When his sons were little, Howard Scott Kalin liked to give elaborate Halloween parties for the children of their riverside neighborhood in Essex, using the woods nearby as a backdrop for spooky scenarios that even the grown-ups found fun. Kalin would drive a tractor, towing the partygoers around.
"Everybody loved him, and they all looked forward to it," Irene Sewell, one of Kalin's neighbors on Anne Avenue, said Tuesday. "It was a big thing every Halloween."
Sewell's nostalgic recollection was tinged with shock at the news that Kalin, a 47-year-old lawyer who doubles as a magician and "professional entertainer," had been arrested Monday in Florida and accused of arranging a rendezvous with a person he assumed was a 14-year-old boy for the purpose of having sex with him.
Kalin — who uses his middle name, Scott — was being held in Florida at the Lake County Detention Center in lieu of $400,000 bail. He is scheduled to appear in court June 20 on four charges, including lewd and lascivious behavior with a child under 16 and using a computer for obscene communications intended to solicit, lure and seduce.
"We're shocked — he's a really nice guy," Sewell said from a friend's porch, just down the street from where Kalin lives with his wife, Mary Ann, who is also an attorney, and their two teenage boys. "For a long time he stayed home with the kids while his wife worked. He never touched a kid."
Authorities in central Florida said that detectives with the Lake County sheriff's office were conducting an undercover operation to root out sexual stalkers of children when a man who turned out to be Kalin made contact with an online chat room Jan. 12. Kalin identified himself as "Ben Aldridge," said he was attending a conference in Orlando, and ultimately communicated "numerous times" with detectives posing online as a 14-year-old boy and a caretaker, the authorities said.
Kalin expressed his desire to return to Florida this month to meet the boy, saying he would bring a basketball and that he "planned on having sex with the boy," according to a probable-cause affidavit that provided graphic details of Kalin's alleged intentions. When Kalin showed up at the designated meeting place, basketball in hand, he was arrested.
Within hours of Kalin's arrest, someone cleared out his office on York Road in Lutherville — from where he had operated his company, Funhouse Entertainment — and removed its name from a plaque next to the door. Other tenants of the two-story office building, which also houses doctors and accountants, were surprised at Kalin's sudden departure and the nature of the allegations against him.
Kalin's Facebook page says he graduated in 1985 from the University of Delaware with a degree in English and technical writing, and obtained his law degree from the University of Baltimore three years later. The page says that in addition to practicing general family and small business law, he is a "master balloon entertainer" and also performs "magic, comedy and vocals."
"I enjoy friends, camping, travel, literature and being active," Kalin wrote on his page. He lists as his favorite quotation a line from "Mame," the Broadway musical: "Life is a buffet and most poor slobs are starving to death!"
Outside his home overlooking Hogpen Creek on Tuesday, Kalin's beige Chevrolet Suburban was parked alongside his wife's green Dodge Grand Caravan. A speedboat sat on a trailer. The house was silent.
Down the street, Doris Lipscomb, who grew up there, said her grandson had spent a great deal of time at the Kalins' house with their children, and that they all had been Boy Scouts together. "I was never afraid to leave my grandson down there," Lipscomb said. "Scott loves kids, he really does. And I'm not saying that for the reason he's in trouble."
One of the neighborhood boys, who is now 19, benefited last year from Kalin's help and encouragement in finding a job and getting his GED diploma, Lipscomb said. "And I'm telling you, he was a wonderful father," she added. "He still is a good person. I don't know what happened there."