The two clubs -- Volcano's on Greenmount Avenue and Trilogy on Eutaw Street -- were close cousins. They had similar clientele. Similar problems with the city. And the same important backer: Mary Ross.
So there was a certain symmetry to this week's arrest: When police picked up the alleged shooter in the Oct. 24 slayings of two college students outside Volcano's nightclub, they found the suspect as he left Club Trilogy.
In East Baltimore, Ross, as community coordinator for Johnston Square Community Development Corp., had been Volcano's protector when it ran afoul of the city rules. She refused to complain despite a rising tide of violence near the establishment. In return, she got Volcano's to allow the community to use the club for neighborhood events.
This year on Eutaw Street, Ross put her familiarity with Volcano's to work as owner and operator of Club Trilogy. Without a liquor license, she secured a series of one-day licenses in the name of Johnston Square Community Development Corp.
To handle costly renovations, Ross acknowledged yesterday that she had depended on the work of Milton Tillman, a former nightclub owner who spent two years in prison for trying to bribe a member of the city zoning board. In October, Tillman was sentenced to 57 months in jail after a tax-fraud conviction.
Opponents of Ross' bid for a liquor license -- an appeal she withdrew Dec. 19 -- have questioned how a woman who retired in June from a $32,736-a-year city job could afford to fix up and open a large two-story hall.
Ross said Tillman renovated the building at 320 N. Eutaw St. shortly before she acquired the rights to run an establishment here. Ross would not discuss -- and did not reveal in filings to the liquor board -- any details of any agreement to rent the building, which is owned by Barnet and Mary Annenberg, according to city records.
Records also show she had arranged to purchase a liquor license for $15,000.
"I did not purchase the business until after Milton finished the renovations," said Ross, 52. "But he did do the renovations, that's true," she added. She declined to explain further.
Tillman is at Allenwood Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania, said his lawyer, Michael Marr.
Ross also would not discuss what was going on in the club at 2 a.m. Monday before the arrest of Kevin Lamont Richardson, 24. The club does not have a liquor license, and needs approval from the zoning board to have after-hours entertainment, city housing Commissioner Daniel P. Henson III wrote in a December letter to the liquor board.
