Who's the real Vince Fumo? It's complicated

To his aides, he was simply the Boss. To his girlfriend, he was "my prince." To his friends, he was a shy Wizard of Oz. To his fellow state senators, he was "Sen. R2D2."

As pitilessly exposed during his federal corruption trial, Sen. Vincent J. Fumo has emerged as an even more intriguing and outsize personality than previously known.

For five weeks, his staffers, an ex-girlfriend, a onetime private eye, and his former political consultant have been dishing like crazy about the 65-year-old Fumo.

Their testimony and a trove of e-mails have not only pointed to the powerful Democrat's legendary ruthlessness, but also to an unexpected tenderness and generosity.

The constants are his energy, the range of his enthusiasms, and the demands he laid on his staff day and night, almost all of which he wanted addressed IMMEDIATELY!!!! . . . ASAP, as he would stipulate in e-mail barrages.

"Sen. Fumo was aware of everything," Frank D. Wallace, his taxpayer-paid private investigator, told jurors. "He was the ultimate control freak."

Fumo is, in short, a piece of work.

And a shopaholic.

"He liked to buy a lot of things, a lot of things," former girlfriend Dorothy Egrie-Wilcox testified. "He didn't buy one of something. He bought four."

That way, Fumo could have the same clothes - the same khaki pants, blue shirts and shoes - in all of his homes. That way, he could equip each floor of each home with the same Oreck vacuum. That way, he could have the identically stocked toolbox at each house.

"I didn't think it was very normal, but once you were with him long enough you saw it was normal for him," the 51-year-old Egrie-Wilcox said. She recalled their "Flintstones-sized" shopping sprees up and down the wide aisles of Sam's Club - outings that were illegally paid for, prosecutors say, with credit cards from a South Philadelphia nonprofit he controlled.

According to the Christmas wish list that Fumo thoughtfully handed out to friends and political allies, his interests were varied: guns (Fumo owns 300), cooking (Fumo's wish list included a $379 Le Creuset six-piece cookware set), sporting (the list included $229 Van Staal titanium fishing pliers).

Egrie-Wilcox said it was not uncommon for him to drop as much as $500 in a bookstore, sometimes buying multiple copies of a book.

Then there was his fascination with tools.

"I've never seen a person own so many tools in my life," Christian Marrone, a former aide and Fumo's estranged son-in-law, told the jury. "There were just tools everywhere."

Even so, "he very rarely used the tools," Egrie-Wilcox said. "He just had to have them."

The prosecution contends that Fumo enjoyed his lavish lifestyle by defrauding the state Senate and a pair of nonprofit organizations.

Although Fumo was paid as much as $1 million as a "rainmaker" for the law firm Dilworth Paxson L.L.P. and received a lucrative salary from his family's bank, he nonetheless found himself financially strapped.

"He spends the money before he has it," his former girlfriend said.

In a 2001 e-mail, Fumo wrote that the financial pressure "sucks!"

"I never even dreamed of making as much money as I do now and I have nothing left at the end of the year," he wrote.

A well-heeled geek, Fumo was fascinated by all manner of digital hardware and electronic gadgetry. As a result, he was in charge of all high-tech issues for Senate Democrats, overseeing a large technical staff and earning the nickname "Sen. R2D2."

While confident and aggressive in the world of politics, Fumo was somewhat awkward in social situations.

According to testimony, his friends dubbed him the Wizard of Oz for his penchant for staying out of public view and relaxing with only a select group.

As a boyfriend, though, Fumo was attentive and gushing.

"Good night my love! My dove, my beautiful one!!!" reads one of his e-mails to Egrie-Wilcox.

For her part, Egrie-Wilcox began one message: "Good morning, my prince. I hope you slept well."

In their e-mail exchanges, Fumo and Egrie-Wilcox repeatedly typed their own special love symbol, the numeral 8 - because if you view an 8 sideways, "it's X's and O's," she explained to the jury.

According to testimony, Fumo was generous with gifts to his girlfriend, including a rotisserie and a revolver. And he lent her about $20,000 to paint her house and help her with her flooring business.

When Egrie-Wilcox promised to pay him back tenfold, Fumo would have none of it.

"Tenfold is not necessary!" he wrote in an e-mail introduced during the trial as a prosecution exhibit. "You already pay more than that in your love and how you take care of me!"

In good times, Fumo was almost giddy in explaining in another e-mail how he owned Philadelphia.

"This is such a wonderful city and I am treated so well here - parking wherever I want and getting into jammed restaurants where I want - I can't wait to share it with you."

On the stand, Egrie-Wilson put it more bluntly: "He loved the fact that he was above everybody else."

Living alone in his 33-room Philadelphia mansion, the twice-divorced Fumo seemed to lose track of ordinary life.

For one thing, Egrie-Wilcox recalled, he once marveled when she used a bank's drive-through window. Fumo, a former bank chairman, told her that he had never done that.

When the relationship turned sour, Fumo was deeply upset.

After she broke up with him, he lashed out in an e-mail for "the hurt you inflicted on me."

To get back at her, prosecutors allege, Fumo had Wallace, his detective, tail her in the hope of getting her arrested for drunken driving.

Moreover, the government alleges that Fumo had his aides secretly rig her computer so he could read her e-mail behind her back. Prosecutors say this apparently took place even during their relationship.

This less-attractive side of Fumo has also been explored at length in the trial.

Howard Cain, his former political consultant, testified that Fumo had assigned him to work on a lowly race for supervisor in Montgomery County to defeat Fumo's daughter, Nicole, with whom the senator was feuding.

Like a soldier bringing the shield of a slain enemy to a warrior king, Cain later laid a campaign poster of Fumo's daughter on the senator's office chair. On it, Cain had written that the daughter had lost.

According to his defense team, Fumo was bullied as a teenager. His parents in South Philadelphia had sent him to a private school, and the tougher neighborhood kids picked on the young Fumo upon his return home each day.

If so, the testimony so far suggests Fumo learned well how to be a bully himself.

When his large staff didn't jump at his command, Fumo got angry, fast.

"If somebody who worked for him didn't do what he was told, he was not nice," Egrie-Wilcox said.

In 2004, Fumo was upset because he got an unexpectedly large cell-phone bill. He shot a hot e-mail to no fewer than four aides.

"I just got a call that we currently owe $259.25 on this account! Who pays for this and why the [expletive] is it not paid??????????" Fumo wrote.

"I want an IMMEDIATE answer!!!!!!!!!!!!"

On another occasion, the senator was bugged when he drove to the Devon Horse Show and there was no VIP parking lot.

Joining Fumo and Egrie-Wilcox were Christian Marrone and Nicole Fumo, who were dating and not yet estranged from Fumo. (They are now married.)

Fumo ordered Marrone "to get out of the car and tell one of the parking people that this was Sen. Fumo and to find him a spot," Egrie-Wilcox said.

When his daughter protested, Fumo told her: "He works for me."

Along with his rages came a Nixonian view of his opponents. In 2000, Marrone suggested that some press criticism had merit. Big mistake.

"No," Fumo wrote back. "The articles have been written because we have many enemies who are jealous and love to rat on us to try and get to me."

Above all, Fumo seemed driven by a desire to master everyone and everything in his world.

Once, Egrie-Wilcox told the jury, Fumo - the owner of expensive homes in Philadelphia, in Florida, and at the Jersey Shore - tried to explain to her why he also was buying a 100-acre farm near Harrisburg.

"He told me he wanted to own a piece of property so when he turned and looked . . . every piece of land in front of him, he owned," she said.

Collected coverage of Fumo trial: www.philly.com/inquirer/special/fumo/

Fumo trial live blog: www.philly.com/philly/blogs/

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