BRIDGEPORT, R.I. - The Rev. Laurence F.X. Brett vanished abruptly almost a decade ago, leaving clothes still hanging in the closet of his Baltimore home and a trail of accusers stretching across four states and back 30 years.
Now, a Hartford Courant investigation has found the disgraced priest - whose disappearance took him beyond the reach of police and plaintiffs' attorneys investigating accusations that Brett sexually abused teen-age boys. He has been living a secretive but comfortable life on the tropical island of St. Maarten in the Caribbean.
Brett apparently has concealed his past as a clergyman and avoided any public connection to the church, identifying himself to acquaintances on the island as a writer, a businessman or, at times, a CIA agent.
The Courant found Brett living in a walled complex of villas at the end of a cul-de-sac by the edge of a lagoon. There, late one afternoon last week, he walked his dog, Joy, and tugged on a cigarette.
"I don't think I remember you," he replied to a reporter who called out his name.
He did not respond to questions about allegations that he abused more than two dozen altar boys and other children in Connecticut, New Mexico, California and Maryland.
Since shortly after his disappearance late in 1993, the official position of the Roman Catholic Church has been that it wants Brett found and brought to justice. The FBI and a private detective tried, unsuccessfully, to find him.
But interviews and documents make clear that, during the past decade, a handful of priests and lay people loyal to Brett have known where to find him - and, in one case, were financially supporting him.
The Courant found evidence that Brett has been in contact for years with at least one and perhaps two priests in the Bridgeport diocese, a prominent Baltimore businessman who is an associate of Cardinal William H. Keeler, a psychologist from Johns Hopkins University, and an order of Catholic priests in Washington, D.C.
An evangelical branch of the order, the Paulist Fathers, for whom Brett worked for many years, supported him financially for years on St. Maarten by sending checks to a Miami mail box, where they were forwarded to an offshore company in Brett's name, a source familiar with the arrangement said.
Corporation records show that Brett created the company - called Wordshares, a variation on the name of the Paulist magazine, Share the Word, for which Brett once wrote - in 1996 on the island of Anguilla, a short boat ride from St. Maarten.
The Paulists did not return calls for comment yesterday. They have previously said Brett worked as "a contract employee" but have refused to discuss his whereabouts.
Told of the Courant's findings, Bridgeport Bishop William Lori issued a statement late yesterday saying he was satisfied Brett had been located. Lori said he was now investigating the actions of the two priests who allegedly have been in contact with him.
"I would be personally disappointed if any of my priests knew of Brett's whereabouts and did not inform me, especially as I have made it very clear that the diocese was anxious to locate Brett and bring him to justice," Lori said.
Brett lived until three months ago on the Dutch side of St. Maarten, not far from the casino and beach at opulent Cupecoy.
Early in June, neighbors said, Brett left suddenly, cutting ties and spreading word that he was returning to the United States.
His case was becoming national news - CNN in May aired a videotape of then-Bridgeport Bishop Edward Egan testifying during a 1997 trial over Brett's abuse of a Connecticut altar boy, and Time magazine featured Brett in an April cover story on the church scandal.
Instead of leaving St. Maarten, Brett moved across the lagoon known as Simpson Bay, to a ground-floor apartment in a cluster of white stucco buildings called Koolbaai Villas.
St. Maarten, less than an hour's flight east of Puerto Rico in the Lesser Antilles, became Brett's home only after an extraordinary odyssey that began in 1964, when he admitted engaging in nonconsensual oral sex with a student at Sacred Heart University.
Brett was subsequently expelled from the diocese but permitted to continue as a priest under the auspices of the Bridgeport diocese. He was dispatched to an isolated monastic retreat in New Mexico before traveling briefly to California, then settling in Baltimore.
Allegations of sexual abuse followed him.
Beginning late in 1992, the Bridgeport diocese learned of three old allegations against Brett. Egan called him back to Bridgeport, suspended him and asked that he voluntarily leave the priesthood. Brett at first agreed, but later changed his mind.
He left his home in Baltimore late that year or early the next, staying briefly at the home of a friend in Florida in 1994 before dropping out of sight.
Meanwhile, complaints about his past behavior continued to pour in. Baltimore Archdiocese officials said they have received 15 complaints against Brett since 1972 and turned over all their information to prosecutors.
"Larry Brett is a criminal," said Stephen Kearney, spokesman for the diocese. "He's an evil guy."
It was information from these complaints that resulted in two warrants for Brett's arrest being issued in February 1999. In those warrants, two former students from Calvert Hall College detailed how Brett allegedly ordered them to report to his office, where they alleged he performed oral sex on them.
Brett was charged with custodial child abuse and second-degree sexual offense in both cases, and the FBI's fugitive task force began searching for the missing priest. But the charges were withdrawn before Brett could be located.
Prosecutor John Cox, who heads the Baltimore County state's attorney's sexual assault unit, said the charges were withdrawn because the specific statutes didn't exist in the early 1970s when Brett was alleged to have committed the crimes. The only charge that did exist then that fit the crimes, Cox said, was one called "perverted practice," and there is disagreement in the state's appellate court about whether that charge, a misdemeanor, carries a one-year statute of limitations.
Cox said in an interview last month that his office could have chosen to make Brett a test case, but that "doesn't get us past the fact that he's missing."
"It's a matter of finding him," Cox said.
A year before Brett left Baltimore, he asked Wayne Ruth, an associate of the cardinal, to help him dispose of his home on North Paca Street. Ruth, a businessman who is chairman of the board in charge of renovating the Basilica of the Assumption, the oldest cathedral in the nation, had been a student at Calvert Hall in Baltimore years earlier when Brett served as chaplain there.
Brett signed over power-of-attorney to Ruth, and in the summer of 1994, records show, Ruth sold the house.
Brett evidently left in a hurry. "Everything was still in the house," said Virgil Gross, the man who bought the property, "like he said he was going to the store and just never came back."
In interviews earlier this month, Ruth said he has seen Brett on St. Maarten only once since then, at a restaurant, and it was his impression Brett was merely passing through.
"We mostly talked about old times," he said.
Ruth said he didn't know his old friend was living on the island, less than a half-mile from where Ruth had a condominium.
Brett's former neighbors on St. Maarten also said a man named David Howell was an occasional visitor. Howell is the pastor of St. Joseph's Church in South Norwalk, Conn. One neighbor said Howell had been to the island in January of this year.
In an interview this week, Howell - who said he overlapped for one year with Brett in the seminary - explained that he has a time-share on the island and acknowledged that he was there in January. But he denied seeing Brett or knowing that he was there.
He could not explain why he appeared to be the intended recipient of a faxed memorandum found on the floor of Brett's condominium after Brett departed in such haste in June.
Gregory Lehne, Brett's therapist, acknowledged seeing Brett and delivering a dog named Joy to him after his old dog, Shakespeare, was struck by a car and killed two years ago. Lehne, an assistant professor of psychology at Hopkins who specializes in treatment of sexual disorders, said it was Howell who alerted him two years ago that Brett had plunged into depression after Shakespeare died.
Lehne said yesterday that he saw no problem in socializing with his former patient, even staying at Brett's condo, and that he didn't realize his former patient and friend was being sought by the FBI and at least one private investigator.
Eric Rich and Elizabeth Hamilton are reporters for The Hartford Courant, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.