| Hunter star could lose $250,000
... and his wife is already gone
Hunter star Fred Dryer, who plays a tough law-and-order cop on TV, is
caught up in a bizarre mob scandal that could cost him a quarter of a
million dollars.
Dryers's nightmare began when his wife Tracy - who has since dumped
him and taken their three-year-old daughter Caitlin with her - persuaded
him to put up a massive bail to keep her father, John Vaccaro, out of
jail.
Vaccaro, 48, was sentenced to nine years in jail in 1985 for his part
in a major slot-machine fraud in Nevada.
The mobster appealed and posted his own $100,000 bond to stay out of
prison.
Later, when the judge raised bail to $350,000, son-in-law Dryer put
up the title to a 12-unit apartment building he owns in Long Beach,
California
But Vaccaro has since been indicted in Los Angeles on charges of drug
trafficking, gambling and conspiracy. |
And, since his alleged criminal
activities took place while his appeal was pending, the U.S. attorney in
Reno, Nevada, has begun proceedings to forfeit Vaccaro's bail -
including bondsman Dryer's $250,000 building.
The scandal is doubly embarrassing for the 200cm Dryer, a former
football star with the Los Angeles Rams and New York Giants.
For one thing, a year after he put up the building for bail at his
wife's request, she left him for restauranteur George Santo Peitro,
Linda Evans' former love.
Tracy has since split with Santo Pietro, whose Hollywood restaurant,
according to court papers, was the alleged meeting site of a Cosa Nostra
meeting.
And in his popular Seven Network series, Dryer, 41, plays Rick
Hunter, a maverick crime fighter whose own family is mixed up in
organised crime. |
Now he's caught up in a
real-life case that it seems not even his Hunter partner, Dee Dee McCall
(played by Stepfanie Kramer), could get him out of.
His mother-in-law Sandra, 47, is already serving an 18-month sentence
for the slot-machine scam, which involved raking off about $8 million
from the one-armed bandits.
She is said to be the first woman to have her name entered in
Nevada's "Black Book" - a list of people barred from the
state's casinos because of convictions for gambling-related crime.
Meanwhile, her husband John stands accused by a grand jury in Los
Angeles of being a key member of a Cosa Nostra family controlling crime
in California and Nevada.
Says a friend of the rugged actor: "The saddest thing is that
Tracy has left him since he put up the money. It's a bitter pill
to swallow.
"But Fred is not the kind of guy who would let something like
this affect him. He's not terribly upset or dwelling on it.
He's strong and looks to the future, and right now, he's getting more of
the notice and applause he deserves for his Hunter role.
"And he's pragmatic enough to take the attitude that you don't
loan money or assets that you can't afford to lose." |
