Mike Love impostor is local man ‘well known’ to Riverhead police, chief says

The Mike Love impostor who cajoled a 24-year-old Riverhead woman into getting on stage at Sunday’s cardboard boat race event and announce she was going to be on American Idol (see June 25 blog post by Katie Blasl) is Walter Klapatosk, 61, of Hampton Bays — and someone well known to Riverhead Town police, Riverhead Police Chief David Hegermiller said Tuesday.

He doesn’t have any criminal charges pending against him in Riverhead, Hegermiller said. A search of criminal court records online disclosed no criminal charges pending against him anywhere in New York.

“Let’s just say he’s well known in Riverhead police circles,” the chief said.  “He’s no doubt a local character,” Hegermiller said, adding “but being a character isn’t against the law.”

A variety of local people, including staff members at both Mattituck and Riverhead libraries, said Klapatosk has been a regular around Riverhead for years. And, as was the case on Sunday, when he convinced Amy Wesoloski he was the Beach Boys lead singer Mike Love, Klapatosk has told a variety of tall tales in the community.

He was a frequent visitor at the East Enders Coffee House, said former coffee house owner Lindsay Reeve.

“He said he was Rusty Stevens,” who as a child played the character Larry Mondelo on the TV show “Leave It to Beaver” in the late 1950s and early 1960s. “He liked to talk to young girls at open mic night. He said he could get them record contracts,” Reeve said. “I was suspicious of his story and one day asked him who played June Cleaver, and he didn’t know. I mean everybody knows it was Barbara Billingsly,” Reeve said. He said he and his wife Diane, who ran the coffee house, warned young women to be careful around Klapatosk. But he never seemed to do anything besides spin some yarn.

“He seemed pretty harmless, though definitely real creepy,” Reeve said.

That was the assessment of one local deli owner who said Klapatosk — who she also knows only as “Rusty.” She said he’s been a patron almost daily at her establishment for about 10 years.

“He seems harmless enough,” she said, but asked that her name be withheld from publication. “He is friendly and very talkative. He has a lot of stories to tell.”

A Riverhead library employee — who also asked to remain anonymous — said Klapatosk told a variety of stories over the years. “He was a book publisher, a television journalist, even a CIA agent,” she said. “But he never seemed to bother anyone and never caused any trouble here.” She knew his real name and recognized him in the picture published on RiverheadLOCAL. He hasn’t been at the library in a while.

Klapatosk has been frequenting the Mattituck library, said an employee there. He calls himself Rusty and says he’s a former TV actor who has connections with TV producers, she said. Again, this woman asked to remain anonymous.

Klapatosk has even shown up at Riverhead Town Hall, but there he claimed to be Three Dog Night keyboardist Jimmy Greenspoon, according to Carol Sclafani, Supervisor Sean Walter’s secretary. He brought in a young woman who was interested in opening a juice bar downtown. He claimed to be her manager, Sclafani said. He has not been back at town hall since November, she said.

Klapatosk told a number of people, including a RiverheadLOCAL reporter, at Sunday’s riverfront event he was Mike Love of the Beach Boys. He told Wesoloski and the reporter he would get Wesoloski onto American Idol next season, regardless of her lack of singing ability, because of her good looks. His strange behavior during Wesoloski’s interview made both Wesoloski and the reporter suspicious. An internet search after the interview revealed that the man posing as Love was an impostor, something confirmed Monday by Love’s attorney, Philip Stillman of California.

Wesoloski told RiverheadLOCAL she was taken in by “Mike Love” and suddenly heard herself being called onstage and announced as an upcoming American Idol contestant. At that point, she said, she went along with it because she believed the man’s story. It was only afterward, during the interview with RiverheadLOCAL, did she find his behavior “bizarre” and she grew suspicious of his claims.

Photo captions: Celebrity imposter Walter Klapatosk, left, and Amy Wesoloski. Klapatosk photo courtesy of Theresa Divan. RiverheadLOCAL photo of Amy Wesoloski by Peter Blasl.