Series of Bizarre Scandals Rocks Normally Placid Poughkeepsie

When the town assessor disappeared, people were puzzled. When his shoes, cigarettes and SUV were found by the Hudson River, they started to worry. When his body was fished out of the river, their bewilderment grew.

That was only the beginning.

Here are some other things that have happened since then in this comfortable corner of the New York City commuter belt:

* A mother of two is shot to death leaving church choir practice;

* A political boss is convicted of running a shakedown scheme;

* The town water supervisor fires a bullet into his head as police come to his door;

* Aforesaid official is then accused of orchestrating a lesbian tryst in a town pump station.

“The citizens don’t know what to expect every time they pick up the newspaper,” says John Mylod, a longtime resident. “As they say commonly these days, you can’t make it up. It’s really as bizarre as it can be.”

The arena for all this skulduggery is the Town of Poughkeepsie, which hugs the better-known Hudson River city of the same name but has its own government. It is known as home to an IBM plant and Vassar College. It is not known as a place where people are shot outside church or engage in sex on municipal property.

Details of the federal probe into the town’s web of scandal have been emerging since Assessor Basil Raucci disappeared on Oct. 4, 1997.

Even before he vanished, 55-year-old Raucci lived under a cloud. A few years earlier he had been accused of manipulating assessments in a neighboring town where he worked. He left that job without the charges’ being proven.

Once he disappeared, the FBI showed interest, but wouldn’t say why. Only later was it revealed that federal officials had been investigating the town government after a complaint by a businessman.

Prosecutors say they uncovered systematic extortion: A paving company would be told it could get municipal contracts for a payoff of $5,000; a contractor would pay $15,000 to clear up his bureaucratic problems with the town. And so on.

Money went to the town Republican Party and corrupt officials.

Raucci, court documents allege, was the money collector, and agents were keeping tabs on him with secret help from a cooperative businessman.

Raucci disappeared the day after an FBI agent confronted him in a hotel, offering a deal: Cooperate or face prosecution. Divers scoured the river for days, but it was a passerby who found the body. His death was ruled a suicide.

More whiffs of something rotten in Town Hall would come in 1998, when two town officials were convicted on corruption-related charges. But the degree of Raucci’s alleged involvement would only come to light last year, among even more jarring revelations.

*

William Paroli Sr. was at the pinnacle of his political power in 1999.

Paroli, who turned 72 on March 16, is a bear of a man with an earthy manner--a former high school fullback and beat cop. He laughingly admits to humble beginnings in politics: “When the boys had parties and ran out of booze, I had to find them a bottle somewhere.”

The Republican Party historically has dominated this town of 41,000, and Dutchess County for that matter. Franklin D. Roosevelt never carried Dutchess County in four successful runs for president, although he lived there.

By 1997, Paroli was GOP chairman for both the county and his town. So when he was arrested last May 26, it hit like a thunderclap.

Paroli recalled being in his yard, wearing an old flannel shirt and work pants and sitting on his garden tractor. Looking up, he saw half a dozen men walking toward him. They were FBI agents.

Still wearing his work clothes, Paroli was brought before a federal judge in White Plains. He was accused of controlling the shakedown scheme, as well as having town workers do electrical and landscaping work on his property. Prosecutors portray him as an ironfisted political boss who ruled by fear to “dominate his party and consequently town government.”

Paroli professed his innocence, saying others invoked his name in their schemes without his knowledge. Believing the federal government was trying to get him to cut a deal, he said: “I’m not going to allow them to break me.”

Paroli quit as a GOP boss, but held on to his $58,000-a-year job as county elections commissioner--despite requests from Gov. George Pataki and others that he step aside. Ever the political mover and shaker, he was fighting the feds on one front while waging a vain battle to undo an election result that unseated his son as county clerk.

Meanwhile, on the day Paroli was arrested, Fred Andros, the head of the town’s water department, suddenly resigned. The next day he pleaded guilty in federal court to a count of conspiracy, admitting to extorting bribes from contractors. Prosecutors say that Andros, like Raucci, worked with Paroli. And at the time it seemed the water chief might be a crucial witness against the party boss.

But the story was about to get more lurid. Enter Dawn Silvernail.

Silvernail is a heavyset 50-year-old who supervised a highway rest stop cleaning crew. She met Andros around 1977 through CB radio chats (his nickname was “Neptune”). They became good friends, even intimate for a time, according to court documents summarizing her statements to police and prosecutors.

Last year, Silvernail claimed, Andros coerced her into killing the town personnel director, Susan Fassett, because he feared she was “going to blow his deal with the feds”--an apparent reference to the single count he pleaded to in the corruption probe.

Silvernail said she reluctantly agreed to kill Fassett. But where?

A plan to kill her outside her Jazzercise class was dropped because the site was too public, according to court documents, so it was decided the 48-year-old married mother of two boys would be shot outside Pleasant Valley Methodist, a white clapboard church where she attended choir practice.

On the night of Oct. 28, according to her statement, Silvernail drove to the church and parked next to Fassett’s Jeep Cherokee. She reclined her passenger seat, loaded her .45-caliber pistol and lay back to wait.

Fassett got into her car. Silvernail sat up and emptied her gun into Fassett’s window, killing her, then slid over to the driver’s seat and sped away, according to the police account of her confession.

Court documents show that Andros claimed he had nothing to do with Fassett’s murder.

Silvernail also claimed that the water chief paid her $350 to have lesbian sex with Fassett at a town pumping station last year, that he videotaped the sex, and that he himself joined in. There were several other encounters for pay, according to Silvernail’s account.

Silvernail confessed a few days after Christmas, and pleaded not guilty to a charge of second-degree murder. Silvernail’s lawyer, D. James O’Neil, has since said that her statement to police was “involuntary” and that he would challenge its validity.

Andros denied to his interrogators that he had sex with Silvernail, but admitted to an affair with Fassett. He said Fassett had a lesbian relationship with Silvernail, but didn’t corroborate the salacious details presented by Silvernail.

After Silvernail confessed, police came to Andros’ house on Dec. 29 to execute a search warrant. As they entered the house, they heard a gunshot. Andros, who was upstairs, had fired a gun into his chin.

The bullet did not kill him. Andros was indicted for second-degree murder as he lay in an intensive care unit at Westchester County Medical Center.

*

As Andros was led shackled into county court on Feb. 17, the Town of Poughkeepsie struggled to make sense of it all: Raucci, the assessor, drowned; Paroli, the political boss, indicted; Fassett, the personnel director, shot to death; and now Andros, a respected civil servant who had worked for the town for decades, facing a murder charge.

Not to mention five people convicted in the federal corruption probe, including Andros.

In court, Andros looked gaunt in a loose-fitting jacket, and his jaw appeared shrunken by his gunshot wound. His lawyer entered the not-guilty plea, and Andros said “thank you” to the judge before he left.

Paroli has not been linked to Fassett’s murder. But in federal court in White Plains a day after Andros entered his plea, he was nothing like his old, defiant self.

Speaking softly in his weathered voice, Paroli told a judge he did indeed conspire to shake down contractors. “I knew what I was doing was wrong and illegal,” he said.

In a plea bargain, Paroli pleaded guilty to a count of conspiracy to commit extortion. The deal includes a fine of $4,000 to $40,000; community service; up to $20,000 in restitution to the town and the resignation from his job as county elections commissioner.

If the sentencing judge accepts the deal on May 18, Paroli could face 15 to 21 months in prison.

After Paroli’s plea, U.S. Atty. Mary Jo White said the federal probe is continuing. She would not elaborate, but insisted to Associated Press: “We’ve substantially broken the back of corruption in the Town of Poughkeepsie.”

But the murder case remains unresolved, a grand jury is looking at the evidence, and the Town of Poughkeepsie is staying tuned.