419: Petty Tyrant

Ira Glass

Steve Raucci. Let's just start with something that Steve Raucci was really good at-- cutting energy costs. He was legendary. If you worked in the Schenectady School District, you knew that if you wanted to turn on extra lights or make some illicit toast in your classroom, there'd be hell to pay. Unauthorized coffee makers, microwaves-- forbidden.

Ira Glass

At one point, Richard Agnello, a special education teacher, was working in the middle school and had this little office with no heat-- none. In winter, it would be 56 degrees in there. He borrowed a thermometer from a science classroom to check. He asked for heat repeatedly. Nothing happened, so he broke the rules, brought in a little space heater, which he would hide in a file cabinet at night. So one winter morning, he gets to work, and he turns on the space heater, hangs up his coat. Suddenly, Steve Raucci walks in and sees the heater.

Ira Glass

The next day, Agnello is walking up a flight of stairs, and sees a maintenance worker coming down the stairs.

Ira Glass

That's John Lapointe Jr, the district electrician who'd been sent to remedy this very, very serious space heater infraction.

Ira Glass

For the people who worked under Steve Raucci, this story's a dime a dozen. And it's got all the hallmarks of Raucci's style-- the temper, the fanatical control over every single detail around him, the pettiness, the comic strip antics, even the fact that workers were forbidden to talk to teachers when they were out on a job.

Schenectady School District has a good reputation academically, and the people in town knew the usual things about their schools-- the test scores, the good teachers, the budget fights. What they didn't know was that a huge scandal was slowly coming to a boil in one of the least likely places, down Norwood Avenue, along the side of Mount Pleasant Middle School, behind the high chain link fence surrounding a parking lot filled with trucks and vans, an area called the pen.

Alongside the pen there's a big garage where they store lawn mowers and tons of supplies. That's where the workers hang out-- the custodians and the maintenance guys. They were Steve Raucci's subjects who, only half-jokingly, called Steve the "King," or the "Doctor," or sometimes even just "God." Everybody who worked for him has an example of something that he did, something just off enough they've never forgotten it.

Ira Glass

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, how one guy came to be untouchable, how he grabbed power and dominated everybody around him, sometimes with fear, sometimes cruelty, playing by rules that he invented. And how people all around him, including people with the power to stop him, let it happen.

And what's so interesting about this is that all the intrigue and drama did not happen in a setting like national politics or big business. This guy wasn't a Harvey Weinstein with the power to make somebody a movie star. This is a study in tyranny writ small, Machiavellian scheming in the maintenance office of school district.

Act One of today's show is about what it was like at the height of Steve Raucci's power. Act Two is about how he fell. We first broadcast today's show years ago, when all this happened. This week is the 10th anniversary of Raucci's arrest. And he just did an interview with a reporter about what happened where he says some things he's never said. Some details of that at the end of the program. The reporter for our story is Sarah Koenig, who later became the host of the podcast Serial. And let's get right to it. Here's Sarah Koenig.

Sarah Koenig

Of course there are tyrannical, manipulative bullies everywhere, but Steve Raucci was special, a virtuoso. Schenectady County District Attorney Bob Carney is something of an expert on tough characters of all kinds. Since he's been DA, he's overseen the convictions of more than 80 murderers.

Sarah Koenig

What also makes the Raucci affair unusual is that he got away with it, quietly, for decades. So that when he was finally arrested in February of 2009, charged with 26 felonies from weapons possession, to arson, to terrorism, the citizens of Schenectady were incredulous. Carl Strock, a writer for the Schenectady Daily Gazette, wrote dozens of columns about the case. And he's not someone who ever thought the school district could yield interesting news.

Sarah Koenig

Steve Raucci grew up in Schenectady. It's a small, mostly working class, middle class city about three hours north of Manhattan. He started working in the district in 1973, making $3.12 an hour as a laborer. He worked his way up to groundskeeper, then maintenance guy. And by the time his career ended 36 years later, he was in charge of all 21 of the district school buildings. He was 60 years old, married to his third wife, Shelley, no children, living in a modest condo.

The stories people tell about Steve's behavior-- and there are probably hundreds of stories-- fall into a few categories. First, humiliating hijinks. Second, insatiable control. And third, retribution-- reserved for those who didn't react well to the first and second categories. I talked to John Lapointe Jr, the electrician, Ellen Frederick, Steve's former secretary, Bryan Schaeffer, a district carpenter, and a few other people who didn't want their names used. They all said that humiliation was a daily event, and often creepily sexual. Here's Ellen Frederick.

Sarah Koenig

And then there was the so-called man game.

Sarah Koenig

Once he asked a young employee to show me a picture of his girlfriend, who was beautiful. So the guy did. The picture was on his phone. And Steve asked him to email it to him, and the guy said no. Steve asked again. And the kid said no. And then Steve suggested that if he so wanted that raise they'd talked about, he would send the photo. So the guy did. The next morning, a big blown-up copy of it was taped to the office whiteboard, along with a caption too disgusting to repeat. The kid was horrified.

Sarah Koenig

If you were out to breakfast with Steve-- and a core group of employees was compelled to attend these breakfasts-- he might pour a shaker of salt in your coffee when your back was turned, or sneak up on you in the bathroom and steal your glasses. Steve would open your paycheck and write something embarrassing on the back, or even the front.

At morning meetings-- sometimes hour-long affairs at which Steve would read aggressive, prepared remarks, Soviet-style, to the 20 or so guys gathered-- he might bring up your personal problems, how your marriage was on the rocks, your wife cheating on you, apropos of nothing.

An older guy who'd since retired from the school told me, you can say a lot of it was funny, but it was funny like this. We were at a restaurant and he took his beer bottle and put the base of it halfway across the edge of the table, so it was teetering. At any moment, crash. And then it was a disaster, he said.

You don't do stuff like this-- slide flaming newsprint under a door, or pretend to have sex with your secretary-- unless you're sure you can get away with it. Steve was sure. He was methodical and utterly in charge. For one thing, he controlled work assignments for the 110 people he managed, and treated his department like a combination of an army unit and a fourth-grade classroom. If you messed up one of his many rules, even in a small way, he'd make you write, I will not do such and such, over and over on that whiteboard every day.

You were supposed to arrive at 6:55 AM. If you came in at 7:00, the official start of the workday, he'd make you sign in late up at the admin office, in a different building a few streets away. Ellen Frederick, his secretary, was a favorite of Steve's for a while. She was the Faye Ray to his King Kong, except that he's actually a small, trim, chiseled guy who wore a brown weave in his gray hair until he had to shave it for prison.

Ellen was such a favorite that she even talked back to him sometimes. At meals, she always had to be at his side. He'd assign everyone else seats, as well. He'd tell her how he liked her to look-- hair, long and curly, skirts short, leggings. Sometimes the staff was told they weren't allowed to talk to her. She was his alone. But eventually, even she crossed him. And if you crossed Steve, you were done. She and a couple of other people in the office were having a casual conversation one day about romantic types. Steve asked Ellen what she meant, so she explained.

Sarah Koenig

Ellen was moved to a different building, different department, no questions asked. It wasn't a demotion, but it wasn't what she wanted. Other than Steve, she really liked her job in the maintenance department, had a lot of friends there. Administrators told her they were moving her for her own protection. They didn't explain what they meant. She told me she later heard Steve had threatened her at a meeting with administrators, saying if she doesn't go quietly, she knows what's going to happen to her, her house, and her family.

And all this time, no one said anything because if they did, they knew they'd face the same sort of retribution from Steve. People said they were afraid to talk sometimes for fear they'd accidentally say the wrong thing. Someone would report it back to Steve. He openly encouraged reporting back, rewarding gossip with time off or overtime pay. A district carpenter even made a wooden wedge of cheese which would end up in your mailbox if you'd been what Steve called a good rat.

Steve flaunted his vengeance, his mastery of it. At a union holiday party in 2007, everyone dressed up, having a nice time. He stood up and asked for their attention so he could read a speech. Instead of a toast to all their hard work and the fun times to come, he issued a yuletide warning. If you criticize me behind my back, you will be very, very sorry.

Sarah Koenig

Police found the text of the speech in Steve's computer when they seized it. That's Bob Carney reading, the district attorney who personally prosecuted Steve.

Sarah Koenig

If you're noticing a certain embattled tone, for Raucci, the maintenance department is an operatic drama of endless threats and intrigue. He can't trust anyone. He's constantly undermined by disloyal minions. You're either with Steve, or you're against Steve, he'd tell people. There is no, on the fence. Fence riders get hurt. He'd recite lines from Goodfellas and other tough guy movies, without irony, in conversations about routine office business. In his Christmas speech, he went on to denounce a bunch of people he'd eliminated, including these guys.

Sarah Koenig

The story of the plumbers was a classic case. There were two plumbers on staff. The senior plumber was giving Steve lip, but to get rid of him, Steve would have to get rid of the junior plumber first-- because of seniority rules. So he tried to get the junior plumber to take another position to make way for Steve to fire his partner. The guy didn't want to do it. One longtime employee who didn't want his name used told me about it. It disgusted him to see how easy it was for Steve to can the junior plumber.

Sarah Koenig

Steve justified the firings as a cost-cutting measure to the administration, saying the district didn't need any plumbers. A month later, of course, they hired another plumber. But anyone who'd stuck up for the enemy plumbers was punished. This guy, who's retired now, had taken that risk, questioning the firings to Steve's face.

Sarah Koenig

I heard this over and over. I needed my job. What choice did I have? I had no one to complain to. I had nowhere to go for help. Steve convinced his workers that he was responsible for any pleasure, any benefit that came their way, which meant he could also take it away without warning. it's the oldest trick in the tyrant playbook.

Steve knew the only way he could maintain the kind of absolute control he wanted over the people below him was to be in the excellent good graces of the many bosses above him-- in the union, the school board, and the district administration. Arguably, his chief talent was figuring out how to make himself indispensable to them. Steve had worked in the school system so long, he knew exactly which levers to pull and in what order.

He started with the union. In the 1990s, the district's maintenance department was in bad shape. It was unruly, and supervisors weren't lasting very long. The district was getting lots of grievances about working conditions and pay. It got so bad that the district considered getting rid of the maintenance department altogether, hiring an outside company to do the work. Back in those days, Steve Raucci was just a regular utility worker with a reputation for strangely aggressive pranks.

He decided to run for president of his unit in the union, which is the CSEA-- Civil Service Employees Association. He promised to help settle the workers problems himself, and he won. John Lapointe, the electrician from the space heater incident, voted for Steve, even campaigned for him. John's a slim, dark-haired guy with a goatee and stylish glasses. He's in his 50s, and his son also works in the maintenance department. John's a deeply nice and gentle man. And yet, he became one of Steve's inner circle.

John and his wife would go to dinner with Steve and his wife and a few other couples. You couldn't refuse these dinners. At the time, 2001, John was impressed with Steve.

Sarah Koenig

That's Carl Strock again, the columnist.

Sarah Koenig

As head of the union, Steve had the opportunity to gain entrance to the inner workings of the entire school district, all from his perch in the maintenance office. He became friendly with a guy named Jeff Janiszewski. They had breakfast meetings at a local chain restaurant. Janiszewski was school board president. But even when he wasn't on the board, Janiszewski was widely known around town as the board's kingmaker. He chose candidates and got them elected. That's where Steve Raucci came in.

Sarah Koenig

That's DA Bob Carney. O and M is the operations and maintenance department, the one Raucci ran.

Sarah Koenig

Several people who worked for Raucci told me if they refused to do all this campaign grunt work, they'd most certainly be punished for it. They also told me they'd had to pass out election flyers, endorsing candidates or urging passage of the budget, door-to-door on district time, which is illegal in New York.

Steve's influence earned him yet more influence. Two years after becoming union president, he was promoted to director of buildings and grounds for the district. His salary jumped from $37,500 to $67,500. But he wasn't called the director, because if he officially became a director or manager of anything, that meant he couldn't also be in the union, much less run his unit, a position he very much wanted to keep.

So on paper, he finagled the underwhelming title of, quote, "head utility worker." That way he could keep his union control. In addition, he wouldn't have to take the civil service exam required to qualify for a manager's job. And importantly, he could still get overtime pay, which managers don't. I asked a former district official, who didn't want to be named, about all this, why he allowed Raucci to cut all these corners in terms of his title and his pay, while he promoted him at all considering his history.

In the past, Raucci had been disciplined for taking work trucks home or disappearing on the job, and there were rumors about explosives. An administrator's car had been set on fire, for instance, and there was talk that Raucci was involved. The former official sorrowfully defended his decisions. I believed in Steve Raucci, he told me. The maintenance department was a tough unit, a troubled unit, and I thought he was someone who cared about the district, who would do a good job. I'm sorry now. But it's hard to say publicly that I believed in him at the time. It's like saying you think Hitler was a good guy.

As for the personnel file, the former official said he didn't know about all the complaints and suspicions about Steve at the time, because he never looked at the file.

This part of Steve's story is the most confounding to me. How it could have happened that a boss of 110 people was also their union president, which in Steve's case meant he could threaten their jobs, prevent them from going over his head, cut off all avenues of complaint. How was such a blatant conflict of interest allowed to stand?

Sarah Koenig

John Lapointe again.

Sarah Koenig

In fact, it's not that strange for a so-called straw boss to be a union president-- someone who's supervising maybe four or five people. What is unheard of at CSEA, however, and probably at any union, is a union president who's an actual boss over 110 people, capable of hiring and firing at will. It seems only a couple of people tried to do anything about this. One of them was Michelle Tabbano, co-chair of the union's grievance committee for Schenectady County. She tried hard to boot him, but she was blocked at every turn.

Sarah Koenig

Kathy Garrison is the region four president of CSEA.

Sarah Koenig

Tabbano took up this fight when she started getting phone calls. Two, three, then six, maybe eight total-- people who worked for Steve.

Sarah Koenig

The reason they were calling her is because they couldn't use the normal chain of command. If a worker had a problem, they were first supposed to go to their supervisor, Steve. Then their complaint went go up a level to the district's director of human resources, Mike Stricos, a pal of Steve's who once presented him with a framed picture of Marlon Brando as the Godfather at a morning staff meeting. After that, there was the union's labor relations specialist, a guy named Mike Campon, who was good friends with school board president Jeff Janiszewski, another Steve supporter.

And the head of the union local? Also friends with Steve. It was a spider's web of good old boys. Since Tabbano couldn't get workers to go public, she tried to oust Steve on a technicality. He was clearly making too much money for his title of head utility worker, which therefore had to be a phony. She filed official requests, twice, with the school district demanding that they disclose financial information about Steve. And how did the school district respond to these official requests for transparency regarding Steve's position? Request they're required to respond to, according to labor law?

Sarah Koenig

Tabbano couldn't prove anything. And none of her union superiors cared to press it. The higher ups at CSEA liked Steve. He helped them with their campaigns.

Sarah Koenig

One of the main ways Steve ingratiated himself with his bosses was also the most traditional, one used by any manager in any workplace to get in good with the people in charge. He saved them money-- lots of it. And the way he did that was pretty ingenious. In 2004, a year after he takes over the maintenance department, Steve also becomes the de facto energy manager for the district, hence the space heater incident.

Another guy had had the job, but he wasn't meeting his energy reduction goals. What happened was that the district had invested in energy-tracking software that, if used properly, was supposed to reduce its energy consumption by, say, 20%, a big savings. A guy named Lou Semione was put in charge of the program, a seventy-something thousand dollar a year job. Steve decided he wanted it, so he began to sabotage Lou. John Lapointe knew what was going on.

Sarah Koenig

Steve, for instance, left the heat and lights on in every building over the three-day Columbus Day holiday. He once pretended the school's football lights were broken, and John had to pretend to fix them.

Sarah Koenig

So Lou's energy savings numbers were bad, maybe single digits. Steve persuaded the administration to give him the job, instead. But again, not the title of energy manager, since that would jeopardize his union situation. He said he'd do the job for half Lou's salary, which he'd collect in overtime. In this way, Steve's salary nearly doubled, so that by the time he was arrested in 2009, he was making about $125,000 a year. The superintendent, by contrast, was making about $194,000.

As energy czar, Steve was fearless. He would openly do battle with anyone who tried to turn on a switch he didn't think needed turning on. Didn't matter if you were a teacher, or an administrator, or one time a priest who wanted weekend heat in a classroom being leased from a church. In an email, Steve called the clergyman a, quote, "joker and a crook with a collar," and vowed to fight him.

Because of all this, Steve's energy reduction numbers were great. He got consumption down by a stunning 30%, saved the district millions in bills, and was publicly praised by the administration. And in particular, by superintendent Eric Ely, for whom Raucci had a soft spot. Judging from their email exchanges, the two became pretty cozy.

Sarah Koenig

That's DA Bob Carney.

Sarah Koenig

The columnist Carl Strock has a favorite from these emails.

Sarah Koenig

And then came the incident known simply as the letter, which eventually would lead to Steve's downfall.

Ira Glass

More on that in a minute. Steve Raucci finally goes too far, but he can't be brought down until his fork is stolen from a diner. Sarah Koenig's story about him continues, from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues.

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. If you're just tuning in, today we're devoting our entire hour to the rise and fall of a petty tyrant, Steve Raucci, who inspired fear, who did what he wanted, who was untouchable in his job running the maintenance department for the Schenectady Public Schools. We first ran today's show back in 2010, shortly after all this happened.

Ira Glass

We have arrived at the fall part of his rise and fall. Sarah Koenig picks up the story.

Sarah Koenig

In early 2005, someone sent an anonymous letter to the union's regional CSEA president, Kathy Garrison, complaining about Steve, saying he was running his unit like a mafia boss, but he wasn't qualified for his job, that he should be kicked out of CSEA. The letter immediately got back to Steve. John Lapointe again.

Sarah Koenig

Debbie was Debbie Gray, wife of Hal Gray, who worked in the maintenance department alongside John Lapointe. Hal had gone to high school with Steve, had known him forever. And Hal and Debbie were both active in the union. And for the record, Debbie says she didn't write that notorious letter, that she's not the type to do anything like that anonymously. But Steve was convinced. He and Hal hadn't been getting along. Steve confronted Hal about the letter, called him a rat, forbid him to come to morning meetings, banished him to the high school.

A few months later, in May of 2005, the Grays discovered rat spray painted in huge capital letters across their tan suburban two-story house. Steve arranged a caravan from work to go check it out. He made all the guys pile into four district vehicles and drive about 10 miles away to the town of Burnt Hills where the grays lived.

Sarah Koenig

John Lapointe was in the passenger seat in the lead car next to Steve.

Sarah Koenig

I saw pictures of the damage. Steve's MO with paint was to hit every surface, every fixture, every window to make it really expensive to fix. He was a professional, after all. There were more attacks of vandalism on the Grays over the years, maybe six altogether. And threats to burn down their house, to move out of town, or else. They complained to the union about it. School district officials knew about it. But there was no evidence linking Raucci to the crimes. Nothing happened.

Finally, after 2 and 1/2 years, Hal and Debbie Gray called the district attorney's office in Schenectady. DA Bob Carney didn't think much would come of it.

Sarah Koenig

Carney had never heard of Steve Raucci. He says he was blown away by their story.

Sarah Koenig

Turns out Raucci was suspected in all kinds of other stuff, dangerous stuff. The case of Gary DiNola, for instance. DiNola was the district's well-respected athletics director and an award-winning teacher. He fought with Steve for a year and a half about getting access to sports facilities, which Steve denied him. So finally, DiNola complained to superintendent Eric Ely. Steve instantly found out, and sent DiNola a menacing email. DiNola woke up the next morning to find his tires slashed and an explosive-- a big one-- tucked under his windshield wiper.

There were old cases, too. The most serious was from 2001 in the nearby town of Rotterdam, when a man was woken up in the middle of the night to his metal front door being blown in by a bomb. Steve got the wrong address in that case. The bomb had been meant for a cop down the street.

And there was the case of Laura Balogh. Laura worked at the union and had been romantically involved with the union's local president. When the relationship broke up, Steve went to her house at night, spray painted "cheater" in red letters on her house in Schodack, and planted an explosive on her doorstep, which never detonated.

That was investigators' first big break. Raucci had used a cigarette butt as a fuse in the homemade bomb. But Raucci wasn't a smoker, and he didn't know about New York's safety paper regulations, that a butt will go out on its own if it's left lit. From the stub, the police got a DNA sample. But since Raucci had no criminal record, he wasn't in their system. They couldn't make a match until they got another sample they knew to be from Raucci. Ellen Frederick, Raucci's former secretary, is married to a former cop. And that former cop knew the state police investigator in charge of Raucci's case.

Sarah Koenig

They came up with a plan. Steve ate breakfast out at local diners-- Sally's, Peter Pause, Blue Ribbon. Ellen would discreetly find out from one of her old colleagues where Steve was headed that morning, and then tell the investigator where to go. The investigator would try to secure a dirty utensil from Steve's place setting. After weeks of trying, the investigator finally nabbed a fork off Steve's plate before the waitress could clear it away. The cops had their match. They had enough evidence to link Steve to the crimes at Laura Balogh's house.

And they could have stopped there, but they wanted to try to get him for the other crimes, too. So they enlisted Keith McKenna, another former cop, who'd recently been busted on a drug charge and was in trouble. Many years before, Keith and Steve had been close friends. They palled around after hours, messed with explosives together. As it happened, DA Bob Carney had grown up across the street from Keith McKenna, and suggested he might help out with the case. Keith hadn't spent time with Steve for a decade, but he goes to see him at the school on the pretense of needing help, some kind of job. Steve is warm and welcoming, and remarkably forthcoming.

Sarah Koenig

Of course, what Steve doesn't know is that Keith is wired. I wrote to Steve Raucci in prison asking for an interview, but never heard back. So these tapes are all we've got. Listening to them, it's like hearing a grainy, homemade version of those mobster movies Steve likes so much. Steve talks about punks, and broads, and wiseguys, and street justice.

Sarah Koenig

It's almost as if Steve's been waiting all his life to lay out his world view on tape, if only someone would ask. Keith McKenna doesn't even have to. He says relatively little in these recordings, which are from three separate meetings in Steve's office over the course of two months. In answer to the most generic questions-- what have you been up to lately? How's work? Have you seen so-and-so-- Steve lets loose like a champion.

For the cops, the tapes are a goldmine. Steve essentially confesses by name to almost all of the bombings, and vandalism, and bad acts the cops already suspect him of-- Hal and Debbie Gray, the 2001 Rotterdam bombing, how he didn't know the cigarette butts wouldn't light his explosives.

Sarah Koenig

And why taking revenge on someone at home is his method of choice.

Sarah Koenig

"Property damage-- you can do a lot with that." A big theme with Steve in these recordings is how there's nothing he can't get away with in the district. Nobody dares tell him to make cuts in his department. He can hire who he likes, fire who he likes. No one can complain.

Sarah Koenig

Then he gestures to the photo of the Godfather, Don Corleone, that's hanging on his wall.

Sarah Koenig

What's striking about these tapes is that Steve sees himself on the side of good. He only does bad things to bullies, he says. He hates bullies. Any anyway, most of what he does-- like planting a bomb at the house of Laura Balogh, the one who broke up with his local union president-- are on behalf of friends, against people he doesn't even know. He'll do anything for a friend, he says. He's loyal that way. Even the guys who work for him-- he says he lies for them all the time, lets them leave early or bill for overtime they don't deserve.

Sarah Koenig

And still, they don't love him enough for it. He complains to Keith that he doesn't have any real friends at work.

Sarah Koenig

Keith, he says, is one of the two people in the world he considers a true friend, someone who'd live for him if need be. At their last meeting, Keith asked Steve if he can give him some explosives, called quarter sticks. There's a guy he wants to teach a lesson to. Steve is so casually generous about it, as if Keith has just asked him for a piece of gum.

Sarah Koenig

Steve tosses Keith an explosive he'd been storing behind a fake plant on top of his filing cabinet. And remember, Steve's office is in a middle school. So through the wall, there are kids 10, 12, 13 years old, and the thing is just sitting there, packed with more than 17 grams of incredibly volatile flash powder, 300 times more powerful than the strongest commercially-available firework. That was on a Wednesday. On Friday morning, cops swarmed the pen and arrested Steve. They had to.

Sarah Koenig

Superintendent Eric Ely called a news conference the following Monday saying he was shocked-- shocked-- to find out Steve Raucci was a thug.

Sarah Koenig

Many people I talked to said this enraged them, that Ely claimed ignorance about Steve's behavior. Ely politely declined to talk to me for this story. He's still facing lawsuits from former employees. But he gave an extended interview to the local CBS reporter, Marci Natale. He said he thought workers' complaints of Ross's tyranny were overblown.

Sarah Koenig

As for the people who came to Ely for help, like Gary DiNola, Ely said it wasn't his role to solve these problems.

Sarah Koenig

This is the same man who wrote, "There aren't many that I trust. You are one. Thank you." Ely is now superintendent of a district in Southbridge, Massachusetts.

Raucci was tried on 22 felony counts. The prosecution had DNA evidence, wire recordings. They called 62 witnesses. The defense had two, and one of them was cross-examined so effectively that she ultimately did Raucci's case more harm than good. Raucci's lawyer, Ron De Angelus, didn't want to be interviewed on tape. But he said Raucci was very peaceful, very quiet, not at all how they were making him out to be-- practically a maniac. His argument at trial was essentially that Raucci was a grand exaggerator who liked to take credit for things he didn't do.

At closing, De Angelus place brightly colored plastic eggs into a basket, one by one, and explained that each egg represented reasonable doubt and a chance to redeem. It was Easter time, he reasoned, a time of hope, a time of renewal, a time that, if you're a Christian and dead, you're going to come back to life. Raucci was convicted on 18 counts and acquitted of four.

At the sentencing hearing, Raucci's victims got a chance to speak to the court-- Laura Balogh, Debbie and Hal Gray, and maintenance supervisor Ron Kriss, who'd had his cars vandalized several times after filing a sexual harassment lawsuit against Steve. They hadn't been physically hurt, but their pain was pretty raw.

Sarah Koenig

Carl Strock, the Daily Gazette columnist, watched the trial.

Sarah Koenig

Some of the people who worked for Steve Raucci also thought they'd be different. They were good people. They knew right from wrong. But they tell me that you had to be in it to understand. Ellen Frederick said it was almost like being in a cult, being brainwashed.

Raucci was sentenced to spend 23 years at the Clinton Correctional Facility, a prison so far north, so forbidding, so antiquated that a journalist who visited there told me he expected Boris Karloff to walk in any minute. Raucci's working as a clerk in the prison commissary. He'll be up for parole in 2032, when he's in his 80s. Raucci's own father died in prison. And in the past, Raucci had warned darkly that he'd never let that happen to him. Steve was never technically fired, by the way, so he's still entitled to his school pension-- $80,000 a year.

Meanwhile, Schenectady cleaned house. The top pro-Raucci administrators are gone-- superintendent Eric Ely to Massachusetts, human resources director Mike Stricos goes to Vegas, and assistant superintendent for business Mike San Angelo-- still nearby, but his contract wasn't renewed. There's an interim superintendent now, a well-liked educator and father of six from another district, whose minivan, incidentally, was set on fire in his driveway one night in 1996. Raucci wasn't questioned in that case, but Carney said he wouldn't be surprised if Steve had been involved.

School board president Jeff Janiszewski was shouted down by audience members at a couple of meetings. And almost all the old board members, including Janiszewski are gone, either retired or voted out, replaced by self-described reformers. Finally, management of all CSEA union locals in Schenectady County has been taken over by the region until further notice. And at least six people have lawsuits pending.

When you see pictures of Raucci from the trial, sitting there quietly at the defendant's table, it's hard to imagine that he caused this mayhem all by himself. But of course, he didn't. He was surrounded, above and below, by people who looked the other way. Even Carl Strock, the newspaper columnist, told me, regretfully, that he, too, had gotten complaints about Steve Raucci from maintenance workers in the past, but didn't really follow up. And it's understandable why. Their stories seemed too small and bureaucratic, not something the rest of us would be interested in.

Ira Glass

Sarah Koenig is now the host of Serial. If you haven't heard season three, it's back to the criminal justice system like season one, but goes so much further, at serialpodcast.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

Ira Glass

In the years since we first broadcast this story, the CSEA union locals in Schenectady County have all been restructured. All the officers were replaced. The superintendent of schools there, Eric Ely, as Sarah reported in her story, got another job as a superintendent in Southbridge, Massachusetts, but since then-- since she did this story-- just three years into the job, he resigned after allegations of misconduct. One of the allegations against him? That he trained a middle high school principal to be a bully. He now teaches math at a high school in North Carolina.

Several lawsuits were filed by people who say they were victimized by Raucci, some of them against Steve Raucci, some of them against the school district. Several of those have settled. And finally, as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, 10 years after his arrest, Steve Raucci gave an interview to a newspaper reporter, Paul Nelson, from the Times Union in Albany. A link to his article at timesunion.com is at our website. In the interview, apparently for the first time, Raucci admitted guilt for some of his crimes-- though not the worst one.

Ira Glass

Raucci he said he and his wife talked a lot about whether he's a psychopath, but he said he thought he wasn't, because even when he gets all wound up, he said, he doesn't think he loses control of himself. He doesn't snap and cross the line, though of course, that's not the definition of a psychopath. Raucci said several times during the interview that he always knew that what he was doing was wrong.

Ira Glass

Raucci told the reporter that he's been diagnosed with prostate cancer. But he said he doesn't see the point in getting treated, or prolonging his life in a maximum security prison.

[MUSIC - "WORKING CLASS HERO" BY OZZY OSBOURNE]