Attorney/crusader John Aretakis came into my life back in February, when he announced that he would represent the two brother victimized by former City School bus driver Douglas Conrad and his room mate James E. Wiley. Over the course of the following four or five months, I've accumulated a thick file full of Aretakis's hand-scrawled faxes. Sometimes his tips were helpful, sometimes not, but they were always inflammatory.

Last month, I reported that Aretakis's two clients had recanted on testimony given in an unrelated case in Albany. I reported that after it was reported to me by Saratoga County District Attorney James A. Murphy III, who released to me a letter from one of his assistants which documented the recant. Aretakis immediately flew into a furry, and started telling me, every other day or so, that Murphy was a liar, and there was no, and had never been, a recant. According to him, a recant exists only when there is written documentation.

According to Murphy, and as reported at the time, there was never any written documentation, the boys backed off of verbal statements given to the state police, which in the language of District Attorneys (and I have confirmed this), constitutes a recant.

Fast-forward to last week: Aretakis produces what he calls damning evidence that Murphy is a liar: a letter that says there was no written statement, and no written recant. Well, no shit John, there never was anything written, and no one ever said there was.

So, after I told Aretakis that I wouldn't be writing the kind of anti-Murphy screed he was pushing me to write, he flew into a rage in which he called me a patsy incapable of doing my job of supervising government. "I've been a source, and you should tell your editors that your source is going to dry up," he said to me. With that, I hung up the phone. Good, I thought, maybe we'll save a little money on copy paper and fax toner at the office.

Aretakis had been, at times, a good source, but I think he is too willing to blur the border between reality and imagination in his singular mission: ridding the world of anything and anyone he doesn't like. For instance, he insisted for months that he had no conflict and could represent both the boys and their mother (who faces endangerment charges for failing to notify police about the abuse), even though the boys would have to testify against their mother, and hence, Aretakis would have to discredit one of his clients to defend another. For that reason (although he sites other reasons, including threats by the Saratoga Springs police department, which I personally believe are invented), he is no longer representing the woman.

Good luck to you John, thanks for no longer darkening my door step.