Forty years ago, when Dennis Elwell came home from Vietnam, the bus dropped him off in the center of Secaucus and he took the long walk alone to the North End where his family lived. It was a lonely walk, one thick with memories, since his family had lived here for generations. Like most veterans of that era, he was not greeted by a parade, and the few people he met did not realize the significance of his return. He was not wounded in the traditional way, except for the memories he carried around inside his head from being involved in a ground battle.
Last month, Elwell returned home again, not from war, but from federal prison, where he had served almost 30 months for accepting $10,000 that federal authorities claimed was a bribe. To this day, he maintains it was not a bribe but a campaign contribution.
Bitter but not broken, Elwell has returned to his family home in the North End to pick up the pieces of his shattered life.
In 2011, when he was 66, he was sentenced to two and a half years in the federal correctional facility in Butler, N.C. Although acquitted of extortion charges, a jury found him guilty of accepting a bribe from federal informant Solomon Dwek in 2009, as part of a federal sting operation called Bid Rig II.
Elwell selected the North Carolina facility because of its connection to Duke University Hospital. He had suffered an aneurysm prior to sentencing, and suffered from kidney stones for which he was treated in jail.
He tried several times to avoid jail while he appealed his conviction, but was forced to go to prison while his appeal was heard. It was later rejected.
Hard questions never asked
By all accounts, Elwell had not been in trouble before. He was convicted for accepting a bribe through Ronald Manzo, who was on probation at the time. Manzo later testified against Elwell, apparently to avoid serving jail time. He is the brother of former Assemblyman Lou Manzo, who was also charged in Bid Rig II, but protested the sting and was exonerated.
Lou Manzo believes Elwell should never have been convicted of bribery:
“My brother testified that he had taken the money on Elwell’s behalf, but nobody asked him if it was a campaign contribution or a bribe – not even the defense attorney. My brother would have said it was a campaign contribution.”
“They don’t want you to fight back. They want you to be afraid. If you got to trial, you might win.” – Dennis Elwell
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Elwell was arrested in a broad sweep of public officials on July 23, 2009 that netted two other New Jersey mayors and 44 public officials, all of whom had alleged corrupt connections to Solomon Dwek. In some cases, it wasn’t clear whether Dwek was offering a bribe in exchange for a political favor, or just a dubious campaign contribution.
Dwek had been arrested in 2006 for a personal bank fraud matter. After that, he agreed to work with the U.S. Attorney’s office in a sting operation that eventually brought down Elwell, as well as newly-elected Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano and other officials in and around Hudson County.
Working with the U.S. Attorney’s office, Dwek approached Elwell with a proposal to develop a phony hotel in Secaucus.
Manzo testified that he took the $10,000 from Dwek, which he later gave to Elwell. According to the feds, the money was to clear the way for Elwell to steer the project through to completion.
Elwell was informed by town administrator David Drummeler that it was improper for him to take cash, and urged Elwell to return it.
Elwell testified that he was holding the money until Manzo could figure out a way for it to be accepted legally. Manzo apparently planned to set up some kind of corporate entity, and then issue a check.
Elwell also testified that he intended to return the money, but this was never verified by Manzo.
Elwell also noted in his defense that he did not have the power to override the zoning of the Meadowlands Development Commission, a state body that oversaw zoning for nearly 90 percent of Secaucus.
While federal authorities had Meadowlands officials testify as to how well they cooperated with Secaucus mayors, the defense could not convince the jury even when pointing out that the Elwell administration had failed to get approvals for several projects, most notably a gas station operation for Walmart.
In his appeal, Elwell claimed federal authorities tried to besmirch his character by allowing Manzo to testify about other convicted Hudson County officials, in particular former County Executive Robert Janiszewski, who pled guilty to accepting bribes in 2001.
Federal authorities failed to disclose that they had secretly recorded Elwell when Janiszewski was the target of an FBI sting operation in 2000. Elwell was never charged in connection with that earlier sting.
Federal authorities attempted to paint Elwell as a “savvy politician” who should have known the difference between a campaign contribution and a bribe, although several people connected to Elwell said he always relied on underlings to handle election details. At the time of the Dwek contact, Manzo served in this role.
“The money Dwek gave my brother was a campaign contribution, not a bribe,” Lou Manzo said. “My brother was a witness against Elwell, but he knew the money was intended as a campaign contribution not a bribe, and would have testified to that had anyone asked him. Nobody did.”
Not an easy time
This has not been an easy time for Elwell.
Scheduled for an early release last May, somehow the paperwork got lost and ended up in the wrong state, Elwell said. He believes this was a subtle harassment for his fighting the case and later appealing it. When he first got to prison, a paperwork error listed him as a sex offender.
“They don’t want you to fight back. They want you to be afraid,” he said. “If you got to trial, you might win, so they come down on you, even when you’re not guilty. They offered me a way out. All I had to do was wear a wire for them and all I would get is probation, but I refused. When I got to prison, local papers ran the story about me, saying I had been the mayor of Secaucus. So other inmates called me The Mayor after that. I had their trust because they knew I hadn’t snitched on anyone.”
The food was bad, he said, and medical attention often came too late to some prisoners, giving Elwell a glimpse of how the justice system actually works.
“This was not the America I fought to protect when I was in Vietnam,” he said.
He exercised a lot and worked as a grounds keeper.
“I pushed a wheelbarrow and tried to keep my head straight,” he said. The population was a mixture of African-Americans, Latinos, and whites, he said.
As part of his release, he cannot leave New Jersey without permission for a year, which means that he can’t travel to see family members who live out of state.
From bad to worse
While he was in prison, Superstorm Sandy hit, doing damage to his Secaucus trucking firm’s biggest customer.
“They couldn’t pay us and we couldn’t make the payments on our trucks,” Elwell said. “We have to sell the trucks.”
So the one-time successful businessman is largely struggling.
“I can’t even buy a car,” he said, although he said he still has friends, people who stayed by him through it all. And a number of people in the public also support him.
“People still stop me on the street to tell me how they think I got screwed,” he said. “But we all did. Look what they did to Joe Doria down in Bayonne. They carried boxes out of his house, forcing him to resign his job. Then seven years later, they tell people the boxes were empty.”
Doria, former mayor of Bayonne, was serving as the Commissioner of the state Department of Community Affairs, and was asked to resign by then-Gov. Jon Corzine.
Even when the FBI came to arrest him, Elwell knew what it was about. In testimony used against him, FBI agents quoted Elwell as mumbling, “I shouldn’t have taken the f—— money.”
This is something Elwell still admits.
“I made a mistake. When I was told to hold the money, I did,” he said. “It was a stupid thing to do. I admitted as much on the stand. Some of the money was supposed to go to a charity.”
According to court testimony, half the money was supposed to go to a civic association organized by Elwell, which, among other things, raised money for charities.
Ironically, Ron Manzo, a resident of Bayonne who actually took the money, served no time in jail, despite being on probation at the time for a crime he pled guilty to in 2004. Lou Manzo, his brother, who was accused in the sting, fought the charges and eventually won, but it cost him his family fortune.
Lou Manzo, a former assemblyman for Jersey City and Bayonne and one time Jersey City freeholder, had just lost his bid to become mayor of Jersey City when charged. The sting largely targeted North Jersey politicians up for election.
“Other people might have beaten the charges, too,” said Lou Manzo “But they didn’t have the money or resources. Dennis Elwell should not have been convicted of taking a bribe.”
These days, Elwell keeps busy by doing what he did in prison, yard work and exercise.
“It keeps down the rage,” he said.
He doesn’t know what he will do next. He is at home with his wife. His children are grown.
“We’re trying to figure that out now,” he said.
Al Sullivan may be reached at asullivan@hudsonreporter.com.