When Angela Bertugli landed an internship with Democratic state Rep. Bill DeWeese in the summer of 2004, it looked like the start of big things for the small-town beauty queen who was distinguishing herself in her studies at Washington & Jefferson College.
Later that summer, the political science student intern met DeWeese's powerful Harrisburg chief of staff, Michael Manzo.
A grand jury report released this week said on their first meeting Manzo and Bertugli shared drinks, and later had sex.
After she graduated from college and moved to Pittsburgh for graduate school, Bertugli told investigators, she became Manzo's Pittsburgh mistress and was hired as a ghost employee on the state payroll. He allegedly housed her in a makeshift office above a Pittsburgh cigar shop.
Those kinky Democrats and their cigars.