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Duck In A Raincoat

An Unauthorized Portrait

Of Joe Ricci

By Maura Curley

Menukie Press

This is an in-depth look at Joe Ricci...The man who made the headlines. He persuaded 60 Minutes to broadcast a flattering segment about his life, a jury to award him $15 million, and prominent parents and judges to send children to his treatment center for troubled adolescents. He also asked voters of Maine to elect him their governor.

Joe Ricci had been likened to a character from Horatio Alger's tales. But things were not as they appeared ... Here's the behind the scenes story-- the story media missed.

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This unauthorized portrait of Joe Ricci is the product of more than 300 interviews and nearly three years of intense research.

Former employees at his racetrack, staffers and residents at his Elan center for troubled adolescents, lovers, relatives, childhood friends, attorneys, a judge, and a former business partner of

20 years reveal the underpinnings of his personality.

Inside These Pages ..

.* Former staffers admit to abusing residents at Ricci's Elan center for troubled teens, and participating in a 'cover-up?'

Proof that Ricci committed perjury during the trial which netted him a $15 million jury verdict

.

* How the NEW YORK TIMES erroneously reported information about charitable organizations Ricci set up which really didn't exist.

*How the 60 MINUTES portrayal of him was misleading and inaccurate .

* Eyewitness accounts of how Ricci shot up his racetrack grandstand with his Uzi machine gun ?

* His ex-wife's revelations of how he sued her insurance company and used the money to buy her an engagement ring?

* The details of his cocaine party the night before he declared his candidacy for governor

* How he was involved in a postal robbery and went to a drug rehabilitation center to avoid federal prison?

* Incidences of his terrorizing employees with threatening phone calls

r

Copyright © 1991 by Maura Curley

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form electronic or mechanical,

photocopying, facsimile, recording, or by

any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the Publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Curley, Maura E.

Duck In A Raincoat

CIP # 91-090294

ISBN-EAN/BOOKLAND

0-9629522-0-6

First Paperback Edition

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Building An Empire

Chapter 2

"You should dance with the one who brung ya."

Chapter 3

Cash Cow

Chapter 4

The 'Therapeutic" Community

Chapter 5

In Their Own Words...

Chapter 6

"Don't turn your back on a sleeping tiger."

Chapter 7

Conspiracies Abound

Part II

Chapter 8

Cosmic Convergence

Chapter 9

Stageset

Chapter 10

Duck In A Raincoat

Chapter 11

"...just feeling aggressive."

Chapter 12

"Politics As Usual"

Chapter 13

Appropriated Virtue

Chapter 14

Who's Zoomin' Who?

Part III

Chapter 15

An Elite Hit Squad?

Chapter 16

"Fighting for the People"

Chapter 17

"Mind Games"

Chapter 18

"You gotta put in all in perspective."

Chapter 19

Behind the scenes: The 60 MINUTES Interview

Part III Continued

Chapter 20

"Whatta ya think I'm gonna do breakdown?"

Chapter 21

"...the days of sandbagging me are over..."

Chapter 22

"...like a dentist with no teeth."

Chapter 23

"...but I can't take back the cruelty I inflict..."

Chapter 24

"There's a treacherous road ahead..."

Chapter 25

"There's no joy in Mudville..."

Chapter 26

"Stay well and fight back..."

Chapter 27

"The coup is complete."

Part IV

Chapter 28

"I'm a Roosevelt Democrat."

Chapter 29

"I'm a fuckin' animal..."

Chapter 30

Eumenides

Chapter 31

Cult Of Personality

Chapter 32

"...like clapping at a funeral..."

Chapter 33

Psychopath

Epilogue

DUCK IN A RAIN COAT

A Fable For Our Time

There once was a mallard who thrived on water

but didn't want others to know this simple fact. He hoped

they wouldn't realize he swam in it with relish,

and even went so far as to don a raincoat during a thunderstorm

The moral : Things are seldom what they appear to be.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There are many people who have helped make this book possible by either talking freely about their own experiences, or putting me in touch with those who would. I know it was not easy to resurrect the ghosts of the past, and make the details part of public record. I admire those who transcended their own fears, and shared their lives with me. I also understand those who just couldn't.

Trying to unearth information that spanned more than four decades required much assistance from public record keepers and others, who knew or had dealings with Joe Ricci. I appreciate their role too in helping me find the facts.

Writing a book like this one has been difficult...I have wrestled with what to discard, and what to include in order to protect the innocent, or merely the misguided. I hope I have been sensitive enough...

Throughout this process it was heartening to have the constant encouragement of a few close friends whom I shall not name. They know who they are. Just being a sounding board, and urging me to plough forward made a difference.

I want to thank you all.

INTRODUCTION

On April 13, 1987 a federal jury in Portland, Maine awarded Joe Ricci $15 million because of a suit he filed against his bank for wrongfully terminating his credit. The jury’s award, the largest verdict ever in the state of Maine, set a national precedent. Joe had filed his claim nearly five years earlier, when his line of credit was canceled because of an FBI rumor that linked him to the Mafia, and indicated his involvement in a gangland killing.

He was ecstatic that April afternoon. Dressed in jeans, leather jacket, and cowboy hat, he looked like a folk hero, smiling at the TV cameras and talking into the many microphones crowded around him.

But Joe's road to those court house steps had been paved with broken relationships, lies, alcohol, drug abuse, and a failed gubernatorial campaign. In his struggle to get his day in court he left emotional corpses in his wake.

Joe moved to Maine in the early 70's to open Elan, a for-profit treatment center for troubled adolescents that soon made him, and his psychiatrist partner, Dr. Gerald Davidson, very wealthy men. The two entrepreneurs branched out into real estate, and other interests. In 1979 they formed another company, Davric Maine, and purchased Scarborough Downs, a harness racetrack for $1.2 million.

Watching a jubilant Joe after he beat the bank one could see no trace of the narcissistic, cunning and often cruel man some knew. He seemed to be unselfishly talking about a victory, not for himself, but for civil rights. "I think the people of Maine made a statement about rights," he exclaimed.

Talking to the press he vowed to use some of his award money to help those less fortunate. He pledged that he would set up a non-profit center for constitutional rights, and start a non-profit weekly newspaper, or magazine focusing on civil rights. He claimed he would make certain that other people would not be abused as he had been.

Despite an article in the December 27, 1987 issue of THE NEW YORK TIMES reporting that he had set up a center for constitutional rights in South Portland, Maine, and a non-profit newspaper was in the works, neither ever got underway.

In April of 1989, two years after his historic Key Bank victory, Joe took to trial a suit he filed against his former lawyers who represented both him and the bank when his credit was cut off. Charging conflict of interest he sought $25 million in damages from the law firm. This trial, like the one involving the bank, was expected to be drawn out for at least six weeks. Yet after only four days of testimony, the case was settled for an undisclosed sum reported to be a little over $1million. (A later hearing held before the Maine Bar of Overseers, found the lawyers innocent of any wrongdoing)

Joe Ricci has continually claimed he’s for the little guy, and watching him during his appearance on 60 MINUTES or reading his quotes in the press, one might believe it. But many little people who have worked for his businesses believe getting involved with him was a mistake.

During the past two and a half years I have spoken to over three hundred persons spanning ten states, who have had personal contact with Joe Ricci. I was trying to get a composite picture of the man who at one time was also my employer. I wanted to make some sense out of his charisma and craziness, of the story I would be telling from different perspectives, and my own experience. A writer’s job is to contour chaos, and writing this book was a challenge.

This has subsequently become more than just a singular story of a person who beat the bank. It is an account of a man determined to control others and achieve his ends through extraordinary means.

Maura Curley

Chapter One

Building An Empire

"Why did you marry daddy?" The question hung heavily in the air, and driving along with her five year old son, Sherry Ricci felt for her child of divorce, straddling his childhood fantasies with adult realities. After one nervous breakdown and three years of therapy Sherry had recently found the strength to end a ten year marriage that had been a torment, but she was still confused. How had the man she worshipped become so cruel? She knew, that despite her own inner conflict, her son deserved an answer, and she wanted it to be honest: "Your father was like the Fonz....," she observed." He breezed into town with his bell bottom trousers, and his special style. I thought he was really cool." Her son, familiar with the program Happy Days was thoughtful, imagining his mother with the Fonz. (a leather jacketed motorcycle riding 50's hero on a popular TV show in the 70’s) He finally spoke, exasperation in his voice. "But mom," he cried. "Don’t you know the really cool one is Richie Cunningham?" (the innocent teenager on the same show) Sherry smiled and realized that she hadn’t. Perhaps that was part of the problem.

******

Sherry Benton was a twenty-two year old travel agent, the child of prosperous but alcoholic parents, when Joe Ricci walked into her life on a blind date in 1968. She was immediately attracted to the bad kid who was still undergoing drug rehabilitation at a residential facility called Daytop Village, about 45 minutes from her hometown in Guilford, Connecticut. His charm was overpowering, and she fell in love. She felt sympathy for him too. Though they were the same age, he had a more difficult childhood, growing up on the wrong side of the railroad tracks in Port Chester, New York, a factory town that borders the affluent town of Rye.

Joe had been raised by his maternal grandparents, Michael and Angelina Santoro who were tired from having already raised six children of their own. His mother, distraught from a bad marriage to his father, had signed over custody to her parents. The Santoro household was comprised of Joe’s grandfather and grandmother, Aunt Josephine "chubby," her husband Vinnie, and two uncles. Young Joey sometimes called his grandfather daddy, though his own father, Frank Ricci, "Bamboo," lived in the next town of Mamaroneck. He was a laborer who had a reputation for being a ‘scrapper’ and a regular at many of the local watering holes.

According to a retired Port Chester police sergeant, Bamboo and his friend Arnie Horton were known as the " kingpins of bar fights." Bamboo, whose nickname described his uncanny ability to bounce back when thrown, was extremely handsome, a big guy, who had his share of women. Sandy Fischer, owner of Sandy’s Old Homestead Bar and Restaurant, across the street from the Port Chester police station, remembers Bamboo as a charmer. "I knew him when he was older..." she recalls with affection, "...but people have said that in younger days he and his friends would literally drive their motorcycles into bars." Bamboo was 24 years old when Joe was born in 1945. He had fathered another son, Ricky by a different woman a few years earlier.

The Santoros had contempt for Bamboo and his family, and they were angry with their daughter Ann for getting involved with them. The Riccis were first generation Americans, who spoke Italian and broken English. The Santoros spoke Italian and perfect English. Joe's maternal grandmother Angelina also spoke Yiddish. They were poor, but very proud. Michael Santoro was a mason, a veteran of the first world war who in later life worked at the town incinerator. Joe saw his grandfather picking up trash with a long stick, and it upset him. He hated his lower class roots, and wanted to get out of Port Chester and leave them behind.

He sometimes took the train to Mamaroneck to visit his Ricci relatives. Bamboo’s brother Tom, who later moved to Maine and worked for Joe‘s businesses recalls his nephew’s visits to his parents' house on Madison Avenue in Mamaroneck where he lived with Bamboo and their six brothers and sisters. "Joe was always asking for money..." he recalls with a smile. "He’d ask for five dollars, and I’d give him one, or he’d want a dollar, and I’d give him fifty cents."

The Santoros didn’t know what to make of their grandson, but were hopeful that he’d grow up to be a good boy. Grandpa Santoro drank, and would go on tirades whenever Joey did anything wrong. But according to aunt Chubby, Angelina would often let him get away with more than he should in order to keep the family peace.

Young Joey was an alter boy at Holy Rosary Church, and spent some time at the Don Bosco Community Center, known as "The Dons" which was next to the church. There he learned boxing and basketball.

Vic Donato, who is four years younger than Joe owns a tailor shop around the corner from the center, and also coaches at "The Dons." He remembers "We called him Joe Rich, and what a character he was...He was a good guy, but I’ve never seen anyone as wild. He’d always have a group with him and they were tough guys. Joe was really tough. If you were nice to him, he’d be your friend, but you didn’t want to mess with him. He was always looking over his shoulder, and if you did something to cross him, he’d never let you forget it. Joe was sharp, knew how to survive. I used to think he had nine lives. If he did something really wrong, he’d get out of it, somebody else would take the heat... He always had himself covered."

Donato remembers that in junior high Joe dated his social science teacher, a tall dark haired beauty just out of college. "We all thought that was something," he says wistfully. "It seems Joe Rich always knew where to go...He was definitely ahead of his time. When we were all involved in basketball games, he was thinking about stealing cars. I really figured he’d eventually be successful, either that or dead."

Joe attended the Horton School on Grace Church Street when he felt like it. Often he’d play hookey, and hang out with the other neighborhood kids, near his the Santoro house on Fox Island Road. Sometimes they would go to the truck depot at the corner of Irving and Pearl Streets and steal Mrs. Wagner’s pies, eat them, or use them for pie fights.

When Joe was 15 years old he was seriously injured in an auto accident with three friends. The impact of the crash caused him to be thrown from the car, and lie in a mud embankment before help arrived. He spent months in United Hospital. Later he was transferred to Burke's Rehabilitation Center in White Plains where he underwent physical therapy in order to walk again. Some relatives recall this accident as a negative turning point for his life. "From there everything went down hill, " states one family member, observing that it could have been the drugs he was given after the accident. "They pumped a lot of stuff into him," she declares.

When Joe was at Burke's his grandmother Angelina visited him everyday, taking the fifteen minute bus ride to White Plains. He eventually recovered from the physical injuries, but began being even more difficult to handle.

About a year later he left Port Chester High, and was sent to Lincoln Hall, a residential treatment facility for boys known as PINS (persons in need of supervision) Run by Jesuit priests, it is located 40 miles north of New York City in the town of Lincolndale, New York. Boys are referred to Lincoln Hall by juvenile services as a place to straighten out after they’ve been arrested, although many are placed there by relatives merely as a result of continued truancy from school. After spending two years at Lincoln Hall Joe returned to Port Chester High in 1963 when he was 18, and stayed there until he quit in 1966 just before his 21st birthday.

The Port Chester High School yearbook, THE PENINGIAN , has no pictures of Joe during any of the years he was in school. The only picture that exists is an outdated photo of him at the age of eleven, attached to his high school entrance papers. He listed the football and basketball teams as school activities, but he wasn’t included in any team photos.

The year he quit high school Joe went to work for the Arnold Bakery factory in downtown Port Chester, and later for Modern Tobacco Company also in Port Chester. After brief stints at these jobs he entered Daytop Village, a residential drug and alcohol program where he stayed for two years until he met his ticket to a new way of life, his future wife, Sherry.

Joe’s entrance into Daytop Village was a reluctant one. A relative, two associates, and one press account state that he had been caught robbing a mail truck, a federal offense, and his choice was to spend seven years in Danbury prison in Connecticut, or enter the drug rehabilitation program at Daytop. Some observers contend he was never the hard core heroin addict he later claimed he was, that his ‘addiction’ was just a ruse to keep him out of prison. His uncle Joe Santoro, now living in Louisville Kentucky, had friends in government, and arranged Joe’s admission to Daytop.

When Sherry met Joe she knew he had problems, yet he seemed sincere, and claimed he wanted to better himself. She was a stewardess, working at a travel agency while waiting to begin a training program for an oversees airline. Her roommate, a schoolteacher, had dated a staff member at Daytop, and they told stories about a really great guy there who was funny and good looking. They eventually brought Joe over one night for dinner, and the four of them were snowed in by a blizzard.

Sherry thought Joe was unlike other guys she dated. He seemed attentive, and sensitive to her feelings, and understood when she told him about her alcoholic parents. She came from a very different background. Her parents, who traced their heritage back to the Mayflower, owned a grocery store . She grew up with her four brothers and sisters in a cape in the rustic town of Guilford, Connecticut. It was a case of opposites attracting. Even Sherry's blond blue-eyed countenance was a sharp contrast to his dark hair and eyes. She had attended a year of college, he hadn’t graduated from high school, Nevertheless it seemed to be a compatible union. She adored him, and eventually so did her parents..

One day Joe appeared at the travel agency in New Haven where Sherry worked, announcing that he’d run away from Daytop. He was very upset because Daytop administrators told him they didn’t think he was ready yet to graduate from the program.

He told Sherry that he didn’t need Daytop anymore, that the administration was just using him for his fund-raising skills. As a senior resident he was making speeches on behalf of the organization and was one of their most successful fund-raisers. He had the unique ability to mesmerize a group, gather support for his cause.

After leaving Daytop Joe thought about returning but didn’t want his head shaved, a standard punishment for residents who ran away. Instead he moved to the rented beach house Sherry and her friend shared.

Joe proved to be the ideal mate, almost too good to be true. When Sherry came home from work she’d find that he had cleaned the house, and bought her little gifts which touched her deeply because she knew he didn’t have any money. Both she and her roommate found him compatible and funny. Sherry realized she was deeply in love, and canceled her plans to move to New York for stewardess training. Soon she and Joe became engaged.

What happened shortly thereafter could have been prophetic, a forecast of the bizarre life ahead. Joe sued Sherry’s insurance company for injuries he said he sustained during a minor car accident they had in her car when she was driving. She had run a stop light, and hadn't thought he was even injured, yet her insurance company settled the claim. Joe used that money to buy her an engagement ring, and they were married on December 13, 1969 in Guilford, Connecticut. They were both 24 years old, and had known each other a year.

Joe needed a job so he sought one in an institutional setting where he felt comfortable. He had heard about a pilot program being launched at a state facility called DARTEC (Drug Addicts Rehabilitation Through Educational Community) in Meriden, Connecticut. It was one of the first programs of its kind in the country to adopt a medical model of professionals working alongside former addicts, counseling patients. A psychiatrist named Donald Pet administered the program. He believed the presence of former addicts in the counseling process to be beneficial. According to Dr. Pet the professionals contributed their education, various job training, and professional techniques, while the recovered or recovering addicts had a lot of street knowledge, and were very effective in talking the language of the people. He says he hired Joe because he thought he had some leadership skills. "He also had a certain amount of rebelliousness," remembers Pet. "Some of the things about him were quite rough on the edges, you might say, but he had a lot of persuasive ability. He was able to convince other people." Pet says"Joe had a very unusual way of getting many of the street people to follow him...He often got people to rally around him, kind of see things his way, and do his bidding. Most of the time it was favorable, but sometimes it was in conflict with other views and ideas. He was an independent thinker."

Peter Maggio who worked as a counselor with Joe at DARTEC, and is still a drug counselor in Connecticut, though DARTEC no longer exists says "Joe had a real talent for getting others to see his point of view. He had a dynamic personality, could be extremely convincing."

It was through another staffer at DARTEC that Joe was introduced to his future business partner, a Massachusetts psychiatrist twenty-five years his senior, named Gerald Davidson.

After meeting Gerry, Joe and Sherry moved to Quincy, Massachusetts where Joe worked at a place called Survival Inc., a walk in drug counseling center, as para-professional services coordinator. A short time later, Survival Inc. purchased a two story stucco house on a residential street where he and Sherry ran a group home for opiate addicted males. They also ran marriage counseling sessions for Davidson’s drug addicted patients.

During this period there was a controversy at Survival Inc. that made it to the Boston Newspapers. It involved three staff members Joe had brought with him from DARTEC in Connecticut who had to be dismissed because of their personal drug use. Sherry remembers Joe had a late night with the trio, that resulted in their separation from Survival Inc. In later announcing their departure to the press Joe said " Drug abuse is incompatible with Survival staff membership principles as well as with the abstinence principle of the therapeutic community."

Just a couple of months after that February incident, Joe and Sherry started their own therapeutic community. They had been putting in long hours working for Survival Inc., but not making much money. They conferred with Gerry Davidson, and decided they could start their own business, and run it for profit.

State mental health statutes were too restrictive in Joe’s native New York, Connecticut or Massachusetts, so Maine was selected for its lack of stringent licensing . It was 1971 two years after Woodstock, and drug treatment centers were hot property. On May 30th they officially opened Elan at the site of a former summer camp in Naples, Maine.

Gerry Davidson, who was then associate director of the drug clinic at Boston City Hospital, gave the program credibility via the model of health care professional and former addict pioneered by Dr. Pet at DARTEC. It was agreed that Davidson would stay at his home in Brookline, and continue directing his own activities, utilizing his Massachusetts contacts to help build Elan. Sherry and Joe, the sole supervisors of the program at the small camp worked in exchange for free food and housing for themselves, and a percentage of profits. Gerry Davidson, and another man, David Goldberg of Newton, Massachusetts, were the major partners until alleged embezzlement by Goldberg forced him out. Joe subsequently sought a full partnership with Davidson, an arrangement that was sealed by selling $8,000 worth of stocks Sherry had inherited from her grandmother.

The early days of Elan were a time of struggle for Joe and Sherry. They lived on the top floor of the rustic building in Naples with residents on the second floor. The ground level was an area everybody shared . They seldom had any private time, never went out to eat, or to the movies, and every activity revolved around the therapeutic community.

Though dining at fancy restaurants, or indulging in leisure activities didn't seem to be a priority back then, getting lots of money apparently was important . Joe and Sherry would often lie awake in bed at night and Joe would project how they were going make their first $100,000.

"Becoming rich was definitely an obsession that seemed to drive Joe," recalls an early staff member at Elan. "Money was extremely important to him when he was earning $10,000 a year, and driving an old Oldsmobile. It represented the power to really be somebody important, who would be accepted by everyone around him, and that meant a lot."

Elan was not very lucrative at first and most of the money made was put back into the business. But gradually it started reaping a big profit, attracting troubled teens from wealthy families who were charged $1,200 a month for treatment. The Naples facility was eventually moved to the former Potter Academy, a landmark in the town of Sebago for more than 75 years, and another secondary site was established in Waterford, Maine.

On January 8, 1974 a fire totally destroyed the former schoolhouse in Sebago that Elan had rented from a local doctor. Joe and Gerry were in Chicago recruiting potential residents when the fire erupted in the early hours of a frigid morning. Fire departments from the surrounding towns of Gorham, Standish, Steep Falls, Sebago Lake, and Baldwin responded to help put out the blaze. But efforts in getting water to fight the fire were hampered by the 1,500 foot distance to the nearest brook, and by the extreme cold. Temperatures hovered around 12 degrees, and the water would have frozen in the hoses if it had not been kept moving by pumps.

The building's owner, Dr. Barnes told the press that he didn’t have much insurance to cover the building, though Elan itself was "adequately insured." Joe explained to members of the press that the residents had done extensive remodeling to the building, making substantial improvements, and it was hard to see all the work that they had done destroyed. The cause of the fire was not determined.

Sherry, who was pregnant with their first child at the time of the fire, doesn't recall how much they got for an insurance settlement, but observes that the blaze seemed to be a turning point for Elan. She says that afterwards the business seemed much more lucrative, and moved to its present location in Poland Spring. Money started pouring in, and the staff grew.

Joe and Sherry were millionaires before they celebrated their 30th birthday.

Chapter Two

"You should dance with the one who brung ya."

Joe and Sherry had been married for five years and had a four month old son, Jason, when they purchased an elegant 14 room house owned by a former bank president. It was surrounded by 100 acres on Blackstrap Road in Falmouth, Maine, a wealthy suburb of Portland. Though their estate was located only 400 miles from the Santoro house on Fox Island Road in Port Chester, it was the opposite end of the earth for Joe. He was on the other side of the therapeutic fence, treating rather than being treated. He had become the adult authority figure troubled adolescents looked to for support. He had achieved financial success beyond his dreams, yet he wasn’t happy.

Periods of good humor would be suddenly invaded by angry outbursts or bouts of suspicious gloom. Those close to him didn’t know how he’d be from one moment to the next. Without warning his moods would change. Some suspected substance abuse, though they didn’t have any proof and were afraid to suggest such a thing. Joe seemed very much against drugs.

He and Sherry didn’t even have alcohol in their house, and would drink only on special occasions. Sherry saw Joe drink heavily only two or three times during their entire marriage.

She secretly feared Joe’s dark mood shifts might be caused by Talwin, a prescription drug she saw him take frequently. When Joe had been working at DARTEC for a few months some staff members had visited them at home and mentioned that they had been worried about the pills he had been taking. Sherry was shocked. "What pills?," she inquired urgently. Joe exploded, angry that these people had come to his residence and confronted him, especially in the presence of his wife. He insisted that he had been taking Talwin for the pain in his elbow which contained a pin because of an injury sustained from his teenage auto accident. He could not bend his whole arm, and sometimes, depending on the weather, the pain was unbearable. She believed his doctor had prescribed the medication and it was necessary, not harmful.

When they met Gerry Davidson and later moved to Massachusetts, Joe was still taking Talwin, this time prescribed by Gerry. Eventually Sherry confronted Gerry about what she perceived was Joe's addiction, but she was brushed off by the older psychiatrist who told her it was all in her head,

In 1975, Joe was thirty years old, had a beautiful loving wife, success, money, adulation from the Elan residents, and two young sons, Jason and Noah, ages one and two. That same year he learned that his fifty-four year old father, had been arrested and charged with attempted murder and possession of a dangerous firearm for shooting a friend at the Canary bar in Port Chester.

Bamboo had been drinking late into the night and began arguing with a guy named Stanley Moore. After exchanging angry words he left the bar, but returned minutes later brandishing the gun, making threats to Moore, calling him a "dirty nigger." When Bamboo's friend, Arnie Horton, tried to intervene, Bamboo shot him in the chest at close range. He then left the bar and went to the police station to turn himself in.

Sgt. Richard Dooley, on duty in the early hours of the morning, took the rifle from Bamboo, and dispatched three Port Chester patrolmen to the bar where they found Horton on the floor bleeding from the chest. He was taken to the hospital where he was listed in fair condition.

Sgt. Dooley, now retired, says he thought Bamboo was going to shoot him too, the night he walked into the station with the gun. "My first instinct was to get the gun," recalls Dooley. "...I knew Bamboo and he was capable of doing crazy things." Arnie Horton eventually recovered. According to police records, Bamboo served six months in the county jail for the shooting, but he and Arnie spent many more nights carousing together before it was all over.

Joe had barely communicated with his father before he and Sherry married. They had seen each other only occasionally in Joe’s youth. Yet both Bamboo and Joe’s mother, Ann, were proud parents at Joe and Sherry’s elegant Guilford wedding.

Sherry says she helped forge a relationship between Joe and his father, after their sons were born. She thought the boys should know their grandparents, and Joe agreed to have his father visit. Joe had been reunited with his mother in Port Chester, while he still continued to live with the Santoros. After Ann remarried she tried to regain custody of her son, but Angelina had grown too fond of Joe to let her grandson live with Ann and her four daughters by her new husband.

Ann visited Joe and Sherry on Blackstrap Road a number of times, yet Joe never had anything nice to say about his mother to anyone. In fact she was often the subject of cruel remarks made to his employees. Some speculate that Joe never forgave his mother for what he termed 'abandonment' .

When Joe and Sherry became millionaires, Sherry says she would sometimes send Ann money, but when Joe learned of it, he would explode in anger. One observer says Joe finally started to send his mother regular checks but "...only after he was involved in the Key bank lawsuit, and feared she might have to be interviewed or something."

After Joe and Sherry made their fortune, they began indulging more in leisure activities like going out to eat, but they had no friends or associates outside the sphere of Elan. The only other couple they ever socialized with was their lawyer Greg Tselikis and his wife Jackie. Greg came from a poor family, and had worked his way through college, and law school, to a position with Bernstein, Shur, Sawyer, and Nelson, a prominent Portland law firm. He and Joe became close and at one point even went duck hunting together, despite Joe’s proclaimed aversion to killing animals. One source close to Joe says"Greg was extraordinarily good to Joe. He’d help him out in a lot of areas that Joe knew absolutely nothing about. There was a camaraderie between them... Neither had started out with a silver spoon in his mouth."

Though they had a large staff, Joe and Sherry both continued to work at Elan, but it was clear that it was Joe who ran the show. He was in the words of one former employee "a sort of cult figure.." He says "It was like he was Jim Jones...He was our reality. It’s hard to explain, but Joe had a way of defining things as if his definition was the only one. We all would have swallowed Cyanide for him if he’d asked..."

Another former staff member recalls Joe had a knack for creating intimacy with people, for making them believe they were important to him, and to his projects. They felt that they had a special relationship with him and he worked at preserving these relationships by being generous. Occasionally he would financially assist poorer kids who had gone through the program. They didn’t have a college education and weren’t trained for any special work other than working at Elan, so Joe would employ them as staff therapists and give them more money than they’d ever get in the real world. Sometimes he’d help them buy a house. But Joe ended up owning these people. They’d be petrified of upsetting him, destroying their economic security. Then when they didn’t act exactly as he wanted them to act, he’d fire them or discredit them, saying they were back on drugs. "It was like he was their pimp...pathetic," she recalls

In his marriage Joe began employing some of the ‘techniques’ he used at Elan. If Sherry annoyed or angered him, she’d be punished. One punishment was embarrassment and humiliation in the presence of other staff members. According to one former staffer he’d ‘shoot her down’ (an Elan term to describe the taking of authority away from someone who had misused it) by humiliating her at staff meetings, or he’d purposely exclude her from decision making, instructing people not to tell her something. "At first we were led to believe that theirs was the perfect marriage," a former resident recalls, "...but after a while it was apparent to some of us that it was far from it."

Sometimes Joe would simply disappear, and when Sherry called Elan to find him, he wouldn’t talk to her. Once she was informed that he’d taken a blond social worker with him to Las Vegas. Joe loved to gamble, and reportedly lost $10,000 one night at the roulette table. Often his disappearances would last for many days, even weeks. Sherry raised their sons virtually alone, and confided that she felt like a single mother from the day they were born.

Joe would insist on having female residents at Elan babysit their sons. He’d pick the girls, and they were always pretty. Sherry thought he did it just to upset her, and complained, but he would get angry and say she was neurotic. One time a girl who had babysat at their house returned to Elan, and ‘copped to guilt’ (Elan term meaning admitting bad behavior) She confessed that she had taunted their year old baby pretending he was a kitty. When he wanted to get off her lap she wouldn’t let him, and that she burnt him with her cigarette. Sherry became hysterical but Joe reacted with disgust directed toward her. He said she'd changed, and there was nothing wrong with the Elan residents babysitting their children, .

Sherry became more and more isolated from Joe, and had no friends, other than her contacts at Elan. And at Elan Joe was in charge. Everybody took orders from him, even if it meant violating her rights.

One day she was at home when she heard noise coming from her bedroom. It was a secretary from Elan going through her drawers and closets. Joe had given her a key to the house, with instructions to pack him a bag so he could take a trip. Despite objections from her, the secretary refused to leave until she had done what Joe sent her to do.

Living with Joe became too much, and Sherry finally suffered a nervous breakdown for which she was hospitalized in 1976.

She had been in the hospital for three weeks when Joe went to visit. A nurse came into her room announcing his arrival. She told her that her husband was there, but that he didn’t want to go in the room. He wanted her to wheel herself out to the hall, near the nurse’s station. She complied, and Joe approached and presented her--in full view of everyone--with an expensive diamond and sapphire necklace. All the nurses began exclaiming over the sparkling gems. "What a wonderful husband you have!," they concluded as she wheeled herself back into her room feeling caught up in a perverse nightmare...

"That scene at the hospital was vintage Joe..." confirms a former associate. "...Everything was for show. He’d always need a group around him, and act out a role, usually one that made him look great to people who didn’t do any serious scrutinizing."

During her hospital stay Sherry (who is five feet six) weighed less than ninety pounds, and was given thorazine. Occasionally friends from Elan would stop by. One time a staffer came to see her, and after five minutes, broke down in tears. Sherry felt badly and told her visitor she was feeling better only to discover that the tears were not for her, but for Joe. She was concerned that he was too distraught over Sherry's illness. She told Sherry that Joe had called a staff meeting and was miserable because he could help so many people, with emotional problems, but not his own wife.

After her breakdown Sherry went to therapy sessions three or four times a week, despite Joe’s initial objection. Slowly she began to repair her self esteem, and became stronger. But she had negative feelings about Joe, about his practices at Elan that she had previously been unable to articulate. They were just gut feelings that something was seriously wrong, and until therapy she hadn't shared her feelings with anyone. Having an objective third party gave things a different perspective. She became more aware of being manipulated, and blindly following a pattern of behavior, simply because it was easier than resisting.

Sherry’s sister Julie had been a resident at Elan, and Sherry’s blind loyalty to Joe had a detrimental affect on the sisters' relationship. Once when Julie had done something that didn’t seem to show enough respect for Joe, Sherry had scolded her. But Julie responded by saying "I’m not in awe of him, like you and the others!" The use of the word ‘awe’ stung Sherry, as she began to realize that ‘awe’ was a poor foundation for a marriage. She knew her sister’s observation had been accurate. She had spent years of her life under her husband’s ‘spell.’ She had gotten older with him, but had not matured herself. It was difficult if not impossible for her to determine where she ended and he began, since she had never questioned any of his actions or motivations. He led, and she followed. The information she got about everything at Elan was filtered through Joe, and it was always just what he wanted her to know. He had been her Pied Piper.

Joe and Sherry’s love life had been non-existent, so terrible, that she later observed to a friend that it was amazing she ever got pregnant. She blamed herself, that she was not attractive enough, rather than admit that he was simply not sexual, despite a strong male countenance, and an obvious eye for women. One former associate says "What really turned him on was power over people and he got his ‘kicks’ by being in absolute control...Sometimes he’d do it with charm, other times money or some overt action, but the manipulation was always there."

After Sherry had given birth to their second son Noah, she was being wheeled back to her room when Joe told her he thought he might have syphilis. This fear proved to be untrue, but devastated his wife minutes after giving birth.

When their son was just a couple of weeks old, she had a tremendous argument with Joe about his use of Talwin, and took the baby and stayed with a friend. Things would get better for a while, but then they’d deteriorate again until she finally had her breakdown.

After two years of therapy Sherry knew she had to start a new life, separate from Joe, yet Joe didn’t seem to want a divorce, and she couldn’t understand why. He would get angry at her often and sometimes he would yell and scream at her so excitedly that his false teeth would dislodge themselves.

In 1978 they didn’t live together. He slept mostly at Elan, an institutional setting where Sherry always thought he felt more comfortable.

During their year apart they talked about divorce, but Joe was still reluctant. Sherry later heard from their accountant that Joe was told a divorce would cost him plenty, and he didn’t like it. He told him during an angry moment that his wife wasn’t getting a divorce, that she’d had one nervous breakdown, and he’d see to it that she had another. He reportedly observed that it’d be cheaper to put her in the Institute for Living in Connecticut for $1,500 per month, than get a divorce. They tried marriage counseling, though Sherry, becoming stronger from her therapy, realized the marriage was over.

Sherry recalls that after one marriage counseling session they stopped at a Howard Johnsons, and Joe told her that whether they got a divorce or not, he was going to buy Scarborough Downs, a harness racetrack and he wanted her to be his partner. She was flabbergasted. They had been to the racetrack, ten miles south of Portland many times together, but she had no idea he wanted to own it. It seemed the antithesis of Elan, and she couldn’t understand why he wanted to get involved with running a racetrack. It seemed to her that they had started out helping people who had addictions. A racetrack with its bars and gambling created addictive behavior. She stared at him, and suddenly understood that he needed a lot of cash to buy the track, and stalling the divorce would help his finances. If that didn’t work, having her as his partner, could tie up her share of a divorce settlement in the purchase price. She had gotten wise to his way of thinking, after nearly ten years of marriage, and she knew then her survival depended on getting away from him.

In November of 1978, Sherry filed for divorce, and the following spring Joe and Gerry Davidson (having formed Davric Maine Corporation) bought Scarborough Downs from The Ogden Corporation for $1.2 million. Ogden took back a $750,000 mortgage on the track to assist with financing. An additional $425,000 in cash from Elan, and a $75,000 loan from their bank, Depositors Trust of Southern Maine provided the remaining funds to complete the purchase.

The details of the divorce were worked out by Greg Tselikis who represented Joe, while Sherry found another Portland attorney. They had numerous real estate holdings and other assets as outlined in the divorce documents. Among these was their 100 acre estate in Falmouth, the Elan land and buildings in Poland Spring, Waterford and Parsonfield, Maine, a private plane, horse stables, a Bentley auto, a 30 unit luxury apartment complex, Scarborough Downs racetrack and various treasury bonds and cash. Sherry agreed to give up all claims to any of their real estate-including their home on Blackstrap Road and all interest in the businesses including Elan, Scarborough Downs, and the apartment complex. In exchange for forfeiting that she was allotted $150,000 to purchase a new house for herself and her sons, various treasury bonds, and $60,000 per year in alimony and child support. She was also given a promissory note for $100,000 in cash. At the time Sherry’s lawyer reportedly indicated she was entitled to more, but regarding her still fragile 98 pound frame, advised her to take Joe’s offer, and move on. Joe was a street fighter, and Sherry was already battle weary.

After nearly ten years of being married to Joe, having his two children, and working full time at Elan she gave up the businesses she helped create. She also left most of its profits behind. Joe, on the other hand still had assets well over $1 million and was operating three businesses with an excess of 300 employees.

Shortly thereafter Joe called a meeting at the Sheraton Inn in South Portland to discuss both Elan and Scarborough Downs. Those present were instructed that they were to have absolutely no contact with his soon to be ex-wife. Anyone found talking to her, or having any communication whatsoever with her would immediately be fired, he warned.

Sherry realized that her divorce from Joe would cost her all her old friendships, and guarantee isolation from everybody except her children. Even her own family, with the exception of Julie, was unsympathetic. None of her relatives had ever been divorced. It was something they thought happened to strangers. They blamed her for not making the marriage work because Joe had convinced them it was her fault.

Yet, the divorce became final on October 23, 1979, six weeks shy of their tenth wedding anniversary.

A month earlier on September 28, 1979, MAINE TIMES, a statewide weekly newspaper had featured a cover story titled: "Meet Maine’s Most Unusual Millionaire." The five page article stated that: "In most respects Joe Ricci is the embodiment of the American dream." It compared his life story to an Horatio Alger tale of rags to riches triumph, citing his hard work, ambition and perseverance in the face of great odds as the catalyst for his success.

Joe falsely told the story’s reporter, Peter Dammann, that he grew up in rat and roach infested squalor, and after being a heroin addict at the age of 12 ended up at Daytop Village, a very brutal drug rehabilitation program from which he graduated with flying colors, while still only in his teens. Joe said he later started DARTEC in Connecticut, got married, and then took a third mortgage out on his house to start Elan.

Describing Elan, Joe declared "We help people find their identity, develop the internal controls they were lacking. We teach them that life is a game of consequence. We are preparing them for life, and let’s face it, life is not a very nice place to be." The article ended quoting Joe: "I want to do and try as many things in my life as I can," he asserted, noting, however, that he would never do anything to compromise the program at Elan because " I’ve always believed that you should dance with the one who brung ya."

Chapter Three

Cash Cow

In the mid 70’s the majority of Elan’s young residents lived at its primary facility in Poland Spring in Maine on five wooded acres which were isolated from everything around them. The setting was comprised of an administrative trailer known as Elan One, some small out buildings used as residence halls, classrooms, and storage space. Other residents were housed 35 miles north in two converted houses located about 100 yards from each other on a road in Waterford, called Apple Blossom Lane. Fifty miles to the southwest was still another facility in Parsonfield, which was supposedly reserved for the most difficult residents. This building with locks on the doors and bars on the windows was a large house that had once been a TB sanitarium.

The entire Elan operation was incredibly lucrative for Joe and his partner, Gerry Davidson, eventually making them hundreds of thousands of dollars each year in profit. In the early 70’s it had received very favorable press coverage due in a large part to Davidson’s extensive contacts. Descriptions of the facility when it first began to operate, however, differ dramatically from later accounts. Particularly interesting are the contradictory statements about Elan which came from Davidson and Ricci themselves. Whether the program was misrepresented at the outset, or later changed as it grew is not clear.

For example, just after Elan opened in 1971 Davidson did an interview for U.S. News And World Report. He said: "Therapeutic communities largely are run by ex-addicts who have become extremely sanctimonious, like all converted heathen. So the communities frequently are set up in some ways reminiscent of concentration camps. They shave their patients heads, make them wear diapers, hang degrading signs on them, things like that. In our therapeutic community we do not do this. Our approach is to build self-esteem, and regard for others. We treat one another like responsible human beings. Our residents respond in fashion, and we have no trouble whatever with people leaving."

Despite these statements, Elan later condoned the use of degrading signs, sent posses out to bring back runaways who dared try to leave the program and was accused of seriously humiliating its residents.

In 1971 Joe appeared on WGAN-TV in Portland and described the new therapeutic community he was running with Sherry as "a private drug treatment center that incorporated physical, intellectual, and therapeutic components to instill self-esteem, self-reliance, and a capacity to love in the individual." Previously he had described his work at Daytop, and DARTEC in similar fashion, but in building up Elan, he criticized those communities for being violent, and damaging.

In a press report, that appeared the day Elan opened its doors, Joe said that "iron clad discipline" would not be a part of his program. He also claimed that Elan would avoid rigid adherence to a set form of treatment, and declared "We tailor the program to fit the individual, not the individual to fit the program." Yet a chief criticism later from residents, and state officials was that Elan had adopted a one treatment for all philosophy, and did few if any individual assessments.

After Elan opened it was not long before people who mattered knew about the new facility in rural Maine. Davidson networked his contacts in many states for referrals, and also went to Washington to lobby for insurance coverage being extended to facilities like Elan. He was a powerful figure with contacts at Harvard, and Massachusetts General Hospital. Troubled teens began to be referred from many states. Juvenile officers and social workers who didn’t know where else to send their wards would pack them off to Elan. Rich parents at their wits end felt safe listening to Joe talk about what he could do for their kids. Joe would even offer to fly Elan’s private plane to pick up potential residents, and take them to his place in the woods. People were swayed by Joe's charisma, and liked the way he talked about Elan which he called "the Rolls Royce of adolescent treatment centers."

There was little controversy. During its first few years Elan lived a honeymoon type existence. But all that changed one summer.

On July 22,1975 a team of five investigators --a psychiatrist and four social workers from the Illinois Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS)-- visited Elan for a routine evaluation. Eleven of its state wards had been placed at Elan. The team stayed for two days, talking with staffers and residents about the program, traveling the grounds observing groups and the daily activities. And after spending nearly 48 hours on the premises, they were aghast at the flagrant child abuse, and violation of civil rights they witnessed. They called their superior, Mary Lee Leahy, who headed the Illinois DCFS, and received authorization to immediately remove the children from Illinois.

The following Monday morning, July 28th, Mary Lee Leahy sent a telegram to then Maine governor, James Longley, informing him of the serious allegations concerning Elan. She requested he immediately conduct a full scale investigation into its operation.

That same day, Don Schlosser, a spokesman for the Illinois DCFS told the Associated Press that the department’s evaluation team had "never seen anything quite so bizarre and degrading." He said "The whole concept of this program seems to be a brain washing technique."

The next day Leahy followed up her telegram to Governor Longley with a letter summarizing some of the findings of her review team. She was appalled by instances of physical abuse and forced labor which included spankings, punching one another in a boxing ring, and senseless ditch digging. She also cited instances of handcuffing a child to a table and the pouring of a mixture of food and human feces over a child’s head, denial of food and recreation, improper medical care, and a total lack of privacy. She summarized her letter by writing:

"In short, our Illinois team members found the Elan program abhorrent to all accepted standards of child care. The treatment model seems predicated on suspension of each child’s liberties; they become automatons who conform to acceptable behavior patterns after they find it hopeless to resist the will of their ‘masters’."

Elan's population at the time was 217 residents, making each director responsible for approximately 45 children. The evaluation team explained that all five resident directors were former drug addicts, all graduates themselves of the Elan program, and none possessed a college degree or had any prior experience in child care. One resident director who was in charge of a house where seven of the Illinois residents lived told the team that he had a history of assaultive behavior toward females. His third assault resulted in serious injury to the woman, which had been the reason for his admission to Elan. This staff member said that he still had difficulties relating to women and that his progress was being monitored by other Elan employees.

The report outlined further staffing structures at Elan, explaining that in addition to the five resident directors there were 20 coordinators who conducted most of the therapy groups. All these staff coordinators were also former Elan residents, and some were recent Elan graduates whose names in fact still appeared on the present resident population sheet.

The Illinois evaluators explained the various bizarre forms of punishment for residents which included 'the ring’, ‘electric sauce,’ ditch digging, handcuffs, straight jackets, and spankings.

The ring was modeled after a regular boxing ring. A resident to be disciplined was placed in the center of a circle formed by other residents, given 16 ounce boxing gloves and head gear. The resident was then confronted with an opponent chosen by the individual who he had allegedly victimized, and forced to put in a round which usually lasted a minute. If the resident being punished was not beaten he or she had to fight subsequent opponents until defeated.

Illinois investigators stated that six residents from Illinois told them about the ring, reporting that those placed in the ring to defeat the person being punished were mostly large well built boys and that boys were used to defeat both male and female residents. Two residents independently told of a young female being forced into the ring. When she resisted she was held down and an attempt was made to tie boxing gloves on her hands. When that was not accomplished, she was subjected to the ring bare fisted and without heard gear. Of particular concern to the investigators was the incident of one of their DCFS residents, who had been determined to be pregnant, but subsequent to her physical exam was put in the ring and defeated.

Some of the reasons for this form of punishment included refraining from discussing problems in therapy, or refusing to cheer on another’s fight in the ring.

Electric sauce was the name given to a mixture of garbage, ketchup, mustard, cigarette butts etc. that was poured over residents’ heads as another form of punishment. The report stated that some residents even indicated that human feces was sometimes included in this ‘sauce.’

Digging ditches was apparently still another form of punishment. Many residents reported that a day of digging ditches under surveillance was a common practice. After each ditch was dug the resident being punished would be required to fill it back up again, and repeat the process for the duration of the punishment.

The use of handcuffs was also alleged. One resident explained that he had been cuffed for about five hours for striking someone. had been ordered by a staff member to handcuff a girl to a table by placing the cuffs around her ankles.

Investigators reported that they had personally witnessed a resident pleading not to be placed in a straight jacket again. Another resident recalled that he had been awakened at 2:30am and ordered to place one of his peers in a straight jacket.

The report contended that both Elan staff members and residents gave spankings to those guilty of ‘acting like babies.' And one of the resident directors who had previously identified himself as having a history of serious assaults on women admitted to this team that he had also spanked a female resident from Illinois.

Elan functioned as a separate society with its own dictionary of terms. A ‘general meeting’ was called after a resident failed to comply with program requirements. At this meeting everyone in the house gathered together and verbally assaulted the person. If this resident did not voluntarily submit to this verbal assault from peers, he or she was then forcibly dragged before the group. At these meetings it was represented that ‘anything goes,' and the use of obscene, degrading and vile language was condoned. Sometimes the posse mentality of these meetings reached a crescendo and the residents charged at the subject, striking, kicking and throwing things. One resident reported that he once had trouble pushing his way into the group to get close enough to personally attack the subject, and was afraid that he might be disciplined for not enthusiastically participating in this disciplining procedure.

The Illinois investigators wrote that they had heard about an adolescent who had been tied to a pole and gagged with a rag. They also wrote about a pitcher of chocolate milk which had been dumped over another boy's head. Other forms of punishment included the scrubbing of a floor with a tooth brush, and the cleaning of toilet bowls with bare hands.

Though the poor qualifications of Elan personnel and abusive methods of punishment were grave concern to the team, they did not confine their outrage to just those areas. In their report they stated that they were also appalled by violations of privacy at Elan. "Expeditors" were constantly at work keeping a written record of negative behavior, acting "like a secret police force." All incoming mail for residents no matter whom it was from was intercepted, opened and read by the Elan staff. If it was determined inappropriate for the resident to read it was confiscated or the objectionable material deleted. All outgoing mail to parents and others was censored, and new residents could not write letters, make or receive phone calls. These activities were considered privileges to be earned through elevation on the hierarchy. One resident reported that he had letter writing privileges, but chose not to write letters because he did not want them read by staff members. Those who were permitted to make phone calls also had their calls monitored by a staff member, and the evaluation team reported that even their own phone conversations at Elan had been monitored by a staffer who informed them afterwards that he had listened to their calls.

During their two day stay at Elan, members of the evaluation team stated that they observed group therapy sessions where personal insults, and attacks on individual family members were common. Verbal attacks from the staffers to the residents overheard included: "You mother fucking whore"... "You cock sucking, titty sucking, mother fucking asshole"..."You mother fucking dog"... Each tirade lasted ten minutes or more.

Team members further reported that Elan’s resident nurse told them that all new residents were subjected to a strip search. They stated that Elan’s nurse told them that she got vaginal smears and did rectal exams on new female residents and secured semen specimens from new male residents to test for any venereal disease. She reportedly stated that the semen specimen was obtained from each new male resident by giving him a small cup and directing him to a private room to masturbate and return with the sample. The evaluation team stated that they subsequently contacted physicians in charge of both public and private facilities to determine if masturbation was an acceptable procedure for obtaining a semen specimen. Each physician contacted was shocked by such a procedure and stated it was not medically acceptable. During the team’s discussion with Elan’s registered nurse they were also distraught to find that she dispensed many medications. Discussing the specific drugs, they found about a dozen were controlled pharmaceuticals that required a prescription. The nurse also reportedly told them that girls leaving Elan were given birth control pills upon request, without having a physical exam performed prior to their getting them.

Deprivation of food as punishment, lack of adequate recreation facilities, trained kitchen personnel, and clothing for residents were other concerns expressed in this report. The evaluators told of one of their wards who had his shoes taken away. He said that during his six weeks at Elan, he had made repeated requests for shoes, but the requests were denied because he was told that if he had shoes he might run away. When this child was brought back to Chicago, it was found that he had blood poisoning in one foot.

The evaluation team’s report concluded from its investigation of Elan that there was absolutely no justification for the outrageous treatment of adolescents which they witnessed, writing

"Elan will argue that the evaluation team has taken occurrences out of context, and that contrary to the findings of the evaluation team , the incidents were in the best interests of the child. Regardless of the reasons given by Elan excusing or justifying the incidents each and every incident reported is directly contrary to Illinois law and regulations, and under no circumstances can the agency permit any of its wards to reside at an institution where such events occur. In addition these practices violate the child’s civil rights and liberties and deprive him of his self respect and dignity. Under no circumstances can the Department of Children and Family Services permit any child to be subjected to Elan."

Joe Ricci, the then 29 year old millionaire founder and executive therapeutic director of Elan was livid when Illinois pulled its wards, but he soon launched his own attack. A source who was close to Joe at the time said he was told by his lawyers to downplay the controversy, try to keep a cap on it. But Joe decided to be on the offensive and came out fighting, threatening law suits for defamation of character and breach of contracts.

An embarrassed state government in Maine immediately launched an inquiry into Illinois allegations in an attempt to explain how such things could be allowed to happen right under its nose. It sent a six member evaluation team of its own to Elan on July 31st and August 1st, and Governor Longley and David Smith, the commissioner for Human Services, made a much heralded trip to Poland Spring.

When Longley received the official 70 page report from the Illinois evaluation team on August 5th, he had Maine’s Department of Human Services issue an interim report on its independent findings. Maine stated that Illinois’s findings were unfounded. It reported that its investigation revealed: "No evidence of unjustifiable denials of civil liberties or of mistreatment brutality or anything that could be considered abhorrent to all acceptable standards of child care." This report asserted that: "The residents (of Elan) interviewed usually expressed new found feelings of dignity, self-assurance, and mental well being, and they attributed these feelings to the treatment they received at Elan."

Responding to the charges of the ring, spankings and physical abuse Maine wrote : "One of the cardinal rules of the Elan program is that the use of physical violence, by either a staff member, or a resident is strictly outlawed." Yet it defended the use of the ring stating: " Only acts of repeated physical violence (on the part of residents ) result in a person being placed in the ring where rounds last about one minute and the participants are evenly matched. "

Responding to the Illinois charges of Elan spanking its residents the Maine evaluators again chose to justify this behavior, though it was in direct contradiction to Elan ‘s stated policy of no corporal punishment.

Regarding spankings they wrote: "It is recognized and accepted by residents as an "ultimate" technique for dealing with rare and unusual behavior," adding: "There was, however, an isolated incident which was recognized as excessive by other staff members and which therefore resulted in the temporary suspension of the staff member responsible."

The Maine team (comprised of four lawyers, a Ph.D., and a psychiatrist) also stated that it found "no evidence to support the charge that residents were forced to dig ditches" writing: "The work assignments performed by the residents are beneficial and integral part of the Elan treatment program and that such work assignments contribute significantly in the development of responsibility, self- respect, and pride."

Responding to Illinois’s other charges regarding lack of privacy and violation of civil rights the Maine contingent wrote in part: "We found that the degree of privacy afforded Elan residents is acceptable within the context of the entire program."

Finally, answering the allegations of screamed obscenities they wrote: "Persons experienced in dealing with trouble adolescents will readily agree that obscene words are an everyday occurrence in the adolescent world, and although we do not condone this type of vocabulary, we feel the use of such words would in no way support a charge of mistreatment or of bizarre or degrading treatment."

A few weeks after the state of Maine issued its report, disagreeing with Illinois’s allegations. Elan filed a civil complaint in Cumberland County Superior court charging Mary Lee Leahy, the five members of the Illinois evaluation team and the Illinois Department of Family and Child Services with defamation of character, breach of contract, and interference with business relations. It asked for $6.1 million in actual damages and $4 million in punitive damages. The next day the state of Illinois on behalf of the Illinois wards filed an action in the U.S. District Court in Chicago, charging the Elan corporation and three of its officers with mistreatment of Illinois wards. It requested $750,000 in damages, and $36, 998 in reimbursement of payment by Illinois to Elan for child care services.

According to Illinois attorney, Dick Devine, who handled the matter for the Illinois DCFS, the state also filed a myriad of other actions in Illinois, and in Portland federal court. In the end all parties eventually settled with no money passing hands.

"Our primary purpose then," Devine now recalls "..was just to get our kids out of that place, and prevent them from ever going back." He notes that some of those sent to Elan were not even delinquent, but merely orphans. Now, even fifteen years later, he remembers the incident with intensity and is surprised that Elan is still operating.

The publicity generated from Illinois’s claims of abuse, caused other states to send their own investigators to determine how their wards were being treated. During the same period that Maine’s evaluation team was assessing Elan, so were three evaluators form Connecticut, four from Rhode Island, and four from Massachusetts.

***

Ken Zaretsky, now a 34 year old entrepreneur living in Chicago, was a teenage staff member at Elan during these state investigations. Looking back on that time frame he reveals that after the Illinois investigators arrived , everything was covered up. "We lied through our teeth, " he says, explaining that he and other staff members did a good job of softening the program for the subsequent investigations. "What we couldn’t cover up we admitted to as the exception rather than the rule. The residents were thrilled when the place was overrun with investigators, because they had a real fun time. We laid off everybody then. But everything the Illinois investigators said was true, every last word of it", he declares.

Ken would be considered one of Elan’s success stories. He was in the program in 1971 from the time he was 15, graduated, and became a senior staff member, spending a total of five years at Elan. He believed in Elan and Joe Ricci whom he says "We all thought was God." But nearly fifteen years later he reports his scars from Elan still run deep, and that the aftershocks of all the humiliation are still felt in his relationship with himself and others. And he regrets the abuse he perpetrated on the residents when he became a staff member. " But I was brainwashed, " he says in his own defense. "I might have abused someone else, but I was a victim too. It can be compared to a mother in the concentration camps pushing the buttons on her children in the ovens. How can you fault her for that?"

Ken came from Illinois, though he was not a ward of the state. He was one of Elan’s private referrals from a doctor by the name of Marvin Schwartz. "Marvin was known as Mr. Adolescent Illinois, " recalls Ken indicating that he was probably single handedly responsible for building Elan with his private referrals.

" I think he and Gerry Davidson went back a long way. I didn’t realize it at the time, but found out later when I worked at Elan that he would get a kickback for every kid he sent there and that’s clearly why he did it", says Ken

Ken says that he and many others who were placed at Elan in the early and mid 70’s were not the hard core deviant kids people imagined. He says he didn’t use heroin or any hard drugs. " I was a normal kid, given the time in our country’s history that I was being a kid in," he observes. "I believed Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were good guys, and President Nixon was the bad guy...Was my behavior antisocial? Yeah, but it was an antisocial period in our history," he contends.

Three months after the multi- state investigation of Elan, Maine’s Department of Human Services issued what it called its Final Report Concerning the Alleged Mistreatment of Juveniles by Elan Corporation. The six pages, prepared by Maine’s Office of Alcoholism and Drug Prevention ( ODAP) , summarized the findings of Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts regarding their investigations of Elan. The ODAP summaries were strikingly similar to the interim report issued earlier by Maine which had been reviewed by the other states. It read in part:

"Based on a reasonable interpretation of the results of investigations by state officials form Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island the Maine Department of Human Services has concluded that there was insufficient evidence to justify the Illinois charges... As a result of these investigations, the four states have reviewed their policies regarding placement and referral of state youths at Elan facilities and all have determined that Elan has consistently provided and will continue to provide innovative, appropriate, and beneficial treatment to juveniles with serious behavioral problems. None of the four investigating states has withdrawn any of their state wards from Elan and every state intends to continue their present policy of encouraging the placement of youths at Elan facilities."

In preparing its final report, however, Maine’s ODAP did not include a summary of the actual investigative report done by evaluators from Massachusetts who visited Elan in July. Their report, filed August 6th, had findings similar to the Illinois team, yet these went unreported.

Spending 48 hours at Elan facilities in Poland Spring, and Parsonfield, the Massachusetts evaluators spoke with residents individually in separate rooms, assuring each of confidentiality. According to the Massachusetts team, spankings occurred at Elan in the course of a general meeting held for disciplinary reasons and were attended by all the residents of a particular house. They described that residents (receiving spankings) were required to bend over a chair, and if they refused, two or more residents and staff would forcibly restrain them by holding arms and legs.

The Massachusetts evaluators described a similar boxing ring format similar to that described by Illinois and stated that injuries from the ring ranged from negligible effects, to black eyes bloody noses, split lips and sprained ankles.

They also received reports of ‘electric sauce’ poured over resident’s heads. Sitting in a corner was still another form of discipline reported. They wrote that the length of time a disciplinee must remain in the corner varied from two days to several months. During this time residents had to have all meals in the corner and were allowed to leave only to go to the bathroom. One resident reported to the evaluators that another resident forced to sit in a corner for two solid months, began to talk to herself, and as a result of talking to herself was given a spanking by the entire house.

In summarizing their investigation, the Massachusetts team wrote :

"It is the opinion if the evaluation team that there is sufficient corroboration among youth in the Elan program to consider certain forms of behavior control employed to constitute abusive treatment of clients. Use of such forms of behavior control would seem to constitute systematic legal violation of clients' rights ( such as assault and assault and battery) regardless of any therapeutic rationale in which they may be incorporated.

It should also be noted that use of abusive behavior controls would seem to be in direct violation of Department of Youth Services standards regarding the treatment of youth under the department's care. The net effect of such practices, while in direct contradiction to the program's stated position was reported by most clients interviewed to be one of severe humiliation as well as in many instances, physically painful.

In light of the information received it is the evaluation team’s opinion that the issue of placement of wards of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the care of DYS at Elan be seriously reconsidered. Subsequently it is felt that a decision must be reached regarding the present contractual agreements between the Commonwealth and Elan pursuant to the best interests of the youth in the program."

Instead of explaining these findings of the four Massachusetts investigators, Maine’s ODAP substituted a subsequent report written by Robert Watson, Director Intensive Care for the Division of Youth Services that supposedly summarized the above findings of the team. It concluded in part:

"Boxing is a therapeutic tool utilized by the community to stop residents from bullying one another. This is carefully supervised to insure that no one is hurt. The purpose is to show that any and all residents cannot bully one another. This is the administration’s definition."

Watson also wrote: "Electric sauce is not, has not been and never will be a practice or tool of the Elan administration." adding: " Of all the residents interviewed only one said he had electric sauce thrown at him. Two said they saw it, and almost all others had heard about it. A staff member at Elan had used this practice approximately eight months ago. As soon as the administration learned that this practice had taken place, it was immediately stopped, and this staff member was terminated. This practice has not taken place since. Summarizing Massachusetts position Watson wrote:

"I feel with further definition the Elan program will continue to achieve our purpose in treatment of the youth we sent to them."

Watson knew what he was writing when he used past tense sent in the above statement, because Massachusetts stopped placing its youth at Elan following its investigation.

Maine’s ODAP represented in its final report summary that Elan had received a unanimous support from its other evaluations, but this wasn’t true. The omissions in the ODAP summary raise questions about the spin placed on its 1975 report concerning child abuse at Elan.

Jerry Docherty who is now deputy director for Family Continuity Programs in Massachusetts remembers visiting Elan during this period when he was with the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services. He was not a member of the evaluation team, but made a separate trip to Elan concerning one of the Massachusetts' wards. He recalls having serious doubts about the therapeutic effectiveness of the program, but says he was impressed with the educational aspect which seemed to function separately. During his visit he asked to see the boxing ring, and asked about other allegations and says "What was presented to me was certainly far less controversial than what I read in the papers. I never saw any of it, but I had some gut level concerns that they weren’t showing me things."..... I also had a strong feeling that the state program was separated from the private pay program and there was a qualitative different feel to it."

He never realized that Elan was run for profit. Learning that the Joe and Gerry made more than $300,000 a year from the program, he says "That is sick."

Chapter Four

The "Therapeutic" Community

In March of 1979 Corrections Magazine featured an in depth story about Elan titled: Elan : Does its bizarre regimen transform troubled youths or abuse them? This article outlined the history of similar programs, stating that "Elan’s rapid growth is a reflection of important trends in American corrections over the past ten years." It mentioned that many people had become disillusioned with conventional vocational and educational programs and turned their attention to ‘therapeutic communities’ that until the early 70's were operating on the fringe of the corrections system. The article stated that these programs, given the tentative endorsement of some experts, became the site of referrals from judges and correction officials for their juvenile offenders. And as the money poured in they mushroomed.

Philip Taft, the author of this article, stated that the father of all these therapeutic communities was Synanon, the California community of alcoholics and drug addicts which bred branches throughout the west. He explained that Synanon graduates started similar programs all over the country and cited Daytop Village in New York as one such program that helped inspire Elan. He noted that "Elan’s millionaire founder and Executive Director, Joe Ricci ,was one of Daytop’s greatest success stories." The article pointed out that Elan was subject to comparison with its spiritual progenitor, Synanon, which was in the process of disintegration after the arrest of two of its members and its founder, Chuck Dederich, for allegedly putting a rattlesnake in the mailbox of a lawyer who brought a suit against the group. (Dederich later committed suicide)

Taft traveled to Maine to visit Elan, and also spoke with social workers, law enforcement officials and others responsible for referring clients there.

He described some unusual impressions: "There is a rain of curses and shouts amidst a confusing chaos of teenagers. Some give commands, others furiously scrub floors, dressed in bizarre costumes— diapers and tin foil and rags. Some have huge signs around their necks. Others scribble on note pads. They are intent on something: just what is uncertain. And no one is smiling. No one."

Taft wrote: "Residents are made to wear costumes that illustrate their unacceptable behavior . For example one boy whose supervisor thought the sun rose and set on him was made to dress like Caesar. Another ’'cry baby'’ was given a diaper and bottle, and others carried signs like "HELP! I am an emotionally crippled monster."

Taft mentions the spankings, and describes the ring: "With heavy 16 ounce gloves, headgear, and surrounded by residents, bullies and provokers must face a different boxer each minute to the screams of delight, and derision from their peers."

Taft quotes an ex Elan employee who stated: "They beat an emotionally slow kid in the snow, it was awful. He was just black and blue for weeks."

A former Elan employee , Donna Pizzi, told Taft "When I left there it was like ‘phew’, I’m out. It was like they had power over me , I went through a lot of psychological pushing and pulling." Pizzi said she found herself wondering about the "blank looks" on the faces of both staff and residents. "There’s a lot of rote repetition of creeds and philosophies without much thinking." She said the staff themselves were so young, most of them only in their teens, and themselves graduates of the program. "They are barely developed. It’s as if they depend on the place , like they had no other place to turn to except (work) at Elan," she declared.

Taft reported that there was a sort of cult speak vocabulary at Elan. He explained bad behavior for example was "corruptness," and "justice" is gained for those who have been abused in the system. His article drew attention to the proliferation of "pithy sayings" tacked to every wall of every residence.

Perhaps most revealing about Taft’s article were his conversations with Gerry Davidson and Joe Ricci. "We’re a community of self help like the Mormons." Davidson told Taft when he visited Elan nearly 11 years ago. He said he had always been a passioned observer of group phenomena. He then compared Elan to the Nazi concentration camps of World War II:

"I've always been fascinated with the phenomenon of identification with the aggressor," he said recalling how some Jews after their release from the camps took on the leather dress of their guards. Davidson stated: " At Elan I want to provide a good aggressor, a responsible , good role model. And that role model is Joe Ricci."

Outlining the program philosophy for the reporter Joe told Taft: " We allow no sex, no drugs, no physical violence. You are responsible for yourself and so are we." When questioned about the charge of Elan fostering dependency, Joe grumbled, calling it "A crock of shit..." He declared "You’ve gotta be Spartan and Machiavellian with your staff."

Talking to Taft about that summer of 1975 when Illinois made its allegations, Joe angrily told him: "It was a raid from the start..." He claimed that the members of the Illinois team: "...were very unprofessional." He said "They got drunk at one meal, and then came back to Elan to work. I didn’t like that...In retrospect Illinois was the worst and the best thing to happen to us...We had 120 kids before that. Now we have twice as many." (This wasn’t true. At the time of the investigations in 1975 the Elan population was recorded as 217)

Both Joe and Gerry refused to disclose their salaries, but told Taft that the profit margin then in 1979 was about ten to fifteen percent of the $40 per student per day ($1,200 per month ) tuition. Using those figures Taft estimated that of the $4.3 million in fees from the previous year, the annual profit split between them in 1979 was between $350,000 and $547,500.

Just how successful Elan was despite its overwhelming financial success was hard to determine. Taft revealed that Elan itself, though operating for eight years, had never done any follow up on former residents until about a year and a half earlier. Of the 12 states that referred children to Elan, only four had ever done any follow up, and what had been done was limited and informal. Just Maryland, Rhode Island, Oregon and Vermont surveyed a total of 71 former Elan residents finding 12 of them were in jail, 17 were working or in school and 42 were in the words of one official "living marginal lives" that included some petty crime, frequent unemployment, and overuse of alcohol and drugs. These state statistics certainly differed from Elan’s 80% success rate that it boasted in its promotional literature were "living healthy productive lives."

Six months later in September of 1979 Joe sat down with another reporter, Peter Daaman from MAINE TIMES. When the subject of the Illinois Investigation came up Joe told him: "Illinois did a tap dance on us for a year." He said the evaluation team was a ‘hit squad’ sent out by governor Dan Walker to get headlines and secure Walker’s reelection. "It was supposed to make him look like a real human macho dude," he observed. He told Daaman that Elan had been vindicated, that the Illinois legislature had endorsed the program. He mentioned that the Chicago newspaper that ‘crucified’ him later did a feature follow up of one of the wards who had fled back to Elan to complete its program and was leading a productive life. (No mention was made that Elan spent a great deal of money employing the services of a Chicago public relations firm to polish its image, or that the Department of Children & Family Services chose never to place any more of its children at Elan)

In early 1981, nearly six years after the explosive Illinois investigation of Elan, and the hasty subsequent investigations by Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine and Connecticut, the Rhode Island Office of the Child Advocate was asked to conduct another, more in depth study of the Elan facility. This request was made by Rhode Island judge, Edward Healey, because of allegations of abuse and neglect which surfaced during a family court juvenile proceeding. This investigation was perhaps the most comprehensive of all. It involved seven health care professionals including two psychiatrists, a psychiatric nurse, a sociologist and two attorneys from the Child Advocate’s Office. The evaluation team studied the reviews of Elan by other states, including Rhode Island, read extensive magazine articles and professional writings concerning the program, and conducted an on-site visit on February 27th and 28th. During this visit researchers reviewed each of the files relating to 130 Rhode Island children that had been placed at Elan from the time the state first utilized the program.

This extensive effort resulted in a forty page report that cited extensive abuses at Elan which constituted a flagrant violation of individual civil rights.

The Rhode Island investigators were seriously concerned about the lack of checks and balances for the exercise of authority by Ricci. They were disturbed that there was no board of directors or any effective institutional review mechanism. The evaluators met with both Joe and Gerry, but found Gerry less involved with the daily operation, and on occasion unable to respond accurately regarding the program’s use of the ring, and isolation cells at the facility in Parsonfield. Additionally, they learned that many of the Rhode Island residents interviewed were unable to identify Davidson as even being a member of the Elan staff, though his responsibilities supposedly included psychiatric and medical care for residents in all the Elan facilities.

The evaluators were equally concerned about the lack of professional staff. During their visit the team was introduced to three M.A. psychologists, but each had been with Elan for a brief time, and like Davidson seemed peripheral to the day to day operation. Residents interviewed showed no awareness of even the existence of professional staff. The sole responsibility for clinical treatment at Elan seemed to rest with former graduates who had undergone "in-service" staff training conducted by Joe Ricci.

The Evaluation team believed that the lack of professional staffing was responsible for the fact that Elan did not perform a thorough clinical assessment of each child upon admission or during residence. The team concluded: "Upon arrival no thorough intake assessment is performed aside from educational assessment...Written individualized treatment plans are not developed as part of the intake process. Placement within the program is based solely upon age and education."

They cited one instance where a case records review failed to address a serious medical problem of one of the Rhode Island residents who clearly required a neurological exam. The team reported that an evaluation was finally arranged by Elan staff just prior to the team's on- site visit, but noted that the child had been in the program for several months. The team was very critical of Elan’s one treatment for all approach to therapy and stated: " A child can be damaged by exposure to relentless confrontation, criticism, and control that marks the Elan approach."

Finally, the team came to much the same conclusion as did the Illinois and Massachusetts investigators:

"The climate of Elan is confrontation , " they wrote, reporting that the emphasis is control and containment in an atmosphere that was described to them by Gerry Davidson as being "paramilitary" and " like the moonies." They stated that key features of life at Elan were: "group living, sensory overload, and constant self and group criticism, with little opportunity for solitude or independence.

After reviewing extensive case files regarding its Rhode Island residents, the evaluators concluded that Elan’s proclamation of its success rate was "grossly exaggerated." They asked Elan to provide information regarding specific standards by which it determined the success rate it advertised. Answering this request Gerry Davidson responded " We feel we have been successful when a graduate is comparatively self supporting( or is attending school) and does not get into trouble with the authorities. The specific rate of success for Rhode Island children is 75%."

When pressed for a definition of its term ‘graduate’ Dr. Davidson responded that residents are graduated when they demonstrate:

1. That they can be reasonably consistent in school and/or work performance.

2. That they know how to form relationships based on mutual respect and, in particular, are not exploitive in relationships with the opposite sex.

3. That they can accept the normal misfortunes of life without using them as excuses for misbehavior.

4. That they can use the tools for relating we have given them. If they experience anxiety or depression they can talk to people and get themselves out of troublesome situations."

Yet despite its claim of an overall 80 % success rate, Elan could not provide the evaluators with any scientific data to substantiate it, or the claim of 75% success with the Rhode Island residents.

Because of this, the evaluation team proceeded to evaluate the success rate for their wards. Each file was reviewed of the 130 Rhode Islanders. The name of each child was then run through the Bureau of Criminal Identification (BCI) in order to obtain existing documentation of criminal offenses that may have been committed after returning to Rhode Island from Elan. (although some then adults, may not have returned to the state) Of the 130 children originally placed at Elan, 13 were still there. Of the remaining 117 children, 70 of them (60%) had been arrested for criminal violations according to the BCI. (The evaluators found this 60% arrest rate very conservative measure of failure for the former Elan residents since BCI records did not reflect instances of neglect or abuse of children, mental health institutionalization, or other indicators of social or family disruption. The BCI also only reflected adult criminal violations. So if youths who had not yet reached 18 years of age had committed a crime, that would not be listed. They would be referred to family court).

In light of these statistics the evaluators concluded: "Elan's claims for success with Rhode Island children seems more self-serving than scientific and reflects adversely on the credibility of the Elan administration."

Chapter Five

In Their Own Words...

Despite requests to Joe Ricci and his lawyers for Elan success stories to be included in this book, none were furnished...

Former residents and staff members consequently were tracked down through newspaper advertisements and by word of mouth. Conversations with nearly two dozen people who were at Elan at different intervals between the years 1971-1988 reveal striking similarities, though these people come from five different states, and varied economic and social circumstance. In most cases they have not talked to each other since leaving the program. All contacted were willing to discuss their experiences, though some did not want their names used for fear of reprisal.

Stephen Smith now 29 was 15 years old when he was sent to Elan by a social worker in Connecticut. He had been a ward of that state since the age of six when his father signed over custody of Stephen and his sisters after their mother had been sent to prison for robbery.

At fifteen he was sensitive and withdrawn, read books all the time, and hated school because the other kids seemed childish, and had perfect families. He explains that the circumstance that led to his going to Elan involved an altercation with a neighbor whom he "shot in the butt" with a bb. gun after the neighbor kicked his dog. Stephen says his social worker gave him the choice of either going to jail or Elan. "I chose Elan because she told me it was like a summer camp in the Maine woods, " he recalled with irony from the warden’s office of Maine State Prison where he was serving a ten year term for burglary.

Stephen is boyish looking, small boned with honey blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. His eyes portray a sadness, which his story supports. The images from his teen years are still alive for him, enough for his voice to crack when he talks about being raped by another Elan resident when he and three other boys and two girls were left in a semi isolation room for a period of more than a week. He is articulate and candid about his life before, during and since his years at Poland Spring and Parsonfield. "I don’t care how personal you get," he says. "The most important thing is that the truth comes out about Ricci. He has no business screwing up kids, and making a fortune doing it. The state takes kids from messed up families, but they put them in places worse. If I was not messed up before I got to Elan, I certainly was afterwards..."

He says: "When I first got there, I couldn’t believe it. Everybody was screaming and beating on each other. I had to sit in these groups, and I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I feel that I was misdiagnosed. For one thing I didn’t have a drug problem. Most of the kids that were in there were I guess there for drugs because I’d be sitting in the groups and they’d want me to talk about what drugs I was doing', what I was hooked on. And I said, ‘listen I don’t have any of that,’ and they’d all say 'Oh yeah? sure !' as If I was denying it. Then they’d ask me if I hated my mother. They’d take out my file and read in front of everyone in the group, things about my mother and her criminal record. I didn’t dig that, so I just didn’t say anything. And then when I shut up, they accused me of intimidating the group, said I was doing some violent act against the group members for not opening up. I was making people hostile at me. So everyone once in a while they’d set up a general meeting, and then throw me in the boxing ring until I lost. So I just used to try to run away all the time. Its the only thing I ever did; try to run away every chance I got. I tried about seven times, but they always caught me because they had this posse that would go out. If they caught someone they’d be rewarded by Ricci..."

"The first time I met Joe Ricci..." he continues, his voice getting softer, and more serious, "...was at a general meeting that was called by a guy named Jeff Gottlieb. I had tried to run away again, and Joe Ricci came in. I’ll never forget it, because he made me feel really worthless, you know like I was an absolute nothing. He came in and I was called up along with a girl named Nancy, and another girl named Marie, two guys named Ray, and Johnny, and another kid named Sean. So when Joe Ricci came in to the house we were all sitting down around a table, and he announced: 'We have some cancer in this house, and any good surgeon knows the best way to get rid of cancer is to cut it out, before it spreads.’ Then he called all of us up in front of the house, and asked everybody else if they had any feelings for us, so we all got screamed at. Then they put us in the boxing ring you know. Then at the end of the meeting Joe Ricci says ‘ Now we’re gonna put you upstairs in one of the rooms. It was a room about the size of this. (6x10) and they boarded up the windows, and boarded up the door and locked it. And he said ’Whatever goes on in there goes on.’ It was in July...I know it was in July, because it was my 16th birthday the next day... It was horrible. Six of us all stuck in there together. The guys— Ray and Johnny would take turns beating each other. Ray would pound his head until he got tired. And they’d take turns having sex with the two girls. One of them didn’t care, but the other girl didn’t want to, but they made her. Sean and Ray would keep her food, and that’s how they got to her. The day I turned 16 I was sitting in the corner and I mentioned that it was my birthday, and Sean picked me up and said 'Oh it’s you’re birthday, I have something to give you...' He started to hit me in the face and stuff, and then, well he raped me in there," he says, his voice trembling.

"After Sean did that stuff with me, he made me do it with the others..." Stephen continued, taking a breath and observing: "Between that time, and one other time I think it had a lot to do with me not having normal relationships with girls. It's really screwed me up, and during the past years I’ve gone from blaming my mother, or my social worker Mrs. Daley, for what happened to me at Elan. But I realize it was really Joe Ricci’s fault. He didn’t care what happened to us in the room, or anywhere else. He was just in it for the money, and he didn’t care about kids. He was running a business and that’s all it was."

Other punishments Stephen detailed included cleaning toilets with bare hands, wearing signs, and doing meaningless chores just to be taught a lesson: "I’d have to push this wheelbarrow down to the lake in the summer, about a mile while wearing a winter coat," he says. " And I’d have to get rocks out of the water, and fill up the wheelbarrow, and bring it back up again, then empty them out, and then fill the wheelbarrow up , and go back down to the water. Other times I’d dig ditches and fill them up again. The whole time they’d be one or two people watching, and hollering to hurry up. It was totally meaningless...and this was all just because I wouldn’t talk in groups, or I’d try to run away...Sometimes I’d get a cowboy ass kick too," he recalled. "One time Joe Ricci was there and he said he was sick of my shit, trying to run away and stuff. I tried to talk to some people who came up from Chicago to do some kind of investigation, and I think that’s what he was all pissed off at. I never talked to them though. Anyhow I got a cowboy ass kick then. That was when they took you and threw you from room to room bouncing you up against the walls. All the residents would drag you around digging you with their hands, punching you , and spitting in your face. It was a lot worse than the ring. It was really vicious."

Stephen doesn’t hesitate to compare Elan with the maximum security prison where he was incarcerated. "Elan’s much much worse...Here there’s a lot of shit. But I get a chance for some solitude, to read, and I’m going to college. I ‘ve also gotten to learn woodworking, and make some money in the prison store. At Elan, there was nothing positive, it was pure hell," he concluded. "You know the worst thing is the judge that sentenced me here (for 10 years ) lectured to me saying I blew the opportunity I had at Elan...I don’t understand how the courts can legitimize a guy like Ricci who has harmed so many mixed up kids."

***

Corrine Lowery who lives in a Chicago suburb was referred to Elan in 1979 when she was fourteen years old. That was four years after the Illinois report citing child abuse, and wards of the Illinois were no longer being referred to Elan. But Corrine was a private placement from an upper middle class family, who happened to have Gerry Davidson's friend, Marvin Schwartz, for a doctor.

During her visit to Maine to talk about her past, she was nine months pregnant, a pretty, well dressed and intelligent woman of 24 already the mother of a two year old daughter. She said she wanted to talk about her teenage years at Elan to "Set the record straight."

She explained that she was a 12 year old, nearly an all A student, when she experienced serious conflicts with her mother’s boyfriend who lived in her house. "My dad died in 1975," she explains, "and my mother was confused. She had three kids, and no real income. This guy was helping her out—and well, he was a child abuser. My mom had kicked him out of the house for a while, and things were fine between us, but then she took him back in, and that’s when all hell broke loose...They made me out to be a liar at school because of what I said about him. Anyway , he was out for revenge. I was told I was grounded for a year or I could leave the house, so I left and stayed with a friend of mine. Then they called me at my friend’s house and asked if I thought school was important to me because I had stopped going after I left home. I was persuaded to go home, supposedly to talk to someone from school who would be at my mom’s house...Well, when I got to the house, there was Dr. Schwartz’s associate, Dr. Andrews, and I was just grabbed and taken to Chicago Lake Shore Hospital."

She stayed in the mental ward at the hospital for four of five months. "I was given no therapy, nothing, " she says, explaining that Schwartz would occasionally come in to see her and fall asleep in a chair by her bed. "Dr. Schwartz was weird," she recalled, observing that every troubled kid who had Dr. Schwartz for a doctor was sent to Elan. "I was drugged and, locked up for nearly five months..." she declared "I wasn’t a kid who did drugs. I never even touched drugs. I have a heart problem too, but there they were shooting me up with thorazine, I think. After a while I couldn’t even see or walk straight." Eventually she says that Dr. Schwartz called her mother and told her she wasn’t "really ready yet for the real world."

"The insurance ran out at the hospital, so they had to do something else with me. Dr. Schwartz told my mom I needed structure in my life, and he knew of this school in Maine, that wasn’t too strict, but was just what I needed. I think he told her I’d be much better in just eight or nine months."

Corrine says that she and her mother then flew to Maine. "When I first got there I was off all the medication then. The first two days my mom was there for the orientation, so they made it look real good. The first day we went down to the lake, and I really didn’t think it was that bad. I actually thought wow this might be great..For me it was a relief just to be out of the hospital, be at a place that didn’t have bars on the windows, where there wasn’t a quiet room with padded walls, and hospital beds. But I had no idea what was ahead. I had absolutely no idea. I would have taken the bars on the windows and the Thorazine...There was so much screwing around with my mind. They yelled at me the whole time about my father dying, and about being into drugs. And I wasn’t into drugs. I mean I’d stand there and listen to them saying ‘ You did this because your father died and you feel it's your fault.’ And I was thinking that my dad had a heart attack in his sleep and I don’t see how I had anything to do with that. I mean the stuff, it just wasn’t anything that applied to me at all. It was just bizarre, and for a young mind it was really confusing."

Corrine recounted her own experiences with Joe: "I used to have night guard duty at the trailer where he and Dr. Davidson had their offices. I would go over with another girl, and he’d tell us to watch out for what he called 'gorillas,' people that were out to get him. He told us to watch out for anyone walking on top of the trailer and listen for any strange noises while he was inside sleeping on a pull out couch. It was very unusual- there we were two fifteen year old girls guarding him. One night we heard a noise, and he jumped up and ran out with a shot gun. He swore up and down someone was going to get him."

Corrine explains that Elan was a violent place, though she escaped real physical abuse. "I never had to go into the ring, but I saw many many people go into the ring for reasons other than violence." She says: "They called one girl ‘ a hooker.’ They claimed she was very seductive, and they threw her in the ring for it. I mean that makes no sense. You just don’t go beat people up for that sort of thing. What would be the next, logical step—go out and murder the real hookers of the world?"

"Joe was constantly quizzing me.. I think he really wanted me out of there"...

"I got along with most everyone. I‘d actually try to talk to people because there were a lot of kids I knew from Lakeshore Hospital who had been sent there by Dr. Schwartz. I’d talk to them like friends and say ‘Isn’t this bull shit?’ But you weren’t suppose to talk to people, you were supposed to confront them, and Joe noticed that I didn’t do that, and he didn’t like it..."

"Most of the time though I played along, just so I could get along. I was like an actress, and I had to act a role they wanted so I could get the privilege of wearing long pants, and blow drying my hair. Otherwise people who were shot down couldn’t even wear shoes. I just played along, but I tried not to be sick about it. If I had to give someone a haircut (verbal reprimand) most of the time what I was saying wouldn’t make much sense, so I wouldn’t be really hurting them. But I think Joe knew. He constantly asked me why I didn’t conform, what I wanted out of life, whether I wanted to be like that forever? I wasn’t a bad person. I was an A student before I came. But that didn’t matter, we were all stereotyped. No matter what the reason was for being there, it was assumed everyone was on drugs. All the girls were viewed as provocative little sluts, and the boys were kind of perverted, though he didn’t seem to pick on the boys as much. Some girls he singled out, and gave them special treatment. Though I don’t know the exact relationships he had with them, there were a lot of rumors. I even heard that he did drugs with some of them."

Corrine recalls that she and another girl named Mary were once allowed to have free dinner and a couple of drinks at Scarborough Downs. ( though at 16 they were under age) as a special treat for dog sitting at his house. On the way home they asked the driver of the Elan van to stop at a Stop 'n Go where they bought some candy. When they got back to Elan, Joe was livid and called a general meeting. "We didn’t know what we had done.... "At first we thought it was because we ordered more than one drink at Scarborough Downs. But eventually we realized it was because we asked the driver to stop on the way home. Joe screamed at us, and called us ungrateful, manipulative little bitches, so we had to ‘hit the pan (do dishes) for a long long time after that."

Corrine explained that she was a staff coordinator at Elan, a step away from graduation, but got shot down because she was influencing others... ‘corrupting them.' She says she was eventually sent to Parsonfield, and then told to leave, given 24 hours notice the day before Easter of 1984. She was not allowed to even say good-bye to anyone.

Talking about her life during the past eight years since leaving Elan, she is quiet and thoughtful, choosing her words carefully.

"When you get out of Elan, it's so amazing not to have anyone follow you around. It's freedom for the first time, and you just don’t want to take any responsibility, because you’re just not ready for it. You’re back to the stage where you’re a little kid. You want to go outside and play all day long. You eat twice as much, sleep twice as much, want to do everything you couldn’t do there..." She said she regretted losing her adolescence. "I wanted to go to college, and be something. I always wanted to be a doctor, and I loved science. I probably could have done it too, but I was just locked up for so long. I wanted to make up for lost time, and couldn’t stand any more discipline." she revealed., adding "I don’t dwell on my time at Elan, but it's always there as a flashback."

phatically, her voice quivering "I’d never send my kids to any place like that...If I ever felt I couldn’t control my daughter, I’d feel better just locking her up in a closet and tossing her a meal once in a while. It would really be less abusive. People need to stay away from people like Joe Ricci. He is mentally ill, power hungry, and he will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Maybe he didn’t have a good childhood or whatever, but he wants what he wants, and doesn’t care who he pushes around or steps on to get it..I first realized what he was really like when I started going over to his trailer, and to his house. He’d be so cruel, ready to do anything to get his way. And if people were in his way, he’d buy them off. I saw the way he’d throw his money around. When I was at his house, he’d have words with his girlfriend, then tell her to go shopping. Joe Ricci is scum. Anyone who can use people the way he did—and its not just people at Elan-it's everybody..."

Sitting upright in her chair from the kick of the baby in her womb, Corrine took a deep breath before she continued talking fervently "There are people who are honestly struggling to make it in life, you know-good people. And then you have a jerk like Joe Ricci kicking everybody around to get what he’s got, and ruining kids' lives. It’s disgusting. I’m just one person, how many kids have been there since Elan opened? I’ve been in touch with some of the kids that were there with me, and they were all worse off after going to Elan. Some were really brainwashed, and totally unable to function afterwards. I don’t know what ever happened to a really good friend of mine. I tried to help her, but she just seemed to go berserk afterwards. I never believed in the place. I’m really stubborn and managed not to get brainwashed. I think that's why I survived. I never believed in Joe Ricci."

***

Ken Zaretsky, the Chicago entrepreneur who admitted he helped cover up some of the abuses at Elan during the state investigations in 1975 said "It's frightening to realize how many casualties there are from that place." He cited two suicides by residents who graduated and became staff members, and fears that "Joe placed a time bomb in all of us." He shared the story of his best friend Neil Saxner, also a former resident. After graduating and working at Elan, he and Neil thought they would run a similar program to Elan in the Chicago area, but Neil was cited for child abuse. "Neil thought he was Joe Ricci......He talked and walked like him. He even married a woman named Sherry. But when he realized he couldn’t be Joe, the pressure became too great, and he killed himself."

***

Dave Elder was second in command during the early days of Elan, working as assistant executive director, directly under Joe. He had been first a resident, and then a graduate working his way up the Elan hierarchy. He told a reporter researching an article that appeared in MAINE TIMES that Elan’s encounter groups were: "tools to vent your feelings...a way to deal with the community." Despite his grasp of the Elan concept, Dave nevertheless found the pressure Joe placed upon him overwhelming. After leaving Elan, he drove a taxi in Portland for a while. He had financial problems, was married, and had a baby on the way when he took his own life. According to one observer, Joe was furious when he learned that Elder had killed himself, and forbade any Elan staffer to pay last respects.

***

John Ricci, now 28, is Joe’s first cousin, the son of Bamboo’s brother Tom. He is tall, well groomed, and handsome enough to pass for an actor in a soap opera. He speaks in quiet well defined phrases about the pain Joe has caused his family, and of his extreme distrust for the cousin he once adored. Like many other ex-residents, and staff members of Elan sketched a grisly picture of life there. But his stories are particularly compelling. He continually referred to Joe as "my cousin," and talked about the family’s unwillingness to see Joe as he really was until it was too late. He said Joe was always somewhat larger than life observing "We all went from feeling very proud to have a member of the family like him to feeling very disrespected by him. "

John and his older brother, Tom Jr., both went to Elan, graduated and became staff members counseling other teenagers like themselves. "I bought my cousin’s program hook, line and sinker, " he declared. " Joe created this process. He’d strip you of all your identity and replace it with his cult oriented nonsense...Joe had this God-like greatness...A 16 or 17 year old doesn’t see the reasons behind the reasons for actions.. All I saw was a charismatic, flamboyant, very powerful figure that got respect, and I idolized that..."

But after he became an Elan staff member, he began to view things differently: "I saw just how disorganized and insensitive everything was... And there I was an 18 year old staff member working all night by myself taking care of 108 other kids, putting them in the boxing ring, keeping them in restraints, when I barely had my own act together."

He explained that his brother Tommy eventually left Elan much more messed up than he was when he went there, lost touch with family members and became a drug using drifter. In June of 1989 Tommy’s body was found at the bottom of the Ventura River in California and John believes that his experiences at Elan contributed to his death.

Many former Elan residents, and staff members indicated Joe had sexual relations with some of the female residents, but are fearful of saying it on record. But John said that he knew of two Elan residents that his cousin "slept with."

John 's father (unlike Joe’s father Bamboo) had done quite well in business, as a general contractor, affording him to be sent to a military school in New York. When his family moved to Maine In the late 1970’s, he transferred to Lake Region High. He found the adjustment difficult, so it was suggested he go to Elan. Now he regrets that he often played the role of house boxer, beating out people when residents were put in the ring. A strapping 6ft. 2 inches he was sometimes 60 pounds heavier than the people he opposed. "I hated to do it, but I wanted to get out of there, get along in the program...." He recalled "I feel guilty about some of the things I did at Elan, but I can somewhat selfishly alleviate that by saying that we (staff members) were all victims of Joe’s regime."

After graduating in 1980 John worked at Elan until he left in the mid 80's He later became heavily involved in drugs with a cocaine habit costing between $500- $700 a week. Eventually, he cleaned up and went to Florida for three years where he worked as a tile layer’s assistant making $12 an hour. It was there that he says he finally got in touch with his feelings, and realized how screwed up he had become.

Now he claims he has a good relationship with his parents, and doesn’t fault them for putting him in Elan. He believes they were as duped as he was, though he says his father still probably "doesn’t realize just what went on there."

Chapter Six

"Never turn your back on a sleeping tiger..."

In 1981 Joe Ricci and his partner Dr. Gerald Davidson had been in business for over a decade. They had become very wealthy men because of Elan. Dr. Davidson’s success might have been predestined. At 58 years of age, he had studied at prestigious schools, and had taught at Harvard. Joe Ricci’s success was more unusual. At 35 years old, he had been a millionaire since his mid twenties. He had never finished a formal high school, had by his own account been a heroin addict, and spent much of his life in institutions, first as a patient, and later as a low paid worker.

Joe enjoyed wealth and unlike many Mainers did not (in the Down East tradition) live beneath his means. He drove a top of the line Mercedes sports car, owned a Bentley , wore flashy clothes and had a posh house. Separating him further from the Maine mentality was the fact that two years earlier he had purchased a race track.

Joe Ricci, the millionaire high school drop out, former heroin addict, who ran a treatment center for adolescents and a racetrack, was an enigma. And in 1981 FBI agents, a state bank investigator, and bank officers drew some conclusions that would have serious ramifications.

Joe and Gerry had been doing business at Portland’s office of Depositors Trust bank for four years, had a $1 million line of credit, and $800,000 in outstanding loans. The businesses in their holding company, Golden Ark Enterprises, included Elan, Scarborough Downs, and The Williamsburg, an upscale apartment complex in Portland’s fashionable western promenade.

Their credit rating was excellent. Both men drew $250,000 per year in salary and felt secure in their banking relationship with Depositors. But unknown to them there was a fraud investigation going on at the bank after the bank’s president, Marco De Salle, resigned over questionable loan practices involving some bank officers.

On November 16, 1981 the chairman of the board of Depositors' parent company, Wallace Haselton, and the bank holding company’s chief counsel, Frank Chapman, met with Maine Attorney General James Tierney, and Tierney’s criminal division chief to determine if criminal action had taken place at Depositors' Portland bank. One of the division’s investigators, Maine native Owen Colomb, was assigned to the case.

Colomb learned that Haselton was worried that there might be problem loans at Depositors other than those being investigated, and that organized crime might be involved. Haselton was nervous about the organized crime issue because it had come up before. Previously his bank had filed an answer to an interrogatory that said Depositors Trust Corporation was I at one time a lender to a borrower who had organized crime connections. Though the individual was not named in that interrogatory, Haselton apparently ruminated about it. He was also worried that an embezzlement at a small branch office years before had Mafia connections. Sources say he had a constant fear that organized crime might infiltrate his bank.

Haselton’s fears were quickly communicated to Colomb, resulting in a subpoena to the bank. It gave Colomb access to other bank records, rather than just those confined to the loans in question.

Reviewing these files Colomb noted that Joseph J. Ricci was the bank’s largest borrower with his $1 million line of credit. Colomb thought he remembered Ricci's name from the mid 70's when Columb had been with the Boston office of the FBI. He knew Ricci as the owner of Scarborough Downs, and thought the name might have appeared in one of the informant files for being involved in possible wrongdoing. Subsequently Colomb asked bank auditor, Conrad Bernier, to prepare a list of all Depositors' customers who had gotten loans of more than $100,000. He though perhaps more familiar names might surface.

Three weeks later, after receiving this list, Colomb and another investigator met with FBI agents, Gary Barnes, chief of the Portland Maine bureau office, and his underling, William Crate. According to court records, Crate told Colomb, that he had heard Ricci was connected with organized crime, and could be involved in fixing races at Scarborough Downs. He further indicated that he had heard Ricci had some knowledge of the killing of Little Joe Napolitano, a reputed Mafia figure and a native of South Portland, Maine who was murdered gangland style and discovered by New York police in the trunk of an abandoned car in 1978.

Agent Barnes testimony differed from subsequent accounts of this meeting between the three men.. He stated that he and Crate furnished no information whatsoever regarding Joe Ricci, and that they told Colomb that the FBI had no investigation of Joe Ricci in progress.

Whatever version one believes, Colomb told Depositors auditor, Conrad Bernier, what he said were the FBI's allegations about Joe Ricci. Bernier then insisted Colomb speak directly to Haselton about the charges.

On December 17, 1981 Colomb told Haselton that he had heard from the FBI that Joe Ricci had ties to organized crime and may have been involved with Joey Napolitano. It didn’t take long for the news to circulate. Bank president Joel Stevens heard the accusations from auditor Bernier, and he was shocked. The next day Bernier, contacted FBI agent Barnes, and was told by Barnes that as far as he knew Joe Ricci was not a dangerous individual. During that conversation, however, Barnes allegedly made it clear that he really could not discuss any of the information Bernier was trying to obtain, since it was against FBI policy to disclose such data.

Four days later the bankers had a meeting regarding Joe Ricci and decided to terminate their relationship with him. Chairman of the Board Haselton wrote a memo to bank President Stevens declaring "Let us be very clear on one thing. I do not want to continue with those accounts identified to you and me today. I don’t care what balances or other relationships they may have, lets get them eased out. We will lose otherwise."

Two days after that memo, officers of the bank met with lawyers from their law firm, Bernstein, Shur, Sawyer, and Nelson who in an ironic twist also were Joe’s corporate counsel. The bank authorized the lawyers to tell Joe Ricci only that an unattributed source had advised them that certain regulating agencies were investigating him as a leading figure in organized crime, one who possibly could have arranged a murder. The bank wanted its law firm’s help them in easing Ricci out. The lawyers said they repeatedly stated that they believed Joe Ricci was clean, but the bankers had their minds set.

On December 29, 1981 Joe got a call from his lawyer, Greg Tselikis, who had been his counsel and confidant for ten years. Greg told Joe about the allegations, attributing the source to ‘a prominent Portland businessman.’ Joe demanded Greg tell him the source of the rumor, but Greg said he could not. According to Joe’s later account he drove to his home in nearby Falmouth and wouldn’t talk to anyone in the house, for fear the house was wired. Then in early January he was turned down by Depositor’s for a $125,000 loan.

Upon learning the news he called his loan officer, Leo Amato, and asked if the denial had anything to do with his Italian background, which he was sensitive about. Amato denied that it did, but according to Joe, told him that there were certain people in the bank who had questions about where he and his partner get their money and how they got it since Elan was such a fantastic money maker.

On January 11, 1982 Joe received a letter from bank president Joel Stevens officially terminating his and Davidson’s line of future credit at Depositors. "Please rest assured that no personal prejudice toward you is intended or implied..." the letter stated, noting that the decision was based on changes in policy, and that "...no useful purpose could be served by a meeting to discuss this situation." Joe was incensed, realizing the bank was also privy to the Mafia rumor his lawyers had told him about. It took longer for him, however, to learn that his lawyers had their information from the bank.

The law firm had a very close relationship with Depositors and one of its partners, ‘prominent businessman’ Leonard Nelson (actor Judd Nelson's father) had been an original incorporator of Depositors Southern in Portland and a member of its board of directors. It was Greg Tselikis of Nelson’s firm who suggested that Ricci and Davidson bring their corporate accounts to that bank in the first place.

After receiving the letter terminating his credit, Joe tried unsuccessfully to reach Stevens who refused to take his calls. He began questioning the bank’s motive which he concluded was to acquire Scarborough Downs by putting him out of business. His theory was that the land at his racetrack was the targeted site for a $100 million ethanol plant. He suspected Scarborough was one of six sites in Maine being considered as a possible construction location for the facility. Ival Cianchette’s Cianbro Construction Company was an owner of New England Ethanol, and an inquiry he claimed Cianchette made about buying into his racetrack fanned the flame of his theory.

In order to ferret out the truth about the Mafia allegations, Greg Tselikis subsequently arranged a meeting on January 19, 1982 between himself, Joe, Agent Crate, and Crate's boss Tom McGeorge of the FBI to determine exactly what information the FBI had about Joe Ricci of Falmouth, Maine. During this meeting it was established that there were no ongoing investigations involving him.

Joe’s sights were then set on the bank. He said he wanted justice, his $125,000 loan, his line of credit and reputation reinstated, and threatened a lawsuit. Shortly thereafter Greg Tselikis informed Joe that he could no longer represent him or the bank in the lawsuit matter, due to conflict of interest laws.

On January 20th, 1982, Tselikis referred Joe to the Boston law firm of Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky, and Popeo. Robert Popeo of that firm agreed to handle Joe’s case. Popeo called Haselton and threatened a $41 million lawsuit, the net worth of Depositors, if they did not grant Joe his $125,000 loan. Haselton told Popeo that he ought to be suing the FBI because the FBI gave them the misinformation. He suggested to Popeo that if he thought he had a legitimate legal action it was against the FBI and not his bank.

Anxiety ridden about possible legal action, particularly at a time when Depositors was considering a bank merger, the bankers decided to cover their tracks. They had been unprepared for Ricci’s protestations of innocence which they heard first confidentially through their mutual lawyer Tselikis, and then through Popeo. They subsequently arranged a meeting between the bank officers, Colomb, and Barnes to insure the accuracy of the negative information about Ricci that had surfaced two months earlier.

In sworn depositions there are wildly fluctuating accounts of what exactly transpired during this meeting on February 19, 1982. The bankers concurred that Barnes corroborated their former client’s connection to organized crime. Barnes, however, stated that the meeting wasn’t even about Ricci, although he admitted being questioned about the allegations and said that the FBI was ‘comfortable’ with its position. Bankers Haselton and Chapman both gave testimony that FBI agent Barnes led them to believe they were on target with their actions. Haselton said "Barnes told me directly that their FBI investigation had been under way for some period of time, that they had substantial information (He may have used the word ‘evidence’) of his connection to organized crime, and of his possible involvement in the murder of Napolitano." Chapman said "Barnes was very specific during the meeting and identified Agent Crate as the source of the Ricci allegations. I asked Barnes was he present when he actually heard the remarks, and Barnes indicated to me in no uncertain terms that he had it right from the horse’s mouth and I could make book on it. Mafia. The open file. Strike Force. Assassination. We weren’t talking Sunday school picnic."

In April 1982 a merger between Depositors Trust Corporation and Canal Bank was completed, after a bitter takeover battle between Depositors and another Maine bank. The merged banks became the largest bank holding company in northern New England with resources totaling $850 million. Soon officials at Key Bank Inc. of Albany subsequently met with Wallace Haselton to explore another merger. (The Key Bank holding company had assets of more than $3 billion, and operated 200 offices throughout New York State)

By July Joe’s Boston attorney, Charles Popeo, sought a final administrative remedy and attempted to arrange a meeting with Haselton, Chapman, and Ricci to resolve the Mafia issue without legal action. He was unsuccessful, and received a letter from Chapman stating that such a meeting would serve no purpose. Popeo then sent another letter to Chapman enclosing a draft complaint charging the bank with violating the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the Fair Credit Disclosure Act, breach of contract, and defamation. He stated that he would file the suit if his client’s dispute was not resolved during the next month.

At this point bank officials felt secure in their attitude toward their former client. They did not budge.

On August 30, 1982, the day after Joe’s 37th birthday, Popeo filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in Portland seeking $41 million in damages. It stated that Ricci and Davidson's businesses lost $7 million because of the bank, and Joe's reputation had been ruined. The complaint claimed that the sudden revocation of credit was done on the basis of Ricci’s national origin and the utterly baseless conclusion that Ricci therefore was connected to organized crime.

The following day Joe called a press conference to tell everyone about his suit, and the ugly rumor that had him unjustly accused. "This strikes right at the heart of what I am as a human being, " he told the press. "It’s like saying you’re a rapist or a criminal. Because what (the Bank ) is saying when they say you’re involved in organized crime is that you’re a vicious animal with no conscience, that you’re a man of no integrity, that you have no sense of right or wrong."

He sweated profusely in front of the TV cameras, as he sputtered allegations about a conspiracy to put him out of business. " Portland is a small town. When they cut off your credit, try to get another bank," he said, adding "This is the kind of stuff you see on 60 MINUTES." ... "What is really ridiculous is that my primary business is treating adolescents who get involved with alcohol and drug abuse," he explained "I come from very humble beginnings...I was raised by my grandparents and we were dirt poor. I’ve worked for everything I have and I did it legally, " he declared. Finally he told the press that he hoped the horrible allegations against him "don’t make my children suffer."

A month later, having denied all the legal charges against it, the bank (on the advice of new counsel) put the name, Joseph J. Ricci, through a Nexis Lexis computer that taps nationwide into court and major newspapers records. It was through this check that they supposedly learned the mistake. The computer showed that a different Ricci of Duxbury, Massachusetts had been indicted for being an organized crime strongman, although these charges were later dismissed.

Perhaps there had been a simple case of mistaken identity, but it was discovered too late. The damage was done, the matter was in the court, and Joe was convinced his termination of credit at the bank was a carefully orchestrated conspiracy to destroy him.

Chapter Seven

Conspiracies Abound

In 1982 two former residents of Elan filed complaints charging physical and emotional abuse. The Maine Bureau of Mental Health and Retardation notified Joe that they were initiating an investigation. Owen Colomb, the attorney general’s office investigator, who helped spawn the Mafia allegations, was dispatched to conduct the investigation.

Joe told everyone that he was 'under siege,' and his lawsuit against the bank became an obsession. He was convinced that the governor and attorney general were in collusion with the bank and Ival Cianchette in an attempt to takeover his land at Scarborough Downs because they wanted to build an ethanol plant. It was all he could talk about.

Joe blamed the bank for what he claimed was serious financial loss during this period. He stated that his businesses lost millions of dollars in potential revenue because people thought he was a member of the Mafia. He created a picture of near destitution where Elan could barely make its weekly payroll, and claimed he was forced to sell various personal antiques and a gold coin collection. He described his ‘fiancee’ Linda Smeaton (a blond, blue eyed woman he met shortly after his divorce who moved in to his home on Blackstrap Road) crying as the items from their house were carted away. He talked about an arrangement he had with a car dealer in Massachusetts to give him 80% of the book value on his Mercedes with just 24 hours notice if he needed immediate cash for survival. Yet during this time he drew a $350,000 annual salary, and spent $121,000 on race horses, and $253,000 on gambling. His gold Rolex was still firmly clasped on his wrist, and his $100,000+ Bentley securely housed in his garage. (Subsequent Key Bank trial documents certify that he actually sold less than $2,000 worth of antiques during this period)

On October 30, 1982, Joe’s father, Bamboo, died at the age of 61. He had been ill with cancer and confined to a hospital a few miles from the state run senior citizen apartment building on King Street In Port Chester where he lived with his new wife. He had a one day wake at Pape’s Funeral Home, a small building located in a run down section of Mamaroneck where he was laid out in a $395 pine casket. Joe didn’t go to the wake or the funeral, but was listed on Pape’s records as the person responsible for the bill.

Joe had his own sons for visits two weekends a month in 1982 and 1983. He stated in court papers, and later told reporters that he feared for his family’s safety during this time, thinking the relatives of Joey Napolitano might believe that he really was a member of the Mafia, and try to seek revenge. He beefed up the private security force guarding his house on Blackstrap Road and armed himself. Yet his ex-wife Sherry and his young sons (then ages six and seven) lived five miles away without any protection. Sherry was petrified.

Her sons would return from visits with their father with terrible tales. One time both boys were in the car with Joe, when he suddenly started screaming to get out of the auto and dive into the bushes. He was certain there was a bomb hidden and ready to explode. Another day the three of them were eating in a Chinese restaurant when Joe pointed out a person seated a few booths away. "See that man over there. " he whispered. "...He’s following us." Every night Sherry would patrol her house, keeping all the lights on. Many nights she wouldn’t sleep at all, until the next day when the boys were in school.

When Joe’s son Noah was hospitalized in 1983 for a collapsed lung, Joe hired a clown to entertain all the children in the ward. With tubes in his mouth and needles in his arms Noah kept waiting for his father to come see him. When Joe finally arrived he told his son that he was on his way to Washington D.C. saying: "...some men are trying to kill me." Joe’s trip to Washington with Sharon Terry, an Elan administrator, was actually to the Department of Environmental Protection to research the possibility of an ethanol plant being planned for Maine.

On December 17, 1983 the clubhouse at Scarborough Downs was burned to the ground in a suspicious fire that Joe told everyone was arson. He said it was committed by the powers who were out to get him. The fire occurred on a blistery night, and containment of the fire was hampered by the fact that there was no water in the private fire hydrants maintained by the track. (Nine years earlier, the fire at Elan also occurred on a frigid day and frozen hoses hampered extinguishment of the fire) The phone at the track was not working that night when the fire was discovered, and the security guard on duty had to drive ten minutes to the Scarborough Fire Department to report the blaze.

***

By the summer of 1984 Joe’s suit against Depositors, then known as Key Bank, was caught in a legal limbo. Progress was stalled by a multitude of motions, and a deluge of depositions. One judge assigned to the case had withdrawn and Joe had fired his lawyer Popeo because he wasn't getting things moving fast enough, and Joe believed that his firm had some remote ties to the Bernstein-Shur law firm he no longer trusted.’ The bank had filed countersuits against the FBI and state investigators for providing the erroneous information, and the case was getting more and more complex.

Joe’s new attorneys were Joe Reeder of Washington D.C., Daniel Lilly, Richard Poulos, and John Campbell from Portland, Maine, and Joe was complaining about their progress too. He was chewing at the bit as his racetrack faced another season with the one and a half year old lawsuit unresolved.

He was also angry about the abuse investigations at Elan. He told everybody that the attorney general’s office had instigated the complaint in 1983 by a former Elan resident. And although Elan was found not guilty of abuse, Owen Colomb’s participation in the probe confirmed Joe’s belief that the attorney general’s office was out to get him.

The clubhouse fire the previous December (happening almost exactly two years from the December 17, 1981 allegations that he was involved with the Mafia) had Joe saying he was more persecuted than ever. He told anyone who would listen that the fire at his track was arson perpetrated upon him by the same people who wanted to put him out of business.

But research into the fire’s investigative file, and surrounding circumstances reveals a more complex tale involving stolen confidential Elan files, cash payoffs, and meetings between an ex-con explosives expert and Joe less than three months before the blaze.

Much of this intrigue centers around an individual, Anthony "Toy" Fischer, whom Joe’s attorney Richard Poulos fingered as the arsonist in a June 11, 1984 letter sent to Arthur Stilphen, Maine Commissioner of Public Safety. Poulos wrote that there were events occurring about the time of the fire that raised "grave concerns of foul play."

Despite the detailed narrative of Poulos’s letter he omitted the fact that Joe had arranged a meeting with Fischer that took place on September 28, 1983 at the Sonesta Hotel and the Executive Inn in Portland. This meeting is substantiated in a subsequent police interview with Fischer at Maine State Police Barracks where Fischer details his relationship with Ricci prior to the fire at Scarborough Downs. ( A September 28, 1983 meeting between Joe and Toy Fischer is also documented by a telephone call to Portland Police headquarters Joe made two days later. He claimed he wanted to put the meeting ‘on the record’ since he feared being set-up by Fischer)

Poulos‘s letter was also troubling in its statements concerning phone calls that he claimed had been received by Scarborough Downs security personnel both prior to and after the fire. He made special mention of a particularly harassing series of phone calls received by Richard Jacobs on December 10,1983 . Yet Richard Jacobs, who worked as assistant chief of security at the track during that period does not remember ever receiving any such calls, and says flatly "It never happened."

On January 7, 1985 Anthony Fischer was interviewed by two detectives, Peter Herring and Maurice Ouelette at Maine State Police Barracks in Scarborough Maine. The subject of the investigation was a Department of Human Services file on Elan that was taken from the Portland Office of Human Services in March of 1983. Elan was then in the midst of investigations by that department and facing an impending license renewal. In the course of this interview Fischer admits to having acted as a courier, picking up the file from an unnamed person at the human services office, and transporting it to a law office in Portland for copying. Later that day Fischer reports calling a number that he believed was an office at Elan, and received a $150 cash payment from an unnamed woman. Fischer’s account reveals that he was subcontracted to do this by a private investigator he knew who had approached him in Portland’s old port area. He was instructed to go to the human services licensing office and say he was there to pick up the file for him. Fischer testified that the person at the office apparently had been expecting him since the thick file had already been pulled out and was on his desk. A man described in his forties with brownish grey hair and glasses handed it to him and told him to make sure he got it back.

Fischer states that he skimmed the file on route to the attorney’s office and noted that it contained information concerning a complaint about Elan from a member of the Shaker Community in Poland Spring along with a report from the Rhode Island Child Advocate’s office. When Fischer arrived at the attorney’s office (whose name like the private Investigator has been blackened out of the official report that was made part of public records) he said that the receptionist there also seemed to be expecting him. He saw an attorney who later called Joe Ricci on the phone, and arranged the meeting he had with Joe at the Sonesta that evening at 5:30pm. According to Fischer this attorney telephoned Joe who was on another line talking to Dr. Davidson who was in Venezuela, and said "Joe I’ve got Fischer here, do you still want to meet him?" Fischer surmises that Joe must have known he was going to that attorney’s office, from either the man who hired him, or the person at human services who had given him the file, because he had never talked to Joe before they met that evening.

Quoting from the Maine State Police Report, Fischer describes his meeting with Joe Ricci this way: (blank areas censored by State Police)

Anthony Fischer: He pulled up and he was in a Mercedes two seat coupe, real expensive jobs...He got out right, and I had told———if I was going to meet with Ricci I wanted to do it alone, right, that you know the guy makes me nervous, you hear things...Then we sat down , and we were talking back and forth right and he mentioned to me that the governor wanted his Scarborough Downs to build an ethanol plant on because his Downs has an exit right off from the highway, some stupid silly bogus thing like that. Then he told me that the State Police were investigating him for the arson of some restaurant, and that you know they were out to get him. And he said that there was no need of it, that he was basically a recluse. Then he told me something that kind of made my hair raise a little bit okay. He told me that ——— had told him that I had you know, done some shit on the side for the FBI when I was with—— You know. And that made me a little nervous, and I asked him how he knew that. He told me———— was on his payroll...So you know I figured well here’s a person you know who's definitely got some inroads to know that type of shit, Okay. And he asked me all about———you know. And subsequently of course the conversation I told him about the book that me and —— had written on you know the bombings...And I told him that you know I had helped to write that book, and that you know we compiled it and everything. And somewhere in the course of that conversation we were talking about , you know, fires and how to do it and get away with and all this, that and the other.

And he told me he was picking my brains because he, had an idea, you know, and at the end of the conversation he offered me a job, head of Security at Scarborough Downs. And I, I told him I’d think about it , and he gave me a ride home to Raymond OK And then after that, the next time I saw him was when he come up to the house terrorizing , all pissed off that the file was never delivered back to the Department of Human Services.

Herring: OK, now at this particular time that you’re meeting with him at the Sonesta , you have the file, don’t you?

Fischer: Ya

Herring: Because you’ve just been to ———office, and you had the file . Now you were also paid?

Fischer: No, I was paid for it by a woman in a blue car.

Herring: Were you paid for it before or after you met with Ricci?

Fischer: Before. I dropped the file off before lunch, because I remember I used the ———at lunch

Herring: ...Let's back up a bit a little. Once the arrangements were made for you to meet with Ricci and there was some discussion about you getting paid. Tell me about that.

Fischer: OK I told ———that I was suppose to get paid and he wrote down a telephone number, and I called that number.

Herring : Who answered?

Fischer: Elan 4 OK I know for a fact it was an Elan number ...I can’t prove it but heart and soul I know it was an Elan number....... I called that number . I left ——— office and went to the Village Green, called that telephone number OK I was told to sit tight and wait, OK I sat tight and waited.. A blue I think it was a Plymouth Station wagon right pulled up, this woman honked the horn , I went over. She had dark hair, real cute real good looking doll. I got in the car, she ran me down to the Franklin Street Arterial, and paid me $150 bucks, and I got out of the car and left...OK the file now is sitting at ———house because I took the file up to ———— and dropped it off there before I made the call.

Herring: Before you called her?

Fischer: Because see I was supposed to take the file from —— and run it back to Department of Human Services, and for some reason I don’t remember, I think I got side tracked. It's one of those bogus little deals where they paid me too quick and I went, I was too busy enjoying the 150 bucks that you know, because at that time I was so broke if I’d step on a nickel I could have told you if it was heads or tails, you know.... and I think I was just out spending the 150 bucks, and one thing led to another....I was out in Raymond , no vehicle and subsequently it just stayed with him.

Herring : Now at the Sonesta Hotel was the file discussed?

Fischer: No no

Herring : Did he bring it up, or you bring it up, either one of you?

Fischer: I think he thanked me for it., I think. I think If I recall he thanked me. He was more interested in the bombs. That was the main gist of that whole thing, he wanted , you know he wanted to know about all that time.

Fischer: Yup, Yup. Because I remember I explained to him now and I can’t recall whether he asked me that or whether he, somehow in the course of the conversation it came up about fires.

Herring: uhhuh.

Fischer: ...And I told him the old battery trick. You take a car battery, you pour the car battery into a pan...

Herring : Uhhuh

Fischer: Into a pan, you bring that to a boil until you see like a thick dense white cloud forming alright. You pour it off, you run it outside you hold your breath because if you breathe that cloud you’re dead OK Run it outside let it all cool down, pour off the liquid and all along the bottom of the pan you’ll find little glass chips...

Herring: Uhhuh

Fischer: OK You take a pair of tweezers, you break those chips off if you want like a five minute deal right, you throw them into a prophylactic , if you want a half, anywhere from twenty minutes to a half hour, you throw them into a balloon, throw a rock or a penny into it for weight... OK you take a styrofoam container, you fill that full of gasoline, right, you drop that in, the gas seeps through the rubber, hits the condensed sulfuric acid, reaches the kindling point and va- voom!. And there’s absolutely nothing there to trace....

Herring : uhhuh

Fischer: Because styrofoam is a petroleum product, it burns. ..You know , and all you have is one section of an area scorched. And I remember I explained that in detail to him.

Herring : Did you explain any others....

Fischer: Ya you take a Timex watch and you take a hot nail. I explained that one to him, drive the thing through. It was the same thing that was used on CMP okay. You take a nail, you drive that through , run a wire to the negative post, and tape a wire to the back of it. Run that to the positive to another wire leading to a blasting cap , and back to the positive post and ground run it to the negative blasting cap. OK you break off the minute hand , right, And then you set it by the hour. What happens is the thing comes around, the hour hand. Once it hits that little tac Va Voom!

I explained that one to him. The old light bulb on, he was real interested in that one as well... Take a light bulb, drive a hot nail through it, tear apart a bullet, pour gunpowder into it, screw it into a lamp, that’s if you want to mark somebody up. They come in, they turn it on, it blows, take the hand right off the guy, bleeds to death, goes into shock... And as I recall he took some notes. He took some notes on a napkin.

Herring : uhhuh

Fischer: While we were talking at the Sonesta, you know, and I don’t, I don’t know whether he was doodling or taking notes, I guess it's you know.

Herring : Did he make any attempt to try to hire you to do anything for him?

Fischer : No No, He offered me a job, Director of Security for Scarborough Downs, and I told him I’d have to think about it, and I told my wife about it, and she just no no no no !

Herring : So his main interest in talking to you that day was what? Learning about bombs or was it learning about security or

Fischer: Ya, he asked me a lot about security because you know, he told me that ———had told him I had given some to the FBI, OK during that whole thing and he wanted to know, you knew he was saying the State Police are always investigating him, that he’s real worried about his employees, and what I should look for, and you know. And he wanted to know what I knew about electronic devices, you know he was telling me his place is always bugged. I told him about West Star which is a corporation where you know right over, right through the mail you can buy the little de-bugging devices to tell if your house is bugged and stuff like that. I told him that, we talked about the stun gun too

Herring: Uhhuh

Fischer: He was saying something about getting a stun gun because he had a lock down facility at Poland Spring where, you know, it’s like a little jail. Guards walk around with pool cues and stuff, and he said that it would be more humane to stun them than beat them with a pool cue. I tended that was toward the end of the conversation. After that I really didn’t appreciate the guy that much because I’d been on the receiving end of programs like that..

Herring: So when you left you took the file home?

Fischer: No I didn’t. I didn’t take the file home to Raymond. The file stayed at ————I don’t think ————— knew what it was. He’s just a friend of mine who lives up on Munjoy Hill. It was just a thing where I’d been visiting him, and left it in his car OK And because Ricci gave me a ride home to Raymond right, and nothing was mentioned about the file or anything OK I think Ricci was under the impression , see the meeting was set up for like 5:30 if I remember right 5:30-6 o’clock somewhere right around there okay. And I think he was under the impression I had already run the file back to the Department of Human Services.... I think he was under that impression OKAnd the file was up at ——— and to be honest with you I really can’t recall why left it, it wound up just getting left there okay. Cuz I remember I had to go back into Portland right, and I got it right off the back of ——car, And I don’t think he was even aware that it was even there. You know then —— gave me a ride home.

Fisher later recalls that the next time he saw Joe Ricci was when he appeared on his doorstep at 1:30 am some weeks later and describes this scene to Detective Herring:

Fischer: We were in bed. There was a knock on the door right, and that man woke me up. She said someone is pounding on the door, right. So I yelled out, who is it , right. And he answered "Its Joe Ricci, open up," all right. So I went out opened the door. OK he comes in, he was wearing a long brown leather coat, right. He says I gotta talk to you, when he opened the door. And I looked passed him and I could see a car and it was running. And I said 'who ‘s in the car?' And he goes "Just some people to make sure I come out " and I could smell he had been doing some serious drinking, right, so he came in right, and then he started yelling and swearing 'fucking asshole, you know you stabbed me in the back, you little cocksucker, that file, you know where’s that file. I want it now, and stuff. And he was threatening to the point where you know that file was right there in my house, but I’d be damned if I was going to give it to him. Cuz you know like I say all the tourists had left and here I am sitting on Panther Pond. I figured you know this guy could do me in, and you guys wouldn’t find me for four days, right. So I told him, I can’t recall whether I told him a friend of mine had it, or whether I destroyed it. I think I told him I destroyed it , but I was nervous. No, I think I told him both. Because I told him I could get in some really hot shit, right, over that file. And he told me not to worry about that, right, That if he could get the file, even if I was to get caught I would have, you know all the legal backing , that his financial situation could provide , right. You know anything money could buy was basically what he was saying. And I remember my wife got up , and she was standing in the doorway and she was just scared shitless, because at one point he said, " Well let me tell you something you little bastard, you don’t know everything that’s going on in this particular thing because if you did you’d be floating , they’d find you floating in back bay." He must have threatened to kill me at least four times that night, all right. And it got to the point where I literally threw his ass out, told him to get the fuck out. He went out, you know he was ambivalent. One minute I was the worst scum of the earth, then the next minute I was the best thing that could ever happen, and you know he was going to set us up, take care of us, you know buy us a house, and you know if I wanted to straighten my life out he’d step right in there and he’d do this and he’d do that, you know. And then the next minute I was going to be found floating in back bay again. And I, I, I started to get to get a little more than ugly with him, OK And he noticed the trophies on my mantle, right. I’m the brown belt New Hampshire champion.

Herring : oh really?

Fischer: Ya, I’m heavily into the arts, And I , I started throwing some of my own around and told him you know, if you don’t calm down , you come into my home, you upset my wife, I’m going to bust every bone in your face, right. He said "I don’t have to, I’m carrying it. " And that’s what my wife got all upset about. Then he calmed down once I started threatening him right back, all right. And he went out , and he got the woman out of the car. There wasn’t a bunch of people out there to make sure that he came out. All there was , it was a woman, who introduced. My wife could probably tell you her name, she’s got a memory like that. But he introduced her as the ——— of Elan, right. And they sat down and they shot the shit for a while. And he left, right. And that was the end of it. Well it was that same night, my wife said we’re moving.

Fischer’s interview with Detective Herring later reveals that he brought the human service file to the attorney general’s office a couple of months later after the fire at Scarborough Downs. This action was apparently prompted by other incidents that occurred after Joe Ricci’s alleged early morning appearance at Fischer’s home. He tells Detective Herring and Ouelette about being beaten up in broad daylight:

Fischer: I had come out of the post office in Raymond, Maine, all right, and these two guys grabbed me. One slugged me in the stomach, and bent me over, and the other one grabbed a hold of my head and drove me back on to the hood of the thing, and told me that you know I better mind my own business, and take care of business, you know something along those lines, all right. And I don’t know whether it was about Ricci, I don’t really know what it was about, but I remember I came home and the whole back of my head was swelling up to shit. They had to run me up to Lewiston Hospital. You can check the date when that happened by going to Lewiston Hospital because they had a cat scan on me and the bill is still outstanding. I can’t afford to pay the bill. You know I had a real bad head injury, one pupil was dilated. The doctor was real nervous about that. It was the hospital closest to Raymond, I think it was over in Naples.

Herring : Bridgton?

Fischer: Bridgton, that might be it. It was a hospital close to Raymond. They ran me up to the hospital, one of my neighbors right, because I was , I was in a daze. I got hurt on that. And then he sent me all the way to Lewiston right, to get a CAT scan so you can check the date that happened. And that’s when my wife said "This is it, you know we’ve got this fucking asshole coming out threatening us, you get attacked in broad daylight, and we’re out of here."

Ouelette: Do you remember anything about these guys? Any names mentioned or vehicles?

Fischer: Ya. Vehicle was dark, I think it was dark blue, dark blue,

Ouelette: Was Ricci’s name ever mentioned while they were

Fischer: I can’t recall, it might have been, I honestly can’t recall

Ouelette: But you drove in, you went inside, you came out.

Fischer: I was on foot because I didn’t have an automobile.

Ouelette: Then you walked out

Fischer: When I walked out, I walked out of the post office, the post office is in Raymond, and I lived up on that hill toward Panther Pond. I walked across that

Ouelette: Anywhere toward that cemetery? The road going into your place, Panther Pond? There’s a little, isn’t there a little cemetery there off 121? You come in that cove and Panther Pond.

Fischer : I go in 302.

Ouelette : Oh OK

Fischer: I go up 302 right and then there’s a road that shoots up this way, Right towards Panther Pond , where the post office is.

Ouelette: Ya.

Fischer: OK down by water and stuff, and I had walked a little ways up the road not very far, I was still at the post office as far as I was concerned, and these guys pulled over , jumped out, and grabbed and spun, and I was getting ready to hit one and Jesus got hit like a mule. I mean you know I’d taken some bad shots, but this guy hit like a mule right in the gut and doubled me over and then the other one grabbed my hair up around in here and just slammed me down across the hood of the car. He said something about...you know...it left the impression, I don’t know whether it was all about Ricci and the file, but it left the impression that that’s what it was about. You know to make sure that, you know, there was, that’s the impression it left on me. It also left the same on my wife. And that shit, that must have been two weeks maybe after, not even two weeks. My wife could tell you better as far as dates go. I think it was shortly after Ricci had been out to the house making all those threats and stuff. Cause I remember I was pissed. I wanted to go right over Blackstrap Road and dance on the guy and the, you know my wife kept saying no no no, you know. See, I know in the back of my head that if I wanted to go to Blackstrap and clean him, You know, I know I could do that. But my wife, you know she’s she’s known, she said no no no we’re just going to move, leave it alone, leave it alone, this guy will kill you....It really scared the shit out of her.

A few months after Fischer was beaten up, the fire destroyed the clubhouse at Scarborough Downs and private investigators working for the track’s insurance company contacted Fischer to discuss the blaze with him. Fischer also learned that Joe Ricci’s private investigators had contacted his half brother to help implicate him for arson (This is contrary to Joe ‘s attorney’s version of events in his letter to the Public Safety Commissioner in which he states the Fischer’s half brother David Dell contacted Ricci) Here's Fischer's comments to Detective Herring about the insurance investigators:

Fischer: This is after the Scarborough Downs fire, OK And I knew that it was beginning to get hot, OK A couple of Ricci’s private detectives showed up OK, and read me the riot act. They told me they were with the insurance company from Massachusetts and they insured Scarborough Downs and everything and they wanted to know

Herring: Did they show you identification?

Fischer : Ya, they were Massachusetts private investigators. They left me a card too.

Herring: OK so they weren’t really his ?

Fischer: No, they said they worked for the insurance company. But they started off on the wrong foot because apparently Ricci called my brother and offered my brother money to testify that I burned down Scarborough Downs, or something crazy and screwy like that. Because my brother called me up all upset saying you know Jesus Christ you know I got this guy calling me wanting to know what I knew about the fire at Scarborough Downs and what I knew about you and all this that and the other. And then a few days later right, this private investigator showed up to see my brother. My brother was in a real ugly mood about the whole thing and he was drinking down the————— and all of a sudden these private investigators show up and you know my brother is the type that you know, he doesn’t need any bullshit in his life, you know.

Also during the interview Detective Herring asked Fischer some more questions about Joe, specifically in response to Fischer’s earlier claim that he read about Joe Ricci’s Mafia connections in the newspapers. Fischer’s response about Joe’s business are worthy of note:

Herring: Do you know anything other than what you read in the paper about him?

Fischer: I know he’s a dog. You know during that Sonesta conversation he said something about, you know all the money is a little bit dirty. He was telling me that I had nothing to be ashamed of about my SCAR days ( radical reform group) and being an ex con and all this. He said he was an ex-con. He said he was an ex-junky, you know, and he said besides, you know you don’t make a million dollars as quickly as I did and have it all clean. Or something like that. He said all new money is dirty.

Herring: How did you say he made his money...?

Fischer: Ya him and———they started a methadone program , right. One of the nice infallible things about the system we live in. He started this program, Okay where people who commit crimes they go in, they tell the judge , you know" I got a drug problem". OK you know jail is already ordered, and the judge will sentence him to probation, and Joe Ricci’s methadone program him, and ———ran together Okay, the doctor down in Brookline, Mass. And it was either Jersey or Connecticut that he did this, But it got to the point right, where attorneys would tell 17 year old kids with no prior drug history." Listen I can make a deal here go in, you huff and plead to the judge that you got a drug problem. He’ll sentence you to Ricci’s methadone program, no problem. And he was actually creating drug addicts, you know.

Ouelette: In other words he was shooting them when they didn’t have a problem?

Fischer: That’ right, because they would go in and some scum bag attorney who didn’t really want to work at the defense in the case would just tell them look cough, or plea. Tell them you got a drug problem. It's your first offense. No problem. The judge will send you to a methadone treatment program, Okay. Now here’s a kid totally clean alright, who’s went out raised a little hell and broke in, stole a carton of cigarettes right not knowing that they could do a better deal anyhow. They just do as their attorney told them. They go in, plead guilty and tell the judge I got a drug problem

Herring: And and Ricci would get paid for these kids?

Fischer: Yup

Herring: By state?

Fischer : Yup the state would pay him. That was down out of state, and then he came up to Maine, He made a million dollars down there, came here bought these farms and started Elan. I have a funny feeling that if you guys really dig on Ricci ..Here’s a character who’s running a drug rehabilitation center and I don’t think he’s clean himself, OK I think you’d find that Joe Ricci got his finger in a lot of different things including the drug industry in Maine.

The investigations into the fire at Scarborough Downs lasted for many months. Not only did the state fire marshall's office investigate the fire, but so did the Mission Insurance Company whose investigators even placed a call to Joe’s ex wife to ask if she thought he was capable of setting fire to his own track. ( She declined to speculate about anything her ex husband would do)

Through his own investigators Joe learned that he was a suspect, and began telling everyone that he thought that something as preposterous as that might occur.... That's why he said he had rewritten his track’s insurance policy for ‘replacement value only’ just weeks before the fire He thought this would eliminate the appearance that he could have benefited financially from it.

Interestingly enough the clubhouse, valued by the town of Scarborough at $93,000 in 1979, was ‘replaced’ five years later for a cost of $2.2 million.

Ten years earlier on January 8, 1974, a fire had destroyed an Elan building in Sebago that was rented from a local doctor. The contents belonging to Elan were also 'adequately insured.'

The fire at Scarborough Downs allowed Joe to significantly upgrade his facility just as the fire at Elan in Sebago caused him to establish Elan's expanded location in Poland Spring.

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