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THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING

SCANDALOUS JUDGE'S LEGACY WON'T DIE RURAL N.H.


TOWN REELS FROM TALE OF DISORDER IN THE COURT
Author(s): Royal Ford, Globe Staff Date: September 18, 1997 Page: B1 Section: Metro
NEWPORT, N.H. -- No one balked on the days he came through the bank doors to cash checks for
thousands of dollars, ostensibly signed by the clients whose estates he had been hired as a lawyer to
protect. He was, after all, the judge.
No one rose in anger as he led young male defendants who appeared before his bench into his private
office, closed the door, and emerged later to find many of them not guilty or give them light sentences.
Even the local police chief, when told by young men that they had traded sex for lesser sentences, did
not dare take him on directly. He was the judge When reports that District Judge John C. Fairbanks was
bilking his clients of millions of dollars reached the office of the state's attorney general, that office was
very slow to act, a state investigation later concluded. An indictment of Fairbanks on charges of stealing
his clients' money was not handed up until 1989, years after the first complaint was made.
And when reports of the sexual sentence-swapping reached the FBI and State Police, nothing was done.
He was, after all, the judge -- and a respected lawyer, bank officer, and the scion of a prominent local
family.
Fairbanks killed himself at age 70 in a Las Vegas hotel room more than three years ago, but for this little
town of 4,000 -- and for many in state government -- he has become the dead judge who won't die. As
the state tries to determine who knew what when, and where millions of dollars may have gone, an
ongoing series of legislative hearings in Concord is keeping bitter memories of him alive.
Folks in Newport still don't like to have their names attached to the comments they make about
Fairbanks. When the first state legislative panel investigated the handling of his case a year ago, few
people in public life or private wanted to talk -- except for his victims.
But with the dogged efforts of the new panel, armed with subpoena powers that last year's panel lacked,
a cautionary tale may emerge about the fear of power, real or perceived, in small towns: about folks
knowing that something was just not right, but not speaking up; and about lawyers, from the local level
to the attorney general's office, treating one of their own with what appears to have been excessive
deference.
All this, while as much as $10 million may have vanished and young males in this tough town were
apparently exploited in a judge's private office.
Fairbanks first came to the attention of authorities in 1977, when a Holyoke, Mass., woman, Diane
Trudeau, charged he had stolen from her father's estate. Her complaint got nowhere, but by 1983, other
complaints began to come in from around Sullivan County in west-central New Hampshire.
And yesterday, the man whose complaints finally forced an investigation told the legislative panel that
investigators lied, falsified documents and protected the judge.
John Tweedy, of Washington, said he gave evidence -- including a handwritten account statement that
contained several discrepancies -- to state investigators Thomas Hannigan and Arthur McDeed.
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"Here they had smoking-gun evidence against Judge Fairbanks" in 1988, Tweedy said. But they gave
Fairbanks access to the evidence, allowed him to explain away thousands of dollars in accounting
"mistakes" and failed to thoroughly investigate Tweedy's allegations until other complaints surfaced, he
said.
And though in 1989 Fairbanks was indicted on charges of stealing $1.8 million from clients, an
indictment might have come earlier based on the work of the county attorney's office. But in what some
here considered a curious move, the attorney general's office, which had appeared ready to ignore the
case, stepped in and took it away.
On Dec. 28, 1989, the day after his indictment, Fairbanks fled his Maine vacation home, where he had
been staying on his lawyer's promise to the state that he would return to New Hampshire upon
indictment. He was not found again until his suicide in Las Vegas in 1994.
"I don't know what took them so long to indict him," a source familiar with the operations of Fairbanks's
law office says of the attorney general's office. "They had those forged checks for a long, long time."
Others are curious about other decisions: why Fairbanks was allowed to go to Maine, and then Canada,
even as the net closed around him; why, after he fled, New Hampshire authorities did not tap the
telephones of the family he left behind; and, most of all, why state and federal authorities seemed so
reluctant to pursue him on the theft and sex charges in the first place.
It appears that much of what Fairbanks was up to was common knowledge in town. Rumors of his
penchant for young men, for instance, had floated around for years.
Arthur Bastian, the former Newport police chief, told the investigative panel last week that his officers
often saw young male defendants meet Fairbanks on the sidewalk outside his office, across from the
police station. Later, Bastian said, they would show up in court, and Fairbanks would often find them
not guilty or let them off lightly.
Evan Hill, a journalist whose office was beside Fairbanks's, says while the judge was luring young men
to his office, it was not clear that laws were being broken.
"While everyone knew it, it was not a public matter," Hill says. "It was a private embarrassment, and we
snickered about it."
But with Bastian's revelations to the legislative committee, Fairbanks's actions are now seen as more
than an embarrassment; they are a serious breach of the laws he was sworn to uphold. And there may be
untold psychological damage left by his sexual exploitation of young men in trouble with the law.
And people still despair for the family trusts Fairbanks looted -- and his lawyer testified last week that
he did admit to stealing from many trusts. There will be testimony in the next few weeks about elderly
citizens who don't have the money they thought would take care of them in their old age.
Many continue to ask where the money went.
"I'll tell you where some of it went," said one source close to Fairbanks. "It went to build that house up
on the hill."
The source was referring to the $600,000 modern home that Fairbanks built on a hill overlooking this
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county seat.
Alf E. Jacobson, a state representative who is chairman of the committee investigating the handling of
the Fairbanks case, says he is confident of more success than last year's committee. While that
committee found some faults in the state's handling of the Fairbanks case, its conclusions were notably
lacking in specifics.
Subpoena power and the requirement that witnesses testify under oath have given teeth to the latest
panel's mission, Jacobson says.
"Already, four people who wouldn't talk have come forward this year before we even subpoenaed
them," Jacobson says, and subpoenas are in the works for others.
Jacobson says the committee may call witnesses from the attorney general's office, where, as the last
investigation concluded, Fairbanks was treated with "extraordinary deference."
That could mean appearances by Steve Merrill, the attorney general who became governor, or his
successor as attorney general, Jeffrey Howard, in addition to others.
Some news reports have said Merrill, while hunting outside Newport with two local legislators and a
Newport businessman, was warned that Fairbanks was stealing from clients, but that as attorney general
he took no action. Merrill has denied those reports.
"We had quite a few state officials come forward with memory problems," state Representative Phil
Cobbin said after last year's hearing.
But while some see hope in the latest investigation, state Senator Jack Barnes, a member of this year's
committee, despairs of ever finding the money Fairbanks stole.
"We'll probably never find out where it went," Barnes says. "And if the State Police or the attorney
general knew about any of this, they ought to be ashamed
Perform a new search
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