Donovan sentenced to prison in forgery scheme
May 17—SALEM — He was once an MIT professor, and, his lawyer said, an adviser to presidents.
He owned multiple luxury properties, hundreds of acres of land, and controlled millions of dollars — a fortune made taking small companies public, on patents he held, and on business books and seminars he produced.
But to his children and his first wife, John Donovan Sr. was "malicious to the core," a man who, once confronted with allegations that he'd abused one of his daughters, engaged in a 20-year campaign of revenge, his late son's best friend told the judge.
On Monday, Donovan Sr. learned he will spend the next two years in state prison, the penalty imposed by a Salem Superior Court judge for a 2016 scheme to swindle his late son's widow and grandchildren out of millions by filing what a jury concluded earlier this month were more than two dozen forged documents at the South Essex Registry of Deeds in Salem.
"Mr. Donovan is 80 years old and undoubtedly contributed much to society, but for 20 years he has left a trail of tears everywhere he has been," Judge Salim Tabit said as he imposed the sentence. "It is my sincere hope that trail ends today."
Donovan Sr., of Hamilton, was found guilty of a dozen counts, including forgery and uttering, and attempt to commit a crime — the theft of his late son's estate and an effort to get out from under multiple financial obligations and a civil judgment.
His son, John III, the owner of the Manchester Athletic Club, died in 2015 of a rare form of adrenal cancer. As his estate was attempting to sell parcels of land to the Trust for Public Lands the following year, 25 documents — deeds, trust documents, and a will codicil — appeared at the Salem Registry of Deeds.
Prosecutors contended — and jurors found — that Donovan Sr. had orchestrated the creation and filing of those forgeries in a scheme to take control of his son's estate and force his son's widow to give him access to his grandchildren.
The verdict came following a nearly four-week trial, where witness after witness — former employees, notaries, and members of his own family — recalled their interactions with Donovan Sr. and pointed out issue after issue with the documents.
Donovan Sr.'s defense contended that the allegations were part of a conspiracy to frame him to hide what he contended was tax fraud involving offshore trust funds created in the 1990s.
The defense was similar to claims made by Donovan Sr. over the past two decades of civil litigation with his children, in a still-ongoing effort to undo a settlement first reached in 2003.
New York financier Jason Konidaris, who was John Donovan III's best friend, read a statement on behalf of the family in which they described the decades of "stunningly malevolent conduct" by Donovan Sr. to "stain, smear and taint each of us with false, rehashed claims to distract everyone from his misconduct."
Megan Donovan, who could have lost her home had the documents not been detected, said she still lives in fear of Donovan Sr., who has been ordered to stay away from her and her children as a condition of his sentence. "I live in fear he has already done something we just have not yet discovered," she told the judge.
Prosecutor Jack Dawley said Donovan's history — including his 2007 conviction for filing a false police report in an attempt to frame his other son, James, for a self-inflicted gunshot wound — shows that he "will stop at nothing to harm his children."
While much of the sentencing hearing Monday was given over to the impact of Donovan Sr.'s crimes on his children and his late son's widow, Tabit said he was even more troubled by Donovan Sr.'s "frontal assault on the integrity of our entire system."
"Mr. Donovan believes that the rules do not apply to him," Tabit said as he sentenced him.
The prison term will be followed by three years of supervised probation.
Dawley and fellow prosecutor Kathryn Janssen had requested a two-year term in the house of correction, a sentence that would have entitled Donovan to seek parole after serving half of that time — something Tabit noted.
The judge said that a house of correction term would also have allowed Donovan Sr. to request that it be served at home, on a GPS monitor, or at a minimum security facility.
The state prison term — two years to two years and one day — will require him to serve most of that time.
His lawyer argued for probation and community service in a sentencing memorandum, telling the judge that at 80 and with serious health problems, including heart disease and prostate cancer, his client doesn't belong in jail.
Defense lawyer Robert Strasnick also told the judge his client was beaten on Sunday at the jail, suffering a black eye, and blamed an apparent update to Donovan's Wikipedia page over the weekend.
Donovan, as he has throughout his trial, wore the same green corduroy jacket and khaki pants for Monday's sentencing hearing, his hair askew.
For the first time, his current wife, Linda, who lives on a horse farm in Aiken, South Carolina, appeared in Salem Superior Court.
She and a friend, Will Graylin, sat together in the courtroom gallery. Both had written letters of support for Donovan Sr.
As Strasnick described his client's proposal to perform community service by teaching business skills to jail inmates and the current diminished financial circumstances he now claims, Linda Donovan tried to speak, raising her hand repeatedly and asking to speak, until Tabit pointed her out.
When told by Strasnick that she wanted to address the judge, she was turned down.
Donovan Sr. did not address the court during the hearing.
Tabit denied a request for a stay of the sentence pending an appeal, and Donovan, who has been in custody at the Middleton Jail since the verdict, was led back to a courtroom holding cell.
He did grant one final motion by Strasnick — a request to withdraw from the case and for appointment of a public defender to represent Donovan Sr. in his appeal.
Courts reporter Julie Manganis can be reached at 978-338-2521, by email at jmanganis@salemnews.com or on Twitter at @SNJulieManganis
Courts reporter Julie Manganis can be reached at 978-338-2521, by email at jmanganis@salemnews.com or on Twitter at @SNJulieManganis
