The seniors feared the fix was in for some politically connected applicant. And they suspected the strings were being pulled by McLaughlin, a longtime area politico who, at the time, was serving as executive director of the Chelsea Housing Authority.
When the Globe ultimately asked Lieutenant Governor Timothy P. Murray - Patrick’s liaison to such boards - whether McLaughlin had spoken to him about getting Bond appointed in Dracut, Murray stammered.
“Mike McLaughlin?’’ he said. “Uh, maybe at some point he might have mentioned, you know, the, the, um, mentioned it.’’
Since then, the sky-high pay McLaughlin received for his own housing authority job has sparked public outrage, his resignation, and state and federal investigations.
It also led the Globe to obtain McLaughlin’s cellphone records, which, among other things, detailed 83 calls between him and Murray during the past seven months.
Perhaps most interesting, for those recalling the Karabatsos episode, was a series of calls on Sept. 21. The Globe asked Murray about McLaughlin after a Governor’s Council meeting that day. The conversation ended at 12:16 p.m., according to a digital tape of it.
McLaughlin’s cellphone records then show two incoming calls from a blocked phone number, much like those used in the lieutenant governor’s office, which is located just steps from the Governor’s Council chamber.
The first call to McLaughlin’s phone, at 12:16 p.m., lasted eight minutes. The second, immediately after at 12:24 p.m., lasted two more.
Those calls were followed by a series of outgoing calls from McLaughlin’s phone to a number in Lowell, next door to Dracut.
And they were followed by a series of three outgoing calls to the cellphone of McLaughlin’s son, Matthew, whom Murray has admitted to referring his application for a state job, before the son’s phone was used to call back the father’s.
The records show McLaughlin’s phone was used next at 1:47 p.m., this time to dial Murray’s cellphone number. That call lasted two minutes.
