Senator Kruger Allegedly Steals Families, Too
With the fallout over State Senator Carl Kruger’s indictment, the media has been exploring his personal life a whole lot more than his financial connections. But when your personal life is as weird as Kruger’s appears to be, it’s easy to see why. The New York Times is no exception, recently running a piece on his twisted relationship with Mill Basin’s Turano family.
The article gives a detailed history on how Kruger met the Turanos and explored how the family depended on Kruger financially. The Turano family consists of mother Dorothy, 73, her two sons Michael, 49, and Gerard, 47, two gynecologists. The article goes back in time to when Dorothy’s first marriage, and an ex-husband who said Kruger stole his family.
“Until he came into the picture,” said Michael Turano, Sr., whose marriage to Dorothy ended in 1985, “we were a very happy family.”
However, others would disagree. Kruger’s longtime lawyer, Brafman, “The Turano marriage was broken for more than 10 years before Mr. Kruger even met the family.”
The estranged former husband still says Kruger was the root of their problematic marriage. “I could see the writing on the wall,” he said. “He was cultivating my wife and two kids as his family-to-be.”
The article spends a lot of space on exploring the awkward situation at the 139 Bassett Avenue mansion, where Dorothy, her two never-married sons and (unofficially) Kruger lived together. But they avoided the brash outing of Carl Kruger as gay lover to Michael Turano in which the New York Post reveled.
But that doesn’t mean they didn’t dabble:
The Turanos are variously described by friends, neighbors and colleagues as the senator’s social acquaintances, lovers or surrogate relatives.
In 2002, Michael Turano testified that Mr. Kruger was his “best friend.” Benjamin Brafman, Mr. Kruger’s lawyer, says the senator “often describes the Turanos as his family,” though in depositions Mr. Kruger has understated how long he has known them and how frequently he visited their home.
(A process server testified that he saw Mr. Kruger at the Bassett Avenue home, on several occasions, “in his pajamas coming out of a bedroom.”)
Investigators, who tapped the senator’s cellphone for months, have both muddied and clarified the situation, suggesting that Mr. Kruger, 61, had his most intimate relationship with Michael, 49, picking him up at the office and fielding phone calls from him throughout the day. “Kruger spoke with Michael Turano,” court records say, “in a manner that revealed that they relied on and supported one another.”
But when asked whether Mr. Kruger was a close friend of her son, Ms. Turano, through the security intercom at her front door, said: “He was my friend. That’s why I don’t understand about this. Whatever comes out is going to be so wrong.”
What exactly is being implied by all of these accusations is pretty obvious, yet it’s unknown.
As weird as it all is, we’re waiting to see how much deeper Kruger’s financial ties go, and what other politicians get dragged down with the state senator.
