Queen Bess

by Preston, Jennifer

  At 9:15 P.M. Bess telephoned Koch at Gracie Mansion to offer her resignation. Koch said she also offered an apology for causing him embarrassment: “Her last comment was ‘I hope that this won’t stop us from having an occasional cup of coffee.’”

  Early the next morning, before anyone had arrived in the City Hall offices, Bess walked into the building with her letter of resignation and left it with the police detectives at the front desk.

  Typed on personal stationery, the letter read:

  Dear Ed:

  I will always be proud to have worked with you through the years and for the opportunities that I have had to serve the people of New York City, first, for four years as commissioner of consumer affairs, and then, for nearly that long, as your cultural affairs commissioner.

  However, I regret that current circumstances are such that I can no longer be sufficiently effective to warrant my continued service in your administration.

  I am therefore resigning my position effective immediately.

  I wish you and your administration success in serving the needs of New Yorkers, a cause to which I have dedicated my public life.

  Most sincerely,

  Bess Myerson

  During her three-year tenure as cultural affairs commissioner Bess had proved to be an effective advocate for the arts during budget negotiations with city officials, seeing that the agency’s budget doubled from $60 million to $123.5 million, which allowed her to dramatically increase financial support to many of the city’s major cultural institutions as well as the more than four hundred smaller cultural programs that the agency supports. At the same time, however, some senior-level managers thought she was a poor administrator.

  “I don’t think that she knew why she was there,” said one senior-level administrator who worked for Bess. “I don’t think she had any goals. For a while she tried to approach it like consumer affairs—see who’s cheating, see if anybody is spending money on things where they shouldn’t be—and then she came to realize that it was an inappropriate role for a cultural affairs commissioner. She was supposed to balance the city’s interest against the interest of the arts. I don’t think that she realized that. There was just no leadership.”

  Another important role of the city’s cultural czar is to bring visibility to the arts, and many people in the arts faulted Bess for not being as visible as they would have liked her to be.

  She also had a reputation for sometimes being embarrassingly unprepared for meeting on important issues affecting the cultural community. “She wasn’t professional,” complained the director of an arts group. “She showed up for one meeting with me in her curlers.”

  Staff members at the cultural affairs agency said that Bess frequently arrived at the office in a sweatsuit. She used to plug in her electric rollers in the men’s room and change into dresses and suits that she kept in her closet, usually before noon.

  With her staff Bess displayed both extremes of her personality. “She could be very tough,” recalled a former senior-level administrator. “She was famous for her voice; that voice made people quiver. She was often really ugly to people, but often she was very nice to people. She showed a real motherly quality to everyone, not just Sukhreet.”

  Koch accepted Bess’s resignation. In a letter he dictated that morning he praised her work at the agency and assured her that “our personal friendship will continue undiminished.”

  At a strained and crowded City Hall news conference a few hours later, Koch appeared unusually subdued as he read from a prepared statement and responded to reporters’ questions with terse and abrupt answers. Following Tyler’s advice, the mayor did not release the seventy-four-page report to the public that day; instead he provided reporters with only a five-sentence summary of Tyler’s conclusions. Tyler had asked the mayor not to make the report public because it might jeopardize the continuing investigation of the U.S. attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, his longtime friend. Noting that bullets had been fired into the home of a former Nanco employee during Andy’s investigation, Tyler also requested that Koch keep the report secret so that “witnesses could be protected.”

  “Judge. Tyler’s findings are distressing, to say the least,” the mayor read from his statement that morning. “Bess Myerson and I have been close friends for more than twenty years. I owe her much as a friend and as the commissioner of cultural affairs, in which capacity she has made significant contributions to the life of this city. While I will not comment on the particular issues or allegations discussed in Judge Tyler’s report, I know that professionally and personally this has been a very difficult time for Bess Myerson.

  “But Bess Myerson fully recognizes my responsibilities as mayor of the city of New York and recognizes that our friendship can never stand in the way of carrying out those responsibilities. Acceptance of her resignation is personally painful, but as mayor I know it is the only appropriate thing to do.”

  The pained expression on Koch’s face throughout the press conference and his solemn demeanor at the podium suggested that Bess’s resignation was for him perhaps the most difficult and embarrassing resignation since the city’s corruption scandal first broke out in January 1986 with Donald Manes’s attempted suicide.

  Although she had not been an “insider” for more than ten years, since his 1977 campaign and the early days of his first term, Bess’s departure from Koch’s administration was perceived to be extremely damaging to him politically. In the public’s mind she had been the unofficial first lady of New York.

  Bess turned on her answering machine that day and refused to take calls. Her lawyer, Hafetz, released a statement on her behalf that said: “Although, in retrospect and with hindsight, Ms. Myerson believes it was a mistake of judgement [sic] to have hired Judge Gabel’s daughter, Ms. Myerson did not intend to, and indeed did not, commit any wrongful acts. Ms. Myerson is further confident that the grand jury will conclude that there was no wrongdoing on her part.”

  Hafetz was shocked by the Tyler report. “It was a very unfair document,” he said later. “It presented a very one-sided picture. All of what was in there was possibly subject to impeachment or contradiction. Yet it conveyed the impression that it was gospel. Additionally, wherever there was an inference that could be drawn for or against Bess, they drew it against Bess.”

  The day the report was released, New York Post reporter Charles Lachman interviewed Judge Gabel, who insisted it was an “absolute fact” that she had never called Bess on behalf of her daughter. “I can understand how people would think, ‘Oh, she was doing it to take care of her kid,’” Judge Gabel told the Post. “It’s not true. I never recommended her to Bess. I never did. My conscience is as clear as can be. As much as I love my daughter, I have never done anything that my conscience has bothered me with.…”

  Another reporter called Nancy Capasso that afternoon to ask if she had any comment on Bess’s resignation. “Oh, that’s too bad,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

  After completing the report, Tyler sent it over to Giuliani to assist his grand jury investigation, which had abandoned its probe of Bess influencing city contracts to focus instead on whether Bess had bribed Judge Gabel by giving Sukhreet a job. Since bribery allegations involving state judges were normally handled by the state, some people were surprised that the report had not gone first to Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau. He said he received it from Tyler ten days after it had been sent to Giuliani. “I did not see a case based on the report,” Morgenthau said later. He called Giuliani’s office and said they should, however, let him know if they were not going to pursue it. “Don’t worry about it,” Morgenthau said he was told. “We’re doing it.”

  Giuliani’s office proceeded with its investigation, interviewing many of the same people as Tyler had, including the former and present employees at the Department of Cultural Affairs, Andy’s former live-in servants and drivers, and aides who worked with Judge Gabel. Since the probe seemed to be focused primarily on Bess, Na
ncy was now less reluctant to cooperate with investigators. She helped the government locate one of her husband’s former drivers, and she invited one of Giuliani’s investigators to meet Shirley Harrod, her husband’s former maid, at her apartment. Nancy had met Harrod through a mutual friend after Harrod had been fired by Andy.

  Meanwhile, reporters from six news organizations attempted to persuade the city and the courts to make the Tyler report public under the state’s freedom of information act. On May 18, however, their request was denied. Manhattan supreme court justice Bruce Wright agreed the report should be kept secret. He said the report contained “shocking” statements of wrongdoing and noted that there was a “genuine possibility” of criminal prosecution. Despite Wright’s ruling, the Tyler report was not to remain secret for very long.

  Not long after asking Bess for her resignation, Koch invited her to Gracie Mansion for Passover. Koch later said publicly that he had extended the invitation because he worried that Bess would be so despondent over her fall from grace that she might harm herself. When word of Koch’s invitation to Bess appeared in the newspapers, a federal official who had read the secret, politically damaging report believed the mayor intended to “whitewash the whole thing.” A few days later writer Jack Newfield, then working for the Village Voice, received a copy of the report in the mail.

  On Wednesday, June 10, the headline “How Bess Bought Justice” ran on the front page of the Village Voice. Inside, Newfield and Wayne Barrett published excerpts from the secret seventy-four-page document. For the first time details about Sukhreet’s city job and the reduction of Nancy Capasso’s alimony were made public.

  The publication of the Tyler report, proclaiming there was “a secret understanding” between Bess and Judge Gabel, set off another frenzy of media coverage. By noon three television news camera crews were at the Village Voice to interview Newfield and Barrett. On the front page of the New York Post the next day the headline read “Bess Mess Rocks City Hall.” Koch was once again under siege. The reporters in City Hall’s Room 9 pressed him to make the Tyler report public, and after Giuliani said he no longer had any objection to making it public, Koch finally released it that night.

  With the report’s details now in full public view, Koch was not as reticent as he had been in the past about his old friend Bess. “I’m aghast at what she did. It’s deplorable,” Koch said a day after the Voice article appeared. “It has to be perceived, though, in the context of a person who I have known, who is without question suffering and has been disgraced.

  “Am I going to reject her phone calls? The answer is no.

  “Do I have any current plans on having dinner with her? The answer is also no.”

  “The Bess Mess” dominated the front pages and television news for days. Developer Donald Trump even injected himself into the controversy, calling on Governor Mario Cuomo to launch a special investigation. The pressure for the state court system to take some action against Judge Gabel was intense, and finally Judge Gabel reluctantly decided to retire from the bench. Reporters sought interviews with Sukhreet, who was only too happy to oblige.

  Editorial writers were also quick to call for further action.

  The New York Daily News expressed righteous indignation on its editorial page: “At long last, the Bess Myerson rock has been kicked over, and what’s crawling out is sickening: arrogance, abuse of power, payroll manipulation, case-fixing, coverup. Small wonder so many people fought so widely to keep Judge Harold Tyler’s report secret.”

  On Friday, June 12, the New York Times ran a strong editorial titled “Ms. Myerson, the Judge, and the Mayor,” calling for “more public answers and appropriate prosecution.”

  “Two public offices were grossly abused when Bess Myerson, then New York City’s Cultural Affairs Commissioner, hired the daughter of the judge presiding over the divorce of Carl Capasso, the Commissioner’s companion. This transaction demands more public answers and appropriate prosecution.…

  “Ms. Myerson has resigned, but her conduct as detailed by Mr. Tyler warrants further action.…”

  In this climate the U.S. attorney’s office worked at a furious pace to prepare federal indictments against Bess, Judge Gabel, and Andy.

  As the scandal continued to swirl around her, Bess took refuge at Andy’s three-acre estate in Westhampton Beach. She drove out there alone on Thursday, the day after the Village Voice broke the story, spending most of her time in a second-floor bedroom overlooking Quantuck Bay. “Bess is locked in her room and not even seeing friends,” a servant told a New York Post reporter. “That poor lady is going through so much, she doesn’t want to talk to anybody.”

  She emerged briefly that afternoon to visit with her daughter, Barra Grant, and her four-year-old granddaughter, who was always able to put a smile on her face. She ignored the large group of photographers and reporters who were camped out at the end of the driveway chronicling her every move.

  Before the public release of the Tyler report on June 10, Bess had appeared to be handling her resignation quite well, considering the circumstances. She was keeping busy, working on a book with writer Susan Dworkin about her year as Miss America, and spending as much time as possible with Andy, who was about to enter jail. She said at the time that it would be difficult watching Andy go to jail, but that she would manage. “It has to be done. I will take it in stride.”

  She also talked about moving forward in her life. “I feel a vibrancy and excitement about life,” she said. “It is a good time. It doesn’t mean that it is all happy days. It means contentment, peace, and work, and relationships. Sometimes life is problematic and sometimes it is sad. It is all of these things. And one learns to take things in their stride, to move forward. I have had great joy in friends. I have had a lot of time for friends that I didn’t have before. And I have had a wonderful time with this book. It is something getting to know myself again.”

  The renewed interest in her following the Village Voice’s article, however, seemed to set her back, close friends said.

  That Friday night, June 12, 1987, Andy arrived at his oceanfront estate. It was the last weekend they would have together. On Monday he was scheduled to report to the federal prison camp at Allenwood, in the rolling hills of northcentral Pennsylvania, to begin serving his four-year prison term.

  They spent Saturday sitting around his pool with his two children and her granddaughter. According to the reporters who watched them, Bess and Andy appeared to be relaxed as she soaked up the sun and he occasionally went into the water for a swim.

  To avoid the photographers Bess left the house in her blue Mercedes early Sunday morning. Andy and his two children emerged from the house at about 11:00 A.M. and packed their belongings into his late-model Lincoln Town Car. Trailed by a caravan of reporters and photographers, he then drove about a mile over to Nancy’s luxury condominium complex to drop off the children. He fought back tears as he stood in the parking lot for a last few moments with his children, lovingly smoothing their hair and pulling them near. He watched them enter the lobby of the complex and then drove back home.

  On his way back to his Park Avenue apartment in Manhattan early that afternoon, reporters continued to trail him. He tried desperately to lose them, at one point zooming to ninety miles per hour on the Long Island Expressway. At his Manhattan apartment he accepted a pizza delivery at about 5:00 P.M. and later emerged from his apartment toting suitcases and refusing to say where he was going.

  That night he was spotted in J. G. Melon’s, a neighborhood bistro at 74th Street and Third Avenue, having dinner with two young, pretty blond women, one of whom he had met through Bess at her group therapy sessions. Bess was nowhere to be seen.

  The next morning, on Monday, June 15, Andy, wearing khaki slacks and a light blue shirt, left for the federal prison camp at Allenwood in his Lincoln Town Car with his nephew, Michael Capasso. They then drove another fifteen miles to the dormitory-style prison on 420 acres, regarded as a “country club” by some becau
se of its tennis court, two boccie ball courts, a law library, and an indoor gym. There are no bars on the windows. That day Andy moved into a small, linoleum-tiled cubicle equipped with a desk, a closet, and a bed. Once a millionaire contractor, he now would spend eight hours a day on custodial duty earning $.30 to $1.11 an hour.

  Prison regulations allowed Andy eight visitors, eight times a month. To arrange for a visit Andy had to put the visitor’s name on a list. Bess was not the only woman Andy invited to visit him.

  Two weeks later, on July 2, Nancy Capasso got the news she had been waiting for. The state appeals court had reversed the decision of state supreme court justice Andrew Tyler and awarded her a $6.4 million divorce settlement.

  In its unanimous decision the Appellate Division voted five to zero to award Nancy three times the $2.2 million she had been awarded at the end of 1985. In a harsh rebuke to Judge Tyler the court found that he had failed to compensate Nancy for contributions she had made to her husband’s career and failed to assess properly the total value of the marital property, which they placed at $15 million.

  As part of the settlement Nancy was to be awarded the $1.9 million estate in Westhampton Beach and $1.3 million from her husband’s company. The court ordered that the $6 million Fifth Avenue apartment be sold by June 30, 1988, and that Nancy get half of the proceeds.

  She also got the $200,000 waterfront condominium, $228,552 in furniture and household items from their Fifth Avenue apartment, and her jewelry, worth an estimated $144,650.

  Andy got to keep his $400,000 Palm Beach condo and collect half of the proceeds from the Fifth Avenue apartment.

  Nancy was ecstatic about her award, and when told that the settlement included Andy’s three-acre Westhampton Beach estate she declared, “Oooh … that’s where Bess the Beauty Queen is ensconced. I wonder how soon I can go in and get her out. This could be fun. I’ll ask her for the key.”