[StBernard] Eight Years After Katrina: St. Rita's Owners 'Still Feel the Stigma'

[Westley Annis]

Eight Years After Katrina: St. Rita's Owners 'Still Feel the Stigma'
Aug. 29, 2013
BY KELLEY ROBINSON
KELLEY ROBINSON More From Kelley >
Reporter

Eight years ago today, nursing home owners Sal and Mabel Mangano say they
were helpless in the moment, watching as their St. Rita's facility in New
Orleans filled with water. Thirty-five elderly residents were trapped
inside, drowning in their wheelchairs and beds. From that moment on, the
Manganos began a life marked as two of Hurricane Katrina's most recognizable
villains.

"I still feel as if people are talking about us when we're in public, behind
our backs," Mabel Mangano told ABC News. "So many people don't know the
truth. They say the truth will set you free, and it did set us free, thank
God. But we still feel the stigma."

Soon after the levees and floodwalls designed to keep New Orleans safe
failed and a wall of water crashed in St. Rita's Nursing Home, the Manganos
were charged with negligent homicide for those who died while in their care.

PHOTO: Cover for the book, Flood of Lies: The St. Rita's Nursing Home
Tragedy, by James A. Cobb Jr.Pelican Publishing Company, Inc.
PHOTO: Cover for the book, "Flood of Lies: The St. Rita's Nursing Home
Tragedy," by James A. Cobb Jr.
"To be charged with killing someone that you loved was the hardest thing
that ever happened to me in my life," Mabel Mangano said.

Sal, now 73, and Mabel, now 70, built St. Rita's Nursing home in 1985 and
were lulled into a false sense of security because the mom-and-pop one-floor
residence was built on one of the highest elevated parts of land in the area
-- so high in fact that the area did not flood during the 1965 Hurricane
Betsy storm.

After the couple was criminally charged, defense attorney James A. Cobb Jr.
took their case. Cobb has now released a book, "Flood of Lies: The St.
Rita's Nursing Home Tragedy," detailing the Manganos' case from tragedy to
verdict. In it, Cobb explains in his own words the hurdles overcome to reach
an acquittal.

Because of the public perception and coverage of the tragedy, Cobb
explained, many residents of West Feliciana Parish, where the case was
tried, had "already made up their minds." He notes polling data that
revealed 72 percent of potential jurors in the area believed the Manganos
were guilty before hearing a single piece of evidence.

"The Manganos were crushed by the way the media vilified them, essentially
arresting them, indicting them and convicting them before anyone even heard
their story," Cobb told ABC News. "Mabel, with her distinctive hair style,
was recognized every place she went. They were deeply hurt and embarrassed
to be in a public place and to see people pointing at them and whispering
about them."

Whispers turned to angry mobs in St. Bernard parish, as Cobb recalls a
jarring moment when the Manganos were arraigned in 2005. (The nursing home
was in St. Bernard parish.) While being escorted with police protection, the
accused came face to face with the family members of the people who died in
their nursing home.

"They had protest signs, they yelled and screamed at the Manganos and I, one
of them yelling, 'Murderers!' as we hit the courthouse door," Cobb said. "It
was a surreal scene that harkened back to vigilante justice in America a
hundred years ago or more. I never represented someone before who the
opponents wanted to kill as much as they wanted to kill me."


>From his viewpoint as the Manganos' defense attorney, Cobb narrates in

"Flood of Lies" the nuances and details not previously released to the
public on one of Hurricane Katrina's most startling moments. He hopes the
book will continue to set aside rumors about the Manganos, which live on
eight years later.