Without Pity by Ann Rule

Author:Ann Rule
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2003-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

Tony Fernandez couldn’t juggle his books forever. By July 1958 the IRS began to look at him with a jaundiced eye. The Internal Revenue Service filed notice of a tax lien of $95,246.31 against him for taxes that he hadn’t paid in 1951, 1952, and 1953. The IRS filed what was known as a “jeopardy assessment” against Fernandez’s assets. This amounted to a lien against all his property. It followed two Superior Court memorandums saying that the wheeler-dealer logger had to pay two logging firms over half a million dollars as the result of civil suits.

Still, Tony Fernandez drove his Cadillacs, lived in his nice house, and kept up the facade of a highly successful businessman and a pillar in Longview.

Individuals who had done business with Fernandez were nothing if not confused. An Oregon man, Bill Belcher, was foggy about a trip he had made to Nelson, British Columbia, with Fernandez in March of 1958. Tony had offered to “fly over” his timber holdings there so Belcher could have a look. But the clouds had been so thick that Belcher couldn’t tell whether he was looking at fir, pine, spruce, hemlock…or tumbleweed. When they attempted to reach the woods later by Jeep, they were forced back by deep snowdrifts.

While they pondered their predicament, Belcher stepped behind the Jeep to light a cigarette. The next conscious memory he had was of lying beside a railroad track; his head felt as though a train had run over it. He was found by railroad workers who called for medics. Belcher was hospitalized with severe head injuries for ten days.

Later, he learned that Tony Fernandez had returned to the guest cabin where the two men had been staying. He had told the managers that Belcher had decided to stay up in the woods in a miner’s cabin.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police notified Bill Belcher’s family that he had been critically injured. His wife left at once for Canada. After assuring herself that he would survive, she followed Belcher’s instructions to retrieve his briefcase in which he had carried important papers and money. She found the briefcase but Belcher could not explain a logging contract that had been tucked inside. There was also a receipt for $40,000 in payment for some land.

Bill Belcher had no memory whatsoever of what happened to him after he stepped out of Tony Fernandez’s vehicle to have a cigarette alongside a snowy road. However, he was adamant that he would never have bought timber he had not even seen, and he would not have given someone $40,000 for trees hidden in fog.

While Belcher had lain unconscious, a bank officer in Grants Pass, Oregon, where Belcher had an account, received several phone calls from a man who identified himself as Bill Belcher. The caller directed the banker to transfer $40,000 to a Gresham, Oregon, bank to the account of the “Fernandez-Belcher deal.”

Belcher, who had never suffered blackouts, fainting spells, or anything akin to them before his mysterious “attack” behind the Jeep

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.