THE WHOLE STORY

Raiders of the Lost Rosses

he media coverage about the "Ross Saga" and Sister Plante's scapegoating has been going on since 1994, with investigative reporters from the Boston Globe, WCVB-TV's "Chronicle", Fall River, Winchester and Providence, RI running in circles around each other trying to unravel the mystery. Much of this "investigation" has been sorely hampered by the massive smokescreen of misdirection and confusion that the Samaritans/FRNB have managed to blow up around the case. In particular, the Samaritans/FRNB have, right from the start, deliberately sent journalists on a frantic search for the "real identity" of General Ross and his family by creating the impression that all of their concerns revolved around this point and this point only. But when you look at what the Samaritans/FRNB actually go on record as saying, you find them contradicting themselves over and over again.

Do the Samaritans of Fall River/New Bedford really suspect that the Ross family does not exist? Well...which way is the wind blowing today? When Elaine Ross was sending them checks that they refused to cash, they thought she existed. They just didn't think her alleged corporation, named on the checks, really existed. They knew someone was sending them letters and talking to them by telephone about services rendered to her son as a hotline client of their agency. They seemed to be in agreement that some relationship existed between their client and Mrs. Ross. They accepted a plaque from the Rosses in 1992, and placed it on display in their offices. When Ellie Leite confronted the Ross supporters in the June 15, 1994 meeting, among her hysterical accusations to Susan Lyman was that Mrs. Lyman "knew who the Rosses really were" but was lying about it. Ellie Leite is also alleged to have said that she "didn't want Mrs. Ross' limousine pulling up outside her door." That sounds very much as if Mrs. Leite believed there was a real, if pseudonymous, Mrs. Ross.

But, when the Samaritans/FRNB seemingly wanted to create a false impression to Bishop O'Malley and the media that Sister Plante was mentally incompetent, they changed their story. Suddenly it was convenient to say that they suspected there was no Ross family, and that Sister Plante was a key member of some kind of sinister conspiracy to fictionalize the entire situation.

Then, when the Samaritans/FRNB wanted everyone to see that there was a real Mrs. Ross who had been harassing them by sending dozens of checks and letters, purportedly from different people but "obviously" all sent from one source, they had no qualms about displaying those letters and checks in the Boston Globe and on "Chronicle". The fact that this was a flagrant violation of the Samaritans/FRNB's stated policy of absolute confidentiality for all clients, families of clients, and donors, did not bother the Samaritans of Fall River/New Bedford at all (although other chapters of the Samaritans were very bothered indeed). Now "Mrs. Ross" was the shadow figure masterminding the entire fraudulent "praise campaign".

So which is it? Do the Samaritans/FRNB believe there is a Ross family, whose real identity the Samaritans/FRNB must suspect of being the darkest and most dangerous of underworld clans? Or do the Samaritans/FRNB believe there is no Ross family, in which case the family poses no danger to them at all--but someone else has a completely incomprehensible reason for concocting a set of non-existent mystery figures? Or do the Samaritans/FRNB claim that the Rosses are a real family running a scheme against the Samaritans/FRNB that rivals "The X-Files" for complexity and sheer irrationalism?

Which is the most convenient for the Samaritans/FRNB to claim today?

Do the Samaritans/FRNB believe that "Michael Ross" does not exist? First they claimed that they knew Michael well, and that he was a nuisance caller known throughout the state by Samaritans volunteers and banned from other Samaritans hotlines. When Ellie Leite met with Sister Plante in her Department of Education office for the first time in August, 1993, she spoke at length about Michael and his tragic suicide attempt, and told Sister Plante that she would keep Michael in her prayers. Mrs. Leite would scarcely promise to pray for a non-existent person!

But when the Samaritans/FRNB seemingly wanted to discredit Sister Plante, suddenly it was convenient to claim that no "Michael Ross" ever existed. Suddenly he was a fictionalized creation of Sister Michaelinda Plante's dissociated imagination, and his poetry book a forgery. The "praise campaign" in his honor was some kind of sick, threatening hoax.

Then, when the Samaritans/FRNB apparently wanted to shortcircuit any public sympathy that might be developing for the twice-bereaved Rosses, they found it convenient to claim that "Michael Ross" had never committed suicide, but was in fact still alive and had recently called a hotline of another Samaritans chapter, where a "longtime volunteer" had recognized his voice. They stated this publicly in the Boston Globe, even though doing so was a flagrant violation of the Samaritans policy of absolute confidentiality for all callers.

So, which is it? Do the Samaritans/FRNB believe there was a "Michael Ross", abusive nuisance caller and bane of hotline volunteers? And if there was, did he die in August, 1994? Or do the Samaritans/FRNB really believe he is just a product of Sister Plante's imagination? Or are the Samaritans/FRNB convinced that Michael Ross is really alive, still crazy after all these years, and calling the Samaritans in Framingham?

Which is the most convenient for the Samaritans/FRNB to claim today?

The most succinct (not to mention disingenuous) statement of this contradiction was made by Pamela Pollock herself on "Chronicle", when she said (and I quote): "Personally, I don't believe there's any General...we don't believe anybody named Michael Ross committed suicide," and a few minutes later said, "the Rosses are at the center of all this." Wait a minute, Pamela! If the Rosses don't exist, then they can't be "at the center" of anything! If they're at the center of this whole thing, then they obviously must exist! So which is it?

By creating the illusion that all their concerns and issues centered on the mystery of whether or not there was a real Ross family, and/or who these people were, the Samaritans/FRNB managed to send otherwise intelligent reporters off on wild goose chases all over the state. These successfully misdirected "investigators" have endlessly harassed everyone connected with the case that they could corner, and published or broadcast mountains of bilge purporting to prove or disprove that the Rosses exist. Reporters have attempted to prove that because there was no call made to Winchester emergency services on the day Michael Ross allegedly made his suicide attempt, that no emergency could have existed. (People rush their loved ones to hospitals in their own cars every day, but the reporters disregard this fact.) They have attempted to prove that there is no death certificate for a young man matching Michael's description filed in North Carolina for the month Michael allegedly died. (I have not seen documentation that any New England reporter painstakingly searched every individual county records department in the entire state of North Carolina before concluding this.) They have attempted to prove that all possible retired Marine Corps Generals still living are accounted for. Paul Parker of the Providence Journal has even attempted to prove that the Rosses' second son, Luke, must be fictional, because, he has said in print and on "Chronicle", no one named Luke or Lucas died in Vietnam!

On that last point, I invite you, the reader of this website, to check out the website The Wall on the Web, which contains every single one of the 58,169 names of American military personnel who died in Vietnam and are listed on the memorial wall in Washington, D.C. Even a cursory search of this awe-inspiring website will turn up both Lukes and Lucases. However, all of these many issues have been thoroughly debunked by former Winchester Town Crier editor Ed Rice, who probably knows more about this whole story than any other reporter involved. He says he knows the Rosses and their true identity...and so does Sister Plante, and so do other people. But all these people have good reasons for respecting the confidentiality of the Ross family, and they obviously have a higher respect for confidentiality in general than do the Samaritans of Fall River/New Bedford.

Throughout the entire case and its aftermath, the Samaritans/FRNB have continued to deliberately feed false information to anyone they could persuade to believe them. Many of the "facts" about the Ross family on which journalists have based their Quest For The Rosses have been given to the media by the Samaritans/FRNB, who will only say they obtained the information from "unnamed sources". These journalists, such as Mary Richardson, then state that their information came from "surrogates for the Rosses", when that is only what they were told by the Samaritans/FRNB who gave the material to the journalists. Some of these materials include the alleged dates of Michael Ross' suicide attempt and death, childhood and adult photographs of Michael, the poetry book, and other information. During her deposition by the Samaritans/FRNB's attorney, Sister Plante was shown an unlabeled, unidentified photograph that was included in the poetry book and asked to confirm that it was Michael Ross. When she stated her belief that it was, the Samaritans/FRNB crowed loudly that the picture was in fact that of a rock star and this proved that Sister Plante didn't know a "Michael Ross." "Chronicle" and the Boston Globe both reported this--but conveniently neglected to mention that Sister Plante had not seen Michael since he was in elementary school. She had been told that he had long hair, and she had simply assumed, incorrectly, that the unlabeled photograph provided by Mrs. Ross was Michael. It had been included with the rest of the poetry book materials without any identification. As it turns out, the Samaritans/FRNB didn't know which rock star was in the picture, either. The picture is of Sebastian Bach, an idol of Michael's, but the Samaritans/FRNB told "Chronicle" that the photograph was Bon Jovi. Evidently there are quite a few people who have trouble distinguishing among rock stars.

Media coverage built on these false leads has further compounded its errors through selective omissions and snide insinuations. On "Chronicle", for example, Mary Richardson commented to her co-anchor that Sister Plante's two lawsuits for defamation of character had been dismissed, and said nothing about the circumstances. The viewer is left with the obvious implication that the suits were dismissed because they were frivolous or the evidence weighed against Sister Plante. You, the reader of this website, now know that Sister Plante's lawsuits were dismissed because of legal technicalities that exempted the defendants from giving any evidence at all. That's quite a different matter than the conclusion so casually suggested by Mary Richardson. Ed Rice has spent many hours and thousands of lines of newsprint tracking down and refuting these journalistic crows' nests, but the errors and disinformation keep on being repeated.

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