Killer Dads by Mary Papenfuss Read Free Book Online

edge. He had just confessed to Dorothy Schimel, a friend of his late mother and a woman he had known since he was a boy growing up in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, that he had lost millions she had entrusted to him to invest. He told her that “someone” had threatened his life. The shaken Schimel, who had come to Parente’s office with tax forms in hand so he could complete and file them for her just days before the deadline, would later tell police that he had become involved with the “wrong kind of people.”
    Bill usually kept it together. The unassuming, slightly nerdy, bespectacled lawyer with kindly, almost-grandfatherly eyes had a reputation as a bit of square—but that worked to his advantage in his business. His suits wereexpensive, but understated and traditional, nothing flamboyant, nothing that shouted the net worth most believed he had earned after decades of hard work in a lucrative practice on Manhattan’s East Side. He dined well, vacationed in his condo in the Hamptons, lived in a spacious, white clapboard Long Island home in upscale Garden City, but he had the quiet, modest manner of a boy with a respectable middle-class upbringing, the only child of a New York State trooper and a stay-at-home mom, both of them Italian immigrants. He was under five foot ten and thick, tending toward pudgy. He was the kind of guy who usually kept his suit coat on, even sitting alone in his office and not expecting visitors. “You never, ever, saw him with his shirt out,” said Jonathan Bachrach, a lawyer who once shared a suite of law offices with Parente. “If anything, he was a bit too much on the side of uptight and organized.”
    People trusted Bill. He had a reputation as a devoted family man and frequently stood out as the sober, meticulous adult in any situation. He rarely socialized with colleagues, opting whenever he could to head home instead to be with his family. “The only thing he was passionate about was his family,” said Bachrach. “It was always his girls. They were his life. I’ve never seen a man as proud of his family as Bill was.” In a previous workplace, Parente was responsible for collecting the rent from 12 lawyers who shared offices along with secretaries and a receptionist. Each month he tracked down the dollars from each suitemate, meeting the rent deadlines, carefully accounting for what was paid and what was owed. “Bill was considered the most trustworthy, and certainly the most reliable among our group of attorneys,” said Bachrach. “We looked to him as the final word on suite management. As far as the other lawyers were concerned, whatever Bill said was solid.” As for his own work, Parente rarely pushed, rarely appeared to be selling anything, a facet of his personality that, paradoxically, tended to boost his business.
    He started out soon after graduation from Brooklyn Law School with his own practice begun with another attorney, Alan Kornblau, whom he had been introduced to by a cousin. The men eventually struck out on their own with separate businesses but stayed lifelong friends. Parente started out as a real estate and tax attorney, but soon also served as an investment advisor to scores of clients. Most of his investment customers were referred to him by others, and he gave investment advice matter-of-factly, at times, reluctantly.“I had to press him to talk about stocks,” said Bachrach. “The only time he put the bite on me was to buy church raffle tickets. Every few months there would be tickets to something.”

    Figure 5.1. A young Stephanie poses with her little sister in 2003 for a holiday shot that would become their Christmas card that year. Reprinted by permission from Portraits by Joanne.
    By 2009 Parente was managing millions of investment dollars entrusted to him by a growing pool of clients. Parente pitched penny stocks to some investors, but also “bridge loans” earmarked for