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Neighbors often saw Vito Fossella with Family No. 2
2008-05-10 Maybe they didn't have a clue on Staten Island, but Vito Fossella's double life wasn't a state secret in the manicured Virginia suburb where his mistress and love child live - or in the halls of Congress.The Republican congressman was a regular visitor to Laura Fay's tidy townhouse - taking strolls around the Alexandria neighborhood with his second family like any other dad in apple-pie America. "A couple of times a week. Sometimes he would come a lot, and then he wouldn't be here for a while. Then he'd come back, usually in the evening." There were good reasons for those extended absences. Two hundred miles away, Fossella had his first family - wife Mary Pat and their three kids, ages 4 to 12. He'd been married since 1990, and a wedding picture in the Staten Island Advance shows the handsome couple - him a management consultant, her a bank executive - beaming with joy. "They got married young. It was a great, grand wedding. It was beautiful. They were in love, and everyone loved them," said a source who has known the Fossellas for many years. "It was magical. People were hanging from the chandeliers, I remember." Vito and Mary Pat were high-school sweethearts. "They were like the king and queen of the prom," the source said. "He went to Monsignor Farrell, and she went to Notre Dame [Academy]. It was like a match made in heaven." Seven years after the wedding, Fossella was elected to Congress, and soon he was spending long stretches in Washington. A source said Fossella met Fay in 2002 on a congressional delegation junket to several European countries, including Italy, Poland and Malta. Fay was then known as Laura Shoaf, a married Air Force lieutenant colonel working as a legislative liaison with the House of Representatives. "She was skipping official functions, as was he," said the source, who was on the trip. "All of a sudden, they were inseparable. At night, staffers, including Fay, would go out on the town, and Fossella would be the lone legislator tagging along. "We all knew they were both married," the insider added. "I remember when we got back, we were all like, 'What's the deal with Vito and Laura?'" On another European trip in 2003, they cozied up again, even though by now Fay was the Air Force's chief House liaison. The lovebirds often disappeared together, and both missed a key dinner in honor of House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Five months later, Fay split with her husband, Guy Shoaf, and a few months after she was pregnant by Fossella. The junket shenanigans may have cost her the liaison job because she was reassigned to a desk job, and she retired from the Air Force as a colonel soon after having Fosella's love child. Fay got the Alexandria house - where an American flag flies outside - in the divorce, and Fossella didn't make himself scarce. In fact, a neighbor said the car Fossella was driving the night he was busted for DWI once belonged to Fay. The neighbor said she suspected Fossella was the child's father after seeing the trio on their walks through the development. "You would see him out with the little child and Laura and in passing," she said. "Just like any other person."
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