Jeanine Pirro, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, was the replacement for a pick by President Donald Trump who couldn’t make it through the Senate confirmation process to keep the job. But a controversy during Pirro’s time as a New York suburban district attorney that put her prosecutorial impartiality into question could threaten her prospects too, should Trump decide to make the nomination official.
For those in the well-to-do New York City suburb of Harrison, the 2002 death of 17-year-old Rob Viscome is an unforgettable tragedy. But it’s what happened immediately afterward that turned some locals against their elected prosecutor, damaging Pirro’s public image ahead of her failed Senate run against Hillary Clinton.
Raymond Viscome, the boy’s uncle and a carpenter in town, told NOTUS it took 13 years for the emotional turmoil and physical pain to subside.
“My whole family is shattered now,” he told NOTUS in a phone interview this week. “I don’t want revenge. I just want the truth.”
NOTUS spoke with seven people involved in this episode of Pirro’s tenure as Westchester County district attorney for this story. On April 23, 2002, more than a dozen high school students in the Harrison area who were let out of school early due to a power outage decided to get together for an impromptu party at classmate Beth Porzio’s family home. Her parents had just left for a vacation.
Harrison police would later piece together what happened at the party: students Pat Rukaj and Rob Viscome got into a verbal altercation, the larger Viscome taunted his friend by referencing Rukaj’s jailed father and the smaller teen punched Viscome in the face so hard he came crashing onto the back of his head on a stone pool deck.
Instead of immediately calling 911, the teens scrambled to wipe away any evidence they’d been having a party with alcohol and dumped beer bottles at a nearby Kohl’s shopping center.
Police reports and witness statements summarized in The Journal News six months later in October 2002 presented a play-by-play: One girl patted Viscome’s face with cold water. Another stuck her fingers in his mouth, thinking it would keep him from swallowing his tongue. Boys who ultimately carried Viscome into a car dropped him several times, and one lied to hospital staff that Viscome had fallen at a park. Witnesses’ statements quoted in the newspaper said John Porzio, the homeowners’ son, had repeatedly told his friends: “This didn’t happen here.”
The police arrested Rukaj later that night for second-degree assault, and arrested at least six others on obstruction charges. Viscome was in a coma for a week at the hospital before he died.
The local newspaper story immediately after the incident pointed out the atypical silence from Pirro, who had earned a reputation for embracing the spotlight with sharp public commentary — even on criminal cases far outside her district. (A Texas judge that same year had ordered her to be silent about a celebrity case there.) “The Westchester County District Attorney’s Office had little to say about the incident yesterday,” it noted.
As the Viscome family grieved, they came to believe they’d found a conflict of interest for the Westchester district attorney responsible with deciding whether and how to prosecute the case: They began to hear whispers that Jeanine Pirro’s daughter, Kiki, was at the party. However, they didn’t see that in police records.
One person who was at the party, who asked that they not be identified by name, told NOTUS that Pirro’s daughter was not at the party. This person also expressed deep regret at what happened, saying, “I was just a kid.”
Then there was the fact that Pirro’s office said the Porzio home’s two teenagers weren’t among the six partygoers who were caught lying to police. But suspicions were raised when people discovered that the homeowners, John and Ellen Porzio, donated $1,045 to Pirro’s most recent reelection campaign. And when it came out that Pirro had personally known the Porzios for more than a decade and lived nearby, her office promptly rejected any notion that Pirro would appoint a special prosecutor.
Pirro’s prosecutors failed to secure an indictment against Rukaj nearly three months later, with her office claiming it was “shocked” at the grand jury’s decision but adding that the office “accepted it within their purview to make.”
By August 2002, a petition made its way around the town demanding that Pirro reopen the case. A former football teammate of Viscome’s, even at 17, was aware enough of the legal battle to tell The Journal News that they “botched it all up.”
Ralph Martinelli, then-publisher of Westchester Magazine, wrote to the local Pelham Sun that “this story is a no-win story for all, but at the center, is a lying District Attorney who has the look of a deer caught in the headlights of an approaching car.”
The New York Times further scrutinized Pirro’s handling of the case.
“There was obvious injury that was visible,” Jonathan Lovett, a lawyer for the Viscome family, was quoted as saying in The Times. “If I go to Jeanine Pirro’s office and punch her in the face and knock her down on the back of her head, do you seriously think I wouldn’t be arrested in five minutes or less?”
The family sued the partygoers and homeowners, and Lovett claimed to reporters in public statements that prosecutors hadn’t called two witnesses they knew about before the grand jury who could attest to the large swollen marks on the dead boy’s face indicating he’d been hit.
When public outrage began to boil over, Pirro and a prosecutor, Patricia Murphy, met with residents at a video rental store to inform them that there was no evidence Rukaj had actually intended to cause his classmate’s death.
Pirro’s attempted indictment “was a joke,” the boy’s uncle now recalls. “What’s that saying? ‘You can indict a ham sandwich?’”
Throughout the weeks and months that followed Viscome’s death, Pirro claimed her office couldn’t prosecute any of the teens involved, because New York state hadn’t criminalized lying to police officers.
In September 2002, The Journal News reported that Pirro “has desperately tried to reach out to the Viscome family, who have met with her three times but will not meet with her again.”
Raymond Viscome told NOTUS this week that Pirro “absolutely” shouldn’t be a U.S. attorney.
“She doesn’t belong in that position,” he said. “Pirro’s power was just incredible. She’ll run over anybody and do anything. Whatever it takes to protect her image is what she’s going to do.”
The case only created more questions after Pirro’s prosecutors, under public pressure, gave it a second go with a lower misdemeanor assault charge, and Rukaj pleaded guilty in a way that would ensure youthful offender status that would keep his record clean.
The judge sentenced the teenager in March 2003 to 100 hours of community service and a one-year conditional discharge — less than an assistant district attorney recommended. It was later discovered that Harrison Town Court Judge John Voetsch, who moonlighted as a real estate agent, listed the Rukaj family’s $2.5-million home on the market just two months later. Voetsch admitted in court papers that his dealmaking “cast doubt on the impartiality of his sentencing decision.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia did not respond to written questions about this matter, nor did Pirro’s daughter, who is now a bankruptcy attorney in Manhattan.
David Hall, who was the Harrison police chief at the time, still lays all the blame on the teenagers.
“Why didn’t they just call 9-1-1 before? Probably to cover their ass because they were all drinking and underage. They all fucked up. They’re gonna have to live with this,” he told NOTUS.
But he staunchly defends Pirro’s work on the case.
“I thought they handled it properly. She worked her ass off. She did a very good job as a district attorney. I was very pleased with her office,” he said. “I think she’ll do a great job in a new role. I think she deserves it. Although, I don’t know who would leave Fox. She was making millions. What the hell do you want that job for?”
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Jose Pagliery is a reporter at NOTUS.