I’m sitting at “the lot” (Corner of 62nd and Broadway) at 7 am waiting to see if Anne comes in early to start hiding records. I can see the lot across 62nd Street to the East where the two grandfather oaks still stand. In 1981, when Don & I fell in love, our little love nest, a tattered travel trailer was parked between those big trees. So many wonderful memories flood my mind that it is difficult to record yesterday’s events. I love and miss him so much.

Within 24 hours of Anne telling Don’s girls about his disappearance, they managed to have a pow wow electing Donna Pettis as their spokesperson and hired Ross Peaveyhouse, Esquire who advertised heavily as a Will & Probate Attorney. They sure didn’t leave any time for trying to find Don nor for grieving. Anne & Donna Pettis called me from the office to let me know that they had decided to appoint a conservator (Anne).

Anne told everyone that there is no power of attorney, but then told me that she has my Will and the Power of Attorney I gave to Don in 1992 just before our Anniversary. I asked about the reciprocal Will and Power of Attorney Don gave me that same day and she said it did not exist. It seems strange that she can find mine, but not his. They should have been kept together. I had forgotten about preparing either of the documents until she reminded me of mine that she had. When Don had started going to Costa Rica so much we had revised his to add jurisdiction in any Country. I have been too busy looking for Don and running our business and refuge to spend any great deal of time searching for a lost paper. After the strange call from Anne and Donna Pettis, I spent the night searching until I located the original Will and Power of Attorney dated 11/96.

Knowing how bitter and suspicious of his kids Don was, I am dumbfounded that Anne would think it was okay to invite his daughters down to the office to go through the books and bank accounts. These are the same girls who tried to take Don to the cleaners via his ex-wife and who Anne says “bald-faced lied” to the court to help their mom get another million dollar settlement four years after the first one. I spent all day Thursday in the office with her and Madeline and let her hang herself with her own rope. (A nice little rope trick my mother taught me.)

I remember the first Christmas Don and I shared in our little love nest. Don had set up the cutest little tree and had decorated it all in white angels. Angel was what Don has always called me. He was the one who started me collecting angels. He bought a nameplate for me that said “Angel”. He brought me little plastic angels and when Pearlie Mae died he sent a ceramic angel praying over a cat. It still sits on my desk to remind me that “all good kitties go to heaven”.

I made curtains for our love nest and tried to make it cheery because often I’d sit there for hours waiting for him to find time to sneak back there to see me. Don had told me his name was Bob Martin and that he was just a lot boy for his slave driving employer, Don Lewis. That was why he would have to sneak around to see me. I was 19 and “Bob” Don was my life. It was a year or more later before one of Don’s new secretaries accidentally gave away his secret.

This just in: Paul Newman in Costa Rica triplex called to ask when Don’s flight will be arriving on Sunday. I updated him and he at least pretended to be surprised and said he would call if Don showed up down there. I told him to let Don know that his kids are seizing his assets and figured that would get Don on the phone right away.

Later that day: I drove to the office 3 hours early and noticed that several other people seemed to be watching the building. How many laps around the block can you make in a pickup truck towing a boat and not look suspicious? The little green compact car must have made twenty laps alone.

At 9:15 Donna Pettis drives up and tells me that Anne did not want to give me the keys to the office and that she was meeting with her attorney. Donna Pettis wanted me to come with her to her Attorney’s office to appoint a conservator, but I told her that I was not comfortable speaking with her attorney since I am still un-represented. We drove off and I called my dad and asked him to get guys and trucks and come to the office.

Suspecting there would be a huge fight, I drove home to get my Power of Attorney. The code for the alarm that Anne gave me the night before, must have been changed, because we could not shut off the alarm and the police arrived. I showed them the POA and my dad explained the situation to him, so he left. We loaded all of the file cabinets and drawers that we could fit into the two pickup trucks and the Jeep.

In the interim, Anne accompanied by her attorney, came in and she asked for her personal items. She tried to take the Don Lewis and United Truck and Trailer check books, but Kenny Farr caught her and made her put them back. She admitted to having $2200.00 in cash from the weeks rent payments, but refused to turn it over. She said she was going to turn over $250,000.00 in properties in her name to the Attorney, Leroy Merkle and that I shouldn’t bother her about the $2200.00.

Then she started screaming and crying that I took her two tins of pennies, nickels and dimes that she was saving for her grand babies and a box with her personal files in it. I told her that the Jeep was already packed, but that I would sort through it carefully and return anything of hers to her. She had a fit and demanded that we unload until we found her boxes, and I refused and her attorney told her she should try to leave gracefully. She kept trying to finagle the boxes, but I wouldn’t give in.

There must be a reason she would put up such a huge fight, for what was supposed to be just her tax records and personal memorabilia. In her hysteria she said, in front of her attorney, my dad and Kenny Farr that she had compromised her scruples for Don for the last time. When I asked what she meant she said that Don made her forge documents and sign other people’s names. Donna Pettis and her husband both came and tried to slow us down, as did Wendell, but we just kept packing until we were out of room.

I was last in our convoy and picked up Burger King meals for everyone as we approached the refuge. It was about 2:00 pm at the latest when we ate and then began unloading. I spent the rest of the day and most of the night separating the old from the new and our business records from Anne’s personal life. One box seemed to hold nothing but the tax and medical records of the last few years for her and all of her children.

I started to just set that box by the door for her, but remembered how adamant she had been and resigned myself to the boring task of going through it a page at a time. Hidden within the pages I found a treasure trove of documents that would be worth a small fortune to the highest bidder. Foremost, was the Will and Power of Attorney that Don executed in 1992 naming me as his attorney and sole heir (the one she said never existed, despite the fact that she notarized the thing), secondarily was the original 1988 GALTA Trust which left the remainder of our estate to Don’s children (even though this had been revised and originals left with Anne that removed his children entirely) and last but not least the most recent original PSRL Land Trust.

I can’t think of any reason why she would need to hide these in a box filled with only her personal documents. They have no trash pickup there so Don brings the office trash here and it is often burned, which means someone could accidentally stumble across these documents if she were to try and throw them away. The safest way to dispose of them would be to slip them into a box from her home and destroy or hide them there. This box was under her desk and had nothing else in it, except her personal stuff.

The rest of the stuff I found made me wonder what it is that she and Madeline do all day. It was the biggest, nastiest, dustiest mess you’ve ever seen, with no rhyme or reason. Still in the top desk drawers were receipt books and deposit slips from the early 1980’s. Everything it would take to run that office would fit in two file cabinets, if it were all in the same two cabinets. The house next door to Anne’s, that she keeps insisting was her own doing and nothing of Don’s, was paid for with 4 cashier’s checks purchased by Don and made payable to the Clerk of the Circuit Court. I wonder if Don knew?

I found a pile, two inches thick of all of the tax certificates held in mostly Anne’s name and some in Gale Rathbone’s name. These will be paying off for years and I would never know. I found arrest records on Anne’s son Jesse (who she said hated Don, but the feeling was mutual). The police report said that Jesse cut someone off in traffic for shooting him a bird and Jesse roared up, blocking traffic, opened the guy’s door and punched him in the mouth hard enough to bust it open. His hearing is coming up Sept. 2, 1997 and Anne has just been bragging to everyone about how she raised her kids right from watching all the mistakes Gladys Lewis Cross and Don made in raising their brood.

The detectives asked me to fax them maps to the properties in Costa Rica when they called me at the office earlier today. Donna Pettis had called them raising Cain because I was moving the office. I asked the detectives if they had a problem with that, and they asked if they could look at it when it gets to its new location. I told them they could and they said there was no problem with me moving stuff then. I also faxed them the long distance calls that Sprint sent and asked if they want me to check them out, or asked if I should wait until they do a preliminary search. I reminded them of how weird I thought it was that Alvin Coulter and Joe Ryan were the first to call and ask me to keep them posted on any news about Don.

Same date, different entry:

Friday 9:00 am passed and no sign of Anne but Donna Pettis, Don’s eldest daughter, pulled up and told me she and her sisters were meeting with their attorney and going to have Anne appointed as Conservator so that no one but Anne would have access to the office. She asked me to come with her to her Attorney and consent to this order and I told her I needed to find legal counsel and would meet with them later. I told her that I had Don’s Power of Attorney and that there was no need to appoint a conservator to run our business. Thinking back on how defensive Anne had been and all of the illegal transfers to her maiden name, I reasoned that she had persuaded Don’s children to appoint her conservator so that she could destroy all documentation giving me the authority to run the business since she always had originals of the Power and the Will and the Trusts, although since Don’s disappearance she has started saying she didn’t remember the documents but that she was looking for them for me.

I called our crew and told them to bring every man and every vehicle they could find to the office. In three hours all of the files we could load were on their way to my home.

For entertainment purposes only.