Gary Kriss Gets Caught

Your scribe loves stories in which karma comes around to bite the ungodly in the backside. In his experience, this happens just about 100% of the time, sooner if not later. It's possible that karma is actually batting a thousand, since some of the ungodly vanish from the scribal radar screen before the karmic zap occurs; who's to know what happens to these wretches once they sneak away to parts unknown?

A Westchester grand jury has recently issued two subpoenas in its investigation of Kriss, who allegedly spent "more than $12,000 [of taxpayer monies] on electronics, software and books, with much of it shipped to his home," according to The Journal News, whose staffer Seth Harrison took the photo above. The postman at 169 Laurel Ridge in South Salem has been kept pretty busy, it seems. Said Board of Legislators Vice Chairman Michael Kaplowitz, "[Kriss] got his fingers stuck in the cookie jar."

About time. Some two decades ago Kriss was one of the honchos at the Second Congregational Church here in Greenwich, acting as an enforcer for the Black Pope of the church, the late unlamented Reg Jones. Both men were actively trying to cover up "Spencergate", the flamboyant affair being carried on by the very unreverend assistant minister Becky Spencer with the son of her superior, the equally unreverend senior minister Mert Rymph. The venue for this hot-sheets trysting was the church parsonage, less than half a stone's throw from the church itself. No doubt the devout parishioners who had built the house well over a century earlier were turning over in their graves in the nearby cemetery. A minister of the Gospel fornicating in the church parsonage? Spencer and both Rymphs would have been tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail if those God-fearing Christians were still alive.

Now, your scribe is no bluenose, and he enjoys sex as much as the next man or woman. But there are certain proprieties to be observed, not to mention some pesky canon laws bearing on the subject of unmarried ministers getting it on with others, particularly members of their congregation. Not to mention the offspring of their direct supervisor, always a managerial no-no. Becky Spencer and her paramour Doug Rymph were a ticking time bomb waiting to topple the hollow steeple at the top of the hill.

Thus it was that Reg Jones, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the General Electric Corporation, a chain smoker and environmental polluter the likes of which this nation has rarely seen, confidante and advisor of Presdent Richard M. "Tricky Dick" Nixon, and master of the cover-up extraordinaire, decided to circle the wagons around the hapless Becky and her boy toy Doug. The truth about their affair was clearly unpalatable and damaging to the church; therefore Reg and his henchman Gary Kriss decided to resort to the Big Lie.

Jones and Kriss issued a challenge to a group of concerned individuals, your scribe (not surprisingly) among them, to attend a meeting with members of the church council to lay to rest the "false and malicious rumors" that were threatening to split the church apart. Two identical tape recorders were placed on the conference table, one tape to be retained by each side. The attack began. Your scribe and his friends were castigated by Jones and Kriss for even suggesting that Becky Spencer was not a pure and spotless virgin, let alone a shameless hussy carrying on night after night in the church parsonage. There were laws of libel and slander, we were told, and unless we had explicit photographic proof of Becky and Doug's in flagrante shenanigans, we were to zip our lips henceforth and forevermore.

Taken aback by this frontal attack, your scribe felt as though he had wandered into Wonderland, where ordinary reality no longer obtained. Reg Jones, Gary Kriss, Jim Dean, and the other church council members took an unequivocal stand: there was no affair, your scribe and anyone else who said anything to the contrary were liars, and that was to be the end of the matter.

Except, of course, it wasn't. The church secretary, who lived in an apartment in the parsonage, knew the true facts of the situation, since she could see and hear Doug's car roll in at dusk and leave at dawn. Doug's father Mert had said sadly to your scribe, once he realized how badly his son's and his subordinate's misbehavior was damaging the church, "I thought there was some health in it...." Finally, after some two hours of acrimony and debate, church elder Phyllis Jacob acknowledged that the Big Lie wasn't going to work. "Everybody knows it's true," she said.

Reg and Gary immediately seized the tape recorders, claiming one of them had "malfunctioned". They said they would make a copy of the remaining tape and provide one to each side. But they never did, of course - Reg had learned all he needed to know about tape recorders from Tricky Dick. Gary Kriss later stated that both machines had malfunctioned, and therefore there were no tapes. He was lying through his teeth, of course.

Well, Reg is dead of cancer (no surprise there) and Gary is now under scrutiny for an apparent lack of financial integrity (no suprise there, either). Becky Spencer was given the usual Greenwich treatment of a farewell party as she was foisted off on an unsuspecting out-of-state church. Mert Rymph looks prematurely old these days, and who knows what has happened to poor simple Doug? Well, karma probably does. And that's all that really matters.