York, PA - It began with a brutal murder.
David and Lorraine Donivan were killed in late December 2005 in Plattsburgh, N.Y. -- their bodies found in their business, a furniture warehouse. David Donivan had been stabbed 32 times. His wife's body had 10 stab wounds and was gutted. A former employee, Edward Dashnaw, was convicted April 2, 2007, after a three-month-long trial, according to news reports.
William Donivan attended the trial. David was his brother.
After the trial, he signed up with the state's Survivors Speaker Bureau, established by the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency's Office of Victims' Services. That, and his background as a state police officer, former police chief in
Dallastown and private investigator, led to him getting a job with the Office of Victims' Services investigating claims for compensation filed by crime victims.
"My family knows what it's like to be a victim of crime," Donivan, 60, said on the porch of his West Manchester Township home.
He went to work for the agency in September 2008. His job entailed reviewing claims and investigating to see whether victims or their families who had filed for compensation were entitled to it. The agency's policies forbid it from granting compensation to victims who were engaged in criminal activity at the time of the crime.
By March 2009, Donivan was out of a job.
And he was facing felony charges of falsifying records to deny crime victims
compensation.
He says he did nothing wrong, that he had done his job and in the cases cited in charges, did what he could do to prevent victims' compensation money from going to criminals or their families.
"I'm not perfect, but everything I did at victims' compensation, I did to help people, to help the victims of crime," he said.
It's a complicated case. But at the heart of it, according to the state Attorney General's office, is whether Donivan falsified documents to deny the families
of crime victims benefits from the Office of Victim's Services.
Donivan has a different view. He believes the case is about whether the Office of Victims Services has given money to people who were victimized while they were committing a crime.
Under the state's regulations, crime victims qualify for compensation if they report the crime promptly, cooperate with police and were not committing a crime at the time. The example often cited is a drug dealer shot while selling drugs.
Donivan said in the cases in which he is charged with falsifying records the victims were engaged in illegal activity. But because police didn't charge them, he said, the office determined that their claims should be paid.
It would have been difficult to
charge the victims in the cases he denied. They are all dead. The claims had been filed by their families.
On Nov. 23, 2008, Donald Royster was shot and killed in the Strip District in Pittsburgh. Royster had a criminal record -- including drug charges, possessing an unregistered handgun and possessing body armor. He was shot with two different weapons.
Royster's family filed for compensation and that's where Donivan came in. He called the Pittsburgh detective assigned to the case, Thomas Leheny.
Here is where versions of the story diverge.
Donivan said Leheny told him he didn't take the Office of Victims Services forms seriously because the office's investigators were "rubber-stampers." The detective told him, according to
Donivan, that police didn't trust the office because it had often provided compensation to criminals. Leheny further told him that the victim was the head of a drug ring in the city's Hill District and that his murder was a hit.
Donivan wanted the office to reject the claim made by Royster's family.
According to the affidavit of probable cause filed to support the charges against Donivan, his boss at the office, Lynne Shiner, asked Donivan to document his conversation with the detective, a request that, Shiner noted, made Donivan uncomfortable. Later, when Shiner asked Donivan's supervisor for the notes of the conversation, they were found to be missing from the file. Donivan told her, according to the affidavit, that he had removed
the notes because he didn't want to "sell Detective Leheny out."
He later provided documentation, but the new version indicated that Leheny was "only joking," according to the affidavit.
Later, the affidavit states, Leheny told Shiner that Donivan's account of their conversation was "entirely false." He also told Shiner that it was apparent from their conversation that Donivan was trying to get information to deny the claim. Leheny added that Royster had not been involved in criminal activity at the time of his murder.
The other cases involved the same crime. On Sept. 2, 2008, Jose Rivera and Kenneth Lockwood were executed on the second floor of an auto-parts store in Philadelphia.
The store was a known drug house. Rivera and Lockwood were found with their hands duct-taped behind their backs and bags over their heads, each shot, point-blank, in the back of the head. Their families filed for compensation.
According to court records, Donivan told his superiors that a Philadelphia police officer, Kathy Battle, told him that a confidential informant had told police the murders were the result of a drug rip-off gone bad. He said Battle told him that the informant told police that men who were going to steal a drug shipment arrived at the address too soon and killed Rivera and Lockwood.
Battle, a victims' assistance officer in the city's homicide unit, later told investigators that she never told Donivan about any confidential informant and that police did not have one in this case. Even if one existed, she said, police procedure would prohibit her from revealing that information. The homicide detective assigned to the case confirmed that, court records stated.
Battle further told investigators that she did inform Donivan that the Rivera and Lockwood had criminal records, but she did not say anything about a drug shipment or any criminal activity at the time of the men's deaths.
Donivan said last Saturday that that may be true, that he did speak with Battle, but that he got the information about the confidential informant and the drug shipment from an undercover cop. He said the case was suspicious from the beginning -- the drug house, the fact that Rivera and Lockwood had criminal records, the report that the man who found the bodies called his father, owner of the auto-parts shop, before calling police.
The undercover cop told him that the case was one of a drug rip-off gone bad.
And that would be reason to deny the claims filed by the victims' families.
The charges, Donivan said, were filed because he opposed compensating people for being victims of crime while engaged in criminal activity. He said the office often awards compensation to criminals or their families. In some cases, he said, the compensation is awarded because police decline to file charges against victims -- in homicide cases, it's impossible.
He said he had gone to an investigative reporter in Harrisburg and was planning to blow the whistle when the charges were filed.
"I wasn't going to change what I believe in," he said. "I believe it's wrong to give victims' money to criminals."
The case, in Dauphin County court, won't go to trial until sometime next year, his lawyer, York attorney Joanne Floyd, said.
The Office of Victims' Services declined to discuss the case. Spokeswoman Tara Mead said the office is obligated to pass on cases such as this to the state attorney general's office for prosecution. The state attorney general's office did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Donivan, though, did speak out.
"I'm going to fight this," he said. "I'm going to do the best I can to expose what they've done. I'm not going to roll over and go away."
About the Office of Victims' Services
The Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency's Office of Victims' Services compensates crime victims and their families to help them survive the financial impact of crime.
The agency reported in its latest annual report that it had distributed nearly $14.2 million to victims or their families in the fiscal year of 2008-2009. The money is intended to help pay for medical bills or other expenses, including, in cases involving homicides, funeral costs.
The money comes from fees collected from those convicted of crimes and from a state allocation.
-- Source: Office of Victims's Services annual report for 2008-2009 fiscal year.
The charges
William Donivan, a former state trooper, chief of police of Dallastown and private investigator, faces four charges:
--- Tampering with public records or information.
--- Tampering with records or identification.
--- Unlawful use of a computer.
--- Unsworn falsification to authorities.
Donivan denies the allegations.
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