ST. MARY’S TODAY

LEONARDTOWN --- Who has the loot?

That question, involving a missing tractor trailer load of property which had been in the custody of the St. Mary’s Sheriff’s Department, was raised one year ago in news reports in ST. MARY’S TODAY, is one step closer to being answered.

Attorneys for a local man seeking the return of his property from police custody, which was seized from him during a police raid of his home in which criminal charges against him were later dropped, recently completed preliminary steps of the lawsuit which revealed who may have been responsible for stealing the property from police custody.

Court filings in a federal suit brought by a Hermanville man against former St. Mary’s Sheriff Richard Voorhaar and ten unnamed deputies have been amended in Federal Court with the suit now alleging that the property of the plaintiff which disappeared in police custody was actually stolen in a scheme involving the Assistant Sheriff Steven Doolan.

The amended complaint filed in United States District Court not only alleges that Deputy Steven Doolan, who had been the second in command at the department with the rank of captain when the first news of nearly $80,000 worth of building supplies was missing from police custody was part of a conspiracy to steal the property but also clears former Sheriff Richard Voorhaar of any wrongdoing in connection with the theft.

Voorhaar had defrocked Doolan of his position as Captain and demoted him to the rank of Lieutenant which he now holds. Voorhaar also had suspended Doolan for about two months before bringing him back to work handling clerical duties.

When St. Mary’s Sheriff David Zylak (D.) was sworn into office, his first action was to assign Doolan and Lt. Michael Merican to sit on the duty officers desk answering the phone, a far cry from the role the two deputies played for much of the time Voorhaar was in office when they ran the department and made most all of the major decisions as the former sheriff spent increasing amounts of time out of state in his mountain cabin.

Voorhaar has since the election, when his anointed candidate to replace him as sheriff lost the Republican primary, sold his home in St. James and moved from St. Mary’s County to West Virginia.

Doolan, his friend Steven Paul Cooper, an employee of a local defense contractor, Eagan McAlister Associates and George Michael Bowes, Jr., Doolan’s stepson, are alleged to have conspired together to steal the building materials.

The building materials have been valued at figures ranging from $40,000 in a Sheriff’s Department press release to as much as $80,000 in published reports.

Doolan’s wife is a security official with Eagan McAlister and in the last campaign cycle was the election campaign treasurer for St. Mary’s State’s Attorney Richard Fritz (R.)

Building materials had been stolen from a job site of an office building owned by EMA prior to the investigation into the stolen property being initated by Sheriff’s detective Cara Safford. Dep. Safford used information obtained from an informant to obtain a search warrant for the property of Wendell Ford.

Ford has long been the target of the Sheriff’s Department which has played him up as a local drug kingpin. Despite their many years of spending all available resources on trying to pin drug dealing charges on Ford, the Sheriff’s Department has been failed to make a case against him and once again created a major embarassement for themselves with this latest case.

The property taken from Ford’s home was poorly catalouged and inventoried and a video tape of the seizure was first reported missing as well but after attorneys for Ford filed a federal suit, the tape mysteriously turned up in the custody of the Sheriff’s Department.

The Maryland State Proscecutor has been conducting a criminal probe of the missing loot since first learning of purloined property in news reports in ST. MARY’S TODAY. A month after the first news was printed, Voohaar assigned a deputy with close ties to Doolan to investigate the matter but that effort quickly ceased and Voorhaar wrote to Prosecutor Montanrelli asking him to conduct a probe. Voorhaar claimed that his effort had been "stonewalled" by Doolan.

Despite a court order issued on March 28, 2002 by District Court Judge John Slade instructing the immediate release of the property to Ford, Doolan, in his official capacity as Assistant Sheriff, wrote to Ford’s attorney promising that an investigation into the matter was underway.

But the newly filed court papers allege that Doolan had a key role in the disappearance of the missing loot.

Doolan converted Ford’s property to his own and directed that the property be released to Cooper and Bowes and some of the property was sold for cash.

Doolan, in an unusual departure from official policy for disposing of property held in police custody, gave a cell phone number to a subordinate in the police property section to use to contact someone he said worked for EMA. Instead, the cell phone number was for his stepson who, according to court filings, "was not then and never has been an employee of EMA".

"Pursuant to the order from Defendant Doolan, his subordinate released to Defendant Bowes and Defendant (Cooper) a close friend of Doolan and an employee of EMA, the majority of the property that had been seized from the Plaintiffs. The property that was released included 5 bags of insulation, aluminum siding starter strips, nineteen pieces of 14 foot baseboard; 2 pre-hung interior vinyl doors; additional interior and exterior doors; 39 pieces of vinyl siding; one roll of tar paper; 5 rolls of poly painted aluminum coil; 5 sets of vinyl shutters; one case of roofing nails (50lbs.); one case of 8d coated sinker nails (50lbs.); 90 sheets of sheetrock; vinyl windows; 52 8’ cinderblocks; and numerous other items," said the court filing.

"On information and belief, Defendants Bowes and Cooper took possession of the property described above knowing that they had no legal right to the property," stated the filing which next said that Doolan’s stepson "…sold a portion of the property for cash" while "Defendant Cooper retained at his residence another portion of the property."

But, as has been the case for years, not all of the loot is accounted for, according to the filings.

In five counts of violation of the law and rights of Ford, the plaintiff’s attorneys, Michael B. Suessmann and A. Shane Mattingly, detail the criminal wrongdoing led by then Captain Doolan and ask for compensatory and actual damages as well as punitive damages in papers they filed with the Federal Court on May 12^th.

Count One of the suit claims that Doolan, Bowes and Cooper’s scheme to steal Ford’s property was "intentional, without justification and together with Defendant Bowes and Cooper’s removal of the property from the custody of the Office of the Sheriff, constiuted a conversion of the Plaintiff’s property."

Count Two charges that "The wrongful acts of the individual defendants, as set forth in this complaint, were committed pursuant to an agreement between and among these defendants to accomplish an unlawful and improper violation of the Plaintiffs’ constitutional and common law rights."

Count Three alleges that Doolan "…acted with actual malice and under color and pretense of law, statutes, customs and usage’s of the State of Maryland" and deprived Ford of the rights, privleges and immunities guaranteed to him under Article 24 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights.

Count Four states that Doolan also deprived Ford of his federal constitutional rights under the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution.

Count Five reasserts the illegal conduct of Doolan and is filed against the Board of Commissioners due to Doolan’s job status as the Assistant Sheriff when the entire affair took place.

Suessmann and Mattingly were contacted last week by ST. MARY’S TODAY for comment on the suit and were asked if they knew how the loot was transported by the conspirators.

Suessmann declined to elaborate beyond the scope of the recent filings.

"We will find out the answer to this question when we have the opportunity to interview the defendants," said Suessmann.

State Prosecutor Montanarelli has repeatedly stated to ST. MARY’S TODAY that his office will be completing their probe soon, noting that earlier projections on ending the probe were hampered by a lack of staff and the task of completing other probes around the state.

Montanarelli said that his probe may recommend the prosecution of civilians involved with theft of the missing loot and also that he would submit a recommendation to States Attorney Richard Fritz that he recuse himself from any dealings with such a prosecution.

Customarily, Montanarelli indicts only elected officials and with Voorhaar now out of office and Sheriff Zylak having nothing to do with the alleged theft scheme organized by Doolan, Doolan could be prosecuted by the United States Attorney or by a special prosecutor who, upon appointment by the Circuit Court, may decide to bring charges.

Should Montanarelli issue a report to Sheriff Zylak on the investigation but determine that prosecution of Doolan is not up to him, Doolan could still be pursued by the FBI which had conducted an extensive probe previously into the activities of the department. Zylak would likely fire Doolan even if no criminal charges are placed as his alleged actions violate many major parts of policy and procedures, especially those dealing with forbidding the theft of property from the police property storage.

If Doolan is charged and convicted of criminal theft charges he would be subject to prison time as well as losing his job and his retirement.

Under the current civil lawsuit, the taxpayers will pick up the tab of paying Ford for his property which was stolen from the Sheriff’s Department, allegedly by the chief deputy, his stepson and Cooper.

This latest revelation in the story of the missing loot goes a long way to clear Voorhaar from any involvement in the theft of the property but also shows how he provided little supervision for the department he was elected to lead. Voorhaar had handpicked Doolan as his Assistant Sheriff, promoted him to Captain from the position of being a desk seargeant and had given him carte blanche to run the agency.