"She committed a crime and she needs to pay the price. End of story! If it were the other way around and Pagones owed Brawley the money, they'd garnish his wages for life! Funny how Sharpton, Bill Cosby, Don King, , and those other losers jumped on the bandwagon and now that she owes people money, where are they with all their support"? MC
A former prosecutor who says Tawana Brawley, now known as Tawana Gutierrez, falsely dragged his name through the mud in a defamation judgment from 1987 is looking to collect this year.
Steven Pagones, a former Dutchess County prosecutor, says Brawley still owes him $429,000, including interest, after falsely calling him a 'gang-raping, kidnapping racist.'
'In all these years, she’s never told the truth about this hoax or paid me a cent,' Pagones told the New York Post on Christmas Eve.
'Now I’m going to seek anything I’m entitled to under the law,' he said.
'In all these years, she’s never told the truth
about this hoax or paid me a cent,' says former assistant district
attorney Steven Pagones
That could well cost Brawley, a single mom working as a nurse in Virginia, up to a couple of hundred dollars a week, according to the Post.
Twenty-five years after Brawley's claims of being raped by a gang of white men polarised New York City, the woman has been tracked down living in hiding in Virginia.
On November 28, 1987, the then-15-year-old was found in a trash bag, dazed, smeared with feces with the word n****r scrawled on her body.
She told police she had been abducted by two white men and driven to the woods where they and four others ravaged her for four days - one of which had a badge.
Here to collect: Pagones, a former assistant
district attorney falsely accused by Reverand Al Sharpton in the 1998
rape of Tawana Brawley, says Brawley still owes him $429,000, including
interest, after falsely calling a 'gang-raping, kidnapping racist'
The case was catapulted onto the national stage by attorneys Alton H. Maddox and C. Vernon Mason, and the then-little-known Rev. Al Sharpton, who claimed she was raped 33 times.
Celebrities weighed in, with Bill Cosby posting a $25,000 reward for information on the case, Don King promised $100,000 for Brawley’s education and boxer Mike Tyson gave her a $30,000 watch to ease her pain.
Fishkill Police Officer Harry Crist Jr. was implicated after being found dead in his apartment a week after Brawley was discovered, and Pagones was also accused when he stepped in with an alibi for the 28-year-old.
But in 1988 a grand jury found the whole shocking story was a hoax, and Brawley was never raped.
Now 40 years old, The New York Post tracked her down working as a nurse in Virginia.
'I don't want to talk to anyone about that,' Brawley told the newspaper recently as she emerged from her apartment in Hopewell, Virginia, wearing scrubs.
Racial tensions: Rev Al Sharpton catapulted the case of Tawana Brawley, centre, onto the main stage
Historic case: Reverend Al Sharpton, pictured in 1988, picketed outside the hotel of New York governor Mario Cuomo
She lives what appears to be a relatively normal life in a neatly kept brick apartment complex with signs warning of video surveillance cameras.
To avoid detection, Brawley goes by the aliases of Thompson and Gutierrez and has a young daughter, a neighbor told the Post.
She reportedly works as a licensed practical nurse at The Laurels of Bon Air in Richmond. But her co-workers have been in the dark about the incredible story of brutality, which turned out to be false.
'Are you serious? We don't know her by that name. Isn't that a trip?' one staffer said, adding that the woman who they call Tawana Gutierrez was 'a good worker.'
According to a neighbor, Brawley has lived in Hopewell - Virginia's most crime-laden town - for at least a year.
'Tawana V. Gutierrez' and 'Tawana V. Thompson' have held the same nursing license since 2006, state records show. The Virginia Board of Nursing confirmed issuing it to a 'Tawana Vacenia Thompson Gutierrez.'
False claims: Brawley, picturd in 1988, claimed she was gang raped by a group of white men, one of whom had a badge
Rally: Tawana Brawley, left in 1988, of Wappinger Falls, N.Y., was the center of the legal controversy over her rape charges
Brawley maintains a PO box in Claremont, Va., under the name Gutierrez, according to The Post's sources.
The grand jury panel, which heard from 180 witnesses over its seven-month investigation, found that Brawley made up the story to avoid being punished for staying out late and missing school.
They found evidence she had ran away from home and was hiding out in her parents' former apartment after they got evicted.
Many believed that Brawley feared her stepdad Ralph King's and needed an alibi for her absence. King spent seven years in prison in the 1970s for killing his first wife.
Traces of the charcoal-like material used to scrawl the hateful word on her body were found under her fingernails, and she showed no signs of genital trauma or exposure, the jury found. One witness said Brawley was spotted climbing into the bin bag.
We believe you: The case polarised new York City in the late 1980s
Lawsuit: Tawana Brawley, pictured in 1997, spoke
at a rally in support of Alton Maddox who lost a lawsuit for defamation
of character by Steven Pagones
'It is probable that in the history of this state, never has a teenager turned the prosecutorial and judicial systems literally upside down with such false claims,' state Supreme Court Justice S. Barrett Hickman wrote at the time.
Pagones has tried to forget the sorry affair but says he can't.
'It'll come up randomly. It'll come up when something happens with Sharpton,' he told The Post.
Pagones won a defamation lawsuit against Sharpton, Brawley and her lawyers in 1998.
Maddox was found liable for $97,000, Mason for $188,000, and Sharpton was ordered to pay $66,000. Brawley was ordered to pay $190,000 at 9 per cent annual interest but hasn't paid any of that bill. In total, she owes $429,000.
He continues to look for her.
'Through her silence, she's as guilty of libel as Maddox, Mason and Sharpton,' he told the newspaper. 'The only way to hold her accountable — at least at this stage — is financially.'
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