'Bizarre' details emerge in Bethlehem principal's arrest
As Principal John Acerra walked the hallways at Nitschmann Middle School joking with students or calling them by their nicknames, he appeared to be the coolest principal in the Bethlehem Area School District.
It turns out he was the coolest naked gay porn watching, meth selling Principal in the Bethlehem Area School District.
Clad in a smartly tailored suit and black turtleneck sweater, he exhibited a warm, funny demeanor and was more likely to give a lesson than a punishment to a student who had gotten into trouble.
So he wasn't into S&M, there's that at least.
Yet people who worked with him including some of his friends weren't surprised that the kind, free spirit they knew was arrested Tuesday night in his school office on charges of selling crystal methamphetamine to a police informant, said Karen Dolan, a district teacher who spent 11 years at Nitschmann.
Over the past five years, the times he arrived hours late for school, missed school altogether, kept himself hidden behind the frequently locked office door or showed up at school activities dressed like a teenager all pointed to a life in free-fall, said Dolan, who is also a Bethlehem councilwoman.
''I love the man. I mean, he's a major reason I'm a teacher today,'' said Dolan, a Liberty High School teacher who left Nitschmann in 2001 but still has close ties to many staff members there. ''But he's been crying for help for a very long time. I'm shocked and I'm dazed, but I'm not surprised.''
The picture emerging is of a man leading a double life that had been spinning out of control for at least the past five months, according to police documents.
At least two teachers say it was much longer than that.
''As a boss, all I can say is he changed in the last two years,'' said Elaine Howorth, a home economics teacher who taught at Nitschmann last semester. ''He wasn't the same boss. He wasn't there all the time when you needed him.''
In hindsight, students say, the locked office door and the times Acerra showed up for school football practice wearing a white undershirt and baggy pants, often the garb of middle-school boys, struck them as strange.
"Hindsight". Good choice of words there.
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