A year full of scandals

October of 1992 was a pretty crazy time in the Daily Pilot

newsroom.

It’s not often that a newspaper can sink its teeth into one big

scandal, much less two.

But that is exactly what we had going 10 years ago, and I was

fortunate or unfortunate (depending on your point of view) to be a

part of it all. Ultimately, our coverage of those scandals became

part of a sample of work for which we won the coveted General

Excellence Award from the California Newspaper Publishers Assn.

For the city, however, there was no doubt this was unfortunate.

Kevin Murphy was barely on the job a year as city manager when a

new set of problems, merely a year after the revelations that

longtime city Utilities Director Bob Dixon had been embezzling close

to $2 million from public funds, surfaced.

Still licking their wounds from Dixon’s embezzlement, the

bombshell came that longtime Police Chief Arb Campbell and his

right-hand man Capt. Tony Villa were being sued for sexually

harassing four female employees of the department.

The list of women would grow to 10, the charges became wild and

outrageous, Campbell and Villa would eventually be placed on leave,

fired, rehired and then retire.

It was a massive amount of reporting that pretty much consumed

yours truly for the better part of a year.

It concluded for the most part with the arrival of Chief Bob

McDonell, who was brought in to heal the wounds and bring the

department back to its real purpose -- police work.

But back to the next bombshell.

As we were all trying to make sense of the Arb Campbell/Tony Villa

case, word came down that Stephen Wagner, a trusted and

well-respected member of the Newport-Mesa school staff, had been

arrested on suspicion of embezzling thousands, maybe millions, of

dollars.

When the tally was done, the total came to about $4 million, with

tales of Rolls Royces, fine art, extravagant jewelry, mink fur-lined

bathrobes and tuxedos, million-dollar homes and a 5,760-carat

emerald, all sold later at auction.

Wagner pleaded guilty and went to jail, where he ultimately died

from complications of AIDS.

Then Newport-Mesa Supt. John Nicoll, who once seemed a powerful,

imposing and unshakeable figure, saw his image mortally wounded by

the scandal, as parents and community leaders wanted to know how he

could have let this happen under his watch.

I’ll never forget one Speak Up Newport meeting at which former

Coast Magazine editor Jim Wood asked Nicoll how he did not become

suspicious when Wagner, basically a mid-level manager at he district,

was wearing mink tuxedos and driving in a Rolls Royce.

His response was that he tells reporters who ask him that question

-- and he emphasized reporters lived in places like Santa Ana and

Garden Grove -- that in Newport Beach it is not unusual to see

someone driving a Rolls Royce.

I remember looking at the women seated in front of me, who turned

to look at each other and mouthed the words “He’s got to go.”

Indeed, he did go, largely because of health reasons, and the

district went on to reform itself and rehabilitate its image. So much

so that it was able to pass a $110-million school bond just two years

ago.

Today, we revisit the scandal that rocked the district 10 years

ago. We’ll look at what the embezzlement did to the district, what

the district has done to prevent it from happening again, how Wagner

was able to pull it off and what the major players from that scandal

have to say about it today.

As for the Campbell and Villa saga, we’ll take that one up in the

early part of summer, as we look back at Chief McDonell’s 10-year

tenure as chief.

Stay tuned.

* TONY DODERO is the editor. He can be reached via e-mail at

tony.dodero@latimes.com or by phone at (949) 574-4258.