For three weeks a federal jury in Brooklyn listened to evidence in the tax-evasion case against Joseph D. Nunan Jr., once (1944-47) the Commissioner of Internal Revenue in the Roosevelt-Truman Administrations. Among the defense witnesses was motherly Kathryn Nunan, who said her husband's income-expenditure discrepancies were complicated by her secret extravagances.
The niece of a well-heeled Tammany leader, Kathryn Nunan had been indulged all her life, she testified, from the time she was a madcap flapper in a Stutz Bearcat. She had borrowed and spent money with carefree abandon, and had never bothered to tell Joe about it. In the period from 1946-50, she spent more than $30,000 on clothes, and when Joe Nunan discovered that she had borrowed $5,000 from a friend, he was "very upset.''*
The jury was unimpressed by Mrs. Nunan's explanations. Last week it found her husband guilty of five counts of evading federal income taxes totaling $91,086. Maximum penalty on each count: five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Still pending is the Government's per jury case against Nunan, charging that he lied to the grand jury that indicted him for evasion after he resigned as the nation's No. 1 tax collector. Since Nu nan's heyday in Washington, 213 other Internal Revenue employees and friends have been indicted, and more than 100 have been convicted of crimes ranging from perjury to bribery. Among the key cases :
¶Denis W. Delaney. onetime collector for the Massachusetts District, after pleading guilty to one count of accepting bribes, served nine months in jail.
¶Daniel A. Bolich, former free-spending Assistant Commissioner, now awaiting trial on evasion charges.
¶James B. E. Olson, resigned supervisor of the New York City Alcohol Tax Unit, awaiting trial for tax evasion.
¶Carroll E. Mealey. former Deputy Commissioner of Internal Revenue, await ing trial for tax evasion.
¶James G. Smyth, ousted collector for Northern California, acquitted on charges of tax fraud.
¶James P. Finnegan, onetime collector in St. Louis, now serving a two-year term for bribery at the U.S. penitentiary at Terre Haute, Ind.
*Last week Mrs. Nunan inherited a one-third interest in the $1,000,000 estate of a cousin.