Lukens received and cashed four checks from employees of Holk Development Inc., totaling $5,500 between 1989 and 1990. Investigations indicated the checks were written with the hopes that Lukens would be able to help Holk reclaim the enormous government contract it once held to refurbish Pentagon offices.
A witness in the case described “illicit non-campaign contribution payments” made to Ohio senator John Glenn and then-Congressmen Lukens. Holk also appeared to be running an “illegal gambling and loansharking” operation being conducted out of Holk’s contruction trailer at the Pentagon. Holk maintained and operated a yacht on the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., which was used to entertain U.S. military and government officials.
During the F.B.I. investigation, a Holk employee admitted to being instructed to pay a $11,000 bribe to a Pentagon official, and the Army Procurement Fraud division stated that Holk’s president showed up with two thugs “purporting to be Holk employees, in an obvious attempt to intimidate the Army’s contracting official.”
On Feburary 23, 1995, Lukens was arrested in Kent, Ohio, and indicted on five felony counts including bribery in the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C.. That same day Fitzpatrick was taken into custody and was indicted on eight felony counts alleging bribery, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and giving false testimony before the grand jury.
Lukens tried, and failed, to appeal two of the charges in 1997. He served a two-year sentence in a low-security federal prison in Texas, while suffering from an advanced case of throat cancer.
Lukens moved to Dallas, where the Cincinnati Enquirer checked up on him some years later. A neighbor described him as “a sad old man who shuttered his windows whenever he goes out.” He never mentioned his former career in congress.
Lukens died on May 25, 2010, in a Texas nursing home. His New York Times obituary included this detail: in 1987, while Lukens was in his first year in the House, he “joined Representative Newt Gingrich and other congressmen to pay for a book lambasting the House titled The House of Ill Repute.”
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