May 21, 2003 - Patty Webster thought the Mashantucket Pequots loved the way she was running their Mystic Hilton hotel. Her good friend, Richard A. "Skip" Hayward, the tribe's chairman and a regular in the hotel lounge when the Mashantuckets bought the Hilton in 1997, told her to run it the way she always had. 

Three years later, Webster, the general manager, and two other key hotel employees were fired amid accusations of financial wrongdoing. 

Testifying in a monthlong civil trial in Norwich Superior Court, Webster said the Mashantuckets manufactured the charges after she fired a tribal member's relative, a cafeteria attendant named Mary Kilgore who Webster said was abusive to other employees and nearly ran over a pregnant woman in the parking lot of the Norwich Inn & Spa, which the tribe also owns. 

Then, Webster testified, A. Searle Field, a senior tribal official, told other hotel employees the management team was fired for financial wrongdoing but that the tribe decided not to press criminal charges. 

During the trial, which has involved top tribal officials and dozens of other witnesses, the three former employees asserted the tribe has ruined their careers by implying they are thieves. They say the tribe should compensate them, in the millions of dollars, for lost wages and other damages. 

A six-member jury began deliberations Tuesday in the case against the Pequot Mystic Hotel LLC and Field, who was managing the tribe's enterprises when Webster, Assistant General Manager Frank DelGreco and Comptroller John Mulcahy were fired. 

Webster and the others are claiming slander, defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. 

The case was heard in Superior Court rather than tribal court because the hotel group is not on the Mashantucket reservation. The jury got a rare look at some of the inner workings of the powerful American Indian owners of Foxwoods Resort Casino. 

Judge Joseph Q. Koletsky is presiding over the case, which has been classified as "complex" litigation. 

"Short of taking their lives, there is nothing worse the tribe could have done to Patty, Frank and John," the hotel managers' attorney, Jacques J. Parenteau, said during closing arguments. 

Webster, general manager of the Hilton since the early 1990s, said the tribe never renegotiated her contract or asked about the extent of her "signing privileges" or the other benefits she enjoyed while working for the previous owners, Fisher Hotel Group. 

In addition to her salary of more than $200,000 a year, she said she had a company car, free dry-cleaning, the authority to buy gifts for hotel employees and to sign for other items, as well as a $7,000 travel and clothing allowance. 

Some of the items in dispute include 150 box lunches for a Cutler Middle School field trip, $1,200 in baby shower gifts for DelGreco, and cigars, a Coach purse and a laptop computer, all purchased for employees on special occasions. 

Webster also authorized $3,400 in hotel employee time and materials to build a ramp for a handicapped employee's spouse and took personal trips to Disneyland and other resorts. 

Parenteau said such "signing privileges" are standard for executives in the hotel industry. 

He recounted the testimony of Hayward, now the Mashantucket vice chairman, who initiated the purchase of the hotel because he liked the property. 

"Skip Hayward was a supporter," he said. "Nobody went to Skip Hayward with these allegations. By the time the decision was conveyed to him, it was already a fait accompli." 

Parenteau said Anthony Beltran, a tribal councilor, and his employee, Richard F. Sebastian, plotted the managers' departure. He said Beltran told Webster she was too independent, didn't like the tribe's interference and that he was going to see to it she was on the tribal council's agenda. 

Two tribal agencies -- the inspector general's office and the internal audit authority -- started investigating hotel expenses around that time, but Parenteau said the tribe called off the investigations before they were complete and fired the three managers. 

Parenteau said the tribe sought out a confidential informant, a former employee of the Norwich Spa named Bret Margrove, who also worked in Hayward's package store in Stonington. 

Using information Margrove provided, Parenteau said the investigators manufactured a case against his clients. Once they were fired, Parenteau said Field approached Mulcahy, the comptroller, with an affidavit prepared by the tribe's lead attorney, Jackson T. King, saying Mulcahy had no knowledge of Webster's $7,000 travel and clothing allowance. 

Mulcahy, who had told the investigators he knew about the account, refused to sign, even though he was offered four weeks' severance pay in exchange, Parenteau said. 

Attorney David Williams, who represented the hotel group and Field, said Webster grew too comfortable after the tribe bought the hotel. 

"Patty Webster now had at the Mystic Hilton something she didn't have in the six years under the Fisher Hotel Group," Williams said. "She ran it knowing Skip Hayward loved the place and no one was looking over her shoulder. ... She got greedy." 

Williams said that for Webster and the others to prove their case, the jury would have to believe many of the witnesses had lied. Some of those witnesses included former federal agents who work for the tribe's inspector general and Searle, an attorney who represented then-U.S. Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. on the Senate Watergate Committee and was chief counsel for the Select Committee on Intelligence. He noted the three managers were "employees at will," meaning the tribe could fire them at any time. 

"Ask yourself, why would these people participate in a sham investigation when they had the right to terminate them (Webster, DelCreco and Mulcahy) at any time?" Williams said. 

Webster is deeply depressed, suffers nightmares and flashbacks and cannot even drive by a hotel, Parenteau said. DelGreco developed a painful ulcer after he was fired, and Mulcahy fell apart when he was asked about his termination during an interview for another job, according to Parenteau. 

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