In light of all this, Wainwright says the federal government's delay in bringing him to trial is unconscionable. (Court records, however, indicate that his attorneys have sought continuances as frequently as prosecutors.) Additional outrage has come from a band of disciples who regard Wainwright as something approaching a messiah. "What they're doing to this man is beyond an injustice," huffs New Yorker Gerry Rennerts, who as president of Sludge Disposal International, Ltd., insists Wainwright technology can revolutionize waste management. At the core of the vigil is Wainwright's wife Marjorie, who has accompanied her spouse during much of his American odyssey, and his son Wayne. Both remain camped in Pompano Beach, awaiting a resolution to the case.
No one is more anxious for Wainwright to stand trial, however, than Roland Smith. The Pembroke Pines man, a key witness in the federal indictment, attended a July 1990 seminar sponsored by Anglo-American, in hopes that ozone technology might halt the spread of his wife's lung cancer. A week later his wife, daughter, and granddaughter visited Wainwright at his clinic and paid $50 apiece for insufflation treatments. In August he paid the company $7500 for an ozone generator.
Three months later his wife showed no improvement and Smith demanded his money back. "I'd like to see the guy put away for 10,000 years," says the semiretired photographer, who never received a refund. "What they do is just sick. They prey on people who are incapable of making a rational decision." Had his wife sought radiation treatment instead of falling for the ozone pitch, Smith says, she might have been spared the removal of a lung.
Like other victims, Smith asserts that even if Wainwright wangles his way out of prison in the States, he wants to see the inventor deported to England, where Scotland Yard will have another crack at him. But the silver-tongued rogue may have a jolly homecoming in store. "From what I'm told, he'll be a big celebrity over there," says fraud detective Roubicek. "I know he'll be on all the talk shows."
That kind of exposure would suit Basil Wainwright just fine, observes Kent Neal, the Broward prosecutor who handled the state case. "With a guy like Basil, half the scam is ego," says Neal. "He wanted to be all the things he claimed to be: a successful inventor, a renowned scientist and humanitarian. For a guy like him, with no formal education, the idea of being important was important. Maybe he never lived up to his father's expectations. Who knows what the sociologists would say?" It was this egomania, according to Neal, that predicated Wainwright's downfall: "The really good con men stay out of the limelight, and Basil just couldn't stand that. He started to believe his own con."
A veteran of twelve years as a fraud prosecutor, Neal admits he was a bit disappointed when Wainwright accepted a plea bargain on the state charges. "I'd learned how to use the ozone generator and everything," he says, "although I never could get anybody to volunteer for an insufflation. I even offered to help Basil after he started complaining about his heart."
Wainwright's current defense attorney, Kenneth Sterns, insists his client's condition is dead serious. "There's a real issue as to whether he is fit to stand trial in federal court," Sterns says. "Ideally we'd like to work out a plea that will get him out of prison infirmaries and into a hospital where he belongs. But Mr. Wainwright wants to go to trial. He seems to feel it's a matter of principle."
Wainwright is a curious sight amid the mostly young, black inmates at the Dade Correctional Institution near Florida City - a pale, bespectacled codger shuffling along in an ill-fitting jump suit, head bowed in the manner of a scolded puppy. He still conveys his delusions emphatically, but these days with a hollow echo, like an actor reading lines into an empty performance hall. A failing heart, he says, has sapped his strength.
To veteran Wainwright-watchers, the pulmonary ailment smacks of malingering. "He says he has a dodgy heart, does he? He did that here, as well," notes British detective Dermot McCann. But doctors say Wainwright would have to be a whiz at biofeedback to generate the abnormal rhythms they're hearing. A battery of diagnostic tests conducted over the past year has done little to identify the problem, and the half-dozen physicians who have examined him, including two specialists, all offer different diagnoses. "Mr. Wainwright appears to have a cardiomyopathy of unknown origin," ventures Dr. Robert Smith, chief physician at the South Florida Reception Center in Northwest Dade, where Wainwright spent most of January. "It's the type of condition that could cause a malignant rhythm at any time, and result in sudden cardiac death."
No one's quite sure what to do about it. Wainwright was offered a pacemaker at one point but turned it down, claiming it would be blasphemous to tamper with the organ that embodies his God-given spirit. More recently, physicians have prescribed a varying diet of medications, for which Wainwright generously reciprocated by supplying the doctors with bundles of ozone literature. "I've never seen anything like it," Dr. Smith remarks earnestly. "The man has a very confusing heart.
