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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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time
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010289
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01028900.022
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1990-09-22
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NATION, Page 80Miss America Wins AgainBess Myerson went to extremes -- but not to bribery
To federal prosecutors, Bess Myerson was the embodiment of the
woman who loved too much: a New York City official who bribed
respected state Supreme Court Justice Hortense Gabel to cut her
boyfriend's alimony payments by giving Gabel's troubled daughter
a job at the cultural affairs commission. To the daughter, Sukhreet
Gabel, Myerson was a manipulative opportunist who banished her when
the scam broke in the newspapers. To ex-wife Nancy Capasso, Myerson
was a harridan who stole her husband Andy, moved into her house and
wore her clothes. But to a federal jury charged with deciding her
fate, Myerson was still Miss America, however tarnished.
The conspiracy and bribery trial that ended last week in
Manhattan seemed a case of three people risking too much for too
little. Why would a respected jurist like Gabel, 76, jeopardize her
16 years on the bench for a job for her daughter? Why would Myerson
-- a successful and well-to-do former Miss America, a former
candidate for the U.S. Senate -- care whether Nancy Capasso got
$1,500 a week or $500? And what was $1,000 a week more or less to
Andy Capasso, 43, a sewer contractor with multiple homes and cars,
city contracts worth $150 million and a net worth of some $12
million?
Obsession was the theme of the trial. Just as Hortense Gabel
searched relentlessly for a job for her only daughter, the still
attractive Myerson, 64, was obsessed with the fleshy Capasso, who
is serving three years in federal prison for income tax evasion.
Born in 1945 -- the year Myerson was crowned Miss America --
Capasso came along during Myerson's losing Senate bid in 1980,
helped her pay off campaign debts, bought her a Mercedes and a fur
coat, and gave her the run of his Long Island mansion. All was
seeming paradise until Nancy Capasso found out about Bess two years
after the affair started, kicked Capasso out of their $6 million
Fifth Avenue duplex, and asked for alimony.
The 15-week trial ultimately came down to Sukhreet Gabel. She
had taped telephone conversations and stolen her mother's files and
she seemed to relish testifying that her job and the judge's ruling
in Capasso's divorce were no coincidence. Yet the obviously
unstable Sukhreet came across like an indulged child desperate for
attention. Judge John Keenan twice instructed the jurors on
"reasonable doubt," and after four days they returned with a
verdict: not guilty. Myerson brushed away tears and kissed Gabel.
Then she walked past the cameras, smiling.