She is unlisted both in the VCU directory and in the Richmond phone book. According to the VCU registrar, she has requested that all of her student information be kept private. Contacted late last month, Pomey declined to comment for this story.

The “Story of Randy and Suzanne,” as it was dubbed by The Crimson’s weekend magazine at the time, thus ends the way it began: in obscurity. Pomey and Gomes have moved on with their respective lives. The Pudding has taken steps to ensure that they never lose $100,000 again. And for the rest of us, all that’s left of this tale are the faded newspaper clippings that document a sensational college crime.

Wielding Cleaver and Club, Former Employee Confronted Police

Guns were drawn and fingers clutched the triggers, as a heavy-set older man brandishing a meat cleaver and a club glared into the eyes of the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) officers surrounding him near the top of Linden Street.

After the suspect, William Cicero, 62, failed to heed an order to drop his weapons, one officer doused him with pepper spray. Cicero responded by throwing his meat cleaver and club at police. According to HUPD spokesperson Steven G. Catalano, officers were at this point authorized to use lethal force.

In the end, Cicero was subdued with a combination of pepper spray and police batons, as a crowd of passersby looked on. Still, the Sept. 19, 2003 arrest marks one of the most dangerous and violent police actions undertaken by HUPD in the last four years.

According to police and court documents, the incident began when Cicero, a long-time Harvard maintenance worker up until his retirement in 1999, began attacking a homeless man who had asked for change on the corner of Mass. Ave and Linden Street.

The homeless man, Michael Parillo, told The Crimson that he had known Cicero for six months and was asking for change at his usual spot on Mass. Ave. when Cicero approached him shouting, “Run, sucker,” and “I’ll clean the streets. I’m starting with you.”

Cicero, who used to give Parillo change and was “always smiling,” struck Parillo on the back and arms with a wooden club, Parillo said. Police allege that Cicero then attacked a woman standing nearby who attempted to intervene. Neither Parillo nor the woman were seriously injured, but Cicero was taken to Cambridge City Hospital with head injuries.

Cicero was charged with six counts, including initially a count of assault with the intent to murder. That charge, however, was downgraded, and currently the most serious charges against Cicero are counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, which could land the defendant in jail for two-and-a-half years.

Cambridge Public Defender David G. Twohig, who is representing Cicero, says his client’s planned defense is that he lacked criminal responsibility on account of mental illness. While several psychiatric experts have examined Cicero for the state, deeming him competent to stand trial, Twohig has hired an independent neuropsychologist to help him make the case that Cicero should not be held responsible for his actions on Sept. 19 of last year.

In the time since his arrest, Cicero was held at Cambridge Hospital and Bridgewater State Hospital before being returned to the Cambridge City Jail, where he currently is incarcerated.

According to a report by Bridgewater State forensic psychologist David Holtzen, soon after his arrest, Cicero was diagnosed by staff at Cambridge Hospital with delirium, a condition involving “confusion, disorientation, agitation, and psychotic symptoms.”

But Holtzen said that based upon his own later examinations of the defendant, Cicero did not suffer from a mental illness as defined by Department of Mental Health regulations.

Holtzen’s report also points to a past criminal history significant for a 1959 incest charge and a 1985 charge of assault with a deadly weapon that was dismissed.