Walter Perry? And why, after everything Perry had done for the Hall, did the Hall send the matter to criminal court rather than to civil court, where the fraternity would have had a shot at quietly getting back its money?Īnd there was something else. Here were some of the questions I had: What happened to the two boxes of financial records-potentially exculpatory material that Perry says disappeared from his office-when the case broke? Is it true that two board members arranged, over Perry’s objections, to get a third member onto the board, creating the coalition that ultimately led to the audit that in turn resulted in The People of the State of New York v. When I called Dawson directly, he replied “No comment” to each of my questions. Dawson replied that the whole Perry business was “very sad,” but no. A’s intermediary named John Dawson, director of marketing for LDR Capital Management, to interest members of the board of trustees in speaking to me. At my request a loyal brother tried, through a St. Being a secret society, the Hall initially declined to respond to any specific questions about the case, instead furnishing a one-page official statement followed by a two-page legal reiteration.
“Everybody.”īut everybody is not always right. It may also be why nobody believes him, making Perry about the loneliest man on the planet. A better answer might just have been “No.” This is not Perry’s way, however, and that, as much as any crime, may be what got him into so much trouble.
Perry maintains he has said the same thing every time he’s been offered a chance to confess his guilt in exchange for leniency, and then has gone on to say a lot more, with elliptical baroque flourishes. “The whole question is absurd.” He insists that the finances of the organization were so tight that, if he had stolen $650,000, the organization’s bills couldn’t have been paid and he would have set off alarms all over the place. Did he steal the money? When I asked him, his face tightened, like that of a prizefighter about to deliver a punch. Then there was the matter of the 362 checks Perry wrote to himself on a Saint Anthony Hall account, which led to an internal investigation and ultimately to criminal prosecution, the outcome of which landed Perry in the Ogdensburg Correctional Facility, in upstate New York. For all this time, Perry says, he was the resident historian and keeper of the secrets a bill collector a scrutinizer of accounts a fixer for several varieties of “girl trouble” and a chauffeur for the alcoholically disabled. He worked out of a small office off the front hall at St. By universal agreement, Perry kept the Hall together with Krazy Glue for three decades, serving as chief undergraduate officer, then as a trustee, and finally as president of the board, often doubling as treasurer and secretary when those gentlemen failed to show up. in classical Greek whose heavy eyebrows, slim mustache, and glittering eyes suggest a kindly but perhaps unreliable uncle. Upwards of $650,000 stolen by the genial, erudite Walter Perry, a devoted member with a Ph.D. But the scandal created an uproar in the Hall that has tarnished its image, caused heavy soul-searching among some members, and led to prison time. I had come to investigate a crime that may seem like something out of the game of Clue. A’s in disguise, for nothing here is quite as it appears. A young woman with dark, Pre-Raphaelite hair came toward us. There was the creak of an opening door, then a soft tread. As part of their initiation, new members were said to be required to buy and then burn a plane ticket to China.Īs my friend pressed the front doorbell, I peered through the glass into a deep, dimly lit foyer that led to some stone steps. An Asian slave was rumored to be kept in the basement to do laundry for what is referred to as The Membership. I’d heard the stories: about the rivers of alcohol, the stacks of 20s by the backgammon board, the supposed drug use, the hot tub on the roof, the beauties reared back against the antique billiard table. A’s-“Probably the 10th or 12th member in my family,” he told me, conveying the tone of the place, then adding nervously, “Just don’t use my name.” He had arrived wearing New York black, no costume, but I had brought along an owlish mask, the closest thing I could find to the scarlet number in the Venetian-orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut. I had come with an out-of-towner who was genetically St. I was keen to move among the beautiful young things as they writhed to a D.J.’s beat. Before me, the building’s giddy Beaux-Arts façade glowed in the lamplight. It was nearly midnight and drizzling outside Columbia’s Saint Anthony Hall fraternity, and I was trying to sneak into its annual Halloween party.
0 kommentar(er)
