He Finally Pleaded Guilty

Stan Pampy Barre could only lie for so long until he was forced to tell the truth:

A yearslong federal probe into a conspiracy by key associates of former Mayor Marc Morial to skim more than $1 million from city contracts took a sudden and stunning turn Sunday with guilty pleas from the two most important remaining defendants.

With the case set for trial on Tuesday, political operative Stan "Pampy" Barré, a restaurateur, and Kerry DeCay, the city's former director of property management, entered an all-but-vacant federal courthouse Sunday morning to admit lead roles in a scheme to loot a massive energy-management contract awarded by Morial in the twilight of his eight years in office.

The collapse of Barré's and DeCay's defense, two days before trial, followed the defection late Friday of fellow defendant Reginald Walker, a construction company owner. Earlier, eight other defendants had pleaded guilty and agreed to testify for the government, among them Terry Songy, an employee of Johnson Controls Inc., the Milwaukee-based company that Morial hired under the terms of a 20-year, $81 million contract to help the city save money on energy bills.