Trauma Queen

Trouble keeps finding Betty Loren Maltese, the imprisoned former town president of Cicero. Her adopted daughter has learned the harsh truth about her mother. Rancor has boiled up with Ed Vrdolyak, her financial protector. And her hopes for an early release have largely vanished. But even stripped of power, freedom, and big hair, Betty is still full of brass

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Doing time in California. "I can see why there are so many suicides in prison," Betty said in a recent e-mail.

In 1997, while she knew she was under federal investigation, Betty arranged the private adoption that brought her Ashleigh. Though many commentators, and even the trial judge, John Grady, questioned her motives—did she hope that being a single mom would reduce a prison term?—her friends and family insist she just wanted to be a mother. "[Betty] never thought she would be indicted, much less convicted and locked up," says her sister, Pat Rand. "I think she just wanted someone to love and love her back."

Today, Judge Grady's comments still hurt. "To bring up Ashleigh and say the horrible things he did was crossing the line," Betty says. "I'd do a lot of things over if I could. I wouldn't have gotten involved with Frank or Cicero politics, but adopting Ashleigh is the best thing I have ever done."

Ashleigh's birth father worked for the town. He and his wife had other children, but they faced financial problems, and their marriage was breaking up. Betty was in the hospital room when Ashleigh was born, and she took Ashleigh home when the infant was just a few days old. Kitty and a babysitter cared for Ashleigh while Betty was at work.

Eventually, Kitty and Ashleigh moved to Las Vegas, into a house Betty had bought in 2000. Located in a gated community on a small lake, the hacienda-style home has a backyard swimming pool and four bedrooms. Betty commuted back and forth to Cicero. Prosecutors later argued at her sentencing that when Betty was in Las Vegas, she spent more time gambling than parenting. But Betty has always insisted that she went to the casinos only when Ashleigh was in bed or at school. Those who know them insist that mother and daughter have a strong bond. "When I heard about Ashleigh going on the Internet, I wanted to write her a letter and tell her how much her mother loved her, but she wouldn't know who the hell I was," says Mary Lynn Chalada, the former Cicero director of code enforcement.

Betty never told Ashleigh that she had been adopted, and she hoped she wouldn't have to tell the girl the truth about prison. She had used the remaining half million dollars in her campaign fund to hire the renowned appeals lawyer Alan Dershowitz, of Harvard Law School, and she was confident she could stay at home on an appeal bond while he worked to overturn her conviction.

In January 2003, Judge Grady sentenced her to eight years in prison and ordered her to repay $3.25 million, which was determined to be her share of the theft. A few weeks later, saying he was concerned that Betty might gamble away the money she owed the government, Grady ordered her to report to prison two months ahead of schedule, six weeks before the special party Betty had planned for Ashleigh's sixth birthday.

In those final days before she went to prison, Betty agonized over what to say to Ashleigh. She talked to a leading child psychiatrist, who advised her to tell Ashleigh the truth. Instead, Betty says, she listened to friends from Cicero who argued that Ashleigh was too young to understand. Betty convinced herself that she would win her appeal and soon be home. On the morning of her departure, she told Ashleigh she was leaving town for work, as she had done previously. Ashleigh seemed to sense something wasn't right. "Where's your suitcase, Mommy?" she kept asking. When Betty started to cry, Ashleigh ordered her to stop. 

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The system first assigned Betty to a minimum-security prison in Dublin, California, about an hour from San Francisco. When Ashleigh came to visit, Betty told her that the prison was now where she worked. In the summer of 2004, Betty asked to be transferred to the prison camp in Victorville, in the desert around 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles, closer to her Las Vegas home. It was a mistake. Dublin offered an outside area for children to play. Victorville has only a grim visiting room. The drive back and forth was hard on Kitty, and Ashleigh hated the place. They still talked with Betty on the phone every night, but they visited less often.

Although Betty frequently told Ashleigh she hoped to be coming home soon, Ashleigh began to suspect her mother wasn't just working away from home. Last June, four and a half years after Betty went away, Ashleigh used Google to learn her family secrets. On the phone later with her mother, years of anger and confusion came pouring out. Betty says Ashleigh told her she would throw the newspaper articles at her when she saw her and said Ashleigh yelled, "I want away from this friggin' family." She said Ashleigh wanted to find her birth mother.

Phone time is limited for the inmates and Betty had just minutes to explain a lifetime of lies to Ashleigh. The angry phone calls continued. Betty says she kept telling Ashleigh, "No matter what you say, I love you."

Betty knows she made a big mistake. "I should have told her the truth. I just never thought I would be here this long. I understand why she's so angry. I hate it when people lie to me, too."

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A few months before the crisis with Ashleigh, Vrdolyak  said a "little bird" told him the government was getting ready to seize the Las Vegas house as part of Betty's forfeiture, according to Betty's family. Vrdolyak started sending smaller checks. Betty exploded with anger. She claims her mother was so strapped for cash, she and Ashleigh were eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner. She loves the house and says it's her only asset.

Vrdolyak wouldn't answer her letters. "I am sick that Ed is doing this to me at this time," Betty e-mailed friends. "Realtors are coming to the door telling my mother the house is going into foreclosure. She sounds weak and scared. His assets aren't frozen. Why is he doing this?"

But Betty's sister, Pat Rand, doesn't think Vrdolyak was trying to hurt the family. "He was very concerned about my mother and Ashleigh being alone in Las Vegas," Pat says.

For several years, Pat had been pushing for Kitty and Ashleigh to come live with her in the South. Betty always said no. She didn't want them so far away, and she worried about losing Ashleigh forever. Just 16 months apart in age, the sisters say they have never been close. After being estranged for years, they reconciled before Betty went to prison. Until last year, Pat made phone calls and sent e-mails for her sister. She took Ashleigh and Kitty to visit Betty and sent her sister money. But Betty got angry that Pat—who has her own home and family—wouldn't move to Las Vegas and stay with Kitty and Ashleigh. The two sisters haven't talked in a year.

Pat says that by last summer the Las Vegas house had become a prison for Ashleigh and Kitty. They have only one close friend in Las Vegas. Kitty did not feel comfortable driving around the city. There were no kids in the neighborhood for Ashleigh to play with. Sometimes Kitty grew so exhausted in the evening, she would go to bed by seven, and Ashleigh would stay up watching TV or playing computer games. In May, Kitty had cataract surgery and it didn't go as well as hoped. Driving is out of the question.

Everything came to a head when Ashleigh learned the truth. Betty wanted Vrdolyak to hire a caretaker to help her mother. She wanted to get counseling for Ashleigh and keep her in her private school. Vrdolyak held firm and cut back on the financial help. He agreed with Pat that Ashleigh and Kitty needed to go live with her.

In August, just days before school would begin, Ashleigh went to live with Pat, but Kitty remained in Las Vegas. The sisters weren't reconciled. Betty was devastated that Ashleigh was leaving, and Pat was furious that Kitty was staying. 

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Photograph: Courtesy of Fox News Chicago

This article appears in the March 2008 issue of Chicago Magazine.

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