Re: 7/22/99 - Raucci Among the Guerrillas
Raucci Among the Guerrillas
A fugitive ex-cop's theatrical life on the lam.
By Paul Bass
Published 07/22/99
On stage, he played the role of Coot Blatherskite, a "dork" in a spoof on the Canadian Mounties.
In the classroom, he was Visiting Professor Raucci. He says he taught a workshop on the workings of the criminal mind.
Offstage, outside the classroom, Vincent Raucci was playing the role of fugitive: from the cops, from the FBI, from pending criminal charges--and from suspicion, fueled by an FBI report, that he may have framed two New Haven men convicted of a double murder.
That double life in the foothills of New Mexico's Gila National Forest ended last week for former New Haven detective Vincent Raucci, when federal agents arrested him after a four-hour armed stand-off.
Authorities planned to bring Raucci back to Connecticut to face charges in two separate cases. He's accused of billing the government for extra-duty work he never performed and of assaulting and threatening his ex-wife in front of their children.
Raucci also figures prominently in the appeals of two men, Scott Lewis and Stefon Morant, convicted of carrying out a 1990 double murder in New Haven. Calls for a new trial have followed an Advocate report last September ("The Cop & The 'Killer,'" on the Web at <http://www.newhavenadvocate.com/newarchive.phtml>) about an FBI investigation that suggested that Raucci set the pair up for the murders because of a drug-dealing debt. Internal New Haven police documents show that the department was investigating Raucci for alleged involvement in the cocaine trade when it pushed him off the force in 1996.
He jumped bail in July 1998 and fled to New Mexico rather than face more questions and possible jail time. New Haven has been paying him a $28,000-a-year disability pension. Then, last month, local authorities decided to try to bring him back. Their first effort failed when agents knocked on the front door of the trailer he was living in; Raucci slipped out the back, authorities said. Last Thursday's second attempt succeeded.
In a phone conversation Monday from his New Mexico jail cell, Raucci declared innocence of all charges against him. He issued a plea for help when he comes back to Connecticut.
Raucci's story and conversations with people he encountered in Silver City, N.M., show that he was still getting by on the same two qualities that earned him decorations as a New Haven detective: charm and a sixth sense.
Add chutzpah, too.
Raucci showed up at the door of a recent Yale graduate in Silver City soon after he fled New Haven in 1998.
He had met the woman at Kavanagh's bar in New Haven, where she was working her way through Yale. They became friendly--so friendly that he brought a gift to her 1997 graduation.
"He was extremely friendly to the whole family. He seemed like a very nice person," recalled the woman's mother, who asks to remain anonymous.
When he turned up a year later in Silver City, "He said, 'I just came to visit. I heard this was a nice place,'" the mother recalled. "We had no idea he was into something crooked. His story was: 'I'm dropping by here on my way to Florida.' We said, 'Ohhhh-kay.' I invited him over for Christmas dinner." He brought presents and charmed everyone.
Raucci said he did plan just to visit at first. Then he lacked money to get home, he claimed. He hoped he could arrange through his lawyer to enter a family violence program in New Mexico to satisfy a court order, rather than have to return home to Connecticut.
Among what he liked in New Mexico: the acting opportunities.
After returning home from Yale, the young graduate had founded an acting troupe in Silver City, called Virus Theater. It performed guerrilla theater and socially conscious plays. Raucci, who's now 43, began hanging out with the twentysomethings, living with some of them on and off, acting in their plays.
He also auditioned with a professional theater, the Pinos Altos Melodrama Company, located in a sparsely populated mountain community above Silver City. He landed the role of Coot Blatherskite, a supporting part, in the original production of Yukin' It Up in the Yukon or .... Moose River Anthology.
"He was supposed to be a dork, not too smart" in the role, according to Melodrama co-owner Jill Hare. "He was OK." He had one singing number.
The cast rehearsed through the summer of 1998. Raucci lived in the woods in Pinos Altos, according to Hare, where he would hold parties with the actors in their late teens and early 20s.
The show went into performance in the fall. Raucci left it in October. He said he left because the play was over. (A feature on the theater in New Mexico magazine says the show ran through November.) Hare said he disappeared after a confrontation with a local writer friend of hers named Max Minor.
Minor said in an interview that Raucci burglarized between $4,000 and $5,000 of electronics equipment from a trailer he was living in. Raucci denied it. He said someone saw a black pick-up like his--but not his--at the scene.
Minor said he confronted Raucci one day outside a trailer. He said Raucci was coming out of the trailer at the time, carrying an armful of guns. "He ran back into the trailer carrying all the weapons," Minor recalled. Minor said he went to the cops.
Raucci said that never happened. Detective Sgt. Steve Gonzalez of the Grant County Sheriff's Department said the department interviewed Raucci in connection with a number of alleged crimes. They made no arrests in those cases, he said; the investigations are ongoing.
Around that time, Kathy Convery said, she also stopped seeing Raucci around.
Convery, who's now 18 and a college student, played Lily the Barmaid in Yukin' it Up, where she met Raucci. She said she dated him a few times and would stay at his place.
"He's charming. He used to be a detective. He had stories to tell. That was pretty cool," Convery said. She said she's skeptical of stories that circulated about Raucci, such as the burglary accusations. "I thought he had kicked the drug thing. He's from a big city. This is a small town. Sometimes people can be snobby to outsiders."
But around that October, "he changed. He used to be a real nice guy. He turned cold. He got paranoid," Convery said.
She hasn't seen Raucci much since. Raucci claimed the only drugs he uses are prescription medication "for bipolar and hyperactivity."
The mother of the recent Yale graduate said her family and her daughter's friends also stopped seeing Raucci. Then, three weeks ago, she was walking her dog in her neighborhood when she noticed a truck driving slowly behind her. It passed her. Then it turned around. It was Raucci.
"He said, 'Hi! I'm your neighbor now. I'm raising chickens. Do you want any eggs?'"
She didn't. She hasn't seen him since. She's not expecting any eggs.
Raucci is expecting trouble in Connecticut.
"The only thing I'm scared of is some gangbangers trying to make a name for themselves and taking me out," Raucci said.
He noted that he put plenty of people in jail in his 16 years as a New Haven cop. Now he might meet up with them behind bars.
"Especially these young punks. They don't know what they're doing. They're in for murders. Theyre not coming out. They make a big name for themselves" by attacking a cop.
Asked what message he wants to send New Haven, Raucci said, "Hey, give me some help. If you can help me out financially with the lawyers and the bond, I'd appreciate it. There [are] two sides to every story. There's so much coming at me. I'm a nice guy. I've always treated people fair. I was a good cop. I'm going through all these changes now. I miss my kids, with my heart and soul. I'm trying to get my life together."
Raucci denied that he'd ever set up Lewis or Morant on murder charges in 1990. If he had, that information would have surely surfaced, he argued.
Nor did he hide from the FBI last month the first time they came to arrest him, he maintained. "I was out in my yard. I was transferring some cactus. I was building a cactus garden. I didn't know they were there. I came back in and my future wife said, 'The FBI was coming for you.' I said, 'Oh, my God.'" He said he didn't then contact the feds because he was planning to return to Connecticut, anyway.
Raucci said he'd like to return to New Mexico. He said he has bought land there.
"Chickens are good up here. They eat all the bugs. You don't need a garbage disposal. They're pretty good watchdogs, too."
E-mail: pbass@newhavenadvocate.com
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