Getting Dad

It'd taken Colleen six months -- and her friends beside her -- to gather the courage to walk into the police station. Her mother sat next to her, hearing many of the details for the first time. Things like this weren't supposed to happen to girls like Colleen -- girls who come from the land of pristine cul-de-sacs and subdivisions with names that evoke the English countryside. The dirt Colleen felt on her couldn't be buffed out like a spot on the berber.

Susan, her mother, knew she was dating a boy named Jeffrey, and that he lived with his father, prominent lawyer Dan Roth, whose face once graced TV ads and yellow-pages spreads. Colleen and Jeffrey even discussed hooking their parents up on a date, since both had been through divorces.

But now Susan realized there were a few details her daughter had conveniently left out. Like the fact that Jeffrey was 35 years old. And that his 59-year-old father, the man accused of fondling her baby girl, was more interested in Colleen than Susan.

Yet it takes more than a detective's instinct to bring charges. Dan Roth was a well-regarded lawyer, after all.

A week later, Sloan decided to have Colleen place a recorded call to Dan. Maybe the girl could coax an admission.

She chatted nervously with the low voice on the other end of the line. But what happened next surprised the detective. Dan had some words for the young girl, but it wouldn't be a confession. She was a "pawn," he barked, a tool his son was using to get revenge after a bitter falling-out.

Sloan had walked into what he thought was a typical sex-crime case. But he now found himself in the midst of an uncivil war between father and son.

Jeffrey was as much a failure as the marriage that produced him. His mother, Leslie, the first of Dan Roth's wives, married his dad while he was a teacher at John Adams High preparing to go to law school.

But the life of a young lawyer leaves little time for family. In 1974, Dan was immersed in the biggest case of his life: defending National Guardsmen involved in the Kent State shootings. The national media set up camp outside his office. Meanwhile, just across the street, another case demanded even more attention from Dan. Leslie had divorced him on grounds of gross neglect of duty. It'd been a clean break, as far as divorces go. Unfortunately, the kids wouldn't have the luxury of such a smooth ride.

Jeffrey was four years old when his mother packed him, his older brother Bruce, and his little sister Julie, and moved out. The nighttime screaming and yelling that would reverberate through the walls of their bedrooms was silenced. But it was just the beginning of the dysfunction in the kids' lives.

Jeffrey and his siblings became a part of their mother's overnight bag, claimed Dan in divorce filings, accompanying her on sleepovers at the homes of whatever guy she happened to be sharing a bed with.

It was clear Mom was in over her head. When Jeffrey was nine, Leslie became the second one to bail on him, sending him to live with his grandmother in California. But Jeffrey wasn't going peacefully.

They figured that out the day Grandma's garage caught fire. Jeffrey had started it. The kid had been shuffled around so many times that no one noticed he was becoming mentally unhinged. Leslie had him institutionalized at Bellefaire, a home for disturbed children in Shaker Heights.

While his first family was crumbling, Dan was busy starting anew. When a change in the law allowed lawyers to advertise, Dan teamed up with brothers Anthony and Basil Russo to open storefront offices in shopping malls from Great Lakes to Parmatown. They milked the new regulations for all they were worth, making Dan's baby face as recognizable as Dick Goddard's. And the money rolled in.

Dan's private life was blossoming as well. He'd fallen in love with his secretary, Enza, a petite 23-year-old. They married, and Enza gave Dan two new babies. In return, he gave her a life his career afforded -- a BMW and a home in Pepper Pike. When the kids got old enough, Dan -- an amateur pilot -- flew his family to vacations in Florida and the Bahamas on his twin-engine plane. Things were suburban-perfect.

Then there was Jeffrey.