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

FOR

THE

LOVE

OF

FOOD

LEXINGTON

1989

The rendezvous begins early every morning: Stanley Demos and his food. Back of the Coach House restaurant. Middle of the kitchen.

Demos wraps his hand around a green pepper, gently. It is 8 a.m. He lifts the vegetable into the air, caresses it.

"Look a' this peppurr," he says in a Greek accent that has survived admirably in spite of a lifetime in the United States. "Beautiful."

He returns the pepper to its box.

"Look a' this," he says, holding aloft a large white mushroom. "Isn't that gorgeous?"

It is. Another day, another love affair between a man and his work, has begun at Stanley Demos' Coach House in Lexington.

This is not just any day, though; fact is, it just might be Demos' last Wednesday in the kitchen he made famous. He is retiring. The end could come this weekend; he has not decided, exactly.

This much is certain, however: Demos, a 69-year-old native of Salonica, Greece, plans to turn the Coach House over to his daughter, Elizabeth "Tootsie" Nelson and her husband, Sam. After that, Demos will move to Sarasota, Fla., with his wife, Pat. "I'll do a li'l fishin,' " he says.

Demos is no slouch at that. He once reeled in a bull dolphin, or Mahi Mahi. Now it hangs with a swordfish and a pork fish on the wall behind the bar in his Coach House. He caught them all.

Demos is most at home, however, with a meat cleaver in his hand, not a fishing rod.

His life has been devoted to cookin' -- as he calls it

-- ever since his days as a chef's apprentice in Athens, Greece.

Demos could not speak a word of English when he immigrated in 1938 to New York. Fortunately, the beauty of a mushroom often is beyond words.

Demos was a busboy. He was a cook. He served four years in the Army, but never saw any action outside the mess hall kitchen.

In 1964, Demos became manager of the old Imperial House, a hotel on Waller Avenue in Lexington. He left the hotel in 1969 to chase his version of the American Dream: owning a restaurant.

Demos took most of the Imperial House's employees with him. "He told me we were going to make the best place in Lexington," said James Scallos, morning chef at the Coach House.

Bartender and friend Al Papania also followed Demos from the Imperial House to the Coach House. "We've been good friends since," Papania said. "He's a little more than the boss."

Demos bought Cap's Coach House in 1969, when the restaurant was in a two- story 18th-century house on South Broadway. Two years later, the original restaurant burned to the ground, and today's Coach House soon rose from the ashes.

In the years since, Demos has become a Lexington celebrity. More important to him, though, he is widely considered the best gourmet cook around.

The Mobil Travel Guide invariably lists the Coach House as a four-star restaurant. And the walls just inside the door are covered with certificates from Travel-Holiday Magazine. The coveted Travel-Holiday Fine Dining Award goes to restaurants that meet certain requirements for food and ambiance.

Past the hall of awards and to the left is the dining room. Chandeliers, pressed white table cloths, mirrors, rich pink draperies and fresh flowers -- a Coach House trademark -- are everywhere.

The elegance of the Coach House, its reputation for great cooking and its exclusive prices have made it a landmark in Lexington, a city with more than its share of movers and shakers.

Famous people eat the Sauce Diane and Crabe Demos. On Tuesday night, University of Kentucky President David Roselle ate there.

Demos reserves certain tables for their regular occupants every night until he realizes that they are not going to show up. Some of the regulars eat dinner there no less than four times a week, and they want to sit in the same place.

Many Lexingtonians spend lunchtime at the Coach House every day. "Somebody would miss two days, and you'd get to wondering about 'em," Papania said.

"It's just like a little famuly, like. I could just about tell you who's gonna be here."

One of the regulars is George Brown of Lexington. "Stanley's been a friend of ours -- of all the people here -- for several years," Brown said.

The horse sales and racing season bring people from all over the world into the Coach House. But underneath it all, the restaurant remains pure Lexington.

As they do at UK football games and basketball games, many of the regulars here come to socialize more than anything else.

Demos recognizes the importance of that.

"When I build the restaurant," he said, "I build it in such a way that no matter where you sit, you'll have a ringside table, so to speak. You can see who's coming and who's going. And, plus, you can be seen.

"You're going to a restaurant, you want to see and be seen. Otherwise, you stay home."

Demos seems small for an institution. He is a short and slight. Do not underestimate him, though. The man who came to America with $8 in his pocket now drives a Mercedes.

"This whole place," he said. "You know, it's mine. I create this place. Everything that's here has the stamp of my doings."

Demos has not confined himself to the Coach House. He has written columns for newspapers in Lexington and Cincinnati. He wrote a cookbook that has sold 20,000 copies. And he has had cooking shows on television.

Now it is time to rest. And fish.

"You reap some of the stuff you have worked for," he said. "I do enjoy the good things in life now."

He smiles.

For years, the Demoses have vacationed in Florida, two months each winter. Now they will leave their condominium in the Radisson Plaza Hotel in Lexington and move to Florida.

"I'm gonna miss him, 'cause he's done so much for me," said Cheryle Harrison, who has worked in the kitchen for 10 years.

"That's what they all say before I leave," Demos said, grinning at his employee.

No one is quite sure what they will do when Demos does leave. Papania said he will be both "glad and sad."

"Mostly glad," Papania said. "He's worked hard.

"I'll probably have to call him a couple times a week to find out how to make a drink. He still helps me behind the bar. He hops right in there in a second."

Demos does not just stand around looking important. He has been known to wait directly on tables; to roll up his sleeves and do some cookin' in the kitchen when things get hectic; and to load the dishwasher.

"It's not that I say, 'God, I'm not gunna touch nothin'," Demos said, grinning.

Demos also is not shy about gracing the dining room with his presence.

"My name is on the sign outside," he said. "So people come in here, they want to know it there's such a person as Stanley Demos, or if he is here. People like to meet the head man, so to speak."

Demos's name will come off the building, but not until the Keeneland spring meet ends in June, Mrs. Nelson said.

Her father is not shedding many tears. He has worked a long time for this. No more 8 a.m.-10 p.m. workdays. No more running around to buy produce, which he still does himself. No more worrying about his freezers going bad or the hot water faucet running amok during long weekends.

"I feel like I've done my share," he said. "I've built a nice restaurant, it's beautiful, and we serve the best of everything, so now I'm gonna let my daughter . . . "

Do not think, however, that Demos does not feel a twinge of sadness.

"I feel sad for leaving -- the customers I've met, the lifestyle I've lived," he says.

Then there are the really pleasurable things: gazing at the perfect pepper, cutting into the ultimate tender lamb chop.

Just watch: It is Wednesday morning, and Demos is hacking away at a block of cheese. It will be served in a salad at lunchtime.

Inches away from the clacking knife blade, Demos's first cup of coffee of the morning shudders with each blow. The coffee waltzes in graceful arcs around the cup.

Demos does not know it, but at lunchtime, all the bar regulars will be in. They have taken up a collection and bought their friend a bicycle.

Lunchtime is gift-giving time.

Papania will drag out the box containing the bicycle while Demos greets all the regulars.

"Mr. Demos," Papania will say. "From all the bar patrons in honor of your retirement."

And Brown, standing at the bar, will chime in: "In other words, Stanley, we're not going to let you get very far."

With that, the whole bar will ring with laughter. There is such a man as Stanley Demos, and nobody much wants to see him go.

CARL

KEYSER’S

TRAIL

OF

DECEIT

PIKEVILLE

1989

Less than a week after Carl Randall Thomas Keyser Jr. was named city manager, officials in this Eastern Kentucky town decided his resume did not qualify him for the job.

It would, however, eventually qualify him for a position in Alaska: Cell 2 of the Petersburg jail.

That is where Keyser, 34, has spent his time since Dec. 21. It is the end, prosecutors say, of a long trail of deception spanning at least 12 states.

Keyser, a native of Huntington, W.Va., was arrested four days before Christmas in Kake, Alaska, where he had worked as city administrator since early October. A felony complaint was filed charging Keyser with first-degree theft, and he was taken to the Petersburg jail.

Like officials in Pikeville, city council members in Kake, a remote Indian village of 600 with no paved roads, say they had discovered the truth about Carl R.T. Keyser: He was not what he said he was.

Keyser's multipage resume was a fake, said Mark Ells, district attorney in Ketchikan, Alaska. The theft charge stemmed from Keyser "obtaining his job and being paid under false pretenses," Ells said. He had earned more than $28,000 in Kake.

Alaska officials discovered Keyser's secret when residents of Kake asked police to check his past, Ells said. Many townspeople were upset about the way Keyser had treated them during his short tenure in office, city council member Lonnie Anderson said. But the "last straw" was a hunting rifle, he said. Two of them, in fact.

Keyser had bought the rifles, each worth about $700, with a credit card he had acquired for the city.

"The community became unglued about that time," Anderson said.

At a regular meeting of the city council in mid-November, 50 Kake residents complained. The council stripped Keyser of his administrative duties and confiscated the credit cards.

Nevertheless, council members could not bring themselves to fire Keyser. "At times he exhibited the qualities that would really benefit the city," Anderson said.

"I'm very good at my job," Keyser said from jail.

Keyser's primary survival tactic was to play on the sympathy of the council, Anderson said. Frequently he would break down and cry when challenged.

The council gave Keyser until Dec. 20 to shape up. But the townspeople asked for the police check and discovered a standing warrant for Keyser's arrest in Pikeville.

On Oct. 19, a grand jury in Pikeville had indicted Keyser on a charge of theft by deception. The felony indictment said Keyser had obtained money by "creating or reinforcing a false impression" about his previous employment.

The commission had spent $694 on Keyser for travel and lodging while interviewing him for the job of city manager.

In a telephone interview last week from the Petersburg jail, Keyserapologized and offered to repay the money. "If I caused them any embarrassment, I'm very sorry," he said.

Keyser spoke softly and articulately, his youthful voice belying distinctly middle-age features. He is a short man with a pudgy face and a receding hairline, but he can "charm the horns off a brass monkey," Anderson said.

Keyser would not say whether he falsified his resume, but he said he thought he was being "persecuted," especially by the news media.

"The Florida papers made me out to be the reincarnation of John Dillinger. Why are they after this guy so hard?" Keyser asked. "They're saying he falsified a resume. Even if he did falsify a resume, is that a reason to persecute a man from one end of the country to the other?"

The Pikeville City Commission has decided it is not. Members voted unanimously Jan. 11 to drop the charge against Keyser. Commissioner Thomas Huffman is satisfied Keyser will be punished where he is. "We feel he'll spend several winters in Alaska," Huffman said.

The final decision on whether to drop the charge, however, is up to Pike County Commonwealth's Attorney John Paul Runyon.

Runyon is working with Ells on the case. The Kentucky prosecutor said he had not decided whether to pursue Keyser, but he said he would not take any action until the Alaska case was resolved.

Pikeville Mayor W.C. Hambley does not understand what all the fuss is about. "I wouldn't spend a nickel running after him," Hambley said. "If he's gone, I say good riddance."

Other towns have not gotten off so easily. In the last three years, Keyser also has applied for jobs in Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon and Virginia, said Darrell Brock, an assistant state's attorney in Volusia County, Fla.

Some hired him and kept him on the payroll much longer than the six days he spent in Pikeville.

Keyser has built a career on public-service jobs obtained with bogus resumes and phony references, Brock said; his real resume is a long list of short-lived jobs.

Keyser's cross-country odyssey has taken him such places as:

• 
  Midvale, Utah, where he was charged in 1980 with impersonating a police officer. The case has been expunged from the record, a Midvale city court clerk said. Keyser apparently was not convicted.
  
• 
  Wayne, W.Va., where Keyser was an officer on the town's two-man police force from Aug. 15 to Sept. 20, 1983. The town council voted not to retain him as a full-time employee, but it was not clear why.
  
• 
  Aurora, Ore., where Keyser was sworn in as a reserve police officer Jan. 9, 1985. Keyser managed an apartment complex in Oregon City, Ore. In February 1985, he was accused of embezzling rent money, Brock said, but apparently was not convicted.
  
• 
  Granite Falls, Wash., where Keyser served as police chief for two months in 1986. He was fired after officials discovered his resume was a fake, City Clerk Gerry James said. "He was not qualified for the job," she said. "It became quite evident he wasn't."
  
• 
  Oregon City, Ore. Officials say Keyser never worked for the city, but apparently he lived there in late 1986, Brock said. In November 1986, Keyser drove out of John's Auto Electric without paying a $70 repair bill, Brock said. When police stopped him, he apologized and paid. Keyser told the police officer he was moving to Enfield, N.C., where he had taken a job as police chief. The officer asked Keyser why he was wearing a badge from Wayne, W.Va., Brock said. Keyser told the officer he was wearing it until he could get one from Enfield; the former police chief had left town with the badge.
  
• 
  Enfield, N.C., where Keyser was police chief from October 1986 to February 1987. On the resume he gave Pikeville officials, Keyser claimed also to have been assistant city manager and parks and recreation director for the city. He was neither, town administrator Joseph Cate said. The resume Keyser gave Enfield officials was a fake, too, Cate said. One of Keyser's references, Arthur R. LeTourneau, had been police chief in Kingsport, Tenn., from May 1985 to May 1986, Cate said. But like Keyser, LeTourneau's credentials were questioned and he left, a Kingsport city official said.
  
• 
  Oak Hill, Fla. In April 1987, Keyser was hired as chief of the three-man police department. He used a cut-and-paste transcript from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton and told city officials it was from Brigham Young University, Brock said. By the end of August, "it hit the fan," Brock said. As they would in Kake, Oak Hill residents began delving into Keyser's resume. On Jan. 6, 1988, Keyser pleaded guilty to perjury, a misdemeanor, for filling out an affidavit vouching for the falsified information he had submitted with his job application. Meanwhile, Keyser applied for jobs in seven other states.
  
• 
  Murphy, Texas, where Keyser was city administrator from January 1988 to last March. Keyser left by "mutual agreement," city secretary Linda Marley said. "I could sense a great shortfall in his supposed qualifications," Ms. Marley said.
  

Keyser offered this explanation for why he held so many jobs in so many different places: "When you're young and getting started in a management career . . . you have to gain experience. It's not like the job is geared toward longevity."

Keyser's stint of employment in Pikeville was anything but long. It lasted six days.

Keyser arrived in Pikeville with his wife and four young daughters the last week of July. He left for Huntington Aug. 3, only hours after the city commission hired him.

Keyser was to start work in Pikeville the following Monday, Commissioner Huffman said.

Commissioners considered themselves lucky to have found someone with such outstanding credentials. "He came on real strong, and we needed a strong leader," Huffman said.

But Keyser's credentials seemed too good to be true. He was hired on a Wednesday, and by the weekend, the news media in Pikeville had become so suspicious they began checking his resume. It was a task the city commission had not done in its haste to hire Keyser, who claimed he had job interviews lined up in other towns.

Quickly it became evident that Keyser's four-page resume was a fake. The town began to rumble. Pikeville, which Keyser had described in his resume cover letter as "a beautiful community and a wonderful opportunity to explore," was fast becoming the stumbling block of his life.

Reporters were calling all Keyser's references.

"He seemed like he was a little too cooperative, too eager to make a good impression," said John Dye of the Appalachian News-Express. Dye alerted city officials about his suspicions. Huffman called one of Keyser's references, Col. Fred Donohoe of the West Virginia State Police. It was not the same man who had called days before to offer a "raving" reference for Keyser, Huffman said. The real Donohoe barely knew Keyser -- but he had gotten confused calls like Huffman's before.

When Keyser later called Huffman, Keyser sensed something was awry. "I said, 'Well, to be frank with you, your references aren't checking out,'" Huffman said.

By Monday, Aug. 8, the story was out. A radio broadcast of a story by Associated Press reporter Steve Robrahn broke the news to Pikeville residents that afternoon.

"City-manager jokes" began making the rounds in Pikeville the next day.

"Anytime you buy the cut-through to the Brooklyn Bridge, it's kind of embarrassing," Huffman said. "But you learn your lesson."

Keyser resigned the Pikeville position over the phone. His job had ended before it began.

WAREHOUSED

HORROR

CARROLLTON

1989

Jurors were sworn in yesterday morning in the murder trial of Larry Mahoney, then driven in vans to a nondescript warehouse several blocks from the courthouse.

Inside the weathered, concrete-block building was Exhibit No. 1: the mangled and charred remains of a school bus and a black Toyota pickup.

On May 14, 1988, 27 people -- 24 of them children -- died in the bus as it was burning on Interstate 71 just south of town. Prosecutors say Mahoney, who is charged with 27 counts of murder, caused the deaths by ramming the bus with his pickup while driving drunk.

Testimony in Mahoney's trial began yesterday afternoon, but the jury's first order of business was a trip to the Fourth Street warehouse to see the wreckage.

Once inside the musty, dim warehouse, several jurors appeared shaken, and two wept as they walked in slow circles around the truck and bus.

The front of the blackened, gutted bus rested on the floor of the warehouse. The axle that once held it up lay nearby, as did a row of seats.

The pickup, which faced the bus, had had its hood and front fenders sheared back, exposing the entire engine. The right front tire, which had ruptured, was smeared with yellow paint -- the color the bus once had been.

"It has been 18 months and six days since the bus crash . . ." Assistant Attorney General Paul Richwalsky later told the jury in his opening statement.

"(It was) an event that horrified a small, quiet community and probably horrified the entire nation.

"As you know, this community is still reeling. . . . And 95 miles from here is another small community -- Radcliff. That community was more than just horrified. It was devastated."

The bus, from Radcliff First Assembly of God Church, was returning from an outing at Kings' Island amusement park near Cincinnati when the collision occurred.

Survivors and many of the victims' families arrived in Carrollton yesterday for the first day of the trial's testimony phase. About 60 Radcliff residents attended or watched it on one of two television sets in a meeting room across the street in the public library.

The trial is being broadcast live on cable in Carroll County.

The tiny room in Carroll Circuit Court was packed. About 70 people, including about 30 members of the Radcliff families, several potential witnesses and a handful of reporters, filled the wooden pews.

For most crash families, yesterday was the first time they had seen Mahoney in person.

"You feel compassion for him. You feel hate," said Jim Daniels, whose 14-year-old daughter was killed. "You feel it all."

It also was the first time Mahoney had seen the crash victims and their families, his attorneys said. As a result, lead defense attorney Bill Summers of Lexington said, Mahoney "did seem to be a lot more ill at ease."

Mahoney chose not to be present yesterday morning as the 16 jurors visited the warehouse, Summers said. Afterward, the jurors were driven past the crash site on I-71.

Many of Mahoney's family members attended the trial yesterday, including his ex-wife Janice, his 16-year-old son, Anthony, his mother, Mary, and his brother-in-law, Jim Daugherty. Mahoney, 36, of Owen County, faces 82 charges.

His trial is expected to last up to six weeks. Richwalsky spent more than 20 minutes yesterday afternoon just reading the lengthy indictment to the jury during his hourlong opening statement. Richwalsky told the jury that Mahoney had spent the day of the crash drinking beer.

Mahoney's blood-alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit for intoxication when he began driving north in the southbound lanes of I-71, Richwalsky said.

"Plain and simple, this is a murder case," he said.

Richwalsky will call more than 100 witnesses to the stand, including 12 children who survived. Some were badly scarred in the fire. One girl lost her leg.

But defense attorney Russell Baldani argued that the real "villains" were the manufacturers of the former school bus, which he said was unsafe, and several friends of Mahoney's who did not help him when he needed it.

Mahoney was tired and troubled the day of the crash because he had worked three straight 12-hour shifts at a Carrollton chemical plant and was having problems in his personal life, Baldani said.

Witnesses said they had seen Mahoney drink five Miller Lite beers that day.

He apparently bought nine cans as well, according to testimony.

Kim Frederick, Mahoney's former girlfriend, said he had visited her at the store where she works that afternoon and said he was tired and confused and needed someone to talk to.

She said she agreed to meet him at 10 p.m. at a bar at Burlington in Boone County. He never showed up.

Baldani said that Mahoney had asked friends to drive him to Burlington and they refused.

"You will hear a story," Baldani told the jury, "a story of human emotion and drama. And as you listen, the eyes of the world will be upon you."