Pardon applications denied included John Wismer, who was sentenced to life six years ago for the murder of a Rockland County deputy sheriff, and Timothy Selig, a Spring City man, convicted of multiple rape. Others rejected in bids for freedom were Ned Willink, Manville, sentenced for mail fraud; Meyer Knowles, Wright City, convicted of burglary; and Kenneth Rice, a Morrow youth, serving a term for assault.
CHAPTER 6
“It appears, Wartovsky, as if you’ve come a cropper,” Swift said as he pointed to the wire story. “The man whose father was going to buy a pardon from the governor is going to remain in prison.”
I was thunderstruck. If Kenny Rice wasn’t freed, the whole theory that Schmid was on the take seemed to totter. Could I have misunderstood Fred Rice?
I looked at the top of the National Press wire story, and I felt better.
WATER/TOWN (NP)—Gov. A. Pinckney Schmid today granted pardons to six state prison inmates—including an elderly man who shot a teenager who had played a Halloween prank on him.
August Hantz, 76, was convicted three years ago of firing a .22 caliber rifle at a group of youths who had left a brimming garbage can tipped against his front door and rung the bell. James O’Riordan, 16, was killed by the shot.
Hantz told a jury youngsters in his inner-city neighborhood had been harrassing him and his wife for years, but he had meant to fire the gun into the air only to frighten the youths.
The governor said in a prepared statement that he had pardoned Hantz because the man had shown remorse, and because the incident appeared to have been a tragic accident.
Also freed by gubernatorial action were:
Morris Carver, Seppervllle, serving a term for setting fire to a neighbor’s barn as the climax of a long feud. Schmid said the evidence in the case was circumstantial and there had been some question of community hostility to Carver when the jury was chosen.
Edward Stampel, a former clerk in the city records office, convicted of embezzlement. The governor said subsequent legal action demonstrated that Stampel had been following orders of a superior who was profiting from the actions.
Pardons also went to Samuel Tucker, rural Severs; Reed Weller, Manville; and Glenn Lightly, suburban Westover.
I was excited. “Look, there are two men here whose names are the same as people we talked to,” I said and told Swift about our contacts with Ivan Carver and Thomas Weller during the Week. “I don’t know what happened with Kenny Rice, but here are two more leads.”
Swift agreed. He told me to head back to Morrow and Manville the next Monday, and said he would send Whine to the city with the pictures he took at the senior citizen centers to see if he could get identifications.
Whine whined, complaining that he wasn’t paid to be an investigative reporter, but Swift gave him an offer he couldn’t refuse. “I know you’re not a reporter, Mr. Tandee, but if you can’t see your way clear to taking on this task, you’re not a photographer, either. Not at this paper, anyway.”
Monday morning, Whine, equipped with a tape recorder, was off to the city and I for the sticks. By midafternoon, I was driving down a country road outside Morrow looking for a mail box marked Rice. With directions from a filling station at the turnoff from the state highway, I found the mail box and a very muscular looking young woman who was just emptying it.
I got out of the car and asked, “Is this the Rice place?”
The woman, at least five feet ten and a good 170 pounds, replied, “Yes. You have business?”
“I’m Bob Wartovsky from the Capital…”
“From the capital? Daddy hasn’t got anything for you. He told you on the phone last Thursday he wasn’t going to pay a cent to you even if Kenny did have to stay in jail.”
“Whoa. I’m from the Capital Register & Press. I talked to Mr. Rice on Wednesday.”
“Oh, the reporter. Well, what Daddy told you didn’t happen. He isn’t going to pay any bribes to anybody. Besides, Kenny is eligible for parole in six or seven months.”
“Is your father home? I want to ask him some more about his talk with the governor.”
“That piss-ant! If I had gone up there I would have turned him in right then. But we don’t want to have any more trouble, and Daddy doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. He said too much to you last week. I could have ended up alone here with two men in prison.”
“But that’s it. The governor ought to be put in jail.”
“Well, somebody else is going to have to put him there. This family has had enough trouble.” She reached over and grabbed me by the shoulder, whirled me around, and shoved me back toward the car.
I’m not all that macho, but I’m not used to being woman-handled either. I started back toward the girl—she looked about twenty—and suddenly found myself lifted by the belt in the back of my pants and deposited in the car. It probably was lucky I left the door open; she might have chucked me through the window.
I thought about pressing the point for about nine seconds. The girl was standing in the middle of the dirt road leading to the farm and looked like she was prepared to stand there even if I tried to drive right at her. I put the car into reverse and headed back toward Morrow.
Bill Phlager came out of his office into the waiting room as soon as his secretary told bim on the intercom that I was there.
“I expected to be seeing or hearing from you. I’ve got someone in the office right now, but if you can wait, I think we’ve got some things to talk about.”
It took about forty minutes. I used the time to find a pay phone and call Swift to tell him about the meeting with Rice’s Amazonian daughter and my decision to go to Phlager.
Swift didn’t much like it. “You should have tried first to contact that other man—Carver, isn’t it? If you get the authorities into this, we can lose the jump we have on everyone.”
I called information for Ivan Carver. The phone was answered by a woman who said he was out, and she didn’t know when he would be back. I went back to Phlager’s office just as the door to the inner sanctum opened and Ivan Carver, looking wan, exited with another man. Carver started as he saw me standing in the D.A.’s outer office, paused, but then scuttled out.
Phlager came to the door. “Come in, Bob.”
As I sat in a seat next to his desk, Phlager said, “As you can see, I didn’t wait for you to call. When I heard about the pardons Friday, I phoned Carver and told him to get down here today. He brought his lawyer—and good thing too.
“Now, what have you got?”
Phlager listened as I recounted last week’s events, interrupting to press me for details when I told him of seeing Carver at the meeting with the governor. He jotted notes on a legal pad as I recounted the conversation with Rice and my encounter with Rice’s daughter.
“Well, Bob, you’ve just filled in the pieces of a puzzle that some of us have been working on for almost a year. I knew Carver and Rice were at the project because Bill Reckel came in here Wednesday and told me he had seen them.
“He went there wondering why in hell he had been invited because he quit farming five years ago. But he got the same kind of call Rice did and went to find out what it was all about it. He said Schmid started out asking him about the project, but all of a sudden brought up the fact that he was presiding over the pardon hearing and looked at him as if he expected Bill to pick up on it.
“Well, Bills brother-in-law is Meyer Knowles, who I put away a couple of years ago for a run of burglaries that had the farmers in the county up in arms. He waited for weekends when the families all went to town or church and looted them—we found enough TVs, microwaves, and other stuff at his place to stock Sears. The funny thing was, one of the television sets was Reckel’s, and the last thing he was interested in was getting Meyer out of the slammer. When he didn’t make a pitch, the governor ended the talk and Bill came to see me.