A clash of videos at Pepin trial

TAMPA -- At times Thursday, the trial pitting local beer distributor Tom Pepin against ex-wife Terry Lea Pepin looked more like a film festival than a divorce case.

In the morning, Tom Pepin's lawyers aired a montage of home videos showing their client at play with his four young daughters. Footage showing him changing a diaper, helping the girls make a snowman during a ski trip in Vail, Colo., and vacationing in the Bahamas brought both parents to tears.

But in the afternoon, Terry Pepin's lawyers screened surveillance tapes of Tom Pepin with the girls' ex-nanny, then 17 years old.

Pepin, 49, testified that he has a sexual relationship with the Pasco County teen but that it didn't begin until she turned 18.

Court-appointed psychologist Deborah Day testified she believes the relationship began before the nanny reached the legal age of consent, as Terry Pepin's lawyers have contended. Day testified that the relationship "may be self-destructive. He can't stop it."

Both of the day's video shows were meant to sway Hillsborough Circuit Court Judge Wayne Timmerman's decision about how much time Tom Pepin should be allowed with the divorced couple's children.

But the surveillance tapes could do more than jeopardize Tom Pepin's visitation rights. The footage could potentially cost him an exclusive contract to deliver Anheuser-Busch beers in Hillsborough and east Pasco counties, a deal that earned him $5-million in 2000 alone and one his father struck in 1967. A morals clause allows the St. Louis brewer of Budweiser and Michelob to invalidate the deal if Pepin Distributing Co. or its executives embarrass it.

"If you're convicted of a felony, they have the right to terminate an agreement with any wholesaler," he testified.

The surveillance videos, shot in mid- and late-2001 by private investigators, show Pepin's Chevy Suburban or Lexus (license plate: BUDYZAR) and the ex-nanny's Nissan Altima parked side by side at the Luxury Box bar and grill in Lutz, a nearby shopping center, and his Avila home. One segment shows him dropping the girl, then a junior, at her high school in the morning.

Terry Pepin testified that she originally hired the investigators to catch him drinking alcohol in the presence of their daughters and knew nothing of the relationship.

Tom Pepin's lawyers matched the allegation of impropriety with one of their own. They said Terry Pepin had sex with a middle-age Ohio businessman in spring 2000, before Tom filed for divorce, and since then has taken her daughters on several vacations with him. Tom Pepin alleged she was trying to give the girls a replacement father at their real father's expense.

Terry Pepin acknowledged that she owes the boyfriend $125,000 for loans he extended her. But psychologist Day disagreed that the children's exposure to him was alienating or improper.

Tom Pepin also may be in trouble for allegedly violating his agreed-upon visitation schedule. He admitted keeping his daughters overnight as many as two weekdays per week since school ended, though he was supposed to return them to Terry Pepin's home in the evenings. He called the behavior a misunderstanding. If the judge finds him in contempt, possible sanctions range from a verbal warning to jail time.

Day, president of the central Florida chapter of the state psychological association, said keeping the girls overnight was another sign of Tom Pepin's propensity for "adventure, thrill-seeking, crossing the line." While those qualities might work for him in business, she said, they can cause others pain in his personal life.

One of Terry Pepin's lawyers, Ron Russo, said in his opening statement Tuesday, "Tom Pepin is a king and a potentate. He thinks he is above the law."

As for his relationship with the teenager, Tom Pepin seemed torn Thursday. In a brief conversation with a reporter before the day's proceedings began, he bristled at the idea that a relationship between a 49-year-old man and an 18-year-old woman is inherently improper. "Who's to say?" he asked.

But faced with the possibility of severe limits on time with his children, Pepin suggested a willingness to compromise.

"I'm willing to dissolve the relationship," he later testified, "if that's what it takes."

-- Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. Scott Barancik can be reached at barancik@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8751.

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