Regret joins relief over Magno

Joseph Magno (right) stands with his lawyer, Donald DeMayo, at his arraignment in Cambridge District Court last February. (GEORGE RIZER/GLOBE STAFF/FILE 2006)

Hours after learning that Joseph Magno had died Monday evening, dozens of students, parents, and teachers gathered at the WAVM-FM studios in Maynard High School.

Principal John Lent said two tables of solemn students held vigil, trying to fathom how the exuberant teacher who helped found their radio station could be the same person who sat in court earlier that day accused of molesting a child.

"Personally, I never saw anything but Joe's best, but others have come forward with stories, horrible stories," said Lent, who taught alongside Magno, 66, since 1968. "There are mixed feelings. There will probably always be mixed feelings. . . . The most tragic part is that people will never really know what happened."

Dwight French, 53, said he has been haunted for nearly 40 years by boyhood encounters with Magno as a student at Maynard High. But while French talks frankly about being abused, he also acknowledges all the teacher accomplished in his 43-year career in Maynard schools.

"I think in a lot of ways there was a good Joe and a bad Joe," said French. "Good Joe tried to do good enough to make up for what bad Joe did."

From interviews with 50 people who knew Magno as students since the 1960s, a picture emerges of a larger-than-life figure who could be generous to a fault or as merciless as a schoolyard bully.

Standing 6 feet tall and weighing 260 pounds at the time of his arrest early last January, Magno was not just physically imposing. As longtime steward of the high school radio station and the force behind events that drew national celebrities, Magno helped raise thousands of dollars for local charities while commanding respect in this community of 10,500.

But for 15 men, including French and a 17-year-old senior who stepped forward last year saying he had been raped, Joseph Magno had a very dark side. Six of the 15 alleged victims have spoken to the Globe and say Magno parlayed paternal relationships to prey on teenage boys.

After his death, Magno's lawyers, Don DeMayo and Mark Shea, denied the charges as vehemently as ever.

"He looked at me and said, 'You don't know how stressful it is to be falsely accused,' " Shea said in court last week. "He wanted this trial."

Jim Hill, 48, was a student at Maynard High when Magno launched WAVM.

"I got in on the ground floor," Hill said. "It was an exciting time, and we felt like we were doing something big."

Magno had been in the Maynard school system for 10 years, working as library director at the junior high and faculty adviser to the high school Audio Visual Club, when two students approached him in 1973 about creating a radio station. He embraced the idea and mobilized the school community. Students raised money through raffles and teachers donated time and materials to create the station's offices.

On April 22, 1974, WAVM went on the air at 91.7 FM.

Hill said "Mags," as everyone called him, was demanding but had an uncanny ability to nurture talent. He credits Magno with inspiring his career as a writer covering the entertainment industry.

"Ya, the guy was loud," Hill said. "But you have to understand that when you come from a bland, little, white-bread town like Maynard, having a big, fat, hot-blooded . . . guy swear at you for screwing up is, well, colorful and exciting."

Some students also found it unnerving.

Maria Terris, who in the early 1980s was among the first girls to hold a high post at the radio station, recalled times that Magno threw books and knocked students on the head with his red-jeweled class ring.

Her sister, Gina Wellington, said she saw Magno grab a boy by his neck and pin him against a door. "That was it for me. I was scared. I walked out one day and didn't come back," Wellington said.

But while many students commented on Magno's short fuse, they also said he usually had a reason to be ticked off -- someone missing a scheduled show, shirking management responsibilities, letting a curse word slip on the air.

"So many kids were drawn to the station," said Terris. "Believe it or not, even with all the yelling, it was just a better place to be than home for some."

They appreciated how Magno waved off accolades, giving all the credit for the station's success to the students, and how he trusted them to operate the equipment without constantly hovering.

Terris and Wellington said they never suspected that Magno was capable of sexual abuse. Of all the students interviewed by the Globe, the only ones who described incidents of sexual abuse by Magno were the ones who said they had been victims themselves.

Hill, whose father was an elementary school principal in town, said Magno never targeted him. But in retrospect, Hill said, he was not surprised by the allegations.

"It was clear that Magno had his favorites, all towheaded blondes," he said. "People talked. Here's this guy that had no wife, no kids . . . but we looked at him as the perpetual adolescent with money to burn. He was like this big kid who would always buy pizzas, hang out with the guys, and tell dirty jokes."

Of the former students who have alleged sexual abuse, six agreed to speak to the Globe. Of them, three agreed to have their names be used. The others requested anonymity, saying they had not told family or co-workers of their experiences.

The six told similar stories. Most had troubled home lives, were welcomed warmly by Magno, and quickly made part of his "inner circle."

Although Magno would usually buy dinner for all students who stayed after school -- depending on the schedule, 10 to 30 could be in the studio -- he took only a select few out to eat or on trips.

French, who now lives in Fitchburg, vividly recalls being a 13-year-old troublemaker in 1967 when Magno asked him to be part of the AV Club. French said he was an awkward eighth-grader at Maynard's Emerson-Fowler Junior High, desperate to wipe away the stigma of being a "bad kid."

"Joe Magno is a special guy. He hung around with all the good kids, drove nice cars. If you were in with him, then you were in," said French. "You got certain privileges when you were one of Magno's boys."

Magno would often get kids out of classes and asked some, including French, to stay after school to help move projectors and television equipment. When Magno gave the boys a ride home, French always seemed to be the last to be dropped off.

After a couple of rides, French said, Magno began asking provocative questions and encouraged him to masturbate. French said he acted uninterested and uncomfortable, and soon Magno no longer asked him to stay after school and started making fun of him in front of the other students.

"I thought someone finally saw my value," French said. "Then he turned on me, cast me out of the tribe. I felt like I didn't make the cut. After that, I got really messed up."

Mark Zbink, 47, was active in sports, not the radio station, when he was in Maynard High in the 1970s. But Zbink said he would tag along with his AV Club friends and get rides home with Magno.

When he was 14 years old, Zbink said, Magno signed him out of school early one day and drove him to a house near Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. The trip was cut short, Zbink said, when he fought off Magno's forceful advances.

"I should have . . . told my parents, but I didn't. I was so embarrassed. What do they say, never trust anyone over 30? Well, that's how I thought then . . . but for some reason I trusted Magno."

Mike Sale, 42, a 1982 Maynard High graduate who is now a television and film editor, said he could understand why people would trust Magno.

WAVM was the crown jewel in a town with an inferiority complex, Sale said in a phone interview.

"People jumped on this because, finally, Maynard had something that Concord or Sudbury didn't," he said. "Joe took these average kids and made them the head of a radio station. People could hear them around town, and they became not only the big man on campus but local celebrities."

Sale described Magno as a "father figure" who devoted long hours, sometimes unpaid, to oversee the station. Sale said Magno helped him become a station manager, and the two remained in touch after Sale graduated and went on to work on such shows and films as "The Wonder Years," "Judging Amy," and "Tommy Boy."

Sale said that he was never accosted, but his friends were among the men who filed police reports against Magno.

While feeling bitter that Magno "used me to recruit other people," Sale noted that the scandal "nullifies all the good things he did."

Such as the annual telethon to benefit local families in need that Magno launched in 1978 with the local newspaper. For 40 hours straight each December, students broadcast over WAVM and the local-access cable TV station, conducting interviews and playing music. Over its nearly three decades, the fund-raiser has raised more than $450,000.

In 1982 Magno began another tradition, a spring awards banquet to honor students who worked at the radio station. To raise the event's profile, he devised the Youth Achievement Award, presented to child movie and television stars. Ricky Schroder, Corey Feldman, Anthony Michael Hall, and Jonathan Taylor Thomas were among the celebrities Magno brought to Maynard.

"Joe had this way of making things happen," said Tom Whalen, a former School Committee member whose six children all worked on WAVM. "He worked his tail off for those kids and for that station."

Whalen recalled an incident when his son was serving as sports editor for the station.

"Bobby Orr called the house. One of the older kids answered the phone and asked who's calling. When he says he's Bobby Orr, the kid says, 'Yeah, right, and I'm George Washington.' "

Whalen, who moved to Maine in 1994, was a member of the School Committee that promoted Magno to director of media services in 1972. He said that until the charges were filed last year, he had never heard reports of Magno abusing students.

"This whole thing has torn that community apart, from the inside out," he said. "That station means everything to the town."

WAVM had been the subject of stories in newspapers across the country in the months just before Magno's arrest.

The little high school station was taking on the Federal Communications Commission, fighting a decision to award its frequency to a Christian broadcast company. Magno enlisted the alumni and friends of the station in the battle. Hundreds of letters and calls poured into the FCC.

Then, at a time when WAVM's fate was still uncertain, Magno became the story.

On Jan. 5 last year, a 17-year-old student told his therapist that a teacher had abused him sexually. The therapist then called Maynard police. A half-hour later, the boy met with officers at the Police Station.

According to court documents obtained by the Globe, the boy said he began working on the radio station in fall 2001, when he was 13. After Magno learned the boy was having problems with his father, he "took an unusual interest" in the boy's life, "telephoning him in the morning when he awoke, at night when he went to bed, and directing him what to do during the day."

The documents quoted the boy as saying the abuse started during a car ride when Magno groped him. Abuse continued "almost daily," according to court papers, at the teacher's home in Hudson, the school, and in his car at various parking lots.

Magno told the teenager that if he didn't go with him "on the car rides, Magno would move on to his younger brother," the court papers say.

When the teenager was a junior, Magno gave him a Mustang, followed by a Mercury Mountaineer after the teenager was in an accident with the Mustang.

Defense attorney DeMayo said last week that the boy's story didn't make sense. After the alleged abuse ended, Magno was asked to be the child's confirmation sponsor and was given a plaque with the boy's picture as a token of appreciation, DeMayo said.

"The timeline doesn't add up," he said. "We would have proved it in court."

In documents filed with the court, Magno's lawyers note that the teenager gave police the names of three other boys who he said had been assaulted by Magno, but all three boys denied that they had been abused.

One of them said that he had known Magno since the fifth grade and he "would never hurt anyone or anything," the defense documents state.

Hours after Magno's body was found in his Hudson home, the WAVM studios became a place where Maynard residents could share their thoughts and memories. Public officials, who had been subject to a gag order for the last year, were finally allowed to speak, but now they were reluctant to do so.

"For so long, people couldn't verbalize what they thought or believed," said Lent. "Now that has become ingrained in people here. They don't want to talk because they don't want to be wrong. . . . No one really knows what happened."

"For some students, Joe Magno was a helpful teacher. Given the information in the press, for some students, he was an abuser," said Superintendent Mark Masterson.

Eric Arntzen , a program manager at WAVM, said his classmates learned of Magno's death through the grapevine.

"There was no formal announcement, but it's such a small place, word gets around pretty quick," the sophomore said. "We're just looking to put it all behind us. There's mainly relief that people don't have to be put through a trial."

WAVM won its battle with the FCC, and under a deal with the University of Massachusetts at Boston , which shares its frequency, it will soon have a new antenna and a larger reach. The station primarily plays music, and has been silent thus far on its founder.

Magno's lawyers said their client had been suffering from an array of health problems, including diabetes and heart trouble. They said the stress of the looming trial took a heavy toll on him. Doctors initially ruled his death the result of a heart attack. He was 66.

Former student Mike Sale said he did not want Magno remembered simply as a one-dimensional monster. "This is a tragic story of a sick man who had a part of him that's wonderful."

Melissa Beecher can be reached at mbeecher@globe.com.