Unsuitable For Building

The property immediately to the west of mine sits along the side of a rather large gully and has a major and unsightly power line almost directly overhead, making it rather unsuitable for building on. Despite this, shortly after the zoning on both this property and my own land were illegally changed from residential to commercial in 2007 as detailed elsewhere in this blog (see, for example, http://vocct.blogspot.com/2009/06/my-story.html), a medical office building and complex were proposed for this property and were approved by the city.

In the last few weeks, construction has suddenly begun on this property. Due to the slope of the land, this has necessitated the bringing in of enormous quantities of fill material and heavy equipment to move it around, obviously at very great expense.

Why would someone do all this, when there is a great deal of other undeveloped land nearby that is clearly much more suitable for building on? The answer is that the other land is not located right next to my homestead. There is a medical building owned by the local hospital immediately to the east of my house that was built shortly after the zoning change and as part of a number of proposed buildings close by that were approved by the city around the same time as the complex being started along my western fence line. (Make that right up against my western fence line!--the fill material being brought in is being dumped right next to my fence.) Construction must now take place on the opposite side of my house so that my property is surrounded on both sides by commercial property. This is necessary so that the county appraisal district can raise their appraisals on my land to commercial levels, which they know I can't pay.

The obvious solutions to my dilemma are to either sell my property and move elsewhere or develop my property myself. However, these are not viable options for me, and the people and entities involved in the construction and planning going on around me know this. My former father-in-law is a very powerful lawyer, banker, and real estate developer who controls the local hospital board and the entire real estate market in our area and has close business and personal ties to three former U.S. presidents (Johnson, Bush, and Bush), Texas billionaires, and more; he also has high-level state and federal agents at his beck and call (see http://vocct.blogspot.com/2012/10/bringing-dirty-tricks-back-home.html). When he puts out the word that my property is not to be sold, purchased, or developed by me or anyone else, no one dares to defy him. This means that even if I could persuade a real estate agent to list the property for sale, no one would dare to buy it, and even if I could get someone to help me develop my land, the city would never approve another development plan.

My former father-in-law and his associates have made lifelong careers out of obtaining property for development on the cheap by getting people into financial trouble in various ways and then buying their homes and land at property tax auctions on various county courthouse steps in our region or as emergency buy-outs. Classic examples of this are the Boot Ranch development, Tapatio Springs resort near Boerne, and shopping centers at The Rim in San Antonio. In my case, I'm sure locals think the idea of the city and county receiving money for the purchase of my property instead of me (however piddling the sum) is a wonderful way of keeping their own taxes down.  They don't seem to be able to realize (at least not until it's too late!) that for the greedy, there is never enough and that their turn to have their property grabbed, or that of loved ones, will eventually come.  [This may be quite soon for some, given the current push for a bypass around my city.  Land located along any proposed routes will suddenly become very valuable commercial property that is ripe for development and therefore highly desirable!]

In the process of these land grabs, people standing in the way often suddenly turn up dead. My neighborhood is no exception to this; at least four people owning property close to mine have died suddenly and violently. Two were found shot to death, one was brought to the hospital dead of unknown causes, and one was found dead underneath a tractor. One of the gunshot victims was my next-door neighbor who, with her husband, owned the property to the west of mine that is now being developed. All of these deaths took place shortly after my husband suddenly left me in 1999,

At the time of the zoning change to commercial and the approval of the medical complex, the property in the gully that is now being built on was listed as being owned by a local physician and her husband, a civil engineer who works for a major local construction company. (The husband also currently sits on the local school board.) Recently, however, an attorney and former city judge who now heads the local hospital foundation went to great pains to seek me out at my workplace so she could tell me herself that she and her father from Colorado had purchased the property to the west of mine and would be building on it. This former judge and her father are also listed as having purchased a large, multi-story medical office building next to the local hospital and supposedly built by them, which is just to the southeast of my property.

I believe that the local physician, her engineer husband, the former judge, and the judge's father are all fronting for my ex-husband and his father. As a fellow physician who was Chief of Staff at the time, my ex- had to have known about the hospital and medical expansion that was being planned for our neighborhood. His sudden departure in 1999 coincides with the murder outside the U.S. of a person who appears to have found out what was going on here and planned to reveal it very publicly. This victim, like the gunshot victims here, was also shot in the head. And I know for a fact that my ex-husband went to great lengths to try and conceal his whereabouts at the time the foreign victim was killed.

Because of the way law enforcement at all levels in the U.S. (including the Department of Justice) has repeatedly refused to help me over the years (undoubtedly due to my former father-in-law's high-level connections), I have little hope of getting any of the assistance or relief I'm entitled to under the law here or of getting the homicides of my neighbors investigated and prosecuted properly. The victim from outside the U.S. is another matter, however, since other countries tend to become upset when foreigners come over and assassinate their prominent citizens. I have every confidence that the foreign victim's death is currently being investigated thoroughly and that charges, if warranted, will be brought. I'm also very glad there are no statutes of limitations on murder cases.

Meanwhile, the illegal stalking and harassment directed at me and my adult children continues unabated. Much of the construction noise from next door is deliberately amplified at times when we are at home. One day last week, I awoke to find that the top portion of our trash had been removed from the bin and scattered all over our front lawn so I'd have to be outside for longer than usual while a large number of heavy construction vehicles that had been waiting just around the corner could slowly parade by. (Most of these vehicles belonged to the same construction company that the afore-mentioned civil engineer works for.) And my ex-husband was careful to leave his latest calling card (a bright pink Christmas bow; he know it's my favorite color) in the center of all the mess. Just this morning, on the way to work, I was headlight-harassed (see http://vocct.blogspot.com/2011/09/how-to-spot-gangstalking-primer.html) by a young female physician with a short blonde bob driving a gray car. In fact, the community-wide stalking and harassment are currently so severe that I sense a documentary film coming on.

By the way, property immediately across the street from the gully currently being built in was the scene of another bizarre and violent death; see http://vocct.blogspot.com/2012/02/developers-greed.html.

Finally, I am far from the only one currently having problems with our local hospital, which recently was awarded one of only two very prestigious national awards (the other recipient being Duke Medical Center).  Coincidentally (??), the major hospital in a neighboring county that is our hospital's main rival was informed around the same time that they'd just been listed as not being up to Medicare standards in the field that my ex-husband specializes in here.  Both of these smack highly of a combination of my former father-in-law's national connections and the expensive public relations firms he employs.  (The rival hospital and its doctors are furious, of course.)

As my friend Medawar likes to say, there's no crime a property developer won't commit!

[*Be sure to read the comments below.]  

Spouses

In order to begin to understand how things work around here, it's critical to look carefully at family relationships and understand who's related to who. The best and most important place to start is usually with spouses. To illustrate this, I'll give you some general examples of the kinds of things to look for.

First, look for what I call the "Fredericksburg spouse". In the last few years, the Kerrville police chief was replaced with one whose wife has family ties to Fredericksburg. Ditto for the editor of the main Kerrville newspaper. Ditto for the local state senator (same county, anyway), who ousted an incumbent who said he had absolute proof of serious election fraud, filed a lawsuit, and then suddenly and abruptly dropped it. (Now go back and read or re-read my "They Do What?" post of 3/30/10.)

Next, look closely at what spouses do for a living. For example, one of the spouses of one of the owners of a phone number that turned up as part of an illegal charge to my phone bill (see "Phone Bill Blues", posted here earlier) turned out to have been a law school professor at a school with a strong focus on anti-terrorism law and high-level national contacts, which I found interesting. Another example: many years ago, I was told by numerous people that the wife of the Fredericksburg police chief (pictured in the previous post) had a job running errands for a well-known movie producer who has a ranch nearby and that many of these errands involved trips to the Fredericksburg airport. (The Fredericksburg police chief and his wife are no longer married.) Also, assets seem to be transferred freely and frequently between spouses around here, often using their business or workplaces.

Then there are the more complicated spousal relationships; for an example of this, I will use one I know a great deal about because it affects me personally. A married couple (and various members of their families) own a tract of land near mine that is being developed, even though much of it is taken up by a deep gully and a large overhead power line. The husband is a civil engineer who works for a local construction company, the owners of which own considerable valuable property close to mine. The owners of this construction company have also been represented for many years by a law partner of my former father-in-law's and brother-in-law's (who recently suddenly left their firm). The husband was recently elected to the local school board, where my former brother-in-law has served in the past.

The wife happens to be in the same business as my ex-husband and works in an office next door to my ex-husband's. Another woman who works in her office building has direct ties to a murder victim and a victim of a suspicious death. The property on the opposite side of the couple's tract from mine was the location of another suspicious death in 2003.

Are you still with me? I know it's complicated, but at the same time, I hope you are starting to see that if you fail to consider both spouses, you end up with a two-dimensional understanding of the situation instead of a three-dimensional one. This framework becomes critically important for true understanding when you then begin adding in additional information. In this case, it turns out there is an additional tract of land located between my land and the couple's that I only became aware of about nine months ago. It's ownership doesn't seem to be available anywhere, and it is not down in the gully or under the power line and is in fact the property where some of my children say their father showed them blueprints of office buildings he was planning to build there in the summer of 2006.

Now I have a final piece of information to add to this complex example: in the last six months or so. "For Sale" signs have gone up on nearly all the properties I've just mentioned: the property owned by the couple, the property beyond it where one of the owners was found shot to death, the property owned by the construction company family, and additional property adjoining mine, including the house formerly owned by the city and more recently the location of some sort of "mystery business" that I've discussed before. Significantly, the only piece of property I've mentioned currently without a "For Sale" sign on it happens to be the tract with the unknown owner along our fence line (the one the blueprints my kids saw were for). Three other small tracts adjoining my property that are owned by my ex-husband also do not have "For Sale" signs on them at the present time.

This is only one example of how complicated interrelationships play out around here, and it tends to get even more complex when you start looking at family members other than spouses. However, these are the things you must research in order to understand the inner workings of this region and to try to obtain relief and justice for victims here.

[If you are new to my blog, I strongly suggest you take the time to go to the beginning and read "My Story".]

What's The Buzz?

Yesterday, a few minutes after one of my kids left to go back to school after coming home for lunch, one of my adult children and I were just finishing our own lunches when we were suddenly startled by a group of five, black, smallish, military-looking helicopters that came zooming past our kitchen window. These were flying single-file, in very close succession, fairly low, and came fairly close to our house (close enough to definitely get our attention!). We watched as all five (still in a line) turned directly over the gully just west of ours that is under so much heavy construction and then flew off in the general direction of the local airport. My kids and I have never seen anything like this before. [Coincidentally, the property the helicopters turned over is supposedly being developed by a pilot friend of my ex-husband's and his physician wife. I believe this property formerly belonged to one of the suspicious death victims described in the "My Story" blog below.]

Death Connections

Deaths around here are often connected by the most amazing coincidences. For example, when a woman whom I believe might have had connections to our case was murdered in San Antonio on 1/1/09 (a day after her parents' home near the LBJ ranch was broken into), a newspaper story about the death in the 1/8/09 San Antonio Express-News featured an interview with a high school classmate of hers--whose family just happens to own property close to mine.

That doesn't impress you? Let's look at a more complicated set of connections involving more than one death. An article in the 6/2/09 Fredericksburg Standard about a 5/14/07 homicide (with similarities to the one above, by the way) featured an extensive interview with a close friend of the victim's who was one of the first people at the crime scene. This friend, who helped fund a reward in the case, had lost her frail, elderly mother on 2/24/03 when she was found dead under a bridge on I-10 near Comfort, TX during an ice storm. (The mother had been using a walker, and I hadn't seen her driving herself in some time. She was a well-known environmentalist who would not have wanted her ranch developed.) This friend also just happens to share an office with the same local doctor who is supposedly developing the property in the gully just west of mine. (Although they have the same office address, the friend is not a doctor and I have never known what she does for a living. She is a close friend of my ex-husband and his family.)

Still just coincidence? Possibly--but wait, there's more. Back on 8/20/03, a rancher with property near the elderly mother/victim's was found dead under a tractor by a neighbor who is related to my former father-in-law. (There is now a major development there called Boot Ranch that locals refer to as "Boot Hill".) Also, the boyfriend of the 5/14/07 homicide victim died on 2/22/09; he was employed at the Office of the Attorney General in Austin at the time.

These are just some of the examples of connections between deaths that I'm aware of; there are many more.