Twisted Triangle

by Caitlin Rother

  Margo called Patsy and laid out a condensed version of what Gene had put her through over the past week.

  “I told him we were together twice, but that it was over and it was not what he thought it was,” Margo said. “Gene is trying to use you to get to me, and I think it would be best for you and for me if we had no further contact.”

  “Do you think he would ever try to hurt me?” Patsy asked.

  “No, it’s me that he wants. So it’s in your best interest to disassociate yourself from me.”

  “Are you really sure this is the right thing to do?” Patsy asked, her voice reflecting her gradual acceptance of the situation.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, but I know that you’re right,” Patsy said. “Good luck.”

  Later, Margo recalled, “It was a very realistic decision to make, and unfortunately that’s what we had to do. She was a megamillions book writer and I was still very focused on getting my life back in order.”

  Brian was frustrated that the FBI wasn’t investigating Margo’s allegations or making any move to protect her from Gene, so he arranged for a former Fairfax County police captain to give her a polygraph on Saturday morning. She passed.

  The next day, Margo met with the same two FBI agents to finish giving her statement. She tried to give them as many specific details hoping to give them verifiable proof that she was telling the truth, and also the ammunition they needed to prosecute Gene for the abduction. She said, for example, that on Tuesday, while she was waiting for Gene to finish in court, she’d written a letter to John Hess and a chronology of the events so far. She’d put it into a stamped envelope addressed to John, but never sent it. Gene took it from her that night, saying she could have jeopardized the kids’ safety if “they” had seen her mail it.

  On Monday, June 29, Brian called the prosecutors to report that the polygraph proved Margo was telling the truth and that if the bureau didn’t start taking more aggressive action, he was going to send his own people out on the street to do it for them.

  Attorney Reid Weingarten filed for a mistrial that same day, saying he could not respond to Margo’s latest allegations in a timely fashion. The judge granted his request and scheduled a new trial for the end of July.

  Over the next couple of weeks, the FBI sent agents to Atlanta to look into Gene’s past activities there, and by mid-July, the bureau had gathered enough information that they posted two agents at Margo’s house from sundown to sunup in case Gene showed up. One stayed outside in his unmarked car; the other sat on the couch all night. This lasted a couple of days, until Margo told them that she found this approach too intrusive.

  So she and the bureau worked out another arrangement: during the week, she stayed the night in a secure part of Quantico, an area in the Jefferson Building usually reserved for high-profile or foreign counterintelligence informants. Then, on the weekend, Margo took the girls—along with two agents from the Washington field office—to Dianna’s house. Margo was still too scared to stay at the townhouse alone.

  Dianna, who had learned about the kidnapping from another agent the week it happened, was devastated. “I almost felt guilty because I hadn’t been there,” she said later. “Of all the times for me not to have gone with her, and then this was the time he pulled this stunt.”

  Tony Daniels, the top official at Quantico, believed the kidnapping story. So did Caroll Toohey.

  “I had no reason not to believe it,” Tony later said. “Margo didn’t seem to be the type of person to fabricate something like that.”

  Caroll thought it was understandable that a hostage in her situation, who was under Gene’s power and had fallen victim to Stockholm syndrome, would give in to sexual manipulations like Gene’s.

  “It’s completely reasonable that she’d go along with sex or anything else really,” he later said. “It’s not even out of the ordinary.”

  But the rank and file felt differently. While the agents were staying at Dianna’s house, they waited until Margo left the room to express their disbelief to Dianna that Gene, a respected FBI agent, would do such a thing to his estranged wife.

  “Do you really believe her?” they kept asking.

  Margo and Dianna felt frustrated with the sexist nature of their questions.

  After two weeks of alternating between strange beds at Quantico and Dianna’s house, Margo could no longer deal with the instability, so she asked her sister Jackie to come up from Tuscaloosa to be, in effect, her emotional bodyguard for a while.

  Jackie was the first family member or friend in whom she confided about her affair with Patsy, although she didn’t name names.

  “I want you to know that Gene’s accusing me of being gay and that I did have a very brief involvement with someone,” Margo said.

  She was scared to hear her sister’s response, but Jackie didn’t even blink.

  “That doesn’t matter,” she said, waving it off with her hand.

  Gene’s second trial was delayed until August 17.

  On August 13, Margo got a call from Brian Gettings, saying that the prosecutors wanted to know how she would feel if Gene got a year in prison for pleading guilty to two felonies—filing a false claim with the federal government and obstruction of justice—but was not charged with a violent crime.

  “I would feel like my life isn’t worth very much,” she said.

  “I understand, but by going forward with this, it would mean you don’t have to come back into court. Can you deal with this?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Tell them to do what they’re going to do and get this over with.”

  Margo felt she was powerless to say or do anything more to force the prosecution, so she tried to accept the fact that Gene was getting off easy. She figured that the prosecutors had determined that the abduction was too difficult to prove with no witnesses and little, if any, physical evidence. Gene had cleverly made sure of that.

  Tony Daniels later speculated as to why Gene was not prosecuted for the kidnapping: “You basically had a he-said, she-said. . . . Nobody saw the assault in the garage, so how do you prosecute a case like that?” Even given the scrapes, burns, and bruises on her body, he said, “There’s a hell of a difference between injuries and a kidnapping.”

  As Brian briefed Margo on the plea agreement, she was irked that Gene had made a special point of telling investigators that he would never testify against her if the government tried to prosecute her. They had already told Gene that Margo was not a target in the investigation, yet he continued to insist that the agreement include his statement. Margo saw this as simply a ploy so that he could claim in the divorce proceedings that he was trying to be reasonable and nice, even after his wife had leveled such horrible allegations against him.

  Jerry York’s case was transferred to Georgia, and his wife, Brenda, was granted immunity. Both of them agreed to testify against Gene.

  Before he’d abducted Margo, Gene had told George Murray, his former Nickelride partner, that he was innocent of the original two charges involving the home relocation scam, and asked George to be a character witness at his upcoming trial in June.

  “You got to tell me you didn’t do this,” George said.

  “No, I didn’t do it. They made this up to try to get me,” Gene replied.

  George agreed to testify but was never called.

  After the kidnapping, Gene called George at his office in Atlanta one afternoon and told him he was accepting a plea bargain.

  “Look, I want to let you know I’m pleading guilty,” Gene said.

  “What?” George said. “You’re telling me you did this? You swore to me you didn’t.”

  George, a Vietnam veteran for whom loyalty to a comrade means everything, was so angry that he spewed expletives at Gene and told him he never wanted to see or talk to him again.

  “I’m probably the last person he’d call if he was on fire because he’d know I’d throw gasoline on him,” George later said. “I saw this as a blatant b
etrayal of trust.”

  On August 19, Gene went to court to plead guilty to the two new charges and to officially accept the plea agreement, under which he agreed to resign, “to provide truthful, complete, and forthright information to the FBI at all times during the debriefing” of his crime, and to serve one year in prison. He submitted his letter of resignation that same day.

  “It has been a pleasure serving with you in happier times,” he wrote to Weldon Kennedy, an associate deputy director for administration at FBI headquarters.

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

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

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

  Margo got some help through the Post Critical Incident Trauma Program, a weeklong group therapy session for agents and nonsworn employees who had been through work-related or personal crises. This was the first time she had to tell her story to strangers, which proved to be a very difficult task.

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

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

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

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

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

  She was surprised and relieved by her friend’s response.

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass what anybody says,” Dianna said.

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

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

  However, Judge Jackson decided to give Gene only one year in prison, the term Gene had agreed to accept in the plea bargain. The judge faulted attorneys from both sides for putting together such an ill-formed plea agreement, saying he was in the frame of mind to put “a plague on both your houses.”

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

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

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

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

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

  “What’s he doing there?” her father asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ll call you back.”

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

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

  Paralyzed with fear, Margo didn’t say anything.

  “Come to the door,” he said again. “I need to talk to you.”

  “I am not coming to the door,” she yelled. “Just go away.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Good luck,” he said.

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

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

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

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