Did Scott Stevens die because he was unable to rein in his own addictive need to gamble? Or was he the victim of a system carefully calibrated to prey on his weakness? Though he won occasional jackpots, some of them six figures, he lost far more-as much as $4.8 million in a single year. Over the next six years, his gambling hobby became an addiction. Back home, Stevens became a regular at the Mountaineer Casino. They brought the kids in the summer and made a family vacation of it by visiting the Grand Canyon, the Hoover Dam, and Disneyland. She liked shopping, sitting by the pool, even occasionally playing the slots with her husband. Scott and Stacy soon began making several trips a year to Vegas. On a subsequent trip, he hit a jackpot on a slot machine and was hooked. Stevens got his first taste of casino gambling while attending a 2006 trade show in Las Vegas. He spent time on weekends painting the high-school cafeteria and stripping the hallway floors. In addition to the soccer fields, he raised money to renovate the middle school, to build a new science lab, and to support the French Club’s trip to France. Stevens doted on his girls and threw himself into causes that benefited them. They married the following year, had three daughters, and settled into a comfortable life in Steubenville thanks to his position with Berkman’s company: a six-figure salary, three cars, two country-club memberships, vacations to Mexico. “Your credit is all you have,” he told her. When he first met Stacy, in 1988, he insisted that she pay off her credit-card debt immediately. He was meticulous about finances, both professionally and personally. He won the trust of the steel magnate Louis Berkman and worked his way up to the position of COO in Berkman’s company. A native of Rochester, New York, he earned a master’s degree in business and finance at the University of Rochester and built a successful career. S cott Stevens hadn’t always been a gambler.
Then he dialed 911 and told the dispatcher his plan. He unpacked his Browning semiautomatic 12-gauge shotgun, loaded it, and sat on one of the railroad ties that rimmed the parking lot. He took off his glasses, his glucose monitor, and his insulin pump-Stevens was a diabetic-and tucked them neatly into his blue thermal lunch bag with the sandwich and apple he hadn’t touched. “I love you.” He then texted the same message to each of his three daughters in succession. “I’m going to do it.” Click.Īt 4:01 p.m., Stevens texted Stacy. “Look, this is hard enough,” Stevens said. Alarmed, Bender tried to talk him out of it. Now he told Bender what he was about to do. Up until that point, he had put on a brave face for Bender, saying he would accept responsibility and serve his time. Timothy Bender, a Cleveland tax attorney who had been advising him on the IRS’s investigation into his embezzlement. “That’s what I’m going to do,” Stevens said, and promptly hung up. Then Stevens told Gurbst that he was going to kill himself. Gurbst said he would pass along the request. Failing his daughters had been the final blow. Stevens had a request: “Please ask the company to continue to pay my daughters’ college tuition.” He had received notification that the tuition benefit the company had provided would be discontinued for the fall semester. Stevens parked his Jeep in the gravel lot and called Ricky Gurbst, a Cleveland attorney whose firm, Squire Patton Boggs, represented Berkman, where Stevens had worked for 14 years-until six and a half months earlier, when the firm discovered that he had been stealing company funds to feed his gambling habit and fired him. He had raised funds for these green fields, tended them with his lawn mower, and watched his daughters play on them. Then he headed to the Jefferson Kiwanis Youth Soccer Club. He placed the letter and the check in an envelope, drove to the Steubenville post office, and mailed it. “I’m so sorry that I’m putting you through this.” “Our family only has a chance if I’m not around to bring us down any further,” he wrote. He wrote that he was “crying like a baby” as he thought about how much he loved her and their three daughters. A former chief operating officer at Louis Berkman Investment, he gave her careful financial instructions that would enable her to avoid responsibility for his losses and keep her credit intact: She was to deposit the enclosed check for $4,000 move her funds into a new checking account decline to pay the money he owed the Bellagio casino in Las Vegas disregard his credit-card debt (it was in his name alone) file her tax returns and sign up for Social Security survivor benefits. Stevens, 52, left the casino and wrote a five-page letter to Stacy.
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