Filmed Oct. 22, 2026, University of New Haven, Department of Communication, Film and Media Studies

“Laws are like spiders’ webs; they hold the weak and delicate who are caught in their meshes, but are torn to pieces by the rich and powerful”

- Anarcharis, philosopher, 6^th century BC

VIDEO EXCERPTS

#Epstein Files #SweetheartDeal Local Cops #OnThePad #VisitorLogsDestroyed

#JaneDoe4 #EpsteinInterviews #MissingFBIDocuments #13YearOlds #Trump

#Epstein #Physics & #Math Teacher #DaltonSchool #PhonyDegrees #DonaldBarr

#BearStearns #Epstein #FunnyResume

#Epstein #WoodyAllen #DinnerGuestBait #PartyFavor

#Woody Allen #ProbableCause #SexualAssault #CTStatePolice #ArrestWarrant

#EpsteinFiles #JPMorgan #134Accounts #InGirlsNames

#Epstein #HarvardFellow #OfficeKey #DonationsRerouted #LesWexner #LeonBlack

COMPLETE VIDEO & BACKGROUND

Story Via Charger Bulletin, UNewHaven Student Paper

How To Tank A Hit-And-Run Case

CT Prison System Has Blank Check To Hide Killing Video & Others as Public Records … Gov, AG & Legislature Responsible But Unaccountable For Accelerating 50-Plus Year Beatdown of The Right To Know Post Ella Grasso …

COMPLETE VIDEO

-

CTExaminer Story on FOI Case

Inside Investigator Story on FOI Case

From Chapter 7, The S&S Bar, YOU THOUGHT IT WAS MORE: New Adventures of the World’s Greatest Counterfeiter

Louis:

Joe The Animal Barboza was a great tough guy to have around the bar. He would take care of business that required muscle. The power went to his head. He was going to be whacked. The FBI warned him. Word of his decision to join forces with the FBI spread immediately and was devastating.

[Barboza linked Marfeo’s shotgun slaying to a hit ordered by New England Crime Boss Raymond Patriarca.]

Raymond and his Family would soon be off the hook from an appeal. But I wasn’t. Barboza was shot while using a device that I had made …

Direct From Atwells Avenue

Federal Hill's Heartleaf Books

From Chapter 8, Beating Ma Bell

LOUIS THE COIN’S BLACK BOXES

Editor’s Note: This narrative updates a prior post in which Louis the Coin’s manufacturing of silencers was noted. Of course, Louis also made orthotics, the Gucci line of belts, the Charles Garnier jewelry, the Barry Cord Kieselstein alligator belt buckle …

In the early 60s, black boxes were a common item in any wise guy’s house where frequent long distance calls were made. They were not the black boxes as we know them today, used to cheat the cable companies by allowing a customer to get more channels than he is paying for. They were used to cheat the phone company. Bookies used them all the time. They were big, bulky, heavy metal boxes with wire hookups that would challenge even a modern day electrician. Despite their drawbacks, they actually worked. You dialed in the long distance number you wished to call and your phone was charged as a local call. Cool, huh?

I was making a portable black box of sorts, housed in a package of Marlboro cigarettes. It was certainly something no one else was doing. It began as a small project. Every one that I finished gave me a real sense of satisfaction. It took me about a month to perfect the box. I remember every time I tried to use it the anxiety that hit me – the fear and the disappointment if it failed. It did fail several times.

I always used phone booths in other cities or even states wondering if the operator would have notified the police that someone was trying to beat the pay phone and a police car would arrive and promptly arrest me. Finally, after numerous attempts I had it down to a science where each one that I made would work perfectly.

You dropped a dime in a pay phone and dialed a long distance number. Your dime was returned and either a live operator or voice recording asked you to drop in a dollar and 35 cents, for example.

So you put the Marlboro package next to the phone’s receiver and press the little red button which indicated it was a quarter – five times for a total of a dollar and 25 cents. Next, press the yellow button which is a code for a dime, once, and your call went through, perfectly, every time.

A dollar and 40-cent call would require all the above plus pressing the green or nickel switch one time.

Calling with the Marlboro package was easy, cheap and entailed no fumbling with change such as slugs. The battery lasted for months; it was inexpensive and quick to replace. The black box gadgets were fun to make at first. They sold and they earned me lots of money.

I couldn’t understand why anyone would pay $250 for this toy. You need to make a lot of phone calls to get your $250 back.

One day, I asked Andy why the sales of these units were so strong and why guys would

pay so much when they wanted everything else for the bubble. To get a wise guy to put out actual cash for anything was one of the hardest things in the world. They wouldn’t spend a nickel for anything. Andy asked me if I knew how much he spent on phone calls in a single day. Of course, I had no idea.

He said, “I spend at least three to four hundred dollars a day for this fucking joint.”

I was amazed. No wonder we could sell all these fucking things that we could make and I didn’t know what Andy was selling them for. I got $250. Maybe he sold them for twice that. Who knows? The $250 more than made me happy.

Now I knew why the wise guys would pay so much money for some of the things that I made. Not that I ever doubted my workmanship; after all, I’m a perfectionist to the ultimate degree.

-

Barboza Bio Via The Mob Museum

June 2026 Louis the Coin Podcast

Louis the Coin Website

Louis X

Louis Bluesky

Louis Facebook

Louis Instagram

J’Allen Jones Unconscious & Possibly Dead With a Shield Held Over Him

Cuffed Behind Back & Holding?

How Does A Person Hold On To A Guard’s Hand While Prone, Restrained & Handcuffed Behind His Back?

Note The Special Technique Of Punching The Subdued Person By The Buttocks & Thigh

Does It Look Like J’Allen Jones Is Resisting?

OR

In Severely Limited Fashion, With Four Or More Guards Holding Him Down, Is His Body Reacting Involuntarily To Lack Of Oxygen & Being Twisted & Contorted?

…Note How Guard Plays To The Camera …

Stop Resisting

Staff Is Utilizing A Technique At This Time

My Staff Is Trying To Control Your Actions So You Don’t Hurt Yourself

At Other Times Jones Is Told To Relax, Continue To Breathe

… He was injected with a combination of Benadryl, Ativan, and Haldol, the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut reported ...

COMPLETE [redacted] VIDEO Released By Court & Background

CT Examiner Story

J’Allen Jones with his father Don Harris and his mother Jessica N. Jones

CT DOC Still Hiding Video from Public in Separate FOI Case, Part 1

Part 2

FINDINGS OF FACT & LAW

BY FOI HEARING OFFICER STILL PENDING:

Complaint Was Heard & Witnesses Questioned May 12 and June 23, 2026

Fall 2025 University of New Haven Class on the Cover-Up

CHRIS POWELL COLUMN: CT AG Defended & Facilitated the Cover-Up

CT Examiner

WPKN

QUICK HITS:

Las Vegas was an open city … so each mob outfit had its resort. And with the New England crew, a lot of that was at the Dunes … At the time we’re talking about with Louis, a lot of those casinos weren’t corporate-owned, and you had a lot of political interconnections going on that opened the door for a lot of these mob people to get high positions in casinos ...

– Larry Henry

He really liked that I said he wasn’t a rat, so he called me up, and he came to visit me ... Louis sent Jerry a Christmas card, they started talking, Jerry helped me, and then Louis called me up.

– Andy Thibault

– Jerry Longo, Louis the Coin

Streaming Audio Via #WPKN

ALSO @ SPOTIFY

Louis the Coin Episode

UNOFFICIAL ‘Transcript’

[powered by Wackadoodle AI thing]

Recorded June 18, 2026

Brian Scott-Smith (0:06) Reporting and supporting what matters. This is CT Examiner Weekly.

Greg Stroud (0:11) Louis “The Coin” Colavecchio minted counterfeit slot machine tokens hitting Mohegan Sun, Foxwoods, and the big names in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, grossing $4 million with the scam. But who was “The Coin,” and how did he do it? I’m Greg Stroud, editor of CT Examiner, and that’s the topic of today’s roundtable.

Brian Scott-Smith (0:33) And I’m your host, Brian Scott-Smith. Joining myself and Greg in the studio is a panel of expert reporters to discuss this incredible story. Welcome to you all. It reads like the plot of a Hollywood movie, but it’s a real story spanning across the nation’s gambling resorts and even through Europe — one that has left a lasting legacy on the casino gaming industry, forever changing it. Joining us to talk more about Louis “The Coin” Colavecchio is Andy Thibault, a contributing editor to CT Examiner and co-author of You Thought It Was More: New Adventures of the World’s Greatest Counterfeiter, plus Larry Henry, former political editor at the Las Vegas Sun and a recognized authority on organized crime, now senior reporter for Gambling.com, and CT Examiner reporter Ally LeMaster also joins us. And I’m going to turn to you first. Set the scene a little more for our listeners about Louis “The Coin.” Who was he?

Andy Thibault (1:36) Well, Louis was a business administration graduate of Providence College, but in his younger days he sold fake cashmere sweaters to Irish bars in Boston, and he was a master counterfeiter and genius in metallurgy.

Greg Stroud (2:01) I was going to say, because looking and reading the book, this man is a genius — an absolute genius. Now, sadly, gone. He passed away a few years ago. He became a friend of yours, didn’t he?

Andy Thibault (2:12) Yes, around 2002 I published a column about him with the help of retired state police Detective Sergeant Jerry Longo, in which I noted how Louis melted down and re-engineered the tokens, and that he wasn’t a rat. He really liked that I said he wasn’t a rat, so he called me up, and he came to visit me.

Greg Stroud (2:39) We’re going to come back to you in just a moment. I just want to quickly bring Larry in as well. Larry, talk to us about your involvement in this — it’s not just a tenuous link, there is a link as to why we’ve got you on this — and your understanding and involvement in this story.

Larry Henry (2:54) What really makes it interesting — it reminds you of a New England novelist named George V. Higgins, who wrote The Friends of Eddie Coyle. That sort of New England underworld was transplanted to Vegas through Louis, at places that don’t really exist anymore in Las Vegas. The old mob world of Las Vegas no longer exists, including a lot of the places where the New England crime family had a lot of influence in the mid-’50s — at the Dunes. The Dunes is gone now. It’s since been imploded. The Bellagio stands where the Dunes once did. But there was a different era. You go across the country now, there are more than 1,000 casinos. Sports betting is legal in almost every state, so it’s a different environment now. Back then, before AC came on board — Atlantic City — Las Vegas was the place, the place where Louie and his crew from New England would go out to gamble. A completely different environment. Las Vegas was an open city — the New England mob was involved, the Chicago Outfit was involved, Detroit was involved — so each mob outfit had its resort. And with the New England crew, a lot of that was at the Dunes.

Greg Stroud (4:10) Larry, you were a political reporter in Nevada. At that time, could you be a political reporter without knowing or coming into contact with the Mafia? Was it just part of the fabric of the state — the city, the business?

Larry Henry (4:32) It was all intertwined — politics, gaming, the mob — all intertwined in Nevada. It’s really funny, because I was press secretary for a governor named Bob Miller. His dad ran the Riviera and Slots of Fun — Slots of Fun is still there, by the way; the Riviera is gone. His dad had been involved in Chicago and came down to Las Vegas, so there were a lot of interconnected elements, political and mob. Keep in mind the casinos in Las Vegas in those days — over time, corporations were allowed to come in and take control of casinos. Late ‘60s, Howard Hughes came in and bought a lot from the mob. Every shareholder didn’t have to be vetted by the Gaming Control Board, by regulators in Nevada. That changed the environment. But at the time we’re talking about with Louis, a lot of those casinos weren’t corporate-owned, and you had a lot of political interconnections going on that opened the door for a lot of these mob people to get high positions in casinos.

Greg Stroud (5:35) Andy, can you explain to us the scam? And can you give us a sense of — if organized crime is sort of in bed with the business side, why are they also in bed with the side that seems to be ripping them off?

Andy Thibault (5:56) Well, as I understand it, there’s a culture where everybody steals from everybody.

Greg Stroud (6:02) So Louis would have had to get permission from someone to rip off the casino.

Andy Thibault (6:15) Well, Louis was under the protection of legendary New England mob boss Raymond Patriarca, and they certainly didn’t tell Raymond everything that went on in his offices or his bar, the SNS Bar, or Sherwood Manufacturing in Providence. And I’m pretty confident they didn’t tell him what they were doing at the Dunes.

Greg Stroud (6:39) So the scam was that they manufactured these fake tokens?

Andy Thibault (6:46) Well, it’s not they — it’s Louis and his tool-and-die makers. He imported a two-ton press from Italy, and he would go on his own. But as Joe Broadmeadow, retired East Providence captain, has said, if they didn’t give Raymond his sweet taste, they would have not been alive any longer.

Ally LeMaster (7:14) Something that was really striking from reading this was that it seemed like police and judges seemed to almost admire his crimes in a way. Can you talk a little bit about why that was, what kind of sway he had?

Andy Thibault (7:26) Well, Jerry Longo, the cop who arrested him in Connecticut, he admired his talent. He was on his side, and Louis was on the other side. When they met, Jerry gave him donuts or cannolis, as opposed to the New Jersey State Police, who roughed him up a little bit. So Louis sent Jerry a Christmas card, they started talking, Jerry helped me, and then Louie called me up.

Ally LeMaster (8:02) Something I think is really interesting from reading this is that police in general had a hard time finding which coins were counterfeit and which ones were real.

Andy Thibault (8:13) The New Jersey State Police detective sent Jerry four tokens and said, “Tell me which one’s real and which one isn’t.” He couldn’t tell the difference. And when they finally noticed the inventories at Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun exceeded what they had, someone said, “Well, these aren’t rabbits.” They borrowed a microscope from Ledyard High School, and still couldn’t determine what was what. So how did the Coin get caught? He loitered at the $100 machines in Atlantic City, where there are many cameras, and he always brought the same girlfriend.

Greg Stroud (9:03) So he would put on costumes, disguises, and use these fake tokens, but his girlfriend kind of just went as his girlfriend.

Andy Thibault (9:15) Well, she played too, I think.

Greg Stroud (9:18) And that’s how they got caught.

Andy Thibault (9:19) Yes.

Greg Stroud (9:20) Does anyone really know exactly how much money he made? The $4 million — is that an estimate?

Andy Thibault (9:29) Jerry estimated that based on a number of factors, including that Louis had sent crates exceeding a couple thousand pounds of tokens by mail to hotels in Las Vegas. And when he got caught in Atlantic City, he had 750 pounds of tokens in his Toyota.

Greg Stroud (9:50) How does Louis fit into the pantheon of scams and scam artists and the Mafia history that you cover?

Larry Henry (10:01) Huge. He was one of the major players. Keep in mind, nowadays slot machines are electronic. In fact, Andy, I’d love to know where on eBay you could buy some of the coins he made — that would be an interesting find. But in Las Vegas in those days — think back to the movie Casino: Joe Pesci played a guy based on Tony “The Ant” Spilotro, who was a Chicago Outfit street enforcer in Las Vegas. Robert De Niro played somebody based on Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, an odds-maker who corrupted a lot of sporting events, ran the Stardust and three other casinos in Las Vegas. They skimmed from the count room — skimming means taking money before it’s counted and taxed — and they would disperse that to mob bosses all over the place: Chicago, Kansas City. There was somebody who would take money from downtown Las Vegas by train to South Florida to Meyer Lansky. Whether you had people like Lou the Coin or people skimming out of the count rooms, Las Vegas was a wide-open environment where mobsters and people connected to the mob, like Louis the Coin, flourished.

Greg Stroud (11:11) Larry, can you remember the first time you started reporting on this, or what you first came to know about it in Las Vegas?

Larry Henry (11:18) I moved there in the early ‘80s, and that’s when I became a reporter there. But I grew up in Louisiana — which is also heavily mob-influenced, like New England. There was the Marcello crime family, Carlos Marcello. You just grow up knowing about it, you hear about it, you wonder why these people aren’t arrested and prosecuted. I was in the Marine Corps, and when I went to college, every barracks, every dorm, every bar had somebody you could book sports bets through illegally, but it was all funneled up to mobsters. You just knew it was out on the streets. Then when I became a reporter, I worked in other cities too, before I went to Nevada — it was ingrained in the culture, and those were news stories, because in the news business, you cover plane crashes, not safe landings. The plane crashes in Nevada — that was the mob. That was heavily covered. There was a really famous reporter and a good friend of mine named Jeff German, who was just killed a few years ago. Some reporters really came up and made a name for themselves, busting the mob. One was a guy named Ned Day, who had been in Milwaukee and was tied in with the mob, and he came down to Nevada and became a mob reporter and went after them. So it was all part of that culture. The mob was heavily reported on in the ‘70s, ‘80s, and into the ‘90s. The last big mob murder in Las Vegas was the late ‘90s — a guy named Fat Herbie Blitzstein, who worked for Tony Spilotro. It was all a part of the culture. It was a part of the coverage. That’s why the Mob Museum today is so big — everybody wants to know what Las Vegas was like.

Greg Stroud (13:04) Talk to us about the modern-day Mafia. You said the last murder was a number of years ago, but the Mafia is still around, isn’t it?

Larry Henry (13:13) You’ve got the traditional mob in places like Italy and the Ndrangheta, you’ve got La Cosa Nostra — they’re still involved in things like cocaine trafficking with South American traffickers. But you also have a lot of other so-called “mafias.” Just in L.A. the other day, I think 30 or 40 Mexican Mafia members were busted for narcotics trafficking. A big Canadian was just arrested not long ago, through Los Angeles. Armenians, Russians, Chinese — you’ve got a lot of different groups now involved in organized crime, everything from stealing gasoline to all the traditional street rackets: illegal sports betting, prostitution. All of that is still thriving and still extremely active with different organized crime groups, including the traditional La Cosa Nostra, the Italian mobs.

Greg Stroud (14:10) Ally?

Ally LeMaster (14:10) What’s interesting about Louis is he was known for counterfeiting, but he did other sorts of crimes. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Andy Thibault (14:19) Louis made silencers for guns, and he used to use Marlboro hard packs for devices where you pushed a button — at a phone booth, you could push it for nickels or dimes — and he couldn’t make them fast enough. He sold many hundreds of those.

Greg Stroud (14:43) The man truly was a genius. And part of his skill is he had personality — this guy had a certain charisma about him that seemed to translate to law enforcement, into courts, in with the press. He was certainly good copy.

Andy Thibault (15:09) He’s a charming fellow and very entertaining. He was banned by certified mail from every casino in the United States. And I went to the fights at Twin River in Rhode Island one night, and who ushers me into the VIP room — where there’s free booze and food — but Louis the Coin.

Greg Stroud (15:30) I grew up in Rochester, New York, and the Mafia was always part of just something that we thought of — whether it was the public works in the town, or how the trash was done, or certain restaurants that we kind of knew weren’t really for us. It’s a good one, but not for us. So I think probably for this younger generation, they just didn’t grow up thinking about organized crime or the Mafia as just a player, a part of the fabric — sort of like what we get in The Wire: all these different sorts of players that are part of this bigger story, and the public are sort of the backdrop for it.

Brian Scott-Smith (16:22) Andy, you mentioned something at the top of the interview — you said that he came to your house with the manuscript. I think it would be interesting for the listeners to understand that the book, although it’s been edited by you and another co-editor and added to, is a memoir — he came to you with real stories. When you saw those — and Ally raised this actually earlier, so sorry for stealing your question, Ally — how much of it do you think was actually real, and some of it was maybe a little bit fantasy?

Andy Thibault (16:49) It’s hard to tell, and we have sort of a disclaimer: “Some of this really happened, and I dream when I’m awake.” But the feds had a sentencing report that we published, which verifies everything in the book. It’s like free advertising via the U.S. Attorney. Everything he did with the tokens was real. He melted them down, and he re-engineered them, and he even bought raw materials not far from a state police organized crime building in Meriden, Connecticut. And not far from that, right now in a glass case, are some of Louis’ tokens at the Connecticut State Police Museum.

Greg Stroud (17:38) Andy, was there a moment where you really saw the darker side — something where you thought, this isn’t maybe the nicest person?

Andy Thibault (17:59) Well, not all my friends are angels. Like everybody, Louis is good and bad — he wasn’t a pacifist, and he did things in his self-interest. But he had great stories, and he was fun to be with.

Greg Stroud (18:17) There was a bit in the book — apparently, during a couple of years in federal prison for his handiwork, he was apparently paid $18,000 by the feds as a consultant.

Andy Thibault (18:35) After he graduated from Fort Dix in New Jersey — which he said were the best two years of his life — he was hired by the U.S. Mint as a consultant, because his dies lasted longer than their dies.

Greg Stroud (18:49) Was there a certain mechanical genius to it, or did he bring somebody else in to do this — or did he know how to do this himself?

Andy Thibault (19:01) He did it all, but he had tool-and-die makers working for him.

Greg Stroud (19:06) In Meriden? Providence?

Andy Thibault (19:09) He bought some raw materials from Meriden.

Greg Stroud (19:11) But he had it done in Providence?

Andy Thibault (19:17) He had a big building, and he had tool-and-die makers working around the clock at all kinds of machines — coin comparators. And when he had the finished product, he had a machine that would knock them around so it looked like they were used.

Greg Stroud (19:34) Did they ever figure out a way to distinguish them? They were almost perfect — they had to be sent to special labs, because even with microscopes, the color, the weight, the composition, the feel, you couldn’t tell. Right here at the mouth of the Connecticut River — a quiet little town — right across the river was a resort that had a casino, I think an illegal one.

Andy Thibault (20:18) It was raided. And our neighbor “Skyball” Scibelli of Old Saybrook — who ran Springfield in cooperation with Raymond Patriarca and the New York family — was Louis’ traveling companion when they’d go on free junkets to Las Vegas and have a blank check to be happy criminals at the Dunes.

Greg Stroud (20:45) And Frank Sinatra would come to —

Andy Thibault (20:48) Mia Farrow — by boat.

Greg Stroud (20:49) Come right to Old Saybrook — gambling. Maybe that’s part of the reason why we’ve been trying to crack the nut that is the Old Saybrook Police Department — there were only two police chiefs for 56 years, I think. They certainly knew a thing or two about this.

Andy Thibault (21:10) Yeah, maybe they would pretend they didn’t know Skyball.

Larry Henry (21:14) Andy, so he made counterfeit coins not just for legal casinos, but for illegal casinos too, right?

Andy Thibault (21:22) Jerry Longo said he documented at least 35 different casinos that Louis made chips for.

Greg Stroud (21:32) So he had to have probably a different — unless they used the same material for all the different casinos — he probably had to have a different mix or something. Different —

Andy Thibault (21:43) Molds.

Greg Stroud (21:44) Molds. And maybe even the material that he created the chips out of.

Andy Thibault (21:50) And in Las Vegas there had been a prior counterfeiting ring before Louis got busted — guys making a few hundred grand, ex-federal agents pretending Louis didn’t happen in Nevada. But he was arrested in Atlantic City, and he had to make deals in Connecticut. One of his lawyers was former Rhode Island Attorney General Jimmy O’Neil, and in Connecticut he had a well-respected, genial lawyer named Mel Scott.

Greg Stroud (22:26) How long did he have to spend in jail for the scam, in total?

Andy Thibault (22:30) Two years in Fort Dix, New Jersey. He eventually moved up to an air-quote “suite” with the Pizza Connection guys — the heroin dealers from Sicily — and they had the best food. They would stage fights in the kitchen, then steal all the best food and take it back to their headquarters.

Greg Stroud (22:55) Larry, I just want to pick up on the organized crime aspect a little bit more. I don’t know if we as individuals realize there is so much of it still around. I think we went through a period, not just here in the U.S. but elsewhere in the world, where the media perhaps reported a little bit more on it, and there were more headlines. We don’t seem to see the same headlines as much, but from listening to what you’re saying, there’s still plenty of it going about.

Larry Henry (23:24) Keep in mind we just had a case where some NBA players and some mobsters in New York were involved in some rigged poker games and some rigged basketball games. It still makes headlines, it still exists, it’s still very active — not just the traditional La Cosa Nostra, but a lot of organized crime still exists, including in places like Las Vegas. A lot of it is the street rack, as it’s harder to get into the count rooms and skim money. It’s harder for people like Louis the Coin to show up with counterfeit devices to steal from casinos. But anywhere there’s money — narcotics, prostitution, street rackets, illegal sports betting, like in California — you can’t go into a bar in L.A. and not find a bartender who can book a bet for you, even though sports betting is technically illegal in California. Anywhere there’s money, there’s going to be organized crime that will get a piece of it.

Brian Scott-Smith (24:22) It’s the $64 million question — excuse the pun. Do you think we’ll ever see somebody like Louis again?

Larry Henry (24:30) In different endeavors, it’s happening to this day. There are illegal casinos all over L.A. to this day. There are a lot of gangsters, mobsters, whatever you want to call them, who are profiting heavily off of organized crime efforts. George Anastasia, a mob writer, once told me that a lot of the stuff that came out about the traditional mob — that became part of the movie Casino and things like that — came out because of court cases. When things go to court, the court transcript becomes public record. A lot of people didn’t know about a lot of this until a lot of these trials occurred. And what George Anastasia told me is that 10 to 15 years from now, when other court cases develop from current organized crime endeavors, we’re going to have a whole new sphere of understanding of what’s happening right now with organized crime.

Greg Stroud (25:21) One thing we were looking at was March Madness — we were up at UConn talking to students, asking them about their gambling habits. One of the figures we heard was that roughly $3 to $4 billion was bet legally on March Madness, or the games around that, but in total they were estimating roughly $12 billion gambled on this sports event. That would be about $9 billion additional — some of that might be just like office pools or other things, but some of it must be these sort of illegal venues you’re talking about. Are these illegal sports books?

Larry Henry (26:11) A lot of it is offshore. Here’s the thing: I’m a proponent for legal sports betting. A lot of the things that are happening now — where athletes are getting busted, a quarterback at Texas Tech entered rehab the other day because he got busted for illegal sports betting — a lot of it wouldn’t be uncovered if it weren’t for legal sports betting, because they have integrity compliance companies that monitor betting that could indicate some illegality. A lot of the stuff coming out now wouldn’t have come out in the old days. Rigged games, rigged horse races, rigged boxing matches — those things have always happened and have always been controlled by the mob, but now we’re finding out more about it because people got caught because they bet legally and those betting irregularities show up. Like the guy the other day — this staff sergeant who got busted for a prediction market bet on whether Maduro was going to be captured in Venezuela, because he was on the inside on when that was going to happen. Those things are exposed now because of the legal market. It’s like Nicholas Pileggi told me one time — the guy who wrote Goodfellas. He wrote the book, and then he co-wrote the movie with Martin Scorsese, the director. He also wrote Casino, the book, and co-wrote the movie with Martin Scorsese. It’s better that the government is monitoring betting and getting the tax dollars from it than it is gangsters. When the gangsters were doing it, we had no idea whatsoever what was going on under the table. Now we have a better feel for it, and it’s taxed, so there are some benefits to society — education, infrastructure, things like that. But prediction markets — DraftKings and FanDuel, by the way, the two biggest legal sports books in the U.S., online sports books, they also have some brick-and-mortar places — those two are also now in the prediction market game. There are a lot of discussions right now in Washington about how to get a better handle on controlling things like that staff sergeant situation, how to get a better handle on the things that could be happening that are manipulating the markets. But if it weren’t for the legal aspect of it, we wouldn’t know any of this.

Greg Stroud (28:26) One thing we’ve looked at here is just how international it all is. At Mohegan Sun here in Connecticut, there are 23 customer representatives just aimed at Asian customers — Filipino customers, Chinese customers — just how international that market is. And it makes it all the harder to track, or all the more ripe for things like money laundering or organized crime, if not in America, then someplace else.

Brian Scott-Smith (29:06) Larry, it’s been fascinating talking to you, and Andy as well — thank you for coming in. The book again: You Thought It Was More: New Adventures of the World’s Greatest Counterfeiter. My thanks to Greg, Ally, Andy, and Larry. Don’t forget to check out the digital pages of CTExaminer.com for more stories and our events calendar for the latest local happenings. And while you’re there, why not subscribe to make sure you don’t miss out on all the week’s news? It’s just $20 for the year. Keep it legal, please. This is CT Examiner Weekly — reporting and supporting what matters. I’m Brian Scott-Smith. Thanks for listening.

Louis the Coin website

Preview & Background

Rick Reyes, vocals / guitar; Asher Delerme, percussion; Kris Jensen, sax

Complete Tune Performed Live at #TheBookSmithsShoppe, Danbury, CT

HOSTS

Brian Scott-Smith, also hosts Morning Edition WSHU, Fairfield, CT

CT Examiner Editor Gregory Stroud

GUESTS

Andy Thibault, co-author, YOU THOUGHT IT WAS MORE: New Adventures of the World’s Greatest Counterfeiter, Histria Books; contributing editor / columnist, CT Examiner.

Larry Henry, contributing writer for The Mob Museum in Las Vegas and former political editor for The Las Vegas Sun.

Ally LeMaster, reporter, CT Examiner; 2025 New England Newspaper and Press Association Rookie of the Year.

CT Examiner Weekly Podcast

Louis Podcast, Taped in April,

Scheduled for June 18 Broadcast

Louis the Coin Colavecchio (R) at The Hartford Club, January 2010, with CT State Police Det. Sgt. Jerry Longo (Retired)

Video Direct from the CT State Police Museum

Louis the Coin Book Website

&

ENTERED INTO EVIDENCE

AMONG OTHER EXHIBITS

Release the Video Immediately, Reporter Ally LeMaster Says in Opening Statement

We Have the Technology To Redact Safety Concerns, Deputy Commissioner William Mulligan Responds to Ally LeMaster

There’s a Myriad of Restraint Techniques: Contributing Editor Andy Thibault Asks Deputy Commissioner Mulligan About Some Particular Moves …

CT Examiner Editor Gregory Stroud Tells Students Why the Paper Pursues Release of the Video to the Public

It Is Excruciating To Watch, state Department of Correction Ombuds DeVaughn Ward Told University of New Haven Class Fall 2025

CREDIBILITY?

What Are the Actual Security Concerns?

More Special Techniques

“I want the world to see what happened to my child.” -- Jessica Jones

Coverage of Hearing Via CT Examiner

AUDIO LINKS

PART 1

PART 2

Via University of New Haven Journalism / Criminal Justice Class, Fall 2025

Kevin Showalter, 1953-1973

3,000 Pages Still Missing

Complete SPJ List Includes 21 CT Examiner Awards

Records Reveal Decades of Warnings about Litchfield Coach Accused of Sexual Abuse

The Studious Fury of Marvelous Mykquan Williams

MORE About the Hit-And-Run Ongoing Cover-Up

BACKGROUND

Six Months After Court Order, Video of Prison Death Still Unreleased

Highlights: SUPPRESSED EVIDENCE IN PRISON FATALITY

Via WPKN & The Usual Podcast Suspects

Photo of Paperback via Oliver Wolcott Library, Litchfield, CT

Geno's Dunes Book

QUICK TAKES ON LOUIS THE COIN COLAVECCHIO, WORLD’S GREATEST COUNTERFEITER

Louis the Coin, though not a made man, was considered such a great talent he was part of the inner circle of the Providence Office. The Providence Office was headquarters of the New England Mob, run for decades by Raymond Patriarca. Louis grossed an estimated $4 Million by manufacturing undetectable slot machine tokens which were fed to slots throughout Nevada, Atlantic City and at Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun. After serving two years federal time, Louis was hired as a consultant by the U.S. Mint.

John Cullen aka Jack Chaucer, Author of Screenplay “COIN MAN”

Louis Gets Philosophical …

-

From Chapter 5, The Dunes:

Louis wrote that Raymond had a way of making problems disappear …

From Chapter 24, The Dunes Hidden Ownership:

In Which Louis Recalls Some Adventures at The Dunes

Louis the Coin Website

CLICKETY CLACK

Clickety clack, clickety clack
Bring that man’s baby back
Clickety clack , clickety clack
I want my spirit back
Clickety clack
Bubble music being seen and heard on saturday night
Blinding the eyes of ones that’s supposed to see
Bubble music, being played and showed throughout America
Clickety clack, clickety clack
Somebody’s mind has got off the goddamn track
Clickety clack, clickety clack
Won’t somebody bring the spirit back?
You didn’t know about John Coltrane
And the beautiful ballad he wrote, wait a minute
And the beautiful ballad he wrote called “After the Rain”
You didn’t know about Lady Day and all the dues that she had to pay
The Beatles come into the country, they take all the bread
While the police hittin’ black and white folks upside their head
Tom Jones and Humperdinck got everybody uptight
They make people that can sing wanna get out and fight
Clickety clack, clickety clack
What is this madness that Nixon has put upon us?
Clickety clack, clickety clack
Won’t somebody bring the spirit back?
Who will it be?
Who will it be?
It certainly won’t be someone that says that they’re free
Clickety clack, clickety clack
Won’t somebody bring the spirit back?
Clickety clack, clickety clack, clickety clack

Via Bright Moments: CLICKETY CLACK

Bright Moments Song

New Adventures of the World’s

Greatest Counterfeiter

Louis demonstrated a certain level of restraint as a self-styled tax collector from casinos ... just a little bit from each household ...

Louis the Coin Book Website

Simon & Schuster AU

“So much sets this book apart – the extraordinary tales it tells, its insider’s look at organized crime and Louis Colavecchio’s enormous affection for his characters. But the biggest surprise? I was held in total suspense by the technical sections. I never expected to be riveted by metallurgy . . . but I was.”

- Novelist Pam Lewis, Author of “Speak Softly, She Can Hear” and “Perfect Family”

Video [2024]: 85 Seconds With Louis the Coin and Friends

Cop Who Busted Louis Misses Him

Excerpts Via REELZ

State Police Nail Crafts

UNewHaven Tribute To Dr. Lee, 1938-2026

CT Examiner Story

CT Examiner Column

From Jerry Longo, president of the CT State Police Alumni Association, which oversees the State Police Museum in Meriden. Det. Sgt. Longo (Retired) recently also retired as head of security for Mohegan Sun.

R.I.P. Henry C. Lee

In 1975 I met a guy named Henry Lee. He came to the Surplus Property Warehouse in Wethersfield to get supplies for a small lab he was helping to build up, who knew. We got to work, went to lunch together a bunch of times and became friends. I became a State Trooper, he became a Forensic Scientist known the world over. I became a Sergeant he became the Commissioner. I wrote a book; he wrote a hundred books. But that didn’t matter, I called him friend, he called me “tubby”. I have a lot of stories but let’s go with this one. We were teaching in the IOACIS/ICTOCT (Transnational Crimes mostly) Conference in Hawaii. He put a slide up of Monica Lewinsky’s dress. Henry had done DNA profiling on this garment. He then put up the chart for the DNA results and said that the material found on the dress could only have belonged to one of two people in the universe, William Jefferson Clinton of Washington D.C. or Jerry Longo of South Windsor Connecticut. I am glad you are now with Margaret and your mom (lived to be over 100). I will miss my friend, and mentor.

Helle Crafts

AP: Man who put wife in wood chipper released from prison early

- Photos of Prosecutor John Durham at the University of St. Joseph by Bob Thiesfield

NEWS ITEM, March 2026: The late Boston mobster Whitey Bulger wrote a book? His FBI agent pal hopes to use the recently-disclosed manuscript to vacate his conviction …

Globe Reporter Who Covered Whitey

For Decades Not Surprised By ‘Memoir’

Overview By Shelley Murphy

Agent Connolly was sentenced to 40 years in prison

but was granted compassionate release in 2021

Shelley Murphy Reports On Multiple Cases

-

Prosecutor Durham On The Use Of Informants:

The prosecutor who put rogue FBI agent John Connolly away, retired CT U.S. Atty. John Durham, spoke about the case in a rare public appearance at the University of St. Joseph in 2018.

The Day of New London reported on Durham’s PowerPoint presentation, “The Use of Informants: A Cautionary Tale.” Durham said Bulger and his associate, hitman Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi, corrupted their FBI handlers while working as “Top Echelon” informants.

“Both Bulger and Flemmi were notorious, really bad actors in Boston when they were recruited by the FBI as informants,” Durham said. He said they bribed their handlers and used leaked information to further their control of narcotics trafficking, loan sharking and extortion.

Following are the official announcement of the event by the university and a link to The Day’s coverage.

USJ DURHAM ANNOUNCEMENT, Feb. 14, 2018

WEST HARTFORD, CONN. (Feb. 14, 2018) – The University of Saint Joseph (USJ) today announced that the public is invited to attend a free event Monday, March 5, 2018 at 6:30 p.m. with Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham, who has conducted some of the nation’s most sensitive corruption and intelligence cases in a career spanning more than 40 years.

University of Saint Joseph President Rhona Free, welcomed Durham, “We are excited for the USJ community to hear from Durham who will share how he was part of a team that found one of the last hold-outs of a generation of mobsters. In history and our society today the ripple effects of the Whitey Bulger case continue and we are eager to hear details of the case that most of us have never have heard about.”

Durham has been asked by four different U.S. attorneys general to undertake special investigative projects. In one of those cases, Durham investigated whether notorious Boston mobsters James “Whitey” Bulger and Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi corrupted FBI agents whom they served as informants. This probe led to the successful prosecution of a former FBI Supervisory Special Agent on racketeering and obstruction of justice charges. The investigation inspired the Martin Scorcese film, “The Departed,” which is loosely based on the case.

In 2000 he uncovered FBI documents showing four convicted murderers had been framed by agents in the 1960s. Two of the men were released, and later won a $100 million civil judgment against the government. The other two had died in prison. Durham and former federal prosecutor Leonard Boyle received the U.S. Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service for their work in the Boston case. Boyle, who currently serves as Connecticut’s Deputy Chief State’s Attorney, will introduce Durham at the USJ event.

Durham graduated, with honors, from Colgate University in 1972 and the University of Connecticut School of Law in 1975. Before becoming a prosecutor, he worked as a Volunteer in Service to America (VISTA) on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana from 1975-77. Durham led a task force to go after Hartford street gangs in 1992. He spearheaded mob prosecutions of the Gambino, Genovese and Patriarca crime families.

He also led numerous public corruption investigations in Connecticut, including that of former Governor John Rowland, who resigned in 2004 and pleaded guilty to accepting gifts and vacations from contractors doing business with the state. From 2008 to 2012, Durham also served as the Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, where he investigated matters relating to the destruction of certain videotapes by the CIA and the treatment of detainees by the CIA.

John Durham, Len Boyle, Rhona Free

Front page coverage, March 2018

Karen Florin, now retired managing editor of The Day, covered the story; John Durham, also now retired; Andy Thibault, speaker series coordinator for USJ; University President Rhona Free

Story: U.S. Attorney Durham tells mob tales during rare lecture

The following two Cool Justice columns appeared first in The Connecticut Law Tribune

The Pride Of Connecticut

Dec. 17, 2001

Connecticut’s renowned canine squad got the call within an hour of the World Trade Center bombings: Stand by to help us find any survivors and recover bodies.

And so a team of 10 state troopers and their dogs left by 11 a.m. on 9-11-01 for the massive search and rescue operation at Ground Zero. They began recovering bodies and body parts at 4 a.m. the next day. “Families want to find anything -- a fingernail, an elbow, a toe,” said state Public Safety Commissioner Arthur Spada, “anything that they can make claim to for closure.”

Dogs named Odin, Blizzard, Thunder, Hero, Ira and Jake were among those who hunted through concrete pilings and broken glass, sometimes cutting their paws as they dug and pointed to bodies. They worked as many dogs do, meticulously digging holes in back yards. But where the dogs of the Connecticut State Police dug, bodies and body parts lay 10 or more feet below the rubble. Within 48 hours, they located 16 or more bodies and thousands of body parts.

“They pretty much led the search and rescue effort,” Spada said.

On Friday, 9-14-01, two of the dogs were treated for minor injuries at the on-site, makeshift hospital. Heavy rain suspended search efforts for a few hours that morning, then the search continued through the night. A typical shift ran from 4 a.m. to 10 p.m.

The routine would continue through the next week. A total of 14 troopers and their dogs worked until New York authorities had the search under control.

Sgt. Kevin Rodino runs the canine unit. “It just looks like a bunch of concrete and steel,” Rodino said of Ground Zero, where his troops found clear photos of families in the debris. “You start finding peoples’ personal effects and it puts a face to someone’s family. You’re performing a task, but there’s a human connection. Sometimes it can take hours or even days to find a person or parts where a dog was digging.”

Some dogs like to wear their protective mittens, others just shake them off. Routinely, the troopers would have to wipe the dogs’ eyes and mouths and wash them every few hours because of all the dust and debris.

“We never experienced something of this magnitude, but we just focused on our own little areas and made as many recoveries as we could,” Rodino said.

Troopers who worked at Ground Zero were: William Csontos, Kevin Slonski, Stowell Burnham, Mark Linhard, John Foley, William Longiodice, Scott O’Donnell, Shawn Swarz, Tom Blake, Michael Real, Kevin Albanese, Michael Fitzsimmons, Brian Faughnan and Michael Alogna. The remaining dogs on the job were: Judd, Zuby, Bak, Logan, Niko, Fergus, Fritz Frisco and Sirus.

As the Connecticut State Police contingent ended their shift and left Ground Zero in a convoy, thousands of New Yorkers would line the streets nightly to cheer them in gratitude for their work.

“We felt the encouragement and support of the citizens of New York City,” Rodino said. “To see that as you’re leaving, it makes you want to come back the next day.”

The scene is captured on a 10-minute video the department produced. The moment had an emotional impact on viewers who saw the video during a presentation before the Litchfield-Morris Rotary last month. Many were tearful. One viewer, a state trooper who had seen the video before, said he cried again. “Are you looking at my eyes?” responded Bob Doyle, a Rotarian and a pharmacist.

Spada said the work of the canine unit brings pride to the department. Their efforts bring pride to the entire state of Connecticut as well.

From Florida To Ground Zero

Jan. 21, 2002

I once knew a guy from Boston who drove to the Grand Canyon, looked around for maybe an hour and then promptly drove back. Another guy, looking for an old girlfriend he hadn’t seen in years, ended up sleeping in a public park. Both of these guys probably needed more and better medication.

Then there’s my friend Pat McCafferty. More than a few people call him a wild man, a risk taker and a smooth negotiator. Still more call him a great cop. McCafferty retired as a Connecticut State Police detective in 1993. Among his numerous murder investigations was the Crafts woodchipper case, which some people -- most notably Henry Lee -- call “Divorce, Connecticut Style.” In the early stages of the state police probe, McCafferty discovered pieces of the late Helle Crafts’ blue terrycloth robe among wood chips by a brook in Newtown, along with an envelope addressed to her husband -- the woodchipper killer, Richard Crafts. These were big breaks in the investigation. McCafferty and many other troopers were awarded meritorious service medals.

A couple days after the World Trade Center bombing, McCafferty heard from a friend who had gone to the New York City Police Department’s First Precinct to help feed rescue workers. McCafferty drove there himself in October from his home in Florida.

At that time the restaurant Nino’s on Canal Street took over the free lunch service, feeding 3,000 people a day. Truckloads of donated food were hauled into the kitchen. One of the volunteer cooks was a chef at Windows on the World.

“I went to Nino’s to volunteer,” McCafferty said, “and wound up helping unload trucks, carrying out garbage, mopping floors, and meeting some of the most wonderful people I have ever met.” Among those he encountered was Kevin Barry of the NYPD Bomb Squad, brother of Connecticut State Police Col. Tim Barry.

At the end of his first shift McCafferty went to the First Precinct to thank some cops who had sent him to Nino’s. He was wearing jeans, a Connecticut State Police t-shirt and a CSP baseball cap.

It was also the end of the shift for the officers he went to thank. They were surprised, McCafferty said, to learn he had driven up from Florida. They were amazed that he had not been to Ground Zero. Minutes later, he was in the back of a NYPD cruiser en route to the site. The two cops explained to McCafferty what buildings had been where, the location where they believed a large number of FDNY bodies would be located, where the gold bullion was buried beneath the rubble, and how the rubble was being moved to Staten Island by barge rather than by truck. This was a lot to process. “I had just experienced the most emotional hour of my life,” McCafferty said. That would change.

Many cops worked as volunteers at Ground Zero after their regular shifts. One of those McCafferty met worked at the temporary morgue on-site.

Whenever any part of an emergency worker is found in the rubble -- including boots, badges, helmets -- it is placed on a litter and draped with an American flag. Any emergency worker in the area stands as an honor guard as the remains are carried out. As McCafferty was leaving the area, an honor guard formed. The remains -- from the hips down -- of a FDNY member had just been recovered. McCafferty stepped back, but a police lieutenant motioned him over and asked him to serve in the honor guard.

McCafferty saluted the remains as they were carried to the waiting ambulance. He left to visit some friends in Connecticut. He wept from Manhattan to Brewster, or, as he put it: “The air in New York City is still polluted as hell; my eyes watered from the First Precinct until I reached I-84.”

The looks of anger, hurt and disbelief on the faces of rescue workers linger with McCafferty. Surpassing that, he said, are the looks of will, determination, dedication and the willingness to do what must be done.

Law & Justice In Everyday Life

NEW COLUMN

State Capitol Shakedown an Absurd Abuse of Power

Woody Allen, Jeffrey Epstein Confer

As Shown On HBO’s Allen V. Farrow Documentary, CT State Police Major Crime Squad Files On Woody Allen Sex Assault Case

- NEWS ITEM: Epstein Files released in early 2026 show Woody Allen and his wife Soon-Yi Previn enlisted convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein for help getting a daughter into college. In a batch of emails, Previn criticized a minor girl for what she characterized as taking advantage of disgraced former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, who served prison time as a predator. Previn also had downplayed the work of her brother Ronan Farrow, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Harvey Weinstein case and the #MeToo movement.

Among Many New Reports On Woody - Epstein

-

And

• Visiting Woody in Newport was ‘important trip’ for Epstein

• Itinerary included lunch w/ Allen & Soon-Yi

Story Via ProJo 2-18-26

-

FLASHBACKS:

Woody, Mia And Frank Maco

Was Published In Connecticut Magazine in 1997

And In The Collection Law & Justice In Everyday Life In 2002

Columns That Follow Were Published In The New Haven Register Group / Digital First Media And In The Collection more COOL JUSTICE, Chapter 3, Woody Allen’s Slippery Tap Dance, in 2014

more COOL JUSTICE

-

Woody, Mia And Frank Maco

The Litchfield County state’s attorney thought he’d seen it all -- and then he ran into Mia Farrow and Woody Allen.

Frank Maco might just as well have been Zelig, the Woody Allen character who appears out of nowhere in the maelstrom of historic events.

A career civil servant, Maco made his mark in the state criminal justice system by grinding out cases and staying out of the limelight. Early on, he became known as a quiet but effective crime fighter.

As a young prosecutor in the 1970s, Maco tried cases before Judge Nicholas Cioffi in Bridgeport.

“Frank is very reflective, extremely reflective,” says Cioffi, the former Superior Court judge and public safety commissioner. “He’s a very calm, level-headed guy. He’s not flashy, but he surely gets the job done; his style is not to become the focal point, but just to present the case to the jury.”

Nevertheless, Maco has been in the international spotlight for nearly five years, ever since he began directing the child abuse investigation of Woody Allen. Now the Litchfield County state’s attorney faces possible suspension or disbarment for his handling of the case. It’s a situation – the celebrities, the tabloid media, the controversy – seemingly at complete odds with his upbringing and his early career. And now it just may do him in.

Frank S. Maco, now 50, grew up on Bridgeport’s East Side. He moved to Stratford as a 9-year-old, to the house where his parents, now in their 70s, still live.

His father Frank J. Maco, a member of the famed Blue Devils 88^th Army infantry division, raised his son on sports and history.

“He acquired a sense of history by living it; the Blue Devils invaded Italy a full month before Normandy,” Maco says of his father. “My dad wanted to impress this sense of history upon me.” Like many teen-age boys of the 1950s and ‘60s, young Maco idolized Mickey Mantle and John F. Kennedy.

“Say what you will about President Kennedy, given the recent revelations about his character,” Maco says, “he got people like me, and a lot of my generation, to say, ‘Hey, look, let’s get involved in public service – that’s not a bad life.’ Some say we were the last generation that had heroes.”

Maco still treasures his correspondence, in 1966 and 1967, with then U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy. As president of Fairfield University’s College Democrats, Maco had invited the New York senator to speak on campus. Kennedy could not make it to Fairfield, but he wrote Maco two kind notes.

Pictures on the recreation room wall at Maco’s parents’ house trace his career, from his swearing-in as a prosecutor in 1972 and as Litchfield County state’s attorney in 1988 all the way up to the Woody Allen case. His dad also keeps a series of scrapbooks from first grade to Maco’s visit to President Kennedy’s grave.

“It’s like therapy for me,” says the elder Maco, who retired after 30 years as a factory foreman and has worked the last 20 as a deputy sheriff in Bridgeport Superior Court.

Father and son have worked the court system simultaneously. “He gets to see, day in and day out, people I grew up with in the system, lawyers and cops,” says Maco of his dad. “He enjoys that.”

Maco’s mother, Theresa, known to her friends as Tess, is the consummate old-style mother who insists on dinner at the table on time. “She wants her family to be healthy and strong – that’s what her whole life has been,” he says.

Maco, his wife of 24 years, Nancy Lou, and their teen-age son Frank Jr. live just a few miles away in Stratford. “My parents and I have been exceptionally close, and that’s the toughest part about going through what I’ve been going through.”

Maco is now in his 25^th year as a prosecutor in Connecticut. After Bridgeport, he served as head of the racketeering unit for the chief state’s attorney’s office. Along the way Maco drew the notice of the late state Supreme Court Justice T. Clark Hull, who recommended him for a post as a state’s attorney. “He is the smoothest prosecutor who has ever appeared before me,” Hull said.

Among Maco’s early triumphs was the arrest and conviction of Edward Palmer, a man who became known as Bridgeport’s bumper rapist.

It was December of 1980. The women of Bridgeport dressed like men and drove with dogs in their cars. They carried knives and unlicensed guns.

“The word was out,” says retired Bridgeport police inspector Anthony Fabrizi. “Women were in a panic because there had been nine known attacks by this guy.”

Two of the women were attacked after their cars were struck in the rear, leading police to brand the culprit the bumper rapist. The rapist wore a mask and blindfolded his victims. Obstacles to solving the case seemed insurmountable. But Fabrizi developed a plan with then assistant state’s attorney Frank Maco: Two Bridgeport police officers, a husband-and-wife team, would be set up in a car as decoys.

Palmer took the bait, rear-ending someone he thought was just another woman driver. But when he approached the car with his gun exposed, the male officer hidden in the back seat shot at him, prompting an exchange of gunfire. Cops were later able to trace the bullets Palmer fired to a gun he stole from a University of Bridgeport security guard.

“Frank made sure we didn’t have any entrapment problems,” Fabrizi says, “I wanted to kill the guy, but Frank said, ‘You can’t do that, Tony; we’ll salt him away forever.’”

Maco told Superior Court Judge Martin Nigro, “This man should never be allowed to live outside prison walls.” Nigro obliged.

Palmer received the longest sentence in Fairfield County history: a minimum of 77 years in prison, and a maximum of two life terms plus 57 years.

When Maco arrived in Litchfield in 1988 as state’s attorney for Litchfield County, the Northwest Corner seemed more like the Wild West than a retreat for New York artists and literary types.

Roy Duntz laughed after he burned down the Salisbury town garage in 1982 to cover the theft of some chainsaws. Why not? He had the closest thing to diplomatic immunity in Northwest Connecticut. The shield was his older brother Richard – known to police as the cocaine kingpin of the region in the 1980s – who intimidated law enforcement officials and witnesses alike.

Richard Duntz had escaped jail time despite being convicted of shooting out the window of a state trooper’s house.

“He always walked and he was feared by everyone,” says James Hiltz, a retired state police lieutenant who headed the Major Crime Squad in western Connecticut. “But Frank stood up to him.”

Before Maco could put Roy Duntz in jail for the garage fire, Duntz burned down the Salisbury Town Hall. His accomplice in the town hall torching, Earl Morey II, confessed to the crime, but he was so scared of Richard Duntz, he asked police to “slap him around so he would look like he was beat up” and forced to confess.

Morey’s fears were well grounded. On Oct. 23, 1986, Richard Duntz shot him three times in the back of the head and killed him. Maco convinced a jury in 1990 that Richard Duntz executed Morey for daring to cross him by linking his brother to the town hall fire.

Roy Duntz was sentenced to 25 years for the town hall fire; Richard Duntz was sentenced to 60 years for the murder of Earl Morey.

“Lawlessness can be put down if good people come forward and testify,” Maco said after convicting Roy Duntz the first time.

Richard Duntz gained a retrial in 1994 because of errors by the trial judge in admitting some of the evidence. Duntz was convicted again, by Maco’s assistant, David Shepack, and died in jail.

Maco had planned to handle the retrial himself. But he was forced to withdraw from the case on May 6, 1994. Woody Allen had seen to that.

The Mia Farrow-Woody Allen relationship first exploded in January 1992, when Farrow found photos of her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, posing naked in Allen’s New York City apartment. Later that year, in August, Allen was accused of molesting and sexually assaulting his 7-year-old adopted daughter, Dylan, at Farrow’s Bridgewater home. Initially, the complaint was filed with New York authorities, but they took no action. Paul Williams, a Caseworker of the Year for New York City’s Human Resources Administration, tried to bring the case to Family Court (against the orders of his superiors) and was fired for “unethical conduct.” Seven months later he was reinstated as a supervisor, a position he still holds.

Maco first learned of the case in August 1992 when he got a call at home from a prosecutor in his office, David Shepack. On vacation, Maco initially thought Shepack was harassing him with a bad joke.

Then, about a week later, Allen held a press conference at a New York hotel announcing that he was the subject of a child- abuse investigation.

“I told the state police to acknowledge that there is an investigation, but to make no further comment,” Maco recalls. “We didn’t identify the nature of the investigation or any of the possible charges.”

Maco refused to talk about specifics of the investigation, limiting his comments to elements that have made their way into the public record.

Interviews with dozens of law enforcement officials and mental health professionals familiar with the case, as well as a review of court documents and other records, show the range of the case against Allen.

On Aug. 4, 1992, a babysitter claims she saw Allen kneeling in front of Dylan, who was sitting on a couch in the den of the Bridgewater home. Dylan was wearing a dress, but no underpants. She stared blankly at the TV screen. The babysitter told authorities she noticed that Allen’s head was between the girl’s legs, very close to her crotch.

Over the course of the following 13 months, Dylan would tell her mother, psychologists, doctors, social workers and police that Allen touched her – with the tip of his right index finger – several times that day.

After the couch incident, the child’s account has Allen taking her up to the master bedroom and into a crawl space for some father-daughter time to play with a train.

“He put his finger in my vagina. He made me lay on the floor all ways, on my back, on my side, my front. He kissed me all over.”

“I didn’t like it,” she continued. “Daddy told me not to tell and he’d take me to Paris, but I did tell.”

Police found hair fibers in the crawl space consistent with Allen’s, but forensic specialist Dr. Henry Lee, chief of Connecticut’s state crime laboratory, believes the evidence could not conclusively place Allen in the attic.

“We found hair in the attic, but what does it prove?” Lee says. “It doesn’t necessarily prove guilt.”

Woody Allen would rebuff efforts by Connecticut state police and Paul Williams of New York to interview him. Just a few weeks after the Aug. 4 incidents, Allen tried to set preconditions for an interview with the state police. One of the preconditions was that any statements made by Allen could not be used to impeach him. The state police did not comply.

Allen’s lawyers also asked Maco to be present for his statement. Maco declined, fearing he would then be a witness and have problems if he took the case to court.

Then on Jan. 6, 1993, Allen appeared at the state police barracks in Litchfield for a three-and-a-half-hour interview. He denied assaulting Dylan. He denied ever having been in the crawl space.

But Allen did say he might have reached into the crawl space on occasion, either to grab one of the children or to give them a soda. State police reminded Allen that to reach into the crawl space, he would have had to enter a small closet first. Allen vehemently denied entry to the crawl space.

But when state police told Allen they had taken fingerprints from the crawl space, he said it was possible that his prints would be found there. State police characterized Allen’s statements as inconsistent.

During the Allen investigation, Maco received a warning from a high-ranking state police official.

“He [Maco] was told,” says a retired officer, “that the Allen people were hiring private detectives to try to get some dirt on us.”

One of their key targets was Sgt. John Mucherino, a primary investigator for Maco. They wanted to know if Mucherino was a drinker or a gambler, if he had any marital problems.

Allen’s private detectives were compartmentalized, hired by different lawyers and subcontractors working for him, police say. The private detectives included former FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration agents, even former state cops who were friends with Mucherino.

One private investigator says he met with Allen’s top criminal lawyer, Elkan Abramowitz. “Abramowitz had an aura about him; he was very charismatic,” the detective said. “I worked for Woody Allen, but I have a personal code.”

The detective said he alerted Mucherino to the nature of the inquiry, then he filed a report and received a substantial fee.

Abramowitz has denied meeting with private detectives on the case, although he acknowledged 10 or more worked for Allen. “We didn’t go into any kind of smear campaign against the police,” he says.

The prying took its toll on Maco. “It was after that that I saw a big change in him,” says investigation team member Frank D’Amico, a retired police officer. “He was tense for a long time. He just took more precautions with everything he did.”

“They were just trying to disrupt the case. We all know today, in light of O.J., that if you have nothing to go on, you go after law enforcement.”

D’Amico says the Allen team played a number of dirty tricks. Other law enforcement officials suspect that they had something to do with the false rumor that a top police investigator on the Allen case was trying to sell a videotape of Dylan to the tabloid media.

The state police immediately began an internal affairs investigation of this trooper, who was cleared. Former Chief State’s Attorney Austin McGuigan said the allegations had to affect “the investigator’s ability to do his job.”

“The investigation closed down for about 10 days,” Maco recalls. “About this time, I was told there was a campaign to disrupt the investigation and discredit the investigators, being orchestrated out of New York.”

“If anyone was watching me or following me,” he says, “I’m sure it was one of the most boring assignments they ever had. But just the thought concerns you, that somebody somewhere might be watching what you’re doing after you leave the office.”

“The word on the street was, ‘Maco’s office is beyond reproach, but we have Maco covered.’ I took it as someone saying I could have been dirty. That stays in your mind. That made it more important for me to explain my decision so people would know it was not based on by being dirty, but on a methodology that is proven.”

Woody Allen proclaimed his innocence on the steps of Yale University in March 1993. A panel of experts from Yale, headed by pediatrician Dr. John Leventhal, concluded no abuse had taken place.

The conclusion itself was an anomaly. The standard practice in the field is to state whether the subject’s behavior is consistent with having suffered sexual abuse.

“Concluding guilt or innocence is not the role of a mental health team – that’s for the court,” says Dr. Diane Schetky, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont, co-author of the widely used textbook Child Sexual Abuse and co-editor of Clinical Handbook of Child Psychiatry and the Law.

Maco had commissioned the Yale study with instructions to determine whether Dylan was a viable witness who could stand up in court. He said that enlisting Yale’s assistance was the biggest mistake he made in the case.

“Regardless of what the Connecticut police wanted from us,” Leventhal said in an April 1993 deposition, “we weren’t necessarily beholden to them. We did not assess whether she’d be a good witness in court. That’s what Mr. Maco may have been interested in, but that’s not necessarily what we were interested in.”

Yale, Maco says, “took the case and ran away with it. I gave their report very little weight.”

An examination of the Yale report and court documents shows:

· The Yale team used psychologists on Allen’s payroll to make mental health conclusions. “That seems like a blatant conflict of interest; they should have excluded themselves,” Schetky says.

· Custody recommendations were made even though the team never saw Allen and any of the children together. “I’d sure want that information,” Schetky says.

· The team refused to interview witnesses who could have corroborated the molestation claims.

· The team destroyed its notes. “I don’t know why they would,” Schetky says. “They shouldn’t have anything to hide, unless there’s disagreement.”

· Leventhal, the only medical doctor on the team, did not interview Dylan. “How can you write about someone you’ve never seen?” Schetky asks.

· The night before Leventhal gave a statement to Farrow’s attorney, he discussed the scenario with Abramowitz, the head of Allen’s legal team, for about 30 minutes.

· The team interviewed Dylan nine times. For three consecutive weeks, she said Allen violated her sexually. In several of the other sessions she mentioned a similar type of abuse. When Dylan did not repeat the precise allegation in some of the sessions, the team reported this as an inconsistency.

The nine interviews were “excessive,” Schetky says. “The danger is the child feels like she’s not believed if she’s asked the same questions over and over.”

Leventhal himself later admitted, in sworn testimony in the custody case, that he made several mistakes during the course of the investigation. One of those was his false characterization of Dylan’s active imagination as a thought disorder.

In the Yale report, Leventhal cited what he called “loose associations” by the child. He said she talked about looking in a trunk and seeing “dead heads.” When advised that Mia Farrow had a trunk in her attic in which she kept wigs from her movies on wig blocks, Leventhal acknowledged this was not evidence of a fantasy problem or a thought disorder.

The pediatrician also attempted to categorize Dylan’s banter as “magical thinking,” citing her vivid description of a sunset. However, after being advised that Mia Farrow described the dark sky upon leaving New Haven in the evening as “the magic hour,” Leventhal said he was “less concerned” about the incident as an example of “loose thinking.”

“This guy Leventhal never left his office, never talked to the child, but he gave a wonderful account and said, ‘I exonerate you, Woody,’” D’Amico says. “Boy, I wouldn’t want to carry that flag around – ‘Leventhal says I’m OK.’ ”

A Yale spokeswoman says the hospital stands by the report and Leventhal’s national reputation.

On Sept. 20, 1993 state police detective Bea Farleakas and Dylan Farrow sat on the floor of Maco’s office, surrounded by stuffed animals. It was not an unusual scene. Children, sometimes victims, were regular visitors to the office, which is just a few doors from the renowned West Street Grill off Litchfield’s town green.

Joining Farleakas, who was the primary detective in the Allen probe, and Dylan was Michelle Prindle, Maco’s secretary. Dylan handed out the stuffed animals and they played for about an hour.

Maco, D’Amico, and state police Lt. Charles McIntyre looked on as Farleakas, Dylan and Prindle finished their play session. Maco then got down on the floor and played and talked with Dylan for about half an hour.

“We talked about kid stuff,” Maco says. “It was like being with my own kid. We were having fun – until the button was pushed. I tried to discuss the incident. I saw her saying to me with her blank stare, ‘This is the last place I want to be. I can’t deal with this. Is this Yale? What are they doing to me?’ ”

Maco backed off. “I saw complete withdrawal any time I tried to discuss the incident. This was complete withdrawal and regression. At the time she was so fragile and damaged I knew she would not be a good witness. I knew she needed healing. I was not going to interfere with her recovery.”

Days later, Maco held a press conference in which he said state police had compiled enough evidence to charge Allen with a crime, but that he’d decided not to approve an arrest warrant in order to spare Dylan the trauma of a trial.

Allen objected strongly to Maco’s characterization of him as a criminal who would never get to refute the charge in court. So strong were his objections, in fact, that in October he filed an ethics complaint against Maco with both the Statewide Grievance Committee – a lawyers’ disciplinary group – and the state Criminal Justice Commission, which hires and fires prosecutors. While the Criminal Justice Commission exonerated Maco that December, the Statewide Grievance Committee voted 6-5 with two abstentions to investigate Maco for alleged misconduct in his handling of the case. The vote overturned a ruling by Maco’s local committee, which had found in his favor.

Susan Levine of Litchfield, a member of the local grievance committee, recalls the deliberations over Maco’s actions.

“We ruled that even though Maco was close to the line, he didn’t cross it,” said Levine, who is also the top borough official in Litchfield. “We were very surprised when statewide overturned it. Why empower local grievance committees and then take away the power? If Maco had acted inappropriately, that’s the way [our] ruling would have gone. Maybe they just wanted to see Woody Allen.”

Levine’s comments were echoed by Superior Court Judge Raymond Norko, who characterized the Statewide Grievance Committee’s actions as “star driven, sloppy and careless.”

One of the members of the statewide panel, Bridgeport attorney Daiga Osis, had been an opponent of Maco in a vigorously contested arson case in Bridgeport – the burning of the Town Fair Tire store on Boston Avenue in the 1980s. Osis had argued an appeal against Maco and lost.

“The name of the prosecutor did not concern me; I have no personal relationship with Maco,” Osis says. But she cast what could have been the deciding vote in the 6-5 decision to investigate Maco. Hiltz, a retired state police lieutenant, called her action “sour grapes” and “payback.”

“I did nothing illegal, unethical or immoral,” Maco says. “I’ll go anywhere to defend that.”

These days, Maco awaits the final word from the Statewide Grievance Committee, which could vote to remove him from his job. Maco says he has rejected offers of a settlement from the Allen camp, which would require him to apologize for his accusatory statements.

He credits his family with the support that has enabled him to endure. “I’ve gained strength from Nancy Lou, from my son and of course, from Mom and Dad. Whatever strength I have comes from them.”

In one particularly intense period, his son Frank Jr., then 9 years old, pulled him through. Allen had branded Maco dishonest and a coward during press conferences after Maco’s announcement that he was closing the case.

“Frank saw the news article, and all I could do was tell him that given the nature of my business, I’m sure I’ve been called a coward and dishonest before, but I don’t think I’ve ever been called both of those at the same time,” Maco recalls. “He laughed, but then he had some fear for my job, so he assured me he had a friend, another young boy whose dad was in the insurance business. He said, ‘Don’t worry, Dad, I’m sure we can always get you a job in insurance.’ ”

-

Chapter 3, more COOL JUSTICE - Woody Allen’s slippery tap dance

Maureen Orth Cooks Woody Allen Like Thanksgiving Turkey

Oct. 7, 2013

Author’s Note: I wrote about the Woody Allen sex abuse case in 1994 and 1995 as editor of The Register Citizen and followed up with a profile of then Litchfield County State’s Attorney Frank Maco for Connecticut Magazine in 1997. In between, I had the opportunity to publish a few pieces about the case for Page Six in The New York Post.

The most startling experiences I’ve had covering the Woody Allen sex abuse case keep on repeating themselves, even to this day.

Just last week, the latest in a line of about a dozen private investigators I have known for many years told me, “Oh yeah, I worked for Woody, too.”

The difference with this fellow, though, is, he wasn’t digging up dirt on Connecticut State Police detectives or prosecutors. His job, with a colleague, was to shadow Mia Farrow’s children at locations including the Danbury Fair Mall.

This latest revelation shows the lengths to which Allen went in the midst of his custody battle 20 years ago with former partner Mia Farrow of Bridgewater.

These PIs did not come cheap. Some of them – former FBI and DEA agents, state troopers and municipal cops – charge more per hour than the top tiers of Connecticut lawyers. When your net worth has been estimated at upwards of $65 million, you can hire the best. You can reach out to all kinds of people.

The case has been resurrected with Maureen Orth’s blockbuster opus in the November edition of Vanity Fair. Orth elicited the first public statements by Dylan Farrow, now 27, regarding allegations that Allen violated her in 1992.

Allen has vehemently and repeatedly denied the charges.

“I was cracking,” the Farrow daughter told Orth. “I had to say something. I wanted it to stop … ”

The 8,000-word story generated extraordinary interest in Farrow’s son Ronan as “L’il Blue Eyes,” possibly the biological son of Frank Sinatra rather than Woody Allen. Notably, all of the eight children interviewed said they wanted nothing to do with Allen.

Other highlights include the impact of Farrow’s activism in Darfur, her relationships with Philip Roth and Vaclev Havel and the missing case file about Allen at New York’s Child Welfare Administration.

I interviewed the caseworker for that New York agency, Paul Williams, in 1995. The Page Six headline was “Unsilenced ghost of Woody case.” Named Caseworker of the Year in 1991, Williams was fired in March 1993 after he refused to remain silent when superiors removed him from the Allen case and ordered him not to cooperate with investigators from Connecticut and the Manhattan DA’s office. He was reinstated seven months later, in September 1993, with the help of Brooklyn lawyer Bruce Baron and feminist author Gloria Steinem.

“They played it dirty and ugly,” Williams told me.

In another bizarre twist, I got to interview a Queens, NY private detective known as “Gotti’s PI,” Victor Juliano. This happened after many people – including Allen – might have wondered if Sinatra was kidding when he supposedly threatened to have Allen’s legs broken.

I asked Juliano if he had gone to the maximum security federal prison in Marion, Illinois, to visit the mob boss known as the Dapper Don on Allen’s behalf.

“Don’t even talk to me about that – that’s bull!” Juliano barked. He would only admit to having a long-standing working relationship with one of Allen’s many attorneys, Jake Laufer: “I worked for Jake Laufer lots of times – It’s not like I just met him.”

Sources said Juliano persuaded John Gotti that if Sinatra ever said anything about leg breaking, it wasn’t to be taken seriously, and that the Woody-Mia war was a family matter best left alone.

In the new Vanity Fair piece, Farrow talks about fears that Allen would cause her harm and then going to Sinatra for help. She notes that Allen’s driver was related to a confessed murderer and mob enforcer. Farrow goes for a ride with a mysterious man who gives her names and phone numbers to call for help as needed. She says that made her feel safer.

Among the hundreds of stories published since Vanity Fair posted a preview of the Orth article on line, some address the issue of whether to watch Allen’s films. This is yet another repeat of the quandary faced by filmgoers 20 years ago, rekindling discussion about the art versus the artist.

Former Connecticut prosecutor:

Kidnapping charges still possible for Woody Allen

Feb. 3, 2014

NEW HAVEN – A former Connecticut prosecutor says the act of taking a minor to a secluded area for a sexual assault constitutes Class A felony kidnapping – a charge famed actor-director Woody Allen could still potentially face.

“The act of taking the minor victim to the attic for the purpose of committing a sexual assault would be a kidnapping in the first degree for which there is no statute of limitations,” attorney Proloy K. Das, a former state appellate prosecutor now with the Hartford firm Rome McGuigan, told the New Haven Register Monday.

Litchfield County State’s Attorney David Shepack, who succeeded Frank Maco, declined to comment. However, Mark Dupuis, spokesman for Chief State’s Attorney Kevin Kane, said: “There is nothing pending at this time. If we were to receive a complaint, it would be reviewed and the appropriate action taken.” Dupuis declined to respond to questions regarding the viability of potential kidnapping charges.

The allegations against Allen are more than 20 years old. They resurfaced over the weekend when Dylan Farrow – who had been adopted by Allen and Mia Farrow – detailed the sexual assault accusations in an open letter to The New York Times.

The Connecticut State Police Major Crime Squad and forensic expert Henry Lee investigated the case. During the probe, Allen hired teams of private detectives to investigate law enforcement officials, the Farrow children and the Yale Child Study team. Then-prosecutor Maco determined there was probable cause to arrest Allen, but declined to pursue the case for fear of damaging the already fragile 7-year-old. Connecticut Magazine examined the case in 1997. Vanity Fair followed up in November 2013.

Allen has denied wrongdoing throughout the course of the case and issued another statement Sunday.

Unbridled, expensive fantasies of Woody Allen mouthpiece

Feb. 9, 2014

The Elkan Abramowitz Fantasy Special – as told to CNN’s Erin Burnett and Nightline’s Juju Chang among many others – has driven much of the false and misleading coverage about Dylan Farrow’s open letter accusing her adoptive father Woody Allen of sexual assault.

Abramowitz is Allen’s long-time lawyer and public voice.

In the lawyer role in this case, Abramowitz has a zero batting average.

Abramowitz lost two ethics complaints against the Connecticut prosecutor who found probable cause to arrest Allen. Abramowitz lost the custody battle with Mia Farrow.

Why, then, is this clown taken seriously? Why is he paid in the range of $1,000 per hour and considered one of the top lawyers in Manhattan?

A couple of lawyers asked me those questions.

The short answer: Abramowitz is extremely clever at confusing issues, parsing words and changing the course of a conversation in a nanosecond. Just watch his recent performances on CNN, Nightline and in other forums. It helps, of course, if his spiels go on without substantive challenge. One striking exception is Maureen Orth’s Feb. 7 post of 10 bullet points at Vanity Fair:

I came into this case a little late, in 1994, as editor of the local daily paper for Litchfield County, The Register Citizen. I investigated the complaints against State’s Attorney Frank Maco and the bogus Yale report used by Abramowitz to repeat false claims against Dylan Farrow. In the course of my reporting, many of the private investigators working for Team Woody told me about their efforts to dig up dirt on cops, prosecutors and children in the family.

As I reported in Connecticut Magazine in 1997, Allen’s private detectives were compartmentalized, hired by different lawyers and contractors. The PIs who talked to me were all highly paid, some of them billing several hundred dollars or more per hour at that time. They included former FBI and DEA agents and former state police and municipal detectives.

Here’s how one of them described Abramowitz in a meeting: “Abramowitz had an aura about him; he was very charismatic.”

In a phone interview leading up to the Connecticut Magazine story, Abramowitz denied meeting with private detectives on the case. He did acknowledge 10 or more investigators worked for Allen. “We didn’t go into any kind of smear campaign against the police,” Abramowitz told me.

It was probably just a coincidence that a state police detective working on the Allen sexual assault case was falsely accused of trying to sell a videotape of Dylan Farrow to the tabloid media.

As I watched Abramowitz pitch his talking points in several venues over the past week I took careful note of his statements. Following are just three Abramowitz assertions that struck me as outright falsehoods or willful errors of omission. Each Abramowitz quote is followed by some of the fact checking I shared with HuffPostLive on Feb. 7 and is based on published reports in The Register Citizen and Connecticut Magazine:

“Yale New Haven experts … investigated the matter totally.” The Yale Child Study team asked state police for a witness list. State police refused to provide it because they did not trust Yale. Yale didn’t know about Allen changing his story regarding hair found in the attic. The team never saw Allen and any of the children together. The leader of the team, Dr. John Leventhal, did not interview Dylan Farrow.

“Dylan was having difficulty distinguishing between fantasy and reality.” This is a key mantra for Abramowitz and Team Woody. However, Leventhal admitted that claim was erroneous. In the report, Leventhal cited what he called “loose associations” by the child. He said she talked about looking in a trunk and seeing “dead heads.” When advised that Mia Farrow had a trunk in her attic in which she kept wigs from her movies on wig blocks, Leventhal acknowledged this was not evidence of a fantasy problem or a thought disorder. The pediatrician also attempted to categorize Dylan Farrow’s banter as “magical thinking,” citing her vivid description of a sunset. However, after being advised that Mia Farrow described the dark sky upon leaving New Haven in the evening as “the magic hour,” Leventhal said he was “less concerned” about the incident as an example of “loose thinking.”

“Woody took a lie detector test and passed the lie detector test.” In fact, Woody Allen refused to take a lie detector test administered by the Connecticut State Police. Police did not ask Mia Farrow to take a lie detector test. Abramowitz has some explaining to do here. Who administered the test referenced by Abramowitz? What were the specific results of the Allen examination[s]? How many tests were taken? What questions were asked? How was each answer evaluated?

Also of note:

The Yale team destroyed its notes. The night before Leventhal gave a statement to the Farrow family’s attorney, he discussed the scenario with Abramowitz for about 30 minutes. The team interviewed Dylan Farrow nine times. For three consecutive weeks, she said Woody Allen violated her sexually. Among her statements to investigators: “He put his finger in my vagina. He made me lay on the floor all ways, on my back, on my side, my front. He kissed me all over … I didn’t like it. Daddy told me not to tell and he’d take me to Paris, but I did tell.” In several of the other sessions, Dylan Farrow mentioned a similar type of abuse. When she did not repeat the precise allegation in some of the sessions, the team reported this as an inconsistency.

The Yale team had been asked to determine if the seven-year-old child’s behavior was consistent with having suffered sexual abuse and if she would be a credible witness. The team was not qualified to conduct a criminal investigation.

“Concluding guilt or innocence is not the role of a mental health team — that’s for the court.” That’s the word I got in 1997 from Dr. Diane Schetky, then an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont, co-author of the widely used textbook Child Sexual Abuse and co-editor of Clinical Handbook of Child Psychiatry and the Law.

The botched Yale report is among the major weapons being used against Dylan Farrow at this time. I find this quite telling.

New York Times Bent Rules For Woody Allen, But Not For Frank Maco

Feb. 14, 2014

News item 2-5-14: The New York Times said it may publish an op-ed by famed moviemaker Woody Allen that responds to allegations of sexual assault by Dylan Farrow, his adopted daughter.

The dilemma of publishing a response as a full op-ed was addressed on many levels at The Times. The public editor, or reader representative, reported on the challenges to inform while bending the paper’s own rules. The standard procedure is to run a letter to the editor.

Public Editor Margaret Sullivan said she reached out to Editorial Page Editor Andrew Rosenthal, who told her, “They (the Woody Allen camp) asked and we said, ‘Yes, send it in.’”

Sullivan noted that publishing such a piece is unusual for The Times’ opinion pages.

It’s not certain that The Times will publish the piece, Sullivan wrote in Public Editor’s Journal. She quoted Rosenthal as saying, “It comes down to the editing process,” something that all op-ed pieces are subject to.

Really?

There was an editing process?

The Times published Allen’s op-ed two days later.

Clearly, the fact-checking department was out to lunch.

For example, in the very first paragraph, Allen wrote, “Twenty-one years ago, when I first heard Mia Farrow had accused me of child molestation, I found the idea so ludicrous I didn’t give it a second thought. ... It was my show business attorney who told me she was bringing the accusation to the police and I would need a criminal lawyer.”

In reality, the criminal referral was made by a pediatrician.

Also, as noted Feb. 7 by Maureen Orth in Vanity Fair — “10 Undeniable Facts About the Woody Allen Sexual-Abuse Allegation” — Allen had been in therapy with a child psychologist for alleged inappropriate behavior toward Dylan Farrow before the abuse allegation was presented to the authorities or made public. Mia Farrow had instructed her baby sitters that Allen was never to be left alone with Dylan.

In terms of fact checking, it goes downhill from there.

Allen stated the Yale Child Study team “spent months doing a meticulous investigation, interviewing everyone concerned, and checking every piece of evidence.” This is among a number of incorrect statements that should have been checked by The New York Times.

In a column Feb. 9, I noted similar assertions by Allen lawyer Elkan Abramowitz that struck me as outright falsehoods or willful errors of omission. For example, “Yale-New Haven experts … investigated the matter totally.” I reported that the Yale Child Study team asked state police for a witness list. State police officers refused to provide it because they did not trust Yale. Yale didn’t know about Allen changing his story regarding hair found in the attic. The team never saw Allen and any of the children together. The leader of the team, Dr. John Leventhal, did not interview Dylan Farrow.

In The New York Times op-ed, Allen states, “I very willingly took a lie-detector test and of course passed because I had nothing to hide.”

In fact, Woody Allen refused to take a lie detector test administered by the Connecticut State Police. Police did not ask Mia Farrow to take a lie detector test.

Who administered the test referenced by Allen and Abramowitz? What were the specific results of the Allen examination(s)? How many tests were taken? What questions were asked? How was each answer evaluated?

Critical thinking demands that any reader look at Allen’s op-ed and Orth’s 10 bullet points, side by side. Bottom line: The New York Times failed its duty to readers when it ran Allen’s op-ed without checking facts.

“Normally, we don’t publish a direct response” as a full op-ed article, Rosenthal told Sullivan, but instead as a smaller and less prominent letter to the editor. “In this case, it was so personal, we thought that we should.’”

Notably, when the prosecutor cited in Allen’s op-ed submitted a short statement to The New York Times, the paper rejected it.

Here’s what Sue Mermelstein, staff editor, New York Times letters department, wrote to retired Litchfield County State’s Attorney Frank S. Maco:

“Here’s the shortened form of your letter that I had planned to send for your review and approval. If you’d like to go ahead with publication, would you revise it a bit so it doesn’t echo the language that has appeared in other media already? We have limited space, so we need to keep it short while allowing you to make your point.

“ ‘To the Editor:

‘Re “Woody Allen Speaks Out,” by Woody Allen (Sunday Review, Feb. 9):

‘I served the State of Connecticut for 31 years as a prosecuting attorney. In 1992 I directed the investigation involving sexual assault allegations against Woody Allen.

‘I believe those who knew me and my work before 1992 would agree that I was a prosecutor who took a case, tried the case to a conclusion, if necessary, accepted the decision of the judge or jury, remained silent and took on my next case.

‘I was outraged by Mr. Allen’s describing me as a district attorney “champing at the bit to prosecute a celebrity case.” The attack upon my character was unprovoked, gratuitous, unwarranted and, most important, unsupported by my history as a prosecutor.

‘FRANK S. MACO

‘Stratford, Conn., Feb. 10, 2014’ ”

I asked Maco why he did not make any revisions.

“I refused to revise five sentences, which included a quote from Allen that I challenged,” Maco said.

POSTSCRIPT: Mermelstein, of The New York Times, had this to say Friday: “We were bending over backwards to give him (Maco) a chance to respond. I got a little annoyed because I spent a lot of time working with him … . I don’t want to speak for op-ed.” Mermelstein said she would forward my inquiry to op-ed, but that I might not get a response right away.

-

SUSAN CAMPBELL COLUMN

Allen V Farrow Will Put Spotlight Back On Infamous Case

Feb 20, 2021 .

Andy Thibault has spent a lifetime covering courts, cops and corruption, and in the ’90s, as an editor at The Register Citizen, he reported a story involving a shocking accusation that movie director and actor Woody Allen had sexually abused his stepdaughter, Dylan Farrow, then 7.

At the time, the little girl lived in Connecticut with her mother, the actor Mia Farrow, who had been Allen’s longtime companion.

Like a dog with a bone, Thibault, now city editor at the Waterbury Republican-American, continued to pursue the story for his newspaper, and eventually, for Connecticut magazine, and The New York Post, and his blog, Cool Justice.

Allen, who has consistently denied any wrongdoing — including in a recent memoir — was never charged with the crime — in no small part because a Yale New Haven Hospital Child Sexual Abuse Clinic report concluded that Dylan Farrow was not sexually abused, and that she either made up the stories or had been manipulated by her mother to accuse Allen.

The press — mostly — moved on. Allen continued to attract bold-faced names to his projects, and only a few stalwarts — mostly Thibault — remained committed to the story.

That’s about to change with “Allen v. Farrow,” a four-part documentary that debuts Sunday on HBO. Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering have turned the camera back on, using what “The Hollywood Reporter” calls “explosive” new information to make the case that we shouldn’t have moved on so fast.

The filmmakers have produced other meticulously researched documentaries about sexual abuse in the military and on college campuses, including 2012’s “The Invisible War” and 2015’s “The Hunting Ground,” among others. This docuseries is a natural progression; in an interview with the New York Times, Ziering called the childhood sexual abuse and incest “the third rail,” the topic no one wants to talk about.

COMPLETE COLUMN

Laurel Post

Episode 3 Promo

Yale’s Bogus #WoodyAllen report

Norwich Bulletin Coverage

Dylan Farrow at Quinebaug Valley Community College, flanked by Desiree Gardner and CJ McGuffy of Integrated Security Services, 4-23-18

… Program starts about 80 seconds into video …

VIDEO: Dylan Farrow Leads Forum: Accounts Of Abuse Before #MeToo: QVCC event 4-23-18

OMBUDS REPORT EXCERPT

Throughout the reporting period, DOC relied heavily on modified and full facility lockdowns as a routine operational response to staffing shortages rather than as limited measures reserved for genuine emergencies.

According to DOC, there were 387 lockdowns in 2025. Lockdowns repeatedly resulted in the suspension of visitation, recreation, educational and therapeutic programming, religious services, access to showers and hygiene, medical movement and sick call, and access to law libraries and communication services.

The OCO received numerous complaints—and confirmed through site visits—that individuals were confined to their cells for days at a time, missed medical appointments, were denied showers for multiple days, and lost visits with family members who had traveled long distances. Lockdowns occurred predictably around weekends, holidays, funerals, and other anticipated staffing stress points, reflecting an institutional dependence on confinement as a substitute for adequate staffing. While DOC has attributed these conditions to workforce attrition, vacancies, and call-outs—pressures the OCO acknowledges—the evidence demonstrates that DOC has no enforceable minimum staffing standards, objective limits on the frequency or duration of lockdowns imposed for non-emergency reasons, nor service-continuity requirements to preserve baseline conditions of confinement when staffing falls short.

COMPLETE REPORT w/ photos