Hear ye, hear ye: Is the Honorable Lisa Richette a magnet for mayhem or just unlucky?
"If I were an actuary, I'd have a hard time giving her insurance," says former longtime Inquirer columnist Clark DeLeon, who periodically wrote about Richette.
To local criminal defense attorney Andrew Gay, who has argued many cases before the flamboyant judge, Richette doesn't go looking for trouble. Trouble goes looking for her.
This time, it didn't have far to look.
Lawrence Richette allegedly attacked his mother at her Center City home Aug. 21. Taken by paramedics to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, she received stitches for a cut above her eye, according to police.
Charged with simple assault and recklessly endangering another person, Lawrence Richette was released on his own recognizance Aug. 22, his 48th birthday. A preliminary hearing is set for Oct. 29.
The only child of Judge Richette and her late husband, lawyer Lawrence J. Richette, Richette has a history of legal troubles, some involving alcohol or drug use.
When contacted for comment, he said, "Leave my mother and me the hell alone," then hung up. Judge Richette did not return repeated messages left on her home answering machine.
Family acquaintances describe the mother-son relationship as volatile. Both are known for their mercurial moods. Judge Richette was hospitalized for depression in the late '70s.
DeLeon recalls a night about 15 years ago when Judge Richette, "looking kind of frantic," walked into Dirty Frank's, a bar at 13th and Pine Streets, in search of a public phone.
She told DeLeon that she and her son had gotten into an argument as they were driving, and that he had broken off the key in the ignition and bolted, DeLeon says.
DeLeon and several others pushed the vehicle from the middle of 13th Street to the curb. "That's when I knew the rumors [about their problematic relationship] were true," he says.
