Beatty, you magnificent bastard! You did it. You outlasted them. It took 14 years, but the defrocked Main Line attorney was finally released from jail Friday afternoon by order of Delaware County Judge Joe Cronin.
“It’s nice to be free,” said H. Beatty Chadwick Friday, grinning like a Cheshire cat.
In his time behind bars for civil contempt, he out-determined eight judges and went through attorneys like Kleenex. It was his last one, Mike Malloy, who managed to spring him.
When word came down from Cronin that he was ordering Chadwick’s release despite his continued refusal to tell the court where he’d hidden his millions during his early 1990s divorce battle, a handful of reporters hustled out to the county prison in Thornbury.
During his 14 years in jail, Chadwick endeared himself to prison guards, administrators and other prisoners by virtue of his impeccable manners and by making himself useful. He worked in the prison law library.
When news came of his impending release, guards and other staff gathered to bid him adieu. And when he walked out a free man, they applauded.
So highly did prison Superintendent John Reilly think of his longtime guest that he ordered him and his lawyer a police escort to keep him from being bothered by pesky reporters.
Turned out, though, Beatty was only too happy to talk to the media about himself and how pleased he was to finally be free.
In Mike Malloy’s third-floor office in Media, Chadwick wore the same old suit and the same old smile that he had in court last Tuesday and he answered just about every question thrown at him.
Except, of course, one.
What happened to the money?
It was hard to imagine this slightly stooped 73-year-old gentleman ever harming a fly, let alone throwing a punch at sheriff’s deputies. But that’s what the record shows happened some years ago.
It was back when he was on the lam in 1994, defying a court order to appear, that sheriff’s deputies finally caught up with him at his dentist’s office in Philadelphia.
According to the disbarment proceedings against him, Beatty first denied who he was and when the deputies asked him to stand up, he “jumped up and started punching wildly.” He gave one deputy a black eye, but got two himself in return and a bloody nose to boot. He was subsequently convicted of simple assault.
In taking his law license, a panel of lawyers declared his behavior in court and out, “deceitful, dishonest and prejudicial to the administration of justice.”
And yet, here he sat — calm, humble, cheerful and even grateful.
He betrayed not an ounce of animosity toward anyone — not the original judge who ordered him locked up, not his ex-wife, not the columnist sitting in front of him who called him everything from an “arrogant liar” to “the most stubborn man in America.”
He had and has a legion of supporters. They include fellow inmates, prison guards, old clients, businessmen, journalists, lawyers and layman.
Some were simply offended that we have a legal system that allows a man to be locked up indefinitely without a trial on the say-so of a single judge.
Others couldn’t help but admire Chadwick’s mule-like determination to stick to his guns. He told his daffy, money-grubbing second wife that she would never get a dime of his dough and he meant it.
So it cost him 14 years of his life. A promise is a promise.
He sent some $2.5 million overseas then claimed he lost it in some sort of Spanish real-estate boondoggle.
But the money was tracked moving from Philadelphia to Gibraltar to New York, then Luxembourg, London and Panama.
His own lawyer, Malloy, in trying to win Chadwick his freedom suggested letting him go and simply following him around. Nothing else has worked, he said.
Friday, Beatty said he has no income, no money, except what he can expect from Social Security.
“I have to get out and make a living,” he said.
He hopes to practice law again. When he was disbarred, his license was suspended for five years. That suspension will end early next year.
But being disbarred didn’t stop Chadwick from offering his advice and legal knowledge to hundreds of fellow inmates over the years.
Malloy said our D.A.’s office will probably be very happy not to have to deal with all the appeals Beatty helped other prisoners write while he was incarcerated. He’s probably right.
For the time being, the old man will live in King of Prussia with his 41-year-old son, William, who arrived at Malloy’s office while his father talked to press.
The son hugged his dad and choked back tears.
“It’s been such a roller coaster ride,” said the younger, red-haired and bearded Chadwick.
The man who first put Chadwick behind bars, former Judge Joe Labrum, is happily retired now. But he said he was “disappointed” by Cronin’s decision to free the man.
“I still think he knows where the money is and he should tell. Until he does, he should be in jail.”
Obviously, not everyone agrees.
“I hope he has the money and I hope he lives long enough to spend every dime of it,” said a friend of mine, a woman, on the day Chadwick was released. “Women,” she added smiling, “can be such bitches.”
And men, sons of bitches.
H. Beatty Chadwick is a magnificent one.
And, finally, at large again.
Gil Spencer’s column appears Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at gspencer@delcotimes.com
