For churches, charities, hard-luck tale had sting

With a terrible cough and eyes tired from crying, she told the priest a wrenching story: She had left a cruel husband in New Hampshire. Now, she and her two young children were living in a truck. Friendless and without family, she had run out of money and had no gas to keep the truck running for heat. She had just found a waitressing job, though, and a landlord who agreed to rent her a couple of rooms for $150 a week. All she needed was a few hundred dollars to get by. The landlord had come with her to St. Thomas the Apostle to vouch for her.

The Rev. Richard Burton examined her Social Security card. The landlord gave his address. Burton pulled out his wallet and gave the man $150 cash Burton had just withdrawn from the ATM, his personal spending money for the next couple of weeks.

''It's not my general order to do this type of thing," Burton said. ''But every once in a while you have just a moment. Here's a moment we can be Christ to them. She gave me a big hug. He shook my hand, and he said, 'You're doing a good thing; this is what Christianity is all about.' "

Police say the duo are crack addicts and unusually gifted con artists who have coaxed thousands of dollars from churches and charities in at least 17 North Shore communities since early November. Joseph F. Brennan, 49, is now in custody, arrested Feb. 23 in North Reading on outstanding warrants. He is awaiting fraud charges. The woman, 32-year-old Kimberly Dow, has so far eluded authorities.

Since Brennan's arrest, the calls have come pouring in, police say. Workers at the Salvation Army in Salem told police that at Christmastime, Dow drove away with a load of toys after tearfully explaining she had nothing for her children. She cajoled two members of the St. Vincent de Paul Society in Beverly to meet her at a nearby Stop & Shop store on a Saturday night in mid-February and give her a $200 check and vouchers for groceries. In January, she wandered into Free Christian Church in Andover during coffee hour on Sunday morning. She collected another $150 with her desperate story.

''The lady was able to turn on the faucets pretty well and get upset," said Middleton Chief Paul F. Armitage.

Middleton police Captain James DiGianvittorio said 25 to 30 churches and charitable organizations have reported giving money to a duo matching descriptions of Dow and Brennan, from East Boston to Ipswich. Many people took pity on them not just once, he said, but three or four times over several months.

''I didn't think it was going to mushroom into what it did; it's amazing," he said of the investigation. ''I've talked to different religious organizations across the North Shore today, and they pretty much all say the same thing: The scam was very well perpetrated. The story was very believable."

He said the scammers victimized parishes and nonprofits in Middleton, Gloucester, East Boston, Reading, Stoneham, Saugus, Revere, Ipswich, Topsfield, Wakefield, Andover, Marblehead, Peabody, Danvers, Lynnfield, Melrose, and Malden.

Organizations in Manchester-by-the-Sea and Essex told police the two tried to get money from them, but were unsuccessful, he said.

Churches and charities are used to desperate people begging for help in a pinch. Many take care to approach each case with a degree of skepticism and to check each story as thoroughly as possible. But clergy and volunteers who gave money to Dow and Brennan said the pair seemed to do everything right.

They had answers for tough questions: Dow couldn't get a motel for the night because she had already given money to her new landlord. They had identification. They could tell the same story over and over with no inconsistencies.

Every gesture, every glance was flawlessly executed, several of the victims said. Burton, who served 15 years as a naval officer before entering the priesthood, said he almost never gives people cash, but Dow called twice before she arrived in person, and each time her story was exactly the same. He watched the two carefully during their meeting in the rectory office of St. Thomas the Apostle Church as he picked up a phone book to look up the number of the Swampscott restaurant where Dow said she got her waitressing job.

He waited for Dow to explain that the woman who had hired her wasn't there and that Burton wouldn't be able to get confirmation. She didn't. He waited for the two to look at each other. They didn't. Burton bought their story and closed the phone book.

''Boy, they were good," he said.

But the truth finally caught up to them in late February, police say, after the Rev. Michael Hobson of St. Agnes Parish in Middleton wrote a check to Dow for a nebulizer she said she needed for her asthma. A clerk at All Checks Cashed in Lynn called Hobson to get his authorization to cash the check.

''In passing, the [clerk] said, 'You're not the only church Dow and Brennan have been cashing checks from,"' DiGianvittorio said.

Hobson gave the OK to cash the check -- he still wanted to give Dow the benefit of the doubt, police said. But that night, he called Armitage, who is one of his parishioners. The Middleton chief sent DiGianvittorio out to investigate the next day.

After speaking to workers at the check-cashing store, DiGianvittorio learned that the duo had cashed thousands of dollars in checks from an array of churches and charities. After running a background check, he discovered that Dow had an outstanding larceny warrant in New Hampshire. Brennan also turned out to have an outstanding warrant on a felony drug charge in Ipswich.

The scammers happened to return to St. Agnes, asking for Hobson, who wasn't there. But as they pulled out of the parking lot, the church secretary, who knew of the investigation, called Middleton police with their license plate number. Minutes later, the North Reading police pulled Brennan over and discovered that he was driving an unregistered, uninsured Isuzu Rodeo with a suspended license. He was arrested and arraigned on the motor vehicle charges and the drug charge. He is now being held on $5,000 cash bail in the Middleton House of Correction, authorities said.

Dow agreed to go with the Middleton police station for questioning. But just then, Dow appeared to suffer a serious asthma attack, North Reading police said, so an ambulance was called to take her to Winchester Hospital.

''She told Captain DiGianvittorio that she had her medical problems straightened out, she would come to the Middleton Police Station and talk further about what his concerns were," Armitage said. ''Nobody, of course, believed her. But they didn't have a warrant for her."

DiGianvittorio said both face multiple charges of larceny by false pretenses. He urged anyone who has seen Dow, or who has been victimized, to contact police.

Lisa Wangsness can be reached at lwangsness@globe.com.