An Epic Downfall With Va. Roots

It started as a routine traffic stop, after a white Honda Civic zipped through a stoplight on Seminary Road in Alexandria one morning in May. But it became the drunken driving arrest heard 'round the world after the driver turned out to be a New York congressman on his way to visit his mistress and their 3-year-old love child.

So began the extreme fall from grace of Rep. Vito J. Fossella (R-N.Y.), who had a wife and three children on Staten Island and a once-promising political career. Whatever the outcome of his trial in Alexandria General District Court, set for this morning, that career has come to a screeching halt. Fossella, 43, is not running for reelection because of the ensuing scandal.

Fossella's arrest on a misdemeanor charge might not have made the front pages of New York's tabloids if Fossella hadn't blurted out to the Alexandria officer that "his daughter was sick and needed to go to the hospital." Fossella's only known children were in New York. And when an Alexandria woman, not an aide or family member, bailed him out of the city jail, a series of bombshells began exploding.

Fossella is facing a mandatory five-day jail sentence if convicted of blowing a 0.17 on a breath test -- twice the legal limit -- and his lawyers are challenging the technology behind the breath machine itself. It's an approach that has had some success across the country as the defense bar tries to understand how a computer can analyze a person's breath and devise a number that can put a driver behind bars.

But that has not been the focus of the New York media, which plunged hungrily into Fossella's arrest and uncovered some of the details that forced him to admit to the affair and to having a 3-year-old daughter. The combination of a politician charged with DUI, a love triangle and a child was like an early Christmas present to the New York tabloids.

" 'Vino' Vito Was Badly Blotto," "Wife May Veto Vito After Baby Shock" and "Defiant Vito: I Can Cheat and Run" the headlines shouted from May front pages of the New York Post and Daily News. Reporters and photographers camped outside the Cameron Station townhouse of mistress Laura Fay and chased her around the city until being shooed away by Alexandria police.

Neighbors of Fay's were reluctant this week to discuss that period in May and June when camera crews conducted 24-hour surveillance on their neighborhood, hoping to get a photo of the "shapely blonde," as the retired Air Force colonel was often described. Reporters staked out Alexandria and Fossella's home on Staten Island on Mother's Day to see where he would appear (neither place), and again on Father's Day (Staten Island).

Even Fay's return to her townhouse in mid-May, after Fossella had publicly acknowledged their affair, merited a story in the Daily News: "Back to Love Nest for Cheatin' Chick and Baby." Alexandria police were present to escort Fay past the media phalanx, the Daily News reported.

It was the Daily News that threw the most resources at the story, sending a squad of reporters to Northern Virginia and Staten Island to dig out details. The Post and Daily News examined the court file and learned that police said Fossella had blown a 0.17 on the breath test, and found the two-page narrative of the arrest from Alexandria Officer Jamie Gernatt.

Fossella had trouble reciting the alphabet from "D" to "T," Gernatt wrote, stumbled on some of the physical tests and blew a 0.133 on a field breath test. Taken to Fairfax County's Mount Vernon police station to be tested, because Alexandria's Intoxilyzer was broken, Fossella initially got an "invalid sample" reading but later blew a 0.17, Gernatt wrote.

The congressman told the officer that he was heading to Grimm Drive "because his daughter was sick and needed to go to the hospital." And Fay, initially "Vito's Mystery Pal" in the Post, was listed in court papers as the person who posted his bond.

The News soon reported that Fossella had been seen at the Logan Tavern in the District two hours before his arrest but was asked to leave because a friend with him was so drunk he fell and smashed a table. Both newspapers began digging into Fay's background as well.