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Louise Davis

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Updated: December 8, 2023

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My sister was born in Chicago, Illinois. She was the first child of Theodore and Lily Demas. She started talking at a very early age. Much to my father's chagrin, she repeated everything that he said. He learned to clean up his language. Because she was so intelligent, she skipped kindergarten and entered first grade at age 5. As a child, Joanna was very bold, aggressive, and bright. She was constantly asking her teachers questions. I was constantly being compared to her. I disliked it at the time. She was a tough act to follow. She was a very wild teenager. She got into all sorts of trouble. She was very popular and had an active social life. That did not keep her from being a National Merit Scholar. She entered the University of Florida at 17. She was a chemistry major. She partied a lot. In spite of this, she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and graduated with honors and a 3.71 GPA. I lived with Joanna my first year at the University. She chose all of my classes and took me to concerts with her. Sometimes she acted like a mother hen. We were very close in those days. At 20 she entered medical school at the University of Miami. She maintained admirable grades throughout medical school, and dated a lot, but she finally settled on one. In 1985, she married Mark Arnold, M.D., a resident in colon and rectal surgery at the University of Miami. She married in the Greek Orthodox church in Coral Gables, Florida. She said that she wanted to be a good wife, to iron his shirts and socks, etc... Soon they had both completed their studies at the University of Miami. Mark found a position at the University of Ohio and Joanna joined a practice in Internal Medicine. They bought a cute 100-year old house in the historic district of Columbus. She attended the opera, the ballet, and the symphony. She was an avid supporter of the fine arts. Although she put up a brave front, It was clear that she was not happy with her new life. She was dissatisfied with her practice and with her marriage as well. In 1990 she and Mark divorced. She bought a large Victorian mansion and renovated it. She also left her partners and started her own practice. She loved rock and roll and followed bands around the country while she maintained her practice. Although metal was her first love, she had a refined ear. She could determine the composer of a piano work within three bars, and she did this on several occasions one of the last times I ever saw her. We drifted apart. In July of 1992 she appeared in Playboy in the pictorial "Med Alert." She made history by being the first M.D. to be featured in the magazine. When the issue came out all of the doctors at her hospital were walking around with it in brown paper bags. She quit her practice and started doing cosmetic procedures out of her house. In 1996 she appeared as a gun-toting waitress in the movie, "My New Advisor" and married Pete Way, the bassist of UFO. She toured the world with him. They were both vegetarians. Joanna was happier than she had ever been before. In 1998 she became increasingly interested in Christianity. Some of her writings, including those that she wrote shortly before her death, are listed in the links below. In 2000 she joined the VA Hospital and was on the faculty at Ohio State University. She had two unexplained seizures during this period. She was also taking beta blockers to control her high blood pressure. Some time in late 2000 she left the VA. The Ways sold their house and rented another. Joanna went on tour with Pete and his band. The tour came to a halt in late November. In December, Joanna returned to Columbus. Pete had to stay behind for two weeks to tend to difficulties with his Visa. She was found dead in her home in Columbus two days after Christmas. There was no sign of foul play. The coroner ruled her death as accidental. Joanna's friend Patti Petrella offered these words about Joanna: I will tell you some wonderful things about Joanna. She was compassionate to most people and all animals. Neighbors would constantly drop by for medical help or advice and she never turned them away or charged them. She volunteered at various free clinics from time to time. She spent many hours writing drug companies about animal testing. Hearing her talk, I know she cared deeply about all the people she treated. She said she missed medicine.She often picked up lonely people and brought them to wherever she was going, because she felt sorry for them. If my husband or myself were ever sick, she came right over if she thought she could help. She was responsible for my being a vegetarian also. I even opened a vegetarian restaurant from 1997-2000. She would come over to the Cafe and talk to my employees and customers about everything under the sun. They just loved her. Photo of Joanna Way Joanna Way
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Taki J Anagnostou of Livonia, Wayne County, MI was born on July 15, 1931, and had a sister Lily (Anagnostou) Demas. Taki Anagnostou died at age 72 years old on February 17, 2004.
Joanna Demas
Joanna Demas
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10/23/1996 NEWS BITES Campaign questions by Bob Fitrakis What really happened in the 1992 sheriff’s election in Franklin County? This question is currently being probed by the Ohio Elections Commission. On Monday, the Commission found insufficient evidence to investigate money-laundering allegations against Sheriff Jim Karnes, former Franklin County Democratic Party Chair Fran Ryan, and the Franklin County Democratic Party. The commission will investigate allegations against Karnes’ 1992 campaign manager and former Elections Commission member, Greg Kostelac, and has suspended him as an investigator for the commission. New information obtained by Columbus Alive sheds more light on the Kostelac investigation. Kostelac admits that he personally delivered $14,000 in checks made out to the Franklin County Democratic Party to Ryan on October 26 and 27, 1992. He acknowledges that Mark Wolfe, Franklin County kingpin in the adult entertainment industry, arranged for seven contributors to give $2,000 apiece. An audiotape of a conversation between former Franklin County Republican Party Executive Director Terry Casey-now a private political consultant and associate of Kostelac-and a member of the Smith campaign crew reveals that there was a falling-out between Karnes and Kostelac immediately following the election. “Greg’s no fan of Karnes,” Casey informed the Smith campaign earlier this year, and there was “…no deal with Karnes” and Mark Wolfe. The campaign donations solicited from Wolfe by Kostelac were “motivated by wanting to screw Earl…. Karnes [was] kind of oblivious” to Greg’s deal, according to Casey. Casey lobbied hard to keep Kostelac from being investigated: “…he’s not a dumb guy, [it’s] very, very important to keep Greg out of it.” In Casey’s analysis, then-Party Chair Ryan “didn’t have a clue” on how the 1992 Franklin County campaigns were going. “[She]…didn’t think Karnes had a chance. [She thought] Farlow could beat Miller,” Casey said. The latter is reference to the race for county prosecutor between Farlow could beat Miller,” Casey said. The latter is reference to the race for county prosecutor between Bev Farlow and successful incumbent Michael Miller. Casey implies that Kostelac was forced in desperation to go to the pornography industry because of poor political decisions on the part of Ryan. In her defense, Ryan says: “Everyone knows how hard I worked to get out the sample ballot and the election tabloid. And if I did something wrong, why would I list every donation from Greg right down to the dollar; and why would I have left that file in the Democratic Party headquarters if I had something to hide?” Ryan insists “that Greg approached me. It was my understanding that he wanted to work for the party. After all, he wanted my job.” After Ryan’s resignation, Kostelac applied to chair the Franklin County Democrats and was not selected. Later, he applied to be chair of the Ohio Democratic Party, also unsuccessfully. Casey also said that Kostelac went so far as to “whet Wolfe’s appetite” with a nasty, negative “TV script” about Smith to entice the donations. Casey refers to “Karnes’ stupidity,” as Kostelac circumvented his candidate’s wishes and cut a deal directly with Ryan. Ryan is on record stating that Kostelac asked her for a loan and she told him: “…if he raised money for the party, then I would give him a loan.” The problem is that Ryan’s statement just doesn’t add up unless Kostelac was trying to launder money. Kostelac raised $14,000; he gives it to Ryan; she loans him $8,000, which the Karnes campaign pays back. That equals $22,000 for Fran and $0 for the Karnes campaign. The question remains, why didn’t Kostelac simply put the $14,000 into the Karnes campaign? Alive has learned that other factors played into Kostelac’s decision as well. Kostelac was having financial problems at the time he took the money from the porn industry. An invoice dated November 18, 1992 from Kostelac to Ryan refers to an “oral agreement” between the two that would result in Kostelac being paid $6,000 if three conditions were met. First, Kostelac must raise the money to pay himself; second, Karnes must win the election; and third, the Karnes campaign had to pay back the $8,000 loan to the Franklin County Democratic Party. According to Sheriff Karnes, his campaign paid Kostelac nothing. “I kept asking him ‘What do I owe you?’ and he kept saying ‘You don’t,'” Karnes recalls. Party insiders and Karnes campaign workers report that at the post-election victory party at La Scala Restaurant, Kostelac took possession of the Karnes campaign cash box instead of turning it over to the treasurer, reportedly to “settle up with Fran.” Sources report that this was the beginning of a falling-out between Karnes and Kostelac. Highly placed Karnes campaign sources and Franklin County staffers all report that the final break between Karnes and Kostelac came after Kostelac asked the Karnes campaign committee for a personal loan. Sources in the Karnes campaign report around “five hundred dollars in bounced checks” from Kostelac. Alive has also learned that Kostelac bounced checks to various political campaigns and organizations. Check #1412 for $100 from Greg Kostelac and Associates dated October 25, 1993 to the Franklin County Democratic Party was returned for “insufficient funds.” Tapes released by the Smith campaign indicate that at least two of the contributors lined up by Mark Wolfe may have gotten some or all of their campaign money from other individuals, possibly in violation of campaign law. One of the individual contributors who was given part of the $14,000 from Wolfe, Dr. Joanna Demas, states that “…It’s possible that he [Tom Wolfe, Mark Wolfe’s brother] gave me a majority of the money. But I made that donation because I believed in what I was doing. Now, maybe I was naive in not asking why is this made out to the Democratic Party and not to Jim Karnes.” Cynthia DeSantis, a local hairdresser, was tapped while staying at Tom Wolfe’s house in Los Angeles. DeSantis, who also was one of the $2,000 contributors, states that she was “doing a favor for my best friend.” That friend was identified as Mark Long, an employee of Mark Wolfe. DeSantis says that, “I believe it was cash.” Photo of Joanna Way Joanna Way
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10/16/1996 by Bob Fitrakis As former Sheriff Earl Smith sees it, “That guy in the other paper missed the whole point….I wasn’t obsessed with pornography, we had a health problem, an AIDS epidemic. And when we tried to close the bookstores we ran right into organized crime.” Referring to a recent front-page article in a local weekly, Smith-who is once again facing off against Karnes for the sheriff’s post-says he doesn’t much care whether people watch triple X videos or read dirty magazines, but he hates the illegal “drugs and prostitution” and money laundering that seem to accompany the porn industry. Of course, the money laundering he loathes isn’t by organized crime, but by the campaign manager for now-Sheriff Jim Karnes’ 1992 campaign. Greg Kostelac, a local attorney and then a member of the Ohio Elections Commission, claims for the record that he did nothing illegal. But the courts may decide that question. Kostelac apparently took porn money that can be tied directly to organized crime in Cleveland and gave it to the Franklin County Democratic Party. Here’s the rest of the story. In 1990, then-Sheriff Smith busted an adult bookstore in New Rome. According to Smith, documents seized in the arrest linked local porn czar Mark Wolfe to Ruben Sternum, the mob’s guy in Cleveland: Wolfe had sent a $100,000 check to help post bond for Sternum. Now comes the 1992 elections. Payback time for the big bad Wolfe. In the waning days of the hotly contested Smith-Karnes race, Wolfe, with the aid of his brother Tom and employee Mark Long, reportedly gave money to six trusted acquaintances: Daryl Castle, Herbert Rogers, Cynthia DeSantis, Joanna Demas, Walt Erwin, and William Joyner. On October 26, Long, Castle, and Demas wrote $2,000 checks to the Franklin County Democratic Party; one day later Erwin, Joyner, Rogers and DeSantis also each wrote $2,000 checks to the Party. Clean, freshly scrubbed porn money. The last-minute influx of the $14,000 into Dem coffers set off a heated battle over the money. Current Democratic Party Chair Denny White was running for county recorder that year and his campaign staffers wanted some of the money; Tom Erney and Rob Lidle lobbied hard for a cut for Denny. But to no avail. The Dems, under the leadership of Fran Ryan, “loaned” the Karnes campaign $8,000 on October 30. Ryan supposedly put the remaining $6,000 into the coordinated campaign effort for all candidates. Kostelac says that $2,200 went into an ad buy at This Week newspapers. The ad was a letter from the Fraternal Order of Police attacking Smith and promoting Karnes. Kostelac has admitted that the $8,000 loan was used to mass-reproduce copies of Marty Yant’s Columbus Alive! article “Tin Star Tyrants.” At the time, Kostelac was serving as Yant’s attorney in a federal bankruptcy case. On November 23, 1992, after Karnes’ narrow victory, the Franklin County Democratic Party paid him $6,000 for “expenses” reportedly for working on the campaigns of White, Linda Evans, Patrick O’Reilly and other Democrats. The problem is, Kostelac may not have worked on these campaigns. When Linda Evans was asked what Kostelac did for her Clerk of Courts campaign in 1992, she replied, “Nothing.” White has also stated that Kostelac did not work for his campaign, but says that Kostelac may have had some “arrangement” with Ryan, who paid him. “I just don’t know. It was before my tenure as chair,” White said. However, it’s an open secret that White staffers exploded when they found out about Kostelac’s expense check. This, in part, may have led to Ryan’s hasty resignation as party chair and White’s ascension. White says no; other party members say yes. Smith claims that he asked White about the money laundering and White confirmed it, yet refuses to provide the documents “without a subpoena.” White says that Smith called him “over a year-and-a-half ago” and “while I’ve pledged to cooperate with any government agency investigating the party’s activities, I wasn’t going to let Earl Smith go fishing in the Democratic Party files.” Wise decision. Seems Smith is out to catch the “big one.” And he’s got some questions he’d like answered. “Where did the $6,000 go? Was it income for Greg Kostelac? Was it reported to the IRS? Was it given to Marty Yant for writing the story?” Kostelac says no money went to Yant and everything else was perfectly legal. Well not quite everything. Cindy DeSantis admits to “doing a favor” for her friend Mark Long, who provided $2,000 in “cash” to be laundered to the Democratic Party. Long, now deceased, had worked for Mark Wolfe. Dr. Joanna Demas admits that Mark Wolfe’s brother “Tom gave me the majority of the money…maybe I was naive.” And perhaps so was Kostelac, who made the mistake of telling his new running buddy, Terry Casey of Republican Party fame, the naked truth about the porn cash. Photo of Joanna Way Joanna Way
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Title: US OH: Doctor's Death As Mysterious As Her Life Published On: 2001-03-12 Source: Beacon Journal, The (OH) Fetched On: 2008-01-26 21:41:39 DOCTOR'S DEATH AS MYSTERIOUS AS HER LIFE COLUMBUS, Ohio (Associated Press) -- In the end, a doctor known for her love of life died like so many of those in the rock 'n' roll world that she admired so much: choking on her vomit from a drug overdose. The mystery of 39-year-old Joanna Demas' death was much like the one surrounding her life. Family members and colleagues described Demas, who once posed for Playboy, in contradictory ways. "This is my worst nightmare,'' her husband, Peter Way, told The Columbus Dispatch for a story Sunday. "I am absolutely devastated.'' Way, bassist for the British head-banger group UFO, found his wife's body on the bathroom floor of their apartment Dec. 26 when he returned home from England. She had been dead at least a day. A recently completed autopsy showed the 5-foot-3, 110-pound Demas had enough drugs to kill several people her size. She had ingested more than two times the lethal amount of cocaine; more than five times the lethal dose of Elavil, an anti-depressant; and six times the lethal limit of Inderal, a beta blocker used to treat anxiety and hypertension. The combination implies suicide, two doctors told the newspaper. But Demas left no note and had no history of suicide attempts, and Franklin County Coroner Brad Lewis has ruled the death accidental Asked how a doctor could mistakenly overdose on two prescription drugs, he said, "The cocaine may have clouded her judgment.'' Demas came to Columbus in 1986 from Florida. She joined a medical group at a local hospital while her first husband, Mark Arnold, accepted a fellowship at Ohio State University. Her patients adored her. Doctors said she was a caring and compassionate internist. But by the time the marriage ended in 1991, "We were totally different people,'' said Arnold, still at Ohio State University Medical Center as a surgeon and remarried. "She started taking singing lessons, hanging with this rock group and having an affair with a band member who was married and had two kids.'' She generated controversy in 1992 by becoming the first physician to pose in Playboy. She told The Columbus Dispatch at the time that she saw the photos as an opportunity to express herself. "I want women to think they can be professional and sexual at the same time,'' she said. "Too many professional woman suppress their femininity.'' Demas began to regularly change jobs and started seeing patients at home. There were complaints about medical care, inquiries about her prescription-writing practices, suspicions of illegal drug activity at her home, and financial problems. She became a regular at clubs in Columbus and would often treat band members who had become ill. She met Way at a UFO concert in 1995 and married him the following year. "If the guys she was attracted to in high school were any indication, Pete was the embodiment of everything she wanted in a man,'' said her sister, Carol Demas. Those who saw her before her death say she appeared to be happy. She and Way had planned to move to Florida, which meant she could be closer to her father and sister. "Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought something like this could happen to her,'' her sister said. Others, though, were not so surprised. "She looked like a shadow of herself. ... It spooked me,'' a former neighbor, Roger Williams, said when he saw her last year. "She was very thin and pale, like a walking dead person.'' Photo of Joanna Way Joanna Way
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Joanna Demas-Way by Free Press Staff JANUARY 23, 2001 As we were laying out the Free Press this holiday season, we were shocked by the sudden and untimely death of one-time Free Press writer, advertiser and friend, Joanna Demas-Way. Our condolences go to her husband, UFO bassist Pete Way, a staunch Free Press supporter who headlined our recent 30th Anniversary bash. Dr. Demas-Way, a graduate of University of Miami Medical School was one of the few doctors willing to write about the medical use of marijuana (see our Winter 2000 issue, “Relief in a Leaf”). Joanna was not only a gifted writer, but a kind and caring physician. She often volunteered her medical services to poor and underserved patients. She prided herself on spending time with getting to know each patient’s needs. Her compassion extended to all of Earth’s creatures, great and small. One of our fondest memories of Joanna is when the Free Press editor found an abandoned newborn baby possum, which Joanna insisted on nurturing, hand-feeding and loving for a few weeks before its inevitable death. One of her favorite pet stores was Animal Fair, because of their Adopt-a-Pet program. Although Joanna and Pete already had Princess, the spoiled goddess of rock , and several other cats and dogs at various times, they recently adopted a beagle with cataracts. Of course, Joanna will be missed by all -- especially her animal friends. We at the Free Press pledge to keep her spirit alive in our commitment to animal rights. Appears in Issue: Winter 2001 Photo of Joanna Way Joanna Way
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Joanna Marie Demas-Way
Joanna Marie Demas-Way
Joanna singing with Pete's band, The Pete Way Band in 1995.
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Joanna Demas-Way
Joanna Demas-Way
Joanna and Pete Way
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Joanna Marie Demas-Way
Joanna Marie Demas-Way
Joanna with her pup.
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Joanna
Joanna
Joanna testifying before OHIO state house.
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Q: How did you come to a decision that this was something you wanted to do? Dr. Demas: Actually, it was a spur-of-the moment thing. When I was in college at the University of Florida, Playboy photographer David Chan was there photographing students for a feature that focused on college campuses. I talked my 16 year old sister into going down to pose, and I went with her. As it turned out they couldn't use her. She was shy about posing for some of the photographs, and then we found out they won't use any models under 18 years old Q: Why didn't you offer to pose then. What made you wait 12 years? Dr. Demas: At the time I wouldn't have dreamed of it. I was going to be a professional woman and I thought professional women didn't do things like that. Over the 12 years, my attitude has changed. When I was growing up I was always wanting to please people, especially those who were in authority. Now, I please myself. When I heard on the radio that David Chan was in Columbus photographing OSU students, I went over to the Holiday Inn where he was taking photographs. I just wanted to meet him and tell him how much I admired his work. Q: How were you familiar with his work? Do you read Playboy regularly? Dr. Demas: No, not really, I saw it from time to time growing up. My brother would have a copy or some of my male friends. Anyway, David Chan seemed ready to take a break. He just wanted to talk. I told him I was not an OSU student-that I was 30 years old, and I just wanted to tell him how much I liked his photographs. He took a couple of Polaroids of me, but I didn't expect anything to come of it. I was shocked when he called my office and asked me to pose. And he was surprised to learn I was a doctor. Q: He didn't know? Dr. Demas: No, I hadn't told him. I left my office phone number with him. That's how he found out. Q: So the decision to pose was an easy one for you? Dr. Demas: No, it wasn't, but I trusted Playboy. I knew that if I called them and told them my job would be gone tomorrow if my photo appeared, they wouldn't run it. Q: Was your job at stake? Dr. Demas: In a way. I was worried how my patients would react when they learned I had posed for Playboy. Some of them were not pleased, but I'd say the majority of them were very nice, very supportive. You know who were the nicest patients about my decision? Several women in their 80's. They were delighted. They said they were glad to see women break away from the Victorian constraints they had suffered growing up. Q: What has the reaction been from the medical community-your colleagues, hospital administrators, etc? Dr. Demas: Mixed, like the patients reactions. Most have been supportive, though. Q: And what did your parents say about all this? Dr. Demas: My mother was an opera singer, but she died of cancer. She wouldn't have had a problem with it, however. My Dad is a doctor in Florida, and he was happy and proud to see my picture. He was also relieved to learn there was just one, and that it was tastefully done. Q: Do you think that by posing nude you are reinforcing a stereotype that says professional women aren't to be taken seriously? Dr. Demas: Definitely not. I hope my posing has made a statement to professional women everywhere that they can be professional and sexual, too. When I was 14 years old, I saw a picture of a lawyer who had posed in Playboy, and I remember being so confused about that. I thought, how could she do that and be professional? That's what I want to tell women in medicine, and in other professions as well-you can do it. Women can do whatever they want to do. If it feels right for them, there is no reason why they can't pose nude or express their sexuality in other ways. And men should accept that women can be both professional and sexual at the same time. There has been a lot of evolution in relationships between the sexes in recent years, but there needs to be a bit more. Maybe my posing in Playboy will wake others up to that fact. Photo of Joanna Way Joanna Way
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Joanna Demas-Way by Free Press Staff JANUARY 23, 2001 As we were laying out the Free Press this holiday season, we were shocked by the sudden and untimely death of one-time Free Press writer, advertiser and friend, Joanna Demas-Way. Our condolences go to her husband, UFO bassist Pete Way, a staunch Free Press supporter who headlined our recent 30th Anniversary bash. Dr. Demas-Way, a graduate of University of Miami Medical School was one of the few doctors willing to write about the medical use of marijuana (see our Winter 2000 issue, “Relief in a Leaf”). Joanna was not only a gifted writer, but a kind and caring physician. She often volunteered her medical services to poor and underserved patients. She prided herself on spending time with getting to know each patient’s needs. Her compassion extended to all of Earth’s creatures, great and small. One of our fondest memories of Joanna is when the Free Press editor found an abandoned newborn baby possum, which Joanna insisted on nurturing, hand-feeding and loving for a few weeks before its inevitable death. One of her favorite pet stores was Animal Fair, because of their Adopt-a-Pet program. Although Joanna and Pete already had Princess, the spoiled goddess of rock , and several other cats and dogs at various times, they recently adopted a beagle with cataracts. Of course, Joanna will be missed by all -- especially her animal friends. We at the Free Press pledge to keep her spirit alive in our commitment to animal rights. Photo of Joanna Way Joanna Way
Comments
As former Sheriff Earl Smith sees it, “That guy in the other paper missed the whole point….I wasn’t obsessed with pornography, we had a health problem, an AIDS epidemic. And when we tried to close the bookstores we ran right into organized crime.” Referring to a recent front-page article in a local weekly, Smith-who is once again facing off against Karnes for the sheriff’s post-says he doesn’t much care whether people watch triple X videos or read dirty magazines, but he hates the illegal “drugs and prostitution” and money laundering that seem to accompany the porn industry. Of course, the money laundering he loathes isn’t by organized crime, but by the campaign manager for now-Sheriff Jim Karnes’ 1992 campaign. Greg Kostelac, a local attorney and then a member of the Ohio Elections Commission, claims for the record that he did nothing illegal. But the courts may decide that question. Kostelac apparently took porn money that can be tied directly to organized crime in Cleveland and gave it to the Franklin County Democratic Party. Here’s the rest of the story. In 1990, then-Sheriff Smith busted an adult bookstore in New Rome. According to Smith, documents seized in the arrest linked local porn czar Mark Wolfe to Ruben Sternum, the mob’s guy in Cleveland: Wolfe had sent a $100,000 check to help post bond for Sternum. Now comes the 1992 elections. Payback time for the big bad Wolfe. In the waning days of the hotly contested Smith-Karnes race, Wolfe, with the aid of his brother Tom and employee Mark Long, reportedly gave money to six trusted acquaintances: Daryl Castle, Herbert Rogers, Cynthia DeSantis, Joanna Demas, Walt Erwin, and William Joyner. On October 26, Long, Castle, and Demas wrote $2,000 checks to the Franklin County Democratic Party; one day later Erwin, Joyner, Rogers and DeSantis also each wrote $2,000 checks to the Party. Clean, freshly scrubbed porn money. The last-minute influx of the $14,000 into Dem coffers set off a heated battle over the money. Current Democratic Party Chair Denny White was running for county recorder that year and his campaign staffers wanted some of the money; Tom Erney and Rob Lidle lobbied hard for a cut for Denny. But to no avail. The Dems, under the leadership of Fran Ryan, “loaned” the Karnes campaign $8,000 on October 30. Ryan supposedly put the remaining $6,000 into the coordinated campaign effort for all candidates. Kostelac says that $2,200 went into an ad buy at This Week newspapers. The ad was a letter from the Fraternal Order of Police attacking Smith and promoting Karnes. Kostelac has admitted that the $8,000 loan was used to mass-reproduce copies of Marty Yant’s Columbus Alive! article “Tin Star Tyrants.” At the time, Kostelac was serving as Yant’s attorney in a federal bankruptcy case. On November 23, 1992, after Karnes’ narrow victory, the Franklin County Democratic Party paid him $6,000 for “expenses” reportedly for working on the campaigns of White, Linda Evans, Patrick O’Reilly and other Democrats. The problem is, Kostelac may not have worked on these campaigns. When Linda Evans was asked what Kostelac did for her Clerk of Courts campaign in 1992, she replied, “Nothing.” White has also stated that Kostelac did not work for his campaign, but says that Kostelac may have had some “arrangement” with Ryan, who paid him. “I just don’t know. It was before my tenure as chair,” White said. However, it’s an open secret that White staffers exploded when they found out about Kostelac’s expense check. This, in part, may have led to Ryan’s hasty resignation as party chair and White’s ascension. White says no; other party members say yes. Smith claims that he asked White about the money laundering and White confirmed it, yet refuses to provide the documents “without a subpoena.” White says that Smith called him “over a year-and-a-half ago” and “while I’ve pledged to cooperate with any government agency investigating the party’s activities, I wasn’t going to let Earl Smith go fishing in the Democratic Party files.” Wise decision. Seems Smith is out to catch the “big one.” And he’s got some questions he’d like answered. “Where did the $6,000 go? Was it income for Greg Kostelac? Was it reported to the IRS? Was it given to Marty Yant for writing the story?” Kostelac says no money went to Yant and everything else was perfectly legal. Well not quite everything. Cindy DeSantis admits to “doing a favor” for her friend Mark Long, who provided $2,000 in “cash” to be laundered to the Democratic Party. Long, now deceased, had worked for Mark Wolfe. Dr. Joanna Demas admits that Mark Wolfe’s brother “Tom gave me the majority of the money…maybe I was naive.” And perhaps so was Kostelac, who made the mistake of telling his new running buddy, Terry Casey of Republican Party fame, the naked truth about the porn cash. Photo of Joanna Way Joanna Way
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What really happened in the 1992 sheriff’s election in Franklin County? This question is currently being probed by the Ohio Elections Commission. On Monday, the Commission found insufficient evidence to investigate money-laundering allegations against Sheriff Jim Karnes, former Franklin County Democratic Party Chair Fran Ryan, and the Franklin County Democratic Party. The commission will investigate allegations against Karnes’ 1992 campaign manager and former Elections Commission member, Greg Kostelac, and has suspended him as an investigator for the commission. New information obtained by Columbus Alive sheds more light on the Kostelac investigation. Kostelac admits that he personally delivered $14,000 in checks made out to the Franklin County Democratic Party to Ryan on October 26 and 27, 1992. He acknowledges that Mark Wolfe, Franklin County kingpin in the adult entertainment industry, arranged for seven contributors to give $2,000 apiece. An audiotape of a conversation between former Franklin County Republican Party Executive Director Terry Casey-now a private political consultant and associate of Kostelac-and a member of the Smith campaign crew reveals that there was a falling-out between Karnes and Kostelac immediately following the election. “Greg’s no fan of Karnes,” Casey informed the Smith campaign earlier this year, and there was “…no deal with Karnes” and Mark Wolfe. The campaign donations solicited from Wolfe by Kostelac were “motivated by wanting to screw Earl…. Karnes [was] kind of oblivious” to Greg’s deal, according to Casey. Casey lobbied hard to keep Kostelac from being investigated: “…he’s not a dumb guy, [it’s] very, very important to keep Greg out of it.” In Casey’s analysis, then-Party Chair Ryan “didn’t have a clue” on how the 1992 Franklin County campaigns were going. “[She]…didn’t think Karnes had a chance. [She thought] Farlow could beat Miller,” Casey said. The latter is reference to the race for county prosecutor between Bev Farlow and successful incumbent Michael Miller. Casey implies that Kostelac was forced in desperation to go to the pornography industry because of poor political decisions on the part of Ryan. In her defense, Ryan says: “Everyone knows how hard I worked to get out the sample ballot and the election tabloid. And if I did something wrong, why would I list every donation from Greg right down to the dollar; and why would I have left that file in the Democratic Party headquarters if I had something to hide?” Ryan insists “that Greg approached me. It was my understanding that he wanted to work for the party. After all, he wanted my job.” After Ryan’s resignation, Kostelac applied to chair the Franklin County Democrats and was not selected. Later, he applied to be chair of the Ohio Democratic Party, also unsuccessfully. Casey also said that Kostelac went so far as to “whet Wolfe’s appetite” with a nasty, negative “TV script” about Smith to entice the donations. Casey refers to “Karnes’ stupidity,” as Kostelac circumvented his candidate’s wishes and cut a deal directly with Ryan. Ryan is on record stating that Kostelac asked her for a loan and she told him: “…if he raised money for the party, then I would give him a loan.” The problem is that Ryan’s statement just doesn’t add up unless Kostelac was trying to launder money. Kostelac raised $14,000; he gives it to Ryan; she loans him $8,000, which the Karnes campaign pays back. That equals $22,000 for Fran and $0 for the Karnes campaign. The question remains, why didn’t Kostelac simply put the $14,000 into the Karnes campaign? Alive has learned that other factors played into Kostelac’s decision as well. Kostelac was having financial problems at the time he took the money from the porn industry. An invoice dated November 18, 1992 from Kostelac to Ryan refers to an “oral agreement” between the two that would result in Kostelac being paid $6,000 if three conditions were met. First, Kostelac must raise the money to pay himself; second, Karnes must win the election; and third, the Karnes campaign had to pay back the $8,000 loan to the Franklin County Democratic Party. According to Sheriff Karnes, his campaign paid Kostelac nothing. “I kept asking him ‘What do I owe you?’ and he kept saying ‘You don’t,'” Karnes recalls. Party insiders and Karnes campaign workers report that at the post-election victory party at La Scala Restaurant, Kostelac took possession of the Karnes campaign cash box instead of turning it over to the treasurer, reportedly to “settle up with Fran.” Sources report that this was the beginning of a falling-out between Karnes and Kostelac. Highly placed Karnes campaign sources and Franklin County staffers all report that the final break between Karnes and Kostelac came after Kostelac asked the Karnes campaign committee for a personal loan. Sources in the Karnes campaign report around “five hundred dollars in bounced checks” from Kostelac. Alive has also learned that Kostelac bounced checks to various political campaigns and organizations. Check #1412 for $100 from Greg Kostelac and Associates dated October 25, 1993 to the Franklin County Democratic Party was returned for “insufficient funds.” Tapes released by the Smith campaign indicate that at least two of the contributors lined up by Mark Wolfe may have gotten some or all of their campaign money from other individuals, possibly in violation of campaign law. One of the individual contributors who was given part of the $14,000 from Wolfe, Dr. Joanna Demas, states that “…It’s possible that he [Tom Wolfe, Mark Wolfe’s brother] gave me a majority of the money. But I made that donation because I believed in what I was doing. Now, maybe I was naive in not asking why is this made out to the Democratic Party and not to Jim Karnes.” Cynthia DeSantis, a local hairdresser, was tapped while staying at Tom Wolfe’s house in Los Angeles. DeSantis, who also was one of the $2,000 contributors, states that she was “doing a favor for my best friend.” That friend was identified as Mark Long, an employee of Mark Wolfe. DeSantis says that, “I believe it was cash.” Photo of Joanna Way Joanna Way
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When some people see their doctors, they open their mouths wide and say, "Ah." When some people see Dr. Joanna Demas in Playboy, they're likely to open their eyes wide andsay, "Aah!" Demas, 30, a Columbus internist, made history this week when she became the first physician to appear nude in the national men's magazine. In the July issue, Demas is part of a pictorial that features female health-care workers. "I see my patients nude all the time," Demas said during an interview in her Olde Town East home."Why should I be freaked out by nudity?" Demas runs a private practice on E. Town Street and is on the staff of Grant Medical Center, where her exposure has created a stir. "Everybody is talking about it," said one Grant physician, who requested anonymity. "I saw a couple of administrators walking down the hallway, pulling magazines out of brown paper bags." Demas posed for nude shots in September during a two-day photo session in Chicago. Playboy visited Columbus in November for pictures of Demas at work in her office. Some hospital officials were "hysterical" when they learned last year of her modeling debut, Demas said. "I told them to chill out. In fairness to them, they didn't know what to expect. I told them to call my lawyer if they still think it is an issue after the pictures come out, so they dropped it.' The hospital plans no disciplinary action against Demas. "She is free to do what she pleases," Grant spokesman Stephen Shivinsky said. "There's not much the institution can do" unless her activities affect her practice of medicine. Nothing in the American Medical Association's code of ethics addresses the issue, according to an AMA spokesman. The AMA is concerned with medical competence and professional ethics, not personal lives, the spokesman said. Demas, of Greek ancestry, compared her published pose to a Greek statue. "How can that offend anybody? It's tastefully done," she said. The photograph grew out of a meeting she initiated with veteran Playboy photographer David Chan when he was in Columbus to shoot "Girls of the Big Ten." Demas has long been a fan of Chan's photography. In fact, whilst in University she tried to get her then underaged sister to pose for the magazine. "He can make anybody look great," she said. Two months after their meeting, Chan called Demas and asked her to appear in the magazine. "I was honored," she said. Demas graduated from the University of Miami (Fla.) medical school. She and her former husband, a Columbus surgeon, moved to central Ohio four years ago. A colleague described Demas as a "real free spirit." She is a vegetarian and counts acting among her hobbies. "I've always been different," she said. "Throughout school, I was considered a nerd." She was paid "a modest fee" for her Playboy appearance and does not expect to do more modeling. "This is a novelty," she said. She informed her patients of her decision to appear in the magazine, and none has complained, she said. "I don't think this has anything to do with how I perform my job." Demas viewed the photos as an opportunity to express herself and send a message to other professional women. "I want women to think they can be professional and sexual at the same time," she said. "Too many professional women have had to suppress their femininity." Asked whether her decision might encourage patients and colleagues to take her less seriously, she said, "I'm young and feminine, so they already take me less seriously." Photo of Joanna Way Joanna Way
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