Slavic village by Plain Dealer Contest

SUNDAY, JUNE 14, 2015

Special report

HARD TIME IN CLEVELAND Fraud, ruin and redemption in Slavic Village Story by Rachel Dissell | rdissell@plaind.com Photographs by Lisa DeJong | ldejong@plaind.com

The Plain Dealer | cleveland.com

Hard time in Cleveland

Sunday, June 14, 2015

CLEVELAND.COM/SLAVIC-VILLAGE

LISA DEJONG / THE PLAIN DEALER

Traces of Polish heritage are everywhere in Slavic Village. From underneath Polish and American ﬂags, a massive laminated photo of Pope John Paul II looks out on East 65th Street.

Sentenced to Slavic Village

“I want to go back.” Blaine Murphy tells his attorney, Larry Zukerman, he’d rather go back to prison than be released to live in Slavic Village.

Slavic Village This area covers the largest part of Cleveland’s South Broadway neighborhood. Its name reﬂects the area’s history as the onetime home of many of Cleveland’s Polish, Czech, Slovenian and Bohemian immigrant communities. Kin

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“This was a mistake,” Blaine Murphy whispered to his lawyer, Larry Zukerman. “I want to go back. Tell him I want to go back.” The plan for Murphy’s Jan. 17, 2014, court hearing had been to ask Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Richard McMonagle for an early release from his twoyear prison sentence. For the past eight months, the 45-year-old had been locked up with more than 2,500 other men at the Richland Correctional Institution, about 90 minutes southwest of Cleveland. He’d been sent there after he admitted to signing fake names to the deeds of 10 Cleveland-area homes, among hundreds he’d acquired and sold in the area.

THOMAS ONDREY / THE PLAIN DEALER

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ynda Lewis watched the silver-haired stranger trudge up driveway after snowdusted driveway. In a black Carhartt jacket and lace-up work boots, he navigated Slavic Village’s East 46th Street, dropping off invites to a neighborhood meeting. He skipped over a dusky green house, its siding stripped as high as a human could reach. It was one of eight vacant homes on the street, not counting the seven empty lots where houses once stood. This must be the guy Cleveland Councilman Anthony Brancatelli had told her about. The rich Florida “house ﬂipper” a judge had ordered to live and work in Slavic Village. Her lifelong home was now his prison. Let’s just watch him, Lewis told her longtime boyfriend, Ted Smith. They crept along, spying at a distance from Smith’s ruby-red Ford F-150. Lewis was skeptical about this stranger. She doubted he would deliver the stacks of notices, part of his community service. He’ll do a few and ditch the rest, she ﬁgured. Smith pointed out a canister of pepper spray swinging from the man’s belt as he continued up the street. Wonder what he’s afraid of, he chuckled.

1/4 mile

WILLIAM NEFF | THE PLAIN DEALER

Map area

Before coming to Cleveland for the first time, in chains, Murphy had lived in a $1.2 million house in Naples, Florida, across from a golf club. He owned a yacht, drove a Porsche and piloted a four-seat Cirrus airplane. Murphy wanted McMonagle to let him return to that sunny life. But his freedom would come at a price. One that now had him pleading to return to prison instead. McMonagle ordered him to complete 3,000 hours of community service and pay the $250,000 in restitution he still owed. Until then, he would be forced to live in a home he had flipped. He’d be shackled to Slavic Village — and to Councilman Brancatelli, who had helped put him behind bars. Thin and balding, with a saltand-pepper beard, Brancatelli, 56, sat poker faced in the back of the courtroom on the Justice Center’s 16th floor as he listened to McMonagle. He’d been on a decades-long crusade to save Slavic Village. In recent years, Brancatelli paid particular attention to speculators such as Murphy. He thought their deals pushed already-vulnerable neighborhoods such as his over the edge, stymying recovery. The inner city had been weakened by decades of population and job loss. Home values had fallen to the point where banks gave away the distressed houses to speculators, who would quickly sell them to other investors, in bulk. With little at stake and no ties to the area, the new buyers often left homes to rot. As the homes decayed, the remaining neighbors felt stuck, powerless against the crime the vacant homes attracted. City officials tried to find owners to push for repairs and tax payments. But it was often like trying to capture ghosts. And while the flipping itself was seen as destructive, it wasn’t necessarily criminal. Then FBI agents helped to track down Murphy.

“This was a mistake. I want to go back. Tell him I want to go back.”

More about Slavic Village

Key ﬁgures

In addition to the reporting, photography and video at Cleveland.com/slavic-village, further information on the community is available: 3 A narrated slideshow of Blaine Murphy’s “selﬁes.” bit.ly/ccomslavicselﬁes 3 What is a zombie property? Watch our video. bit.ly/ccomslaviczombie

Blaine Murphy: Florida house ﬂipper, convicted of fraud in his dealings.

3 A multimedia slideshow of vintage Slavic Village photos. bit.ly/ccomslavicvintage

Companies he ran flipped a lot of houses in Ohio as well as in Michigan, Missouri and Texas. He’d used fictitious names for some of those transactions. Prosecutors said that made the dealings fraudulent, and therefore criminal. He wasn’t just a speculator. He was a symbol. To Brancatelli, Murphy was a con man. He had exploited the vulnerable neighborhood with no regard for the harm he caused. And now Murphy was slumped, hands cuffed behind his orange, jail-issued V-neck shirt, as he heard the judge call Brancatelli his “de-facto probation ofﬁcer.” Zukerman, his attorney, called the plan a recipe for disaster. “That man hates my client,” he told McMonagle. “He has said so. He said my client is the scourge of the Earth, that he has ruined the city of Cleveland.” Zukerman grew louder, almost spitting. “He has made it his life mission to see my client go to prison. And now you’re saying, ‘Mr. Murphy, you want to be free, you have to be with the man who has made it his mission to see you incarcerated.’ ’’ McMonagle listened, and then, with a calm brought by 36 years on the bench, said: “We will see the character of everybody involved here. That’s it. Thank you.”

Lynda Lewis: Slavic Village resident who worked with Murphy during his sentence.

Anthony Brancatelli: Cleveland city councilman who worked with Murphy in Slavic Village.

Online View comprehensive photo galleries from Slavic Village. Watch video interviews with the key ﬁgures in this story. Share your thoughts and comments on the rebuilding of Slavic Village. cleveland .com/slavic-village

On the cover A window is shown at a house on Huss Avenue, at the corner of East 59th Street, that was demolished in April by Slavic Village Development.

Blaine Murphy, reacting to the judge’s order

Sunday, June 14, 2015

The Plain Dealer | cleveland.com

Hard time in Cleveland

CLEVELAND.COM/SLAVIC-VILLAGE

PHOTOGRAPHS BY LISA DEJONG / THE PLAIN DEALER

Murphy tries out the queen-size air mattress he bought at Target on his ﬁrst night in his Beyerle Road home on Jan. 22, 2014, as he prepares to complete 3,000 hours of community service.

A bed of his own making

laine Murphy emerged from the Justice Center on Jan. 22 in a donated zip-up track jacket, baggy jeans and generic white tennis shoes fastened with Velcro. A frigid wind whipped around him. The man known in Cleveland as the “Florida ﬂipper” checked in with his new county probation ofﬁcer and stood in line with other felons to submit urine for a drug test. Murphy made headlines days earlier when he told a judge he’d rather return to prison than work for Councilman Brancatelli in Slavic Village. Prison — where Murphy taught gang members to read and write letters, visited the library and ate his meals at set times — was predictable. Working in Slavic Village would not be. And the judge had warned him, “I’ll hold you to this.” If he failed, he could be sent back to prison for a decade. With that in mind, he headed to his new home: 3628 Beyerle Road.

Slavic Village is a collection of neighborhoods southeast of Cleveland’s downtown, hovering on the edge of the industrial valley. Originally, the clusters were known by such names as Karlin and Warszawa, inhabited by Polish, Hungarian and Czech immigrants, who walked to jobs in the steel mills. The pockets were anchored by churches such as St. John Nepomucene, Shrine of St. Stanislaus and St. Hyacinth. In its heyday in the 1930s, Slavic Village’s Broadway Avenue bustled like a second downtown, jammed with streetcars bringing working-class families to the many shops and restaurants. The neighborhood where Murphy was ordered to live has been known as Forest City Park from as far back as 1894. At the turn of the 20th century, it was home to a 47-acre amusement park, a short-lived twin to Cleveland’s more famous Euclid Beach Park. The neighborhood thrived even after the Willow Freeway, now part

Murphy carries supplies into his home on his first night in Slavic Village. Murphy had bought this home for $1 to “flip” it. Later, after he was criminally charged, he hired a contractor to fix it up. of Interstate 77, first sliced through in the late 1930s, isolating it from the rest of the community. Stores stood along Independence Road, a main artery that led to the sooty collection of furnaces, mounds of ore pellets and rolling mills. In 1938, that stretch had five grocers, two shoe-repair shops, a music teacher, a taxidermist and a dozen or more other businesses. Now, only a single bar, the ATB Lounge & Grill, is open for business. The 3 M Food Mart is boarded up. So is the Step In Liquor, with its small metal sign advertising “Bikes, Babes, Beer.” The larger neighborhood began its long decline in the decades after World War II, when the economy slumped and the steel jobs started to vanish. The highways and cheap home loans for veterans paved the way to the suburbs for many families. The flight accelerated in the

1970s after bankruptcies ravaged the steel industry, cross-town busing was ordered to desegregate city schools, and violent crime spiked. The area was collectively rebranded Slavic Village in 1977 during an early revitalization effort. Now, the area that once teemed with more than 70,000 people has dwindled to fewer than 25,000. More than 1,200 houses are vacant. More than half of those are on a waiting list for demolition. A vinyl-sided bungalow on Beyerle Road was one of about 20 Slavic Village homes traced back to Murphy. One of his companies, MoneyLine, acquired it in 2006 from a bank that had purchased it two years earlier at a sheriff’s auction. It cost $1. Before then, it had been in the same family since at least 1972. On the day he left jail, Murphy clomped up the home’s gravel driveway, past a boulder bearing his new address, and brushed off the snow with a yellow legal pad.

“I’ll hold you to this.”

He noticed that the ﬂag holder installed on the front of the house was bent. That irritated him. He was raised to respect the ﬂag. As he walked toward the side door, a feral cat darted toward a frozen public nine-hole golf course that lay beyond the yard. Murphy had hired a contractor to gut and rehabilitate the century-old structure. It had been his plan to donate the house, before he was sent to prison. Now he was sentenced to live here while he completed community service. Inside, Murphy gave a Realtorstyle tour. He pointed out features such as new kitchen cabinets and counters. The dining room was furnished with white plastic lawn furniture and a few plastic plants. As Murphy treaded across the carpet, his breath clouded in front of his face. Outside, it was 12 degrees. Inside, it wasn’t much warmer.

A small halo of warmth emanated from the burners of a shiny black Frigidaire stove. But the energy-efficient furnace Murphy had installed wasn’t working. He headed down the steep basement stairs to investigate. He flipped sets of electrical breakers and elicited a brief mechanical HumUUM. Then, silence. “Well, this could be the problem,” Murphy said. He waded into an ankle-deep puddle of frigid water around the furnace. A frozen ceiling pipe had burst in the first-floor bathroom, sending freshly mudded drywall into the tub. Water then cascaded through the floor and into the basement. Murphy had picked up some handyman skills in his late teens while working maintenance at an apartment building his father owned, and later as a landlord in New Jersey. But this job was too big for him, he said. “I guess I won’t be showering,”

Murphy said, shrugging it off. It was after dark when he rolled a queen-size air mattress onto the floor of an upstairs bedroom. Since he was on house arrest, his county probation officer had allowed him one quick store trip to grab some provisions — a cheap coffee maker and his favorite Pepperidge Farm Montauk cookies, the soft kind with chunks of milk chocolate. He had also loaded the trunk of his rental car with space heaters. Wisps of their warmth were finally reaching his bone-cold body as he prepared for bed. He maneuvered ill-fitting sheets over his mattress and tried it out. The quiet in the house was unnerving. Prison was constant noise. Guards jangling keys. Squawking radios. Farts, burps, coughing, laughing, people talking at all hours of the night. Murphy had been in the “honor pod.” His cell was next to a man called DJ Master Jeff, who would blast violent anti-white rap music most of the day but sign off with Hall and Oates’ “Sara Smile,” which Murphy liked. There was also the guy with the “tattoo parlor” and “Donnie Trump,” who ran a casino with weighted dice. Murphy joined some of the higher-functioning prisoners to watch PBS or listen to NPR. Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion” would take him away from his sadness for an hour or two. But this day, alone in his house, the solitude had his mind racing. It was a symptom of the bipolar illness he had struggled to cope with for years. How would the neighbors treat him? What about Brancatelli? Was he out to get him? He also wrestled with paranoia, a feeling that he was being set up to fail. Murphy was resentful. His punishment felt disproportionate to others who had damaged Slavic Village. He didn’t see any Wall Street bankers being ordered to live on his street. Why was he their scapegoat?

Judge Richard McMonagle, warning Murphy of the conditions of his release into Slavic Village

The Plain Dealer | cleveland.com

Hard time in Cleveland

Sunday, June 14, 2015

CLEVELAND.COM/SLAVIC-VILLAGE

PHOTOGRAPHS BY LISA DEJONG / THE PLAIN DEALER

Councilman Brancatelli, left, brings Murphy to his favorite lunch spot at The Red Chimney on Fleet Avenue in Slavic Village, on Murphy’s ﬁrst day of community service.

The convict and the crusader

wo weeks after moving into his house in Slavic Village, on Feb. 4, Murphy was back at the Justice Center, sitting on a bank of bolted-to-the-floor orange chairs. A few days’ worth of gray stubble lined his chin. He was waiting to meet with McMonagle and to face Brancatelli for the first time. And to learn what his 3,000 hours of community service in Slavic Village would entail. It almost didn’t happen after a “60 Minutes” television crew showed up to capture that meeting as part of a potential story on Cleveland’s housing crisis. As Murphy’s attorney, Larry Zukerman, railed about what he felt was a publicity stunt, the convict and the councilman met in the corridor. Brancatelli had rushed off the courthouse elevator onto the 16th floor, his wool coat slung over his arm. He was running late from a council finance meeting. He recognized Murphy, who jumped up to shake his hand. “How are you doing so far?” Brancatelli asked. “Fine,” Murphy replied. “Except this,” he said, pointing to a red scab slashed across the left side of his neck. “I was attacked,” Murphy said. He turned his head to show the wound inflicted by a feral cat, one of the many that squatted in his backyard. Brancatelli nodded. The cats roamed the neighborhood, hundreds of them, it seemed, living in vacant homes in winter and sunning themselves in warmer weather on patches of weeds where homes once stood. Brancatelli offered Murphy the number of a woman who ran a catch-and-release program, which neutered cats in hopes of humanely depleting the nuisance. “I’m not out to hang anybody,” McMonagle said as the men settled around a scarred table in his chambers. “Or to send you back to jail.” Around them, court files spilled off of chairs and wooden benches.

Brancatelli, left, and Murphy, right, listen to Judge Richard McMonagle in his chambers on Feb. 4, 2014. The judge was purging, preparing to retire at the end of the year. In his 36 years on the bench, McMonagle had decided there were two types of criminals: bad people, and good people who do bad things. He thought Murphy was the latter. He sensed that Murphy had never stopped to consider the ramiﬁcations of his business deals. When the house-flipping case came to McMonagle two years earlier, prosecutors were ready to hang Murphy “high and forever,” the judge recalled. At a press conference announcing Murphy’s arrest, thenCuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason painted Murphy as a callous carpetbagger — one who flipped more than 235 homes in Cuyahoga County, often while hiding behind fake names such as Bryce Peters III and Martin Franks. The homes racked up unpaid ﬁnes for housing-code violations, which eventually led to $9.5 million in judgment against Murphy’s companies. It would cost taxpayers millions to bulldoze the blighted houses ditched by Murphy’s buyers. Mason called Murphy an “example of a germ that multiplies exponentially on spoiled food.” Prosecutors said Murphy’s plan

was clear: to get rich and avoid any liability. That image — of the jet-setting millionaire Florida businessman preying on down-and-out Cleveland neighborhoods — differed from the depictions of Murphy in dozens of testimonial letters the judge read before sentencing him. In the letters, family members, friends and employees laid out snippets of his life story. How he started out as a bright and entrepreneurial elementary schooler who sold tickets to backyard carnivals in his western New Jersey neighborhood. That grew into Studio B Entertainment, a company Murphy started in the sixth grade that provided sound, lights and disc jockey services for weddings, parties and concerts. How, in college, with his father’s financing, he bought his first property and turned it into a rooming house for the poor. That led to larger-investment rental properties, most of which he later sold. Letter after letter reflected a man who was caring, not cutthroat. Someone who hired people with criminal records, “because everybody needs a chance,” one writer said. A man who rescued fellow boat-

ers. Who dropped everything to help a friend with an illness or addiction. When he was arrested days before Christmas in 2011, Murphy, a licensed U.S. Coast Guard Merchant Mariner captain, was in charge of a crew on a merchant vessel. A crew member wrote that Murphy made a call from jail to make sure his men all got their paychecks that week — and holiday bonuses. A friend Murphy met on a ski trip credited him with advice, dispensed on a snowy back trail, that saved his marriage and ultimately his life. He wrote: “While some of his business actions were apparently not legal, there is no doubt in my mind there was never any harm intended and if I know Blaine, he has stepped up to the plate, taken responsibility, and will probably do more than is required of him to make things right.” That’s what McMonagle wanted to see. He wasn’t expecting a miracle in Slavic Village, but the people deserved — needed — something meaningful. Something prison time or money couldn’t accomplish. McMonagle’s vision was partially inspired by a cable television show he watched with his wife, a talented gardener. It showed vacant, weedy lots in Detroit being transformed into lush gardens and farms. He told Murphy to start by planting ﬁve gardens here. His decision to send Murphy to Slavic Village was also fueled by a drumbeat of Plain Dealer editorials and columns that called for restitution and restoration for the neighborhood. Murphy had ideas of his own. He’d stayed up nights in his mostly empty home researching ideas to beautify vacant lots with native plants. He offered to use a big diesel truck he had stored in Philly to haul around others assigned to community service. Zukerman, his attorney, sighed. His chin rested in his palm as he watched his client oscillate from one big idea to another. “Of course, I can swing a hammer,” Murphy offered, taking a breath. “I don’t mind manual labor.” Brancatelli had that in mind. And more. He wanted it to sink in for Murphy.

“All those years of complaining made us the face of bad.”

He wanted him to understand what the residents were stuck dealing with. The daily landscape of boarded windows, trash and tires piled high where gardens used to grow. Homes stripped of plumbing, electrical fixtures and siding by scavengers picking meat from the bones. He saw Murphy as valuable human capital for the neighborhood. He could do more than the typical DUI offender sentenced to pick up roadside trash. Brancatelli wanted his probationer to spend eight hours a day working for Slavic Village Development, doing the dirty work of cleaning up the housing-crimes mess. Calling in code violations. Cleaning up lots. Boarding up houses. He wanted him to research the ownership histories of blighted homes — like the ones he and his companies had owned and sold. The salvageable homes Murphy would help identify would feed into two ventures. One was a nonprofit associated with Slavic Village Development that allowed lower-income buyers to purchase a rehabbed house after putting in their own “sweat equity.” The other was a for-profit effort to repair and resell homes at affordable prices to entice new people to the neighborhood. Murphy, without missing a beat, quipped, “We shouldn’t call that flipping, though?” In many ways, Brancatelli was Murphy’s opposite. Murphy was hyper-extroverted, always talking a big game. Brancatelli was intense, but in a steady, deliberate way. He had to be. One of the first things he learned, soon after he took office in 2005 was that a ZIP code he represented had one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country. It wasn’t a total shock. The youngest of six kids born to a waitress and a mechanic, Brancatelli was the only one to remain in Slavic Village. Much of the neighborhood’s slide happened right in front of his bespectacled eyes. The fight to stop the deterioration became habit. For 17 years, he ran community

agencies devoted to redeveloping the neighborhood, including the Broadway Housing Coalition, which later folded into the presentday Slavic Village Development. Then — as now — Brancatelli could hardly drive by a vacant structure without stopping. “I was trespassing before it was fashionable,” he sometimes jokes. He took his future wife, Gail Glamm, inside an abandoned home on the way to their ﬁrst dinner date more than 20 years ago. Years later, he’d load their toddler son, Jack, into the car and drive around, scrawling down the addresses of abandoned homes worth saving. At the height of the foreclosure crisis in 2006, Brancatelli was desperate to change the trajectory of Slavic Village. He embarked on a tour to publicize the damage. He ferried out-of-town reporters around and introduced them to residents trapped within the wreckage. The journalists parachuted in to marvel at the urban decay and snap photos. That led to coffeetable books of “ruin porn” and framed artwork at gallery shows. The councilman also starred in the Swiss-made courtroom docudrama “Cleveland vs. Wall Street.” The 2010 ﬁlm attempted to chronicle the city’s failed 2008 lawsuit against 21 banks it felt were responsible for subprime loans that fueled the foreclosure crisis. Eventually, Brancatelli realized his message could hamper revitalization. “All those years of complaining made us the face of bad. It made our challenges seem insurmountable,” he said. Peddling the idea of a turnaround had proved formidable. In spite of all that — or perhaps because of it — Brancatelli pushed to have Murphy come to work in Slavic Village. But he was uneasy about it. He was putting a felon, a schemer, among elderly and vulnerable residents he served. It was a risk Brancatelli felt he had to take.

Councilman Tony Brancatelli, on Slavic Village’s housing crisis

Sunday, June 14, 2015

The Plain Dealer | cleveland.com

Hard time in Cleveland

CLEVELAND.COM/SLAVIC-VILLAGE

PHOTOGRAPHS BY LISA DEJONG / THE PLAIN DEALER

Slavic Village residents Lynda Lewis and Ted Smith stand on Sykora Avenue. The couple formed a friendship with Murphy as they worked together to better their Forest City Park neighborhood.

What will the neighbors think?

ewis lingered near the door of the fluorescent-lit meeting room t u c ke d b e h i n d t h e whitewashed church on Kimmel Road. Members of the Forest City Park Civic Association had been meeting monthly there for decades. The agenda for March 11, 2014, included spring projects, illegal dumping and an update on street repairs. Lewis peered down the driveway as a handful of her neighbors took seats at the folding tables. Her boyfriend, Ted Smith, searched for the ﬂag so they could start the meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance. A neighbor mentioned that “the new guy,” Murphy, had just pulled up out front. “He’s good-looking, isn’t he,” the woman said. Later, they decided he looked like a young Richard Gere with color-shifting blue-green eyes. “I think he’s gay,” Lewis shot back. “He wears a lot of mousse in his hair.” The neighbors had heard how Murphy begged the judge to be sent back to prison rather than live among them. Lewis was unsure how they would receive him. She marched out to introduce herself and maybe rib Murphy a little bit about the security cameras she had seen mounted on his house. But then she saw the look on his face. Hiding underneath a tan baseball cap was a scared little boy. It instantly ignited her mothering instinct. Murphy started to ramble. About sign-up sheets he printed and gardens he was supposed to plant — and then he stopped. “Are they going to throw tomatoes at me?” he asked quietly. “I don’t know,” Lewis said. “I don’t know what they’re going to do.” She walked him inside. Block clubs and civic associations are the most basic form of democracy in Cleveland. Citizens gather to kvetch about city services, gossip and hear political promises over pastries. The Forest City Park Civic Association was chartered in 1939 as

Murphy, center, gets a taste of the problems that need addressing in Forest City Park during his ﬁrst meeting. Neighbors Smith, left, and Magyc talk to Murphy about the need for home demolitions instead of community gardens. a group “dedicated to the health, appearance and welfare of a historical and pioneer neighborhood in Greater Cleveland.” Its membership and once-robust bank account had dwindled by 2014. The challenges, though, had grown for decades. A typewritten association report from 1981 listed illegal dumping as a problem and litter removal from Crete Island, a raised grassy median strip on Independence Road, as a completed community project. Ten years after that, a meeting agenda included discussion of vacant lots, vandalism and tree cutting. Brancatelli had been urging Lewis to take on a larger role in the association. The longtime president of the group was close to stepping down. Brancatelli wanted Lewis to step in. The councilman had leverage with Lewis.

The way Lewis tells the story — often with tears — Brancatelli rescued her in 1991 when she was divorced and living in a crummy apartment with her two children. Brancatelli met Lewis after her sister answered a notice that Brancatelli’s father placed in a neighborhood newsletter when he was looking for a female companion. The younger Brancatelli helped Lewis get credit counseling and a home of her own. It was on Sykora Road with a welcoming front porch and shiny woodwork. It had been condemned then rehabilitated through a community program. Lewis was one of many single mothers Brancatelli remembers matching with houses in hopes of stabilizing their families and the neighborhood. “I told him if I ever got a house back for me and the kids I would never leave this neighborhood and I would do whatever I had to do

to make this neighborhood work,” she said. At 64, Lewis is a grandmother, with dark-blond hair streaked with an ever-changing array of highlights. She works as a probate court deputy clerk downtown. She’s been at the job for 30 years. Lewis lives with Smith, a recycling-truck driver who favors sleeveless shirts and builds furniture out of stacks of discarded wooden pallets. Her grown son, Brent, who works in the salt mines under Lake Erie, lives with them. Lewis’ wicked sense of humor greets anyone who walks into her foyer. There, a messy-haired mannequin is dressed — mostly provocatively — in garb Lewis ﬁnds at local thrift stores. Lewis calls the long-legged ﬁgure “Ted’s girlfriend.” It was a gift from a neighbor who collects them. Sometimes, Lewis’ playfulness

masks her apprehension about being a leader — and about whether she and her friends can make a difference. As her neighbors ﬁltered into the meeting, Lewis plopped down next to Murphy. Brancatelli swept in with a ﬁveinch stack of pamphlets and fliers about upcoming events in the neighborhood. Murphy introduced himself to the group as a volunteer for Slavic Village Development. He didn’t mention he was a felon doing his community service. Brancatelli didn’t publicly correct him either. Nobody brought it up. The councilman encouraged the neighbors to go to Murphy with information about vacant and vandalized properties. As the meeting was ending, Murphy asked people to pass around a sign-up sheet for those interested in helping with one of the commu-

“Are they going to throw tomatoes at me?”

nity gardens McMonagle ordered him to plant. He was looking for potential locations. “I need to sort of feel everyone out,” he said. “No guarantees.” Murphy said his main concern was that any garden or project they created would need to last beyond his time in Slavic Village. “I need a house demolished ﬁrst,” one resident shouted, drawing a knowing laugh from Brancatelli. The neighborhood had a list of hundreds of houses waiting to be leveled, and the city had little money to pay for it. As neighbors rose from their folding chairs, Murphy shook their hands. He met Mary, a blond woman in her 70s who collected eclectic yard ornaments and loved to bake. He chatted with Magyc, a retired steelworker with a broad smile who lived next to the church and poured concrete for a living. Andrea, a single mother sidelined by a stroke, was at the meeting with her two children, Hunter Ann and Dylan. None of them mentioned Murphy’s crimes, though they eyed him curiously. During the meeting, Lewis slid a hand-scrawled note to him across the folding table. It was part joke, part hope. You’re my new best friend, it read. Afterward, she grabbed his arm. “Let’s take a walk,” Lewis said. Murphy pointed to his electronic ankle bracelet. Court rules required him to be home by 9 p.m. or risk getting arrested. But he still had a few minutes. Though it was chilly, they walked the block down Kimmel Road toward Lewis’ house. Murphy jotted a few notes as Lewis pointed to houses that needed boarding up, backyards piled with tires and vacant lots strewn with empty Kamchatka vodka bottles and dirty diapers. “There’s a lot to do here,” Lewis conﬁded. “And I have no clue how to do it.” Murphy looked up from his yellow legal pad and grinned. “Lady, I’ve got my own problems,” he said.

Murphy, before his ﬁrst neighborhood meeting

S6 | Sunday, June 14, 2015

The Plain Dealer | cleveland.com

Sunday, June 14, 2015 | S7

Hard time in Cleveland

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A community in critical condition: street-by-street triage

irst, stop the bleeding. That objective had, for years, defined Slavic Village Development’s mission. The community agency adopted a combat-medicine strategy to triage and stabilize its five miles of streets and homes, constantly checking for a pulse. On a sunny March morning, it was time to do rounds. Murphy was working with Zach Germaniuk, a 26-year-old attorney for the agency, to examine the neighborhood. The Youngstown native had grown up across the street from an abandoned house. Urban revitalization was one of his passions. That and heavy-metal music. On paper, Murphy represented the type of villain Germaniuk battled in his job. As a student in the Urban Development Law Clinic at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, he had worked to track down some of Murphy’s holdings and assisted in unraveling the chain of businesses he operated. Yet, Germaniuk tried to take a neutral approach to working with Murphy, who was following the judge’s orders to improve a neighborhood damaged by his crimes. He thought about the words of one of his law professors: It doesn’t matter if someone is doing the right thing for the wrong reason, so long as it’s the right thing. “I’m not expecting him to have an epiphany,” Germaniuk said. Murphy’s presence caused tension at Slavic Village Development. He wasn’t given access to the agency computer server or any keys to the building. He was free labor. But he wasn’t warmly welcomed. He was a felonious fox in their henhouse. The work gave Murphy a closeup view of what the agency was up against. Of the fewer than 10,000 structures in Slavic Village, more than 1,200 were vacant. Part of Germaniuk’s job was to identify the zombie homes, properties abandoned by banks and out-of-town owners, and find legal ways to wrest control of them. Then they could be razed or repurposed. The demolition list included more than 600 homes. In the midst of those structures, elderly and poor residents lived in devalued homes that were no longer worth what they owed. Many needed paint or gutters. Some needed far more extensive repairs. Germaniuk worked with them. He referred them to low-income repair programs for loans and grants instead of turning the owners in to the housing court right away. On their neighborhood rounds, Murphy drove his 11-year-old, diesel-guzzling Ford Excursion he had nicknamed “Tank.” It was the central command for the pair’s operation. The inside of the SUV was a mobile office with a video surveillance system and wireless Internet. It was decorated with frosted sconces, candles and a rack of wineglasses. Germaniuk sat at a small desk, in a wool peacoat, jeans and leather shoes. He scrutinized a computer spreadsheet that contained thousands of property records. Outside on the street, Murphy worked in jeans and a youcan’t-miss-me fluorescent vest. He was to walk Lederer Avenue, a side street about a block from Hyacinth Park, in a neighborhood named for the Catholic church that has anchored the area for more than a century. The men communicated with walkie-talkies that squawked as Murphy relayed vitals on house after house. “6531 needs paint on the front porch and new pillars,” Murphy said. “One window is damaged.” Germaniuk pecked at his keyboard, adding details into a massive database used by the city and researchers. One home appeared to be vacant and had the name of a property-management company tacked to the front. “The front window is broken. It’s an OVV,” Murphy said, meaning it was open, vacant and vandalized. “Going to take a walk around the back, stand by.” The rear yard was filled with debris; the porch and steps were rotting. The sagging garage roof needed replacing. Germaniuk made a note to report the home to the city, though the city’s housing court, which hears complaints about code violations, was likely already aware of it.

For every house or lot they examined, they asked: Is it occupied? If not, is it boarded up? Is it salvageable? Is it condemned? Is it on a demolition list? What priority? If it has been knocked down, was it a good demolition? Has the lot been properly graded and reseeded? Those questions lead to decisions that are vital to the neighborhood’s sur vival, to ridding it of rotting houses, or saving those that can be put in the hands of people willing to maintain them. For Murphy and Germaniuk, the process repeated itself ploddingly throughout the day, house after house, street after street. They battled vicious dogs slamming up against chain-link fences. And alerted each other to “No Trespassing” signs so they wouldn’t end up looking down the muzzle of a gun. They cataloged mountains of tires, tangles of brush with skunks nesting inside, and homes stripped of aluminum siding.

New demolitions When money is available, Slavic Village Development works from lists of condemned homes, given priority based on whether they are dangerous or standing in the way of new development. 500 400 300 200

July 2010 saw the most demolitions, totaling 410 structures razed.

100 0

Blaine Murphy walks through illegally dumped tires behind a garage on East 78th Street as he does his community service in Slavic Village. Murphy helped haul away thousands of tires from the neighborhood.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY LISA DEJONG / THE PLAIN DEALER

Looking at the vacant structures Slavic Village ofﬁcials keep a close eye on vacant and boarded-up structures as a way of measuring progress and deciding where to focus any demolition dollars they get. Unoccupied houses hit a high of 1,368 in early 2009 — 12.8 percent of all structures in Slavic Village. 1,500

Vacant and open

Vacant/not boarded

Boarded (or partially boarded)

1,200

900

600

300

0 “I don’t even know how to ﬁx this,” Murphy said after discovering illegally dumped trash behind a vacant home on East 76th Street in Slavic Village. “It’s depressing.”

Jan. Jan. 2006 2007

June Jan. July Mar July Jan. 2007 2008 2008 2009 2009 2010

July 2010

July 2011

Feb. 2012

Oct. 2012

Mar. Dec. Aug. Jan. 2013 2013 2014 2015

NOTE: Staff at SVD attempts to survey every street in the neighborhood twice a year. Some years they were only able to survey once.

Murphy talks with a neighbor who told him this porch roof had caved in the previous week. The neighbor said the resident had just abandoned the home.

“I’m not expecting him to have an epiphany.”

July July July Oct. Dec. Aug. Jan. ’09 ’10 ’11 ’12 ’13 ’14 ’15

Occasionally, when a vacant home was unsecured due to vandals or weathered plywood that bowed and faltered, Murphy would grab a hammer and board it up. It made more sense than waiting for the city or a private owner to do it. As he navigated the rickety porch of one home, Murphy kicked aside 24-ounce King Cobra malt liquor cans and sifted through drywall rubble for nails to reuse. New ones weren’t cheap and, as part of his community service, he was paying for any materials he needed. He laughed about his own frugality. That’s how he was raised. Here, people thought of him as a millionaire. He’d done well enough in business to have a boat, a nice home and even a small airplane. But, in some ways, it was a shell game. He’d ﬁled for bankruptcy multiple times. Most of the homes his companies had owned in Cleveland were ones the banks had given away. He hadn’t had to really pay for them. As they worked their way through the neighborhood, Germaniuk pointed to small successes. Houses secured with specially designed plexiglass instead of the uglier plywood. New townhouses built on once-blighted land. Restaurants preparing to open. His agency’s strategy was to steadily encourage enough young professionals and middle-class families to live in the new and affordably ﬁxed-up homes. Slavic Village wasn’t going to be Tremont or Ohio City or DetroitShoreway. It would never be polished or posh. Nobody wanted to erase the rich immigrant history or sweep away the grit that made it what it was. They wanted neighbors who would enjoy $2 beers while bowling at The Nash, the nearlycentury-old Slovenian National Home on East 80th. People comfortable with economic and racial diversity. Artists and entrepreneurs who preferred bikes to cars. But the pitch wasn’t perfect. Patches of the neighborhood were still on life support. After lunch, Murphy and Germaniuk steered onto Magnet Avenue. Of the 22 parcels on the street, almost half were empty. It was pocked with uneven lots from poor demolition jobs. The left-behind homes were riddled with busted windows, or just not worth saving. Germaniuk sighed. “Looks like we lost Magnet,” he said.

Zach Germaniuk, an attorney working for Slavic Village Development with Murphy

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Blaine Murphy, or “Sparky,” removes the head of his furry Dalmatian costume to take a breather during the May 2014 Polish Constitution Day Parade, celebrating the Polish Constitution of 1791.

A stray dog has his day

urphy bounded through Slavic Village’s historic Warszawa district, chasing children in his rented Dalmatian costume, pretending to lick them with its plastic tongue. He handed out paw-print “autographs” as he scampered from sidewalk to sidewalk. It was close to 60 degrees that first weekend in May as the neighborhood celebrated its annual Polish Constitution Day Parade. Under the polyester black-and-white fur, it was probably 20 degrees warmer. The Dalmatian head tilted to the side, briefly revealing Murphy’s spiked silver hair. He took a few slugs of water from a plastic bottle before winking and dropping the head back on his shoulders. It had been Murphy’s idea for the Forest City Park neighbors to march in the parade. And, as they had learned in recent months, Murphy did nothing small. Their contingent lined up for the 1:30 p.m. start with a golf cart decorated with streamers and a shiny vintage firetruck that Ted Smith had borrowed from the recycling company where he worked. Children piled on top to wave at onlookers. Lewis ambled alongside Murphy, a Polish-princess crown of red ribbon encircling her head. She and her neighbors handed out small gifts to the spectators. They placed plastic firefighter hats on the heads of toddlers and bounced inflatable golf balls to others along the route. She groaned about how Murphy had roped them into the parade. “This guy tires me out,” she said. “He needs to go back to Florida.” All morning, Lewis had called Murphy “Sparky.” She joked that he was a stray she’d taken in. She already couldn’t imagine him leaving his adopted neighborhood. For Slavic Village, the parade was a nod to the 1791 creation of the Polish Constitution, a symbol of democratic pride. For Forest City Park residents, it was a celebration of their newfound momentum.

Parade volunteers carry a long ribbon in front of the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus in Slavic Village. Murphy encouraged the Forest City Park residents to march in the parade through Slavic Village.

Parade-goers line up in front of the Polish-American Cultural Center on Lansing Avenue.

“This guy tires me out. He needs to go back to Florida.”

Just a week earlier, the group held a successful neighborhood cleanup. Murphy had hooked up a trailer to his truck, and neighbors loaded it with tires and years’ worth of overgrown brush from an empty lot on Independence Road. Smith drove his truck around, collecting trash and delivering it to a donated dumpster. Afterward, the two men took turns grilling hot dogs in a vacant lot. The kids had a hot dog eating contest, and the two winners claimed they scarfed down 14 dogs apiece. Country music ﬁltered out of the cab of Smith’s truck while they planned for the parade. On parade day, the Forest City Park neighbors were last in the line of marchers. The grand finale, they joked. They eased down East 65 th

Street, past the squat, brick Polish American Cultural Center, beneath the gaze of an oversize laminated photo of Pope John Paul II affixed to the front of a vinyl-sided apartment house. In front of them, ladies twirled Polish flags, singing songs memorized from childhood. They were dressed in all manner of red — red pumps, red scarves, red blazers. The parade drew neighbors to their porches and suburbanites back to the streets where they had been raised. One man wearing only socks and cutoff jean shorts sat on a weathered wooden porch. He held a tall can of beer in one hand and tried to corral a droopy-diapered toddler with the other. Several blocks down, a family snacked from bowls of popcorn and pretzels in front of a strip of new townhomes as an older man balanced an accordion on his lap, occasionally lifting it to squeeze out a short tune. They paraded by vacant lots, some sprouting purple wildflowers, and a much-anticipated restaurant — the Six5 Bistro — that was set to open soon. A final turn led the marchers to the plaza in front of Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus, its towering wooden doors draped with ribbons. A woman announced each contingent over a public address system as they passed in front of the church. The audience applauded. Murphy spotted Brancatelli standing next to Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson. He wildly waved his paws and sprang toward the men, highfiving Brancatelli, who played along. He turned to Jackson, who hesitated a moment before tapping the paw. Murphy cartoonishly tiptoed away, his smirk hidden underneath the dog’s frozen grin. Afterward, he joined the neighbors in front of the fire engine — which had broken down — for group photos to commemorate their adventure. Murphy stood in the middle, playing to the camera. Attached to his white collar, a large cardboard dog tag read: “If found, return to Forest City Park.”

Lewis, on Murphy’s enthusiasm for the Polish Constitution Day Parade

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Murphy laughs with neighbor Mary Hess on the bench he bought as a surprise for her 76th birthday. Murphy also planted dwarf plum and peach trees for her in an empty lot adjacent to her home.

Leaning on the neighbors

t was May 23, Murphy’s 46th birthday — and exactly a year since the day he first entered prison. Now, pleased with his community-service work in Slavic Village, McMonagle ordered Murphy’s electronic bracelet removed. He was still being monitored, but the judge allowed him to return to Naples for a week for the first time since his arrest more than 2½ years earlier. Murphy’s Florida friends welcomed him with a chocolate cake. It was frosted in the shape of a bird cage with its door flung open. A plastic red bird sat outside the door. Set free. Instead of just soaking in the sun, though, Murphy checked in with Lewis and his Forest City Park neighbors every day. Once it was about a street fight that had disrupted a neighborhood meeting. Then he called to put the finishing touches on a grant proposal for volunteers to help with a summer cleanup. Sometimes, his troubles would tumble out in those talks with Lewis. He’d confide about the yardwork that piled up at home or the financial and legal stresses he faced. How he felt unfocused and overwhelmed. How sometimes he felt as though he just wanted to sleep and, other times, couldn’t sleep at all. At first, Lewis thought it was odd that Murphy kept finding reasons to call and trade text messages. She kept him up on the gossip, assured him his roommate, Woodstock, a Siamese fighting fish, was fed. She taunted him with a photo of condiments she’d rearranged in his obsessive-compulsively neat refrigerator. Then it hit her. He misses us. In just a few months, Murphy’s Forest City Park neighbors had become his adopted family. They shared meals. Cut each other down with relentless jokes. They didn’t seem to care whether he had millions or was broke, as he insisted he was. The “Weekend Warriors” traipsed the neighborhood, plucking garbage from the streets and spelunking inside of abandoned houses. Afterward, they would congregate on Lewis’ front porch, some-

Murphy, left, and Lynda Lewis talk on the porch of the Sykora Avenue home Lewis shares with her boyfriend, Ted Smith. times joined by Brancatelli, as they sorted through emails about residents’ complaints and made plans to beautify vacant lots. The near-constant activity distracted Murphy from his dread and despair over being arrested. His disturbing memories of prison and the fear of being locked up again. From thoughts of looming legal issues in other states. Feelings of shame and embarrassment. The work, and his neighbors, kept Murphy from getting overwhelmed by an unanswerable question. Will I ever get my life back in order? A chat with Lewis and Smith, one that always included laughter, did more to lift his mood than the medicine his doctor prescribed for symptoms of post-traumatic stress. It pushed aside another option he had considered. Suicide. Some scoffed at the instant friendship Lewis and others had struck with Murphy. Wasn’t he using them to glorify himself so he could hightail it back to Florida and his own life? “He just wants to do his time and get the hell out of here,” one woman, a friend of Lewis’ son, said after a few beers one evening. If that were true, it wouldn’t have bothered Lewis. In a way, wasn’t she using him, too? His energy? His charisma? His predicament? Lewis struggled with what her gut told her about Murphy versus

what ofﬁcials said publicly about him after his arrest. She watched him wrestle with it, too. As much as he rejected claims that his business deals contributed to the conditions in their neighborhood, he still wanted to be liked. He almost seemed to need it. Murphy didn’t share a lot about his personal life. His father and other relatives made brief visits but didn’t socialize much. Smith thought it traced back to Murphy’s mother, Diane, who died when he was 11. She had been a nurse and a social worker. Murphy inherited her smile and spontaneity. He remembered her taking belly-dancing lessons one time to surprise his father. His mom supported him unconditionally, even when he wanted to take roller-skating and ﬁgureskating lessons, which his father didn’t think was a proper, manly thing to do. When he was in elementary school, Murphy’s mother had what doctors thought was a pinched nerve in her shoulder. It turned out to be a baseball-size tumor. One day, when Murphy was home from school pretending to be sick, he heard a noise coming from his parents’ bedroom. He ran in and found his mom staring blankly. He rushed to a neighbor who called an ambulance. Cancer had spread to her brain. She died within months. His businessman father sup-

ported him financially, helping him with his early business ventures. The two were close. Their bond formed as he taught Murphy to sail starting at age 4. The two later sailed around the world together. His father was a conservative man, not an emotional one. Growing up, Murphy often felt alone. An awkward pimply kid in high school, he got bad grades and had little fashion sense. But he had big aspirations. Grandiose plans. Lewis was kind. But she was no fool. She believes that actions speak louder than words. She watched how Murphy acted when nobody was paying attention. Sure, he liked to showboat a little. He took endless selfies and was always posing for photos that showed him “working.” But he also took a genuine interest in people, even when it wasn’t part of the community service he was ordered to do. Especially with the kids in Slavic Village. He took a few to the Cleveland National Air Show. He took one flying in a plane. He invited Michael, a redheaded fourth-grader to play his trumpet for the block club. Later, he pulled the boy aside to chide him about his behavior toward his mother. He would go shopping or out to eat with 11-year-old Hunter Ann and Dylan, 14, two kids whose single mother was an active block club member. After one dinner together, Dylan told Lewis that Murphy was the first man who had ever really listened to him. On most weekends, Murphy was rarely without his teen sidekicks, George and Mikey, seniors at East Technical High School. They started tagging along to perform the community service hours they needed for graduation, and stuck around for the fast-food meals Murphy bought them. Murphy chauffeured the boys and their dates to prom in his Excursion. He gave them $100 bills to “tip” the driver. He attended their graduation ceremony and saw Mikey off to boot camp when he joined the Marines. One time, he squeezed into an illfitting 1980s suit and showed up in

Juvenile Court after George got himself in a jackpot over a box of condoms he tried to swipe “for a friend.” Murphy told a Juvenile Court magistrate that the 17-year-old had faced challenges at home but was a good kid committed to cleaning up his neighborhood. In the end, George’s record was sealed. Those were the actions that spoke to Lewis. That and Murphy’s over-the-top persona, which made their work fun. Judge McMonagle had ordered Murphy to plant gardens as part of his community service. Murphy offered to sow one for 74-year-old Judith Skudrin, whose family had once owned one of the many stores in Forest City Park. Skudrin’s sweetand-sour pickles were legendary. Now Murphy was planting a rogue orchard for Mary Hess, a kind blond woman with a rural Maryland drawl and a permed ponytail. The type who blesses friends with peanut butter pies heavier than a brick. Murphy hunkered shirtless and sweating in a grassy lot and wrestled a dwarf peach sapling into a knee-deep hole. Two plum trees were lined up to be planted next. Hess had already turned one vacant lot next to her house into an urban-gardening paradise. Along her chain-link fence, despite a chilly spring, a tomato ripened on a vine near a tuft of fragrant purple basil. The yard was sprinkled with a trash-to-treasure mix of colorful pots and lawn ornaments given by neighbors and rescued from tree lawns. She was expanding her empire onto another vacant lot, one bookended by an abandoned home and a run-down rental that seemed to attract only nuisance neighbors. Hess’ dream was to get the city land bank to transfer the property to her. “I’m doing this for the people of the neighborhood. Fruit is so expensive,” she said. Her intent was to share the bounty, some of it baked into pies. Hess headed toward her house to get a watering hose. Murphy and Lewis, who had joined them, exchanged conspiratorial glances.

“He don’t do nothing small. He’s got to do everything big.”

It was Hess’ 76th birthday, and they had a surprise. Hess had admired a massive metal butterfly bench during a recent shopping trip with Lewis. It was the perfect addition to her hodgepodge of yard decorations. But it was $100. Even on sale. Far too steep for her ﬁxed income. Lewis had mentioned it to Murphy during one of their evening chats. A few days later, he called her as he stood in front of it. The bench was no longer on sale. That didn’t matter. “She really wanted it, right?” Murphy asked before buying it. Now it was in the back of Ted Smith’s pickup truck, ready for a grand presentation. Lewis shook her head. “He don’t do nothing small. He’s got to do everything big.” Lewis was right. Even though Murphy had come to the neighborhood a prisoner, he wanted to leave a lasting legacy. He had become enamored with an empty church for sale. It had a home on the same plot that was in good enough condition to rent. He dreamed of persueding McMonagle and prosecutors to use the last $250,000 he owed — the last of the total $1 million in restitution he would pay — to help purchase it. Maybe they could name it the Anthony Brancatelli Campus to win the councilman’s support? Murphy poured the percolating plan into a page-long email that captured the way his mind often swirled: It turns out the property is set up for exactly what I had thought we could do: reading room, kitchen, computer room with a bunch of training computers to teach kids computing skills, portable basketball hoops and court, lawn equipment (to keep up the hood). … room for a yoga/ wellness center, ofﬁces, the chapel area, outside space for barbeque’s, volleyball and wedding tents to rent the chapel out for events. With the rest of the money, they could demolish problem properties that plagued his neighbors. Murphy drafted a proposal for the judge. McMonagle didn’t buy in. Neither did prosecutors. Still, a seed was planted.

Lewis, on Murphy’s ambition during his service

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Murphy plunges into 350 gallons of water after his neighbor, Hunter Ann Wilcoxen, hits the bull’s-eye during the 2014 Feet on Fleet festival in Slavic Village.

Criminals and cockroaches

cMonagle sat in a folding chair against the wall in the back corner of the room. His wife, Paulette, sat next to him. The judge was making a rare offthe-bench appearance at the July meeting of the Forest City Park Civic Association to check in on the man he’d ordered to live in the neighborhood. McMonagle’s presence put Murphy on edge. He fiddled with a flatscreen television rigged to display a slide show. He’d stayed up most of the night to stitch the 8½-minute piece together. Snapshot after snapshot celebrated a spring and summer’s worth of the neighbors’ — and Murphy’s — accomplishments. Gardens planted. Tires removed. Parades marched in. And a small veterans memorial park the neighbors had created over the July 4 weekend. The group erected a flagpole on the same vacant lot where they held their first cleanup. The American and Polish flags flew over Independence Road, surrounded by marbled tiles and red, white and purple flowers. One photo captured Murphy, Lewis and two children pretending to raise the aluminum pole in an “Iwo Jima moment.” After the slide show ended, Murphy beamed as he unveiled the design for the new neighborhood welcome sign featuring a tree and the slogan “Come grow with us.” Murphy turned his focus to children gathered at the meeting. He had a legion of loyal children he often fed, teased and encouraged. He wanted them to have pride in the place they were from. He called them the Guardians of the Park and told them that picking up trash where they played was their responsibility. He pulled out a black trash bag filled with dollar-store badges, water shooters and wands. The wands, he said, were magic. “You do believe in magic, don’t you?” he said. No, one of the kids said. Murphy raised his eyebrows, poured a sprinkle of water from a plastic bottle into his hand. He

He climbed aboard the plank. He’d had a turn earlier in the morning, allowing the neighborhood children to dunk him. He wore a head-mounted camera to capture footage of it. Brancatelli had stripped off his dripping suit jacket. His wet Cleveland T-shirt stuck to him. From behind a spray-painted mark, the councilman ﬁred three balls at the plastic red bull’s-eye. He missed each time. “Tony, Tony,” Murphy shouted from the plank. He gestured for him to try again. He had talked all morning about how they would dunk each other. “C’mon. Dunk me. You got to.” The councilman turned, waved and headed up the street.

Murphy and neighbors gather to build a veterans tiny memorial park, erecting a ﬂagpole and building a walking path to a seating area. The ﬂagpole was a symbol to the neighbors, a visual reminder of what they were accomplishing. Yet it was a daily battle to keep it free of debris. made the water disappear and reappear, splashing one kid in the face. “It’s like he’s the Pied Piper,” McMonagle said, grinning and shaking his head. But the neighbors would not have Murphy to march behind forever. At some point, once he completed his service hours, he would leave them. Lewis was dreading that day. Murphy had dragged her out of the dark ages. He taught her to use a smartphone and email to make organizing neighborhood tasks easier. Despite her protests that she was “too old for that crap,” he nagged her to take advantage of leadership training Brancatelli offered so she could run the block club. Without Murphy. “I’m not going anywhere,” Murphy promised. “Even if I’m granted to go home tomorrow, I’ll be back,” he told the group. “I’ve made lifelong friends.” The neighbors applauded him, and he looked downward, blushing. “Don’t get all carried away,” Ted Smith said. Brancatelli walked down East 65 th Street. Despite the latesummer humidity, he wore a suit.

He pulled a plastic Cleveland Browns megaphone from a worn leather briefcase, took off his glasses and climbed onto a plank that hovered over 350 gallons of chilly fire-hydrant water. Murphy had challenged Brancatelli to join him in a “celebrity” dunk tank at the annual Feet on Fleet street festival the last weekend in July. It was being held on a side street because Fleet Avenue, a main Slavic Village thoroughfare, was a mess of orange cones and detours. On the pavement, Lewis sprayed orange paint to advertise the opportunity to “flip the flipper” and “dunk the councilman.” It was a way to raise awareness and, they hoped, a little money to continue the work of the Forest City Park neighbors. The smell of bleach wafted up from the blue plastic dunk tub. Cleveland police officers, Slavic Village Development employees and others waited their turn in line as Brancatelli taunted them and their throwing arms through his minimegaphone. Bang, whoosh. Bang, whoosh. Bang, whoosh.

Within the hour, he had been dropped into the bucket nearly 50 times. One of those dunks was Murphy’s doing. He stood in front of the councilman in his white tank top and swim trunks and hurled the ball three times. After each try missed the mark, Murphy jogged up and saluted Brancatelli before slapping the bull’s-eye. He laughed as Brancatelli plunged into the water. The relationship between the two men had come a long way in six months. They remained cautious of each other’s motives. But Brancatelli appreciated Murphy’s work ethic. He was worth more than any $50,000-a-year public servant or anyone ever sentenced before to do community service. Murphy respected Brancatelli’s tireless efforts to better the area he represented. The two exchanged ﬂurries of emails hashing through neighborhood issues daily. Sometimes, Brancatelli was the first person Murphy spoke to in the morning and the last person he contacted before going to bed. And he wanted Brancatelli to dunk him. Badly.

In Forest City Park, successes were followed by doses of reality. Neighbors would board up homes only to find them broken into again. Their reports to the city about dangers, such as collapsed sections of street, would go unanswered for months. They would remove a pile of tires, and a new heap would reappear overnight. Early in August, someone destroyed their memorial park. After getting a call from a neighbor, Murphy and Lewis went to the spot on Independence Road and found a crumble of marble tiles that once surrounded their flagpole. Graffiti defaced several boulders. Some of the damage was clearly the work of neighborhood kids, who drew, of all things, a carrot. The flagpole had been a symbol to the neighbors, a visual reminder on their main thoroughfare of what they were accomplishing. Yet it had been a daily battle to keep the lot free of debris. Lewis wondered whether their efforts were worth it. Were they getting anywhere? Were they making any difference? “For what we’re trying to do over there, we’ve had nothing but problems,” she said as they cleaned up. Lewis was livid at a neighbor who told her she’d seen the flagpole culprit but was afraid there would be retaliation if she called police. Cleveland police officer Tim

“I’m not going anywhere. Even if I’m granted to go home tomorrow, I’ll be back.”

Riley and others had drilled them with the same messages: Call police. Do it often. Give them speciﬁc information. The association had started Neighborhood Watch training. They took it seriously, investing in spotlights and signs for their cars and patrolling in teams. “Keep calling, keep calling, keep calling,” Riley told them during a summer meeting. Cleveland police deployed resources based on need, he said. More calls would get them more patrol cars driving through their neighborhood. He explained it in terms they all could understand. “What happens when you run in to a house with cockroaches and turn the light on,” Riley asked. “They all scatter,” he said, answering his own question. The same goes for criminals. The frustrations took their toll. Murphy’s daily dose of depressionfighting Paxil was all that kept them from seeping in too deeply. That, and laughter, which Murphy often instigated. Lewis had a particularly strong aversion to the cockroaches of Riley’s analogy. When a family on her street vacated a roach-infested house, she obsessed about how the insects would come running toward hers. Murphy, always ready to pounce, snuck over when Lewis wasn’t home and left cutout paper roaches everywhere. On the windows, the porch, the garage, affixed to her chain-link fence. Lewis said she laughed so hard she almost wet her pants. Until the next day. She woke up and found a real cockroach in her bathroom sink. She cussed Murphy out. Told him his handiwork must’ve read like welcome signs for all the roaches in the ’hood. It cost her $100 to have exterminators come out. The next time Murphy left Cleveland for a quick trip, she and Smith bought a bag of plastic roaches and planted them in every sink, cabinet and couch crevice of his Beyerle Road home. Those roaches will be there when he is long gone, Lewis thought.

Murphy, to his neighbors

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Murphy cries in the arms of Lewis on Nov. 21, 2014, after Judge McMonagle frees him from probation after more than 2,700 hours of community service and a ﬁnal $250,000 in restitution.

A bittersweet goodbye

ewis turned her head to the side and pressed her lips together. She was trying to control the tears. Sitting in the corner of McMonagle’s jury box, Lewis was waiting for word that the man she’d grown to love like a son could leave Cleveland to return to Florida for good. She wanted the judge to free Murphy. A week earlier, on Nov. 14, several of Murphy’s Forest City Park neighbors had dressed up and made their way through snow and ice to come to court to support him. Dylan and Hunter Ann, two kids he had grown close to, skipped school to come. Murphy had set up a rented projector screen. He had planned to show the judge photos of what he and his neighbors had accomplished. He also hoped the judge would allow him to donate his Beyerle Road home to Slavic Village Development as part of a pitch to whittle down the restitution he still owed. But it went a step too far for prosecutors when his attorney gave a detailed accounting of what Murphy had spent during his 10-plus months in the neighborhood, asking that it also be shaved off what he owed. The list of expenses enraged prosecutors. “Mr. Murphy still owes $250,000 to the state of Ohio,” Assistant Prosecutor Gregory Mussman told McMonagle. “Instead, I’ve gotten receipts for car washes and McDonald’s … He’s treating it as an expense account.” They wanted their money. If not, Murphy should go back to prison. Murphy looked dejected. Behind him on the projection screen was an off-kilter stock image of a beach, a sailboat resting on calm, sparkling blue water. The kind of place he longed to get back to. He thought the prosecutors were being unreasonable. It was the money, always the money, they cared about. Never the neighborhood. Not the people. Not the good that was done. He was still paranoid that they were out to get him. As proof, he

Murphy, left, shakes McMonagle’s hand after the judge tells Murphy he can go home to Florida. had a photo, purportedly taken in the prosecutor’s office, that someone had sent him after he was released from prison. It was a blown-up version of his mug shot attached to a target-practice body. It was riddled with what looked like bullet holes. And I’m the bad guy here? he wondered. The hearing ended in an ultimatum from McMonagle. Pay the $250,000 in restitution if he wanted to go home. Even Murphy’s attorney, Larry Zukerman, seemed to lose patience with him. “Just get the money,” he told Murphy. “Get the money and you can go.” On some level, Murphy had always known he’d have to pay. He had discussed it back in February over grilled cheese sandwiches and soup at The Red Chimney with Brancatelli. Murphy told Brancatelli that his county probation ofﬁcer had asked when he planned on paying the rest of the restitution. “The way things are going with this case,” he told Brancatelli with

a grin. “On the very last day.” Murphy made calls, ones he didn’t want to make, to his father and some friends, and arranged to borrow the $250,000. He had it wired to Zukerman. Murphy returned to the Justice Center on Nov. 21. McMonagle’s courtroom was quiet. A crowd of reporters and others had filled the space just hours earlier to watch the judge set another man free. Clevelander Ricky Jackson had been sentenced to death for a murder he didn’t commit. He spent almost 39 years fighting to get out since McMonagle’s father, George, had presided over the trial in 1976. “Life is filled with small victories, and this is a big one,” McMonagle told Jackson. Murphy’s moment was less dramatic but emotional nonetheless. For the court’s record, Zukerman rattled off Murphy’s accomplishments. Since mid-January, the man once known as the “Florida flipper” had completed more than 2,747 official hours of community service — and many more

unofficial hours. He’d helped to create at least eight gardens, inspected 1,300 properties and collected more than 2,000 illegally dumped tires. At a neighborhood meeting, he was given a “Golden Tire” award for his efforts. “I understand that people are very hesitant to believe how genuine Blaine is,” Zukerman said. “What he’s done is made an indelible positive impression.” Murphy told the judge that asking to return to prison instead of living in Slavic Village was, in retrospect, “the worst statement I’ve made in my life.” His time there had turned out to be a rewarding experience, he said, one that showed him what his life had been missing. “I can now literally drive around the 350 homes in the Forest City Park area and I know pretty much who lives at every other property,” he said. “I don’t have that even in Naples ... The feeling of family, you look out for each other. They’ve looked out for me in some amazing ways,” he said. Murphy promised to return, maybe in the spring after the snow

melted, for the first Forest City Park Civic Association meeting. Prosecutors told the judge Murphy’s final $250,000 payment would be used to do what his neighbors wanted most — to knock down damaged homes, 30 of them in Slavic Village. Murphy looked at Lewis with a mix of surprise and satisfaction. He blinked back tears. McMonagle recycled some of the advice he’d used hours earlier, about life being filled with small victories. “This was a good one,” McMonagle said. “I wish you luck. I’ll terminate the probation.” After he left the courthouse, Murphy prepared to leave town quickly for a friend’s home in Philly. He’d packed his home the night before and handed over his fish, Woodstock, to one of the children he had befriended. He and Lewis stood on a street corner and hugged. Both of them sobbed. Murphy’s feelings about leaving Cleveland were all over the place. He resented the mental and emotional dive that prison and then his “release” to Slavic Village had caused. At the same time, he didn’t want to leave the people like Lewis who kept him from giving up on life. “Please, just turn around and walk and don’t look back,” Murphy told her. The following week, a handful of Forest City Park neighbors gathered on East 46th Street. It was the same stretch where Lewis first spotted Murphy when he was delivering civic association meeting fliers 10 months earlier. A press-conference podium bearing the seal of the county prosecutor’s office stood in front of a sagging gray structure. The home had been flipped more than a dozen times in a decade. It was one that Lewis, Smith and Murphy had boarded up a number of times. The carcass of a squirrel lay frozen on the sidewalk nearby. During his stay, Murphy had attempted to cook up a number of ways to guide how his restitution money would be spent. Most of his ideas didn’t get far. In the end, one of those seeds did germinate.

Lewis lamented that Murphy wasn’t there for the “official” announcement of how his restitution money would be spent, although he was getting updates via text message. Still, it was a good thing Murphy had already left Slavic Village, Lewis thought as she listened to County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty call her friend a “serial scam artist.” As much as Murphy didn’t want to shoulder the blame for eyesores in the neighborhood, he was proud to take some credit for bringing them down. He even put out a press release saying so. Brancatelli stood in his fedora and a loud Christmas tie. He thanked McMonagle for seeing the opportunity to right a wrong. He thanked McGinty for investing the restitution in his neighborhood. He thanked Murphy, too. “He clearly understands the issues that are facing our neighborhood,” Brancatelli said. A lot about Murphy still made him wince. He never really understood his over-the-top, star-of-theshow persona. Murphy had shown up to Brancatelli’s annual pancake fundraiser in a foot-tall chef ’s hat with his name pasted on the front in felt letters. The apron he wore said, “I ﬂip 4 Tony’s Pancakes.” But he showed up. He lived up to his responsibilities. “He could have just done his hours, but he did more and went above what was expected,” Brancatelli said later. “I guess the reason doesn’t matter.” That was how Lewis felt, too. She never wanted anything from Murphy. She just wanted to make her home a better place. She and most of her neighbors couldn’t afford to move. They had to stay and make it work. A few weeks later, a yellow envelope came in the mail for Lewis. It was from Florida. On the cover of the card inside, a leathery old man was wearing only a ﬂuorescent bikini bottom. The print read: Thought you might like some roasted nuts for your birthday. Above, Murphy had scrawled, Thanks for saving my life.

“He could have just done his hours, but he did more and went above what was expected.”

Brancatelli, on Murphy

S12

The Plain Dealer | cleveland.com

Hard time in Cleveland

Sunday, June 14, 2015

CLEVELAND.COM/SLAVIC-VILLAGE

PHOTOGRAPHS BY LISA DEJONG / THE PLAIN DEALER

Councilman Brancatelli laughs while Lewis reacts to Murphy, right, who peels off a fake mustache at the April Forest City Park Civic Association meeting.

A promise kept

n April 14, Lewis stood in front of the members of the Forest City Park Civic Association wearing a black shirt with the words “Slavic Village” on the front. A pink and green frosted cake and two award certificates sat on a table in front of her. Slavic Village Development had named the association best neighborhood block club of 2014. The other honored her friend Murphy for his “outstanding service” to keeping Slavic Village “rolling into the future.” Murphy had promised to return for the first meeting of the year. But apparently he wasn’t able to make it. Instead, he was going to participate via cellphone from his home in Florida. His attorneys had warned him to stay out of Cleveland or risk being arrested again. Cleveland Housing Court Judge Ray Pianka is still looking to collect what he calculates as more than $11,500 in unpaid fines and $12 million in contempt-of-court costs from Murphy’s companies that own homes in the city. Since Murphy was released from probation in November 2014, he continued to work from Florida with Lewis and the others to bring money and volunteers to the neighborhood. But Murphy didn’t call in, blaming technical difficulties. Lewis started the meeting without him. “Blaine Murphy has left us,” she said, her voice tight. “He’s still alive,” Brancatelli interjected. Lewis reminded neighbors of all Murphy had helped them accomplish in the 10 months he’d lived among them. Lewis and Brancatelli shared the news about the homes that Murphy’s final $250,000 in restitution would pay to tear down in Slavic Village. Some of them were eyesores on Independence Road that had deteriorated further over the winter. The neighbors applauded.

Forest City Park neighbor Mary Hess, left, doesn’t recognize Murphy, right, at the civic association meeting in April. Murphy walked in using a cane and wearing a disguise.

About this series On Jan. 17, 2014, Plain Dealer reporter Rachel Dissell covered a court hearing on house flipper Blaine Murphy’s request to be freed early from a two-year prison sentence for signing fake names to the deeds of some of the more than 200 homes his companies acquired and sold in the Greater Cleveland area. ¶ Murphy did an abrupt about-face, pleading to be returned to prison after Judge Richard McMonagle ordered him to complete 3,000 hours of community service while living in Slavic Village, a neighborhood at the epicenter of the national foreclosure crisis. ¶ McMonagle declined and set the stage for a deeper story with this statement: “We will see the character of everybody involved here.” ¶ For the following 10 months, Dissell and Plain Dealer photographer Lisa DeJong chronicled Murphy’s time in Slavic Village. Dissell or DeJong was present for nearly every scene described in the story. If they weren’t present, they got detailed accounts from those who were. In addition, they gathered public and historical records on Slavic Village and on Murphy’s court cases and businesses. Also contributing: Jo Ellen Corrigan, Wendy McManamon, Katherine Siemon, Kathryn Kroll, Ron Rutti, Bill Gugliotta, Chris Morris, Bill Neff Jon Fobes, Paige Owens, David Kordalski and Josh Crutchmer. Cleveland city historian Martin Hauserman provided research assistance. Technical assistance was provided by Northeast Ohio Media Group’s Michael Rose, Colin Toke, David Petkiewicz and Amanda Harnocz.

“Blaine Murphy has left us.”

Lewis, at a neighborhood meeting

The momentum they built with Murphy was continuing. Neighbors had been patrolling with their new crime-watch walkie-talkies and lights they bought with a community grant. Their pocket of Slavic Village was safer than it had been in decades. As Lewis shared spring and summer plans for the association, a man hunched over a cane moved toward the front. Underneath a mass of straggly long hair and baseball cap was a terrible stick-on mustache. No one seemed to notice. Until the man tumbled over, almost taking Lewis with him. Then she saw Murphy’s grin. Covering her face, laughing and crying at the same time, she buried her head into Brancatelli’s shoulder. He shook his head. Of course. Murphy stayed a few days. He shared a drink with Brancatelli. He joined the block watch patrol one night. Keeping his promise to return to Slavic Village felt good. Murphy’s Forest City Park neighbors were continuing what they’d started. It wasn’t miraculous, but it was progress. Two dozen volunteers were lined up from Quicken Loans to continue the spring cleanup they had started. And they planned to march again in the Polish Constitution Day Parade, though someone else would have to be “Sparky.” Murphy left Slavic Village for a job interview to do maritime work for international aid groups that ferry supplies to countries under duress, such as Haiti. The time at sea, he hoped, would help him clear his mind and heal from the effects of posttraumatic stress disorder he said was caused by his experience in the criminal justice system. After three years out of work, and legal issues tied to house flipping in other states, he was preparing to ﬁle for bankruptcy again. And to start over.