Mortal Danger and Other True Cases Read online

  According to his former follower, Bill Thaw worked at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Miami from 1976 until the early eighties as a psychotherapist.

  John Branden, the teenager who mowed lawns, the young father who worked for the tax assessor’s office, and the man who sought status in local politics, learned much from Bill Thaw and tried to emulate him.

  Kate Jewell would always feel that Thaw was the person who inspired John to become the charismatic doctor with scores of grateful patients, and the would-be entrepreneur whose goal was to make a fortune and be widely admired. Perhaps he was. And, quite likely, Thaw taught John Branden shortcuts and even con games that would pave the way for who he was to become.

  Who Bill Thaw really was is perhaps more puzzling than who John Branden was, and the details of Branden’s connection to Thaw are clouded. Thaw was about ten years older than the young man who saw him as a mentor, and at that point he was far more charismatic than John Branden. Bill Thaw was an enigma, the kind of person whose secrets probably followed him to the grave.

  William Michael Thaw, aka Michael William Thaw, was born in 1933, and he was probably the consummate con man. He was an accomplished smooth talker and snake-oil salesman extraordinaire. He could convince almost anyone of almost anything.

  In May 1962, when John Branden was still a teenager and years away from meeting Bill Thaw, Thaw was hired by a company called Micronics Corporation of America, with headquarters in Philadelphia. The company made miniature tools for the burgeoning electronics industry, and Thaw was hired to find distributors for these products. He impressed the officers at Micronics, and they agreed when he suggested that he set up his center of operations in Hampton, Virginia.

  In his late twenties, Bill Thaw set out with enthusiasm. He began by taking out an ad in the Newport News Daily Press, where he offered franchises for Micronics.

  A Hampton man named Leon Felcher* contacted Thaw. After he checked out the Philadelphia corporation, Felcher gave Bill Thaw a check for $5,000, made out to the Micronics Corporation of America. Thaw shook his hand and gave Felcher a contract as a “master distributor” for that firm. Smiling, he explained that the check would, of course, be held in escrow to guarantee payment for the tools to be delivered.

  Later, Bill Thaw offered Felcher an option besides simply delivering tools and catalogs—he suggested that Felcher join with him and form a Virginia corporation that would be completely independent of the Philadelphia firm. Felcher agreed, and Thaw obtained a charter from the Virginia Corporation Commission for the new company, to be known as American Minitronics Corporation, naming Leon Felcher president and Thaw secretary-treasurer and responsible agent. When that switch was accomplished so easily, Bill Thaw told Felcher that their Virginia corporation could also be awarded the Micronics sales franchise for the entire southeastern territory, from Maryland to Florida. That would mean commissions from all the sales made by distributors in that area.

  Leon Felcher wasn’t eager to come up with another $5,000, but both Thaw and a man he introduced as his business associate—Donald Hassel—reassured him that this would be a no-fail investment. Somewhat reluctantly, Felcher wrote another $5,000 check to the Philadelphia corporation—for which Thaw had originally worked.

  Felcher was right to hesitate. The company that had hired Thaw would never see either check. Bill Thaw had established a bank account with the real company’s name, but he’d added “of Hampton, Virginia,” opening it with $400 of his own money. Three days after he got Felcher’s first check, he put $3,500 in this account and kept $1,500 in cash. None of it, of course, went to the legitimate Philadelphia firm. Within ten days, Thaw and Hassel had drained the account to its last dollar to pay for their motel bills, apartment rent, and other bills unrelated to either the Minitronics corporation or the Philadelphia Micronics company.

  Bill Thaw and Donald Hassel expanded their nets. They took out more advertisements in newspapers in the Southeast, extolling the tremendous business potential in miniature tools. “Qualified applicants” who made a $5,000 deposit were guaranteed a place in their corporation and were directed to communicate with Leon Felcher, president of Virginia Minitronics in Hampton.

  But the applicants never reached Felcher; instead, Thaw hired a secretary and told her to prepare letters with Felcher’s name typed in. And then he instructed her to sign Felcher’s name. Wisely, she refused, and the letters were sent out with only the typed name.

  Nevertheless, Thaw and Hassel had some takers who expressed interest in joining their nonexistent business. They set up a meeting place for applicants at an upscale hotel in Washington, D.C., and greeted applicants wearing tailored business suits and carrying attaché cases. Their line of patter was as charming as before, but their conferences weren’t as convincing to new applicants as they had been with Leon Felcher. None of the new candidates were willing to write a $5,000 check.

  Finally, one man agreed to buy the distributorship for metropolitan Washington, D.C., for a bargain price—$2,500. Thaw sold the very same territory to another “exclusive distributor” on the same day. However, he failed to find any further applicants as gullible or generous as Leon Felcher. There were no more $10,000 investors, but there were several who managed to come up with $1,000 to $1,500. Thaw kept all the money for himself and used early applicants to persuade others—until they all realized they had been duped.

  William Michael Thaw and Donald Hassel were convicted of mail fraud. They appealed the conviction, but a higher court denied their arguments.

  A decade later, Bill Thaw had relocated to Florida, and John Branden was a young married man. John was four years older than teenaged Sue when they married. He always said he had his bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern Florida in Naples, and that he had to scramble to pay his tuition as he worked as a landscape architect to pay his way through. He was a dreamer and was constantly looking for ways to rise above the crowd. For a time, politics seemed like a way to mingle with the movers and shakers, but it wasn’t.

  John told Kate that he had learned to fly small planes when he was a young man living in Florida, and he would sometimes brag that he flew around in Governor Lawton Childs’s private plane when he was active in the Young Democrats organization.

  Somewhere during that period, he met Bill Thaw. By then, Thaw and Werner Erhard had long since parted ways. John explained their breakup to Kate by saying that Bill Thaw felt that Erhard had become “too Hollywood,” having grown far more interested in the commercial side of est than in changing people’s lives.

  Given the rise and fall of Minitronics, it seems unlikely that Thaw was actually turned off by any enterprise that made big money, but he might have learned to be cautious about franchises and moneymaking schemes that ballooned too quickly.

  If John Branden would later dislike having his picture taken, Bill Thaw was adamant about not letting anyone take a photograph of him. Today, it is impossible to find a picture of William Michael Thaw. Something happened to John Branden as he followed his “god,” and he undoubtedly learned from Thaw. As John became more savvy, he became more secretive. His jobs and organizational attachments seemed to be conveniently vague—quite possibly as he intended.

  The Brandens had their two young daughters and seemed to be an average family of the seventies and eighties, at least to the casual observer. John told Kate that he had a thriving nutritional practice in a woman chiropractor’s office in Naples. The way he spoke of his years in Florida, they seemed to be happy and productive.

  And yet, they packed hurriedly and left Florida in 1986. John described their exit to Kate in a mysterious way, saying, “We left under cover of night—there was a contract out on me….”

  Was there? Kate had already seen that John had a need for drama, but she didn’t know if he was testing her or just enjoying telling flamboyant stories.

  “Once,” Kate recalled, “when I first knew John in San Diego, he told me he had to go up to the northern part of the county to meet t
wo guys who worked for the CIA, and he wanted me to go with him. It was all very hush-hush. And then it turned out it was only two guys who were getting him a hardtop for his Suzuki.”

  But Kate would always wonder about his tale of fleeing Florida in the dead of night. When she learned that Bill Thaw committed suicide by gunshot in Palm Beach a year after that, Kate began to believe that John had escaped from some ominous threat in Florida.

  Thaw’s body disappeared, according to John, but Kate sometimes worried that he wasn’t really dead at all, only hiding from something that might involve John. “Maybe he’s in South America,” she commented, half seriously. John didn’t reply.

  John revealed that he had used different surnames from time to time—including his ex-wife’s maiden name. He was most voluble when he’d been drinking, but even then Kate noticed that he was censoring what he told her. Still, in their early years together, Kate and John were happy, and she was totally committed to him. She never dreamed that he would hurt her—or leave her. John just loved mystery and keeping part of himself hidden.

  It really didn’t bother her, and only rarely did she press him for fine points and specifics of his past. Kate would sometimes ask him about his midnight flight from Florida, but he would never tell her why he’d had to leave so surreptitiously. Sometimes she wondered if it was for some illegal activity like gunrunning, and then she castigated herself for being so suspicious. John was a respected professional. He had his PhD from the University of New Mexico in nutritional studies. She assumed that he had attended the New Mexico college on a part-time basis during the time he lived in Florida.

  The Brandens left Florida in 1986 and moved in with his older sister, Marilyn, and her husband, Alan*, until they could establish themselves in California. Two years later, John had a booming practice as a PhD in clinical nutrition in San Diego.

  (He did not yet have his naturopathic doctor degree from Clayton. There is a legal difference between a naturopathic doctor and a naturopathic physician. John was never a naturopathic physician. The latter has more medical training and is allowed to write prescriptions. Clayton trained “doctors” who were nutrition and lifestyle counselors. Kate was taught to honor the difference.)

  After his mother died, John really had no family except his daughters and Kate. Kate never met his sister Marilyn, and John wouldn’t say why the authorities had sought him. Later, he denied that it had been anything very important—just Marilyn’s meanness, as she enjoyed getting him into trouble.

  As always, Kate believed him.

  All in all, their travels were carefree. John’s mother’s bequest saw him through a jobless period easily, and he assured Kate that the next career he picked would be far more rewarding—both monetarily and in terms of helping people—than any he’d had before. They were in no hurry, and their almost-endless trip erased the stress that they’d both been living with for so long.

  John and Kate liked the Oregon coast a lot and were even more taken with Orcas Island, a tiny dollop of land north of Deception Pass between British Columbia and northwestern Washington State. Orcas was reachable only by ferries, and it had kept its windswept, small-town ambiance, which attracted artists, tourists, and salt-of-the-earth longtime residents.

  Kate was charmed by Orcas Island, but she pointed out that the only way to get on or off the island was by ferry, and that could be a hassle. John agreed with her. He preferred Gold Beach, even though naturopaths could not be licensed to practice in Oregon. It was a moot question at this point; they were weighing all kinds of possibilities for bringing nutritional remedies to those who needed them badly. That would mean weeks of travel around America, and perhaps even in Canada. They weren’t ready to settle down yet, but they both hoped to live in the Northwest some day. Neither of them liked the rootless feeling of being on the road without a home base.

  Kate had no intention of giving up flying for American Airlines, but she had enough seniority to take long leaves of absence.

  As the miles rolled away beneath their tires, they discussed John’s ideas, and Kate followed his lead. She loved him, admired him, and believed in his innovative plans. If there were any fissures in his perfectly groomed, self-confident façade, Kate saw them revealed only briefly. John always had what seemed like a sound physiological reason—fatigue, low blood sugar, or something else—for his sudden rages.

  They had gone through so much to be together, and she finally accepted that she had found the perfect relationship she had longed for all of her life.

  Or so she thought.

  Chapter Three

  By 1994, although happily unmarried, Kate Jewell and John Branden grew tired of the road and were ready to settle down—at least enough to have a home to come back to. John constantly wanted to move on to another of his schemes for success—one more suited to his area of expertise—but they both wanted to live on the Oregon coast.

  Kate and John scouted for condos to buy, but those they looked at felt cramped and too close to other units. They were about to give up when they found a perfect spot in Gold Beach. It was a house surrounded by trees, a small shake cottage with a shake roof, Dutch doors, and a yard full of sword ferns and rhododendrons. It was a rental, but they had an option to buy this secluded, woodsy property. They hoped to do that as soon as possible. There was room for a big garden, and neighbors close enough that they weren’t completely isolated but not so close that they had no privacy. It was rustic, but not rugged, with thick-piled carpet, new appliances, a modern bathroom, and a big deck.

  John’s bequest from his mother’s estate was long gone, and they couldn’t afford to buy the house outright, but Doris and Bill Turner, the couple who owned it, became their good friends—especially Kate’s—and they wanted the younger couple to have the place.

  “It was like living in a park,” Kate said. “A forested park, and we had a glimpse of the ocean through the trees. We were as likely to see deer in our yard as we were squirrels. We both loved it.”

  John Branden, however, insisted that they clean every corner of their new home before they moved in. He was fanatic about germs. He washed his hands compulsively—almost like Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth.

  “John wouldn’t wear clothes inside if he’d worn them outdoors,” Kate said. “He insisted on changing so we wouldn’t bring in germs. If I sat in ‘his’ chair with ‘street clothes’ on, he freaked. I had to be really careful when I washed dishes, and make sure I wiped out the sink ‘to get rid of bacteria and water spots.’ He usually had to go back and do it over, which was also a way to erode my self-esteem.”

  John was horrified once when a neighbor brought Kate a cat that had been run over by a car. She cradled it in her arms, trying to find a pulse—but there was none. When John saw the dead cat in her arms, he yelled at her to get away from it. Didn’t she know that bacteria and germs jump off animals when they die?

  Their futon had to be made a certain way, the bedding folded just so and put away, and their towels had to be folded to John’s precise specifications. He drove her crazy when she cooked because he hovered over her, cleaning up and putting away measuring cups before she was finished with them.

  But these were irritating and annoying peccadilloes, and not nearly as troubling as his jealousy.

  To keep them afloat financially, Kate occasionally returned to American Airlines, flying out of San Francisco. She had so much seniority that she could stay on the American roster, even if she didn’t fly as many trips as she once did. It left her free to help John with his plans for a new enterprise. He forbade her to fly very often.

  At first, that didn’t bother Kate. John wanted her with him, and not in some city at the other end of the country. And they did have plans to make.

  John had been seeking an “overnight success” business, although that didn’t matter much to Kate. She would have liked to buy their home instead of renting it, and to have a stronger financial base, but she wasn’t looking for great wealth and fame. Not at all. She love
d to walk the beach, and she enjoyed the muted woods that surrounded their house, making the rest of the world and its problems seem far away.

  John wanted more. He began to research companies that sold nutritional supplements, and he read about a Texas corporation that was a rising star in the stock market: Emprise, which soon became Mannatech, Incorporated. Although he read the financial reports on the company, which showed constant growth and millions of dollars in sales, he wasn’t particularly interested in Mannatech’s checkered background.

  Mannatech was founded in the midnineties by an entrepreneur named Sam Caster, a man who had run afoul of the Texas attorney general with some of his earlier ventures. First came an insulation product, which, he said, used “NASA technology” to dramatically reduce heating and air-conditioning bills. The AG questioned just how much and failed to validate Caster’s claims. Next, it was a pest-control device that emitted vibrations that scared varmints and bugs, snakes and scorpions, out of infested households. The AG checked Caster’s claims and found no vibrations whatsoever. He went so far as to say, “The device is a hoax and stands on the same scientific footing as a perpetual motion machine.”

  Undeterred, Sam Caster started Mannatech in 1994, concurrent with the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act’s passage by the U.S. Congress. The new statute made wide marketing of nutritional products much more profitable than it had been.

  Mannatech was a multilevel marketing corporation, with a structure much like that of any number of businesses, with constant recruiting of sales representatives by supervisors and officers on a higher level. Makeup, cooking products, spices, erotic underwear, and sex toys are all sold this way. Of course, only those supervisors and officers in the upper echelons of multilevel companies make the munificent salaries.

  Mannatech was one of the fastest-growing small companies in America, as its enthusiastic sales force spread to extol the success of its nutritional supplements, skin-care products, and weight-management system. The one aspect of their program that demanded intense delicacy was the fact that salespeople were told to avoid claiming that Mannatech’s elixirs, pills, and creams could cure illness. It was all right to say that customers could benefit from “good nutrition,” but they were not to promise cures for cancer, Down syndrome, Alzheimer’s, infertility, hemochromatosis, or any other specific disease.