By Jonathan Shugarts
Waterbury Republican-American
July 9, 2010
http://www.rep-am.com/news/local/494045.txt
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| Weirui Zhong, a 35-year-old police say attended Harvard University using money stolen from Sacred Heart Parish in Waterbury, left only two things behind in the Upper East Side apartment he shared with the Rev. Kevin Gray,who police say pilfered the church's cash. Workers painting the apartment this week said he moved out last week, leaving a portrait of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel taped to the living room ceiling. The other painting depicts a woman that appears to be Mother Mary, which also was attached to the ceiling. Workers were planning to pitch both works into the trash. Gray is charged with stealing more than $1.3 million from the small parish. Jonathan Shugarts Republican-American |
Kevin Gray's New York was a world of male escorts and a Manhattan gay bar frequented by sequined, flamboyant drag queens.
Known in Waterbury as "Father Kevin," the Catholic priest lived a life of mid-week Masses, funerals, marriages and blessing members of his flock. But for several years he spent many of his nights in the city that never sleeps, living in a cramped, Upper East Side apartment no bigger than most people's garages, that he shared with a man he met in Central Park.
In charging Gray with first-degree larceny this week, Waterbury police claim he spent more than $163,000 of money stolen from Sacred Heart parish paying the rent for apartment 3F at 1427 York Ave., a place that 35-year-old Weirui Zhong called home.
A visit Wednesday to Gray's part-time home revealed that Zhong has vanished from the apartment and the piano, the two dogs and the other items police say were paid for by Gray with church funds have disappeared with him.
Workers painting over the flowers and gold-trimmed molding on the apartment's living room walls this week say they don't know where Zhong has gone, but his stuff was moved out sometime last week. Curiously, Zhong left behind two items the workers found stuck to the living room ceiling: a reproduction of a detail from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel painting printed on a cardboard rectangle and another poster that appears to be the Virgin Mary.
Both Renaissance-era posters found on the ceiling were headed for the trash heap, the painters said.
Zhong told police he met Gray, who he believed was an attorney battling colon cancer, in Central Park in 2005. Gray paid Zhong's rent for the next five years, each check drawn from the parish's bank account, police say.
Gray's former apartment sits at the end of a narrow hallway in an old walk-up building tiled with small hexagons crusted in decades of black grime.
It's far from flashy, for Manhattan standards. The third-floor digs are cramped, but it's in a decent neighborhood with a sushi restaurant on the ground floor and a small park about a block away.
A small closet-like bedroom with cabinets sits on one side, while an old stove and refrigerator stained with a red, sticky liquid, take up the kitchen. Gray, who told police he was gay, lived at the cramped Upper East Side apartment at least part time with Zhong, and listed it as his address with authorities.
The rent was about $2,000 a month, based on court documents.
Two painters were sweating in 100-degree heat on Wednesday to get the place ready for the next tenant. They had no idea that the previous occupant was a priest and were shocked to learn of his arrest.
"That's crazy," said a worker wearing a backwards ball cap.
The Archdiocese of Hartford has suspended the 64-year-old Gray from his duties as a priest and another clergy member has taken his place at Sacred Heart. Gray is due in Waterbury Superior Court later this month.
To read the complete story see Friday's Republican-American or our electronic edition at http://republicanamerican.ct.newsmemory.com.
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