A real Man of God Malice in Wonderland a real man of god

SOMETHING

SMELLS,

COUNCILMAN

LEXINGTON

1993
When the Urban County Council raised sewer-user fees in April 1992, council member Michael A. Wilson voted yes -- even though he was more than $1,200 behind paying his own sewer bills.

The unpaid bills for his business and residential accounts were turned over to a collection agency, which successfully sued him earlier this year.

In a prepared statement released yesterday, Wilson said he had recently paid off the delinquent amount.

Unpaid sewer bills, however, weren't his only debt to the city of Lexington. Until this summer he was behind $4,278.67 on five years' worth of property tax bills, too.

Wilson has been whittling away at the sewer bills since April 1993, when a collection agency won a suit by default because Wilson offered no defense. Fayette District Judge David F. Hayse ordered Wilson to pay $1,243.87 -- an amount that included credit for payments made after the complaint was filed.

David Pratt, the attorney representing the collection agency, Kentucky Accounts Service Inc., said earlier this week that Wilson has been paying off the debt and and that the final payment was scheduled for November.

Wilson said yesterday that he had paid off the debt, but he would not specify when -- other than to say he had paid it before yesterday.

"I don't think that is as relevant as the fact it is paid," he said.

As of yesterday morning, the collection agency had not yet turned over to the city any of the money Wilson paid toward the complaint, and Pratt could not be reached to verify the payment.
Property tax problems
City records show the last payment the city sewer office received on any of Wilson's accounts was in July 1992.

By late last week, Wilson had paid the collection agency more than half the amount called for in the judge's ruling, Pratt said.

When reached yesterday at his council office, Wilson read the following prepared statement:

"This debt was related to my business I closed in March, and the entire amount has been paid.

"This experience, along with the number of calls I received about the sewer-user fee, caused me in January to announce that one of my campaign efforts would be to roll back the sewer-user fee by several percentage points, or to work to repeal it if we can still meet our obligations without it."

Although Wilson yesterday called the sewer-user fee "one of the primary goals of my campaign effort," he could not explain why he did not mention the issue during a routine pre-election interview early last week.

"I guess it was an oversight," he said yesterday.

Some of Wilson's problems stem from his Mail Downtown business, which closed earlier this year. But sewer office records show that $600 of the debt is on Wilson's home at 612 West Short Street. Court records show Wilson owed $312.54 of that amount when he voted to raise the sewer user fee.

Wilson declined to say yesterday why his home sewer-user fee had gone unpaid, too.

"I don't want to lose the focus of the things I had to say" in the prepared statement, he said.

Wilson's delinquent sewer fees and other information came to light during a routine records check on candidates for profiles to run in the Herald-Leader. Court records show that most of his sewer debts had accrued since the late 1980s.

Wilson, pastor of Jimtown First Baptist Church, is seeking re-election next month. After seven years as 1st District representative, he announced in January that he would run for an at-large berth on the council.

He made the cut in the primary election, finishing sixth out of nine candidates. The top six vote-getters in the May primary vie for three at-large seats.


Two trials
Delinquent sewer-user accounts are not the first evidence of Wilson's being at odds with taxes, fees and policies for which he, as a city council member, must share responsibility -- both symbolic and actual. Wilson has shown a pattern of behavior that makes him a paradox -- repeatedly at odds with the very government of which he is a part.

He and parking control officer Gail Hensley tangled in court twice after she charged him with harassment. In both his trials -- 1989 and 1990 -- Wilson accused her of racism for ticketing him in the loading zone in front of his downtown business.

He was convicted the first time but won the second case.

Wilson also has been slow to pay his taxes. Until this year, he had not paid taxes on his property at 612 West Short Street for five years running. His total debt, including interest and other costs, was $4,278.67.

This summer Wilson paid off all but his 1993 real estate taxes, the balance of which does not become delinquent until next summer. On May 10, Wilson paid for 1988 through 1991 -- a total of $2,548.74.

On June 30, he paid $1,729.93 owed for the 1992 tax year.

Wilson said yesterday that he did not pay the taxes because the property valuation administrator's office was sending his tax bills to the wrong place -- a previous address.

The misdirected notices were returned to the PVA's office without his knowledge.

When asked why he didn't think it was strange that he wasn't receiving tax bills for the West Short Street property, Wilson said he assumed his brother was paying them. Wilson then owned but did not live in the house at 612 West Short Street.

Family members were living there on the condition that they pay the taxes and other expenses for keeping up the property, Wilson said.

He said he did not find out about the delinquent tax payments until he refinanced his house earlier this year.

"At that time, immediately, all that debt was liquidated by myself," he said.

Personal problems were at least partly responsible for his financial troubles, Wilson said.

"Contributing to some of these problems were family responsibilities I had assumed," he said. He would not elaborate.

When asked whether he thought his unpaid taxes and fees compromised him as a council member who votes on such issues, Wilson declined to comment. He repeated his prepared statement.

It is not clear why tax payments on 612 West Short Street were for so long allowed to be delinquent.

Historically, a payment was not officially delinquent until April of the following year. The cutoff now is June. It is then that the sheriff quits trying to collect the taxes and offers the delinquent bills up for sale at the county courthouse, Fayette County Clerk Donald Blevins said.

What is for sale, in effect, is the lien against the property. But buyers are rare, Blevins said.

After the bill becomes delinquent, the county attorney must wait a year to begin legal proceedings in Fayette Circuit Court.

"If you look back, you will see an inconsistent pattern of enforcement for collection," Blevins said. He referred specifically to former County Attorney Norrie Wake's administration.

Wake resigned after being convicted in July of taking kickbacks from pay raises he gave some employees to retire his 1985 campaign debt.

"It seemed they did more the first year or so than they did after that in collecting the taxes," Blevins said.

Margaret Kannensohn, who took over as county attorney last month, said she was not familiar with Wilson's case or how delinquent tax bills were handled under previous administrations.

"We went through a long period of time where it was perfectly acceptable for tax bills to remain unpaid," Blevins said. "And it was sort of the general feeling it was a problem that took care of itself -- that when property changed hands or was mortgaged or whatever, that all those tax bills would be brought current."

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Urban County Council decided to attack the backlog of tax bills, Blevins said. But interest in the problem waned again in the late 1980s, he said.

MIDNIGHT

IN

THE

GARDEN

OF
GOOD

AND

EVIL

LEXINGTON

1993
The remains of Dr. Nicholas J. Pisacano are interred beneath a towering white pine in Section O of Lexington Cemetery, but his memory is buried in a much less peaceful place: beneath almost two feet of paper work generated by an ongoing civil war over his money.

"Nick always felt that money was evil," Pisacano's close friend, accountant Joe E. Coons, said in a deposition. Were he alive, Pisacano might see the events of the last three years as proof.

Since Pisacano died in 1990, money has pitted his friends and loved ones against one another in legal battles over his retirement benefits and created an undercurrent of suspicion that led to the doctor's disinterment two weeks ago.

At the request of Pisacano's children, forensic specialists are re-examining organs from the body, which was reburied after the samples were taken, and performing toxicology tests on the tissue to check for unusual levels of substances such as arsenic. Lexington police are waiting to see whether Pisacano was poisoned, said Lt. Jim Cox of the robbery-homicide squad.

Testing Pisacano's remains will take at least four to six weeks, said Dr. Carolyn Coyne, deputy medical examiner for Kentucky.

"All early indications are that he was probably having some heart problems and died as a result of those," Fayette County Coroner Dr. Dennis Penn said. "Again, at this time, we have no evidence of foul play."

Pisacano had been "awfully tired" in the months before his death and planned to visit the Mayo Clinic in July 1990 for a coronary-bypass operation, I.G Manis, executor of Pisacano's estate, has testified.

Lt. Cox said police are "in a holding pattern right now until those autopsy and toxicology tests come back.

"We have done some interviews with family members, and all the normal checks."

Brief news reports and the family's cryptic public statements about Pisacano's disinterment have created an aura of mystery about the doctor that never existed in life.

Pisacano was a prominent figure at the University of Kentucky, where he served as a member of the board of trustees and in several other leadership roles.

Although possessed of a keen sense of humor, he was disarmingly straightforward and sometimes gruff -- qualities that made Pisacano a popular biology professor at the University of Kentucky, where he taught without pay for 11 years.

Money was unimportant to the nationally known physician, friends have testified. Those closest to him, however, have been consumed by financial matters pertaining to his wealth almost since the day he died.
Pisacano's world
It is unclear whether the fight over Pisacano's money has anything directly to do with his exhumation. Together, however, the events assume added meaning.

The lawsuits and public records pertaining to his death provide glimpses into Pisacano's world, where the common bond between some of his friends and family members -- their love and respect for the gravel-voiced physician from Philadelphia -- dissolved into distrust once the doctor died.

After Virginia Leigh Pisacano found her husband dead in his bed the morning of March 11, 1990, then-Fayette County Coroner Dr. David A. Hull ruled that Pisacano had died of a heart attack. But a letter Hull wrote March 28 suggests that at least one of Pisacano's five children by a previous marriage was not convinced by the coroner's ruling.

In the letter, addressed to Pisacano's daughter Lori, Hull stood by his opinion that the doctor's death was "a natural one."

"There is no evidence to support any other diagnosis," Hull wrote, citing Pisacano's history of heart problems and other chronic ailments such as diabetes.

Medical records contained in the coroner's file on the case said the 65-year-old doctor smoked and was overweight and paid little attention to his health.

"In the event that you continue to feel that this decision is not justified, I will be glad to entertain any evidence or written statements that you may have to the contrary, including written opinions of your own as to the cause of your father's death," wrote Hull, who died last year.

Lori, whose married name is Walls, did not return a reporter's calls. Her brother, Dean Pisacano, who has served as spokesman for his siblings in other matters, would not comment.

Court documents suggest reasons why Pisacano's children might want their father's death investigated. A thread of suspicion runs through the convoluted tangle of litigation, which dwells on changes in beneficiary forms and the possibility of forgery.

Two civil suits -- one in state court, the other in federal -- contested a total of $1.4 million.

On one side is I.G. Manis Jr., as executor of Pisacano's estate; and the doctor's five children from his first marriage, to Anna Mae Pisacano, which ended in divorce in 1973.

On the other side is American Board of Family Practice Inc., Pisacano's longtime employer; and the doctor's second wife and widow, Virginia Leigh Pisacano, whom he married in 1978.

The federal complaint, filed in January 1992 by American Board, ended Thursday when U.S. District Judge Karl S. Forester ruled that the board had acted properly when it directed Pisacano's pension benefits to his widow.
A life trust
The estate had argued in a counterclaim that if the payment had been made within 60 days of Pisacano's retirement as his pension plan required, Pisacano would have received the money. Then, it would have gone to his estate when he died. But Forester dismissed the counterclaim in his ruling last Thursday.

Pisacano's will established a life trust for Virginia Leigh. She would live off the income, and when she died, the remainder of the trust -- basically, the principal -- would be divided among the Pisacano children.

Pisacano's estate contends that the doctor's pension should have gone into the trust rather than directly to his widow.

Attorneys for the estate touched repeatedly on the fact that J. Whitney Wallingford, counsel for American Board, also served as Virginia Leigh's attorney.

"When you retained him individually, you were aware that he also represented the plan as legal counsel. That's correct, is it not?" Virginia Leigh Pisacano was asked in a deposition.

"Well, yes," she said.

In one deposition, an attorney for the estate questioned the speed with which Pisacano's widow received the money.

"Why is after Dr. Pisacano's death there such an appearance -- or it seems to me there was then very much a hurry to distribute the money to Virginia Leigh Pisacano. Was that a correct impression?" Charles Christian asked Raymond Carey Cranfill, retired head of the trust department at First Security National Bank and Trust Co.

"She wanted it fast; that's correct," Cranfill said.

Wallingford would not comment on the case. Virginia Leigh Pisacano did not return reporters' phone calls.

A well-executed forgery?
In the federal suit over Pisacano's pension, five handwriting experts were called on to determine whether the doctor's signature had been forged on a beneficiary designation form dated Feb. 5, 1990 -- a month and six days before he died.

The form designates his widow as beneficiary. Two of the handwriting experts said Pisacano had not signed the document. One, a 20-year veteran of the FBI, called it a "well-executed forgery."

But three other experts, including the court-appointed one, testified the signature was authentic.

In his deposition in federal court, Manis, the trustee, said he had seen Virginia Leigh Pisacano sign her husband's name to documents in the past.

"She can sign his name where you can't tell the difference," he said.

Virginia Leigh Pisacano said in her deposition that as her husband's administrative assistant she had signed his name before. She was not asked in the deposition whether she had signed his name to the critical beneficiary form.

However, she did say of Dr. Pisacano, "I presume he signed it the day I gave it to him."

No witnesses signed the document.

In his ruling, Judge Forester said it was irrelevant who signed the document because Virginia Leigh Pisacano was automatically the beneficiary under the plan's guidelines.
Honoring his wishes
The legal skirmishing began in September 1990, when Pisacano's estate filed a complaint against American Board in Fayette Circuit Court.

The suit still is pending.

The estate seeks to recover money paid to the board under an annuity owned by Pisacano. The board, which paid into the annuity for Pisacano, was the beneficiary. But the board did not sign over beneficiary status when it granted the doctor ownership of the matured annuity upon his retirement, the complaint says.

The board established a trust that began paying Pisacano from a deferred compensation plan and transferred ownership of the annuity to the doctor when he retired Dec. 31, 1989. After Pisacano died, the board, as beneficiary, received the remainder of the money from the annuity -- $323,861.09 -- and began paying it out to Pisacano's widow in monthly installments of $3,800.

In doing so, board members -- several of them close friends of the Pisacanos -- said they were honoring the doctor's wishes.

"Every time Nick signed a beneficiary form, despite anything any other document said . . . he always assigned it to Virginia Leigh. Always. And I think that the board's position is we're going to live by the arrangement that we knew Nick wanted us to live by," Coons testified in his deposition.

"And they don't feel that payment of those funds into a trust in which she's the primary beneficiary is enough to live up to that end?" John P. Brice, attorney for the estate, asked Coons.

"No," Coons said.

Manis contends the money should have gone to Pisacano's estate, where it was to be held in trust. A driving issue behind the battle over Pisacano's money seems to be the question of who will pay the taxes on it.

The heirs are being taxed on the principal even though they have received none of it.

"Would it seem to you that it's fairly inequitable for . . . Dr. Pisacano's estate to have to pay income tax liability on an amount . . . and then not receive the benefit attendant with the income?" Brice asked Coons.

"I think he'd want Virginia Leigh to have the annuity, period," Coons responded.

"I don't think he'd give a damn who paid the taxes on it."

PEACE

AND

UNITY,

CRIPS

AND

BLOODS

LEXINGTON

1993
On the first day of Peace Camp '93 yesterday, six versions of the Golden Rule hung on the side of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Lexington: Christian, Islam, Hinduism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Judaism.

One message. Six ways of saying it. Seventy-one words in all.

Two teen-age campers unwittingly sent the opposite message using only two letters of the alphabet.

Like many other campers, the girls had their faces painted. But the letters on their cheeks caught the eye of camp co-director Robert Lloyd and made his gray-bearded jaw set hard.

The letters stood for the name of a gang. "That's not what this camp is all about," said Lloyd, who took one girl aside in the shade of a cherry tree and asked her to remove the letters.

The camp, in its second year, is designed to promote racial and ethnic harmony and peace. The more campers learn about their differences, the more they are supposed to learn how much they are alike.

The two-day camp, for children ages 9 to 13, brings 75 campers together this weekend. They are black, white, Jewish, Christian and American Indian, among others. Besides getting their faces painted, they devour pizza, play kickball and volleyball, sing and learn about new cultures and languages.

But just getting the campers together for two days in the summer, albeit a good start, is not enough, Lloyd said.

"Racism exists wherever you go," he said. "In some activities, (blacks and whites in Lexington) might mingle pretty well. But then everybody goes back to their own neighborhoods."

Even though the children had chosen to attend, Lloyd and other camp organizers yesterday had to overcome the campers' resistance to mix and mingle. "It's a natural sort of resistance," said Zaida Belendez, a camp organizer.

The obstacles pointed out the need for the camp and its limitations. As the children formed a unity circle near an American Indian-style teepee behind the church, camp counselor John Cole urged them to break away from their friends and stand next to someone they did not know.

"Last time we got in our circle," Cole said, "I let you stand in your little cliques and things. Now I want you to stand next to somebody you don't know."

Cole gently ushered some of the campers away from their friends and helped them find new spots in the circle. The structure of the camp does not appeal to some of the campers.

"It's all right," 12-year-old Tammy Williams said of the camp as she washed a red balloon off her face. "It was funner last year, 'cause we got to do almost anything.

"We weren't in groups."

The camp's so-called rainbow groups are designed to ensure children from different backgrounds spend time together. Many children enjoyed the opportunity and took advantage of it.

"It gives me experiences in dealing with other people in different religions," said Kurt Faircloth, 12, who attends Unitarian Universalist Church of Lexington.

Other children, however, were switching groups, Belendez said.

Cole, who works with a group of young black men at the Bluegrass-Aspendale Teen Center, said the value of the camp does not simply lie in improving racial harmony.

"The most important aspect that can come out of this is respect for yourself and others."

Cole and Lloyd said they think Fayette County schools should teach history with a more diverse cast of characters.

"Lexington's very conservative, and there's a classism that exists that affords people the luxury of not seeing," Cole said.

Yesterday probably was the first time many of the campers had ventured into south Lexington, Cole said. Many blacks live on the city's north side.

"If I can afford to live on the south end of town, when it's appropriate I can be politically correct and analyze racial problems, then I can go back to my luxurious home on the south side," he said.

As for the girls with the gang letters on their cheeks, Belendez said, "We told them they have to transform it into something positive."

Lloyd, who has lived in St. Louis and seen the ugliness of gang violence, said: "These kids have no idea what that's really about."

SOMEBODY

OUT

THERE

LEXINGTON

1993
The state has no death certificate on file for Melanie Flynn, and her parents still have a bedroom in their north Lexington home they call "Melanie's room."

But almost 17 years after Flynn disappeared, her mother, Ella Ritchey Flynn, does not cling to any false hope that her daughter is alive. She thinks her daughter was murdered, and this week she is going public for the first time with a plea for information about the unsolved case.

Melanie Flynn's disappearance, one of Lexington's darkest and most talked-about mysteries, is the subject of a nightly series of reports this week on WKYT-TV (Channel 27). Each installment features taped segments of a recent interview with Ritchey Flynn along with file footage from past interviews and newscasts.

In an interview yesterday with the Herald-Leader, Ritchey Flynn said she and her family had decided to come forward in an effort to keep attention focused on the case. The Flynns are unhappy with the way police have handled the investigation, she said -- especially in the days and weeks after Melanie's disappearance January 26, 1977.

The decision to speak out was the "culmination of frustration through the years," she said.

"We think information was suppressed," Ritchey Flynn said. "We don't know why. We tried to work within the system all these years, and we were told that if we spoke out we would hurt the investigation. And I just felt like it was time that we told our side of it."

Police repeatedly assured the Flynns the investigation was going well only to dash their hopes later, Ritchey Flynn said. "We have been told 'That's a dead end' so many times," she said.

In her interview Monday on Channel 27, Ritchey Flynn told reporter Karen Oddy she thought police might have played a role in her daughter's demise. "I think they were involved in her disappearance and probably in her murder," she said.

She was especially critical of Capt. John Bizzack, one of the first detectives assigned to the case. Bizzack said last night that there is nothing he can say publicly about the case.