Tampa Bay Times from St. Petersburg, Florida • 12

SUNDAY, AUGUST 20, 1 989 1 3A ST. PETERSBURG TIMES Secret from 1A led to Mule. Meanwhile, Tranchina stayed away a few weeks and then returned to Ocala. On July 12, Tranchina left town again, this time saying that his foster father had died in Louisiana. This time, Sagrista was suspicious.

Tranchina didn't want her to come along because he said that he didn't get along well with his relatives. And he didn't want her to drive him to the airport. "If you want to know the truth," she says, "I thought he had a girlfriend." But the real reason, once again, was found in the television listings; Unsolved Mysteries planned to repeat the Mule segment that day, complete with pictures of the bearded ex-cop and a re-enactment of his alleged crimes. After Tranchina left town, some of the people who knew him in Ocala watched Why would he Charles Mule always worked best in the shadows. He found plenty of them in Slidell, La.

Slidell is a gritty city north of the New Orleans suburbs where Mule grew up. Just off Interstate 10, it is home to a truck stop where Mule made his name as one of Slidell's best undercover detectives. In the truck stop parking lot, under light turned fuzzy by the diesel fumes, truckers fuel their rigs, catch some sleep, or head toward the restaurant for a helping of chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes. That's when they're behaving. Police say the truck stop has also become a home to prostitutes and drug dealers.

Mule, a master of disguise who could grow a full beard in days, did much of his undercover police work there, lurking in the parking lot in jeans and hospital shirt, making bust after bust. He was so good at changing his appearance that he once arrested the same truck "He was real dependable," said Goodell's wife, Carol. "You could always count on him. In the car business, you can't count on too much." The Goodells and Tranchina grew close. He would often stop by with his cockatiel, Morris, to gab.

He doodled zany pictures on scraps of paper for the couple's children. They had him over for Thanksgiving dinner. Sometimes they-wondered why Tranchina seemed so alone. But then they recalled the story he told them and others when he arrived in town. Tranchina said that he was an optician who had built a booming business in Miami with his foster brother.

He had come to Ocala, the story went, to scout out a new location. But while he was away, his foster brother sold everything and took the money, leaving him broke. "That explained why he really had only the clothes on his back," said Mrs. Goodell. "Without that story, we would have wondered." His friends and neighbors say he was a generous man.

He would often grill a few extra steaks for the elderly ladies living at his apartment complex. He would leave the keys in his car so friends could borrow it. Although he didn't have much cash, he would lend it freely. Last summer, a woman came to Tranchina's lot looking for a car. Not long after, he and Jackie Sagrista ran into each other at a bar.

They went back to his apartment, where they sat on the living room floor and talked through the night. taunts of their classmates. "They'd say, 'Your daddy rapes little says Mule's ex-wife, now Linda Smith. It got worse after he vanished. Mrs.

Smith said that Mule didn't tell the family he was going to run, and he ne.ver contacted them or other relatives after he did. Mule was an only child, and his father suffered a paralyzing stroke after he left. Mule 's son, Charlie tired of his classmates' taunts and got in so many fights that he flunked a grade. Mule's grandson took his first steps and wondered where his "other pa pa" was. Mule's second wife, Sharon, had stuck by her husband before his trial.

And in March 1986, she persuaded a judge to grant her a divorce because he had abandoned her. (Mule's second wife could not be reached for comment for this article.) Mule's family tried not to give up hope. Though she remarried, Mrs. Smith kept the phone number in her maiden name so Mule could find it. When she went shopping, she would see men she thought were her husband.

Sometimes the phone rang but the caller would say nothing. Was it Charlie? Mrs. Smith recalls that in the months before his trial, Mule had said that he might decide to flee. But he promised not to leave his family in the dark. He said, "Some day, I'll give you some kind of a sign," Mrs.

Smith said. "But he never did." the show. Joe Mullinax was one. As manager of the apart ment complex where Tranchina lived last summer, Mullinax knew him as a reliable tenant and nice guy. But after watching the show, Mullinax grew convinced that he was really a sex crimes fugitive named Charles Mule.

He called the. show's hotline to say that Mule was living in Ocala under the name of Joe Tranchina. Three weeks later, Mule was under arrest for child molestation. "Anybody who did that deserves to be in prison," Mullinax says now. It was no game driver twice on drug charges without being recognized.

In 1984, Sgt. Mule's colleagues so admired his work that they made him the first recipient of the Slidell police department's Patrolmen's Choice award. That same year, authorities say that he began molesting the children who came to his department Sagrista and Tranchina had driven down a sandy lane skirted by giant oak trees to look at a new home when the FBI finally caught up with them. Until she saw the shotgun pointed at her face, Sagrista says, she didn't have a clue that something was wrong. "I kept saying, 'What's going on? What's going But looking back, Sagrista and Mule's other Florida friends can see the hints.

There were the mysterious phone calls Tranchina made from a pay phone when a free phone was nearby. His talk of corruption plaguing Louisiana police departments. The time he dismantled a gun with more expertise than one would expect from an optician. His insistence that property bought with Sagrista not be listed in his name. Once, Tranchina told a co-worker that he used to work counseling children who had been sexually p- v- If ti 1 1 iMiiWlV'lllr --JIIMlMIIMMMlIMlllir-' tlli'Il ior neip.

Jeannie Turkell says she was one of the first victims. In August 1984, Jeannie was a petite 11 -year-old with chestnut-colored hair and hazel eyes. One day, she came home and told her parents that a neighborhood boy had made sexual advances to her and a friend in the woods near their home. Jeannie's parents took her to the Slidell police department. (The child and her parents are given false names for this article.) Jeannie's complaint turned out to be exaggerated, her mother says, but Mule suggested a series of counseling sessions for her.

Although Mule wasn't a juvenile officer, he was a sex crimes specialist. Jeannie's parents agreed to the counseling. "I never questioned him because he was a policeman," said Mrs. Turkell. "Why would he lie to me?" Td the Turkells, Mule seemed to provide their daughter with a blend of authority and compassion.

At first, he met with her in an office at the police station while they waited outside. Then he began swinging by their home to pick her up, once inviting the child to stay overnight with him and his children. "She called him her best friend," Mr. Turkell recalls. But then Jeannie began acting strangely.

She would repeatedly ask her father what time he was leaving for work. Sometimes when he would look at her, she would snap: 'Daddy, don't look at me!" In March 1985, seven months after Mule began counseling Jeannie, the child was diagnosed with a venereal disease. She was 12. Jeannie told her parents that she had been having sex with Mule for months. Some of the alleged abuse took place inside the police station, authorities say, while much occurred inside a motel next to the truck stop.

Looking back, Jeannie's father recalled the night i abused. "I told him, 'If anybody ever did anything like that to my kids, I'd kill recalls the co-worker, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of losing his job. "He said, 'I know what you But on the other hand, says Sagrista, the man she called Joe didn't seem to have any lack of identifying papers. He arrived in Ocala with a birth certificate, a baptismal certificate, even a Florida driver's license (obtained in North Miami in March 1987) that identified him as a safe driver. And he didn't seem to shy away from public jobs, or the police.

Once, Mule was at a gas station in Ocala when Joe "J.J." Tranchina treated Jackie Sagrista's four children, aged 3 to 21, like his own. "He was the best man in my life," says Sagrista. Mule arrestedS ocala "vlv MARI0N ff L- CITRUS jcmiiuc wd3 wiih muie wiiiie ner parents were ARKANSAS some police officers arrived to arrest a drunk, said Capt. Thomas from Louisiana. "He hollered at the drunk, 'You ought to get a The officers told Mule to get lost.

After his arrest, Mule consented to a limited interview with the New Orleans Times-Picayune. During the interview, he said he had watched the Unsolved Mysteries shows on his case, and that they angered him. "I saw it on TV where 'Charlie's playing a game, and this is exciting to Mule told the newspaper. "It's not a game. Believe me.

It never has been a game. It's just been very, very rough." Those who suffer most LOUISIANA 3 celebrating their 25th anniversary at a seafood restaurant next t(Tthe truck stop. Shaking his head and blinking back tears, he said: "He had my daughter there in that damn motel." A curious suicide The Turkells went to the police. They agreed to go along with a plan to let Jeannie meet one more time with Mule. Around dinnertime on March 1, 1985.

the phone k. I I ie ana I HERNANDO I Mule now marks his days in the St. Tammany footJm PASC0 i Ihilsborouqh Gulf of Mexico TlmM art Tlm art Parish jail in Covington, where he is being held in lieu of $l-million bail. Authorities have put him in an isolated cell so that other inmates, angered by his past as a cop and the sex abuse charges, don't hurt him. One of Mule's lawyers, Joseph P.

Raspanti of New Orleans, suggested recently that prosecutors might have trouble putting on a strong case for sexual abuse more than four years after his arrest. But Harry P. Pastuszek Jr, first assistant district attorney in St. Tammany, said the prosecutors' case is as strong as ever. Pastuszek said that prosecutors have worked hard to stay in touch with all four of Mule's alleged victims, two of whom have moved from Louisiana.

All four are ready to testify, he said, and prosecutors are eager to see Mule punished. "We're in the business of protecting the public," In atU rang inside Room 150 of the truck stop motel, court documents state. After Mule answered, he buttoned his pants, pulled on his shoes and said to the child words to the effect of: "You set me up." Moments later, police stormed in and arrested Mule. After Mule's arrest, other girls and their parents came forward to tell tales strikingly similar to Jeannie's. On Sept.

27, 1985, a grand jury indicted Mule oh 29 crimes involving sex with four girls aged 11 to 16. Mule pleaded innocent to the charges and said that he had been framed by officials whose wrongdoing he had been investigating. Before the trial, Mule and his lawyers charged that Slidell police had destroyed Mule's appointment books and other evidence that would clear him. During a hearing, Slidell officers acknowledged burning the diary of one of Mule's victims, along with pornographic pictures and condoms found in his desk. They denied burning the appointment books, but Mule's lawyer argued that enough was destroyed to deny Mule a fair trial.

"It seems they selectively saved some things and burned others," said the lawyer, Frank G. DeSalvo. "And the things that were saved incriminate Charlie Mule." i The judge refused to stop the trial. It was set to begin on May 12, 1986. The day of the trial came, but Mule had vanished.

The next day, his 1972 Ford pickup truck was found abandoned and vandalized on a white concrete bridge stretching over a swamp near Slidell. That afternoon, Mule's two attorneys each got a suicide letter from their client. According to Larry Ciko, a spokesman for the St. Tammany Parish sheriffs department, Mule wrote in his letter that he had little hope of proving his innocence without the destroyed documents. "I found it much easier to kill myself than to get up in court and admit guilty or (no contest) and have to spend time in jail," Mule wrote.

"I felt a part of Bill Goodell, above, took a liking to Tranchina. Joe Mullinax, right, alerted police after watching Unsolved Mysteries. he said. "When one of our own is caught in something like this, it hurts us all." But it is the people who loved and trusted Mule who suffer most. Mule's Florida friends were stunned to learn his true identity.

The only man they know is the gentle Joe Tranchina; they say they can't imagine him as a child molester. "I said to the FBI man, 'If he's guilty, may he burn in says Sagrista. "But I'm also certain that he's not. I don't feel I cduld have lived with a man for a year and not had some sign." (Officials say they don't suspect Mule of sexually abusing anyone in Florida.) For Mule's relatives in Louisiana, the emotions are more complex. Although they defend him and say he had reason to run, they can't hide their hurt A month later, Tranchina moved in with Sagrista.

Sagrista, 40, is a thin woman with frosted hair and delicate hands. After three failed marriages, she hadn't held out much hope for a man as earnest and kind as Tranchina seemed to be. One day, they saw a man on the roadside with a sign saying he would work for food, but they didn't stop. Later that night, she. said that Tranchina lay in bed and said, "I sure do wish we could have given him some money." When Tranchina got a job as a shoe store manager in Crystal River, the family moved to Help from Hollywood In 1987, Louisiana investigators got a tip that Mule was holed up on a family farm east of Slidell in West Pearl River County, Miss.

A search failed to turn up the fugitive, but the evidence that he had crossed state lines was enough to get the FBI involved. Then the authorities turned to Hollywood. One day, Capt. Thomas got a call from the Unsolved Mysteries television show. The show's representative wanted to talk about an unsolved murder in Louisiana, but Thomas told them they might be more interested in the case of an undercover cop turned wanted criminal.

The Unsolved Mysteries featuring Mule's case was set to air on March 1, 1989. Shortly before that, Tranchina read about it in TV Guide and thought up an excuse to leave town. He told his new girlfriend and his other Florida friends that his foster mother had died and he needed to fly to Louisiana for her funeral. Goodell drove him to the Ocala airport to catch a $50 flight to Gainesville, where Tranchina said he would make a connecting flight. "He seemed extremely nervous getting on the airplane," Goodell recalls, sitting in the office of his used car lot.

But that didn't seem too strange, said Mrs. Goodell. "He was going home to his mother's funeral, so you'd expect him to be upset." The show produced a flood of tips, but none that at being abandoned for 39 months. The day Mule returned to Louisiana in handcuffs, his son insisted on driving his battered Malibu to see him in jail. Charlie Jr.

is 15 now, a wiry kid with a gold chain around his neck and a thousand questions about the missing piece of his father's life. "When he left, it was like everything went with him," says Charlie Jr. "It's hard to just put it back again." And Mule's arrest has renewed old pain for his alleged victims. Jeannie "furkell, now 16, has bounced in and out of mental hospitals since she accused Mule of abusing her. She hasn't attended regular school since 1985 and she dreads the stares of the Slidell residents who know she was the girl with Mule in Room 150.

One recent Saturday morning, the sun shone brightly outside Jeannie's suburban home, but Jeannie and her parents sat in a darkened kitchen, smoking cigarettes and fretting about having to testify against Mule. Jeannie's once-silky brown hair is now a harsh blond, and there is a hard set to her mouth. Jeannie doesn't talk much, but her mother's words echo her daughter's anger: "He's sitting up there in his isolated cell. Well, isn't that nice? Who's isolating us from our pain?" me wouia just cue a slow death every day. Authorities were sure Mule had faked the suicide.

The hunt began. A nice guy named J. J. In Ocala, car shoppers without much cash or credit head south of town on Pine Avenue, past the slick new car dealerships with their pennants flapping in the wind, to the string of dirt and grass lots selling old cars at cut rates. In the spring of 1987, at a lot called Executive Motors, Mule found a new home.

It wasn't long before Bill Goodell, the manager of an affiliated lot, took a shine to the man who said his name was Joe Tranchina. He liked Tran-china's sense of humor, his hustle and his apparent honesty. homes in Ozello and Chassahowitzka. Tranchina treated her four children, aged 3 to 21, like his own. He took them fishing and cooked crabs caught off their concrete dock.

Before long, her 3-year-old, Josh, began calling him "Daddy." "He was the best man in my life," says Sagrista. Was it Charlie? Meanwhile, in Louisiana, Charles Mule's family suffered. Mule's 14-year marriage to his high school sweetheart, Linda, had collapsed in 1983. But Mule had stayed on good terms with her and regularly came to take his two daughters and son fishing, water skiing or shopping. After his arrest, the children had to suffer the r-em a.