Towhey book details ‘no-holds-barred screaming fest’ in Rob Ford home
Guns and heroin come up in a long cellphone call with the "agitated" and "incoherent" mayor, as described in a book by his former chief of staff.

thestar.com
Oct. 14, 2015
By David Rider

As the Conservative party enlists Councillor Rob Ford to help save GTA seats, a new book by Ford’s former chief of staff describes a terrifying scene at the then-mayor’s Etobicoke home in June 2012.

Mark Towhey, in an excerpt from his soon-to-be-released book that appeared Wednesday on Maclean’s magazine’s website, describes a raging, out-of-control Ford threatening to kill his wife and waking up his young daughter amid talk of a gun in the house.

The Star cannot independently verify Towhey’s account and was unable to reach Ford for comment.

“My left thumb hovers over the ‘Enter’ button on my iPhone, ready to summon the police,” Towhey, now a Newstalk 1010 radio host and crisis communications consultant. “My heart is pounding. I hear blood rushing through my neck. I lean forward, mouth open, straining to hear what’s going on in Rob Ford’s house.”

Towhey says Ford, sounding “out of it” but not drunk, called and woke him at 2:39 a.m. Towhey was home alone with his two children, so had to deal with the “agitated” and “incoherent” mayor by phone.

Towhey says he heard Ford and his wife Renata, separated by a door, yelling obscenities at each other in a “no-holds-barred screaming fest,” when Ford said: “I’m going insane” and “She just took my gun upstairs.”

Towhey writes: “I don’t know if he’s making s--- up. I can’t tell what’s really happening from what fantasies he’s spinning.” Ford yells at his wife: “I’ve got you cornered like a rat.”

Towhey, who said he was taking notes, then writes that Ford yelled: “I’m going to give you five dollars see ... (incoherent)...or I’m putting three bullets in your head. You’re pinched. I’ll pump you full ... (again incoherent).”

After Renata went into the bedroom of Ford’s two young children, Towhey writes, he begged Ford to leave them out of the argument, but he hears Ford ask his then-8-year-old daughter if “Mommy’s being bad or good.”

“’Mommy is good,’” she replies, in a tired little voice. “Everyone in this house is good.”’

Towhey hears what sounds like Rob and Renata fighting over his cellphone, and later gibberish from the mayor, including “heroin,” before he seems to calm down and the call ends after 1 hour and 40 minutes.

Towhey writes that he had his hand poised to call 911 on another phone but never did alert the police. When he told Ford’s other staff about the call the next day, “A lot of them were, ‘Yeah, that happens all the time.’”

Towhey’s book, Mayor Rob Ford: Uncontrollable: How I Tried to Help the World’s Most Notorious Mayor, will be released later this month.

Ford later fired Towhey, after his chief of staff urged him to go to rehab. The mayor continued lying publicly about his use of crack cocaine, alcohol and other substances.

Ford eventually went to rehab during his 2014 mayoral re-election campaign and then dropped out of the race to have surgery on a cancerous tumour.

Now by all accounts clean and healthy, Ford, who was elected to his old Ward 2, Etobicoke North, council seat, was in the front row Tuesday with brother Doug Ford at a campaign event with Conservative Leader Stephen Harper. The Conservatives said Harper talked to the Fords backstage.

The event’s host, Conservative MP Ted Opitz, who is running for re-election, called them “two great sons of Etobicoke Centre.”

On Thursday, before release of Towhey’s excerpt, Harper, whose party declares itself tough on criminals including illegal drug users, said he was not going to cast judgment on the Ford family and welcomed its support.

The Fords are planning, with the Conservatives’ blessing, a “Ford Nation” rally in support of Harper on Saturday.

After Maclean’s published Towhey’s account, Conservative campaign spokesman Kory Teneycke told the Star’s Tonda MacCharles that its revelations make no difference to Harper’s decision to attend that rally.

“We’re happy to have their support, and that’s it,” Teneycke said.