7-Up vs. Coke, Part 2: From dot-com darling to disaster, the spectacular flameout of Andrew Gladney. Heir to a fortune, Andrew Gladney went from John Burroughs to Yale and came home to found Savvis Inc. Then he squandered it all.

Gladney and the young woman — he knew her by her middle name, Rachelle — got together three times in St. Louis. What enticed her, she'd later say, were his promises of cocaine and cash. "I was desperate for money," she stated in her deposition.

Rachelle said she and Gladney consumed copious amounts of cocaine on all three visits. They fooled around in the former MAX Broadcasting office and engaged in sexual acts with a male friend of Gladney. Rachelle testified that Gladney claimed he "really liked men" and "was really into" watching gay couples have sex. She didn't resist when Gladney and his friend tied her legs behind her head during the sex acts, she said under oath.

"I really did enjoy this last weekend," she wrote to Gladney in an e-mail, according to the court file, "you have brought out Rachelle, the part of me that I love most."

But Rachelle's view of the relationship changed after their third "date," on April 11, 2001. It began on a Friday afternoon at the MAX office, she stated in her deposition, and continued with a visit to a strip club before another romp through the office for more cocaine and foreplay with one of Gladney's female friends.

In the evening, Rachelle and Gladney checked into room 1415 at the Ritz-Carlton in Clayton. There, Rachelle stated, Gladney asked her to put makeup on him. He invited the resident in the room next door to engage in sex with the couple, she testified, and he invited two bellboys into the room, separately, and she performed sex acts on each while Gladney watched.

After a shower, Rachelle testified, Gladney tied her up. He "proceeded to bite my legs," she stated. When she attempted to pull away, she alleged, "[h]e slapped my face and slapped my clitoris and he told me that he would only ease up if he wanted to...." Rachelle testified that Gladney bit her on numerous other parts of her body and wrapped the tie from a terrycloth robe around her neck until she cried.

Eventually Gladney left. Court papers indicate that Rachelle woke up the next morning and ordered room service for breakfast, then departed as well. Sometime later she went to police.

In May 2001 the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney's Office charged Gladney with two felony counts of sodomy and one count of first-degree assault.

Gladney's girlfriend Jeanie Haines, who was pregnant with his child, left him. His ex-wife, Cindy, requested that his custody rights to their son be rescinded, alleging that the boy was in his care at the time of his arrest.

Gladney, still out of work, strenuously fought the charges. He was prepared to go to trial, according to attorney Rosenblum, who says he intended to prove that the alleged victim was sexually active with other men at the time, and to argue that the relations between his client and Rachelle were entirely consensual.

On October 4, 2001, Gladney's second son was born. Haines had taken him back, and by Halloween Gladney had further cause to celebrate: County prosecutors had reviewed the case and decided to drop all charges against the new dad.

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Joe Taylor was working late on a summer evening in 2004 when he heard the click-clack of the door to his office suite unlocking. The attorney peered into the lobby and beheld a muscular man, shirtless and wearing a pair of camouflage cut-offs, stumbling in. "He's holding a stepladder and a light bulb, and he's clearly drunk, and I say, 'Can I help you?'" recounts Taylor, a local attorney. "He says, 'I bought the building. I'm your new owner. I came to change a light bulb.'"

The landlord — Andrew Gladney — proceeded to "jaw" at breakneck pace, Taylor says, about the million-dollar professional and residential condos he envisioned for the building. Gladney suggested Taylor should stick around as a tenant.

"You play Ping-Pong?" Taylor says Gladney suddenly blurted. "Come with me!"

Hoping to detach himself as politely as possible from what was becoming an increasingly bizarre encounter, the attorney followed Gladney to the latter's office, where his new landlord began rifling through papers on his desk. "He lifts up a piece of paper, and there's a mound of what appeared to be — and most certainly was — cocaine, sweeps it into his hand, eats it and chases it with a Diet 7-Up," Taylor says.

"I was shocked," the lawyer adds. "Because he had no idea who I was, and he didn't give a shit. And then he goes: 'Let's play!'"

For Gladney, it had been a couple of tumultuous years.