Patricia Mulcahy

Word Count 979

I sat stunned on the couch in my Brooklyn living room. My former boss, a congressional candidate I worked for right out of college as a press secretary, was featured on the television show FBI: Most Wanted with a substantial ransom on his head. 

 I barely recognized the man whose campaign poster had featured a photo of the square-jawed, wavy-haired Ted Kennedy look alike with his three daughters at his side, next to the headline: “At Last -- a Man to Believe In!”  Now he wore his hair slicked back, like a lounge singer. His broad face was saggy with the weight of the twenty years since I had seen him.  

The truth is, if Mac Buckley had been a truly viable congressional candidate, he never would have hired me. As far as I could tell, there were no other candidates for the position. I never dreamed of working in politics; my goal was to become an investigative journalist, but I couldn’t even get a job writing obituaries. A friendly reporter at the AP referred me to Mac’s campaign. 

But working with him turned out to be the most interesting experience of my young life. Besides running a busy defense practice with a partner, and running for office, Buckley volunteered in the boxing program at the Police Athletic League and ran a boxing clinic at his own expense in a Hartford housing project. Our appropriately macho campaign slogan, “X Marks the Spot,” encouraged voters to check the box next to Buckley’s name on the ballot. 

All four of us on the campaign staff went to see Mac’s fighters in action. One of them, Marlon “Magic Man” Starling, went on to win the World Welterweight title three times. Never did I imagine how enthralling it could be to watch two men pummel each other. 

Another welterweight, Donny Nelson, made the cover of Ring magazine, a signal honor for young boxers on the way to national fame. Not long after his appearance in Ring, Donny Nelson was shot in a street altercation over the theft of a bicycle. He was twenty-four, a sweet kid who often hung out at campaign headquarters in the back of the old Victorian house that served as Mac’s law office. 

Everyone on our staff went to the funeral together. I shuddered when Donny’s mother fainted in the church’s aisle. From the pulpit, the preacher thundered, “In our community, we have churches on every corner—and liquor stores next door!” In the casket, Donny’s dark brown skin had faded in death to a dusty grey—the color of a pigeon’s coat. 

The most devastating event of the campaign was not in fact Mac’s loss, which was not objectively surprising, even if his supporters—and staff—felt he was the better man. What stayed with me was not the many hours slaving over press releases or writing speeches for the candidate on topics about which I knew little: What devastated me was Donny’s funeral. 

So what happened to the man I’d worked for? The Mac I knew was a proud crusader, an underdog as a Republican in an overwhelmingly Democratic district whose incumbent congressman was a creature of the local political machine, with paltry legislative accomplishments. 

Was the crusader’s cloak merely a disguise for a profoundly troubled man? From the Boston Globe: “If Mac Buckley could run away, if he could disappear with your money and live a secret life, then whom could you trust? What could possibly happen that would more deeply shatter your faith in the legal system, in your fellow man, even?” 

When he first disappeared, people speculated that Buckley had run afoul of one of his clients, whose ranks included drug dealers as well as Mafia kingpins. As it turned out, there were at least four lawsuits pending against him, including ones from longtime friends who had entrusted Mac with $350,000 to invest on their behalf, and a man awaiting justice for his daughter, stabbed with an ice pick by her husband. 

While on the lam, he drove to his father’s grave in upstate New York, before heading south. In Tennessee, he purchased a $1,500 diamond bracelet -- for himself! -- with a credit card in the name of a woman who hired him to defend her son for the rape and stabbing of a former babysitter. On a shopping spree in Tampa, Florida, he bought a box of top-flight Cuban cigars in nearby Yuba City. It was as if Mac Buckley wanted to get caught. Eventually, he was charged with first-degree larceny and forgery. At his trial, the record showed that he had thirty-one different bank accounts. There seemed to be no end to the lengths he would go to, to waste other people’s lives and money.

Mac’s law partner Hubie Santos told the judge that his then-client had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and alcohol addiction. Buckley was disbarred and let out on bail before being sentenced to fifteen months in prison; he served two and was also remanded to seven years of “transitional supervision” as well as psychiatric treatment. 

Mac Buckley died in the spring of 2022 at age 81. His official obituary noted: “Above all, Mac was a beloved husband, father, and grandfather who valued time with his family. He faithfully attended his five daughters’ sporting events and loved fishing, gardening, and playing tennis with his grandchildren.”

 In other obituaries, commentators in the boxing media noted that Buckley made a comeback as a trainer after he got out of prison. He also worked as a substitute teacher in the same neighborhood where some of his boxers lived. Was there still some measure of the man who tried to help inner-city kids better themselves? 

 I wanted to believe there was, despite all the ways in which he’d robbed so many people not just of money and a legal defense, but also of innocence, belief, and trust.   

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Patricia formed the editorial consulting service Brooklyn Books after over twenty years in book publishing. She started as a temp at Farrar Straus and Giroux and left as Editor in Chief at Doubleday. Her authors included bestselling crime writers James Lee Burke and Michael Connelly.