Rhode Island in a Nutshell
By Q:You once said you were convicted of being mayor of Providence. Admittedly, they got you on very petty offenses.
A: Oh, it was nickel and dime. They convicted me because an aide of mine took a thousand dollars on tape from an F.B.I. plant. They couldn’t get me at the ballot box, and so they got me that way. The world wasn’t any safer because I was at Fort Dix. But, hey, this is the business that we’ve chosen.
Q: Buddy I ended when you resigned after pleading no contest to charges that you assaulted a onetime friend whom you suspected of having an affair with your ex-wife. It was reported that you held him hostage, beat him up, threw an ashtray at him and threatened him with a burning log.
A: There was no kidnapping; he was free to go. No. 1, I picked the log up and threw it in the fireplace. He said he thought I was going to throw it at him. The prosecutor said that was putting him in reasonable apprehension of bodily harm, so that’s assault. As far as ashtrays and all these myths, that’s all bull. No. 2, no one ever urinated on anybody.
Q: I actually never even heard anything about that.
A: Oh, yeah. That’s been public. I never did that.
Q: It was a huge story when the local press discovered that in 1966 a woman you met while in law school accused you of raping her at gunpoint.
A: It didn’t happen the way the press said it happened. I was never charged with anything, never indicted, never arrested, never nothing. Was there an incident? Yeah. Was it a rape? Absolutely not. We had a togetherness, a one-night stand kind of thing.
Q: Your biographer, Mike Stanton, reported that the detective investigating the incident called it “one of the most clear-cut cases of rape” he’d seen and said that the woman passed a lie-detector test while you failed three times.
A: I never took three lie-detector tests. I never took any lie-detector test, so I don’t understand where he gets that information. That’s why I have trouble with the book.
Q: Do you think your state deserves the centuries-old nickname Rogue Island because of its long history of corruption?
A: Rhode Island could make a lot of improvements, but we love this place. The problem is, we’re too small, and everybody knows each other’s business.
I could not explain Rhode Island any better than this.