My attorney assured me that it was virtually unheard-of to get probation based on charges as serious as the ones I was facing. Also, the deal I was offered couldn’t have been worked out without the cooperation of prosecutor Van Vliet and the belief that she had in me. She clearly took a leap of faith on my credibility and ability to bounce back while facing extreme adversity, and I wasn’t going to let her down. I wasn’t going to let myself down, either.
I decided that my best option was to take the plea agreement.
While I was awaiting my court case, I hung out quite a bit with a friend of mine named John Uribe. He would stop by my house mostly late at night, and we would have many long talks until the sun came up. I first met Kevin Maher through John.
I didn’t know this at the time, but while I was out on bail and my trial was pending, John began to get paranoid about my flipping on him. His mind raced with thoughts that I was going to do something underhanded, such as rat him out to the authorities. Doing something like that had never crossed my mind, but John wasn’t thinking clearly. His paranoia was a result of his excessive use of cocaine. In an attempt to make himself feel more secure, John phoned Kevin in New Jersey and asked him to come down to Miami to check me out.
I wasn’t aware of the intricacies of John and Kevin’s business and personal relationship back then. I found out later that Kevin was using John to find criminals for the DEA to lock up. Kevin would make frequent trips down to Miami, then return with new information for his DEA contacts in New York City. I find it rather ironic that John called Kevin down to Miami to make sure I wasn’t a rat, and in the end Kevin locked John up.
Kevin drove down to Miami in his Porsche, all the way from New Jersey, to the Mayfair nightclub, where I was hanging out in the VIP room. Contrary to previous reports, that evening I was not wearing leather hot pants with my leg over a chair with no underwear. I was actually dressed quite tastefully in a long, fitted, ruffled Spanish dress.
Kevin stuck out like a sore thumb as soon as he walked into the trendy Latin nightclub. While I fit in with my dark, tanned skin and long, curly hair, he was quite the opposite: a pale-skinned, Irish American guy with bright blue eyes.
Kevin saw me from across the room and approached me with a stoic seriousness. “Where’s John?”
“Who are you?” I responded.
“I’m Kevin. Kevin Maher. I’m from New Jersey and John called me.”
“Well, then you have his phone number,” I answered bluntly.
“Don’t be a smart-ass with me. I know who you are . . . Beverly.”
“Oh, you’re smart, too,” I shot back, and began to turn away. “Everybody in here knows who I am. Did you ask the doorman my name? Anyway, I don’t really want to talk to you.”
Kevin walked away and came back up to me a bit later that night. That time, he was severely pissed off. John had gotten the keys to Kevin’s Porsche from the valet and taken off with it. Even though Kevin had rubbed me the wrong way when I first met him, for some reason at that moment I felt bad for him. Since he appeared to be a cop, I knew that nobody at the club was going to help him get his car back, so I decided to lend a hand.
I told Kevin that I would go down to the valet with him and help look into the problem. He seemed to appreciate my offer, and when we got into the elevator to go down to the valet, he looked at me rather funny. Not ha-ha funny, but as if he were going to lean over and kiss me. I was dead right. We began kissing, and although it seemed strange, I went with it.
When we got to the lobby, I told Kevin not to tell John what had just happened between us. I wasn’t involved with John romantically, but I didn’t know exactly why Kevin was in Miami, and somehow things didn’t seem to add up. John and Kevin clearly didn’t march to the same drummer, and I strongly suspected that there was more to their involvement than met the eye.
Once we got to the valet, Kevin called up John on his car phone and told him to return his car immediately. Kevin was screaming at John, but John didn’t come back with the car. After a couple of hours went by, I began to feel even worse for Kevin.
As we waited for John to return from his joyride with Kevin’s Porsche, hopefully in one piece, we opened up to each other. Finally, he hit me with it: “I’m with the FBI,” Kevin said quietly. I knew he was a cop, I thought.
“Just stop!” I insisted. “I don’t want to know anything about what you’re doing. I have my own problems right now.”
“Yeah, John told me you were arrested and that you’re out on bail. He’s paranoid that you’re going to get him locked up.”
“What?!” I was stunned. “I’m not trying to have John locked up. I’m done with my case. Finished. And I don’t want to go back. Not ever.”
Kevin said he could help me.
“How can you help me? I’m already done with my case.” I told Kevin that in just a few weeks I was going to go before the judge to be sentenced. I had already pleaded guilty to extortion and was getting a plea bargain, which included probation.
“I’ll make sure that you get probation,” Kevin insisted.
“You don’t have to make sure. I’ve already done it all through my attorney. Please don’t interfere with this.”
He looked me in the eye and said, “I just want to keep you safe.”
When Kevin said that, I melted instantly. I hadn’t heard a man offer to keep me safe in a long time. I was insecure, upset, anxious, and scared. For a brief moment after he offered me safety, the darkness then surrounding my life became a bit lighter. Kevin wasn’t my type; I had previously dated tall, dark, and handsome Latino men, and he was short, pale, and not the best-looking guy. However, he said those magic words at a time in my life when they mattered. At that moment, our connection grew deeper, and for me this went far beyond the physical.
“I don’t want your help right now,” I responded softly. “But when I’m done with my case, it would be nice to know that somebody’s there for me, because one thing’s for sure—I have to get out of Miami when this is all over.”
He took a deep breath and said, “I’m in love with you.”
What? I wondered how this man could already be in love with me when we had just met. I didn’t even know him, and he certainly didn’t know me. But when you’re young, in trouble, and fighting for your life, you don’t question things that feel positive, and it felt good and reassuring to hear. I was to learn in time that Kevin’s love wasn’t really love at all—it was an obsession. My problem was that I didn’t know it at that moment. How could I have known?
In November of 1986, I entered court to hear my sentence. My lawyer told me that while it looked good, courts don’t have to accept plea agreements. They can reject them if they so choose. I held my breath and prayed. Prosecutor Van Vliet walked over to the defense side of the table and told Judge Eugene Spellman that she was going to recommend probation and gave all the reasons why. When she was finished, Judge Spellman asked me to stand up.
The judge lowered his glasses down on his nose and looked directly into my eyes. Before he sentenced me, he wanted to inform me that in the seventeen years he had sat on the bench, he had never had a prosecutor recommend probation for charges as serious as mine. Not ever. Judge Spellman let me know unequivocally that if I messed up and landed back in court, I should not look for help from Van Vliet, and he would specially request to be assigned my case and would put me away, personally.
Then Judge Spellman gave me my sentence: five years’ probation.
Contrary to various reports, I never ratted anyone out. As part of my plea bargain, I was prepared to testify truthfully about the events that unfolded. However, the other people named in the case made plea bargains for themselves and never went to trial. My testimony was never required. I didn’t rat my boyfriend out, either. Jorge paid for my defense, so when people accuse me of betraying him, it makes no sense whatsoever. If the arrest hadn’t happened the way it happened and I had been involved with somebody else at the time, I really could have gone
downhill. It was actually a gift that I had received my wake-up call when I did and had supportive people in my life, and I don’t have any regrets.
My attorney, Norman Elliott Kent, recently reflected on my arrest, trial, and subsequent rehabilitation that brought me to the positive state of my present life:
Danielle met the demanding requirements for pretrial release, including significant drug rehabilitation counseling, which requires a lot of energy. She undertook the difficult task of accepting responsibility for her own actions, and she wanted to do whatever was necessary to remain a free woman and change her life. Danielle was rewarded for her efforts by the prosecutor when she was recommended for probation. None of these things that she is achieving now as a television star would be possible today had she not taken those ameliorative and rehabilitative measures back then. If Danielle did not take these kinds of brave steps, instead of starring on a television show, she might be just getting out of prison and in a halfway house. Only her willingness to change in the past made her future possible. If you want to be better tomorrow, the time to start is today.
One of the conditions for my probation was that it had to be served outside of Miami. The prosecutor and my attorney spoke at great length about how unsafe and unhealthy it would be for me to stay there any longer, and the judge agreed and wanted an address where I would be relocating within three days of my sentencing. I had no family or any real friends outside of Miami and had no idea where I was going to move, so my attorney requested an extension while I put the pieces of my potential new life together. I quickly began to drift back into my old bad habits, going out to clubs and partying all night. I wasn’t drinking or doing drugs; instead, I was getting high on what I loved the most—dancing. I finally had my freedom back and wanted to celebrate on the dance floor. I also wanted to reclaim the carefree feeling that I had enjoyed in Miami before everything went sour.
My attorney caught wind that I was resorting to my old ways. Miami may seem large, but in my circles word traveled fast. One night, one of the club owners who was a friend of my attorney suggested that I should leave Miami because he’d hate to see me get into trouble again. It didn’t take me more than a moment to realize that he was right.
It was hard leaving Miami behind, but it was time. So that’s exactly what I did.
7
ONE STEP FORWARD, TEN STEPS BACK
It was time to take charge of my life, but my support system was weak. I had no contact with my father and barely spoke to my mother. I had no boyfriend, and all of my close friends were in Florida, a place where I could no longer stay. I had to leave everything I had known for the past seven years and start a new chapter of my life somewhere else. Probation was to last for the next five years; my goal was to complete my probation without incident and put this Miami phase of my life far behind me. It would be difficult, but I was up to the challenge when I considered the alternatives. At the time, moving to New Jersey with Kevin seemed to be a smart option. In fact, it was my only option.
Kevin constantly stayed in touch with me after we met at the club. Let’s put it this way: we were more than just friends. He was traveling back and forth to Florida and he made it a point to find me and see me when he was in town. He told me many more times that he loved me and promised over and over to keep me safe. After a stint in prison, having eight serious indictments against me, and receiving probation (by the skin of my teeth and the grace of God), that’s exactly what I needed to hear. Plus, Kevin had told me he was an FBI agent—a man of the law. Starting the next phase of my life with someone who could truly protect me seemed like the perfect fit.
When I finally told Kevin that I wanted to leave Florida and be with him after months of his trying to convince me, he was quite happy, to say the least. We drove all the way to the Garden State in his Porsche, and as soon as we arrived, Kevin put me up in a motel in Little Ferry, which is a blue-collar town just south of Hackensack. It was the kind of motel where you pay by the hour, not by the night, and it was riddled with hookers, drugs, and pimps. Used needles and empty plastic baggies containing drug residue were actually in the corner of my room when I checked in. I couldn’t bear to sleep in the bed—the pillows and bedspread were so full of stains that I wouldn’t even venture to sit on it. I unpacked some of my clothes and draped them over a chair, the only reasonably clean piece of furniture in the room. That was where I would sit during the day and sleep at night. The bathroom was no better—it was disgusting. I would put on sweatpants and a baseball hat pulled down low and go to a nearby diner to use the ladies’ room. Clearly, the motel was a far cry from the posh high-rise condo that I had just left in Coconut Grove. So much for Kevin keeping me safe, I thought.
While this was not a safe place for me, it certainly was for Kevin: he knew that by parking me there, he was free of worry. No one at the motel would be of interest to me. I had no phone to contact anyone, only a pager. I didn’t have access to a car to take off in or even any clue where I was. There was no easy way for me to leave the area surrounding the motel unless Kevin came and picked me up. He’d come by and take me out for a bite to eat. But sometimes he wouldn’t show up for days on end. Already he was in complete control of my life.
I stayed at the motel for about three weeks. The longer I stayed, the less safe I felt as I became more aware of the number of crackheads surrounding me. I was now living in their world, and the irony was that I was on drug probation! As I walked down the street in Little Ferry after living there for nearly a month, something clicked and I got the feeling that it was time to get out of there before something terrible happened. I grabbed all my stuff and called a cab from a pay phone and asked the driver to take me someplace safe. “Go to a Bennigan’s,” I said to the cabbie, figuring that a chain restaurant would at least be in a decent town. He took me to the nearest Bennigan’s, but to my dismay it was in an even seedier location than my motel was.
At Bennigan’s, I called a car service and told the dispatcher I was lost. A driver arrived and I asked him to take me to the
nicest nearby town he could think of. He drove me about thirty minutes to Englewood Cliffs, an upper-middle-class town just across the Hudson River from Manhattan.
In town I walked into a friendly looking neighborhood pizzeria, ordered a couple of slices, took out my notepad and paperwork, and began to regroup. The people who worked at the pizza place were nice and let me sit at a table for as long as I liked and didn’t hassle me. After about five hours, Kevin paged me. He asked where I was and I told him. Shortly after, he showed up in a rage to pick me up and caused a huge scene. Much to the other customers’ shock and dismay, he dragged me out of the pizza place, threw me into his car, and began to interrogate me as if I were a suspect in one of his FBI cases.
Kevin, paranoid and high on coke, accused me of prostituting myself to the customers and the fellas who worked at the pizza place. I tried to calm him down by explaining that I was there only because I felt unsafe at the motel and simply didn’t know where else to go. I told him that I had only a few more weeks in which to renew my probation status in New Jersey, and I had to get settled into a place that seemed acceptable to the court officers. I said that it would be impossible to do that in the sleazebag motel where he had left me.
Unable to accept my reasoning, and without warning, Kevin exploded and punched me in the left side of my face. The blow was powerful and extremely painful. But what was even more painful was that this man who supposedly loved me and had promised to keep me safe had just hit me. As soon as I stood up for myself and my rights, the control freak within Kevin snapped. He couldn’t handle it, and he reacted with violence. I was confused, defenseless, and in complete shock.
Now, for most women, this would be a clear red flag to get the hell out of the relationship. However, when you grow up being abused, you don’t even know what a warning sign is. I wasn’t taught whom or what to stay away from by my parents. I wasn’t shown the right way to behave and how others who supposedl
y love you should behave toward you. Not to mention I was lost. I was alone. I had no home. I had no job. And I didn’t know that I was heading into an even darker and more dangerous place than when I’d lived in Florida.
soon after that incident in the pizzeria parking lot in New Jersey, I moved to New York City and began working nights as an exotic dancer.
Kevin wanted me to get into the business to make money for the both of us. He had admired the way I danced at the nightclubs in Miami and felt I could bring in a significant income as a dancer. He introduced me to a girl named Rosario who worked as an exotic dancer in the city; Rosario had been instructed by Kevin to make me her protégée and teach me how to be successful on the dancing circuit. She lived in a modest apartment in Astoria, Queens, on Nineteenth Street and Ditmars Boulevard. I moved in with her and she began to show me the ropes.
Rosario was a full-figured Puerto Rican. She had a good grasp of the business and how it worked, so I listened to her advice. Rosario taught me many things, including an important survival lesson that stuck with me. “Don’t date the customers,” she advised. “Never mix business with pleasure.”
She brought me to a club called the Baby Doll in Chinatown. I came into the place as Beverly Merrill, auditioned, and was hired. I danced under the name Danielle, in a tiny bikini. I was used to running around all day in Florida in a bikini, so I was comfortable in my “costume.” Plus, I was getting paid to do what I loved to do best in Miami—dance.
The Naked Truth: The Real Story Behind the Real Housewife of New Jersey--In Her Own Words Page 8