The Voices of Union County NJ

[Mozo]

Complaint by Democratic boss mobilized a small army of investigators
Sunday, May 14, 2006
BY JOSH MARGOLIN AND JEFF WHELAN
Star-Ledger Staff

It was a mild, sunny morning in February. Investigators from the Union County Prosecutor's Office, on a stakeout since 6 o'clock, watched from unmarked cars as the suspect left for work.

They trailed their target's black Ford Explorer from the condominium in West Orange to Trenton, where it entered an underground garage at the Statehouse. Detectives were watching when the suspect walked to the car of the chairman of the state Democratic Party, opened the unlocked door and left a note inside.

As the SUV proceeded back onto the street, a dark, unmarked car cut it off at a red light. Thirteen officers burst from their vehicles.

The cowering figure handcuffed off State Street in Trenton that day was a 36-year-old woman wearing high heels and pearls.

Karen Golding, a $100,000-a-year lobbyist for Prudential Financial and a well-known player in the New Jersey Democratic Party, was taken to the prosecutor's office in Elizabeth and charged with sending anonymous letters and e-mail messages over a span of 15 months to the party chairman, Joseph Cryan, and two women he dated. Golding also was charged with burglarizing Cryan's car.

Even by New Jersey standards, the story of the fallout from the relationship between Golding and Cryan is a bizarre one. Interviews and dozens of internal documents obtained by The Star-Ledger reveal a melodrama featuring political intrigue, stalking, sexually explicit messages, mystery phone calls and a response by law enforcement perhaps more fit for a mob boss, terrorist or drug kingpin.

The investigation that led to the Feb. 6 arrest had proceeded by fits and starts for more than a year. It included at least 20 officers, the Union County prosecutor's special prosecutions unit, intelligence unit and high-tech task force. A library was subpoenaed, its user records searched, a 19-year-old student questioned at her home as a suspected accomplice. At one point, Cryan -- a Union County undersheriff -- entered the case himself, investigating the crime in which he was the alleged victim.

By the time Golding was cuffed, investigators were 50 miles out of their jurisdiction, operating on grounds patrolled by the State Police, who had no idea the Union contingent was in town. In a final twist, Golding called Gov. Jon Corzine the evening of her arrest for the money to make bail.

In their first interviews since, Golding and Cryan shed new light on a series of events that have fascinated the New Jersey political world for months.

Golding said the whole episode stemmed from the breakup of her two-year affair with Cryan, an assemblyman and Union County power broker. She said she didn't deserve her arrest, punishment and the resulting loss of her job, and that it never should have become a law enforcement matter.

"I'm not perfect," she said, "but I didn't deserve to have this happen to me. I've lost everything. I loved my job. I loved my life. I'm human. I've worked very hard throughout my life, and my biggest fault may have been getting involved with the wrong man."

Cryan repeatedly declined to say whether the two ever were romantically involved. He said he "will not comment on any personal relationship with Karen Golding."

But Cryan, who has been divorced since 2001, compared Golding to the character played by Glenn Close in the famous stalker movie, "Fatal Attraction."

"She's obsessive," Cryan said. "I mean, it's pretty obvious. I got everything but the rabbit on the stove."

Union County Prosecutor Theodore Romankow said the case did not receive any special treatment because of Cryan's clout in Union County, where he earns more than $105,000 a year as an undersheriff, in addition to his $49,000 Assembly salary.

Romankow said his office handles about six stalking cases a year, and the complaint Cryan brought to him got the same attention others do.

"I treat all of those victims in stalking cases equally. I don't care if it's a senator, a state chairman or Joe Dokes on the street. He came to me for help and I didn't turn my back on him," Romankow said.

However, former Assistant Attorney General Debra Stone, who has been a county prosecutor and overseen prosecutor's offices from Trenton, said the time and manpower expended on the Golding investigation appear disproportionate to the charge of fourth-degree stalking.

"The whole case is not normal. It sounds like it was certainly not a run-of-the-mill stalking case in terms of the investigation. It's highly unusual," Stone said. She said the number of investigators following Golding that day was "more similar to something we would use on a homicide investigation."

Ten days ago, a Superior Court judge accepted Golding into a pretrial intervention program in which the charges can be dropped in two years. Judge John Triarsi ordered her into counseling and barred her for two years from going near Cryan or the two women acquaintances. Though Triarsi said Golding's behavior was troubling, he did not find she was a threat to harm anyone.

Golding says she decided to break her silence so people would not have the one-dimensional view of her created by the arrest and resulting media coverage. Had she not lost her job after her arrest, she said, she probably would never have spoken out publicly.

"I felt this was the best way to respond," she said. "I am deeply troubled by the events of Feb. 6. I, too, am a victim -- of Joe Cryan. The party's over. Not that it was a party. It's an opportunity to rebuild my life, and I'm looking forward to putting this behind me."

BROUGHT TOGETHER
The Goldings and Cryans are prominent families in the North Jersey Irish-American community and have known each other for years. Karen Golding was close to Joseph Cryan's mother, Mary, and father, John, the late Essex County sheriff whose name is attached to an Irish-American civic association now run by Joseph, one of his six children.

Golding said of John Cryan, "He was like a grandfather to me; he treated me like gold."

Golding was raised in South Orange, the daughter of two public employees. Her father is also a sergeant-at-arms in the Assembly.

A 1991 graduate of the University of Scranton, Golding worked for AIG and Liberty Mutual Group before joining Prudential's government relations department in 2001. She was later promoted to director. She is a member of the state Board of Dentistry, a trustee of the foundation that runs the governor's mansion, and a close friend of former first lady Dina Matos McGreevey.

She had no criminal record or prior restraining orders against her, either as a juvenile or adult, according to a comprehensive search by the court.

Cryan, 44, has been an assemblyman from Union County since 2002. Outside of politics, his family is known for its South Orange restaurant, called Cryan's, and a second place, now closed, that Joseph Cryan ran in Metuchen.

In 1997, Golding and Cryan became friends while volunteering to help James E. McGreevey's first run for governor. In 2000, Golding worked as a scheduler on Corzine's U.S. Senate campaign. Corzine then recommended her for a job at Prudential, and she remained active in politics on her own time.

The next year, Golding helped raise funds for Cryan's campaign for the Assembly. He had just been through a difficult divorce, and she said that by early 2003 their friendship had turned romantic.

"It just kind of happened," she said. "There was always an underlying flirtation, attraction. I was a little nervous about it, but it grew. And it was very comfortable. It was just easy."

Golding said her relationship with Cryan was like a "roller coaster," with the intensity fading in the summer of 2005. But even then, she said, they ran into each other at political events and kept in touch by phone and e-mail.

"We were friends. We had a lot in common," she said.

Golding also helped Cryan raise money for the Cryan Association, a group that solicits money from various corporations that lobby state government. The association holds an annual fundraising dance and contributes to a variety of scholarship funds and St. Patrick's Day parades around North Jersey. In 2004, Golding was one of two people honored by the group as an "outstanding individual and successful professional."

SUSPICIONS
Exactly why the stalking began is not clear. Golding, citing the pretrial agreement that restricts her from admitting or denying guilt, will not discuss specifics.

Cryan said he and two women friends began receiving numerous annoying e-mail messages and thousands of nuisance hang-up phone calls and harassing mail in late 2002.

According to Romankow, Cryan did not report the harassment to the prosecutor's office until March 2005. Cryan mentioned several possible suspects -- including Golding -- but did not tell officials about a romance, according to a person close to the investigation who requested anonymity because the prosecutor did not authorize the release of the information.

Cryan says: "I had tons of e-mails. Tons of them. It was time to do something. One of the things you'll never be able to comprehend is what happens to you: Each and every day you come home at a different time ... and your phone rings. You go to pick up your girlfriend, you go up to the house and your phone starts buzzing.

"You'll never comprehend what that does to you. It's an awful, awful thing to go through."

Patricia Rago, 50, one of Cryan's former girlfriends, said she and members of her family received numerous anonymous e-mail messages and phone calls.

"Ms. Golding stalked, harassed, followed, called my family and myself for a period of about 3 1/2 years, including my 70-plus-year-old mother and my two children and my ex-husband," Rago said. "She would not give us a minute's peace."

Cryan said he has been dating Kathleen Conway, 45, since November and that Conway received multiple nasty letters. According to two people familiar with the evidence, one of the letters included a condom. Conway declined to comment for this story.

Police records show Golding was under suspicion as early as last September, when the Union County Prosecutor's Office stationed an unmarked car outside her condominium to conduct surveillance one night.

Romankow described the investigation as a sporadic effort that intensified in January when the letters, e-mail messages and hang-up telephone calls became "serious threats." He has declined to describe what exactly the threats were. In a letter to the court, the prosecutor's office said Golding's communications were "alarming" but "did not threaten violence against the victims."

BOILING POINT
While the investigation intensified, Cryan's political career was on the rise.

Assemblywoman Bonnie Watson Coleman left her post chairing the state Democratic Party in the fall, and Cryan, then the No. 2 party official, became the leading contender to fill the spot during the Corzine administration.

Though the chairmanship is considered a hard and often thankless job, it is a key position in the power corridors of the state, controlling millions of dollars in party funds. The chairman, appointed by the governor, also has a singular level of access to New Jersey's chief executive.

It was while Corzine was weighing Cryan's appointment that someone used a Yahoo account to send an anonymous e-mail to a political reporter at The Star-Ledger, urging an investigation into the finances of the Cryan Association. The Jan. 23 e-mail was copied to a spokesman at the Democratic State Committee.

It was then the investigation went into overdrive, police documents show, with Cryan himself becoming an investigator in the case in which he was a victim.

"I just hit a boiling point," Cryan said. He declined to provide financial records of the Cryan Association.

Police documents show Cryan contacted the Network Security Group, a West Caldwell consulting firm that assists law enforcement agencies in high-tech crimes.

A spokesman for Cryan said the assemblyman paid the Network Security Group but declined to disclose how much.

At Cryan's direction and with the help of a Union County sheriff's deputy, the firm traced the e-mail to the Summit Public Library.

"Undersheriff Cryan realized that individuals associated with him had received harassing e-mails originating from the same location in the past," Lt. Steven Siegel of the prosecutor's office wrote in one report.

SEARCHING THE LIBRARY
On Jan. 30, state Attorney General Zulima Farber announced she was investigating an allegation by a developer that Cryan had accepted illegal campaign donations. He would be cleared the following month, but the investigation was enough to imperil his ascent to state Democratic chairman. Corzine put the nomination on hold.

On the same day as Farber's announcement, investigators from the prosecutor's office and sheriff's department hand-delivered a subpoena to the Summit Public Library, documents show.

Librarians tend to be reluctant about turning over information about personal research activities to the government. But Barry Osmun, the city attorney for the Democratic administration in Summit, said he instructed the library to comply.

Investigators obtained video from the library's nine surveillance cameras, plus sign-in sheets and log-in information for public-access computer terminals, records show.

They pinpointed six public users during the time the e-mail was sent. Two of the users were unknown. For the other four, investigators obtained the addresses, cell phones, driver's license numbers and dates of birth. They checked that information against motor vehicle records, police reports show.

One lieutenant reviewed eight hours of video over a five-day period and, according to internal reports, was looking for either Golding or her sister, Maura. The images showed Golding entering just before the e-mail was sent and leaving just after.

Rhonda Stern, a substitute teacher, said she came home one afternoon with her daughter Ayala, a high school senior, to find two Union County investigators at their door. They wanted to interview the student about her library card and computer use.

Stern said she invited them inside their apartment because she didn't want her daughter to be questioned in front of the neighbors. "As a mother I'm scared," Stern said. "They started to interrogate her. They said, 'Did you send these e-mails?' It was very, very startling."

Stern said her daughter explained she had been doing research on one of the computers on Jan. 21 and inadvertently left her card there.

"She lost her card. Evidently she must have forgot it at the library," Stern said.

Investigators later found the card on Golding, according to an internal police report. It was two days later -- Jan. 23 -- that the e-mail about Cryan was sent to The Star-Ledger.

Stern said investigators showed pictures of the Golding sisters to her daughter and asked if the teenager knew them. Stern said detectives didn't say what they were investigating.

"I don't know what these women were up to, whether they were criminals or terrorists," Stern said.

THE ARREST
On Jan. 29, investigators were watching when Golding dropped an anonymous letter to Conway in a mailbox. They would not disclose what the letter said, but it apparently set the stage for Golding's arrest.

Eight days later, Feb. 6, Golding said she was heading to Trenton for lunch meetings. Detectives followed as she left West Orange, tailing her as she drove past Cryan's home and then Conway's townhouse in Somerset County, according to two law enforcement officials. They were still on Golding's trail as she drove the New Jersey Turnpike, then turned toward Trenton and entered the Statehouse garage.

Cryan himself was in Trenton for committee meetings, and Golding entered his unlocked car, sat in it for five to 10 minutes and left a signed note, according to sources close to the investigation. The sources, who requested anonymity because of the pretrial agreement, said the note offered encouragement to Cryan on the one-year anniversary of his father's death, which was that day.

Moments later, Golding was under arrest.

There were 13 investigators -- including a captain, four lieutenants and two sergeants -- assigned to conduct surveillance of Golding on the day of her arrest, according to an internal report. As a matter of courtesy, local law agencies often notify the State Police that they are treading in the troopers' jurisdiction, but the squad did not.

Golding said she asked to call a lawyer immediately upon her arrest but was told Capt. Edward Fitzgerald, who was heading the case, wanted to speak to her first. Golding knew Fitzgerald. He had been honored a week earlier by the Cryan Association as one of the citizens of the year.

When Fitzgerald began questioning her at the prosecutor's office in Elizabeth more than three hours after her arrest, Golding said, she told him she and Cryan previously had a romantic relationship.

She was charged with fourth-degree stalking and third-degree burglary, and bail was set at $50,000 with a 10 percent cash option.

It was then that Golding made a decision that would thrust her into the headlines. It was about 9 p.m., her parents were in Florida, and she said the only person she knew who could get that much cash that quickly was the governor.

"I was scared out of my mind. It wasn't something I gave a lot of thought to, unfortunately," she said. "I got ahold of him. He was just caught off guard and, you know, it wasn't your typical phone call. I'm not the type of person that's ever had a brush with the law. I never had a speeding ticket."

Corzine, who was at the governor's mansion in Princeton hosting a reception for lawmakers, dispatched an aide with $5,000 in cash. The governor later said he posted Golding's bail only after speaking with a detective who assured him she was not a danger to herself or others.

Golding returned to her apartment in West Orange that night to find investigators had taken her home computer and other personal belongings, she said.

The next day, four investigators searched her office at Prudential headquarters in Newark. They seized her computer hard drive and boxes of belongings, including her personal medical records, travel records and cell phone statements, records show.

Through the computer seizures, Golding said, "the Union County Prosecutor's Office has several thousand e-mails Joe Cryan sent me, many of which are very personal in nature" and would support her assertion of a former romantic relationship. Another person familiar with the evidence confirmed there were sexually explicit e-mails between the two.

"This was a very personal matter that should have been handled personally," Golding said.

"I think Joe Cryan made some bad choices in not telling the prosecutor's office the full story. I can't help but think that, given the circumstances surrounding this, that they wouldn't have taken a different approach" -- such as issuing her a warning or recommending a restraining order, she said.

Romankow said he could not recall whether Golding had told investigators she'd had a romantic relationship with Cryan and that, to his knowledge, no one in the prosecutor's office ever asked Cryan about the allegation.

"Her relationship is not relevant to the issue of stalking. There are a lot of people who fall in and out of love, but they don't stalk when the relationship is over," Romankow said.

The prosecutor flatly rejected suggestions his investigation was overkill.

"It stopped the stalking," Romankow said. "Victims were able to go on with their lives, and hopefully there will be a positive resolution in Ms. Golding's life. There are no alternatives when something like this happens. You are required to do what you have to do here."

Golding applied for the pretrial intervention program three days after her office was searched.

On May 3, Executive Assistant Prosecutor Anne Frawley, an expert in high-tech crimes, wrote a letter to Judge Triarsi urging him to accept Golding into the PTI program.

Cryan said he was disappointed the court found she didn't pose a physical threat.

"I disagreed with that. Most certainly, any mother would tell you that when their child gets anonymous letters and mail and calls when they're home, it's threatening," he said. "What did I ever do to her?"

Staff writer Jonathan Casiano contributed to this report. Jeff Whelan and Josh Margolin cover politics. They may be reached at jwhelan@starledger.com and jmargolin@starledger.


© 2006 The Star Ledger
© 2006 NJ.com All Rights Reserved.

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The girl was innocent and with a slip of an envelope she becomes
another "Fatal Attraction" storyline.
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