A Troubled Double Life

The chief of enforcement at the Securities and Exchange Commission seemed the very pillar of rectitude. Hardworking and scrupulous, John M. Fedders, 43, had a reputation as a vigorous prosecutor of disclosure fraud and insider trading. A former partner in the Washington law firm of Arnold & Porter, he was the father of five sons, a member of the high-toned Congressional Country Club and a churchgoing Catholic who idolized General George Patton. In fact, unknown to almost everyone, Fedders was leading a Jekyll and Hyde double life.

Last week the dark side of that life was revealed by the Wall Street Journal in a vivid, 4,000-word expose. The newspaper disclosed not only that Fedders abused his wife, but that he was in financial difficulties for living beyond his means, and that questions still lingered about his role in an alleged cover-up by a former client, Southland Corp., convicted of criminal conspiracy. Fedders acknowledged seven "regrettable episodes" of wife abuse and publicly expressed remorse. But that was not enough to satisfy the White House. At midweek, after 3 1/2 eventful years at the SEC, Fedders stepped down. Said he: "The glare of publicity on my private life threatens to undermine the effectiveness of the Division of Enforcement and of the commission."

The jolting revelations that Fedders had beaten his wife were contained in court papers in Maryland. Suing for a divorce after 18 years of marriage, Charlotte Fedders, 41, described herself as "a classic abused wife." An outgoing, statuesque (5 ft. 9 in.) woman, she had once worshiped her husband, a 6-ft. 10-in. former basketball center at Marquette University, and she routinely laid out his suit, socks and underwear in the morning. But barely two years after they were married, she testified, her husband struck her on the side of the head, rupturing an eardrum. Mrs. Fedders recounted that when she was pregnant with her first son, Fedders attacked her with his fists, pummeling her in the abdomen. Said she: "I remember he was yelling he didn't care if he killed me or killed the baby." Another time, she recalled, he grabbed her by the hair and tried to heave her over a 5-ft.-high banister in their home, causing an injury to her neck, for which she must occasionally wear an orthopedic brace. The marriage finally ruptured in the summer of 1983, when Fedders refused to continue psychotherapy after only half a dozen sessions. Mrs. Fedders then ordered her husband out of their $250,000 house in Potomac, Md.

Fedders had a history of "black moods," and these apparently were exacerbated by a 1982-83 federal grand jury investigation of Southland, the Dallas-based operator of 7-Eleven. Southland was accused of attempting to bribe state officials, and Fedders was questioned about his role in helping the company conduct an internal investigation, which failed to turn up any wrongdoing.