Now that you have had a little time to familiarize yourself with this case, I’d like to ask your opinion on a few things.
Clifford Opp gave us ten days to file the accounting that was due the end of December. I believe it expires this week. I didn’t get a copy. I had everything done and in the accountant’s hand (chosen by Stalley, the other conservator) by the second week of January for our year end tax returns. I learned mid April that he hadn’t done anything with it and in fact, still has not filed a return for me. I have had several meetings with Debra Boje, Doug Stalley, Ben Morris and my mother, Barbara Stairs to try and put together an accounting for the court. It is a nightmare. We gave up on Boje, Stalley and Morris and hired an accountant who is familiar with real estate of the type in which I deal and they have been working on if for two weeks. Mary Wutschel asked that I get an extension good through June 10 at which time she says she can have the early accounting done and the first quarter of 1998. It wouldn’t be such a mess, except for the fact that the estate is divided into five entities and each one has to be accounted for separately, but as more information is gathered, things get moved from one entity to another and the money trail that went with it then has to be transferred, in order to correct the inventory. Stalley suggest filing it wrong and amending, but I see that as an opportunity to spend a lot of time defending the changes in court and that is an unnecessary expense. I don’t want to get the court upset thinking that I am just ignoring the original Order, so I was wondering if we should file for an extension based on these unusual circumstances? What do you need from me in order to do that?
The mall developer up the road from me offered to give Wildlife on Easy Street, Inc., a pile of dirt that has a retail value of 5 million, but I have to pay trucks to haul it at a cost of $250,000.00. Wendell Williams, a former “partner” of my husband’s stole our dump truck last January. I gave him several opportunities to return in and then threatened to turn it over to the police. He told me he took the truck and was using it in Gibsonton, but that he would not give it back because it was a gift from Don to him. It was an 8,000.00 1978 Brockway and my husband wouldn’t give someone change for the phone, much less a truck we use all the time. I filed a police report, but never found the truck. Wendell told me “it wouldn’t be good for my health” to try and recover any of the equipment he took in Don’s absence. I don’t even know what else he has other than a pressure washer and a concrete saw. I have had two people in addition to myself, scouring Gibsonton to no avail. Do I have any legal recourse? If he says, as he did to me, that it was a gift, then where did he claim it on his tax return? If he says he doesn’t know anything about it, then I don’t suppose there is anything I can do. It was parked in a lot I own next door to his office when it disappeared. He has both his building and mine fenced, with guard dogs. I can’t even get into my building at 4813 N. Westshore Boulevard.
As for Anne McQueen: She has been the most costly party in this suit to me, as she is continuously filing demands to which my attorneys have had to respond. Her latest is to call up for a hearing my Motion in Objection to her attorney’s fees being awarded. It is set to be heard on June 29. As we discussed, I wish to pull my assets out of the conservatorship and will get some fight from the kids, but expect the majority of the litigation to come from Anne’s protests. I would like to remove her from the conservatorship first, so that I don’t have to pay you and her attorney to battle out something that is none of her business. I will lose more by trying to pull out while Anne can still give me so much grief. As you may recall, getting Anne out of the picture may be a little complicated.
She holds $500,000.00 in real property and mortgages title to E.A. Riggs, Trustee (her maiden name from 30 years ago). There are no trust documents. She claims there never were. She also holds over $50,000.00 in tax certificates as E.A. Riggs. She had originally told me that Don had asked her to put these in her maiden name just for holding purposes because they were properties that he bought with Wendell Williams, but then she went back and said Wendell had no right to any of the properties, so I asked Wendell, who said, in front of Anne, that he was entitled to half of the profits and then Anne quit that night. As they have sold, at Anne’s insistence, the conservatorship has paid Wendell half of the profits, because now she claims that some were Wendell’s and the rest Don gave to her. Anne and her secretary, Madaline Gavinni who both worked for my husband and I until his disappearance, now work for Wendell Williams, who incidentally, never had enough money for an office, much less two secretaries, before Don disappeared. I suspect Wendell and Anne of being responsible for my husband’s absence, I just haven’t been able to prove it yet.
Four month before Don left, he changed his life insurance policy. It had always provided 160k, to Anne, 650k, to me and our bills, and the rest to his kids (except Danny). The new policy made Anne the “owner” and put the proceeds in the C&A Trust, of which she and I were listed and Beneficiaries. The C&A Trust gave Anne 200k, me the same 650k and then gave Anne the discretion to decide which, if any, of Don’s daughters and grandchildren would receive the balance of the $1,250,000.00 policy. The C&A Trust was defined and a copy attached to the policy, however, it was never actually signed. I didn’t even know it existed until after Don’s disappearance. Anne claims she got Don to do this so that she could guarantee that he wouldn’t disinherit any more of his children. The premiums have always been paid from our business account. Tax wise it would be smart to have an outside owner (someone other than Don), but I don’t think it should be Anne. I am sending copies of all of the letters back and forth regarding this policy. I have no objection to Anne receiving as much as $200,000.00 and the children can split 400k anyway they want, but I want to know that I am not paying premiums on a policy that may be deemed “faulty” because of the lack of a trust agreement or the weird changes effected by our secretary just four months before his disappearance.
Anne has filed some nonsense about me funding a retirement fund for her, and I don’t know what sort of response has to be made to that. She quit; she didn’t retire. She is claiming that all of the property still titled to her is what Don gave her as her retirement, but early in 1997 when I discovered a property titled to her and brought it to Don’s attention, he made her sign it back to us, so I don’t believe he knew she was doing this. I had also been trying to get her a $5.00 per week raise and Don wouldn’t hear of it, so I find a 700,000.00 retirement fund, of Don’s approval, a little unbelievable.
She’s also made a lot of noise about seeking a libel suit against me because in our WildLife newsletter I asked anyone with knowledge about Don’s feeling towards the kids or Anne to come forward and said that our secretary (never named or otherwise identified) had transferred about 600k of our assets to her name. She’s been seeking an injunction to keep me from talking about her. This was the extent of my “talking about her” and nothing compared to the stories that have come back to me from her saying that I killed my husband and fed him to the cats. You never did ask, but I’m sure you wondered and the answer is “No. I did not kill my husband. I did not have him killed and if he has been killed I don’t know who may have done it, other than my suspicions about Anne and Wendell.”
Let me know if there is anything I can provide you with to make this transition go smoothly. My mother, Barbara Stairs handles the collections and book keeping and is usually by the phone at 920-6534 fax 926-3255 or you can page me at 878-8425 or fax to my desk at 920-5927. Thank you for your time in this matter. For the animals, Carole Lewis.
I've been writing my story since I was able to write, but when the media goes to share it, they only choose the parts that fit their idea of what will generate views. If I'm going to share my story, it should be the whole story. The titles are the dates things happened. If you have any interest in who I really am please start at the beginning of this playlist: http://savethecats.org/
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