Deputy Sheriff Pamela DosReis stands behind Chief Justice Frank Williams outside the Senate chambers in 2004.

The Journal / Bob Thayer

Frank J. Williams, the retired chief justice of the state Supreme Court, launched a media blitz Thursday to squash rumors of impropriety with his former driver and explain in his words his role in the driver’s family and how he became her daughter’s godfather.

Williams, who stepped down from the most powerful position in the state court system last year, started the day answering personal questions on WPRO-AM radio from an old friend, Buddy Cianci. They grew up in the same neighborhood, and their friendship endured as one rose to the top of the state’s judicial system, while the other became Providence’s mayor, went to federal prison for racketeering conspiracy, then rebounded as a popular talk-show host.

Asked directly by Cianci if he had ever had an affair with Pamela DosReis, Williams said: “It’s a disgusting rumor and outrageous. Of course not.”

He added: “Nor is [DosReis] my daughter or the child my granddaughter.”

Williams’ role in the DosReis family became public in September during a contested divorce filing between Pamela and her estranged husband, Frank J. DosReis.

In court papers, Frank DosReis said that Williams’ “inordinate and oftentimes bizarre interference with the family, is, in large part, the reason for the parties’ divorce.” Frank DosReis said the former chief justice regularly slept in their Johnston house, vacationed to Disney World with the family and attended a “father-daughter” dance with him and his little girl.

As the divorce proceedings continued, a Family Court judge issued a restraining order preventing Williams from visiting the couple’s 6-year-old daughter.

Then The Journal published a front page story about how Williams hired Pamela DosReis’ mother as a courthouse cleaning woman. Days later, Williams — who had stayed on to assist the Supreme Court with cases after his retirement — surrendered those duties after discussions with his successor, Chief Justice Paul A. Suttell.

Speaking Thursday to a radio audience, Williams said the truth of his involvement with the family had been “skewered in some of the [court] documents” and that the publicity had been “particularly hurtful” to him; to his wife, Virginia, who he said also loved the little girl; and to his 91-year-old father.

During his three-hour appearance with Cianci, Williams answered all of the questions that have circulated for weeks. Throughout, Williams stressed that his wife knew and encouraged the role they had both accepted as guardians over the little girl.

Williams said he first met Pamela DosReis, a deputy court sheriff, in 2001 after he received a death threat and she became his part-time driver. “Virginia and I” socialized with both Pamela and Frank DosReis, Williams said, before their daughter was born in May 2003.

Williams said he was “surprised and honored” when Frank DosReis asked him to be the girl’s godfather. Because of his Italian heritage, Williams said, he took the responsibility seriously and discussed its implications with Virginia Williams before accepting the role.

Williams said he and his wife gave generously to the DosReis family — truck tires for Frank, a new $1,000 television, $6,500 a year in private school tuition for the girl — because “we didn’t have children of our own … It was our way of showing our friendship to them.”

Some of Williams’ on-air remarks contradicted versions of events described in divorce papers and testimony.

Take, for instance, last year’s kindergarten father-daughter dance in West Warwick, attended by both Frank DosReis and Williams.

During one divorce hearing, Frank DosReis said it was his wife who decided that Williams would attend the dance.

“I found out at the last minute. What am I going to do?” asked DosReis, who told a Family Court judge he never asked Williams to keep away from his family because he felt “intimidated” by Williams’ powerful position.

Williams, however, told radio listeners that he went to the dance reluctantly, and at Frank DosReis’ request. Williams said DosReis refused to go to a previous father-daughter dance and told Williams this time: “I’ll go if you go.”

Williams said he looked forward to the dance as much as having a root-canal procedure. But he went and “didn’t even get a dance.”

Williams also denied that he often slept at the DosReis house in Johnston or had his own room there.

In the last four years, Williams said, he slept there four times “at the most,” and always at the invitation of either Pamela, Frank or his godchild.

Williams said each overnight visit was for a special occasion, such as his goddaughter’s birthday and one Christmas Eve when his wife, Virginia, was in Texas caring for her ailing mother.

In one of the few moments of levity during the show, Williams, an Abraham Lincoln scholar, said the guest room where he stayed couldn’t possibly be considered his own private room since it lacked any statues of the 16th president.

Williams said that both Pamela and Frank had given him keys to their house, but that the arrangement was similar to trusting neighbors who exchange keys to watch over each other’s houses. On a few occasions, Williams said, he did use the key to check on things or to pick something up, but always at the request of either Pamela or Frank.

When the girl was 3 years old, Williams said, he did watch over her in the bathroom at the start of her bath time. He did so at the parents’ request, he said, when Pamela was cooking dinner and Frank was home after working a double shift as a corrections officer. Williams never bathed her, he said; only the girl’s mother bathed her.

“I see nothing inappropriate about a godfather … watching the child for the child’s own safety,” he said.

Williams said he couldn’t explain why Frank DosReis said he felt “intimidated” by the judge.

“You could have knocked me over with a feather,” Williams said, when he heard that.

Williams had scheduled interviews with at least two television stations and The Associated Press. Williams, through his spokesman Mike Doyle, was willing to sit down for an interview with The Providence Journal, but wanted to exercise veto power over the choice of the reporter. The newspaper declined to accommodate Williams and Doyle.

At WPRO-AM radio, station managers issued a news release on Thursday morning announcing that Williams would be on Cianci’s show.

But before Cianci and his sidekick, Ron St. Pierre, took to the airwaves, another talk show host at the station, John DePetro, called Williams a “disgrace,” and played a taped ditty that included his two young daughters singing, “Hey Chiefy drinking wine, at my house all the time. Hey Chiefy! Hey Chiefy!”

DePetro told his audience that he was playing the song because he had multiple requests for it from callers.

Williams said he didn’t enjoy speaking publicly about personal matters, and was only speaking Thursday since an accord in the divorce had been reached. The settlement gives Pamela and Frank DosReis shared joint custody of their daughter.

Said Williams at the end of his radio appearance: “I hope it’s over.”

bmalinow@projo.com

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