The Children Chase

One Sunday in June 1967, a cement mason named Thomas Leonhard called his former wife to arrange a visit that day with his three kids. He had a picnic planned. But neither she nor the children were at their home in Buffalo, N.Y. Leonhard has been trying to find them ever since.

Other divorced men sometimes have trouble getting all of their agreed-upon visitation rights, but Leonhard soon found that he was involved in an extraordinary dilemma. His ex-wife had married a convicted robber who became an informant against the Mafia, and the sudden disappearance of Leonhard's children had been masterminded with impregnable expertise by the U.S. Government.

Pascal Calabrese, the former Mrs. Leonhard's new husband, was paroled soon after his testimony helped convict five Mafiosi, including a reputed underboss who got 20 years. A "contract" was reportedly out on Calabrese and his family, but the informer went directly from prison to a new residence and identity, complete with faked supporting credentials that a grateful Government had provided for him, his new wife and the three Leonhard children. That was fine for them, but "what about me?" Leonhard asks.

He knew about the marriage, which took place before Calabrese's imprisonment. He was even able to write to his ex-wife through Thomas Kennelly, a former federal attorney who had prosecuted the Mafiosi with Calabrese's testimony and is the one man who knows the family's whereabouts. But she absolutely refused to let Leonhard see his children, even at a neutral location, for fear they would give away their new identities. Leonhard went to state court to gain full custody of the children. He won after his former wife refused to take the risk of appearing in court to contest the case. But she also failed to surrender the children.

Leonhard, now 33 and himself remarried, doggedly went to federal court to get an order requiring Kennelly to stop denying him his right to raise the children. But Judge Irving Kaufman, writing for a unanimous three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, sadly turned Leonhard down. Resolving the competing interest of Leonhard's claim and the children's safety, said the judge, would take "the wisdom of Solomon," but the suit was only concerned with Attorney Kennelly. He had acted "in good faith" to protect the children's lives, said Kaufman, and so had committed no wrong that a federal court could right. Undeterred, Leonhard is considering further legal maneuvers to win his parental right to raise the children whom he already has legal responsibility for.

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