Duck In A Raincoat

302 Pages·2012·1.136 MB·English

by  Maura Curley

Duck in a Raincoat
The Joe Ricci Story
By Maura Curley
What 60 Minutes,
The New York Times, and the state of Maine didn’t tell.
Dedication
To Daniel, my fellow fury,
and Benjamin, for leading me to the light.
And to all of us whose lives have ever been darkened by a
“duck in a raincoat.”
Contents
Foreword
Part I
Chapter One: Building an empire
Chapter Two: "Dance with the one who brung ya."
Chapter Three: Cash Cow
Chapter Four: The therapeutic community
Chapter Five: In their words
Chapter Six: Never turn your back on a Sleeping tiger
Chapter Seven: Conspiracies abound.
Part II
Chapter Eight: Cosmic Convergence
Chapter Nine: Stage Set
Chapter Ten: Duck in a Raincoat
Chapter Eleven: Just feeling aggressive.
Chapter Twelve: Politics as usual
Chapter Thirteen: Appropriated Virtue
Chapter Fourteen: Who’s zoomin’ who?
Part III
Chapter Fifteen: An elite hit squad?
Chapter Sixteen: "Fighting for the people"
Chapter Seventeen: Mind Games
Chapter Eighteen: You gotta put it in perspective.
Chapter Nineteen: The 60 Minutes Interview
Chapter Twenty: Ya think I’m gonna breakdown?
Chapter Twenty-One: Trust the national press?
Chapter Twenty-Two: A dentist with no teeth
Chapter Twenty-Three: I can’t take back cruelty I inflict.
Part IV
Chapter Twenty-Four: I want everything dignified and low key.
Chapter Twenty-Five: There’s a treacherous road ahead.
Chapter Twenty-Six: Stay Well and Fight Back.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: The coup is complete
Chapter Twenty-Eight: I’m a Roosevelt democrat.
Part V
Chapter Twenty-Nine: I’m a fuckin’ animal.
Chapter Thirty: Eumenides
Chapter Thirty-One: Cult of Personality
Chapter Thirty-Two: Davidson will pay for it.
Chapter Thirty-Three: Psychopath
Chapter Thirty-four: What the media missed
Epilogue
A few final words
Foreword
Joseph Ricci persuaded the news show 60 Minutes to broadcast a flattering
segment about his struggles, a jury in the state of Maine to award him $15
million, and prominent parents, psychiatrists, and judges to send teens to his
treatment center. He also asked voters of Maine to elect him their governor.
Joe Ricci’s story from poverty to wealth has been compared to Horatio
Alger’s. But too many believed what Ricci said was true and paid the price.
This story about Joe Ricci is the product of intense research. Former
employees at his racetrack, residents at his Elan School for troubled
adolescents, lovers, relatives, childhood friends, attorneys, a judge,
psychiatrists, and his former business partner of twenty years, reveal the
underpinnings of his personality. They serve to warn us about the dangers
of Ricci’s type of behavior.
This book was first published in the 1990s, before the Internet and
Facebook. Since then Elan survivors, and legions affected by Joe Ricci,
learned about it via social media and found strength in sharing their stories
of horror and healing.
During the past two decades I have heard from people who told me this
book changed their lives. They realized they were not crazy, but the victims
of a system that failed them. Many former residents of Ricci’s Elan School
used this book to explain to their parents and relatives an experience they
couldn’t articulate.
Some survivors of the abuse at Elan slowly rebuilt their spirits, broken by
the place they were sent to heal. Others were not so fortunate and suffered
marginal lives loss. Too many chose suicide.
After nearly forty years of operation, Elan finally closed in 2011, thanks to
a diligent band of former residents, intent on discrediting the facility via
social media.
We have more knowledge about mental illness than we had when this book
was first published. This makes it shocking to realize adolescents struggling
with sanity were irreparably harmed by something that was packaged as
being therapeutic. Sadly, other boot camps that pretend to help troubled
teens still exist without proper medical knowledge or supervision.
This updated third edition focuses on practices in therapeutic communities
such as Elan and explains how a certain personality type can appropriate
virtue and manipulate people.
Over time we’ve stripped off the masks of sanity from many we believed
were honorable men. Bernie Madoff, Donald Trump, and numerous others
come to mind. But we learned too late. Similarly, Joe Ricci demonstrated
how considerable wealth often commands our respect, which should never
be given unless it is earned.
Maura Curley
PART I
Chapter One: Building an empire
“Why did you marry daddy?”
The question hung heavily in the air. Sherry Ricci felt for her five-year-old
child of divorce, straddling his fantasies with adult realities. After one
nervous breakdown and three years of therapy she had found the strength to
end her ten-year marriage. But she was still confused. How had Joe Ricci,
the man she worshiped, turned cruel?
She knew, despite her own inner conflict, her son deserved an answer. She
told him: “Your father was like the Fonz. He breezed into town with his
bell-bottom trousers. I thought he was cool.”
Her son, familiar with the TV show Happy Days, appeared thoughtful,
imagining his mother with the Fonz. (A leather jacketed motorcycle riding
1950s hero on a popular TV show in the 1970s.) He finally spoke,
exasperation in his voice. “But mom,” he cried. “Don’t you know the really
cool one on the show is Richie Cunningham?” (the innocent teenager on the
same show) Sherry realized she hadn’t. Perhaps that was her problem.
Sherry Benton was a twenty-two-year-old travel agent, the child of
prosperous but alcoholic parents when Joe Ricci walked into her life on a
blind date in 1968. She was attracted to the bad kid still undergoing drug
rehabilitation at a residential facility called Daytop Village, less than an
hour away from her hometown in Guilford, Connecticut. He dazzled her
with his charm, and she fell in love. She felt sympathy for him too. He had
a difficult childhood, growing up in Port Chester, New York, a factory town
that borders the affluent town of Rye.
Ricci had been raised by his maternal grandparents, Michael and Angelina
Santoro. The Santoro household also included Ricci’s aunt Josephine
“chubby,” her husband Vinnie, and two uncles. He sometimes called his
grandfather “daddy,” though his own father, Frank Ricci, “Bamboo,” lived
in the next town. Bamboo, whose nickname described his uncanny ability to
bounce back when thrown a punch, was a regular at local pubs. He and his
friend Arnie Horton were known as the “kingpins of bar fights.” Sandy
Fischer, who owned Sandy’s Old Homestead Bar and Restaurant, across the
street from the Port Chester police station, remembered Bamboo as a
charmer.
The Santoros had contempt for Bamboo and his family. They were angry
with their daughter Ann for getting involved with the Riccis, first
generation Americans, who spoke Italian and broken English. The Santoros
considered themselves better bred. They spoke Italian as well as perfect
English. Angelina Santoro, also spoke Yiddish. Michael Santoro was a
mason, who worked at the town incinerator. They were poor but proud.
Ricci was an altar boy at Holy Rosary Church and spent time at the Don
Bosco Community Center, known as ‘The Dons,’ where he learned how to
box and play basketball.
Vic Donato, four years younger than Ricci, remembered him from then.
“We called him Joe Rich. I’ve never seen anyone as wild. If you were nice
to him, he’d be your friend, but you didn’t want to mess with him. He was
always looking over his shoulder, and if you did something to cross him,
he’d never let you forget it. Joe Rich was sharp, knew how to survive. I
used to think he had nine lives. If he did something wrong, somebody else
would take the heat. He always had himself covered. He was ahead of his
time. When we were involved in basketball games, he was thinking about
stealing cars. I figured he’d eventually be successful, either that or dead.”
Donato said Ricci dated his social science teacher in junior high, a tall dark-
haired beauty just out of college. Often, he’d play hooky, and hang out with
others, near the Santoro house on Fox Island Road. Sometimes, he and his
friends would go to the depot at the corner of Irving and Pearl Streets and
steal Mrs. Wagner’s pies from delivery trucks.
When Ricci was fifteen, he was in an auto accident, thrown from the car,
and lay in a mud embankment before help arrived. He spent months in the
hospital and later was transferred to Burke’s Rehabilitation Center in White