a week in three prisons along the way. He spent the majority of his term in Sandstone.

In late April, a bank offi informed Margo that foreclosure was about to begin on the Nokesville house and that in about a week, a sheriff’s deputy would dump all its contents on the street.

Betty, her divorce attorney, said Margo could go and salvage her belongings before they ended up on the sidewalk, because the house was still in her name.

So Margo called a locksmith to meet her there. He picked the lock and opened the door for Margo once she showed him her ID and the deed with her name on it.

“Good luck,” he said.

When she’d left the house in October 1992, Gene had allowed her to take only her clothes and makeup. This time, she brought a moving van and a crew to box up the rest of her things. She also brought John Hess for emotional support in case Tracy, the babysitter Gene had used during the kidnapping, who was living in the house while he was in prison, was home.

Margo took the girls’ bedroom set, the blanket chest her father had made for them, her grandmother’s cedar chest, the tables and chairs from the breakfast and dining room, the sofa, and two TV sets. She also cleaned out the garage. Many of her things were missing, such as her wedding dress, family photos, and several of her grandmother’s handmade quilts.

Among some papers, she found Gene’s presentencing report, which outlined a chronology of the investigation, the charges against him, and many biographical details he’d provided that would be completely contrary to what he would claim about his family and his mental health history several years later.

For example, the report said that Gene “described his upbringing as a very wholesome, loving family environment. He noted that there was never any type of mental or physical abuse imposed on family members. . . . [He] noted that his family was ‘poor,’ however, all his material and emotional needs were provided for. He indicated that [he and] his sister . . . had a normal relationship that most siblings experience.”

Margo had the moving crew box up Gene’s clothes, which she gave to his attorney, but she sold his tools at a church yard sale, along with much of their furniture, china, crystal, and linens, using the proceeds for living expenses or to pay off the debts with which he’d saddled her. She also got rid of a whole slew of picture frames, which she’d emptied, as if she were trying to free herself of her past life with Gene.

All the fi records that she and Gene had kept in two fi cabinets in his offi had also disappeared. He would later say that Margo stole these documents that day, using this as an excuse when he didn’t want to account for or explain certain transactions he made after he got out. He later admitted to making a number of such transactions by using the power of attorney she’d signed back in 1990, including borrowing money on the lines of credit they’d obtained before she left.

When Gene found out about Margo’s visit to the house, he told Tracy, the babysitter, to call the police. After he was released from prison in April 1995, he contacted the police himself to re-port that Margo had stolen $15,400 worth of his property, then fi a claim with the insurance company. The police didn’t pur-sue the matter, and the insurance company rejected Gene’s claim after Margo explained the situation.

For Margo, the foreclosure brought back childhood memories of her parents’ money problems back in Trussville, Alabama, when she heard her father crying to her mother in the bathroom about how he’d tried to stop the bank from taking their house. She also remembered being thirteen and seeing her mother tucking away the babysitting money Margo had given her, then looking embarrassed when Margo saw her pull it out of her lingerie drawer later to pay bills.

Margo didn’t want her children to have the same kind of memories, but she didn’t know how she was going to deal with the awful fi mess that Gene had put them in.

She felt overwhelmed as the debts began to mount. Gene had taken out loans on the van and the Jeep Cherokee, which she

still co-owned, but he’d stopped making payments once he went to prison.

The repo man called in November to tell Margo he had to take the van, so she told him where it was parked, and he picked it up. The Jeep went next.

Margo found it strangely coincidental that on April 4, 1994, the same date that Gene reported to prison, she was informed in a letter from Ed Leary, the bureau’s personnel offi , that the agency was strongly considering firing her. She was given ten days to respond.

Among the reasons he cited were that she was involved in a scheme to defraud the government and had fi false joint tax returns in 1986 and 1987, made false statements on joint loan applications, perjured herself at Gene’s trial, and exhibited conduct unbecoming to an agent.

“Employees must not, at any time, engage in criminal, dishonest, immoral or disgraceful conduct prejudicial to the government,” he wrote.

Margo felt that the bureau had used her to prosecute Gene and then discarded her. She also felt that Gene’s allegation about her homosexual activities, which had been publicized in the newspaper, was a silent but contributing factor in her current predicament.

FBI offi today say that as late as 1991, bureau policy concerning sexual conduct was that “an applicant or an employee must be reliable, trustworthy, of good conduct and of complete and unswerving loyalty to the United States,” conduct that, whether heterosexual or homosexual, would be considered in judging any applicant or employee on a case-by-case basis. Margo says she never saw a written policy explicitly about sexual conduct. All she knew was that for some time, the bureau had considered being a homosexual a security risk.