Chronologic Order

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In an earlier post entitled "Guessing Games" (7/25/10), I mentioned what was going on at around the same time as the ads shown there. Now I'm posting a sampling of information and documentation presented in chronologic order that you can plug the ads into and also use to understand some of the events that led up to my hiring private investigator Ed Hodges at the end of June 2003.

As you look at these, keep in mind that we have two title companies here: one run by the city attorney, and the other run by a law partner of my ex-husband's divorce lawyer. You should also be aware that the county judge was a classmate of my former brother-in-law's and that the property to the south of mine consists of a very steep hill that is unsuitable for building on.

By the middle of June 2003, I had a tax appraisal protest hearing coming up and had been unable to force my ex-husband to provide me with the agricultural use documentation from past years I needed or to get him to remove his exotic animals from my property (which I'd been forced to feed because he wouldn't). There had also been numerous serious and frightening incidents that I haven't gone into much here. We'd had CONSTANT problems with people trespassing, partying, leaving trash and drug paraphernalia, etc. on my property, and the police wouldn't do anything--in fact, one of the people blatantly trespassing was the local police chief, my ex-husband's close friend. City employees had cleared out a house the city had bought that bordered both my property and the rent house where my ex-husband had been living and dumped a large amount of trash (including furniture and appliances) on my property; when I called the police, the responding officer just laughed and then started asking me over and over again about what I intended to do with my property. Late one night when I let my dog out, he scared off an athletic-looking Caucasion man who'd been tampering with our phone line at the point where it entered our house.

It was at this point that I discussed my situation with a man in my Bible study class at church who was ex-military and someome I considered a friend. He told me he sometimes worked as a private investigator for a man named Ed Hodges from Arlington, and he suggested I hire Ed to help me with some of my problems. I told him to have Hodges call me, we talked on the phone, and I decided to hire him.

Hodges helped me retain my ag. exemption, but he also immediately began trying to get me to sign a trust document that gave him full control of my property. When I refused to do this, he forged my name on the document he'd been trying to get me to sign. The county clerk's office then filed this document at the courthouse even though it wasn't properly notarized, and they faxed a copy of it to an unknown location.

Still Waiting...

In the summer of 2006, I consulted a professional document examiner about a fraudulent trust document I already knew private investigator Ed Hodges had forged my name on. The document examiner wrote a report stating my initials had been forged on the pages and a page on clearly different paper with my genuine signature on it had been added. (See "She Said", 9/16/09.) This document examiner has close ties to the FBI office in San Antonio.

The document expert gave me referrals to several attorneys she said were "trust lawyers" who could help me deal with the fraud. One of the recommended attorneys stalled and then refused to represent me. Another passed me on to a partner of theirs who was rude to me on the phone and made it clear their practice was actually criminal law. (I later learned that all of these recommended attorneys were actually criminal lawyers.)

The third of these lawyers was a woman who said her husband worked for the CIA. She said his name was David Clark, which I later learned is considered a generic spy name. She also mentioned being an avid horsewoman and owning horses, but she wouldn't say what kind. (She is the same lawyer discussed in "The French Connection" earlier.)

I decided to hire this last lawyer mainly on the basis of the recommendation from the document examiner. I signed a contract with her and paid her a retainer and a fee that was to be put in escrow. A day or so later, before I'd even had time to meet with her again after providing her with copies of my documentation to look over, Ed Hodges filed a lawsuit against me and my children claiming I owed him enormous sums of money for various "trust duties" like the ones shown in my 7/27/10 post entitled "Dating Problems".

The year that followed was one of constant stalling, repeated demands for money from me by various persons involved in the case, a "mediation" session that was more like attempted extortion, and numerous other odd and disturbing events. Eventually I decided I wanted a written summary of this attorney's work in her own words, so I asked her to provide this in a one-page format; the page she provided is shown here.

Two days later, on July 11th, 2007, my lawyer called and said she was faxing me some paperwork she'd just received from Ed Hodges' lawyer. At 4:01 PM she faxed me the paper shown here plus another with a crude map on it.

I started looking at these documents and quickly realized they involved a proposed zoning change on land very close to mine that I knew nothing about. I then looked at the map more carefully to try and figure out whose land was involved. The more I examined the map, the more convinced I became that the land to be rezoned was actually my own, despite the 200' statement on the notice.

I checked the date and time for the hearing and was shocked to discover that it was to start in an hour and that any protests needed to be filed in writing ahead of time. I called my lawyer back and asked her if the hearing was for my land. She said no, it was for land to the west of mine. I told her I was upset about being notified so late, and she claimed she'd only just received the notice herself from Hodges' lawyer--but I could see he's actually faxed it to her several hours earlier. I asked her why the notice had come from Hodges' lawyer instead of the city, and she claimed she didn't know.

By this time so many alarms were going off for me that I ran to my car and raced over to the city offices. The Director of Development Services tried to run past me as I entered, but I stopped him and insisted on speaking to him. He said he was "late for a meeting" and again tried to push past me, but I stood my ground in the doorway and demanded to know if it was my property to be rezoned. Like my attorney, he said no, it was for land west of mine. He was sweating profusely, clearly nervous (shaking), and wouldn't look me in the eye. I demanded he show me a better map.

At that point, he took me down a back hallway and showed me a larger and much more detailed wall map where I could clearly see it was indeed my own land that was up for rezoning. I asked him why he'd lied to me, to which he only replied, "If you want to file a protest, you'll have to give it to the secretary right now, because our office is closing." I then asked him why the city had never notified me of the hearing, but he only repeated his instruction about filing a protest, so I quickly scribbled the few lines shown along the bottom of the page and handed it to the secretary. While she was stamping this and making copies, I told the official I had a conflict with one of my children's activities and would be unable to attend the hearing. (Everyone in town knew I had a child involved in this activity.) I also told him that first thing the next morning, I'd be contacting the Texas OAG and the FBI. At the mention of the FBI, he grabbed his things and fled the building.

As soon as I returned home, I called my lawyer back. I was furious with her for lying to me and wanted an explanation, which of course she wouldn't give me. After consulting with my children, I fired her.

The next morning, I called the city offices and was told that, although my brief and hasty protest had been presented at the hearing, they had gone ahead and recommended my land be rezoned. I immediately prepared a more detailed protest that I faxed to the city. I then prepared a formal complaint plus documentation that I faxed to the Texas OAG with a copy to the city. (Of course I had no response from either.)

I immediately began searching for a new lawyer, and I spent the next few weeks almost non-stop on the phone trying to find one. I quickly discovered that the only ones who were willing to represent my children and me in the lawsuit would only do so if I first deeded over one-third to one-half of my zoned-commercial property to them first, which I would not do. When I realized I had a serious problem finding proper legal representation, I began contacting legal assistance organizations, also without success, as I've blogged about previously.

In the process of talking to so many lawyers (literally hundreds!), I noticed something odd: every time I showed this hearing notice to one of them, they always commented on the fact that the city was listed as the applicant on it--without my even mentioning it first. Even stranger, half of them told me the city's being the applicant for the zoning change wasn't legal, while the other half told me it was! The fact that they all seemed so interested in this one issue yet could not seem to agree on it intrigued me, so I started taking an informal poll of the responses I received. I also started pointing out to attorneys that I'd been given conflicting information about the issue and wanted to find out for certain whether it was legal for the city to be the applicant for a zoning change for land owned by someone else. I received the same response to this every time" "I'll look this up and get back to you."

Of course they never did get back to me, so I'm still waiting... for a definitive answer on whether or not it was legal for the city to be the applicant AND for an attorney to agree to represent us properly, both in the lawsuit and elsewhere.

At this point, you might want to go back and read "The Legal Situation" (6/23/10) again. You should also know that more recently this same lawyer was giving public elder law seminars involving trusts at Democratic Party functions and advertising herself as an "elder law specialist".

Blessings

Over the holidays, I've been blessed to be able to spend time with my kids. What has NOT been a blessing is our being awakened at 7 AM every weekday morning that is not an actual holiday by loud noises from heavy equipment repeatedly opening up the street in front of our house--work that seems to end magically when everyone inside our home finally gets up. Of course, we have never been notified about any of this work or its purpose by the city or anyone else, and although it often causes the street to be blocked off, we are never given any notification of affected access.

Our city and county seen to be especially well-blessed with equipment and assets for an area of our size. Although ours is a small town, we have an enormous complex of expensive buildings and equipment located over near our local high school that exists in addition to the main city and county buildings elsewhere. We even have some lovely custom-painted ambulances (as well as the regular kind), and our police have new SUVs and pickups as well as the normal patrol cars. I once sat down and listed all of the publicly-owned property and assets here that I could think of just out of curiosity, and I was shocked enough by the end result to wonder if some taxpayers might also be victims (since some clearly pay a lot more than others here; I have more information on this).

After considering the matter further, however, I wondered if the local riches might instead be related to something else. In the summer of 2002, my children and I both watched and filmed two city employees who pulled up in front of our front door in a marked city truck, parked, got out, and proceeded to move sausage-shaped bundles shrink-wrapped in tan-colored plastic from the bed of the truck to the front, where we watched them being tied behind and under the front bumper with thin black cord or rope.

When I later told the local p.i. who recommended I hire Ed Hodges (see "My Story" at the beginning of this blog) that I had a videotape of this, he insisted I give him the tape so he could "turn it over to the proper law enforcement authorities". Once I realized these people had conned me, I assumed this video had been destroyed, but I do still have a couple of grainy still photographs one of my kids took with their camera while I was filming. After this incident, we began to notice many, many other instances of suspicious behaviour by local public employees.

Almost Daily

Because we're on a summer schedule around here right now, we slept in a little yesterday. When I stepped out of my front door at 8:20 AM to retrieve my newspaper, I noticed a man wearing a white ball cap standing on the side of the street near the eastern side of my property. As I walked up my driveway, the man took off his ball cap so I would be sure to recognize him and began walking slowly towards me. I had my dog (who's very protective) with me on a leash, and as soon as he saw the guy starting towards us, my dog began barking and pulling, at which point the man stopped and began laughing. He stood there while I struggled with the dog and retrieved the paper, and then he sauntered off. Of course I recognized him as he wanted me to; he's a lawyer who doesn't live in my neighborhood (he lives near the LBJ ranch in Stonewall).

This morning I got up at 5:30 to take my child to catch a bus for band camp. As we left, I noticed a light on inside the house directly above our driveway that is usually dark (except for the extremely bright lights coming from two lower-level windows 24/7 that were recently covered over with some sort of opaque black covering).

When I returned around 5:50 AM, I discovered two women in jogging shorts (who weren't jogging and looked like they'd just gotten out of bed) standing on the side of the street directly in front of my house. As I drove into my driveway, they walked off.

About 5 minutes later, I leashed my dog and went out front to get the newspaper. As soon as I stepped outside, I immediately noticed a very large dump truck that was parked just east of the eastern end of my property. As I started walking up my driveway to go to the paperbox at the street, this truck started up and began moving very slowly toward me in a jerky fashion that was the result of the druver (whom I couldn't see in the dark)repeatedly hitting his brakes to cause the maximum possible amount of noise. He did this the entire time I was outside, and as I went back into my house, I saw him drive off.

These are the descriptions of events from two mornings in a row. Now please multiply these by 10 years and you will get some idea of what has been and continues to be done to my children and me. It's not just in the morning, either (for ex., people run out of our house or driveway as we pull in at night, people harass us as we walk our dog in the evenings, etc.). It doesn't make any difference if we change our schedule, either; these people always know when we are coming or going, which they could ONLY do if we were under illegal surveillance inside our house. (Is that were some of the missing DHS equipment comes in?)

Later the same day (after I'd written the previous part of this blog): Around 4:15 PM, our dog began barking frantically. We looked outside and saw a male high school coach directing his class of student athletes to run repeatedly up and down the hill on our front lawn! (which is clearly a private yard). Worse, because of the current severe drought conditions here, much of the grass and ground cover on this hill (which we fight erosion problems on even in the best conditions) is dead, so the students were doing serious damage to the slope and what was left of its cover--and they all seemed to think this was funny. I was in the bathroom, but my adult daughter ran out, told them they were trespassing on private property and causing damage, and insisted that they leave immediately. Instead, the coach had the students sit down in our front yard for a few minutes, but by the time I got downstairs, they were all leaving. I immediately faxed the school to complain and also let them know there might be damages they would be responsible for, but I had to also wonder if harassment is now an official high school subject here.