Fatal Beauty by Burl Barer

Author:Burl Barer [Barer, Burl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7860-2792-7
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp.
Published: 2011-02-24T05:00:00+00:00

This scenario is further validated by John Thrash, a wealthy retired Houston physician turned CEO of a thriving energy company, and executor of Joste’s estate. “I knew Jimmy because I met him in the Houston area through my father, who is also in the oil and gas business. He knew my father first, and that’s how I came to know him.

“He was a very dear friend,” Thrash explained. “We socialized together often, up until I got married, then not as frequently. I met Rhonda through Jimmy, and we saw and socialized sometimes, but not as often as with Jimmy.”

The very fact that Joste and Thrash were close friends further exemplified the personality and social circle of Jimmy Joste. “Philanthropy is an important and highly valued characteristic of their shared social circle,” stated Houston journalist and author Steven Long. “John Thrash and his wife, Becca, are an excellent example of the high-society philanthropy of petroleum millionaires. Some folks in that social strata fund hospitals, education, engineering and technology research, or social services. John is one of the most respected men in Houston, and Becca is a relentless fund-raiser for the arts, board member for the Houston Grand Opera, the Contemporary Arts Museum and American Friends of the Louvre. The long-standing friendship between Jimmy Joste and John Thrash bespeaks volumes of their shared values, interests and common concerns.”

Thrash, whose “cozy” home is a remarkably comfortable twenty-thousand-square-foot manse, sat in the Travis County Courthouse discussing the affairs of James Joste. “Jimmy and I discussed the idea of me serving as executor of his estate,” said Thrash. “I learned definitely that he had done that after his death.

“Jimmy made an investment of five hundred thousand dollars in 2000 or 2001, in one of our companies in New York State,” explained Thrash. “In 2004, that project was in intense multilateral litigation with AIG and the bank that was involved and a number of other partners, including us.

“This was not an asset that Jimmy could easily liquidate,” said Thrash. “It was a private limited-partnership ownership, and it was not liquid. Liquid would be stock, publicly traded stock that could be sold on an open market. These were private interests in private companies, and so establishing their value, particularly in an instance where there is litigation going on, would be virtually impossible.

“It might have been two to four months before his death that Jimmy came to me and told me that he wanted to sell about a hundred thousand dollars of his share in that investment because he was getting married.”

Thrash explained to Joste the difficulties involved in his request, and that it wasn’t feasible at that time to anticipate being able to liquidate any of that investment. Jimmy Joste wasn’t the only person in the Joste/Glover relationship to approach Thrash about money.

“Some months before I saw Jimmy, I was on my way out of the office when I was told by one of our receptionists that Rhonda was in the lobby and wanted to talk to me.

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