27—
Ann

Bill Knowland met Ann Dickson in a bar at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas on July 7, 1970. He was taking a break from the gambling tables, and he noticed her immediately. She was a stunningly beautiful woman in her late thirties who stood out in a city filled with beautiful women. He sat at the bar beside her and began a casual conversation. Despite his stilted manner of small talk, when he introduced himself and offered a drink, Ann accepted readily.

Although he usually had difficulty talking one on one, even with people he knew well, Ann was different. She made conversation easy, letting him know she knew who he was, how important he was, and that she remembered his background. He was flattered. Sometimes even in Oakland, where he should have been recognized, the senator felt he was ignored. With Ann, he felt important, and they got along from the start. She touched the right buttons and he reacted. He liked to drink, and she kept up with him, drink for drink. He liked to dance, and she danced beautifully. He liked to gamble, and she knew her way around Las Vegas.

They spent the night in her nearby apartment, which she called "the Pit." Within days they were into a torrid affair. The senator and Ann quickly became part of the Las Vegas Strip scene.

He soon would know that Ann was a mistake, a horribly messy mistake. Ann wanted more than an affair. She quickly let him know she wanted marriage and a chance at the rich Knowland life. His past affairs for the most part had been quiet, pleasant interludes. He had truly loved Ruth Moody, but most of the women were just entertainment

outside his marriage. Now, he found himself looking at divorce and remarriage, not an affair, and despite everything he had done for her, Ann was out of control. She was drinking constantly, throwing tantrums, and abusing him verbally in front of his friends. She wanted him to leave Oakland, leave the Tribune , and move to Las Vegas. She knew he couldn't do that, but she kept demanding it.

Ruth Ann Dickson was born November 28, 1931, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She was a beauty from the start: old family photos show her as striking, modeling an Easter hat when she was scarcely more than a baby. She was an only child and the center of the family's attention.

She began doing television commercials for a Tulsa car dealer when she was barely in her teens. Friends recalled that she never left the family's neat, middle-class house unless her hair was done and her makeup was perfect.

Her daughter, Kay Sessinghaus Paolinetti, who after college became a successful businesswoman in Colorado Springs, Colorado, remembers Ann as "a product of the '50s, where if you had a pretty face, men fell at your heels and would do anything." She was the belle of her Catholic high school and later of Tulsa University. As a Chin Omega sorority pledge at the university, she learned to drink, an aptitude that would both help her and drag her down. "She had her choice of boyfriends, even then," her daughter recalls older family members saying. Her favorite was Lawrence Sessinghaus, a fellow student, and they began dating seriously a few weeks after they met. Girls of the '50s were expected to get married, and in 1952, when she was twenty-one years old, Ann became Mrs. Sessinghaus.

Kay was born the following year, and Ann was totally unprepared for this change in her life. While Ann found her role as mother especially difficult, marriage was not easy for either her or Lawrence. Both were young, self-centered, and unready for a suburban family life. Ann resented the marriage and resented having to take care of a child. Kay said her father told her later that Ann would call him home from work to change diapers.

Before, life had been easy for Ann, but now it became more and more arduous. Sessinghaus was restless and moved the young family constantly. They lived in Oklahoma, California, and Kansas. They had a second child, Steve, in 1958, but Sessinghaus never really settled down. When he announced that they were moving to Arizona, Ann decided she had had enough. She felt she deserved a better life and she knew it wouldn't be with Sessinghaus. She filed for divorce and let Sessinghaus take the children with him to Arizona.

Ann went to Las Vegas to try to get her life on track again. She was still young, beautiful, and ambitious, and in the late 1950s, Las Vegas was a mecca for the young and restless. There she met Jack Wilson, a high flier who was rich one year, poor the next. She caught him on an upward swing, and she began to experience the life she had always wanted. Life in Las Vegas was exciting, and the possibilities seemed limitless. They were married, and while their success lasted they enjoyed a life of luxury. Ann won parts in television commercials for Schlitz beer, MetraCal, and Kentucky Fried Chicken. They bought a country club in El Centro, California. Then the downward slide began. Wilson tried various business ventures, but few were successful. Ann felt herself falling into the same unsettled pattern that she had experienced in her earlier marriage.

As she moved from place to place, Ann saw her children occasionally, but they remained in Arizona with Sessinghaus. They remember little of Wilson. Her daughter, Kay, told us, "I don't know who he was, or when they got married. They divorced and married again. They fought a lot over money. They had a lot and lost it all. . . . [It was] feast or famine. One summer I went out to visit them. They had a gorgeous home off Sunset in the Hollywood hills. It was beautiful, with a swimming pool."

Wilson and Ann separated a final time, and she returned to Las Vegas, living with a man named Nick Lorenzo. Ann's son, Steve Sessinghaus, remembers Lorenzo as an old "Italian type guy, kind of a rough-hewn character, what you might think of as old Las Vegas." Wilson mailed her a Mexican divorce in 1970, and she never heard from him again. Back in Las Vegas, she began doing some bit parts in movies in addition to television commercials. She met Elvis Presley when she had a small part in Viva Las Vegas , and did some dancing in clubs, but she never really caught on. "I think Mom always had in herself the thought that she could be [another] Elizabeth Taylor. But as far back as I can remember, she didn't have any skills," her daughter recalls. "She thought the only assets she had were her looks." Ann started dropping years off her age; once she introduced Kay as her sister so no one would know that she was old enough to have a teenage daughter.

The young divorcée definitely was ready for something better when former senator William F. Knowland approached her in the Tropicana casino bar.

The Las Vegas Strip in 1970 was nothing like the Disneyland-like high-rise carnival of today. Most of the hotels and casinos were two- or three-story buildings set back from the streets. It was still a small town,

a place where the rich and famous could be entertained. James Seagrave, vice president of public affairs at the Stardust Hotel and casino, remembers the era with some nostalgia. He can't recall meeting Knowland, but he says, "It was not uncommon at all for prominent people to lose lots of money, and feel perfectly safe that no one would know about it. There was an aura of privacy. [Hotels and casinos] were stylish, low-key getaways. People wore dinner jackets. Women wore evening dresses." Typically, a big spender would be met at the airport and brought by limousine to his or her casino of choice. Rooms, food, and drinks were complimentary. Sometimes, even major officials at a hotel might be unaware of well-known guests and their gambling habits.

Organized crime still ran the town in the late 1960s and early '70s when Knowland was gambling heavily. "It was mob controlled," says Myram Borders, longtime United Press International Las Vegas reporter and currently chief of the Las Vegas Convention/Visitors Authority news bureau. "But it was freewheeling for the patrons. You could drop out of sight and have a wonderful time." Borders worked in the UPI Las Vegas bureau from the time of the mob buildup into the corporate era of the 1990s.

As far as the outside world was concerned, Bill Knowland was able to drop out of sight and have a wonderful time, at least until his relationship with Ann became public. After he met Ann, they gambled together. The Knowland family believed she had been working for the casinos as a shill to entice customers to the table. Her son, Steve, who now is an attorney in Tulsa, rejects the notion: "She had a friend who did that, but I don't think she did." Nevertheless, Knowland began to be invited to parties for high rollers at the Tropicana and Riviera. When the MGM casino opened, the senator and Ann were invited. Everything was complimentary.

Kay remembers, "Every holiday, he'd have a suite and everything was comped. Steve and I would have parties, and when room service came, we'd say, 'Oh, he's in the shower, can we sign for it?' We always had the nicest rooms. You don't get those things without being a big spender. He'd always have a lot of chips in his pocket when he was in Vegas." To Ann and her children, Knowland appeared rich. "He was a fountain of money," Kay says of the time. "His own kids had gorgeous homes in Piedmont."

What they did not know was that the gambling and the expense of maintaining two lives were dragging him down. In the next three years, he would spend every dollar he could get his hands on, then borrow more. He sold his holdings in the Tribune Building Company and the

Franklin Investment Company, a business associated with the Tribune . He sold his Russian River home to the Tribune Building Company. Using his influential position as publisher of the Tribune , he was able to borrow $1 million from Oakland banks. He even borrowed from Helen. By 1974, he had to ask for his entire annual salary from the Tribune in January. A month later, the money was all gone.

His dream romance, a sixty-two-year-old man with a beautiful younger woman, began to collapse almost from the beginning. Knowland started living in a plastic world in more ways than one. He had fourteen credit cards when he met Ann, and he would add thirty-five more in the next three years. In 1971, he cashed $52,354 in checks just at the Tropicana, Riviera, and Sands casinos. Like most gamblers, his bad luck ran in streaks. On March 4, 1971, he cashed a $200 check at the Tropicana and another for $400 at the Riviera. Two days later, he cashed checks for $600 and $400 at the Riviera. A day later, it was $500 at the Sands and $500 at the Tropicana. In April, he cashed $2,700 in checks at the same casinos in a three-day period. Most of the checks ranged from $300 to $600, and sometimes he cashed more than $1,000 a day. He also was paying Ann's bills and commuting most weekends to Las Vegas. They occasionally took trips to New York and Puerto Rico.

While the senator liked set rules, organization, and order, Ann was impetuous, extravagant, and totally unstructured in her life. Knowland tried to put her on a schedule, establish her lifestyle, and set her on a straight course, but it was an impossible situation for both of them. He had been in control all of his life, and she was uncontrollable. Still, the smitten senator went ahead with plans to get a divorce from Helen, his wife of forty-four years, and marry Ann. Joe remembers both his parents at that time as being terribly distraught: "Helen, like most women who really love 'their man' for more than sex and security, was indeed in her own way in love with her 'Billy' until the day she died. And, believe it or not, He remained in love with Her, in his own way, until the day he died. Note—when he asked for the divorce, reluctantly she gave it to him by filing 'irreconcilable differences' rather than adultery." An interlocutory, or intermediate, decree was issued on October 15, 1971. The final dissolution of the marriage to Helen was ordered on March 15, 1972.

Knowland began planning for a new marriage; to get Ann's correct ring size, he borrowed the wedding ring Jack Wilson had given her. He lost the ring and Ann became furious. He finally calmed her by giving her a check for $1,500.

Adjusting to his new family was difficult for the senator. Ann was

having trouble with her adolescent son, Steve, and wanted to send him back to Tulsa to stay with her mother. Ann wouldn't move to Oakland, but she would call or fly up on a moment's notice. He kept trying to make order out of what rapidly was becoming a totally disordered life. But nothing was working as he planned. Ann again was being difficult. Early in March, they tried to come up with a wedding date, but in a note to himself, Knowland wrote that problems with Steve, Ann's temper, and her medical problems indicated that they should postpone marriage until "we both knew there was a reasonable chance for happiness for all of us." When he told Ann this in a phone call to Las Vegas, she hung up on him. Knowland also noted that Ann had slapped his face four times; she sometimes berated him crudely and profanely. Nevertheless, he clung to her and the hope that the relationship could be saved. She told him they would be married in April "or not at all," and on April 29, they were married in Oakland at the Park Bellview apartments. The senator's daughter Emelyn put the small ceremony together; Paul Manolis was best man. The senator was devastated when his only son, Joe, refused to attend. Manolis's wife, Elene, remembers seeing Ann's mother and thinking, "That's who he should be marrying. She was very dignified, with gray hair."

The honeymoon that followed was a disaster. Instead of going to the Caribbean, they booked a luxury cruise through the Mediterranean on the Incres Lines' Victoria . Ann disliked her cabin and hated the ship, which she immediately labeled an "old tub." She did like the ship's food, and she loved the champagne. She drank heavily and loudly insulted people around her on the liner. Knowland repeatedly pleaded with her to keep her voice down and not to disturb the other passengers. In his letters home to Manolis, now the Tribune 's executive editor, he referred to Ann's having a serious "change of life problem," but he remained blind to what was clear to others—Ann was a full-blown alcoholic.

The situation became so intolerable that the captain of the Victoria threatened to remove the Knowlands from the ship when it reached Greece. The senator decided he was not going to be pushed around. It was his honeymoon, and he was determined to finish it. He wrote to Manolis, "If we are put off, I shall inform those responsible that I intend to use all the resources at my command to take civil action against the Incres Lines, its officers, ship and corporate [headquarters]." He called both his lawyer son-in-law, Hal Jewett, and Manolis and ordered them to be prepared to fly to Athens. He told them the shock and em-

barrassment of being kicked off the ship might cause his blood pressure to go so high it might kill him, and his heirs would "have a strong case, as do the [Tribune ] corporation[s] for damage done to them." The Victoria 's captain relented, and the remainder of the trip settled down to a pattern of pleasant visits ashore and distressing periods aboard the ship.

In a letter to his daughter Emelyn, Knowland wrote: "It has been a yo yo existence almost every single day since we stepped foot aboard the Victoria. The shore visits' in many cases were all that could be desired. But on the return to the ship, she would be upset by such a variety of major things to her, but relatively minor to any other human being, that I was baffled, troubled and now [I am] convinced that she is a very upset, immature and perhaps dangerous woman."

Ann threatened to leave the ship in Spain and take off on her own. "Ann is two completely different personalities," Knowland told Emelyn. "One is sweet, kind and most lovable. The other is violent, abusive and more bitchy than any woman or man I have ever known." He added, "After one of her tantrum sessions which must be seen to be believed, a veil seems to fall before her eyes and she is living in another world. The next day, or perhaps even later the same day, the veil lifts and she is her other lovable self. At least she seems contrite and not to remember what she has said or done."

Early in the affair with Ann, Knowland had met still another woman. Lee Carter was something of a mystery woman, known to Knowland's Oakland Tribune staff only as a voice on the telephone. According to his family, he went to see her when he was having trouble with Ann, and she had a sympathetic ear for his problems. He would drop everything when she called the Tribune . Knowland kept pictures of her in his desk drawer, but even Manolis never met her. The senator's daughter Estelle listed Paul Manolis as the telephone contact for Carter, but he says he cannot recall anything about her. Although the affair lasted more than three years, she never was seen with him publicly. The day after the honeymoon ended, Knowland went to visit Lee Carter in San Francisco. He told her of the troubles throughout the trip. He was obsessed with death, and he brought a copy of his own obituary that he had prepared for her to read.

Once back in Oakland, the senator worked on getting to know his new family. He and Ann flew to Scottsdale to an eighth-grade graduation ceremony for her son, Steve. Then the three flew to Tulsa for the high school graduation of Steve's sister, Kay.

They returned to Oakland and moved into a third-floor luxury apartment at 311 Wayne Avenue near Lake Merritt, even though the senator still had a lease at the Park Bellview apartments nearby. Steve had a room in the apartment and Kay lived in a separate apartment next door.

"I thought he was quite nice," Steve recalls. "I liked him very much. He treated me very well. He was always wanting to give me advice on things. I was a pretty good student; I think he was pleased about that." To the public, the senator appeared stern, almost humorless at times, but Steve says he didn't have that impression at all; "seemed like he laughed at a lot of things, enjoyed things that made him laugh."

His sister, Kay, has similar memories. "I thought he was a wonderful man. I would have liked him [even] had he not paid my tuition and everything, and he still made me work." One of Kay's favorite stories about the senator concerned his voracious appetite. "He was a big man, and he had a big appetite. My mom had this lemon cream makeup she put on her face. He ate it." Kay later opened the refrigerator and saw a big sign on the cream, "Not Food! Don't Eat!"

Kay wanted to go back to Tulsa for college, but Knowland insisted she stay in the Bay Area. She was too late to register at Stanford University, her first choice, and he convinced her that she should attend Mills College in Oakland. While at Mills, Kay was holding down a job in a greasy spoon on University Avenue in Berkeley. The senator would go up to visit her in his limousine. "I was working at this little barbecue dump. . . . About once a week he'd be sure to come and have dinner there—in his suit, and everybody else in jeans and T-shirt, and here he'd try to order a decent dinner and always leave me a big tip."

Kay was aware of the couple's stormy relationship, but she cautioned, "Don't show my mother in too terrible a light. I don't believe she drove Bill into bankruptcy." She added, "Bill truly loved my mother, and in her way she loved him. It's a fact she drank, but she didn't do anything differently after they were married than before they were married."

It was as if Knowland was trying to have a relationship with Ann's children that he never had with his own. He communicated with them constantly and advised instead of ordering. Steve recalls driving through the San Joaquin Valley once with Knowland on a trip from Oakland to Las Vegas. "We drove through Merced and Kern County. He was telling me about all the political factions in them. I found it an interesting conversation. It was a long time ago, but I remember it." In contrast, Knowland's younger daughter, Estelle, remembers a summer in Washington, D.C., when she and her father commuted together—she

to school and he to the Capitol: "We never talked about anything. We rode in silence."

Ann hated Oakland. She was not accepted in the senator's old social circles and was barely tolerated by most of his family. The couple's closest friends were Charles and Irene Sargent, and the Knowland family said that Ann bought her way into that friendship with her lavish spending at Irene Sargent's specialty apparel store. She also was running up charge accounts at other exclusive Bay Area shops. Ann was jealous of the lifestyle of the senator's two daughters and his son. They were high in the East Bay social strata and she was not.

The senator's son, Joe, was the most rigid. He made it clear that at best he considered Ann an opportunist. He didn't say what his worst thoughts were. His relationship with his father worsened, both in the family and at the Tribune . Joe now reflects, "Where what he once touched turned to gold, now it turned to stone. Everything he tried to do failed him."

The senator was short of money again, and he wanted the newspaper's board of directors to sell its holdings in a newsprint company in Tacoma, Washington. Joe didn't want to lose the Tribune 's source of newsprint. "I asked for a one-month delay," Joe says. "Dad said to the board, 'If you don't support my resolution, I will resign.'" They took one gasp of breath and went along with him; Joe cast the only dissenting vote. According to Joe, the decision cost the company $1 million. The senator removed his son as assistant publisher, saying, "There is only one publisher at the Tribune , and I am he."

That dictatorial attitude did not reflect personal animus; he took the same approach toward his own Oakland Tribune editorial board, a group of editors that made recommendations on endorsements. During one election, a $47 million Peralta Community College District bond issue was on the ballot; Knowland's editors felt they could not justify it. Knowland, always a strong supporter of education, listened patiently as the editors explained their points of view. Then he stated, "The vote is one to five, and I win. We endorse the bonds."

When ground was broken on a new campus financed by the bonds, Knowland was there with a shovel.

Ann began to exploit the senator's friendship with her own children. In a note to himself, Knowland said she had called him from Las Vegas and threatened to link him romantically with her teenage daughter. He

wrote a note for his files: "During the course of the phone conversation, she said she would accuse me of spending more time with Kay than with her. 'How will that look in print?' said she. It was a bald-faced threat of blackmail and I told her so. She calmed down some after I told her I could not be threatened or intimidated by any such move on her part. I told her I would inform Kay of what had transpired and arrange for her to re-enter Mills as a boarding student. She asked me not to tell Kay, but I feel tonight that there is no alternative left to me now." During the same period, Ann often complained that he was spending too much time with the Knowland family. He told her he had divorced his wife for her, but not his family. In a later note, he wrote, "Dear God, I have never dreamed a marriage in 'paradise crest' could turn out to be made up of so much 'hell.' Maybe man makes his own heaven or hell on earth."

Ann sought the recognition in Las Vegas that she couldn't have in Oakland or Piedmont. The senator bought her a house on Ridgecrest Drive in southeast Las Vegas; it was a large home resembling tract housing, about five miles east of the strip, near the intersection of Boulder Highway and Flamingo Road. She decorated the living room in pinks and golds, with a baby grand piano as the focal point. In the family room, she placed the senator's political mementos. The master bedroom was in blues and whites. A red and white bedroom with imported wicker furniture was done for Kay, but she never lived there permanently. In November 1972, the Knowlands' Las Vegas home was included in the Clark County Attorneys' Wives Thirteenth Annual Tour of Homes.

The senator bought Ann a Pontiac Grand Prix. She didn't like it, so he bought her a new Lincoln Continental Mark IV and gave the Grand Prix to Kay. He sent Ann on two trips to Hawaii in the first months after their marriage, joining her on the second. She asked for boats, a car for Steve when he reached his sixteenth birthday, and a new car for Kay in place of the Grand Prix. "The more I did for her, the more she wanted," he complained in a note to Paul Manolis in December 1972.

She responded by continuing her attempts to spend her way to social approval, and Knowland suffered more. "I am not Aristotle Onassis," he protested to her at one point. He considered selling the Tribune to raise money. He talked to the Gannett newspaper group, but they couldn't reach an agreement. He wanted $20 million, and they offered $8 million. By this time, he was behind $68,000 on a commercial loan, owed Helen for part of the divorce settlement, and was trying to pay nearly $30,000 in back income taxes.

"By December [1972], I had come to realize that unless the situation was corrected soon, the situation was headed for disaster for both of us, in one way or another," Knowland wrote in another memo.

He told Manolis that things were moving to a crisis stage. Ann was demanding a $3,200 set of diamond drop earrings for Christmas, and said if Knowland didn't buy them for her, "I might as well not come to Las Vegas." On Christmas Day, he gave her a different set of diamond earrings and she threw them at him. "It was this Christmas disaster that was the straw that broke the camel's back of our marriage," he wrote in a memo. "I knew then that we had come to the end of the road." The despondent senator wrote a letter to Manolis outlining plans for his own funeral.

On December 30, he wrote again to Manolis, saying Ann was going to hire Los Angeles attorney Paul Ziffren to handle any divorce action. Ziffren was a former California Democratic Party leader that Knowland had treated harshly in the 1958 campaign for governor. "He hates your guts," Ann had told the senator. Knowland also told Manolis that he was concerned for the Tribune . He said Ann had threatened to destroy him and the family business. "She is capable to do [sic ] the first and perhaps to make a real attempt to do the second through some strange connections she has," he told his executive editor. He did not explain the "strange connections."

Ann was more comfortable with her old friends in Las Vegas than in California, and even as she threatened divorce, she wanted Knowland to get more involved there. In January 1973, she called the senator with a problem. She had been out with Phil Daly, a friend who had been fired from his job as manager of the slot machine operation at the Tropicana Hotel when new management took over. The two had been drinking together, and he had been arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol. Ann said there had been no accident, and no one was hurt, but the police had taken Daly to jail and impounded his car. When the senator called the Las Vegas police, he was told that Daly had been booked and bail was set at $500. With the help of his son-in-law, Hal Jewett, Knowland arranged for bail through a Las Vegas bondsman. Because of a delay in wiring the money through Western Union, Jewett ended up flying to Las Vegas with the bail money. But by the time he arrived, Daly already was out of jail.

The pressures of his foundering marriage and worsening financial condition continued, and on February 7 the senator collapsed at his

Oakland apartment. His daughter Emelyn brought him to Peralta Hospital in Oakland unconscious and unable to sign his admittance papers. He had been working on labor negotiations regarding new equipment in the Tribune 's composing room and was exhausted from his trips back and forth from Las Vegas. The diagnosis was high blood pressure.

Ann flew to Oakland and was enraged when the Knowland family was allowed to see the senator and she was not. The family battle that ensued further troubled the senator. When he was released from the hospital, he filed for divorce. Knowland's attorney was Suren Toomajian, known then in Oakland as "the great separator" because of his success in divorces of the rich and famous. Toomajian, who had occupied offices in the Tribune Tower since it was built, advised a lump settlement for Ann so that a clean cut could be made. The senator wanted to set up some sort of an annuity for her and her children.

But the divorce would never become final. On March 3, Ann fell against a table in her Las Vegas home and suffered a severe head injury; as a result, the senator was drawn back into the quagmire. Ann had been drinking and arguing with her son throughout the day. Ann's mother, Ruth Dickson, took Steve out to dinner to get him away from Ann. When they returned at about 11 P.M., they found her on the floor near the dining room with a deep puncture wound in her forehead. Both Steve and his grandmother thought she was dead. They called police for an ambulance. Because of the depth of the wound, Las Vegas police thought she had been shot. Knowland flew to her side at Sunrise Hospital.

As Ann recovered, they continued to discuss a divorce settlement, but the senator moved back into the cycle of commuting to Las Vegas. Ann insisted she did not want a divorce. The senator told her he could not continue his busy life and come home to turmoil. He offered a number of suggestions, including that she return to Tulsa to live with her mother. She rejected them all.

The man who had argued with presidents and set national policy had more than met his match in this second wife. In another memo to himself, he wrote: "It is one of the few times in my life I have run up against an impasse with every alternative door apparently blocked. Yet, there must be a reasonable and proper answer. Perhaps with God's help, one can be found before a great tragedy takes place."