STOUT

Christmas Eve - that's when Vanessa Stout first became concerned about her job. While her boss, Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann, passed out coffee mugs to staffers, his wife, Alyssa Lenhoff, glared at Stout from across the room.

Stout worked in the General Services division of the AG's office in Columbus, inside Rhodes Tower, an intimidating structure of glass and black marble across the street from the Statehouse. A single mother with an 11th grade education, Stout's last job had been running the front desk at an Extended Stay. Working for the AG was the best job she'd ever had. The man who'd helped her get it, Anthony Gutierrez, was a close friend of Dann's. The men lived near each other in Youngstown and shared an apartment outside Columbus. So Stout asked Gutierrez why Alyssa was giving her the stink eye.

Stout would later claim that Gutierrez told her that Alyssa Lenhoff had recently discovered that Dann was having an affair with his scheduler - and that, when confronted, Dann had admitted that Gutierrez and their other roommate, the AG's communications director, Leo Jennings, were also cheating on their spouses. And now Lenhoff apparently assumed that Stout was sleeping with Gutierrez - and Lenhoff wanted her and the scheduler transferred out of the building.

This account comes from Stout's attorney, who says it's what Stout told the investigators who have been trying to unravel various allegations involving attorney general's office staffers. The investigator's findings are due to be released later this week.

This much is already known: In January, Stout and Dann's scheduler, Jessica Utovich, were transferred. Gutierrez and Jennings were suspended in early April, after news of an internal investigation leaked to reporters. And journalists from across the state are knocking on doors, asking about Utovich and whether she really was wearing pajamas at Dann's apartment the night another young woman woke up in Gutierrez's bed, hung over, with her pants unbuttoned.

Day after day, more details emerge, casting a shadow over the office of an attorney general who won a surprising upset against a strong Republican candidate and spent his first year waging war against all the right people. Dann finds himself caught in a distracting scandal and increasingly hysterical media storm; one prominent commenter has already called for Dann's resignation, well before his role in or knowledge of the incidents in question has been made clear. Still, at the least, he appears guilty of some highly questionable hirings.

MARC DANN GREW UP in Shaker Heights, but earned a reputation as a charismatic politician in Youngstown, where he practiced law. He became a member of the Liberty Board of Education, where his three kids went to school. In 2000 he ran for Ohio Senate, but lost to Tim Ryan. When Ryan rode a wave of union support into the US Congress in 2002, the state senate's Democratic caucus appointed Dann to finish out his term. Dann was reelected in 2004.

He soon made a name for himself. In 2005, when Gov. Bob Taft refused to release incriminating documents related to the $50 million his golfing buddy, Tom Noe, invested into rare coins for the Bureau of Workers' Compensation, Dann sued the governor and exposed deep-rooted corruption within the Republican Party. Taft was charged with several misdemeanors. Noe, who kicked back hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to local GOP candidates, went to prison. Local Dems used the scandal to help take back the Governor's mansion in '06, and Dann won a surprising victory against Betty Montgomery in the AG race, partly by reminding voters that she had been the auditor when Noe was looting the BWC.

Since taking office in January 2007, Dann has done more to defend the interests of Ohioans than Republican predecessor Jim Petro did over his entire tenure. Dann personally negotiated the largest securities fraud settlement in state history from AAL/Time Warner, which was forced to fork over $175 million after deflating the value of state pension funds by merging with AOL. Cleveland loves Dann because he dared to take on predatory lenders who have turned this city into a maze of foreclosed homes. In 2007, he launched the first Predatory Lending Task Force and sued 10 mortgage companies that had pressured real-estate appraisers to inflate the value of homes. In January of this year, he filed suit against lending giant Freddie Mac, which defrauded state pension funds by investing in sub-prime home loans. He's also declared war on charter schools that divert millions of dollars of taxpayers' money into private companies while providing students with a sometimes less-than-stellar education.

All along, however, sources inside the AG's office have fed reporters tips about strange and possibly illegal behavior by staffers - people who should have known better than to risk embarrassing their high-profile boss. But what's come out about them since raises questions about why Dann, the anti-corruption crusader, hired them in the first place.

At the top of that list are Anthony Gutierrez and Leo Jennings.

UTOVICH

Gutierrez was an odd pick for director of general services, the office that oversees equipment, communications and vehicles used by AG staffers. Gutierrez had no experience in government, and the Youngstown construction business he'd managed had thousands of dollars in liens against it.

At the time he was hired, Gutierrez's license was still suspended from a September 2006 drunk-driving incident (Dann picked him up at a Highway Patrol post, after Gutierrez blew a 0.149 and was arrested). Plus, there was the matter of the $5,024 in unpaid state taxes he owed to the Collections Enforcement Counsel - a branch of the Attorney General's office.

He got his license back in April, just in time to pick up his state-owned SUV, and the AG's office agreed to settle his tax bill for $3,095, for which he promptly wrote a check. He owed the IRS over $20,000, too, but the feds agreed to a payment plan.

Dann has defended his aide, once telling The Plain Dealer that Gutierrez had saved the office "literally thousands, if not millions" of dollars. He's definitely saved himself some money. The Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation didn't charge him for repairs to an SUV that he crashed into a guardrail, on October 10, 2007.

Leo Jennings, Dann's communications director, was also an odd choice, given his background. In 2001, he was working as a political consultant for Mahoning County Commissioner Vickie Sherlock when reporters discovered that Sherlock was charging hotel stays and dinners with Jennings to her county credit card. The scandal broke apart Jennings' family. But Dann was there to represent him in the divorce (Dann also represented Sherlock when auditors picked apart her credit statements). Jennings got hitched again last summer, in Vegas, during a trip to an AG conference.

Friends from low places are not uncommon in politics, though it's debatable whether that makes Dann's trust in his more or less understandable. But complicating matters for the attorney general is the fact that he didn't just hire these men, he shared an apartment with them too.

ON MARCH 31, Columbus Dispatch reporter Alan Johnson got a tip about a complaint that had just been filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity office, a department charged with assuring non-threatening work environments for state workers. A woman named Cindy Stankoski, who had worked for Gutierrez in the general services department, had told human resources about an incident at Dann's apartment, in Gutierrez's bedroom.

According to the complaint, Stankoski told an EEO official that, on the evening of Sept. 10, 2007, Gutierrez pressured her into going out with him for a few drinks after work. While they drank Crown Royal and Grey Goose, Dann called Gutierrez's cell phone. Dann then spoke to Stankoski and invited her over to their apartment for pizza. Stankoski agreed, and Gutierrez drove her to the apartment in Dublin, about 20 minutes outside Columbus.

While they ate, Dann's scheduler, Jessica Utovich, walked in without knocking. She was wearing "p.j.'s", the EEO official wrote in the report. Stankoski then stepped outside and texted a coworker to come pick her up, but the coworker was too far away to oblige. Marooned at Dann's apartment, Stankoski was told she could crash in Gutierrez' first-floor bedroom. She thought Gutierrez would sleep on the couch, but in the morning, she "woke up with pants unbuttoned," according to the report. Next to her was Gutierrez, in his underwear. She was unsure what had happened. She told the EEO officials that she "didn't feel violated but could have been."

A few days after the incident, the complaint says, she confronted Gutierrez and asked what he had done to her when she was passed out. He told her he hadn't done anything, but then said, according to Stankoski, "I wanted to fuck you." When she asked him why he had hired her in the first place, Gutierrez said, "ass and tits got [you] the job."

The report "kind of confirmed our suspicions," says James Nash, Johnson's reporting partner at the Dispatch. "It feeds into some of the things we're hearing about Marc Dann."

The Sunday, April 6 Dispatch carried Nash and Johnson's article on the complaint. For a whole day, no other paper picked up the story. (Later, Johnson was told that Leo Jennings was making calls to the Vindicator, Youngstown's daily paper, threatening legal action if they reprinted the piece.) But that first day, Johnson and Nash wondered if the story would end there. "But then Dann suspended Gutierrez," says Johnson, "and that got the ball rolling. And it confirmed that we were on the right track."

The coverage that followed made much of a single line from Johnson and Nash's article: "Already there was Dann's scheduler, Jessica Utovich, who, according to the complaint, "walked in [with] p.j.'s and laptop.'"

GUTIERREZ

Jennings was quoted as saying that Utovich was there for work-related purposes only. "She was there to deliver schedules," he said. And the EEO official who logged the complaint admitted she wrote "p.j.'s" when Stankoski had actually meant sweatpants. But neither clarification did much to slow the building scandal.

"Frankly, I don't think it matters," says Johnson. "Stankoski told them that Jessica appeared as if she was there to stay the night. It reminds me of Bill Clinton [arguing semantics] a little. Was it something other than pajamas? Sweats? I'm not sure the distinction is important."

WHEN STAFFING THE general services office, Gutierrez was willing to give other people with limited experience a chance, too. In August 2007, he hired 26-year-old Cindy Stankoski as a telecommunications assistant, placing her in charge of running all telephone services and video-conferencing equipment. Though Stankoski, by all accounts, was motivated and hard-working, her only post-high school education was attained at the Ohio State School of Cosmetology. Her previous job was at a salon.

Stankoski was later transferred, and in November, Gutierrez replaced her with 25-year-old Vanessa Stout. Gutierrez had met Stout after backing his SUV into her father's car at the Tuttles Grove Apartments, where Gutierrez lived with Dann and Jennings. Stout lived in the rooms across from them. In her application, Stout wrote that she had completed three years of high school and was previously in charge of sorting laundry and removing soiled items from rooms at the hotel where she worked.

Stankoski and Stout had good state jobs - and Gutierrez took every opportunity to remind them that they owed him, according to their attorney, Rex Elliott, who provided some details not contained in the EEO report that was the basis of the Dispatch's April '07 story.

"Cindy didn't want to go home with Gutierrez on Sept. 10," says Elliott. "She was still working at the salon three nights a week and it was her night off. But he was pressuring her to come along, and Marc Dann told her to come, and she thought, "How is this going to affect my job if I don't go?'"

According to Elliott, when she arrived at the Dublin apartment, Dann offered her shots of tequila. She was already drunk, so she declined and ate instead. "At that point, Jessica Utovich walks into the apartment," continues Elliott. "Cindy thought it was odd that Jessica just walked in. She's wearing sweatpants and lays down on the floor with her laptop. In her interview with investigators last Tuesday, Cindy said [that] at that time she thought, "My God, Jessica is here with Dann. I'm here with Gutierrez. They think it's a double date.'"

Stankoski stepped outside to text her friend to pick her up. The texts were later shown to investigators: "Girl im in a weird situation. Iem w marc dann ... drunnnnk."

In October, Elliott says, Stankoski was shopping at Easton Town Center when she received several calls from Gutierrez. He was at the Ocean Club, a bar attached to the mall, with Jennings and a young female attorney from the AG's office. The woman got on the phone, Elliott says, and told Stankoski to come have a few drinks with them. When Stankoski arrived, according to Elliott, she saw Jennings making out with the young attorney.

Elliott says, "Gutierrez tells Cindy that he didn't have sex with her when she fell asleep in his bedroom. "My intention was to fuck you,' he told her. "But I decided not to.'"

The next day, Stankoski told investigators, Gutierrez came to work reeking of alcohol, with dried vomit on his nose. He told her that he'd fallen asleep behind the wheel and crashed his state-issued SUV into a guard rail. An invoice shows that Gutierrez dropped off a smashed SUV to be repaired on Oct. 10. The State Highway Patrol is investigating the incident.

Gutierrez made unwanted advances on Stankoski almost daily, Elliott claims. Then, apparently growing tired of being rejected, he transferred Stankoski to another job - she was told it was a promotion, but Elliott says it wasn't - and hired Vanessa Stout in her place.

STANKOSKI

Immediately, Elliott says, Gutierrez shifted his attention to Stout. He started with the invites for drinks after work, but quickly escalated to more offensive behavior. One day, he called Stout and said she should come over to the apartment because he had a present for her. "Vanessa is very concerned by now, so she brings a friend with her," says Elliott. "He doesn't say anything for awhile. But when they get ready to leave, he says, "Hold on.' He goes into his bedroom and comes back with a purple dildo in a gift bag. Vanessa says, "Do you want me to thank you or tell you to fuck off?' She leaves and throws the dildo away. At work, Gutierrez keeps bringing it up. "I bought you a present, I think I'm entitled to see you use it,' he tells her."

After Stout was transferred out of the building in January, she and Stankoski decided to tell human resources about what was going on, before they lost their jobs. "The first thing [the HR reps] say to Cindy is, "We've been waiting for you to come to us for a long time.' [Stankoski's friend had shown HR her text messages from Dann's apartment on Sept. 10.] It's HR's job to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen and here they've known about it for months and have done nothing."

Later, Gutierrez bumped into Stout's boyfriend at a bar. "Gutierrez told him he didn't appreciate what Vanessa was saying," Elliott says. "She took that as a threat."

Stankoski and Stout also contacted Columbus police, but no charges have been brought.

Dann placed Gutierrez on paid leave April 7, the day after the Dispatch's first story. On April 8, Dann ignored suggestions from Gov. Ted Strickland to hire an outside investigator and instead asked assistant attorneys general Ben Espy and Julie Pfieffer to oversee the inquiry into alleged sexual misconduct. On April 14, Dann suspended Jennings with pay, "as a result of new information received."

LAST SUMMER, Dispatch reporter Nash was given a print out of an old version of Jessica Utovich's MySpace page (her page was later switched to private, then removed). On the page, Nash says, were snapshots from Dann's inauguration, and blog posts that struck him and Johnson as oddly familiar with the attorney general. Flirtatious, even.

Apparently, the reporters continue to pursue rumors about Utovich's relationship with Dann. "The MySpace page, with its supposed smoking-gun revelations, has taken on a life of its own," Nash says in an e-mail.

A former Avon Lake resident and Cuyahoga Community College student, 28-year-old Jessica Utovich was active in the Ohio Democratic Party before being hired as Dann's scheduler in January '07. Clearly the AG's workload and the nature of Utovich's position would have kept them in frequent contact, and working closely could easily have led to a friendly professional relationship.

But the thin line between friendly and inappropriate may be the next phase of the coverage of Dann's office. Thanks to The Plain Dealer's attorney, David Marburger, reporters have had access to more than 2,200 e-mails between AG's office staffers, including many between Utovich and Dann. And unfortunately for Dann, some call to mind Nash's description of Utovich's purported MySpace blog posts - overly familiar.

Sept. 4: Please do not EVER tell me to stop acting emotional. I try to do my job the best that I can and you shit on it. Your emotional crap is what makes everyone else so miserable.

Sept. 5: You can't have two. I feel ditched all over again. It's the hair. ... It's because she has better hair, isn't it? ... I'm kinda hurt not being the bff anymore.

Sept. 16: Do your kids not like me?

DANN

Oct. 17: I hate you.

Oct. 22, Utovich to Dann: I need to find someone to stay on my butt for the next 3 years till graduation if I'm going to succeed. Isn't that horrible? Dann: You will suceed. Utovich: Is that because I can spell succeed and you can't? Seriously, I need someone to stay on top of me. Please?

Oct. 24, Utovich to Dann: You hung up on me. Dann: You wouldn't stop talking. Utovich: You are supposed to promise. Please? Please say yes Jessica, I promise.

To date Utovich has ignored interview requests, including Free Times'. At press time it wasn't even clear whether she had spoken to the internal investigators. So for now the e-mails - some of which are partially redacted, others devoid of any context - stand on their own, and Dann can only wonder how much damage his reputation has suffered, and whether it's permanent.

BUT HERE'S THE DILEMMA the media face, or should be facing: Much of what's "known" comes from recollections of comments, some made by Gutierrez, the man whose apparent untrustworthiness is arguably the foundation of the current scandal.

Alyssa Lenhoff, Dann's wife and the director of the journalism program at Youngstown State, noted this in her e-mail response to Free Times' request for comment on whether she'd played a role in Stankoski, Stout or Utovich's transfers: "The only comment I would make is that this is false. I never asked Marc nor anyone else to transfer anyone. Are you really writing a cover story based on double (maybe triple) hearsay that happens to be false? I've been a journalist for 20 years and I am a little surprised by how you described your cover story. Maybe I am missing something."

Gutierrez spoke briefly in his driveway, long enough to say, "I would love to talk. But I already spoke to another reporter off the record and it got me in a lot of trouble."

Dann has said little - not surprising, considering that the investigators he appointed are still working (last week they said that they'd interviewed 23 witnesses and were preparing a report to be released this week). Utovich has avoided the press. Jennings did not respond to Free Times' requests for comment; nor did Ed Simpson, Dann's chief of staff. Spokesmen in the AG's office and the Dann for Ohio campaign refused to comment on "rumors." (One also noted that Utovich's transfer was ordered by Ed Simpson, Dann's chief of staff, because Simpson "thought it was time for her to move on.")

Chris Redfern, head of the Ohio Democratic Party, released this statement: "No one has accused Marc Dann of doing anything illegal. No one has accused Marc Dann of being a bad AG. Look at his accomplishments, already. You know what they're accusing him of? Having bad friends. As soon as this report comes out, you'll see terminations of employees who have done things that are inappropriate. Then, Dann will have the opportunity to chart his own course for the rest of his term."

It remains to be seen, though, whether the report will really silence those who are already calling for Dann's head.

Plain Dealer columnist Brent Larkin worked himself into a lather two weeks ago: "That decision [to conduct an in-house investigation] was a huge political blunder that not only raises suspicions of a cover-up, but will undermine the credibility of virtually everything Dann does in his important job as the state's top lawyer," Larkin wrote in the April 16 edition. He went on to mention rumors that Strickland is already selecting replacements to fill Dann's position, if he is forced to resign. "Even if Dann lasts until 2010, it's difficult to imagine him winning a second term."

A Baltimore Sun writer went so far as to speculate that "an exquisitely sleazy scandal in the Ohio Attorney General's office could ripple through the November election with potentially disastrous consequences for the Democrats' national ticket."

At a brief public appearance two weeks ago, a Dayton Daily News reporter asked Dann point-blank if he intended to resign. "That is just ridiculous," he said. "I'm doing a great job for the people of the state of Ohio. We are holding people who hurt consumers accountable, we're taking on predatory lenders ... and [resigning] never crossed my mind." He abruptly ended the press conference and disappeared behind a phalanx of AG staffers.

CORRECTION: The quote attributed to the Baltimore Sun actually came from a Chicago Tribune writer, Andrew Zajac.