Looking Back On Four Years Of Crime

A quick perusal of "In the News" section on thefacebook.com confirms that, if not everyone, then many at Harvard get Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame. But while these items usually link to games won, stunts pulled or pedestrian quotes as random student X, a different subset of newsmakers gain their notoriety through, well, more notorious means.

Their names are ripped from the police blotter and plastered across the front page under sober shots of Middlesex County Courthouse arraignments. Their misfortune is alternatively giggled at by strangers over dining-hall fare and lamented by family and friends. These Harvard criminals come to us from the student body, the broader Harvard community of faculty and staff and, sometimes, the wild and dangerous world that lies beyond our Ivied walls.

Some are remembered by name—who didn’t hear about the embezzling duo of Pomey and Gomes; others by their exploits—the “Alexander the Great bomber” or the “pot-dealing chef.” But those memories are incomplete, with few following closely what transpired in the aftermath of the initial shocking headlines.

Described inside are just some of these high-profile crimes and criminals, along with what could be gleaned from court records and interviews about their post-newsmaking careers. Their paths have taken them as far from Harvard as Virginia Commonwealth University and a state-run mental health lockup, while others returned to jobs and classes at Harvard.

All, though, are part of the amalgam of shared experiences and memories that the Class of 2004 collectively holds.

Bomb Threat Disrupted Exam

It’s 40 minutes into the final exam of the popular Core, Literature and Arts B-21, “Images of Alexander the Great,” and 500 eyes focus on a slide of the course’s hero slaying the Persian Emperor Darius, displayed at the front of the Science Center B lecture hall.

The lights are low and few people notice a slightly disheveled figure edge his way down to the front row. The course head, Loeb Professor of Classical Art and Archeology David G. Mitten, would later tell The Crimson that he assumed the man was a student late for the January 18, 2001 exam.

Suddenly the man reaches into his satchel, takes out a brick and hurls it at the blackboard. All 500 eyes shoot down as he announces his name and his intention: he is “Romanticus;” he has a bomb; he declares “war on the [expletive] United States of America;” and if anyone moves, they are all going to die.

According to police reports, the man was not Romanticus, but Kenneth Leong of Tierrasanta, Calif., a 21-year-old drifter with a history of mental problems. He did not have a bomb.

His threat though, triggered a mass stampede for the door, the evacuation of the Science Center, a mace-drenched arrest and, ultimately, a rare course-wide February makeup final. For Leong, the threat meant a set of charges that could have brought him significant jail time—albeit charges that were never prosecuted. Three-and-a-half years later, as the last students from “Images of Alexander” graduate, the criminal justice system has lost track of Leong.

The stampede for the door on that January day was led by a group of students sitting near the back of the hall. Today, Mitten remembers the scene: “The books, blue-books, flip-flops, bottles of Gatorade, etc. left in Science Center B just where everyone abandoned them instantly when someone yelled, ‘Run like hell!’ It was like Pompeii!”

Left behind with Leong were Mitten, a teaching fellow and a senior, all of whom stayed until police arrived minutes later. Leong first demanded a cell-phone to call the police, but when none of those present had one to offer, he walked back into the middle of the auditorium and began sipping a departed student’s soda, declaring his intention to wait until police arrived.

Within ten minutes the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) and Cambridge Police Department were on the scene, cordoning off the Science Center. Leong struggled when officers who had entered the lecture hall tried to arrest him, and he was subdued with mace.

Outside, Mitten circulated through the crowd, while news copters hovered overhead. A bomb squad entered to inspect Leong’s satchel—which it ultimately determined to be harmless.

Leong was escorted to waiting police cars and taken to Cambridge District Court, where he plead “not guilty” to charges of making a false bomb threat, disorderly conduct and trespassing. After initially waiving his right to a court-appointed attorney, Leong was committed to the state-run Lindemann Mental Health Center for a 20-day stay to evaluate his competency to stand trial.

On Feb. 3, most of the class’s students filed back into lecture halls—this time in Emerson Hall and under police protection—to make a second go at the exam, while a small number opted for a take-home exam intended for those too traumatized to take the in-class test.

The public record of Leong’s next few months is sparse, and the paper trail vanishes completely before that spring’s Commencement exercises.

According to Cambridge Public Defender David G. Twohig, who represented the defendant, mental health professionals initially deemed Leong not competent to stand trial, meaning he couldn’t understand the charges against him. At an initial hearing, Leong stated he had been off his medication, and a motion filed by Twohig described him as suffering from chronic paranoid schizophrenia.

But while at Lindemann, Twohig says his client improved. “He was there, got on his medications and reached whatever baseline he could,” Twohig says. “In that setting he seemed like a nice person. He was very troubled but was doing well in the structured environment.” The result of his improvement was that he was deemed competent to be tried, and his case moved forward.

Prosecutors had in the meantime downgraded the most severe charge against Leong—from making false bomb threats to making threats to commit a crime.

Then, sometime in the spring, Leong walked out of Lindemann. While technically a “locked Department of Mental Health facility,” Lindemann is at root a hospital—unlike other state facilities, it is not located within prison walls. Several involved with the criminal justice system say “escape” from the facility is not uncommon.

The next either Twohig or the court heard of him, Leong was in New York, at the Bellevue State Psychiatric Hospital. Court papers show no great rush to bring Leong back to prosecute him, but according to Twohig he eventually landed back in custody at Lindemann, and a date for a jury trial was set.

The final entry in Leong’s relatively thin case file comes abruptly, less than half a year after he was arrested. It’s a nolle prosequi filing by prosecutors, an order announcing their decision to suspend prosecution. According to Twohig, the Commonwealth’s decision is a common one for situations in which the defendant is “clearly delusional” and the remaining charges are minor.

Following the decision not to prosecute, the only thing holding Leong at Lindemann was a set of civil commitment papers. According to Twohig, Leong formally signed himself in when he was sent to Lindemann for the second time, meaning that he could file a request to leave the center at any time with three days notice. During the three-day period, Lindemann could decide whether to file a civil action to commit Leong against his will.

Confidentiality rules forbid Lindemann from confirming whether Leong is still a patient there, but Twohig thinks it is unlikely. “He was probably let out a month or two later and disappeared into the woodwork.”

Mitten says he harbors no ill feelings towards the man who disrupted his final, though his sympathy lies elsewhere. “While I really feel sorry for the poor disturbed man, I felt and feel even sorrier for all the students who were put in fear of their lives,” Mitten says. The professor recognizes in the scare a lesson that is even sharper in a post-Sept. 11 world: “It makes one realize how vulnerable we are to crazy individuals like this and to terrorism in our open urban university community.”

OCS Counselor Led Officers on Chase

It was a late October afternoon in leafy Brookline, and a routine traffic stop was about to turn into a scene from “Cops.” According to Brookline police, the driver of a white Subaru was doing 70 in a 30 MPH zone and failed to stop when instructed to pull over.

The driver led police on a 2.5-mile chase through Brookline, over the BU Bridge and to Memorial Drive, where he lost the tailing officer.

The officer caught back up and attempted to make an arrest as the driver abandoned his car in front of Winthrop House. According to police, a scuffle ensued, during which the man made repeated attempts to “grab the officer’s gun out of the holster.”

The alleged assailant then momentarily escaped but was tackled in front of the Malkin Athletic Center by a Harvard undergraduate and two other passersby.

The suspect, a 57-year old black man from Roslindale, Mass., was transported back to the Brookline police station, where he was charged on six counts, including armed assault with attempt to murder. Because he was acting erratically—according to police he made several more attempts to escape while being held in Brookline—the man was delivered to the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center to undergo psychiatric evaluation.

All of that was good enough for top story billing in The Crimson on the morning of October 26, 2000. The next day provided another bombshell, however: the suspect had a class year and—even more shockingly—a Harvard title.

The man arrested was Wilson J. Hunt Jr. ’65-’69, a 19-year employee at the Office of Career Services (OCS) and at the time the assistant director responsible for advising about minority student affairs, architecture, science and technology.

Director of OCS Bill Wright-Swadel called Hunt a “valued member of [the Harvard] community” and said the entire office was concerned about the situation. Hunt’s employment status was at the time undecided, Wright-Swadel said.

Today, Hunt is again an assistant director at OCS, responsible for minority student affairs, architecture, science and technology.

Harvard officials declined to comment on his case, and in a recent interview Hunt provided only scattered details about his arrest, the disposition of his case and how the incident affected his work at the University.

Between court papers and what Hunt was willing to say, however, a picture of what happened on and after that October afternoon can slowly be pieced together.

That picture is of a man with a long history of mental illness, but an equally long history of attempts to overcome it.

According to a motion for pre-trial probation filed by Hunt’s attorney in January 2001, Hunt was at the time suffering from and being treated for diagnoses of schizoaffective disorder and secondary post traumatic stress disorder. The first is characterized by severe mood swings and depression mixed with schizophrenia-like symptoms. The second refers to mental illness brought on by interactions with or the witnessing of others who experienced great trauma. It is often associated with the horrors of war or abuse.

In his Harvard 35th Reunion Report in 2000, Hunt told classmates how his bouts of depression had stymied repeated attempts to graduate from Harvard.

His first such attack occurred during senior year, and he left Harvard before graduation. A second attempt at finishing Harvard ended in similar circumstances.

Hunt reports that a third round of severe depression was triggered when his attempt to apply for readmission to the College was unsuccessful.

Despite these setbacks, Hunt finally graduated from Harvard as a commuting student in 1969, a full eight years after he entered.

According to his lawyer’s motion, on the day of his arrest, Hunt suffered a paranoid episode at work brought on by an incident there. He left work, but while in his car decided he needed to return. “While doing so, he became overwhelmed by terror, which resulted in the acts for which he is now charged,” the motion reads. “Present treatment addresses the incident and the resulting acts and a reoccurrence is highly unlikely.”

The motion goes on to note that Hunt had no criminal record, no substance abuse history and “extremely high moral standards of self-conduct.”

Hunt explains today without elaborating further that he “was under a lot of stress at the time.” He did note in his reunion report in 2000 that he and his wife were separated and probably divorcing.

It is unclear from court records how long Hunt remained in the hospital following his arrest, and he says he doesn’t remember the precise timeline. On Nov. 16, about three weeks after the incident, there is an entry in the docket saying that a motion to allow him to be escorted to court by his lawyer on the day of his discharge had been granted, and the docket notes that on Nov. 22, Hunt was released from court on his own recognizance.

Hunt says that he did not return to work at OCS for the entire time the criminal charges were pending nor for the rest of the school year.

The next and final development in the case came at a pre-trial hearing on January 9, 2001. Prosecutors amended the most serious count against Hunt—armed assault with the attempt to murder, which can carry a 5 to 20-year prison sentence—to assault and battery on a police officer, which is punishable with up to a two-and-a-half-year jail term.

Meanwhile, Hunt formally admitted to sufficient facts to warrant a guilty finding. The court responded by continuing the case without a formal verdict for ten months, until October of 2001, when the charges were dismissed on recommendation of the probate department. Hunt was ordered to continue counseling and medications as directed by his physician.

The decision meant that Hunt would be spared the guilty verdict that would have caused him further difficultly in regaining his job.

According to Hunt, the Commonwealth knew that the charge of assault with attempt to murder was “trumped up.”

“I think the charge may have been one they give to African-Americans when they are arrested and resist arrest,” Hunt said in an interview last week. Asked about police claims that he grabbed for the officer’s gun, he said, “There was certainly no attempt at murdering a police officer.”

With the criminal charges against him resolved, Hunt said his next step was to convince Harvard that he was fit to return.

“I talked to various people on returning to Harvard, sort of got a clean bill of health,” he said.

Harvard officials would not comment on what hurdles Hunt had to overcome or whether the criterion for deciding whether to retain someone after a criminal case varies based on the employee’s position.

According to Hunt, he was allowed to return to Harvard some time after Commencement of 2001, and he has fulfilled his duties with no further incident in the time since.

In the reunion report published before his arrest, Hunt wrote that he was grateful for the opportunities his job presented him. “I have loved working at Harvard despite my checkered past here,” he wrote. “The students are continually amazing, interesting and accomplished, although sometimes purporting to be clueless.”

Hasty Pudding Embezzlers Used $100K To Live 'Lavish Lifestyle'

The crimes of Suzanne M. Pomey and Randy J. Gomes, both formerly members of the Class of 2002, were the most highly publicized of the last four years, yet the pair’s post-sentencing lives are also the most mysterious. Both have taken pains to remove themselves from the limelight. For this story, no headway was made into locating Gomes, and it took a lucky Internet search to track an otherwise unlisted Pomey down to Richmond, Va., where she had no comment on her post-Harvard career.

The story begins during intersession in January 2002, when a court unsealed a blockbuster indictment: Pomey and Gomes were being charged with embezzling almost $100,000 from the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, where both were officials.

The indictment charged that, for over a year, the pair had been moving funds from the Pudding to their own personal accounts, via the organization’s credit card machine. Over the next several months, the campus buzzed about the details that began to emerge, as prosecutors alleged that the two had used the stolen money to finance a “lavish lifestyle.”

Police confiscated from Gomes’ dorm room a flat-screen TV, a DJ machine, 91 DVDs and other expensive entertainment equipment which they said had been bought with ill-gotten gains. Police also alleged that stolen money went to pay for Gomes’ drug addiction, expensive clothing for Pomey and an open-bar birthday party that Gomes threw for Pomey at a local restaurant.

News of the scandal spread quickly, making headlines in papers ranging from The New York Times to London’s Daily Telegraph.

Due to the pending felony case, Pomey and Gomes were denied degrees in 2002. After an unsuccessful effort by Pomey to suppress a confession she made to police and to be tried separately from Gomes, both changed their pleas to “guilty” at a September 2002 hearing. Prosecutors sought jail time, while lawyers for the defendants argued that the judge should order pre-trial probation, a step which would have prevented the guilty plea from being entered on their permanent record.

On Oct. 4, the judge split the difference. A guilty plea to the grand larceny charge would be a part of Pomey’s and Gomes’ criminal records, but the two would avoid jail time. Gomes was sentenced to five years probation, Pomey to two.

The final axe fell for Pomey and Gomes that next February, when the full Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted to dismiss the pair. Dismissal is a rare and severe punishment at Harvard. While dismissed students can technically re-enroll, it takes another vote of the Faculty to allow it. Twenty-five students had been dismissed in the 66 years prior to the action against Pomey and Gomes, and only nine were subsequently readmitted.

It is unclear where Pomey and Gomes went after their sentencing.

Gomes could not be reached for comment for this story.

A web advertisement offering services as a baby-sitter was the only clue to Pomey’s whereabouts.

According to the advertisement, Pomey is living in Richmond, Va., in the upscale West End neighborhood. The advertisement also notes that she is good with kids, trained in CPR and life-guarding and available both day and night.

Contact information is listed with an e-mail address at vcu.edu—Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), a 25,000-student private university in Richmond with a focus on the life sciences. Pomey had already completed all of her requirements for an undergraduate degree at Harvard, but it is unclear which of VCU’s 100+ programs Pomey was or is enrolled in.

She is unlisted both in the VCU directory and in the Richmond phone book. According to the VCU registrar, she has requested that all of her student information be kept private. Contacted late last month, Pomey declined to comment for this story.

The “Story of Randy and Suzanne,” as it was dubbed by The Crimson’s weekend magazine at the time, thus ends the way it began: in obscurity. Pomey and Gomes have moved on with their respective lives. The Pudding has taken steps to ensure that they never lose $100,000 again. And for the rest of us, all that’s left of this tale are the faded newspaper clippings that document a sensational college crime.

Wielding Cleaver and Club, Former Employee Confronted Police

Guns were drawn and fingers clutched the triggers, as a heavy-set older man brandishing a meat cleaver and a club glared into the eyes of the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) officers surrounding him near the top of Linden Street.

After the suspect, William Cicero, 62, failed to heed an order to drop his weapons, one officer doused him with pepper spray. Cicero responded by throwing his meat cleaver and club at police. According to HUPD spokesperson Steven G. Catalano, officers were at this point authorized to use lethal force.

In the end, Cicero was subdued with a combination of pepper spray and police batons, as a crowd of passersby looked on. Still, the Sept. 19, 2003 arrest marks one of the most dangerous and violent police actions undertaken by HUPD in the last four years.

According to police and court documents, the incident began when Cicero, a long-time Harvard maintenance worker up until his retirement in 1999, began attacking a homeless man who had asked for change on the corner of Mass. Ave and Linden Street.

The homeless man, Michael Parillo, told The Crimson that he had known Cicero for six months and was asking for change at his usual spot on Mass. Ave. when Cicero approached him shouting, “Run, sucker,” and “I’ll clean the streets. I’m starting with you.”

Cicero, who used to give Parillo change and was “always smiling,” struck Parillo on the back and arms with a wooden club, Parillo said. Police allege that Cicero then attacked a woman standing nearby who attempted to intervene. Neither Parillo nor the woman were seriously injured, but Cicero was taken to Cambridge City Hospital with head injuries.

Cicero was charged with six counts, including initially a count of assault with the intent to murder. That charge, however, was downgraded, and currently the most serious charges against Cicero are counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, which could land the defendant in jail for two-and-a-half years.

Cambridge Public Defender David G. Twohig, who is representing Cicero, says his client’s planned defense is that he lacked criminal responsibility on account of mental illness. While several psychiatric experts have examined Cicero for the state, deeming him competent to stand trial, Twohig has hired an independent neuropsychologist to help him make the case that Cicero should not be held responsible for his actions on Sept. 19 of last year.

In the time since his arrest, Cicero was held at Cambridge Hospital and Bridgewater State Hospital before being returned to the Cambridge City Jail, where he currently is incarcerated.

According to a report by Bridgewater State forensic psychologist David Holtzen, soon after his arrest, Cicero was diagnosed by staff at Cambridge Hospital with delirium, a condition involving “confusion, disorientation, agitation, and psychotic symptoms.”

But Holtzen said that based upon his own later examinations of the defendant, Cicero did not suffer from a mental illness as defined by Department of Mental Health regulations.

Holtzen’s report also points to a past criminal history significant for a 1959 incest charge and a 1985 charge of assault with a deadly weapon that was dismissed.

According to the report, Cicero was observed rambling about Arabs at Cambridge Hospital and claimed one worker had tried to stuff a rag down his throat. Asked why he left Harvard, Cicero became agitated: “They gave an ultimatum or a buyout—get rid of you—put [in] the minorities.”

A jury trial in Cicero’s case was scheduled to begin next Monday, but Twohig said last week that he was filing for a continuance as his expert witness would not be available on that day.

Crimes Of Our Times

Other memorable campus incidents and their resolution.

Angello Dalla Santa

Arrested: Nov. 20, 2001.
Convicted in July 2003, on one felony count of marijuana trafficking

The “pot-dealing chef,” Dalla Santa was accused of trafficking nearly 300 pounds of marijuana, estimated to be worth $500,000. Dalla Santa was, at the time of his arrest, manager of Winthrop and Lowell dining halls.

Dalla Santa plead guilty to a reduced charge and was sentenced last summer to a year in jail without the chance of parole. Dalla Santa was incarcerated at the Middlesex House of Corrections in Billerica, Mass.

Brian M. Wan, Class of 2005.

Arraigned: June 20, 2002.
Charged with six counts, including breaking and entering, larceny and larceny over $250. Sufficient facts for a guilty verdict found, but case was continued until 2005.

Police searched the dorm rooms of Wan and another Greenough resident, Michael D. Wang, in the spring of 2002 and turned up items that other Greenough residents had reported missing over the previous months. According to police records, Wan hatched elaborate schemes to steal, among other items, his roommate’s new computer.

According to court records, in 2002 Wan agreed to a plea deal in which he would confess to sufficient facts to warrant a guilty verdict but would have his case continued without a finding until 2005. He was ordered to pay $4,000 in restitution, and was placed on probation.

Wan and Wang left Harvard following the investigation and according to Harvard registration information did not return.

In January of last year, Wan’s attorney filed a motion seeking to overturn his client’s plea, arguing that it was having the unintended effect of preventing Wan from regaining admission to Harvard. No action was taken on the motion.

Alexander Pring-Wilson

Arrested: April 12, 2003.
Charged with 1st degree murder.

Pring-Wilson, at the time a graduate student at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, is accused of stabbing to death Cambridge teen Michael D. Colono, 18, during an early morning altercation.

According to police reports, Pring-Wilson was walking home from a night out with friends when he and the victim, who he did not previously know, began sparring verbally. Police say that Pring-Wilson then fatally stabbed Colono with a pocket knife that the Colorado native was carrying.

While Pring-Wilson originally told police he was an innocent bystander, he was later arrested at his Somerville apartment. He now argues, through his lawyer, that he acted in self-defense.

Last May, Pring-Wilson was freed on $400,000 bail and remains under house arrest at his apartment.

A trial is scheduled for September.