Fuster’s manslaughter conviction
Frontline repeated Frank Fuster’s claim that his manslaughter conviction "was an accident." Frontline expressed no skepticism about this claim and apparently did not research public records on the matter.
Those records demonstrate the extent to which Frank Fuster is lying about his manslaughter conviction. Fuster was arrested on January 16, 1969 when an off-duty police officer witnessed him kill a man with a rifle after a fender bender in the Bronx. Official records indicate that Fuster:
"was observed by an off duty police officer to be standing with a rifle in his hand behind a station wagon stopped for traffic on the Willis Avenue Bridge in the Bronx. The officer stopped his car and walked toward the subject who continued to hold the rifle in his hand. At this point the victim, who had been standing near the driver’s side of the same station wagon, darted around the car toward the subject and as he approached the rear of the vehicle, the subject raised his rifle and fired two (2) shots. The victim stumbled, and fell to the ground bleeding. The officer ran toward the subject with his revolver drawn and identified himself as an officer, disarming the subject and placing him under arrest." (Presentence Investigation, Florida Department of Corrections, Re: Francisco Escalona Fuster (DC #38564), p. 2. [Date in typing 11/18/82; Date complete 11/18/82] )
Fuster was charged with two felonies: manslaughter and reckless endangerment for the depraved indifference to life that he demonstrated when waving his loaded rifle at the off-duty police officer who arrested him. Fuster eventually pleaded guilty to First Degree Manslaughter and he served four years of a ten-year sentence. In a WashingtonPost.com webcast on April 26th, Frontline's Michael Kirk repeated the erroneous claim that Fuster was convicted of "involuntary manslaughter." Apparently Frontline did not actually check the records of the case.
Fuster has provided many different accounts of the manslaughter case over the years, none consistent with the official record. In all of Fuster’s accounts, he bears no responsibility for his actions (even though he pleaded guilty). In 1982, he told Dr. Seth Krieger that: "The other man pulled a gun, threatened him, and then started to leave the scene. Mr. Escalona grabbed a rifle he had within reach, and pointed it at the other man, trying to ‘make an arrest.’ The other man yanked on the barrel of the gun, it went off, and he died of the resulting wound." Notice how Fuster could not bring himself to say that he shot his own rifle. Yet witnesses, including the off-duty police officer, all say that Fuster shot the unarmed man in cold blood.
Dr. Krieger concluded that Mr. Fuster "developed a lifestyle and world view characterized by compulsive and paranoid features." (Id, p. 4). Those features were born out in the Country Walk case, where Fuster argued that all of the parents had conspired against him - even those who did not bring civil suits or have children in the criminal case.
When Fuster testified in the Country Walk case, his lies about the manslaughter case had grown even larger. As Fuster claimed, under oath: "when I was twenty years old, couple of months before becoming a New York City police officer, I’m accused of being a murderer" (Hollingsworth 1986, pp. 413-14). Fuster was no closer to being a New York police officer than he was to being a private investigator, which is something else he has claimed about his employment (while he was actually working as a salesman on commission for the Minx Fur Company).
By this time, Fuster had stopped blaming his lawyer for his manslaughter conviction. He was now blaming the District Attorney. "The office of the district attorney induced perjury," Fuster asserted, professing that he was "free of guilt." (Hollingsworth 1986, p. 414). He also made the absurd claim that the off-duty policeman "set him up." Further, he made the claim -- contradicted by the physical evidence at the scene—that the man he killed was "armed" and shot first. Fuster’s refusal to accept any blame for this death is consistent with the conclusion of his parole assessment on release from New York:
"Fuster is a tall, well-built man who is almost a compulsive talker. He goes into great details about everything that he discusses and much of the information that he provides differs from that available in the Probation Report. It does not appear that he accepts full responsibility for killing the victim of the instant crime indicating that the individual threatened him with a weapon and the rifle that the subject had discharged when it was grabbed by the victim. It does not appear that he has a great deal of remorse over the fact that he killed a man." [New York] Institutional Record – Parole. (HS. No. 1056 627) D: 6/10/70; T: 7/15/70, p. 5.
By the time that Frank Fuster was standing before the judge in his probation violation hearing in August 1985, he referred to Mr. Isenbek’s death by rifle shots as "a crime that did not take place"(Probation Violation Hearing, tr. 145).
Frontline interviewed Frank Fuster in prison. Fuster said that Mr. Isenbek’s death "was an accident." Frontline correspondents Michael Kirk and Peter Boyer accepted Fuster’s version, a version that is contradicted by a host of available public records. (1, 2, 3, 4)
Fuster’s 1982 conviction for "lewd and lascivious assault" on a child
Frank Fuster was arrested September 21, 1981 for lewd and lascivious assault on a minor – a nine-year-old girl whose breasts and genitals Fuster fondled while driving her home. The jury heard from the girl, who was cross-examined at length. They found her credible and convicted Fuster. Fuster has distorted the facts of this case in many ways. So has his current lawyer. In papers signed March 26, 2002, Amy Donella referred to this conviction as a "charge of sexual abuse committed against a teenage girl" (Petitioner’s Objections to Report of the Magistrate Judge, Fuster-Escalona v. Singletary, p. 7). In fact, the girl was nine years old.
Fuster has distorted the case in three ways—all disproved by the public record. First, Fuster has minimized the charges in this case. He has claimed in various places that the charges involve nothing more than "touching her chest area over her blouse while entering the van." In fact, the allegations did not stem from contact while entering the vehicle. The charges on which he was found guilty were that Fuster made the child sit in his lap and more than once he touched and rubbed her breasts and genital area for several minutes.
Second, Fuster has fiddled with the chronology of how the case evolved. He has claimed that the charges were lodged days later, after her friend, who had been raped, somehow convinced the girl that something happened to her, too. In fact, the girl did not initially deny the charges; rather, she told her mother immediately after she was picked up at Fuster’s house, and her story never changed over time. She also said that Fuster called after he was arrested and berated the child for "making my life miserable." (Deposition of Rene R., State v. Fuster Escalona [Case No. 81-21904], (September 15, 1982), tr. 36.).
Finally, as for Fuster’s "vehement denial" and the lie detector tests he supposedly passed: it is curious to note that Fuster did not avail himself of the opportunity to take the stand and tell the jury his defense. He later blamed his lawyer for "not letting him take the stand." Of course, Fuster could have taken the stand if he desired, as he acknowledged in a statement at his probation violation hearing. Fuster’s exact words were that his lawyer told him "If you want to testify you got to sign documents for me, release, blah, blah." (Probation Violation Hearing, tr. 145, line 13-14).
Fuster told his Parole Officer that he was "motivated toward receiving sex-offender treatment."(Letter from Lois Mack, Probation and Parole Officer, to Judge Robinson, 2/2/83.) Perhaps that was a lie. That certainly appears to be case about the alleged lie detector tests. There is no evidence in the court file of such tests. And the results of that alleged test have never been made available for verification. Fuster’s MMPI tests (personality tests) were revealed through the proceeding, however, and they found in Fuster a "strong need to see himself as extremely virtuous" and someone who is "compulsive and paranoid."
A careful examination of Fuster’s statements to the police reveals classic behavior for someone seeking to rationalize sexual contact with children. Fuster confirmed, but never explained, that he entered the van through the passenger side. That is how, according to Fuster, "he may have brushed up against" the nine year old girl. (State v. Escalona, No. 81-21904, Deposition of Detective Bradley Marshall, 12/17/81, p. 35). Fuster also told the police that "he asked her to sit with him because he was sleepy and wanted someone to talk to and possibly have someone to grab the wheel if he feel asleep" (Deposition of Detective Bradley Marshall, 12/17/81, tr. 35). Fuster even acknowledged that he made the girl sit with him and that he put his arms around her. Fuster’s explanation for these actions: it was to "keep her from falling off the seat" (Id., tr. 36).
Most remarkably, Fuster admitted the basic acts in this crime, but sought to minimize them, in a rambling statement to the court before being sentenced for violated his probation. At one point in this statement, Fuster demonstrated:
"This is how I touch her chest area. I don’t see any sexual movement here. I also touch her in her vagina area. That’s it. That was the whole case." (tr, 140, lines 19-21)(emphasis added).
One wonders whether those who have accepted Fuster’s subsequent protestations of innocence are aware that he admitted in court that in the course of driving home with a nine-year old girl he touched her "chest area" and her "vagina area." Viewers of Frontline were not given this information to help inform their assessment. Why not?