Maurice Possley, his wife, Cathleen Falsani, and their adopted son, Vasco Possley
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Chicago Tribune investigative reporter Maurice Possley [See Biography ], unable to bear to see the newspaper he worked at for almost 25 years dismantled like it was a traveling circus; with reduced space, budgets cut, staff slashed, made the most difficult decision of his 36-year journalism career by submitting his resignation in July, 2008 to seek a better life outside of the newspaper industry and far away from the sharp knife of Tribune owner Sam Zell.
Did this Pulitzer Prize winning journalist make the right choice by taking a buyout?
Pull up a chair; I have a story to tell.
While deciding on his next move, Possley freelanced for the Chicago Sun-Times before accepting a position in the fall of 2008 to teach a course on the causes of wrongful convictions at the University of Michigan Law School, a course he taught along with Sam Gross, professor of Law at the University.
During the cold Michigan winter of February, 2008, Possley, by sheer happenstance, crossed paths with Kathleen "Cookie" Ridolfi, executive director of the Northern California Innocence Project at Santa Clara University School of Law. The next month, she extended to him an offer for a one-year position as an investigator researcher at NCIP to work on an investigative project on prosecutorial misconduct. Possley accepted and began in the fall of 2009.
Uncertain what the future would hold just a few short months ago, things were beginning to fall into place for this former Tribune staffer.
In March, 2008, Posley signed a contract to write a non-fiction book about a WWII soldier who had volunteered to lead a mission into Munich in the waning days of the war to capture and kill Adolf Hitler. Once his teaching duties ended at the University of Michigan Law School, he began in April writing the book with his co-author, John Woodbridge.
Possley wasn’t the only journalist in the family. His wife, Cathleen Falsani, was a religion writer for the Chicago Sun-Times who had written a book called ``The God Factor: Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People’’ and donated part of her advance to a charity in Blantyre, Malawi, that works to get street kids--orphans--off the streets and reunite them with extended family members.
This is where the plot thickens.
In 2006, Falsani bought a raffle ticket at a fundraiser for a Chicago non-governmental organization that does micro-finance in Tanzania and Kenya; and lo and behold she won--a two week trip to Africa for two. They both flew off in the fall of 2007 and extended it for an additional week, in part to take a side trip to Malawi and visit the charity. While there, fate intervened, when they were introduced to a tiny 9-year-old boy, gaunt, noticeably unhealthy, weighing a mere 35 pounds, but wielding a big bright smile- larger than life-who was an orphan and who was dying of a hole in his heart. His name was Vasco Sylvester.
Once back on American soil, Possley’s wife wrote a column, chronicling the plight of Vasco Sylvester and other children like him who are helpless living in a country in which heart surgery simply doesn’t exist. So moved by her column, a hospital came forward and volunteered their services (at no cost to the patient) provided they were able to get the young boy to Chicago. After negotiating through a number of bureaucratic hoops, Possley and his wife finally managed to get Vasco Sylvester to the Windy City in April, 2009.
The next logical step would have been for Possley and his wife to adopt the parentless boy. But the law in Malawi, at the time, prohibited adoption of children unless the adoptive parents lived in the country for three years. Having eliminated the thought of adopting him, their next plan of attack was to make sure he underwent surgery and then return him to his homeland two weeks later.
But the young boy’s condition worsened; he came down with malaria, so surgery was delayed until June. During the ensuing months, fate intervened yet again when the Malawi High Court overturned the residency law. The change in the residency law came about when American singer Madonna after failing to meet the residency requirements, went on an international crusade to have the law changed so that she would be able to adopt a 4 year-old girl from Malawi, Chifundo ``Mercy’’ James. The pop star won her appeal in June, 2009.
Encouraged by the new ruling, Possley and his wife immediately put in motion plans to adopt Vasco. The surgery, performed at Hope Children's Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois, just outside Chicago was successful and the couple moved to California (Laguna Beach) in July 2009, just in time for Possley to begin working at the Northern California Innocence Project (NCIP). By October, 2009, he finished the manuscript of his World War II book, ``Hitler in the Crosshairs: A GI’s Story of Courage and Faith.’’
After many nights tossing and turning, I’m sure, the news they were anxiously awaiting finally arrived.
In May 2010, an email landed in their inbox, saying they had a court date in Malawi in three weeks. Traveling faster than a speed of light, they got to Malawi and a month later, returned with their adopted son--now named, Vasco Fitzmaurice Mark David Possley.
In October 2010, NCIP published the prosecutorial misconduct study--the largest state study of the issue ever published. Possley’s contract, meanwhile, had been renewed for a second year, which paved the way for a follow up study in the spring of 2011.
Funding at NCIP, however, dried up and his contract wasn’t renewed for 2012.
But as one door slammed shut, another flew open.
John Jay College of Criminal Justice's Center on Media, Crime and Justice hired Possley to a part-time contract to inform and educate journalists on the issue of pretrial detention, a position he held previously on the subject of gun violence.
And in late 2011, Sam Gross, the professor he previously taught with, asked for his assistance on a project at the University of Michigan Law School and Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions, a project Gross had been working on for several years and was planning on going public with--The National Registry of Exonerations.
Possley worked part-time for them until late spring when he became a full-time writer and researcher for the Registry, the largest collection of exonerated defendants ever assembled.
He and his wife still live in Laguna Beach. Vasco, their adopted son, is doing extremely well, putting on some much needed weight; he’s learned to skateboard, surf, snowboard and has even displayed some dazzling foot work on the soccer field. Possley says in three years he has gone from speaking not a word of English to being fluent as he prepares for the 7th grade in the fall.
Simply remarkable, considering the youngster never attended school before. Though he still needs to catch up in certain areas of his education, he is miraculously flourishing in school.
The continued death march of the newspaper industry finally caught up with his wife, Cathleen, who was laid off by the Chicago Sun-Times (she had been submitting columns from California ) and now works (and cyber commutes) as director of new media for Sojourners Magazine, which is based in Washington, D.C. She continues to write books.
Having spent a good chunk of his adult life at a daily newspaper, how much does Possley still miss the routine and exhilaration of meeting deadlines and working on investigative pieces?
``I do miss the work I was doing’’ Possley tells me, `` and the friends whose lives were intertwined with mine in the workplace. But I haven't looked back and have no regrets. I have discovered it is possible to outrun the avalanche.’’
In 2008, Possley was one of two lead members of a team of Chicago Tribune reporters awarded the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for a series of articles on hazardous children’s products that prompted numerous recalls as well as the most comprehensive overhaul of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in the history of that agency.
Previously, he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist on three different occasions: once for public service (2000), and twice for national reporting (2001, 2007) — for his work on wrongful convictions and wrongful executions.
In addition to his book on Hitler, Possley authored two other nonfiction works: ``Everybody Pays: Two Men, One Murder and the Price of Truth’’ and ``The Brown’s Chicken Massacre’’ .
He is a 1972 graduate of Loyola University in Chicago, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in communications.
-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
July 31, 2012
Mr. Possley I desperately need your help. I was falsely prosecuted, convicted and I spent 6 years 10 months and 18 days in Calif. State Prison for a crime where the prosecutor and my "appointed attorney" suppressed evidence to prove my innocence. The evidence (1) video tape, (2) alleged victim's statement, (3) Verizon Cellular telephone records. I was released on May 11, 2016 on an incredible matter. Please contact me directly at,(214)662-6180. I remain, DBWms
Posted by: Donald B. Williams | 06/30/2016 at 01:28 PM