The inside scoop on Father Frank Mutsko.

   Father Frank Mutsko is a Roman Catholic Priest who befriended an elderly Wisconsin Woman, Delores Raucina.  Delores ended up buying Father Frank a new Lexus and a condo on a Florida golf course.  She also gave him tens of thousands of dollars.

   Here is the Big I TEAM Investigation into Father Frank.

   We worked on this story with a station in Florida.  This is always a tough situation.  We both want to run the story first.  And we both want to make sure that we don't get scooped by the newspaper or the AP or an Internet site.  that is a real threat if one of us run the story and the other station waits a day.  In this case we actually argued back and forth a little bit.  It was our story idea.  The Orlando station wouldn't have had any story if we had not tipped them off to it.  They thought they had some right to the story because the shady priest was in their jurisdiction.  In the end we ran the story first and they ran it the next day.  We offered to let them run it simultaneously in their late newscast.  That didn't work for them because their 'newscast of record' is their 5P.  If they ran it the same day as us, but earlier, that wouldn't work for us.  Anyhow, we worked it out.

   The day we confronted Father Frank was a clear sunny day.  We knew that he was saying mass at 7:15A and 8:30A.  We got there about an hour before the first mass.  We looked around for his Lexus.  It was nowhere.  This made us very nervous.  We didn't see him get dropped off.  So we weren't even 100% sure he was going to be at church, even though he was scheduled to say the morning masses.  Once mass time began, I headed in and sure enough there was Father Frank saying mass.

   Now the question was, were is he going to come out?  We wanted to talk with him but didn't know what door he would come out.  Would he walk to the church office or come out with his 'ride' and just leave?  We took a a guess and camped out by a door that would lead to the office.  We guessed right.  10 minutes after mass ended, he walked out and we confronted him.  My jaw almost hit the ground when I asked him if he knew Delores Raucina and he said no.  He denied it.  When I reminded him that she was the woman who left him a $250,00 house it seemed to jog his memory. 

   Now we've learned that Mutsko is selling his condo and is retiring as a priest.  How convenient.  Now he has no one to answer to and the family feels like they have no one left to try to pressure to get some of Delores' money.  He will ride off into the sunset.  It's a sad story.