The Day
Karen Florin
The New London-Waterford Speedbowl, which wealthy businessman Bruce J. Bemer bought at auction in 2014, is on track for a delayed opening this season and its future ownership is in question amid a sex trafficking scandal unprecedented in Connecticut.
Convicted of sex trafficking crimes Wednesday, Bemer, 65, of Glastonbury faces a lengthy prison sentence and the potential for his fortune — estimated in the tens of millions — to be distributed among more than a dozen victims and their attorneys in civil litigation.
The Speedbowl’s management announced Friday that the track tentatively is scheduled to open the first week of June, about the same time its owner faces life-changing court proceedings. Jury selection for some of Bemer’s civil lawsuits is scheduled for June 4 in Superior Court in Bridgeport. His sentencing date is June 6 in his criminal case.
As the racetrack’s operators hurry to finish a renovation project that includes replacing the grandstands for the first time in its 69 year history, civil attorneys are accelerating their efforts to collect damages for Bemer’s victims.
“We’re pressing forward, and my plan is to take every penny from that man,” said attorney Joel Faxon, who is representing eight victims or their estates and said he has another client “waiting in the wings” to bring a civil action.
Attorney Ryan Barry, whose Manchester firm, Barry, Barall & Spinella, represents Bemer, said the firm wouldn’t comment on pending cases.
Bemer is free on $1.25 million bond while awaiting sentencing and ostensibly attempting to get his affairs in order. He was hailed as a knight in shining armor when he bought the beloved local racetrack in 2014 and promised to make improvements with the hope, he said, of at least breaking even. Now his ownership of the track has become something of a nightmare for the fans of Wacky Wednesdays and other racing events.
The track had scheduled its season opening for May 11, but General Manager Mike Serluca said Friday that Blastoff Weekend likely will take place on June 1 or June 8, due to construction delays. The bleachers had been demolished for a renovation project that also includes the concessions stand and press box.
As of Thursday, there had been no applications for building permits and no occupancy approvals are in place, according to Abby Piersall, planning director for the town of Waterford. The track can’t open without the permits, inspections and approvals and a security plan in place with town police.
Serluca has met with town officials in an effort to move things along, Piersall said.
“I think the message is that the town stands ready to evaluate any applications that come in, and we’re waiting as well,” Piersall said by phone Thursday.
Serluca, who took over last fall as general manager, said he planned to lease the track, but said by phone Friday that he didn’t want to take on big bills that had been left behind by the previous leaseholder. He said he is working directly for the track’s management company, of which Bemer is president.
“I talked to him for the first time today, and that’s how I know we are still open for business for the season,” Serluca said. New grandstands are scheduled to be delivered Monday, with a second planned delivery on April 27. Serluca said he announced the delayed season opening to the racing community via social media and that events previously scheduled for May are being rescheduled.
As far as the future of the Speedbowl, which he said has the best racing surface in New England and a following that is like family, Serluca said he doesn’t know.
“Everybody in life makes mistakes, and it defines you or ruins you,” he said. “Unfortunately this one has the potential to ruin him, but it doesn’t define the Bruce Bemer I’ve known for the past five years.”
The racing community was shocked by Bemer’s arrest and the sordid revelations about his lifestyle that followed.
In the early years of his track ownership, lifelong racing enthusiast Bemer, who owned a warehouse full of muscle cars, would arrange for sex trafficker Robert King to bring “boys” to racing events in a Winnebago, according to testimony at his trial. The people he referred to as “boys” were young, mentally disabled and drug-addicted men whom he paid for sex and other lewd acts. The victims testified that the sex would take place after the races at other locations, including Bemer’s office at his flagship business, Bemer Petroleum in Glastonbury, and at his motorcycle shop in Hartford. At the Glastonbury office, Bemer had a plastic clown head in the lobby, and in his inner office, a leather couch and a shelf with Coke bottles imprinted with some of the victims’ names, according to testimony.
Bemer Petroleum is likely more of a priority than the racetrack as he struggles to maintain his wealth. His parents, Francis and John Bemer, founded the company, according to its website, which indicates it employs 50 people and has 12,000 customers. Bemer Petroleum holds several licenses that are in good standing, according to state Department of Consumer Protection records. But it is embroiled in several lawsuits, one that alleges that following Bemer’s arrest, an employee of 32 years left the company and shared company secrets and customer information with his new employer, Daniels Oil.
Bemer’s health also has been the subject of some of his litigation. At least one of the civil lawsuits alleges Bemer has been infected with HIV for decades and knowingly engaged in unprotected sex with victims.
The men who testified at Bemer’s criminal trial were adults when they said King recruited them from group homes, drug rehabilitation centers, homeless shelters or the street. They said he took them in and fed their drug addictions while keeping a tab of their indebtedness to him, then delivered them to Bemer for paid sex.
The civil attorneys also allege Bemer preyed on at least three minors, and that his actions resulted in the deaths of at least three men.
Bemer admitted to investigators that King had been providing young men to him for 25 years, and his attorneys contended at the trial that he was guilty only of patronizing prostitutes, a misdemeanor crime for which the statute of limitations had expired.
His expert defense team notwithstanding, the jury of five men and one woman in Danbury found Bemer guilty of felony trafficking crimes that could land him a 60-year sentence when he stands before Judge Robin Pavia on June 6. Attorney Faxon said he and his clients would take the day off from the civil trial in Bridgeport to provide victim impact statements at the sentencing hearing. In taking his criminal case to trial, Bemer turned down a court offer to plead guilty in exchange for a felony conviction, probation and no prison time. King pleaded guilty to trafficking while awaiting sentencing, and another participant in the trafficking ring served a one-year prison sentence.
King also is named in the civil lawsuits, but Faxon said the trafficking ring would not have existed without Bemer’s “large pockets.” In 2014, Superior Court Barbara Bellis ordered Bemer to set aside $25 million in assets as a prejudgment remedy, should he be found liable in the civil cases. The ruling indicated the plaintiffs proved probable cause exists to find him liable of doing harm to vulnerable young men.
“The only way to stop him from human trafficking is to take all his money, every single penny, so he can’t do it to any other child, he can’t do it to any other mentally ill person or drug-addicted person or their families,” Faxon said. “He’s ruined entire families and it needs to stop.”