Hours before his sentencing on federal bank-fraud charges in November, Ed Mattar leaped from his 27th-floor apartment.
I went by the scene and saw the tree he broke on his way down. Below it, I found the indentation he left in the dirt and shards of glass from the window he bashed out with a hammer.
I wrote a column that was — I’ll admit — insensitive. “Mattar jumped out on his (prison sentence),” I wrote. “A deadbeat until the very end.”
The 1998 failure of Mattar’s Boulder- based BestBank had cost the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. more than $200 million. It also cost some uninsured depositors another $27 million.
It took nearly 10 years to investigate, prosecute and finally schedule a sentencing hearing for this guy. And what does he do? He skips out on the bill. But there I go again, dancing on Mattar’s grave.
Whatever mistakes he made, Mattar was also a human being. One of the readers who pointed this out to me was federal prisoner Dennis Herula.
Herula is a former Rhode Island stockbroker who was sentenced to 16 years for fleecing his clients out of $15 million.
One of his victims was Joe Coors. The brewery scion had invested nearly $40 million in one of Herula’s schemes, but in the end, Coors was fortunate to recover all but $4 million of it.
Herula reportedly blew some of his ill-gotten gains on the usual prizes: pricey houses, a $200,000 Bentley, a 13 1/2-carat diamond ring. But he was properly contrite at his 2005 sentencing in Denver federal court.
“My greed and total disregard put my career into a new league — that of a thief,” he said. “I deluded myself into thinking that taking investors’ money was permissible because I’d be making more down the road and would put it back. I was only kidding myself.”
When I received Herula’s first letter, complaining of my insensitivity, I was heartened to learn that Mattar had made a friend. He didn’t seem to have many friends.
“He used his nasty temper as a way to try to deflect legitimate regulatory inquiries,” said Barbara Walker, executive director of the Independent Bankers of Colorado. “He was flamboyant in life, and in death.”
Another woman I interviewed in 1998 compared Mattar to Danny DeVito in “Other People’s Money,” without the endearing sense of humor.
More to the story
The truth, though, is that people have more dimensions than that. Here’s what Herula had to say about Mattar:
Dear Mr. Lewis:
Since you were so gracious to admit that you were insensitive in your article regarding the suicide of Edward Mattar, I will confess that I did not know much about his crime.
I met Ed in the transfer center in Oklahoma City that the U.S. Marshals use as a drop- off and pick-up hub for federal prisoners en route to prisons across the country. There are fewer white-collar criminals in the system than I thought, and Ed stood out from the crowd. There aren’t a lot of older white men in the system.
We struck up a conversation and traveled together to Denver on ConAir to the Englewood Federal Detention Center.
Ed spent only a month in the detention center before he was bonded out. In that time, I got to know him 2 4/7 and we swapped family stories, jokes, and our fears of the unknown with the upcoming legal matters.
I went to court with Ed for our arraignment and listened while the judge read off a series of . . . bank fraud counts. The courts were all impersonal and gave no indication of the nature of the damage that was done. I couldn’t see the victims.
Ed befriended several other inmates and was well-liked by most. He was always invited to play cards with several groups and kept out of trouble.
When Ed left I thought I’d never hear from him again, but he did write and always expressed concern for me and my family.
Other inmates who had left would call him and ask for help. Ed helped several people with money for rent deposits, clothes to get a job, and expense money.
I never asked Ed for anything, but he sent me commissary money on occasion and books too.
Prior to his trial, he would write me to get a feel for prison life. My assumption was that he was preparing himself for the inevitable. He was not yet convicted.
I can only describe Ed as a complicated man who was kind to me. Why he chose to end his life rather than face his sentence is still a mystery to me. He did have medical issues, but I’m not aware of the severity of them.
I’m only aware of what I did — the people I hurt and the price I’m paying. Whatever he did — he paid the ultimate price.
Dennis Herula, Federal Correctional Institution, Fort Dix, N.J.
Al Lewis’ column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Respond to him at , 303-954-1967 or alewis@denverpost.com.
