The Maplewood Police Department
recently closed an investigation into the Rev. Rodger Bauman, an Oakdale
priest who accepted a $120,000 check from a 99-year-old former
parishioner. Bauman has maintained all along that the money was a gift. He eventually returned it.
No charges were ever filed.
But the
circumstances surrounding the money raised concerns among the man's
caregivers, the woman serving as his power of attorney and a police
detective, who investigated Bauman on suspicion of swindling a
vulnerable adult.
The man who wrote the check, Lou
Dziengel, lived in an assisted living home in Maplewood.
He got around
with a walker, wore two hearing aids and, by at least one account, was
rough around the edges.
"Very stubborn. He wanted things his
way," said the woman who served as his power of attorney. Her name has
been redacted from police reports, and MPR News has agreed not to
identify her.
"There was a certain way to do things, and a certain way
you didn't do things."
The woman said Dziengel, a former
Army soldier who served in World War II and received a Purple Heart
after surviving imprisonment by German troops, according to the White Bear Press,
was particularly stubborn when it came to his finances.
He insisted on
keeping two blank checks in his wallet — he would use them on trips to
the store for lunch meat, bread or batteries for his hearing aids.
But in December of 2011, Dziengel
wrote a check that went way beyond those expenses. The woman who served
as his power of attorney was reviewing Dziengel's bank statement when
she noticed a check withdrawn in the amount of $120,000.
"I was just shocked. I couldn't
believe what had happened," she said. "So then I took the check copy and
his bank statement to him, and I said, 'Lou, you gave this check to
Rodger Bauman. Was this what you wanted to do? And he says, 'He's not
supposed to cash that check.'"
Police said Bauman held the check
for two and a half weeks before he deposited it into his own personal
bank account.
The next day, he wrote checks to eight people, totaling
$40,000.
Seven of the eight had the last name Bauman.
Bauman still serves as pastor of
Guardian Angels parish in Oakdale, and declined to be interviewed for
this story.
The day he received it, Bauman wrote his former parishioner
and Dziengel's longtime girlfriend a note saying he was "truly moved" by
the gesture.
But to Maplewood Police Chief Paul Schnell, accepting the money was inexcusable.
"The conduct and the behavior itself
is concerning and disturbing. We have a vulnerable adult, we have a
person who [is] in a position of authority, certainly a person of
significant influence in another person's life," Schnell said. "And to
be given $120,000 and not to have some gut check about that? It just
seems unusual."
Bauman's attorney, Paul Engh, said
the priest and Dziengel had known each other for several years.
Dziengel
was a parishioner when Bauman was pastor of St. Mary of the Lake in
White Bear Lake.
Engh said in a statement that the
priest "considered the check a gift coming from an old friend."
According to police reports, Dziengel told the detective Bauman was
supposed to split the money between himself and some charities.
In a
different police interview, Dziengel said Bauman was going to use the
money to start a new church.
Bauman's attorney notes that Bauman repaid Dziengel in full.
But police records show that the
priest returned the money only after an employee from the Maplewood care
center filed a complaint to report her suspicions.
Dziengel and his longtime girlfriend
were living in the facility's memory-care unit because she had been
diagnosed with dementia and Parkinson's disease.
But it was clear to the woman who
served as his power of attorney that his mind, too, had begun slipping
several months before he wrote the check.
When interviewed by the
detective investigating the case, he had problems concentrating and
couldn't say what year it was.
A doctor who examined Dziengel weeks
after he wrote the check found that he displayed "significant
impairment in cognitive ability, particularly with short-term memory and
executive functioning. He appears to be in need of assistance with
medical and financial decision making."
Lou Dziengel died about four months
after writing the check.
That was a blow to Ramsey County prosecutors,
who believed they would have had a better case if Dziengel were alive to
take the stand.
Ramsey County Attorney John Choi
said state law presumes residents of a care facility are vulnerable
adults.
But Choi said there are other factors that would have come into
play. His prosecutors wrestled with how to prove whether the priest
exercised "undue influence" on Dziengel.
"You can have a perspective about
it, but ultimately you have to prove a case where all 12 jurors are
going to agree ... that the facts we have prove the criminal violation
beyond a reasonable doubt," Choi said.
Choi's office declined to file
charges in March of last year.
The Maplewood detective continued to work
the case until a couple of months ago.
Jennifer Haselberger, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis'
former top church lawyer, became familiar with the case.
She said Bauman
refused to resign after archdiocese leaders confronted him about the
money.
Haselberger says she urged Archbishop John Nienstedt to remove
Bauman from his pastorship, or at least place some restrictions on his
duties and warn parish trustees.
But as far as Haselberger knows, none of that happened.
"Bauman is still pastor of that
parish to this day," she said. "And so unfortunately, as I saw happen
too frequently, once the threat of his arrest was removed, life just
went back to normal."
The Archdiocese of St. Paul and
Minneapolis would not elaborate on the Bauman case, saying that it is a
personnel matter.
But spokesman Jim Accurso said the church did not
remove Bauman because police never determined he had exploited Dziengel.
"The gentleman insisted — he gave
the money to Father Bauman," Accurso said. "Father Bauman returned the
money."
Dziengel never had any children, but
was twice-married and twice-widowed — and proposed many times to the
girlfriend he lived with until his death, according to the woman who
served as his power of attorney.
The former prisoner of war told the
White Bear Press that God saved him so he could take care of others.