Who Lied?

Consider the following sequence of events.

On 1/24/05, I spoke with the owner of a private investigation (p.i.) agency in Boerne, Texas, whom I’ll call P.I. #1, about hiring him to help me deal with a fraudulent trust document my name had been forged on and also to collect evidence that my children and I were being stalked and harassed. P.I. #1 told me he was a former DEA agent with many years of law enforcement experience who believed he could help me. We agreed to meet about this in Boerne, after he returned from a business trip to Washington, D.C.

On 1/31/05, I met with P.I. #1 at a restaurant in Boerne. P.I. #1 was accompanied at this meeting by a second man and his wife. This second man, whom I’ll call P.I. #2, was introduced to me as a retired FBI agent who had specialized in fraud cases and now worked as a p.i. with a specialty in that area. P.I. #1 said he wanted P.I. #2 to consult on my case if I hired him and that he would pay P.I. #2 himself out of what I paid him if I hired them.

Both of these men said they were licensed as private investigators by the State of Texas, and they told me how to go to the DPS/PSB website to verify this (which I later did). P.I. #1 carried a large black leather briefcase with an official-looking seal on it that he said was from his days with the DEA. He had asked me to bring along a cashier’s check for his retainer if I decided to hire him, which I did decide to do (Doc. A). As I left this meeting, P.I. #2 pulled out a business card, wrote his cell phone number on it while I watched, and handed it to me (Doc. B, top).

On 2/2/05, P.I. #2 personally escorted me to the office of an attorney in Boerne that both p.i.s insisted I hire to help me deal with the fraudulent trust. I did hire this lawyer at that time.

On 2/4/05, P.I. #2 asked me to meet with him at his home, which was located in Fair Oaks Ranch, an affluent suburb between Boerne and San Antonio. He gave me directions to his house over the phone, and I jotted them down along the edge of my kitchen calendar. I drove to his house, where I met with him and his wife, who they said helped with his business. While I was there, the couple showed me a large glass case containing a handgun, a badge, and other items I was told were related to the man’s years as an FBI agent. I was also shown briefly into a room with a computer in it that was being used as an office. This room had a wooden shelf attached to the wall than ran all along one side. There were some small items on the shelf, but my attention was drawn to a large framed art print that was propped up against the wall on the shelf, midway down the room. This print was a still-life of various items related to FBI service (gun, badge with “FBI” clearly written on it, etc.). It was in the style of a well-known Kentucky artist named Don Ensor, and it was very similar or possibly identical to a print I recalled seeing a few years earlier at the home of my father’s next-door neighbor, an FBI agent, in Kentucky.

I only met with P.I. #2 at his home this one time. After this, both p.i.s insisted on meeting with me in an assortment of other unusual locations instead. P.I. #1 always insisted on being paid in cash only. When I demanded a receipt, he finally hand-wrote me one (Doc. C).

All three of these men (the two p.i.s and the lawyer they took me to) charged me large amounts of money for work they claimed to be doing as part of my case, but when I began asking to see actual results of their work and requesting written reports of what they’d done, they began stalling. I confronted all three of them at a meeting in the lawyer’s office on 8/15/05 that I can only describe as very frightening and threatening. Desperate to defuse the situation, I told the three men I needed to spend the next few weeks getting two of my children off to college in other states and then would re-evaluate things. As I was leaving this meeting, I spotted my former father-in-law’s vehicle nearby and realized he’d been listening in on the meeting, probably from an adjacent office. At that point, I realized I’d been conned.

On 8/21/05, I mailed a formal complaint in the form of a box of documents plus a cover letter against the persons involved in the fraudulent trust, P.I. #1, P.I. #2, and the Boerne lawyer to the FBI office in San Antonio (Doc. D). However, I was followed into the post office by two men who flashed badges at postal employees and were immediately admitted into the “Employees Only” part of the building. Because I was concerned about this, I went in person to the FBI office a few days later to follow up on my complaint. The Special Agent I met with there (who never told me his name) said their office hadn’t received my complaint. I explained that one of the p.i.s who’d defrauded me was a former FBI agent. The current agent took down P.I. #2’s information and said he’d do some checking.

Beginning on 9/4/05, I started noticing P.I. #1 and P.I. #2 following me and stalking me. I recorded these incidents in a logbook.

I officially fired P.I. #1, P.I. #2, and their lawyer-friend on 9/9/05. I had deliberately waited to do this until after I was sure there were written records of the crimes committed against me on file with the FBI because of how frightening the confrontation with the two former federal agents in particular had been.

On 9/13/05, I received a letter from the FBI that was dated 9/1/05 in which they refused to do anything (Doc. E). This letter was printed on cheap, flimsy paper and arrived with its envelope hanging wide open. It referred to a strange unknown letter I was supposed to have sent them on 8/24/05, rather than the supposedly missing box of documents with its very clear cover letter that I’d actually sent on 8/22/05 as shown above.

On 10/21/05, I filed formal complaints with the DPS/PSB (Texas p.i. licensing board) against P.I. #1 and P.I. #2 (Doc. F).

When I got no response from the DPS/PSB, I began complaining to the Texas OAG and other agencies. I also sent a letter to the DPS/PSB on 11/10/05 asking about the lack of response to my complaints (Doc. G). On 11/13/05, I emailed the DPS/PSB about my fear of P.I. #2 because he was frightening me by stalking me and driving by our house repeatedly (Doc. H).

On 11/15/05, a DPS investigator in San Antonio called and asked me to meet him at a public location that was between my house and his office later that day to give him copies of all the documents related to the complaints I’d filed. During this conversation, he hinted that P.I. #2 might not have actually been an FBI agent.

About 20 or 30 minutes after this call ended, the DPS investigator called me back to cancel our meeting in San Antonio. He said he’d just learned that a senior DPS investigator in Dallas had already been assigned to my case. He instead asked me to fax him a few of the most important documents from my complaints, and he gave me his fax number. Then he told me straight out that he hadn’t been able to find any indications of P.I. #2’s ever having worked for the FBI. I told the investigator I was shocked to hear this. He told me to just fax what he’d asked for, and he said someone would get back in touch with me soon.

I immediately gathered up what the investigator had asked for. I started faxing the documents to the number I’d been given but quickly discovered that the fax number didn’t work. I thought I must have jotted the number down incorrectly, so I called the investigator back to check on this. A different investigator answered the phone, said the person I’d just talked to had left the office, and told me the fax machine I’d been trying to send to was out of order. He gave me the number of a different machine he said was located down the same hallway, and he promised me he’d personally make sure that my documents got to the correct investigator. I then faxed my documents to the second number without any problems.

As it happened, P.I. #1 and P.I. #2 had provided me with simple equipment for recording phone calls, and I still had this equipment attached to my telephone. As a result, I had a cassette tape recording of my phone conversations with the San Antonio DPS investigator. (The third call about the broken fax machine was made from a different phone and was not recorded.)

That evening, I suddenly remembered the business card P.I. #2 had given me (Doc. B, top). I got it out, looked at it again, and saw that it contained both a statement implying he’d been an FBI agent and a sample of his handwriting proving he’d given it to me. Based on what the DPS investigator had told me on the phone, I now believed the card might be proof that P.I. #2 had impersonated an FBI agent. The next morning, 11/16/05, I sent a letter (Doc. I) and a copy of the card to the DPS investigator in San Antonio.

On 2/6/06, I was sent a letter from the San Antonio DPS investigator giving me the contact information for the Dallas investigator who was handling my case (Doc. J).

The Dallas investigator, the DPS, and the Texas OAG all later refused to take any action whatsoever against P.I. #1 or P.I. #2. Because I was upset about law enforcement’s refusal to do anything at all about investigating or prosecuting these p.i.s and was seriously concerned about them defrauding someone else because they still held valid Texas p.i. licenses, I began sending copies of the business card from P.I. #2 to various agencies and the media. Meanwhile, I continued to log various stalking incidents directed against me by both of these p.i.s.

On 6/26/07, I went back down to the San Antonio FBI office on another matter and met with a different agent there who did identify himself (Doc. B, bottom). I was surprised to discover very quickly that this agent was more interested in P.I. #2 than he was in the matter I’d come there about. The agent began this discussion by asking me if I wasn’t afraid of being sued by P.I. #2 for accusing him of impersonating a federal agent by sending around copies of his business card. I told him no, and I explained about how the DPS investigator had told me there was no record of P.I. #2 ever having worked for the FBI. I was stunned when the agent told me P.I. #2 actually had worked for the FBI as a fraud investigator. I asked him why the DPS investigator had lied to me. He said he didn’t know, and he implied that I was not being truthful about having been told this.

At that point, I became very upset. I immediately told the agent that I just happened to have a cassette tape recording of the phone conversation in which the DPS investigator had made the statements in question, and I got out the tape and handed it to him. At this, the agent became agitated, grabbed the tape from me, and ran out of the room.

He returned a few minutes later with a small tape recorder that he turned on. My tape was in the recorder, and it started playing right at the spot during my first call with the investigator where he implied that P.I. #2 hadn’t worked for the FBI but didn’t actually state this. This made me wonder how the agent had managed to locate that spot on the tape so quickly, since he hadn’t been out of the room very long. I knew the part of the tape he needed to hear was in the second phone call, but when I told him this, he moved the tape ahead (again to just the right spot!) and showed me there was only one phone call on my tape, even though I knew there had been two. I tried to tell him the other call had somehow disappeared from the tape, but he made it clear he didn’t believe me. I told him that, regardless of his FBI status, P.I. #2 had defrauded me and had been stalking me ever since and that I was afraid of him. We discussed a particular incident in which P.I. #2 had been tailgating me too closely and might have tapped my bumper with his vehicle at a stop sign, before moving on to the matter I’d actually come to discuss.

I was extremely upset about my cassette tape, which I knew had to have been tampered with at some point. As soon as I got home, I got out a copy of the tape I’d made and played it. To my astonishment, someone had also removed the second phone call from the copy as well!

I was positive both tapes had been tampered with. The matter I’d gone to the FBI office about involved, among other things, another lawyer who’d recently defrauded me. I remembered that a few months before, she had asked me to make her copies of all the tape recordings related to my case, which I’d kept hidden because of repeated break-ins at our house. I’d also gone to the FBI to ask their help in locating illegal surveillance devices we knew were installed in our house and on our property that were being used to facilitate the stalking (which they refused to do), and I realized that the illegal surveillance might have revealed where I kept the tapes so they could be doctored during one of the break-ins, using the copy I’d provided the lawyer with to determine what on the tape needed to be altered. I’m told a very high-quality doctored master could have been prepared in advance using a tool called “Audacity” and stored as an .aup file on a laptop; this could at some point be recorded onto my tapes directly in a very short amount of time. I’m also told it’s possible to bookmark specific spots on a tape.

Regarding the question of whether P.I. #2 really had or had not been an FBI agent as he’d claimed, I remained puzzled. I knew what I’ve related here was correct and accurate, because I’d personally experienced all of it. That meant that two different persons in law enforcement had given me completely conflicting information. There was no escaping the fact that one of them might have lied to me. Since I was unsure of who was being truthful and who wasn’t, I of course immediately contacted as many of the people and agencies I could remember having sent copies of P.I. #2’s business card to and explained the situation to them.

I wondered if I’d ever be able to get to the truth of the matter. Recently, the subject came up again in a most unexpected way. I was put in touch with another victim of organized stalking in San Antonio, and when I mentioned the name of P.I. #2, this victim recognized it instantly. The other victim had discovered P.I. #2 actually runs a major regional organized stalking gang that employs numerous members of both his and his wife’s extended families. I was provided with information on persons and vehicles known to be involved in this stalking gang, and I recognized many of them. This other victim says he has personally filed serious complaints with various law enforcement agencies against P.I. #2, and he knows of at least three other victims who’ve done this as well.

It now appears likely that, although I did not meet P.I. #2 until 2005, he had actually been stalking me from the very beginning, which was probably in 1999.

As to the question of whether P.I. #2 really is a former FBI agent or not, the San Antonio victim says he checked the man out thoroughly and was told by someone he trusted at the FBI that P.I. #2 definitely had worked for the FBI. (In that case, I would very much like to know what he did there and why he left!) As of 3/25/11, P.I. #2 still holds a valid Texas p.i. license, according to the DPS/PSB website. (P.I. #1 appears to have retired.)

As to the question of why someone in law enforcement might have lied to me, there are a couple of other possibilities. For example, the DPS investigator might have checked someone else with a similar name. Or perhaps the DPS investigator checked directly with Quantico, who didn’t know P.I. #1 had been employed by the local FBI office as a private contractor, paid informant, or in some other capacity rather than as an agent. The problem with those sorts of explanations is why I wasn’t simply given them at some point.

I’ve now come to realize that the important question isn’t who lied to me or even whether they lied to me or not; it’s why no one in law enforcement has been straight with me about P.I. #2, why he still has his license after there’ve been so many serious complaints filed against him, and why he’s never been prosecuted for anything as far as I know.

Tricks Of The Trade

As I've discussed before, early in 2005 I hired a former FBI agent and a former DEA agent who were working together as private investigators to look into serious problems I was having with a previous investigator I'd hired named Ed Hodges. The new investigators insisted I talk with a lawyer they worked with and spoke very highly of who was also on the Boerne, TX city council at the time. The former FBI agent even personally accompanied me to my first meeting with this attorney. It was at this meeting that I first realized Hodges had conned me. On the ex-FBI agent's advice, I immediately hired this Boerne attorney to handle the fraud for me.

At one point during this initial meeting, I also mentioned to this lawyer that I needed to have a new will drawn up. The lawyer said he could do this for me but it would have to wait until the fraud was dealt with because it was more urgent.

As detailed in "My Story" at the beginning of this blog, I became increasingly confused and frustrated when this lawyer kept stalling. (A sample email exchange of mine with him is posted at "They Said", 9/16/09.) I became especially concerned when one of my children and I photographed a car we believed belonged to Ed Hodges parked in front of my ex-husband's office during what was described to my other children as "a big meeting about real estate development in our neighborhood" and this lawyer still wouldn't do anything.

In August of 2005 I suddenly received a call from the Boerne attorney telling me he'd finally drawn up the new will I'd originally asked for. I was puzzled as to why he'd suddenly done this without my having asked again and even more puzzled when he insisted I make the long drive to his office right away to sign it, but he said he'd recently been less busy and had finally gotten around to drawing it up, so I headed down there. My oldest child, who was home from college, went with me.

When we got to the attorney's office, I was very surprised to discover he'd drawn up far more than just a will for me: there was also a power of attorney document, a guardianship document, a medical power of attorney document, a directive to physicians document, and more.

I was very confused by all the documents which had never been explained to me or discussed with me. I was also upset when I saw numerous references in the new will to the fraudulent trust Ed Hodges had altered and forged my initials on [Ex. 1], but the lawyer said these were necessary until the fraudulent trust issue was resolved legally. He suggested I go ahead and sign the documents and then if I later changed my mind about any of them, I could simply destroy the original to void it.

I hesitated for some time over what I should do and discussed the matter at length with my adult child. In the end, I did decide to go ahead and sign the documents.

After I got home and was able to study the documents a little more, I realized that one of them could be easily altered by someone by simply crossing items out [Ex. 2a]. I was seriously concerned about this and immediately destroyed that document. I also emailed the lawyer to let him know what I'd done and why [Ex. 2b]. His reply is also shown.

Shortly after this, I discovered my former father-in-law had been allowed to listen in on a confrontational meeting between myself, this lawyer, and the two ex-feds who recommended him. I fired all of them, and I immediately destroyed the originals of all the documents I'd signed and sent emails and handwritten letters to my children and several friends stating I'd voided all the documents.

I did, however, keep obvious copies of these documents (clearly marked as such). When I hired a professional document examiner to look at the fraudulent trust document in 2006 (see "She Said", 9/16/09), I also asked her to look at the copies of the Boerne legal documents.

The document examiner found numerous problems with these documents, some of which I'm posting here. Since I don't have any legal training or experience, I never realized that I was the affiant, not the lawyer and his secretary, who therefore knowingly signed some of the documents incorrectly [Exs. 3a and 3b]. Notice that these documents were also notarized this way [Ex 3b]. In another case, one page I initialed was swapped for an uninitialed page [Ex 4] when the secretary stepped out of the room briefly to copy the signed documents and bind them into folders--I know this because I checked all the pages twice and very carefully to make sure I hadn't missed any pages, and that's the only time the originals left my sight.

The document examiner recommended another attorney to me (see "She Said") whom I hired--and later also had to fire for conning me! When Ed Hodges stated in legal documents that he'd turned over documentation he claimed he had to my former Boerne attorney and the Boerne attorney would not give me a complete copy of my file, I filed a formal complaint against him with the State Bar of Texas that included copies of the documents he'd drawn up with the problems clearly marked. The attorney then provided an extremely incomplete copy of my file.

The State Bar of Texas refused to discipline this attorney in any way, so he's still practicing law with no complaints listed on his webpage. I'm posting these examples now in the hope they will prevent someone else from being victimized.

File Numbers

Early in 2005, I hired a lawyer to represent us that the ex-DEA and ex-FBI agents I'd hired as private investigators to help me figure out what was going on with Ed Hodges recommended highly and even went with me to see. On the day I first met this attorney and hired him, he told me why the trust document Ed Hodges had mailed me was fraudulent and I looked at it carefully for the first time and realized it was not the document I'd signed. Also at this meeting (which the former FBI agent also attended), this lawyer casually mentioned some sort of problem with file numbers on the document but wouldn't explain this further.

Several times over the next few months, I tried unsuccessfully to get this attorney to explain to me what he'd meant about the file numbers, but he just changed the subject or said it didn't matter. Eventually, I tried to get him to explain his earlier remarks to me in writing as shown here, and you can see his reply.

I'm no lawyer myself and have no idea if there's anything to this or not, but given the fact that I later caught these people allowing my adversaries to listen in on my private conversation with them and fired them as a result, I have to wonder. Therefore, I'm posting copies of the file numbers from various versions of the fraudulent trust document here in the hope that someone else will explain to me what's going on with them.

For more information on all this, please read "My Story" at the beginning of this blog.

Another One

According to a "mini-article"in this morning's San Antonio Express-News, another close associate of my ex-husband and his brother was found dead under suspicious circumstances yesterday. The article says the man had been missing since Friday, but we never saw or heard anything on the news about the extensive search for him that was described. Of course it was my ex-husband's buddy the local sheriff and his friends who found the body "in a wooded area on an adjoining ranch".

Once again I'm left unable to answer the frightened questions of my children, who grew up with this man's kids. Many years ago when I was still married, I remember my sister-in-law telling me a wild story about this man and his wife, who I was told were extremely wealthy, deciding to move here from Dallas because their children had either been kidnapped or had been threatened with being kidnapped. They'd supposedly come to our area because they believed it was safer. Coincidentally (?), the man worked for the same construction company previously discussed here in my post entitled "Spouses". I also remember that his sister-in-law, an accountant, died suddenly while on vacation in the British Virgin Islands a few years ago; her husband currently lives nearby.

There has been an extreme and unusual dearth of information given out by this same sheriff concerning the murder investigation of the death of the young man who was found at an unnamed ranch house near here months after he disappeared from Kendall County. San Antonio news coverage of this recently had short press releases saying two young men had been arrested in connection with this homicide, but there's been no additional information given out that I'm aware of and no mention of any of this in our local paper. This is frankly unbelievable under the circumstances; a homicide in a small town is usually considered much more newsworthy. (Update: There is a short piece in the local paper this week about the case, but it contains very little additional information.)

Lost And Found

Instead of being confined to the classifieds as usual, the "Lost And Found"s seemed to be scattered all over our local newspaper today.

First, one of the missing persons I've written about before was identified as being the body of a white male that was found in eastern Gillespie County at an unidentified location by an unidentified person last Sunday. Trey Allen Noah, 20, of Kendall County had been missing since last November. The Gillespie County Sheriff, a close friend of my ex-husband's, is insisting on heading the investigation and is not giving out any information, which is frankly "business as usual" around here in suspicious death cases and does not bode well as far as the victim's family receiving any kind of real closure or justice. (This is the same sheriff who, in his previous job as a state game warden, happened to find a number of other victims of suspicious deaths.)

Secondly, I spotted a public notice of a zoning change by the city that was hidden at the bottom of a page in the sports section (amid advertisements) rather than being published in the classifieds section with the other public notices as is normal. Sure enough, the property whose zoning has been changed is described only vaguely, and there were no previous notices published previously announcing any hearings on this change. From the little stated in the notice, I have no idea where this property is or what's really going on, other than that the zoning of it was changed from residential to "public facility".

Taxing Troubles

Today being "Tax Day" brings to mind my past inabilities to obtain complete and correct copies of my back federal income tax returns from the years I was married and filed jointly with my husband.

In 2005, the two private investigators (one ex-FBI and the other ex-DEA) from the Boerne area I'd hired to help me gather evidence against Ed Hodges and others regarding a fraudulent trust document began insisting that I needed to obtain copies of my back tax returns from the IRS but would not explain why. The former DEA agent said he had a good friend who worked for the IRS in Austin and that he'd get his friend to expedite my requests, so I went online as the p.i.s had instructed me, printed out the proper forms, filled them out, and mailed then to the IRS in Austin on 5/15/05, along with my check for $468.00 to pay for copies of the returns from the years the p.i.s had asked me to obtain ($39.00 each).

On 6/21/05, I received a check from the IRS for $351.00 with no explanation. Then on 6/29/05, I received copies of my federal tax returns from 1998, 1999, and 2000 (which happen to be the same ones handed to me by my divorce lawyer and accountant during my divorce negotiations that they said they'd been furnished by my husband and his accountant, except that these new copies had some unusual markings on them) plus a letter from the IRS dated 2/27/05 saying my returns from the other years I'd requested were not available, which explained the refund check I'd received.

I noticed that this packet had been mailed from zip code 78741 instead of 73301 where the IRS office was located, but no one would tell me whether this was significant or not. When I told the two p.i.s I was unable to obtain the documents they'd asked for and requested contact information for the one p.i.'s IRS friend so I could try to find out why I'd been denied copies of my records, the p.i. told me there was nothing more I could do and refused to give me his friend's information.

I have never been able to obtain complete and correct copies of my back tax returns from the government. In retrospect, I never actually saw any of these completed returns while I was married, either; my husband always brought home the signature page only for me to sign, and I did so because he insisted on having his father, his office manager, and their family's accountant handle all our finances and at the time, I had no reason not to trust them completely. In fact, on one especially memorable "Tax Day", I remember my husband suddenly bursting into an all-female fashion show being held to raise money for a local charity, running up to me while I was on the runway, asking me to sign our tax return, and then madly dashing out to howls of laughter from the audience which, as I told him later, was extremely embarrassing for me. (In retrospect, this incident has taken on an entirely different significance.)

The State Bar of Texas Did

...Nothing again.

I filed a very serious and well-documented complaint with the state bar against the Boerne lawyer I've discussed previously in "They Said" (9/16/09) and elsewhere after it became clear that I would have to do so in order to force him to turn over copies of documents Ed Hodges said he'd sent to this lawyer, the lawyer was refusing to give me a complete copy of my file, and I desperately needed these documents for my lawsuit with Hodges. I also included in this complaint copies of the statements made by this lawyer as exemplified by the ones posted in "They Said", as well as copies of some of the legal documents this attorney had insisted on drawing up for me that the document expert I'd hired had found very serious problems with.

Officials with the State Bar of Texas notified me that they were investigating my complaint, and they eventually told me they had called the lawyer in for some sort of questioning session. However, I soon received notification that they had found no wrong-doing and would not be taking any action against the attorney. On the evening of the same day I received a letter from the state bar to this effect, someone in one of the houses close to ours threw a very large and loud party. We saw the lawyer I'd complained about and some of his family members at this party, and we also saw the lawyer, his family, and various friends of theirs doing repeated drive-bys, walk-bys, and even "bike-bys" of our home all evening long.

I also filed a formal complaint with the State Bar of Texas against the "government lawyer" (from her listing on their website at the time) who accepted a retainer check from me after meeting with the Boerne lawyer and his two p.i. friends (the former FBI and DEA agents) without my knowledge but supposedly on my behalf and then refused to meet with me or speak to me by phone. (See "Versions Of The Truth", posted here on 9/29/09). By the time I filed my complaint against her, I'd learned she had formerly been with the DEA but now had a criminal defense practice and had almost certainly actually been working for my ex-husband and his family. Despite my documenting what had been said and done by all involved and providing the bar with a copy of my cancelled check and bank statements regarding this lawyer, the bar association refused to even look into the matter, much less take any action. (This same attorney later suddenly moved to Washington, D.C. with her attorney husband after being charged in a strange incident in Boerne involving another attorney and a local police officer.)

Lawyer 4

As stated previously, I've been advised that it's important for me to document my inability to find proper legal representation for myself and my children despite my many years of constantly searching, so periodically I'm posting examples of my dealings with various attorneys and organizations. Again, these are in no particular order; the numbers I'm assigning them are only for identification purposes within my blog.

I've discussed this particular lawyer before, but I feel the need to go into more detail about him because my dealings with him were so different from what I generally encounter. (Attorneys usually either refuse to even speak with me on the phone when they hear who I am, stall for several weeks in various ways and then refuse to speak with me, or try to con me by insisting I sign over a portion of my land to them before they'll represent us and then get very uncomfortable when they realize I know what's going on. Note: The lawyers in the latter group are usually the ones I've been referred to by the state bar association's referral service.)

I'd heard that a woman in our town had filed a major lawsuit against the local hospital and others over the wrongful death of her husband. This suit was suddenly dropped, and it was rumored that she had received a substantial settlement privately. It just so happened that I was a client of the business where she worked and knew her slightly, so one day I asked her about who had represented her. She replied that her lawyer had been a relative of hers from Boerne and that she would call me that evening with his name and contact information. She did call me later, and she gave me the contact information for a well-known Boerne attorney whom I knew to have represented some very high-profile clients.

I wrote to this attorney asking him to help us, and I sent him a summary of our case and sample documentation. To my pleasant surprise, his staff called and said he would meet with me, so I made an appointment. I was specifically instructed to bring the fraudulent trust document with me when I came, but instead of bringing the original document, I took a very high-quality color copy of the document. I also brought along a substantial amount of additional documentation (also all copies).

When I arrived for my appointment, I used the restroom in the hallway outside the law office and then went inside and checked in with the receptionist. I was asked to sit in the waiting area, where I waited for about 30 minutes. Finally, the lawyer came out, introduced himself to me, and then asked me to remain in the waiting area while he checked the restrooms. To my amazement, I watched him go out into the hallway and go into both the men's and women's restrooms briefly as if looking for someone. He then came back into the office, told me he was ready to see me, and escorted me back to his office.

Once I'd sat down in the lawyer's office and told him my story, he asked to see the fraudulent trust document, so I pulled out a folder containing the copy I'd brought and gave it to him. He glanced at it quickly and asked if he could hang onto it so he could study it further; I told him he could. He then began to ask me a lot of questions about where I'd filed complaints, and he wanted contact information for each person I'd talked to in law enforcement, which I gave him. I asked him about his fees and how much he would need as a retainer, but as soon as I'd asked him this, he said he couldn't accept a retainer from me and that he still wasn't sure he could represent us.

At that point, I started to become very uneasy about the whole situation with him. I asked him what the problem was, and he became evasive and said again that he just needed more time to study the fraudulent trust document. I asked him how long this would take because I was anxious for us to have some legal protection as soon as possible, and again he became evasive about whether he could represent my children and me or not and said he'd have to get back to me on it. Then as I was getting my things together to leave, he told me to be very careful driving home because he'd had four previous clients who'd been murdered. At that, I remember feeling the hair on the baON

The Latest Things

The latest trend in the harassment of us seems to be people running up to our front door, ringing the doorbell several times in rapid succession, and dashing off. We've had the occasional kid do this to us over the years, but these are most definitely adults doing it now, and with markedly increased frequency. Even more important is the fact that the people doing this always seem to magically appear only when we're unable to come to the door quickly: when we're getting dressed, bathing, sleeping, "indisposed" in the bathroom, etc.

Twice recently, one or more of us has actually been able to get a good look at the culprits. One was an anorexic-looking young woman (~20s) wearing high heels she seemed to be having trouble walking/running in and a silly-looking blond wig--she looked like an overgrown child playing dress-up. Another was a man of around 50 who yelled something ridiculous at me in a local German accent as he jumped into a large white SUV being driven by a similar-looking buddy who then sped off out of our driveway. (Both of these men were dressed like city workers.)

In another recent development, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) named a former Texas Ranger from Kerrville as the head of a new group that is supposed to be addressing the problem of police corruption in Texas. This former ranger most recently headed the probation department in the same district that has just seen its former judge and former D.A. indicted on charges of misusing seizure funds, which is not exactly cause for optimism.

Also, we have been told that my former father-in-law and brother-in-law are suddenly splitting up their longtime law practice and that one of the other partners has already moved out. Apparently there are problems with dividing up the partnership's assets as well.

The latest thing in Boerne seems to be missing people--two at last count.

Finally, the abandoned building next door to us has just opened as a new rehab. facility for the local hospital, which no doubt is related to the coaches with the hospital's Wellness Center instructing their students to trespass on and damage our front yard last summer as previously described in "Almost Daily" (7/29/09). Important questions that need answering are: 1) Who sold or is leasing this property to the hospital?; 2) How much is the hospital paying for it?; and 3) When did the sellers/owners purchase it? In the past, the owners of this property have been listed under a variety of names in the tax records, along with a Florida address as shown here, at the same time that an official map at the local tax appraisal office still showed my ex-husband's name on my property despite my divorce having been finalized more than 2 years earlier.

Lawyer 2

As soon as I realized I'd also been seriously conned by the Boerne lawyer and investigators as well as Ed Hodges and his people, I began contacting prominent personal injury law firms in San Antonio asking for their help. Most of these either refused to talk to me or said they had conflicts of interest, but I did receive the referral shown here from one major firm. I was surprised by this referral because the lawyer they told me to call was quite young, was in a small practice (one partner), and was someone I knew nothing about.

Since I was desperate to find proper legal representation, I decided to talk to this lawyer and see what he said. I called and made an appointment, but as I was driving down to meet with him, one of the Boerne p.i.s I'd been having problems with (the former FBI agent) suddenly pulled up right next to me, made sure I'd seen him, and sped off at the next exit as documented in my log book and shown here.

When I arrived at the lawyer's San Antonio office and met with him, he seemed nervous and was hesitant about taking my case, especially when I started showing him how much documentation I had. As I was leaving, he introduced me to his partner in the hallway. The partner seemed more interested in helping me and gave me his business card. They both said they wanted to discuss our situation between themselves before they decided anything, and they said they'd call me later. I waited for their call, but when it didn't come, I called them back and was told they'd decided they couldn't help me.

Later, I learned that the son of my ex-husband's divorce lawyer (who is about the same age as the two I met with) is an attorney who offices in the same building as these two. Furthermore, it turns out these two are close friends of his.

The G-Man Down The Road

The former FBI agent working as a private investigator and certified fraud investigator who defrauded me in 2005 (see my 9/16/09 post entitled "They Said") once insisted that I meet with him in his home in a nice subdivision just off I-10 near Boerne. (Much later, a DPS senior investigator told me p.i.s are not supposed to do this.) At his house, I met his wife, whom he said worked for him, as did their adult children.

While I was there, the former FBI agent showed me his gun and badge, which were in a glass case. Nearly, I noticed a distinctive framed art print that appeared to be either very similar or identical to one I'd remembered seeing on the wall of the FBI agent who lived next door to my father and stepmother (see "The G-Man Next Door" below). I was surprised to see a copy of this print in Texas, because I associated the artist (who has a very distinctive style and was a friend of my late mother's) more with the state my father lives in.

Several times during this and subsequent meetings with this man, he mentioned that his wife had been a high school classmate of a very prominent San Antonio attorney. (I later learned this attorney is a major criminal defense lawyer.) The former agent also told me (but always verbally, never in writing) on several different occasions that another former classmate of his wife's had been an FBI agent and colleague of his but, like him, had retired and become a private investigator. However, he described this former colleague as a "rogue agent" [his exact words] who'd gotten mixed up with a criminal known as "Murph The Surf" who had murdered a woman in Florida. He and the former DEA agent-turned-p.i. who'd recommended I hire him told me on several occasions they had reason to believe my ex-husband was somehow involved with these criminals, but they would not give me any proof or additional information on this, and I didn't know whether to believe them or not.

Also during this and subsequent meetings with the retired agent, he mentioned that he and his wife were involved in some sort of prison ministry that involved regularly visiting inmates on behalf of their church. I'm not familiar with the particular church they belonged to, but over the years, I've noticed that many of the churches here whose finances are handled only by very close associates of my former father-in-law also have these prison ministries. (They have extensive ongoing missionary projects in Mexico and Central America as well that involve frequent member trips to these countries.)

The final thing I need to mention for now about my meetings with this former FBI agent is that twice when I met with him, he was wearing a t-shirt identical to two owned by one of my children. These shirts were very distinctive, and both times I mentioned to the agent that one of my kids owned the same shirt. He just laughed it off as coincidence at the time, but a few weeks after I fired him (see "My Story" at the beginning of this blog), both of these shirts suddenly turned up together in my offspring's overnight bag upon returning from visitation with their dad, and they said they did not know how the shirts got in there. I have been forced to conclude that the ex-agent deliberately wore my child's shirts while meeting with me as a sick joke.

After I accidentally discovered this man was not really working for me and fired him, I began to have serious and repeated problems with him stalking and harassing me (that I have kept records of). One of these incidents occurred while I was driving to San Antonio on I-10 to meet with a lawyer who'd been recommended to me by the State Bar of Texas' referral service. As I passed the entrance ramp located closest to the former agent's house, he suddenly pulled up behind me and began tailgating me extremely aggressively. After doing this for several minutes, he changed lanes, drove right up beside me until he was sure I recognized him, grinned and waved, and then sped off; I saw him exit the freeway at the next off-ramp. (My meeting with the lawyer that day did not go well, especially after I accidentally discovered he was a close friend of the son of my ex-husband's divorce lawyer while I was there.) [I have discovered serious conflict of interest problems with every single lawyer I've been referred to by the state bar.]

All this happened in 2005, but I still sometimes see this man, his wife, or people in his vehicles who appear to be his family members, following and harassing me occasionally, and I have documented incidences of seeing him or his vehicle/s parked outside office buildings owned by my ex- and his family. Although I filed an extremely serious and well-documented complaint against him with the p.i. licensing bureau, the DPS refused to discipline him in any way; in fact, a DPS investigator lied to me over the phone by telling me he could find no record of this man's ever having worked for the FBI. (The tape I made of this phone call has been tampered with.) Even after I complained in person to a San Antonio FBI agent that on one occasion the guy had been following me so closely that I believe his car bumper touched mine when I stopped at a stop sign near my home, nothing was ever done about him.

Shue Case

The death case of Col. Phillip Shue of nearby Boerne, TX is a classic example of the kinds of things that go on all the time around here, but because it has some particularly bizarre aspects, it has attracted the attention of CBS News and recently became the subject of an episode of their 48 Hours Mystery program. Because Shue's death has similarities to so many others here and involves the same D.A. and one judge as our case, I try to follow all of the progress with investigating it as often as I can. I hadn't done any checking on it in quite a while, but two nights ago I did a web search and found a website called "MilitaryCorruption.com" that had a posting from someone claiming to have a great deal of new information on the case and claiming to be "hot on the trail of Shue's killer" (or something similar). I decided to email them asking for more information.

Last night I received a strange phone call from a man named John Porterfield who said he is writing a book about the Shue case that will "be coming out sometime this fall". Mr. Porterfield asked me if I had additional information on the case, and I told him no, only what I'd read in the papers. He then proceeded to ask me a lot of questions about Jason Davis, attorney for Shue's widow, Tracy. I told him I knew nothing about Davis other than that he'd been the law partner of a lawyer I once met with regarding possibly representing me and my children who tried to get me to give him the originals of some of my documents and, when I refused, told me 4 of his clients had been murdered and that I'd better be really careful driving home. Mr. Porterfield told me I had the wrong attorney named Davis, and I said that was interesting but that I couldn't help him.

Porterfield then started asking me about the harassment my kids and I have experienced from TX DPS officers, so I told him about 2 specific incidents. I also mentioned that around here you can't always believe people who claim to be eyewitnesses, and he said something about there being a third witness in the Shue case who was never interviewed by the police. Porterfield also made several statements to me that seemed to contridict things posted on the website and things I'd read in published accounts, which I found confusing. I told him it sounded to me as if he did not agree with anything the investigator hired by CBS News had concluded, and Porterfield called him "that idiot from New Jersey they sent down here" [sic.].

I started asking him about his book, and he told me his conclusions in it would come as a big surprise that I'd have to wait for. Porterfield then told me a little about himself. He mentioned that he was involved in the local music scene and that a well-known local musician [whose son was murdered at Colorado School of Mines] is his only acquaintance in my town, which I immediately suspected was not a truthful statement, since the musician he said he knows is extremely gregarious with LOTS of friends who all know each other very well. Porterfield also claimed not to know my ex- and his family, which didn't make sense to me if he lives in this area, because EVERYONE here knows them. At that point I became suspicious of him and ended our conversation by telling him I would be looking forward to seeing his book.
Later when I went online and checked my emails, I found one from the man Porterfield said had given him my contact info. from the website, Glenn MacDonald. MacDonald told me he'd given Porterfield [whom he identified as an attorney and crime writer, meaning he absolutely HAD to know my former father-in-law and brother-in-law as fellow attorneys!] my phone number and said he'd be calling me for information on attorney Jason Davis. Then MacDonald wrote that Tracy Shue had tried to have him [MacDonald] killed and that she would probably not like Porterfield's book when it comes out (which pretty much spoils the "surprise" for me)!

MacDonald ended his email by asking me what I thought happened to Col. Shue, so I told him about some of the similar "deaths on the side of the road" as I call them and explained that many of them had even been along the same stretch of highway. I told him that my personal opinion, for whatever he thought it was worth, was that Shue was already dead, the accident was staged, the witnesses had not been truthful, and DPS troopers had probably compromised the scene.

I did not tell either Porterfield or MacDonald that Porterfield had accidentally given me what I believe is a very important piece of information I hadn't known before: he said that the tree Col. Shue's car hit had a yellow ribbon tied around it. The whole evening gave me a lot to think about regarding the MilitaryCorruption website in general.