Into The Woods

Billy Smolinski Vanished Five Years Ago. The Cops Believe His Body Is Buried in Shelton. The Big Question Is Where?




Janice Smolinski watches as private investigator Todd Lovejoy searches through debris in a wooded area in Shelton.


Bands of electrical storms surged across Connecticut and heavy air hung oppressively across the lower Naugatuck Valley. It was a day to sit on the front porch and drink iced tea, not a day to stomp through the forest, scramble up embankments, and peer beneath rubbish looking for the body of your murdered son.
Welcome to the world of Janice and Bill Smolinski, which for the past five years has been a living nightmare as they relentlessly search for the remains of their 31-year-old son.
“We have to bring him home,” Janice Smolinski said. “We may never find out exactly what happened to him, but we aren’t going to give up until we find Billy.”


Billy Smolinski vanished in August 2004.

And the Smolinskis think they are getting close. They’ve been working with a private investigator, Todd Lovejoy, who has brought a sense of purpose to an investigation that has been more hot potato, than priority, to various law enforcement agencies involved since August 2004.
Lovejoy, a former sergeant in the Waterbury police department, left the force five years ago to launch his own business, Spyglass Investigations. Lovejoy stumbled into the case by accident two years ago while working on a separate investigation. While interviewing a witness he uncovered pertinent information that was linked to Billy’s disappearance.


Despite five years of desperation and anxiety, Janice Smolinski remains confident her son’s body will be found and she and her husband, Bill, will have closure. She is pictured here with P.I. Todd Lovejoy.

On June 14th the Smolinskis met Lovejoy in a gravel parking lot in Shelton to scout a wooded area for Billy’s remains. Lovejoy had pieced together several clues and believed there was an outside chance that Billy was buried beneath construction debris on the edge of a densely wooded forest in Shelton.
Frustrated with the pace of the federal investigation, the Smolinskis and Lovejoy decided to take action. The night before the search Janice Smolinski was optimistic – even joyful – that the search for Billy was about to come to an end. She barely slept. She and Bill attended church in the morning and met Lovejoy at noon.


Todd Lovejoy of Spyglass Investigations reads the VIN # off an abandoned car in the area the Smolinskis believe their son is buried. Lovejoy, a former sergeant in the Waterbury Police Department, has refueled the Smolinskis hope they will find their son.



Janice Smolinski watches Todd Lovejoy search through debris for her son Billy.


They climbed hills, slid down steep embankments, walked along railroad tracks, poked through piles of industrial debris and peered into dark barrels.
Three hours later the search came to an end with no Billy. “I’m not disappointed,” Janice said, “I’m on a mission. I really feel like we are very close to finding him. This spot is so isolated. It’s a great place to get rid of a body if you don’t want anyone to see you.”
While the Smolinskis have no proof that Billy was murdered five years ago, several suspects have provided detailed information about what happened that fateful night – and though the stories contradict – the end result in all the versions is the same – Billy was murdered, and his body was buried.
One suspect went so far as to lead the police to an isolated meadow in Seymour and point to the exact spot where he said he had helped bury Billy’s body. That information was used by the FBI to launch a massive dig in Seymour last August. Backhoes from the town of Seymour tore up an entire meadow, but no Billy.


An overhead view of the massive dig for Billy Smolinski in August 2008.

Other leads have pointed beneath a driveway and inside the foundation of a new house. One of the suspects was a former grave digger and there was speculation that Billy might have been buried in a cemetery in Seymour.
To date there has been more speculation than answers. No law enforcement agency is giving the Smolinskis any hope that Billy is still alive, they just don’t know where he’s buried. And all the suspects are either dead, in prison, or have a track record of substance abuse.
In the past five years the investigation has involved the Waterbury Police Department, the FBI, the Connecticut State Police, the Seymour police, and the Shelton police.
There is some confusion as to which organization is the lead investigator in the case. It started in Waterbury, was taken over by the FBI three years ago, and now involves the State Police, Seymour Police and the Shelton Police.
In a series of telephone calls the Observer tried to get an answer to the question of what law enforcement agency was in charge of the investigation.
An inquiry to the FBI resulted in an agency spokesperson leaving a message on the Observer voicemail stating that the FBI’s official policy is to not comment on ongoing investigations.
Detective Ben Trabka of the Shelton Police Department said the investigation was a multi-jurisdictional case and was very complicated. “The case has bounced around as the information has bounced around,” Trabka said. “No one agency wants to say they are the lead, but a lot of the leads point to a Shelton involvement.”
Trabka said that Waterbury was still actively involved in the case and that Waterbury police had processed a house in Seymour last autumn.
This was news to Waterbury police chief Neil O’Leary, who 90 minutes before he retired, told the Observer that he believed the FBI was the lead investigator.
“Technically we still have some standing in the case,” O’Leary said, “but if we got a tip today the first call we’d make is to the FBI. It’s their case now.”
The State Police refused the Smolinskis plea for help for two years telling the family that the case was under the jurisdiction of the Waterbury Police Department, and unless they were called in by Waterbury, they couldn’t help.
After the FBI took over the case in August 2006 it appears that the feds reached out to other police departments for assistance. Trabka said the FBI came to Shelton two years ago and that his department has been assisting ever since.
In addition, the Woodbridge Police Department is a key player in the story because they made the only arrest in the case when they pinched Janice Smolinski for hanging missing person flyers on a telephone poll too close to a public school.
It didn’t seem to matter to the Woodbridge cops that a Woodbridge school bus driver, Madeleine Gleason, had been tearing down Billy’s missing person flyers for weeks. It didn’t seem to matter to the Woodbridge police, or the Waterbury police, that Madeleine Gleason was Billy’s ex-girlfriend, and that the couple had split after Billy discovered Madeleine was having an affair with a prominent Woodbridge politician.


Madeleine Gleason

It didn’t seem to matter that Billy’s last telephone call was to the home of the Woodbridge politician telling him to “watch his back.”
Nearly two years after Billy disappeared the Deputy Assistant police chief in Waterbury told the Observer that “Billy was probably having a beer in Europe.”
The Waterbury police collected and lost five individual DNA samples from the Smolinski family, and despite impossibly strong leads, they repeatedly stated that they had nothing to investigate, that they had exhausted all leads in the investigation.
Private investigator Todd Lovejoy told the Observer that in the past five years no law enforcement organization has been to, or processed, the house he believes Billy Smolinski might have been murdered in.
It took almost five years before any police thoroughly processed Billy’s pick-up truck for forensic clues. The truck was recently combed over by the State Police Major Crime Squad, and Shelton Detective Ben Trabka said “they got some fingerprints out of the truck and they are trying to I.D. them now. They also got some DNA evidence, but they are not sure whose it is, and what significance it has.”
Trabka said that if any of the material links the suspects to the truck it will send off alarms. “There is no reason for any of the suspects to be in that truck,” Trabka said. “One theory is that after they buried him they drove his truck back home and parked it in the wrong place.”
The DNA and fingerprints can provide a direct link to the individuals who murdered and buried Billy Smolinski.
‘This case has had it’s ups and downs,” Trabka said, “but right now all the information points to this end of the valley.”

Battle Lines

Plans To Transform Anamet To Clean BioFuel Generator Meets Public Resistence. Company Has Troublesome Past.


The Anamet site has been dormant for nearly a decade.



Saverio Romanelli of the Waterbury Environmental Control Commission questioned Chestnut Hill BioFuel during its March 2009 presentation.


Old equipment decaying inside Anamet




On the surface it sounds like a terrific idea.

Chestnut Hill BioEnergy is proposing to purchase the Anamet property on South Main Street in Waterbury and transform the shuttered buildings, which have lay dormant for 9 years, into a clean energy project. The gist of the proposal is to take up to 54 truckloads of food waste a day and transform it into electricity.

The company will knock down an abandoned building along the Naugatuck River which used to generate steam and electric power for Anamet, a massive company that made metal hoses in the south end of Waterbury for 72 years, and turn a Brownfield into a taxable business that will put money in city coffers.

The plant would employ 40 to 50 people and tax revenue from the property would increase at least ten times. Sounds great, huh? Well, as usual, the devil is in the details. And upon closer inspection, some of the details don’t smell so good.

A few years ago David Goodemote – the man driving the proposal in Waterbury - was the president of Eastern Organic Resources which ran the Woodhue Composting Center in Springfield, New Jersey. The business took in 100 tons of wood chips, food waste, brush, and cardboard a day, and transformed the stew into compost they would resell to landscapers, garden centers and contractors.


David Goodemote


Food waste compacter behind a local Stop and Shop

Goodemote proclaimed his company to be environmentally friendly, but his neighbors had a different story – they called the composting center an obnoxious and destructive force in the neighborhood. The neighbors complained about a foul odor coming from the composting plant, and one neighbor, George Nicholson, worried that the foul air from Eastern Organic Resources caused respiratory infections among the racehorses on his farm.

In 2006 the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection hammered Eastern Organic with a $1.5 million fine for polluting the air and water, and committing administrative violations. Among the charges was that Eastern Organic had illegally discharged contaminated water into wetlands and a nearby brook. In an article in the August 6th, 2006 issue of the New York Times, David Goodemote said the accusations were unfair, and stated the company’s problems could be resolved by enclosing the facility and trapping the air and water inside.

Goodemote said New Jersey would not allow him the permits to do that. Frustrated, the composting plant was morphed into a solar energy farm and Goodemote set out to find a new home for his food recycling enterprise. After searching several states, and visiting sites around Connecticut, Goodemote zeroed in on the Anamet property, nestled between South Main Street and the Naugatuck River.

“New Jersey was not willing to work with us,” Goodemote said at a meeting in Waterbury recently, “but Connecticut and Massachusetts are.”

The key, according to Goodemote, is to obtain the proper permits to contain composting in an airtight process at the Anamet facility and trap all contaminated water and air inside. With the facility closed in, Goodemote said, there would be no odor problem in the South End, and no contaminated water seeping into the Naugatuck River. Mike Maynard, of Chestnut Hill BioEnergy, was also at the March meeting of the Waterbury Environmental Control Commission. Maynard said his company is not shy about talking about their “painful experience in New Jersey.”

“There are lessons learned,” he said. “We need to pay careful attention to odor control and the only way to do that is to close it in.”


Mike Maynard

Goodemote and Maynard said their problems in New Jersey arose from “political shifts” that thwarted their efforts to close in the facility. “The Connecticut DEP has been to our facility in New Jersey,” Goodemote said. “It is the largest composting facility on the East Coast. We know the key is to get our permit first.”

The Meeting
On a drizzling night in late March, Chestnut Hill BioEnergy gave a power point presentation about their Anamet site proposal to the Waterbury Environmental Control Commission. The company has been making the rounds for months trying to drum up support for their project, and opposition is beginning to stir. Neighborhood groups are e-mailing each other to muster troops to oppose the project. Members of the Waterbury Greenway Advisory Committee are paying close attention to the proposal as they plan a 7 mile multi-use trail along the Naugatuck River. Images of a multi-million dollar Greenway next to a plant processing food waste – operated by a company with a history of air and water violations - has given members pause.




The Anamet site is directly on the east bank of the Naugatuck River.



Greenway Advisory Committee Chairman Ron Napoli poses questions

After Chestnut Hill BioEnergy finished its presentation, Ron Napoli, the chairman of the Greenway Committee, rose to address the group. He said residents in the South End have had prior experience with serious odors from the city’s Waste Water Treatment Plant that had impacted their ability to enjoy their property. Napoli said that consultants studied the problem and said the odors had come from inside the plant. Napoli concluded by saying “odors could be the worst thing to happen to our Greenway project.”

Goodemote and Maynard assured Napoli that there would be no odors escaping from their composting process and that they would like to participate in the Greenway project. They would be happy to allow the Greenway a trail right through their property, they said.


Dick Scappini

Dick Scappini asked the presenters what control they had over the dozens of trucks that would deliver food waste to the plant each day. Goodemote and Maynard said they didn’t own the trucks and they would rely on independent haulers.

“I can’t say there will never be a leak,” Goodemote said. “There will be leaks and there will be a consequence to the hauler.”
The trucks will mostly haul compactors, not packers, greatly reducing spillage and leakage. Scappini wanted to know what happens when a leak occurs. Who cleans it up? What is the city’s recourse?

Goodemote said the haulers would be fined.

Close attention was paid to which route the trucks would use to get in and out of Waterbury. Goodemote said there would be no residential traffic, no impact on schools, no trucks on South Main Street, and that trucks could only operate from 6 am to 6 pm, and not at all on Sunday. The trucks would have a fairly easy entrance into the plant, but exiting proved more troublesome, with initial plans to route the trucks past the Brass Mill Mall.


Anamet's close proximity to St. Anne's Church proposed Loyola Project has raised concern.

Environmental Control Commission member Art Denze wanted to know “Why Waterbury?”, and he was concerned about building a Greenway “next to a garbage disposal.”


Steve Schrag

Steve Schrag is the head of the commission and he also wanted to know how and why Waterbury was selected for the project. Goodemote and Maynard told him that a multi agency task force and the state Department of Economic and Community Development had given the company a list of communities to consider: Hartford, Waterbury, New Haven, Bridgeport and Meriden.

“We had to be along a highway,” Goodemote said. “And we needed to be centrally located in the state’s population density. When we looked at the Anamet site we fell in love with it. We couldn’t build a site like that for less than $500 a square foot. This was far and way the best site we found. The building is impregnable. We can easily make it airtight.”

The Watchdog
Larry De Pillo has been a community activist in Waterbury for 30 years. He has been a mayoral candidate in Waterbury four times and was instrumental in forming the Independent Party in the city. To some people Larry De Pillo is an obstructionist, a man who stands up at almost every aldermanic meeting to rail against some proposal or another. To others, De Pillo is a man of integrity who challenges the political structure in Waterbury and keeps the powerful on their toes.

Whether he’s a pebble in the shoe, or a champion for the people - or both - it’s hard not to notice Larry De Pillo.


Larry De Pillo

De Pillo is strongly against the Chestnut Hill BioEnergy proposal for two reasons. “I don’t think this type of business belongs in a location where a lot of people live,” De Pillo told the Observer. “And #2, the people making this proposal are the same ones that experienced big problems in New Jersey.”

De Pillo said he called the DEP in New Jersey and was told “they had feet worth of files on the company, that they had conducted a horrendous operation and were shut down.”

When Chestnut Hill BioEnergy made an invitation only presentation to the Waterbury Board of Aldermen last year, De Pillo contacted Waterbury Mayor Mike Jarjura to see if he might gain access to the meeting. Jarjura told De Pillo he was unable to attend, and that De Pillo could go in his place. When the meeting started, Board of Education member John Theriault and Republican-American reporter Michael Puffer were denied access because they hadn’t been invited.

“That’s no way to treat an elected official and a member of the press,” De Pillo said.

As the meeting unfolded there was no mention of the company’s problems in New Jersey. De Pillo said he asked if they had any prior experience running an operation like they were proposing in Waterbury, and they said they had. De Pillo wrote the name of the operation down, and after the meeting he went home and entered the name in a Google search on the internet.

De Pillo was stunned.

He found articles in the New York Times that documented the company’s failures in New Jersey. De Pillo gathered information and produced a small booklet about the company’s only previous effort to run a food waste composting facility. Then he called Mayor Jarjura and requested a meeting.

“The Mayor was nice enough to give me his invitation so I wanted to tell him what I saw and heard,” De Pillo said. “When I showed him the booklet he was very surprised, and very concerned.”

De Pillo called the Connecticut DEP and “ripped them new backsides”, he said. “Then when I talked to the guy in charge of issuing permits he said he didn’t know who they were. Despite what the company officials say, the DEP is not onboard with their proposal.”

De Pillo accuses Chestnut Hill BioEnergy of misrepresenting Waterbury’s concerns when they are lobbying for the project in Hartford. “They are telling legislators that everyone in Waterbury is onboard with the concept,” De Pillo said. “This is a lie. Right now I don’t know anyone in Waterbury who is supporting this concept.”

And to De Pillo, this is already more than a concept. “They have a professional presentation they are taking around and it seems to be the same one they used in New Jersey to try and get their permit down there,” De Pillo said. “ New Jersey told them to go pound sand, and we should say the same thing.”

One of De PIllo’s greatest fears is that the project is never brought forward in Waterbury to gain city board approval. “This is all a horse and pony show to get approval from the Department of Public Utility Control (DPUC),” De Pillo said. “This company is trying to ram this through the DPUC and the Siting Council and then it won’t matter what the DEP and Waterbury have to say about it.”

De Pillo said he is not opposed to the concept of recycling food waste into energy, he just doesn’t think the Anamet site in the place to do it, or Chestnut Hill BioEnergy the company to run it.

The Observer asked De Pillo if he were the mayor, what would he do about this situation.

“I would request a meeting with top DPUC members, top siting council members, and top members from the Clean Energy Fund. I would want to know how Chestnut Hill BioEnergy has been representing Waterbury and where they are in the process,” De Pillo said. “It is time for Mayor jarjura and the Waterbury Development Corporation to intervene before it is too late.”

WDC
The Waterbury Development Corporation (WDC) is the City of Waterbury’s official economic and community development agency, and Leo Frank is the executive director. Franks said WDC showed Chestnut Hill BioEnergy a few sites in Waterbury, but has not passed judgement on the project.

“We are a sales force showing people properties and trying to stimulate the local economy,” Frank said. “Just because we showed this company the Anamet site doesn’t mean we are a proponent for their plans. We are a proponent for Waterbury.”



Frank met with the company 18 months ago and said Chestnut Hill BioEnergy explained the problems they had experienced in New Jersey. “ I told them you can expect a fierce battle in Waterbury,” Frank said. “ The South End has had problems with high traffic proposals in dense population areas before.”

Frank had addressed the Greenway Advisory Committee a month ago and told the group that Chestnut Hill BioEnergy had no traction and was no where on the radar screen. “When I said that I didn’t know they had received a $500,000 loan from the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund,” Frank said. “But right now WDC has no opinion about the proposal.”

Franks said WDC “doesn’t get too emotional. We try to stay neutral, but if the mayor wants us to get involved, we will.”

Let It Flow

Ideas Flying For Greenway Project Along The Naugatuck River In Waterbury


The Naugatuck River flows right through the center of Waterbury


Excitement during the 2nd Annual Naugatuck River Race


Hashing out plans during a greenway summit


One of the organizers of the river race, Kevin Zak, of the Naugatuck River Revival Group, addresses a pre-race gathering May 9th


An aerial map of the Naugatuck River generated lots of discussion on April 30th at Kennedy High School


During the past 50 years the spirit of Waterbury has slowly dehydrated like a grape shrivelling into a raisin. The once blustering civic spirit that forged an industrial powerhouse out of a treeless meadow has waned with economic loss, political corruption and systemic arguing.

Enter the healing power of water.

Water has the power to cleanse and nourish our souls. It also has the power to hydrate a dried raisin and make it swollen and plump again.

It was the convergence of seven streams and rivers that led the settlers to build the Mattatuck Plantation here. It was the awesome power of those rivers and streams that fired the grist mills and fueled the brass industry as the city rose to worldwide prominence. Water was the city’s biggest asset, and our ancestors acknowledged that fact when they changed the name from Mattatuck, to Waterbury. The city owns a world class water system that winds through Litchfield County, and the Water Department is the only city department that posts a profit every year.

Somewhere along the way the community lost it’s reverence for our rivers and streams and they became little more than liquid conveyor belts to move our waste and garbage south further down the Naugatuck Valley. Many city residents remember the days when the Naugatuck River was stained orange and red from industrial dyes, and the Naugatuck is one of the only documented rivers in America to actually catch fire from all the debris and pollutants clogging its arteries.

Times have changed.



The river runs clear again. The dams that blocked it for nearly 200 years are almost entirely removed, and the natural wildlife has returned. As the river healed, many area residents began a slow awakening to the extraordinary asset we had mistreated and abused for 200 years. Individuals began to kayak and paddle through Waterbury. Fisherman no longer feared eating the catch they yanked from the river. Bird watchers could see Great Blue Herons, Green Herons, and a lucky few spotted a lone Bald Eagle down in the Platts Mills section of the river.




Several years ago a small group of community minded activists sought to tap into the power of the river and build a greenway along its banks. A preliminary environmental study was completed, but the cash needed to implement the dream was shorter than a politician’s memory after election day.

The missing link was political will.

All that changed last Spring when the Naugatuck River Revival Group sponsored a six mile canoe and kayak race on the river, and had the brilliant idea to invite municipal leaders from up and down the river to compete.

What could have been a ho-hum race involving 20 experienced boaters was suddenly transformed into the event of the year when Waterbury Mayor Mike Jarjura promised to participate. State Senator Joan Hartley and aldermen Mike Telesca, Paul Pernerewski and Paul Noguira all braved the unknown to paddle from Platts Mills to Beacon Falls. Nobody knew what lay around the next bend and there was a sense of dread and excitement as 200 boats blasted off from Waterbury’s south end.



Waterbury Mayor Michael Jarjura in 2008, and some of the 250 boaters in 2009



The First Selectman of Beacon Falls, Susan Cables, participated, as did Chuck Frigon, the Town Manager in Watertown, and the mayors of Ansonia and Derby. An enormous amount of publicity was generated and photographs of a drenched Michael Jarjura crossing the finish line waving to the crowd seemed to epitomize the event. Jarjura’s canoe had flipped three times and he ruined his cell phone, but he had a blast. Other participants said the event was one of the most memorable of their life.

The importance of influential politicians in the event cannot be underestimated. The race was talked about for weeks, and then suddenly $4 million dollars was reallocated from a 2005 High Priority Federal Transportation Grant and directed towards creating a 7.1 mile greenway along the Naugatuck River.

Over the summer Mayor Jarjura formed a Greenway Advisory Committee and asked many influential community leaders to serve on it. Former mayoral candidate and long-time alderman, Ron Napoli, is the chairman of the committee. Kathleen McNamara, the community development coordinator for the Waterbury Development Corporation, is the vice-chairman. McNamara has been pushing for a greenway in the city for years and has been instrumental in nurturing the project from idea, to the cusp of reality.


Kathleen McNamara

“This is a great project,” McNamara said. “We tried it several years ago but the timing wasn’t right. Now we have tremendous momentum and great public participation. In the past ten years this is the most excited I’ve been about any project in the city.”

And while other communities up and down the Naugatuck River try to get their own greenway projects launched, Waterbury seems to be way ahead of the curve. In addition to the $4 million that now sits in the Connecticut Department of Transportation coffers for the Waterbury greenway, the city just recently applied for an additional $11.3 million in federal funding to advance the project.

But what exactly is a greenway?

In his book Greenways For America, Charles E. Little gives several possible definitions for a greenway. First, he says it is a linear open space established along either a natural corridor, such as a riverfront, stream valley, ridgeline, or overland along a railroad right of way converted to recreational use, a canal, a scenic road, or other route.

Second, Little defines a greenway as any natural or landscaped course for pedestrian or bicycle passage. Third, an open-space connector linking parks, nature reserves, cultural features, or historic sites within populated areas.

Greenways have exploded upon the national consciousness in the past 25 years, but in his book, Little credits Frederick Law Olmstead for inventing the idea of greenways. Olmstead was born in Hartford in 1822 and designed Central Park in the heart of New York City, and ironically, it was Olmstead who also designed Fulton Park in Waterbury.

In the introduction to his book, Little states greenways are “wonderfully rich and diverse - as rich and diverse as human ingenuity and topographical opportunity can make them.”

And in Waterbury the gears of imagination are just beginning to grind.



The Naugatuck River hugs Route 8 for several miles in Waterbury

While still in it’s conceptual stage, the multi-use greenway in Waterbury is imagined to provide a place for bikers, rollerbladers, walkers, and parents pushing their baby strollers up and down the Naugatuck River corridor. The greenway should provide entrance and exit points for kayaks and canoes. It should have educational components to interpret history and nature. It should have places for the community to gather to enjoy theater and concerts, and shops and restaurants to buy an ice cream or a beer.



The Mixmaster intersection of Route 8 and I-84

The Greenway Advisory Committee selected Alta Planning + Design from Saratoga Springs, NY, to plan a route for the greenway. The company was hired this Spring and their first step into the project was to conduct a community wide kick-off and brain storming session on April 30th at Kennedy High School where nearly 150 city residents showed up to participate.

Mayor Jarjura was the first to address the gathering and spent a few minutes talking about his participation in the 2nd Annual Naugatuck River Race being held May 9th, assuring everyone he would wear a helmet this time. “This project has the potential to alter the city,” Jarjura said. “Water is gold. If you have a waterway you have to do something to enhance the community.”

Alta’s Jeff Olson is managing the project in Waterbury and he has extraordinary experience planning and deigning similar projects around the country. Olson addressed the gathering at Kennedy High School and said the first thing he was there to do was listen to the community.



Jeff Olson of Alta Planning and Design



“We want to hear what ideas you have for the project,” Olson said, and then he broke the gathering into smaller splinter groups to work on various concepts and ideas. “I’ve done this all across the country and as you get started your community is way ahead of most communities,” Olson said. “You already have your mayor in a kayak and you have millions of dollars committed. This is fantastic.”




Starting a project with excellent digital maps, environmental studies in place, and a committed city administration gives Waterbury a big head start. Olson asked the gathering if they knew the meaning of the word Naugatuck, and several people knew it was an ancient Algonquian word for “Lone tree by the fishing place.”

As he spoke briefly about the greenway, Olson said “the Naugatuck River can become the unifying theme of this community”, and getting residents out walking, biking running and paddling “can have tremendous benefits on people’s health”.



Olson told the gathering of the importance of including public art in the project and shared a story about how England committed itself to a massive greenway project that included a spectacular amount of public art. In Waterbury there might be ways to connect to public art already in existence - the statues and monuments in downtown Waterbury, the Mattatuck Museum and Timexpo. The greenway can have little fingers or tentacles that shoot off into the community and neighborhoods to connect the city.




There was discussion during the night to try and link the greenway to the downtown UConn campus, to Municipal Stadium and to a proposed transportation center. Other ideas were to connect the greenway to Duggan School in Brooklyn, to the Huntington ballfields, to Fort Hill Cemetery, to neighborhood parks and special events. Another idea was to transform a car junk yard along the river into a park.

Designing a greenway from Waterbury city limits to Thomaston would be much easier than tackling the 7.1 mile stretch in Waterbury, through densely populated areas, factories, brownfields, abandoned bridges and beneath the mixmaster exchange where I-84 and Route 8 intersection. “If this were the Olympics,” Olson said. “The degree of difficulty with this project would be very high.”

From his experience, though, Olson said every greenway project is different. “Each one is an open book,” Olson said. “There are a lot of obstacles, but with innovation and creativity we can find solutions.”

There might be locations in Waterbury where the greenway will have to veer away from the river. There might be opportunities to build the greenway out over the river. In the end it will be Olson’s job to come back to the community and the Greenway Advisory Committee with options and estimated costs. “We’ll be looking for the best most workable solution,” Olson said. “Then it’s up to the community to decide what they want.”



And during the kick-off night at Kennedy High School the community was brimming with ideas. Some of the ideas were a sculpture park on the seven acres being donated to the city in the south end by Mimi Niederman, and to provide security along the entire greenway. Another idea was to create programs to teach city youngsters to ride bikes and to swim. Olson was excited about the idea to get Waterbury kids off computers and outside exercising. “The number of kids across the country who don’t know how to ride bikes and swim is alarming,” he said.


Mimi Niederman is donating seven acres of riverfront property in the South End of Waterbury





At the end of the evening Olson tried to summarize the event. “I was asked by the Waterbury Development Corporation to come and inspire the community. Instead it is me who has been inspired.” Olson said it is usually at the first meetings that individuals come up with pitch forks and rotten fruit to criticize the project, but in Waterbury there was absolutely no negativity.

“There are people out there opposed to this,” Olson said, “and we’ll hear from them.”

Or maybe not.

Waterbury has been so bogged down in bickering and a loss of civic pride, that maybe this project along the river will provide the healing this community so desperately needs. In Charles Little’s book about greenways he wrote “For a 100 years urban rivers have been relegated to the ugliest of urban functions - sewage disposal, heavy industrial sites and garbage disposal. Inevitably the river corridors became a kind of no man’s land, dividing cities, economically and socially - the poor on one side, the rich on the other.”





But, Little writes, times have changed. “The ugly functions have been replaced and when cities discover this the impulse is strong to establish a greenway project along the river front. And then a miracle happens. The river begins to join the people of the city together, rather than separate them. What was once an open wound begins to heal itself, and the city along with it.”

Jim Calhoun Is Out Of Control

Forget the press conference meltdown, the real issue with Jim Calhoun is not his salary, it's his courtside behavior. He swears at his players, kicks chairs, abuses referees and curses at fans. Is this the price of victory?



Photograph originally appeared in the New York Times



It was a crisp autumn evening in 2006 and Hasheem Thabeet was about to begin his basketball career at the University of Connecticut. Thabeet spent the first 16 years of his life 7,600 miles from UConn, in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, where sultry air wafts into West Africa from the Indian Ocean and the average temperature in November is a toasty 86 degrees.

On this night, November 10th, Thabeet was making his debut at the Hartford Civic Center. Despite his massive size, 7’3” and 265 pounds, Thabeet was extraordinarily inexperienced and had been lightly recruited out of high school. He saw his first pick-up basketball game in Tanzania when he was 15 years old. The other players noticed his 6’8” frame and invited him to play. Thabeet had played soccer his entire childhood and was athletic, with nimble feet, a rarity for a man his size. Thabeet took to basketball quickly, and soon found himself playing high school ball in Kenya, where he began firing off unsolicited e-mails to U.S. colleges trying to get a scholarship. The Internet cold calls didn’t work, but Thabeet was “discovered” by an American businessman who was scouting African players for prep schools back in the States.


Hasheem Thabeet stretches before a recent game against South Florida. Photograph by John Murray

And in the blink of an eye, Hasheem Thabeet was sucked into the world of American basketball, a culture offering unfathomable wealth for those tough and talented enough to run the gauntlet. No player from Tanzania had ever played major college basketball in the United States before, and no Tanzanian had ever played in the NBA. Thabeet’s dream was longer than a long shot — kind of like trying to hit a 325-yard drive with your putter.

High school in America was a whirlwind for Thabeet — he played at three schools in two years, moving from California, to Mississippi, to Texas. During his senior year in Houston he averaged 16 points and four blocks per game, but received scant interest from major college recruiters. Thabeet, though, was the type of player UConn coach Jim Calhoun loved to recruit — raw, with vast room for improvement. A player who Calhoun, with the intensity of a drill sergeant, could forge into a star.

When Thabeet walked out onto the court against Quinnipiac in 2006 he became the tallest basketball player in UConn history. Nobody quite knew what to expect from the raw freshman, but the game was predicted to be a coming-out party for the rest of UConn’s highly regarded freshman class, which included several prized recruits. It should have been a fun night for UConn players as they raced up and down the court like antelope, leaving an outgunned and forgettable Quinnipiac team gasping for air.

The players seemed relaxed and playful, but all that was about to change.

Seconds into the game, Jim Calhoun began stomping his feet on the court to get his players’ attention. He screamed, he bellowed, his face contorted with anger as he paced up and down the bench, spraying obscenities like bullets from a machine gun. With every errant pass or botched offensive play, Calhoun yanked the offending player from the game. Play became stilted as the players peeked over their shoulders to see what Calhoun was doing. At one point Calhoun grabbed Stanley Robinson’s jersey and physically pulled him towards the bench.


At 7'3", Hasheem Thabeet is the tallest player in UConn history. He is projected to be one the top picks in the upcoming NBA draft. Photograph by John Murray


Quinnipiac was playing steady basketball and the game was surprisingly close. When one of the UConn guards missed an outside shot, Thabeet snagged the rebound and went back up with a shot from point-blank range. Instead of cramming the ball through the hoop with a monstrous dunk, Thabeet attempted to make a bank shot off the glass and awkwardly missed the basket by five feet.

The crowd groaned, Calhoun called a quick time out and raced onto the court to confront Thabeet. Calhoun, red faced and waving his hands, met Thabeet at the foul line and screamed, “Dunk the f**king ball.”

It was a strange sight to behold. Calhoun and Thabeet were the only two people on the court, and Calhoun looked like a rabid squirrel stomping his feet and waving his hands at the base of a massive tree. Thabeet, fluent in French and Swahili and still working on his English, was getting a postgraduate course in profanity from Calhoun.

But Calhoun wasn’t satisfied to just verbally abuse his players. Moments later, his wrath spilled into the stands.

A fan behind the UConn bench hollered out some benign comment about grabbing a rebound, and Calhoun spun around to a crowd of men, women and children, and screamed, “Shut the f**k up!”

The fan got the point, but just to be sure, Calhoun bellowed it again. UConn players on the bench looked at each other in stunned disbelief.

Sitting ten feet behind the UConn bench, I was stunned, too. I wondered how Calhoun could get away with this. Does coaching a championship basketball team give the man carte blanche to behave like a vulgar idiot? Calhoun’s antics continued all game long. He verbally abused players, he screamed, he stomped, and by the end of the game he was drenched in sweat, his tie dangling sideways from his neck, looking like he’d just lost a bar fight.

I had gone to Hartford to watch a basketball game, but two hours later I felt like I’d been mugged by Jim Calhoun. After the game, my friend Andy and I spent an hour talking about Calhoun and concluded that Connecticut is in an abusive relationship with the legendary coach. We let him abuse us, and his players, because he’s taken us, and them, to the promised land of NCAA championships. We trade dignity and grace for victory.


Calhoun rips into former UConn player Doug Wiggins. Photograph by Bob Childs of the Associated Press

It’s unfair to only paint Calhoun as an overbearing jerk. He is an intense and complicated man, an exceedingly generous man off the court, and one of the most successful coaches in college basketball history.

In a state that has no professional sports team, Calhoun is a living legend. A few years ago he was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, largely for taking a second-tier program and driving it to glory. He’s snagged two national championships and groomed 16 NBA players. If he sticks around three or four more years, Calhoun might become the winningest basketball coach in college history.

Rival coach Jim Boeheim of Syracuse said, “Jim Calhoun has done as good a job as has ever been done in college basketball history. He has done something at Connecticut that I really don’t think has ever been done any place else.”

What he’s accomplished at UConn is unique. Calhoun hasn’t piled up wins at an established national powerhouse like Duke, UCLA or Kansas. Despite the school’s location in the woods of eastern Connecticut, Calhoun has built UConn’s program into one of the top three in America. Prior to Calhoun’s arrival, the school had never ended a season ranked in the top 25 in the country. Since then, Calhoun has often led the team to the upper tiers of the national polls. UConn has been ranked #1 in the country nine different times under Calhoun, and in all of Big East history only Georgetown and Pittsburgh have held down that top spot more than once (both teams achieved that ranking twice). In Calhoun’s 23 years at UConn, his teams have won 20 games 18 times. They have reached the 25-win plateau 11 times.

That’s rarefied air.


Calhoun has led UConn to two national championships. Photograph originally appeared in Sports Illustrated.


And if you’re an elite high school basketball player dreaming of a career in the NBA, UConn is one of the schools that better be your radar screen. UConn has 13 players currently playing in the NBA, second only to Duke, with 14. UConn has twice as many players in the NBA as any other Big East team. The message to the players is clear: If you want to turn pro and make millions, go to UConn, because Jim Calhoun has a superb record of developing professional basketball players. That’s why he’s in the Hall of Fame.

Former Hartford Courant columnist Alan Greenberg once wrote that ”the hiring of Jim Calhoun in 1986 was the most important hire in the history of the State of Connecticut.”

Off the court, Calhoun and his wife, Pat, donated $125,000 to the Calhoun Cardiology Research Fund, and the Jim Calhoun Celebrity Golf Tournament has raised an additional $3 million to support the cause.

Calhoun has worked tireless hours raising public awareness of autism, diabetes and cancer. He is a generous man.

He is also abusive and vulgar.

The administration at the university — and the fans across Huskie Nation — have turned a blind eye to Calhoun’s repugnant behavior because he wins championships, makes us feel good about our little state, and, oh by the way, the program rakes in millions of dollars.

None of that excuses his boorish behavior. Winning 800 college basketball games does not give Jim Calhoun the right to act like an ass, or to verbally abuse players, fans and reporters.

Former UConn basketball coach Dee Rowe told the New York Times in 1995 that Calhoun “keeps himself on edge. You look at him, and you say he won’t allow himself to lose.”

Rowe also called Calhoun “Bobby Knight East, and I say that with respect.”

To say Calhoun is controlling is like saying the economy is struggling a little bit right now. In a New York Times interview he said, “I like to control the players’ environment. I like to control the atmosphere.”

In a national bestseller called “The Verbally Abusive Relationship,” Patricia Evans creates the profile of an abuser. There are certain characteristics, or traits, that many verbal abusers have in common. Consider these, and think about how many might apply to Jim Calhoun: irritable, angry, intense, controlling, competitive, quick with comebacks and put-downs, critical, manipulative, explosive and hostile.

Evans writes in her book that name-calling is “the most obvious form of verbal abuse, and that all name-calling is verbally abusive.”


Calhoun explodes on forward Stanley Robinson. Photograph by John Woike of the Hartford Courant.

Writer Robert Fulghum wrote: “Yelling at living things does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts.”

And not all UConn players have accepted Calhoun’s tirades. Toraino Walker cited verbal abuse as the reason he quit the team in 1992. Other players have transferred, and many recruits have picked other schools because they didn’t want to deal with Calhoun’s screaming. Inside UConn it is well known that families and friends of the players are not allowed to sit behind the team bench. Imagine hearing Calhoun call your son a f**king idiot in front of 16,000 fans?



One Calhoun story — which is difficult to verify — has Calhoun going bananas on the sidelines after a player made a foolish pass. Calhoun is alleged to have grabbed a player off the bench and told him to “Go in for that asshole.” The player dashed to the scorer’s table at mid-court to check in before entering the game. A moment later the player looked confused, and then called back to Calhoun, “Coach, which asshole?”

The Press Conference
Jim Calhoun was recently in the center of a highly contentious exchange with journalist Ken Krayeske that landed them on YouTube, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and in columns all across the country.

I was at the press conference where the exchange took place, standing three feet away from Krayeske when he asked Calhoun if, considering the dire state of the economy, he might be willing to give some of his $1.6 million salary back. Calhoun said “not a dime back,” and when Krayeske asked how much Calhoun’s deal with Comcast was worth, Calhoun paused, and said “You’re not really that stupid are you?”. When Krayeske said that he was, Calhoun said “My best advice to you is to shut up” and then began screaming about how much money his program brought into the university.


This photograph of Jim Calhoun was taken seconds after Ken Krayeske (pictured below) interrupted Calhoun's monologue to ask the coach if he was willing to give any of his $1.6 million salary back. Photograph by John Murray



When Krayeske walked out of the press conference, he was convinced no one would report about the incident. He was wrong. The incident was caught on video, and within hours it was an Internet sensation. Lines were drawn between the sports world and the realm of bigger, broader ideas.

Some thought Calhoun came off arrogant and insensitive to the struggle of millions of Americans out of work and struggling to pay their bills. State workers were being asked to take unpaid days off, and the highest paid state employee in Connecticut — Jim Calhoun — was glibly refusing to give one dime back.

Some people thought Krayeske was a punk for asking Calhoun a question about his salary during a press conference minutes after UConn defeated South Florida on Valentine’s Day. Many others thought the question was legitimate, but the press conference was neither the time or place to broach the subject. Krayeske came under national attack for his part in the drama, and UConn and many sports columnists were quick to claim Krayeske wasn’t even a journalist — he only had a photo pass, for God’s sake — and had no right to ask Calhoun a question.

That line of reasoning is absurd.

I’ve known Ken Krayeske for 15 years. He has worked at the Republican-American newspaper, the Register Citizen, and the Hartford Advocate. He helped the Waterbury Observer run two summer youth programs back in the 1990s. Krayeske has a degree in journalism from Syracuse University, ran a youth newspaper for two years in Hartford, and now writes a weekly column for the Hartford News. Krayeske is a journalist, and had every right to ask Calhoun a question during the press conference.

As for the photo pass, that’s what I had been issued for the game, too. When you are both a writer and a photographer — which very few journalists are — you have to pick one or the other to get your credential. UConn doesn’t allow photographers to sit in a chair along press row and take notes and game photographs at the same time. If you want photographs you have to sit on the floor underneath the baskets. That’s why both Krayeske and I had photo passes that day.

Krayeske is an excellent writer and photographer, and is every bit as complicated as Jim Calhoun. In addition to being a journalist for the past 15 years, Krayeske is a UConn law student and a political activist, and was the Green Party campaign manager during the 2006 governor’s race. Ken was arrested in a bizarre incident during Jodi Rell’s inauguration parade, primarily because the state and local police had his name on a watch list. His crime when he was arrested? He was standing on a street corner photographing Rell as she walked past. Krayeske filed a federal lawsuit against the police and stands an excellent chance of winning a settlement before the case goes to trial.

Krayeske is also a vocal proponent of legalizing marijuana and has traveled to Africa and Europe to write freelance articles for High Times Magazine. He has also pulled a few political stunts in his role as an activist, including disrupting a speech by Senator Joe Lieberman. And make no mistake about this fact: Ken Krayeske entered that UConn press conference seeking confrontation. While some people avoid confrontation at all costs, Krayeske moves towards it. Krayeske approached me at halftime of the game and asked if I was going to the press conference afterwards. “Make sure you stick around,” he said, “because I’m going to drop a bomb on Calhoun.”

After the game, Krayeske and I talked for ten minutes about his lawsuit and he again encouraged me to stay and watch him go after Calhoun. Was it a set-up? Certainly. Did Krayeske wave a red flag in front of a steamed bull? Absolutely. Was it a legitimate question to ask Calhoun? Yes. Did Calhoun handle the situation well? Certainly not. Calhoun yelled and told Krayeske to shut up. UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma said he feared what might have happened to Krayeske if he had dared to ask Calhoun that question 20 years ago. What does that mean? Would Calhoun have taken Krayeske out into the hall and roughed him up?

The widely circulated video clip of Calhoun shouting became a poltical hot potato. Governor Jodi Rell called the tirade “an embarrassment” and two state legislators wrote a letter to UConn asking that the coach be disciplined for his behavior.



But Calhoun being tripped up by Krayeske’s salary question is like a bank robber getting nailed for snatching chocolate chip cookies. For 23 years, Calhoun has bellowed at and intimidated his players. He is an old-school coach using old-school tactics that repeatedly crossed the line into abuse. Back in the 1990s, then-Governor John Rowland attended a UConn-Villanova game and witnessed Jim Calhoun up close and personal. Rowland was disturbed by Calhoun’s behavior, which he said at the time was “out of control.” Rowland said Calhoun’s behavior and language created a stark contrast to the Villanova bench, where a Catholic priest sat during every game.

A few days later, Rowland placed a call to UConn athletic director Lew Perkins and said UConn needed to do something about Calhoun’s behavior. Perkins agreed, and he began sitting in a chair close to the UConn bench, along press row, where he could keep a close eye and ear on Calhoun.

Whenever Calhoun began to grow agitated and begin to curse, Perkins would catch his attention and signal for him to tone it down. Rowland said this worked for a while, then Perkins accepted a position in Kansas.

Several people connected to UConn have implied that current UConn Athletic Director Jeffrey Hathaway is afraid of Calhoun, and is reluctant to take on the issue of his coach’s behavior.

But it really shouldn’t matter how many basketball games and championships Calhoun has won. He is a public figure, and as the most recognizable celebrity in Connecticut, he is a role model and should be held to high standards. Would we accept a math teacher screaming at students and calling them f**king idiots because they couldn’t master Pythagorean’s Theorem? That teacher would immediately be reprimanded, and if it happened again, he would be fired. It would be a moot point to defend the teacher’s behavior by saying they are forging better students. That behavior is unacceptable.

Would we accept Calhoun-like tirades from the coach of the women’s badminton team? Never. But in the world of sports and big business, anything goes as long as you win, and win big. A majority of avid UConn fans don’t care what Calhoun does as long as he keeps leading the basketball team to victory. Public opinion in the Calhoun-Krayeske dispute is clearly on the coach’s side. A recent Quinnipiac Poll found that 80% of the respondents didn’t think Calhoun should give any of his salary back. But the issue isn’t about money, it’s about behavior and verbal abuse that should not be tolerated.

The Press
Halfway through the Calhoun-Krayeske exchange Krayeske said, “I wouldn’t have to ask these questions if these guys in here did their job.”

After Krayeske punked all the sport writers in the room, Calhoun recoiled, and a collective groan came from the press corp. I’ve attended a dozen UConn press conferences over the years, and they are painful exercises. Sports writers often ask fawning, cloying, pompom-waving queries like, “Coach, how do you think Donyell played tonight?” or “Coach, what do you think your chances are against Pittsburgh on Saturday?”

In reality, the UConn press corps is a much less attractive version of the team’s cheerleaders. Instead of lithe, fit coeds doing back flips, the press corps is mostly comprised of middle-aged men firmly under the thumb of both UConn coaches — Jim Calhoun and Geno Auriemma.


Reporters gather around Hasheem Thabeet after the game against South Florida. Photograph by John Murray

Seldom does a journalist probe into the sensitive areas of the UConn men’s basketball program. The graduation rate is only 30%, and that number crashes to 17% when considering only black players.

In the past ten years, two journalists have taken on Calhoun: Jeff Jacobs of the Hartford Courant, and Ken Krayeske, who has persistently challenged Calhoun’s behavior, his program, his salary, and the exorbitant cost of running the program.

Jacobs questioned how UConn handled an incident involving two players who tried to pawn stolen laptop computers. One player, Marcus Williams, was the starting point guard on a team contending for a national championship. The other player, A.J. Price, was a back-up guard. When Calhoun and UConn announced that Price would be suspended for the season, yet Williams could return for the important stretch of games after January 1st, Jacobs wrote columns questioning the rationale. Was this just about winning basketball games?


A.J. Price was suspended two years ago for trying to pawn stolen laptop computers. In 2009 he is the star point guard and the player counted on to lead the team through the NCAA tournament. Photograph by John Murray


Calhoun was furious and called Jacobs a racist, and implied to members of the UConn press corps that Jacobs was gay. Jacobs fired back, saying he would not be intimidated by Calhoun, and the showdown got plenty of airtime on WFAN sports radio in New York City.

Ten years ago, Krayeske wrote a column in the Hartford Advocate that brought up many of the same issues raised in this article — specifically, Calhoun’s courtside behavior.

“I was told by the sports information people at UConn that my column was not the way to cover UConn basketball,” Krayeske said. “And they cut off my access to the players.”

Krayeske rails against the “clubby atmosphere” that exists between the beat writers and the team they are supposed to cover. Before each home game, UConn lays out a buffet of food for the writers to eat. They are given salad, chicken tenders, lasagna, bread and butter, giant cookies, soda, coffee and bottled water. It’s all free, and before any game most of the writers and photographers sit around large wooden tables, gorging on state-subsidized food.

“If they feed you, you become part of the family,” Krayeske said. “The free food compromises a writer’s integrity and UConn expects you to write only positive stories about their program. The message is, don’t bite the hand that feeds you, and more importantly, why should state government be paying for the press to eat?”

Krayeske refuses to eat the free food.

One of the real ironies of the Calhoun-Krayeske blowout was that Krayeske has asked these questions before, and written extensively about the subject on his blog, The 40-Year Plan.

“I asked Calhoun in a telephone interview how much money he personally made off of an exclusive Nike deal with UConn,” Krayeske said. “His response was to ask me how much money I made at the Hartford Advocate. I told him, and then asked him the question again. He wouldn’t give me an answer.”

In the days after Krayeske punked the sports writers, numerous columns were written about him across the state of Connecticut, and they were mostly vicious. A columnist for the New London Day, Mike DiMauro, went way over the top and stated that Krayeske was a fraud and had no business in the room with real journalists. Ironically, moments after Calhoun blew his top at Krayeske, Calhoun singled out DiMauro and complimented him on the terrific column he had written about Hasheem Thabeet.

“That was a special column, Mike,” Calhoun said. “I told Hasheem he should save that one.”

After the Krayeske explosion, the lovefest resumed.

And seconds after the press conference ended, a journalist came up to Krayeske and confronted him. He said Krayeske had no right to confront Calhoun. Didn’t Krayeske know how important Calhoun was to Connecticut? Didn’t Krayeske know how many jobs had been created by the UConn men’s program? Then the reporter likened Krayeske to the Iraqi shoe-thrower for disrespecting Calhoun the way the Iraqi reporter had disrespected President George W. Bush.

In the days after the confrontation the Internet went wild about the story. Blogs attacked Krayeske as a “whining fruitcake” and a “stupid little hippie.”

Krayeske stopped reading the comments because they were so nasty, but he did admire the creativity of one: “This guy wrote that I looked like a homeless man with a dead squirrel nailed to my head. I thought that was pretty funny.”

Occasionally someone did spank Calhoun. Eric Fries of East Lyme wrote, “UConn coach Jim Calhoun has certainly proven that you can be a winner and a champion and still not have any class.”


Jim Calhoun almost jumped out of his shoes in anger after freshman Kemba Walker made an errant pass against South Florida. Photograph by John Murray

A Sports Illustrated blogger wrote that “the coach is a public figure and he should to be asked tough questions like that. It comes with the territory.”

Many bloggers accused Calhoun of being a bully. If the coach had answered the question like he had answered Krayeske’s previous queries over the years, there would never have been a national controversy. The story became about Calhoun’s over-the-top response and was a perfect storm of arrogance, money, and the tanking economy. Calhoun might as well have said “let them eat cake,” like Marie Antoinette referring to the starving peasants in 1800 France.

So what, in the end, are we to make of our bullying superstar coach?

Jim Calhoun may be the biggest celebrity in Connecticut, but he is not untouchable. Referring back to Patricia Evan’s book about verbal abuse, the key to changing behavior is for the victim to point out the behavior, and ask for change. Somebody in authority needs to directly intervene and ask Jim Calhoun to stop swearing at his players. We need Governor Rell to step in like John Rowland did a decade ago. We need athletic director Jeff Hathaway to supervise Calhoun’s behavior, and reprimand public acts of vulgarity and verbal abuse.

This is not about winning national championships and multimillion dollar contracts. It should be about humanity. Calhoun went on WFAN recently and said, “Life is a motion picture, not a snapshot. There are always a few frames any of us would take back.”

But the longer Jim Calhoun is allowed to storm up and down the court, spewing profanities at players and fans, the snapshots become a movie about abuse, not championship glory.

The Broken Promise

Four-Term Waterbury Mayor Michael Jarjura Faces Internal Party Challenges As He Seeks Re-election In 2009
Story By John Murray

Photographs By John Murray and Michael Asaro


(Photograph of Mayor Michael Jarjura)


In the world of politics broken promises are like weather changes in New England –predictably frequent. Americans have come to accept broken promises as part of our raucous political discourse. In order to secure our votes most candidates will tell us what we want to hear, and then after the election, they largely do whatever is in their own best interest.

Welcome to democracy in America.

Although broken promises litter the political landscape like cornstalks across Nebraska, two broken vows has triggered a political showdown between three democratic leaders in Waterbury. The story began to unfold in July 2005 when Waterbury Mayor Michael Jarjura approached Waterbury Police Chief Neil O’Leary at a funeral. Jarjura was plowing ahead with his campaign for a third term in office, and if successful, he had stated it would be his last.

O’Leary recalled the conversation. “The mayor told me he wasn’t running for another term and told me directly that I would be a good leader for the city. The mayor encouraged me in July 2005 to consider taking the next step into public office in 2007.”


(Photograph of Neil O'Leary)

One month later Jarjura’s hopes for a third term were upended when Karen Mulcahy scored a stunning upset in the democratic primary, and it appeared Jarjura’s political career was toast. Devastated, Jarjura reached out to O’Leary and other influential democrats for support in an unprecedented write-in campaign that challenged Mulcahy and three other candidates in the November general election. O’Leary was instrumental in convincing political strategist Fran Sullivan to come down from Cape Cod and run Jarjura’s long shot campaign.

Two months later Jarjura made national news when he became just the fifth candidate in American history to win a major political election on a write-in ballot. After Jarjura’s victory he again re-iterated to O’Leary that he was serving his last term in office. Jarjura also met with aldermanic president J. Paul Vance Jr. and promised him that this was his last term as mayor.

Based on the direct word of Mike Jarjura, both Vance and O’Leary began to contemplate campaigns for an open mayor’s seat in the autumn of 2007. But in the spring of 2007 Jarjura changed his mind and decided to seek re-election to a fourth term.

“The mayor told me he wanted another term so he could prove that the write-in campaign wasn’t a fluke,” O’Leary said. “I promised to support him and he pointedly told me this was going to be it for him. One more term and he was out.”

Vance didn’t appreciate the mayor’s waffling around and decided to plow ahead with his own plans and primary Jarjura in September 2007.

Wanting to avoid a costly and divisive political showdown, Jarjura went to Vance’s kitchen table and assured him that a fourth term would unequivocally be his last. If Vance waited two more years, the coast would be clear.

“I did sit with Paul and his wife at their kitchen table,” Jarjura confirmed. “Paul told me he had been waiting in the wings and wanted to challenge me in a primary. I told him that I would hate to see that happen. I asked him to hold off and he could run in two years, I just wanted one more term.”


(Photograph of J. Paul Vance Jr.)


Vance and O’Leary holstered their ambitions and in November 2007 they both supported Jarjura as the mayor swept to a convincing fourth term in office. With Jarjura promising that this was his last term there was now an opportunity for any political aspirants to move forward with their own plans, and both Vance and O’Leary eyed mayoral campaigns in 2009.

Vance made the first move by filing papers in late May, just six months after the last municipal election, and 18 months before the electorate would decide Waterbury’s next leader. No one could recall a mayoral candidate declaring their intentions so early in the process, and the response from Mike Jarjura was shocking. During an interview with the Observer in early June, Mayor Jarjura announced he was strongly leaning towards seeking a fifth term in office, and that if he didn’t run, he thought Police Chief O’Leary would be an excellent choice to replace him.

Let the political sumo wrestling begin.

Vance no longer cared what Jarjura was or wasn’t going to do, and made his intentions official on July 11th, on his 34th birthday. “I’m in,” Vance said. “Several people have approached me and said I should just wait until Mike decides he’s through. Mike’s friends are concerned that he doesn’t have anything lined up, and he is unsure what he’d do afterwards. But really, what does that matter? Politics is not a career. Do a short time and get out.”

Vance admits he is frustrated by Jarjura’s broken promises. “I’ve been a hothead and said the wrong things before,” Vance said, “ but I’m not going to break my word. Mike has done that two times now. It doesn’t matter what he says anymore. I’d appreciate his support, but if I don’t get it, we’ll let the voters decide what they want.”

Despite Vance’s seven years of aldermanic experience, some political pundits believe O’Leary presents a more dangerous internal threat to a fifth Jarjura term. O’Leary is a forceful man who has modernized the police department, created one of the most successful PAL programs in the country, and has overseen a drop in the city’s crime rate for six straight years.

“Ever since the mayor approached me at the funeral in July 2005,” O’Leary told the Observer, “I have had an interest in running for mayor.”


(Photograph of Neil O'Leary and Mayor Jarjura)

As O’Leary considers his options he is acutely aware of the Hatch Act, a federal law that prohibits local police officers from seeking “partisan” elected office. If O’Leary announced he was running for mayor - while still serving as Waterbury’s top cop - he would be in violation of the Hatch Act, could be fired by Mayor Jarjura, and find himself a target of a federal investigation.

“I have to be very careful what I say,” O’Leary said, “ but I will tell you that a significant number of people have approached me and asked me to run for mayor. I am flattered that so me people think I might do a good job as mayor, but because of the federal law I’m going to take my time and mull over my options until early January and make my decision then.”

If O’Leary were to run for mayor he would have to step down as police chief. It is his understanding that he could resign and announce his candidacy in the same breath. But during a telephone interview on December 9th he clearly stated he hadn’t made up his mind yet, and will continue to gather input from the community as to whether he should mount a challenge to a Jarjura fifth term.

“Everybody should do what’s in their hearts to do,” Mayor Jarjura said. “Who knows? Maybe they can win.”

But is Jarjura really going to run? During a Fox-61 interview in November the mayor said he would be announcing after the holidays and that it was premature to think about the next election. “People want to enjoy Christmas and the New Year,” he said. “But I have every intention to continue my responsibilities here. I think I’ve earned it.”

But while he was publicly proclaiming that to Fox 61 news, Jarjura had privately agreed to a power meeting with O’Leary in January that would bring the party leadership together to hash things out. Jarjura and O’Leary agreed to hold off on any political announcements until after the meeting.

Many big name players in the local Democratic Party are treading lightly around the subject of a Jarjura-O’Leary match-up because it has the potential to splinter a united party. Vance has a legion of supporters as well, but not among the leadership and deep pocket donors.

“There would be a lot of strained relationships if Neil ran,” Jarjura said. “But with the Independents and Republicans weakened, we could survive a three way splinter.”

When the Observer sat down with Mayor Jarjura in his office on December 4th he unexpectedly announced that “I’m 100% running for mayor and I’m going to win.”


(Photograph of John Murray interviewing Mayor Jarjura)


When asked about a power meeting in January the mayor confirmed it was going to happen. “Unless someone can convince me why Mayor Jarjura shouldn’t seek re-election, I’m running,” he said. “I can’t think of any reason not to run other than to step aside to promote the political aspirations of other candidates.”

Is the mayor trying to have it both ways? He promises not to run, and then he runs. He openly calls on all candidates to follow their hearts and run if they want to, and then he and his minions indirectly threaten people supporting other candidates with lost board appointments and lost job opportunities. Several people have confirmed that Vance supporters and O’Leary supporters have received threats via the grapevine that they are in harms way if their candidate challenges Jarjura.

“There’s a lot of passive-aggressive stuff going on in Waterbury right now,” Vance said. “And I don’t like it.”

But to many insiders that’s just old school politics and the way the game is played in Waterbury.

Vance bristles at that notion. “We can be better than that,” he said. “Look at President-elect Obama and his team of rivals. Look at how Obama handled the nasty campaigning that came his way. When it got ugly he didn’t respond with the same tone. I won’t get personal with Mike Jarjura. I’ve run with him four times. I respect him, but I don’t like the game he is playing right now.”

Jarjura doesn’t believe he is playing any political games. He said he is too busy governing to be focused on others’ ambitions.

“The city is at an important juncture in its history and we need to have a steady hand on the wheel,” Jarjura said. “Continuity is very important and we need to be more progressive right now. We’ve been focused on reorganizing and I now want to focus on infrastructure and programs. Another term will give me the opportunity to do that.”

Vance said the mayor has a right to change his mind, but this is the right time for Paul Vance to step into the ring. He and his wife Michelle are expecting their first child in the spring and they’ve bought a house in Town Plot. “Most of our friends have moved out of Waterbury into the suburbs,” Vance said. “I don’t like where the city is right now. I see the big picture and believe being mayor is about more than flag raising ceremonies.”

Vance said he’s running “not because of Mike or Neil, I’m running because I think I can do a good job, and if the voters agree, they’ll hire me. If not, I’ll continue to practice law.”

So what’s going to happen? Vance and Jarjura are running, and O’Leary is pondering his future like a cougar eyeing his prey. After several years of relative calm in the city’s Democratic Party, expect all hell to break loose in 2009, and don’t be surprised if Democratic Party Chairman Ned Cullinan develops an ulcer.


(Photograph of Ned Cullinan while he's still smiling)

As Jarjura puts it, both Vance and O’Leary would take considerable risk in challenging a popular four-term mayor.

“Paul is risking his political future at a very young age and Neil would be losing his job as police chief,” Jarjura said.

Jarjura said he has no problem working with O’Leary and Vance in their official capacities as they try to move the city forward. “There won’t be anything that strains my friendship with Neil,” Jarjura said, “and I’ll try to be professional with Paul.”

Asked if he would try to broker a deal and promise Vance and O’Leary that this would be his last term in exchange for their support, the mayor rolled his eyes and said, “Oh no, I’m not saying that again. That keeps getting me in trouble. But I will say that I have ended up serving longer than I anticipated – by necessity - not by design.”

The Importance Of Ralph Nader

The public safety crusader brought his powerful anti-corporate message to Waterbury, Connecticut, in September 2008

Story and photographs by John Murray



























If Ralph Nader were a consumer product this would be a lot easier. Nader, standing on familiar ground, would fight like a bulldog to get the public to understand the importance of bringing that product - which makes us all safer - into every home in America. The product, he would tell us, holds the key to crushing corporate power out of our political process, and would return democracy to the American people.

Who doesn’t want that?

But Ralph Nader is not a product, he’s a 74-year-old man wedded to the lifelong pursuit of making America safer. It was Nader’s tireless consumer advocacy in the 1960s and 1970s that brought us seat belts, air bags, food labels, clean water, clean air, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Nader’s work for public good is astonishing, and led to him being selected one of the 100 most influential men in American history.

But when Nader took his consumer advocacy crusade into the political arena and started running for President every four years - he got screwed. His idealism collided with modern American politics. Nader was caught in a vice between Republicans and Democrats, a two-party system he calls a “duopoly”, which was long ago hijacked by corporate money, lobbyists and greed.

Nader entered the political arena to try and pry corporate fingers off the steering wheel. Nader’s weapon was a brilliant mind and suitcase full of ideals. He two opponents , however, were armed with money, guns, knifes and pepper spray. Without a means to spread his message to the American people he didn’t have a chance.

The system is stacked against Nader and any other third party candidate who challenges the iron fisted rule of Republican and Democrat power. Many Americans don’t know that Nader is on the ballot in 45 states in 2008. Why? Because the mainstream media has effectively censored him. Nader said the New York Times and The Washington Post have told him they aren’t going to report about his campaign this year because of the negative impact they believed he had on the 2000 race. (Nader received 97,000 votes in Florida, a state won by George W. Bush by 543 votes)

The media should give the public the information and let the voters decide. An abundance of information should flow through a free country like blood through our veins. We need vigorous journalism to provide the public with more information, not a high minded few applying a tourniquet to the flow of news about Ralph Nader.

It’s un-American. And it’s wrong.

The rap about Nader costing Al Gore the 2000 election is also mis-guided and wrong. Consider the facts: 12% of Florida democrats (200,000) voted for Bush, and all the other third party candidates tallied above the Bush margin of victory – Reform Party (17,000), Libertarians (16,000), Worker’s World (1800) and the Socialists Workers (562).

Why isn’t their fault? Why pin the Bush victory on Ralph Nader? It makes no sense.

I was too young to fully appreciate Ralph Nader in his prime, but my mother was enthralled with him. She read about him in the daily newspapers, watched him on the Phil Donahue Show, bought his books, and went to see him when he visited New London, Connecticut, back in the 1970s. My mother was inspired by Ralph Nader and wrote hundreds of letters to corporations and businesses to complain about their products, and when she didn’t get the response she thought was warranted, she wrote more letters.

Nader reappeared on my radar screen in the early 1990s when he launched his first write-in campaign for the presidency. I was working at the Register-Citizen newspaper in Torrington at the time, and Nader, being from neighboring Winsted, was of intense local interest. One of our reporters, Jedd Gould, was given the assignment to cover Nader’s campaign in New Hampshire. Jedd was so inspired by Nader that he eventually left the daily newspaper to launch The Winsted Voice, which was entirely written by the citizens of Winsted, giving the people the chance to cover themselves.

I remember visiting Jedd in his apartment in Winsted after he published his first issue. The morning changed my life. As one of more than 100 employees at the Register-Citizen I believed you needed reporters, photographers, salespeople, a production department, a vast distribution network and a printing press to publish a newspaper.

But here was Jedd Gould sitting at one computer in his disheveled apartment with a frisky Labrador Retriever bounding between piles of dirty laundry. Jedd sold the ads, made the ads, laid out the newspaper in his computer and cut and pasted the contents together into one mechanical copy. Then Jedd would take the one copy of his newspaper to a printer where they would print thousands of Winsted Voices and drop them back off at his apartment the following day. Jedd would then personally deliver the papers at dozens of locations around town.

He was a one-man band, and his success became the blueprint for the Waterbury Observer. One year after Jedd launched The Winsted Voice, a fellow journalist at the Register-Citizen, Marty Begnal, approached me about an idea he had about starting a newspaper in Waterbury. My first move was to consult with Jedd to see exactly how he published The Winsted Voice - what equipment did he have, what software programs, how much money did he need to start the business, how did he figure out his ad rates, and was it hard to get businesses to distribute a free newspaper?

Ralph Nader inspired Jedd Gould to launch a community written free newspaper in Nader’s hometown of Winsted. Without Ralph Nader there wouldn’t have been a Winsted Voice, and without Jedd Gould there wouldn’t be a Waterbury Observer.

One of the last projects I worked on at the Register-Citizen was an investigative piece about the horrific impact industrial cleaning solutions were having on the workers at the Becton Dickinson (BD) plant in Canaan, Connecticut. The company manufactured hypodermic needles for the medical industry and used a variety of methods to sterilize the product, including radiation and ETO gas. I spent a year interviewing injured employees and reconstructing a nuclear accident that had occurred inside the plant. When it was time to publish the story the editors were terrified that a multi-billion dollar corporation would sue the family owned newspaper. It took months for the story to make the rounds through every editor, the publisher, and finally, the owner of the paper.

The article finally had the green light, but just days before publication, the Journal Register Company, an aggressive business corporation with a reputation for destroying a newspaper’s soul, purchased the Register-Citizen. Dozens of employees were let go and the story was killed.

Frustrated, I took the story to Jedd Gould, who was now publishing The Winsted Voice, and The Canaan Voice. Jedd immediately agreed to publish the story and every home in Canaan received a copy of The Canaan Voice with an eight page expose on the dangers inside Becton Dickinson, the largest business and employer in the region. There was some talk from BD officials about suing Jedd for publishing the story, but the specter of Ralph Nader looming ominously in the background might have squelched that idea.

A few months later, Agnes Mulroy, the BD employee who had risked her life to bring the story forward, was flown down to Washington D.C. to receive a Citizens Courage Award from Ralph Nader.





Fast forward 15 years and I get a call from Silas Bronson librarian, Anita Bologna, telling me Ralph Nader was coming to Waterbury for a rally. Despite the indirect impact that Ralph Nader had on my life, I was uninspired to go out of my way to see him. Like many Americans, I had swallowed the propaganda, and saw Nader as a polarizing figure who helped deliver the White House to George W. Bush in 2000.

I was sluggish going to see Nader in downtown Waterbury in late September, but I went. Ralph was 30 minutes late and walked into the Independent Party headquarters and headed straight for the food buffet. He nibbled on some treats and was whisked into a back room for a private audience with journalists from the Hartford Courant, the Republican-American, the Observer, and a two film crews.

Nader’s posture was slouched and he looked straight at the floor as he uncorked a blistering attack on the $750 billion Wall Street bailout package just passed by Congress. Pulling no punches he called the package a bailout for the reckless and the greedy that contained little to nothing to help homeowners about to lose their homes.

“This is taxation without representation,” Nader said. “Congress is bailing out Wall Street with $750 billion without a single minute of a public hearing. This is the worst piece of legislation I have seen in 40 years.”

And for the next 30 minutes Ralph Nader stood in a cramped room with six journalists and delivered the keenest insights about democracy and the modern political process that I have ever heard. The words tumbling from his mouth were like notes from a Mozart tune - crisp and clear.

He didn’t lose Al Gore the 2000 election, he said, Al Gore lost when he couldn’t deliver his own home state of Tennessee, and despite all the focus on Florida and the recount, it wasn’t Florida that swung the election to Bush - it was the Supreme Court of the United States that swung the outcome when they voted along party lines to give the throne to “King George IV.”





Nader’s message is as sharp as an ice pick, but he can’t effectively deliver it to the American people because he isn’t allowed to debate Barack Obama or John McCain. The Commission on Presidential Debates is a private corporation run by the former chairman of the Republican National Committee and the former chairman of the Democrat National Committee. They decide which candidates voters get to see, and despite 66% of the American public wanting Nader on stage with Gore and Bush in 2000, the commission not only froze him out, they threatened to arrest Nader if he entered the hall with a legitimate ticket to simply sit in the audience.

The justification for Nader’s exclusion was that polls indicated he didn’t have enough support to be a factor in the race, which makes no sense, because after the election he was blamed by millions of Americans for being the biggest factor in the race.

“Which is it,” Nader said. “You can’t have it both ways.”

Nader received almost three million votes in 2000, and snagged 10% of the vote in Alaska. Many national experts have stated that if Nader were allowed to debate his presidential opponents, his 3% in the polls would swell to 25% to 30%, not only making him a major factor, but also forcing the two political parties to adopt some of his platforms, which can be viewed at www.votenader.org

And it might be one of the planks in Nader’s platform that keeps the debate door slammed in his face. Nader has spent his life challenging corporate America to provide better and safer products to Americans, and one of his first moves as president would be to launch an aggressive crackdown on corporate crime and corporate welfare. The political process in America is now driven by corporate interests, so does anybody in their right mind believe that the major corporations in America have any interest in letting Ralph Nader expound his views of democracy and civic duty to the American public?

That’s why he’s barred from the debates - he’s too dangerous to corporate interests.

Amazingly, it is through the efforts of the local Independent Party in Waterbury that Nader is even on the ballot in Connecticut. Independent Party chairman, Mike Telesca, met Nader in New Hampshire in 2004 at a meeting of independent political candidates. The Independent Party was fresh off a major victory after they had swept local Republicans out of office in Waterbury, gaining 8 elected seats.

This eventually got Nader’s attention, and during a rally the following year in Hartford, Nader saw Telesca in the crowd and said “Mike is doing amazing things in Waterbury. Come up here and tell us how you did it.”

Nader then walked off the stage and gave it to Mike Telesca. Earlier this year a Nader coordinator called Telesca to ask if the Independent Party would be interested in working with Nader to try and get the 7500 signatures needed to get him on the Connecticut ballot.

“I was thrilled,” Telesca said. “ And I promised our support.”

Then Telesca and a group of highly motivated volunteers went out and gathered more than 15,000 signatures to insure Nader was on the ballot. Incredibly, Nader is running on the Independent Party ticket, and is using local party headquarters as his state headquarters. The Independent Party started in 2001 in Waterbury and now has candidates for office in Naugatuck, Winsted, Newtown, Norwalk and Milford. And now the Independent Party has Ralph Nader at the top of their ticket.

Although it’s clear that Ralph is never going to be invited to any presidential debate, his mere presence in the 2008 race is a benefit to all Americans. His tenacious pursuit of democracy is not only inspiring, it’s heroic. By hurling his body against the corporate wall of politics Ralph Nader has created a crack in the fortress, an opening for the rest of us - if we ever wake up - to march through and reclaim our democracy.

December 2007 - A Punch In The Face

In A Bizarre Twist, Billy Smolinski's ex-girlfriend, Madeleine Gleason, sues the Smolinski family, and The Waterbury Observer
Column By John Murray


(Photograph of Billy Smolinski and his dog Harley)


How much abuse can Janice and Bill Smolinski take?

The Waterbury Police Department failed them, the political process is messing with their heads, and now they find themselves trapped in a lawsuit filed by their son’s ex-girlfriend that amounts to legalized extortion.

This extraordinary story began three years ago when Janice and Bill’s 31-year-old son disappeared in Waterbury. The Smolinskis were unable to get local authorities to treat the situation seriously, and their own efforts to find Billy have been thwarted by sloppy police work, bungled science, and a national missing person network with holes large enough for a herd of elephants to stampede through.

Everywhere they turned for help they crashed into a wall of incompetence. Their faith in the system is shattered.

“ Everything that could go wrong in this case has gone wrong,” Janice Smolinski said. “Everything.”

The Smolinskis are convinced their son was murdered three years ago. At the time of his disappearance Billy Smolinski was involved in a love triangle with enough haunting circumstances to launch a Stephen King novel. Billy was dating an older woman, Madeleine Gleason, who was 16 years his senior. After dating for more than a year, Billy discovered Madeleine was also involved with a married Woodbridge politician named Chris Sorensen.


(Photograph of Madleine Gleason and Billy Smolinski at a wedding)

Billy and Madeleine argued, and broke up. Billy left a threatening message on Sorensen’s answering machine telling him “to watch his back”, and a few hours later Billy vanished off the face of the earth.


(Photograph of Woodbridge politician Chris Sorensen)

Janice and Bill Smolinski don’t know the details of what happened to their son on August 24th, 2004, but they believe he was murdered and his body buried somewhere in the lower Naugatuck Valley.

A tip called into CrimeStoppers, and subsequently released by the Freedom of Information Commission, fingers Madeleine Gleason’s son, Shaun Karpuik, as the murderer. The information given to CrimeStoppers was highly detailed and alleged that Karpuik, with help from at least one friend, strangled Billy inside Madeleine’s apartment.

Karpuik was a former grave digger in Seymour, and at the time of Billy’s disappearance Karpuik was working for a landscaping company and had ready access to heavy earth moving equipment.

Three months after Billy Smolinski vanished, Shaun Karpuik died of a drug overdose in Waterbury. The FBI seized control of the investigation in August 2006, and earlier this year they excavated several sites in Shelton in an unsuccessful effort to unearth the remains of Billy Smolinski. The federal investigation is ongoing.

STRANGE BEHAVIOR
Several days after Billy disappeared the Smolinski family, unable to get the attention of Waterbury police, launched their own search. They scoured the banks of the Naugatuck River and combed through all the spots they knew Billy loved.

The Smolinskis hung missing person posters throughout western Connecticut, and followed up on every lead that came their way. A month later reports started filtering in from several towns that someone was tearing down Billy’s missing person posters. Janice and Bill drove around Ansonia, Seymour and Woodbridge, and discovered that dozens of posters had been removed.

Eventually a witness in Amity caught a woman standing on the bumper of her car tearing down a poster and jotted down the license plate number. The vandal turned out to be Madeleine Gleason, Billy’s ex-girlfriend.

‘That’s when the chaos started.” Janice Smolinski said. “We brought the information to the Waterbury police department and the Woodbridge police department and they were both totally disinterested.”

So the Smolinskis set up a surveillance operation and videotaped Madeleine tearing down the posters. The family would hang them up, and at night Madeleine and one of her friends would tear them down. In addition to ripping posters off telephone poles Gleason eventually began slashing Billy’s face on the poster and spray painting “Who cares?”.





“We couldn’t understand why she was doing this,” Janice Smolinski said. “Our son was missing and instead of helping us find him, she drove around slashing his photograph. Why would anybody do that?”


(Photograph of Madeleine Gleason running back to her school bus with a missing person poster of Billy Smolinski in hand)

Unable to get any police assistance, the Smolinskis continued the cat and mouse game for months, convinced that Madeleine knew something about Billy’s disappearance. The game grew so bold that Janice would hang a poster on a telephone pole and Madeleine would walk up and rip it down right in Janice’s face.

In a world turned upside down, the confrontation ended when Janice Smolinski was arrested by Woodbridge police for harassment. Gleason lived in Woodbridge and was a school bus driver in town. Sorensen, the other part of the love triangle, was an elected official in Woodbridge, and a prominent businessman involved in running a long distance trucking company. Janice had dared to enter the lion’s den in search of her son, and she was bitten. The charges against Janice were eventually dropped, but not before the soft-spoken woman was booked and fingerprinted. She was told to stay out of Woodbridge.

In March 2006 the Observer published a five page investigative piece on the case entitled “Gone”, airing out explosive details of the love triangle, and exposing the inept police investigation into Billy’s disappearance. There were impossibly strong leads to follow in the case, yet Waterbury detectives said their investigation had stalled. Deputy Chief Jimmy Egan had the nerve to say that “Billy was probably having a beer somewhere in Europe.”

Three months after the story was published Madeleine Gleason and B and B Transportation (her employer) filed a lawsuit against Janice Smolinski, Paula Bell (Billy’s sister) and The Waterbury Observer for harassment and invasion of privacy. One month later the FBI took over the investigation into Billy’s disappearance and the lawsuit went silent for 14 months, until a few weeks ago.

A judge called the lawyers together on November 15th in a move my lawyer, Atty. Mark Lee, said was a simple procedure to see where the lawsuit stood. Atty. Lee and the Smolinski’s lawyer both said we didn’t have to be present, and I went out of town on a previously scheduled trip to Ohio. I missed the unexpected fireworks.

Despite our lawyers statements that we didn’t need to be present, Bill and Janice Smolinski, and their daughter, Paula Bell, went to Superior Court in New Haven to see what would happen. Madeleine Gleason showed up with high powered lawyer John Williams, who decades earlier had built a reputation by challenging police corruption, and defending the Black Panthers in New Haven.

As the proceedings began the judge unexpectedly tried to settle the case on the spot. Instead of dismissing an outrageous and baseless lawsuit, the judge asked Atty. Williams what his client needed to settle the case.

The response was $115,000 from the Smolinskis, and $115,000 from the Observer. After some wrangling Atty. Williams set his clients final demand at $25,000 for Gleason and $5000 for B and B Transportation. The offer was quickly refused.

The charges against Janice Smolinski and Paula Bell is a “he said - she said” story. Gleason accuses the two women of systematic harassment that led to emotional distress. She has no proof to back up her allegations and Janice and Paula state the charges are “total lies”.

The charges against the Observer are more specific and easier to decipher. The paper is accused of invasion of privacy for publishing the sordid details of Gleason’s life - which are all true - and for publishing photographs of her tearing down missing person flyers in public.



(Photograph of Billy Smolinski and Madeleine Gleason)

The charges are ludicrous. For nine months Madeleine Gleason destroyed hundreds of missing person posters of Billy Smolinski in broad daylight - in public - having the nerve to tear them down in the face of a grieving and distraught mother. The Smolinskis have videotape of Gleason stopping her school bus to tear down flyers. A Woodbridge police report names Gleason as a suspect in the disappearance of Billy Smolinski. The report said she would remain a suspect until she took a polygraph test. She has never taken the test, so she remains a suspect. A document released by the FOI Commission alleges that Billy Smolinski was murdered in Madeleine Gleason’s apartment.

And Madeleine Gleason is the one filing a lawsuit?


(Photograph of Madeleine Gleason)

It reminds me of a case a lawyer friend had back in 1992. She had just been hired by a local firm that specialized in personal injury law and her first client was a real slug. Her client had been intoxicated, sped through a red light and crashed into another car. He claimed damages and wanted to file a lawsuit. My friend was shocked, but her boss told her to file the lawsuit. The insurance company eventually settled for $10,000 rather than pay expensive legal fees to fight the case. It made no sense to her, or to me.

And that’s the situation the Smolinskis find themselves in now. There is no way Madeleine Gleason could ever win her lawsuit against the Smolinskis, or the Observer, but that doesn’t matter.

If we fight the ridiculous charges in a full blown trial we are going to spend tens of thousands of dollars on depositions and legal fees. Several lawyers estimate that a trial could cost the Smolinskis $50,000 to $100,000. No lawyer I’ve spoken to believes Madeleine Gleason has a shot of winning a verdict at trial, but who has an extra $50,000 laying around to pay for that outcome?

And that’s why I describe this process as legalized extortion. Fighting this absurd charge will cost you $100,000, but if you pay us $25,000 right now we’ll settle the lawsuit. Either way you lose. It doesn’t matter about being right or wrong, about printing the truth or publishing lies. The system forces people to accept a punch in the face to try and get out of the court system with their vital organs still intact.

While the lawyers were in the judge’s chamber going over the case, four people sat quietly in a hallway; Bill Smolinski, Janice Smolinski, Paula Bell, and not far away – Madeleine Gleason. And when their lawyer came out and told them they could settle the case for $115,000, Bill Smolinski said he wouldn’t give Madeleine Gleason one dollar. Their lawyer advised them that if they went to trial they would spend tens of thousands in legal fees, and if they lost, they could lose their house and their life savings.

“I was crushed,” Janice Smolinski said. “I always thought we could depend on the authorities and society to help us out. But the whole system completely failed us.”


(Photograph of Janice Smolinski)

The Smolinskis have already shelled out more than $10,000 in legal fees, and now trapped in a legal vice, they eventually offered $2500 to settle the case. That offer was refused by Gleason and B and B Transportation. The Observer has shelled out $5000 in legal fees, offered $500 to settle, and that offer was also refused.

Neither the Smolinskis or The Waterbury Observer will offer another dollar to settle the case. Let the chips fall where they may.

“We are not going to give anyone a dime for false accusations,” Janice Smolinski said. “We were caught off guard that day in court, but we’ll go to trial if we have to.”


(Photograph of Paula Bell, Janice and Bill Smolinski)

In the three years since Billy disappeared the Smolinskis belief in the system has crumbled around them. They not only lost a son, they have lost faith in the concept of justice in America.

“If we weren’t going through this I wouldn’t believe that all this could happen,” Janice Smolinski said. “We used to believe that if someone got arrested it meant they had done something wrong. We used to believe that if somebody was sued they had done something wrong. Nothing makes sense anymore. I feel like we are in an episode of the Twilight Zone.”

(For more informationon on the case check out www.waterburyobserver.com)