Post by MXB on Jun 10, 2006 3:44:12 GMT -5
With thanks to those who made this article available to me for posting here.
WHY GOOD WOMEN LOVE THEIR BAD FELLAS
Clare Longrigg
THE spectacular fall of criminal lawyer Angela Baillie, who was recently convicted of smuggling heroin and diazepam to one of her clients in Barlinnie jail, no doubt had heads shaking in disbelief in judges' chambers. But Baillie's downfall began, we understand, years earlier.
Before she even embarked on a career in the criminal courts, she was said to be fascinated by gangsters. While studying law at Glasgow University, Baillie had a Saturday job at Versace, selling Baroque silk shirts to flash customers.
A former colleague remembers: "If there was a famous footballer and a gangster in the store at the same time, Angela would always serve the gangster. She thought gangsters were glamorous."
A single mother, Baillie worked hard and played hard. She developed a cocaine habit to fuel her nights out in Glasgow clubs and her days in court. Like many defence lawyers who revel in reflected celebrity, she enjoyed the notoriety of her clients.
Although she claims she was coerced, it's possible to imagine how Baillie, eager to please her client (reportedly serving time for a gangland killing), decided to smuggle into jail the drugs he asked her for, rather than alert the authorities.
Baillie would not be the first lawyer to be seduced by the criminal world. A glamorous blonde American lawyer, Dorothy Suffel, threw away her career when she embarked on an affair with a Mafia boss from the Colombo crime family of New York. Suffel was a respectable girl and had not been married long when she met mobster Andrew Russo, 30 years her senior, at a party on Long Island. She was "honoured" by his attention and quickly became his mistress.
He took her for dinner at Elaine's, the exclusive mob hangout on New York's Upper East Side, and to parties where Hollywood stars rubbed shoulders with Mafiosi. Before long, she was doing legal work for the family, visiting Russo's crew members in jail, taking messages to and from the inmates and running errands for the organisation. She desperately wanted to make herself useful and to be accepted by the mobsters as one of their own.
Suffel's mistake was to assume that once she had started a relationship with Russo that she was still a free agent. One of his crew members serving time for armed robbery and attempted murder was Larry Fiorenza - a drug addict with cirrhosis of the liver and HIV. Unprepossessing as he sounds, Suffel found Fiorenza irresistible - she later admitted she wanted to save him.
They started an affair, consummated in the prison visiting rooms. In her briefcase she smuggled in food, vitamins and condoms.
By the time Russo found out about Dorothy's indiscretion, she was under investigation for aiding and abetting a criminal. It was clear she was in far more danger for her amorous exploits than her illegal activities, so she and Fiorenza turned state's evidence and fled for the safety of the witness protection programme.
Disbarred and disgraced, Suffel now lives under an assumed name, far from home, alone - her marriage to Fiorenza did not survive long outside the steamy atmosphere of the penitentiary.
Some women can't resist a violent criminal who is safely behind bars. The Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, recently got engaged to a woman who has been writing to him for some years. Although he will never be released, the happy couple reportedly talk about their future life together.
Sutcliffe's attraction for the many women who write to him is particularly baffling, however there are cases in which women contact a prisoner on humanitarian grounds and, having persuaded themselves he is innocent, dedicate themselves to his welfare and eventual release with passionate fervour. The injustice of a wrongful conviction adds fire to these long-distance romances.
One woman who may be regretting her arduous campaign on behalf of an inmate is Karen Torley, from Cambuslang. Torley started writing several years ago to Kenny Richey, a Scot on Death Row in Ohio. He was convicted of murdering a little girl who died in a fire at his ex-girlfriend's house, but has always maintained his innocence. After they had been corresponding for some months, the pair became engaged, and Torley helped launch a high-profile campaign for Richey's release.
Torley's efforts seemed to be about to bear fruit when the original conviction was overturned last year, but Richey remains in prison, awaiting the outcome of further appeals. Meanwhile, he has rekindled his relationship with his ex-wife after a 20-year hiatus, and faithful Torley has been given the push. In an interview from prison, Richey, 41, played the romantic hero, torn between the love of two women. His sense of his own desirability is apparently undimmed by the orange prison jumpsuit and shackles.
"I still love Karen, but I'm not in love with her," he said. "I wish her the best, but I can't keep going on the way I am. I'm just being torn apart. I'm grateful for everything she's done and for her love, but things kicked off with my ex-wife and I'm playing both sides. It needs to stop."
Torley, who has devoted eight years of her life to freeing her man, has so far not expressed any rage, though to do so would be understandable, but admits she was "devastated" when Richey told her he was in love with his ex.
It's a disappointing result for those of us who have followed the case, curious as to whether a long-term, long-distance relationship between two people who have never touched could survive normal married life.
Not all women who get involved with dangerous men want to save them: some are looking for protection. Scottish comedian Janey Godley endured a grim childhood, with two alcoholic parents and years of sexual abuse by her creepy uncle. At 18, she met Sean Storrie, son of an East Glasgow gangster.
He didn't exactly charm her off her feet, but she was interested in this hardman who worked as a bouncer.
"I couldn't stand him," she recalls. "He was so moody. But when he asked me out, I said yes out of curiosity."
Being a tough lad from a rough family, young Storrie wasn't fazed when Godley told him about her traumatic history. He just listened to her, and she loved him for it.
Not to say it was a perfect marriage: the couple ran a pub in the East End of Glasgow for her gangster father-in-law, where drugs were rife and violence an occupational hazard. A police raid on the pub uncovered caches of weapons Storrie's father had hidden in the back yard. Storrie knocked Godley about, and she ran away repeatedly.
Unlike most of the women who find themselves married to the mob, Godley seems to have effected a transformation on her man. He became a reformed character and stopped beating her, while she launched a successful career as a stand-up comedian, using the dark material of her past for laughs. Last year she published her memoir, Handstands in the Dark, including "handy hints on how to get Semtex off your walls".
Even though she was a victim of violence herself, she admits it has its uses: she doesn't need to worry about being sought out by the uncle who abused her, as she's got protection.
"I married into a family who really don't like men who abuse children," she says defiantly. "My husband's one of seven sons from the East End."
For a woman at a low point in her life, the protection of a mobster can be a powerful attraction. Marilyn Wisbey had gangland pedigree: her father was one of the Great Train Robbers, and her mother, who had knitted the balaclavas used in the raid -
"She knew it was going to be a big one, but she didn't know it was going to be the train. She had to make the balaclavas. When they tried them on, one eye was up there," Wisbey points to her forehead, wheezing with laughter, "and one was down here," she indicates her cheekbone. "But at least she tried..." - took her girls to Harrods to spend the proceeds.
But when she met Mad Frankie Fraser, former associate of London's notorious Kray brothers, Wisbey was down on her luck: "Dad just got nicked for drugs, my husband asked me for a divorce, all my friends deserted me, and all I could do was drown my sorrows." She was singing in a bar when Fraser approached her, and she was quick to establish her credentials.
"I said 'D'you know who I am?' He said, 'No.' I said, 'I'm Tommy Wisbey's daughter'. He said, 'Ooh.'"
The ageing gangster and his moll were together for more than ten years. "He's been a big pal, Frank," Wisbey says. "Diamond. He's my rock."
Their first date was a visit to her father in prison. On the train they ate a picnic of smoked salmon sandwiches and drank Champagne.
They'd been together a few months when Frank was shot in the face as they came out of a nightclub. She recalls: "When they let me in to the hospital to visit him, I said, 'F****** hell Frank, that was some powerful shot of vodka we had last night.' He said, 'Don't make me laugh.' I just held up a bowl for him to be sick. I'd only known him three months. I thought, 'I can't leave him.'
"Most sensible women would have got out a bit lively but I thought, no."
Some women are drawn to dangerous men simply because they can't resist the thrill. Brenda Colletti was raised in a tiny hick town and ran away to Philadelphia in search of excitement. She found it in the shape of Philip, an up-and-coming hitman in the South Philly Mafia. When they went to bars, people would send over drinks.
They ate in restaurants owned by gangsters and never picked up the tab. Philip bought her a gun and she would practise shooting in the basement of their house. She was hooked on the glamour of it, quoting lines from The Godfather and talking about "respect".
By day they plotted hits at the kitchen table; by night they slept with guns under the mattress. "It was really cool," she purrs. "We were just bad people."
No Questions Asked: The Secret Life of Women in the Mob by Clare Longrigg. Published by Miramax Books, £15.99.
This article: living.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=648362006
Last updated: 30-Apr-06 00:54 BST
Delivery formats for "Scotsman.com Living"
WHY GOOD WOMEN LOVE THEIR BAD FELLAS
Clare Longrigg
THE spectacular fall of criminal lawyer Angela Baillie, who was recently convicted of smuggling heroin and diazepam to one of her clients in Barlinnie jail, no doubt had heads shaking in disbelief in judges' chambers. But Baillie's downfall began, we understand, years earlier.
Before she even embarked on a career in the criminal courts, she was said to be fascinated by gangsters. While studying law at Glasgow University, Baillie had a Saturday job at Versace, selling Baroque silk shirts to flash customers.
A former colleague remembers: "If there was a famous footballer and a gangster in the store at the same time, Angela would always serve the gangster. She thought gangsters were glamorous."
A single mother, Baillie worked hard and played hard. She developed a cocaine habit to fuel her nights out in Glasgow clubs and her days in court. Like many defence lawyers who revel in reflected celebrity, she enjoyed the notoriety of her clients.
Although she claims she was coerced, it's possible to imagine how Baillie, eager to please her client (reportedly serving time for a gangland killing), decided to smuggle into jail the drugs he asked her for, rather than alert the authorities.
Baillie would not be the first lawyer to be seduced by the criminal world. A glamorous blonde American lawyer, Dorothy Suffel, threw away her career when she embarked on an affair with a Mafia boss from the Colombo crime family of New York. Suffel was a respectable girl and had not been married long when she met mobster Andrew Russo, 30 years her senior, at a party on Long Island. She was "honoured" by his attention and quickly became his mistress.
He took her for dinner at Elaine's, the exclusive mob hangout on New York's Upper East Side, and to parties where Hollywood stars rubbed shoulders with Mafiosi. Before long, she was doing legal work for the family, visiting Russo's crew members in jail, taking messages to and from the inmates and running errands for the organisation. She desperately wanted to make herself useful and to be accepted by the mobsters as one of their own.
Suffel's mistake was to assume that once she had started a relationship with Russo that she was still a free agent. One of his crew members serving time for armed robbery and attempted murder was Larry Fiorenza - a drug addict with cirrhosis of the liver and HIV. Unprepossessing as he sounds, Suffel found Fiorenza irresistible - she later admitted she wanted to save him.
They started an affair, consummated in the prison visiting rooms. In her briefcase she smuggled in food, vitamins and condoms.
By the time Russo found out about Dorothy's indiscretion, she was under investigation for aiding and abetting a criminal. It was clear she was in far more danger for her amorous exploits than her illegal activities, so she and Fiorenza turned state's evidence and fled for the safety of the witness protection programme.
Disbarred and disgraced, Suffel now lives under an assumed name, far from home, alone - her marriage to Fiorenza did not survive long outside the steamy atmosphere of the penitentiary.
Some women can't resist a violent criminal who is safely behind bars. The Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, recently got engaged to a woman who has been writing to him for some years. Although he will never be released, the happy couple reportedly talk about their future life together.
Sutcliffe's attraction for the many women who write to him is particularly baffling, however there are cases in which women contact a prisoner on humanitarian grounds and, having persuaded themselves he is innocent, dedicate themselves to his welfare and eventual release with passionate fervour. The injustice of a wrongful conviction adds fire to these long-distance romances.
One woman who may be regretting her arduous campaign on behalf of an inmate is Karen Torley, from Cambuslang. Torley started writing several years ago to Kenny Richey, a Scot on Death Row in Ohio. He was convicted of murdering a little girl who died in a fire at his ex-girlfriend's house, but has always maintained his innocence. After they had been corresponding for some months, the pair became engaged, and Torley helped launch a high-profile campaign for Richey's release.
Torley's efforts seemed to be about to bear fruit when the original conviction was overturned last year, but Richey remains in prison, awaiting the outcome of further appeals. Meanwhile, he has rekindled his relationship with his ex-wife after a 20-year hiatus, and faithful Torley has been given the push. In an interview from prison, Richey, 41, played the romantic hero, torn between the love of two women. His sense of his own desirability is apparently undimmed by the orange prison jumpsuit and shackles.
"I still love Karen, but I'm not in love with her," he said. "I wish her the best, but I can't keep going on the way I am. I'm just being torn apart. I'm grateful for everything she's done and for her love, but things kicked off with my ex-wife and I'm playing both sides. It needs to stop."
Torley, who has devoted eight years of her life to freeing her man, has so far not expressed any rage, though to do so would be understandable, but admits she was "devastated" when Richey told her he was in love with his ex.
It's a disappointing result for those of us who have followed the case, curious as to whether a long-term, long-distance relationship between two people who have never touched could survive normal married life.
Not all women who get involved with dangerous men want to save them: some are looking for protection. Scottish comedian Janey Godley endured a grim childhood, with two alcoholic parents and years of sexual abuse by her creepy uncle. At 18, she met Sean Storrie, son of an East Glasgow gangster.
He didn't exactly charm her off her feet, but she was interested in this hardman who worked as a bouncer.
"I couldn't stand him," she recalls. "He was so moody. But when he asked me out, I said yes out of curiosity."
Being a tough lad from a rough family, young Storrie wasn't fazed when Godley told him about her traumatic history. He just listened to her, and she loved him for it.
Not to say it was a perfect marriage: the couple ran a pub in the East End of Glasgow for her gangster father-in-law, where drugs were rife and violence an occupational hazard. A police raid on the pub uncovered caches of weapons Storrie's father had hidden in the back yard. Storrie knocked Godley about, and she ran away repeatedly.
Unlike most of the women who find themselves married to the mob, Godley seems to have effected a transformation on her man. He became a reformed character and stopped beating her, while she launched a successful career as a stand-up comedian, using the dark material of her past for laughs. Last year she published her memoir, Handstands in the Dark, including "handy hints on how to get Semtex off your walls".
Even though she was a victim of violence herself, she admits it has its uses: she doesn't need to worry about being sought out by the uncle who abused her, as she's got protection.
"I married into a family who really don't like men who abuse children," she says defiantly. "My husband's one of seven sons from the East End."
For a woman at a low point in her life, the protection of a mobster can be a powerful attraction. Marilyn Wisbey had gangland pedigree: her father was one of the Great Train Robbers, and her mother, who had knitted the balaclavas used in the raid -
"She knew it was going to be a big one, but she didn't know it was going to be the train. She had to make the balaclavas. When they tried them on, one eye was up there," Wisbey points to her forehead, wheezing with laughter, "and one was down here," she indicates her cheekbone. "But at least she tried..." - took her girls to Harrods to spend the proceeds.
But when she met Mad Frankie Fraser, former associate of London's notorious Kray brothers, Wisbey was down on her luck: "Dad just got nicked for drugs, my husband asked me for a divorce, all my friends deserted me, and all I could do was drown my sorrows." She was singing in a bar when Fraser approached her, and she was quick to establish her credentials.
"I said 'D'you know who I am?' He said, 'No.' I said, 'I'm Tommy Wisbey's daughter'. He said, 'Ooh.'"
The ageing gangster and his moll were together for more than ten years. "He's been a big pal, Frank," Wisbey says. "Diamond. He's my rock."
Their first date was a visit to her father in prison. On the train they ate a picnic of smoked salmon sandwiches and drank Champagne.
They'd been together a few months when Frank was shot in the face as they came out of a nightclub. She recalls: "When they let me in to the hospital to visit him, I said, 'F****** hell Frank, that was some powerful shot of vodka we had last night.' He said, 'Don't make me laugh.' I just held up a bowl for him to be sick. I'd only known him three months. I thought, 'I can't leave him.'
"Most sensible women would have got out a bit lively but I thought, no."
Some women are drawn to dangerous men simply because they can't resist the thrill. Brenda Colletti was raised in a tiny hick town and ran away to Philadelphia in search of excitement. She found it in the shape of Philip, an up-and-coming hitman in the South Philly Mafia. When they went to bars, people would send over drinks.
They ate in restaurants owned by gangsters and never picked up the tab. Philip bought her a gun and she would practise shooting in the basement of their house. She was hooked on the glamour of it, quoting lines from The Godfather and talking about "respect".
By day they plotted hits at the kitchen table; by night they slept with guns under the mattress. "It was really cool," she purrs. "We were just bad people."
No Questions Asked: The Secret Life of Women in the Mob by Clare Longrigg. Published by Miramax Books, £15.99.
This article: living.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=648362006
Last updated: 30-Apr-06 00:54 BST
Delivery formats for "Scotsman.com Living"
