Before we get into this week’s Savage Love, I’d like to say this for the record: While the letter printed below was written on Garfield County Sheriff’s Department letterhead, so far as I’ve been able to ascertain this letter is a complete fabrication. It was not sent to me by Thomas P. Dalessandri, Sheriff of Garfield County, Colorado, or by any other law enforcement officer, living or dead, to the best of my knowledge, so help me God.
Now that’s what the kids in the Savage Love mail room like to call a goddamn letter. While the acts described by “Sheriff Dalessandri” are extreme by anyone’s standards–even our famously extreme Savage Love standards–they’re not unperformable. Yet something about the letter struck me as, well, odd. Supposing there was a Garfield County, Colorado, and supposing this county had a sheriff named Dalessandri, and supposing this sheriff had some sort of interaction with a prostitute that ended badly, would this same Garfield County sheriff be so foolish as to send an incriminating letter to a newspaper?
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“This is so stupid,” said Sears. “Tom is a good man, a family man–I mean, my God. I don’t even know what they’re talking about. Who the hell is Fatty Beltbuckle?” Fatty Arbuckle, I explained, was a silent-film star who was charged with the rape and subsequent death of a starlet named Virginia Rappe. Accused of violating Rappe with a bottle, Arbuckle was tried three times and ultimately acquitted.
I asked Mr. Foster to sit down, and then I read him the letter. After a pause, I asked him if he was responsible for the letter. “Absolutely not! Hey, you run for office, and when the votes are counted, you move on. You let bygones be bygones. I don’t go in for dirty tricks.” Does Sheriff Dalessandri consort with prostitutes? “No! That’s off the wall! I did not write that letter, that’s all I know. How would I get access to the official letterhead? Hey, maybe the sheriff’s got some disgruntled employee down there in his office.”
