Secret Life Puzzles Community

By NICOLA M. WHITE and JASON GEARY The Tampa Tribune

Published: Sep 10, 2007

ST. PETERSBURG - Twenty years ago, John Bryan and his wife hired a teenage babysitter to watch their two young boys.

They had known the 17-year-old about 24 hours when they asked her to be their live-in nanny. Nine months later, the Bryans adopted her.

"Nobody in my whole life had showed me that much love," the girl said in a 1988 interview with The Tampa Tribune.

The Bryans helped her through junior college, bought her a car, took her on ski trips and on vacations to the Cayman Islands.

Friday, the feel-good story turned sinister, as Bryan resigned from the St. Petersburg City Council and committed suicide after being accused of sexually abusing his two adopted teenage daughters. He also admitted to having had a sexual relationship with the girl he hired as a nanny and adopted 20 years ago.

The news painted a different picture of Bryan than the one he had spent decades cultivating.

"John was such a big supporter of adopting kids, protecting kids, helping kids," said David Salverson, who knew Bryan for more than 20 years through the Exchange Club of Northeast St. Petersburg, a civic group that supports children's causes and works to prevent child abuse.

"Who is this person who does child abuse? That couldn't be him. I thought, 'It's got to be a mistake.'"

At a shelter hearing in Family Court Friday morning, Bryan, 56, contended his relationship with the nanny, now 38, had been consensual and had happened while she was an adult. A judge ordered him to move out of the St. Petersburg home he shared with his wife and two daughters, ages 13 and 15.

That evening, Bryan was found at his second home in Citrus County, slumped in a golf cart. In the closed garage, a riding lawn mower was running, and two four-wheelers that also appeared to have been running were out of gas. Authorities found a handwritten suicide note on yellow legal paper in the house.

It was "a goodbye or farewell note to his family," said Gail Tierney, spokeswoman for the Citrus County Sheriff's Office.

In the letter, Bryan said he was confident his family would be able to get through this and that he loved them, she said.

He Promoted Children's Rights

People who knew the lifelong St. Petersburg resident described him as a family man who publicly fought for children's rights in various civic groups and on the city council, to which he was elected in 2001.

At Tuesday's weekly Exchange Club meeting at Pepin restaurant in St. Petersburg, no one had any inkling anything was amiss with Bryan, though authorities say they began investigating him last week.

Fellow club member Bill Dudley remembered Bryan's enthusiasm when a representative from the Heart Gallery, which tries to match potential parents with children needing homes, spoke to the club last year.

"John spoke up and said, 'You know, I adopted a couple of children. It's a wonderful organization,'" Dudley said. "He had a passion in his voice. He felt really good about it." Bryan sometimes brought his young daughters to club meetings and outings.

On Labor Day, several club members went to the Bryans' home in Floral City. His second wife, Alicia, was there, and they gave no signs they planned to separate, as Bryan told neighbors Friday before he committed suicide.

Over the years, Dudley had heard rumors about Bryan's personal life, but nothing that piqued his interest.

"It was just that he was a strange bird," Dudley said. "Who's to say we're not all kind of strange birds?"

In 1988, there was no hint that the relationship between John Bryan and his nanny was anything more than a father-daughter bond.

Bryan Downplayed Adoption

The girl, who was estranged from her birth parents, said she was overwhelmed the Bryans wanted to take her into their family. John Bryan said people who thought it was unusual for them to adopt an 18-year-old didn't understand the bond his family shared with the girl.

"It is the most rewarding thing we have ever done," he said.

In 1988, Marion Bryan and her newly adopted daughter opened an upscale dress shop together in St. Petersburg.

"[She's] my best friend," Marion Bryan said at the time.

Marion and John Bryan divorced in 1992.

Neither Marion nor her adopted adult daughter could be reached for comment Sunday. The daughter's attorney, Richard Giglio of Tampa, said she was "deeply distraught by the recent events regarding her adoptive father." He declined to comment when asked whether the woman considers herself the victim of a crime.

Sunday, friends and colleagues were still trying to figure out who John Bryan really was.

Karl Nurse, who served on the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority with Bryan, said he never suspected anything strange about Bryan's personal life. At a meeting Wednesday, Bryan told his colleagues he had to leave early for a back-to-school event.

"You've got to believe, I guess, there was another John Bryan that I didn't know," he said. "I mean, I guess, you just don't know when the door closes what people's life is like."

Reporter Nicola M. White can be reached at (813) 779-4613 or nwhite1@tampatrib.com. Reporter Jason Geary can be reached at (813) 865-1505 or jgeary

@tampatrib.com. Researcher Melanie Coon contributed to this report.