Finders Keepers: A Senior Citizen's Bizarre Encounter with Local Law

By Virginia M. Bolen

When author Virginia M. Bolen found a watch in the parking lot of the shelter in which she volunteered in August of 1997, she had no idea the trouble that would follow. In Finders Keepers, she shares her story of being arrested and charged with felony theft in a small town in Montana.

This accounts narrates Bolens encounter with a justice system run amuck. She describes what happened to her and how she fought back over a period of years to gain vindication. She was harassed, intimidated, jailed, and pilloried in the press for a crime that law enforcement knew she didnt commit. Through her own words, public records, correspondence, and newspaper articles, she portrays the personalities involved, including jail inmates (even the girlfriend of a serial killer), sheriffs deputies, county attorneys, bridge players, the mother of a world champion poker player, and a Montana State Senator.

Finders Keepers gives insight into the personalities and mindset of authorities, who ignoring facts and common sense, persist in yielding their power. Its a case thats been followed by the legal community, even outside of Montana, because of its challenge to prosecutorial immunity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 24, 2008
• ISBN: 9780595616558

Virginia M. Bolen

Virginia M. Bolen is a graduate of the University of North Carolina and lived in the Southeast until she and her husband retired to Montana from Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, in 1991. She retired from the Postal Service. They live on a small farm outside of Hamilton, Montana.

Book preview

Finders Keepers

24102.png

A Senior Citizen’s Bizarre Encounter with Local Law

Virginia M. Bolen

24108.png

FINDERS KEEPERS

A SENIOR CITIZEN’S BIZARRE ENCOUNTER WITH LOCAL LAW

Copyright © 2008 by Virginia M. Bolen.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-0-5955-0802-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-0-5956-1655-8 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 05/01/2015

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1    The Crime

Chapter 2    Fugitive At Large

Chapter 3    Summons And Court Appearance

Chapter 4    Incarceration

Chapter 5    Out On Bond

Chapter 6    Public Outrage

Chapter 7    Case Dismissed

Chapter 8    Lawsuit Against The County

Chapter 9    Discovery

Chapter 10    Depositions

Chapter 11    The Trial

Chapter 12    The Verdict

PREFACE

As retirement time approached in the late 1980’s my husband and I began to research places to retire outside of the Sun Belt. We had both been born and reared in the Southeast and had spent our entire lives there. We had always disliked the heat and humidity of that part of the country and wanted to spend our retirement years in a cooler climate. Our children were firmly planted in the Charleston, South Carolina area, but we figured we could visit them during winter months and they could visit us in the summer!

We read lots of books on selecting retirement spots and concentrated our search in the Northeast. We worked our way from Maine down to the Saratoga Springs, New York area. As we found a neighborhood and homes that suited us there, we put our home on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina on the market. As luck would have it, this was during one of the downturns in the real estate market and our home did not sell for two years. During this time we continued working, I with the Post Office, and my husband, W. C., in his private accounting practice.

While we waited for our home to sell we continued to research the Saratoga Springs area. Two of our sons had attended college in Montana and they suggested that we extend our search there as the climate would suit us. After considerable research and subscribing to the local newspaper we decided on the town of Hamilton which is about forty-five miles south of Missoula.

In the summer of 1991 we flew out to Montana to look over Hamilton which we had not seen on our previous frequent vacations in Montana. Hamilton is off the beaten track, in the Bitterroot Valley, not on one of the routes to Yellowstone or Glacier National Parks, or on a main north-south or east-west route. However, like most of the valleys in Montana, it is breathtakingly beautiful. There were not many homes on the market, but we found one our second day here that suited us. It was located about a mile from town in a mixed residential-agricultural neighborhood. As we had a sale pending on our home we purchased it. We moved here in July of 1991.

Hamilton is the county seat of Ravalli County which is almost a hundred miles long and lies between the Bitterroot and Sapphire Mountain Ranges with the Bitterroot River running through it. The town was founded by Marcus Daly, the copper baron, in the late 1800’s to supply timber for his copper mines to the east in Anaconda and Butte. He had his summer home here and his vast Thoroughbred farm from which he sent his horses to compete on the national scene. He planned the town with a hotel, a flour mill, a bank, and a main street wide enough to turn around a team-of-four. The residential streets were carefully laid out and lined with maple trees. .

After Marcus Daly’s death in 1900 and the dispersal of most of his holdings, the Valley enjoyed another brief time of prosperity with the development of apple orchards spawned by Daly’s start of an irrigation system for the Valley. This did not last long because of severe winters and the development of the apple industry in Washington State. In the 1920’s the Rocky Mountain Laboratory was founded and it has provided limited steady employment in the Valley through the years.

The Valley has always been considered a quiet, peaceful, lovely, off-the-beaten-track place to live by those who knew about it. In the past twenty-five years it has been discovered and new residents and developers have moved in, doubling the population. This has changed the complexion of Hamilton from a small sleepy western town into a more up-scale retirement and vacation destination. This change has not all been for the good. Much of the political and governmental structure of the County has been taken over by outsiders. All of the antagonists in my story are from out-of-state. Since we have been here we have noticed a lot of embezzlements perpetrated on local businesses, charities, and schools by newcomers taking advantage of the naiveté of the long-time residents of the Valley.

In general, it has always been hard to make a living in Ravalli County and many of the youth have had to leave the Valley for employment, though some have returned in their retirement. Because of the poor economic climate many have tried, failed, and had to move on to other places. However, because of Montana’s seemingly liberal social programs, many in Ravalli County, and I presume, in the rest of the State, are on welfare, workmen’s compensation, or unemployment. There are many people here disabled from forestry and agricultural accidents, but also a good many apparently healthy men who are able to buck bales of hay, load heavy firewood, and do other hard manual labor while watching over their shoulders for the workmen’s comp man! They do various odd jobs on a strictly cash basis.

Our first few years here were idyllic. We had a busy schedule of social, political, church, and charitable activities, in addition to caring for the small farm which we moved to after about four years in the Valley. This illusion of perfection was shattered when I accidentally scratched the surface of this serene veneer and came face-to-face with a sub-culture of cronyism, bullying, and intimidation. This book is the story of what we went through for the next several years.

CHAPTER 1

THE CRIME

FOUND LADIES WRIST WATCH, in parking lot of Animal Shelter on 8/30. Identify to claim. 363-6001.

Quote from the Lost & Found section of The Ravalli Republic, September 8th through 10th, 1997

Have fun at the Fair! Ethyl called to me as I left the Animal Shelter after my volunteer shift on that Saturday morning. I was in a hurry as W. C. and I were planning to go to the Ravalli County Fair for lunch and the afternoon activities. I had to walk carefully to my car because that week they had just spread new gravel in the parking lot and it was large aggregate and a little hard to walk on. As I picked my way along I noticed something shiny in the rocks. I leaned over and picked up a watch and immediately went back into the Shelter and gave it to Ethyl, the manager. We assumed it had been dropped by some one visiting the Shelter and Ethyl pinned it on a bulletin board adjoining the reception desk.

When I returned to the Shelter for work the following week the watch was still hanging there. Since it appeared to be a watch of some value we decided it shouldn’t be left hanging in such a vulnerable place, with the general public, people working off community service sentences, and such, coming and going all day. Instead, I placed a sign on the counter saying, FOUND - LADIES WRIST WATCH IN PARKING LOT - CALL 363-6001 TO IDENTIFY. I then took the watch home for safe-keeping. The watch was a diamond and platinum Hamilton, possibly manufactured in the 1940’s or ’50’s. It had a worn cloth band and a defective clasp, but otherwise was in working order. When no one called about it I placed the above ad in the local newspaper. When I received no calls, I phoned the Ravalli County Sheriff’s Department to ask if anyone had reported a lost watch. The response was negative. In the meantime I had told church members, bridge club friends, and others about my find. I seemed to have reached a dead end so I put the watch in our safe deposit box and forgot about it.

The following spring I came across the watch and decided something should be done with it. A local jeweler recommended a certified appraiser in Missoula so I took it, along with my engagement ring, which I had just had redesigned, to be appraised. With the certified appraisal I was able to add the $2,079 watch to my insurance floater policy. After I had it fully insured I had a new watch band put on and began to wear it occasionally, about once a month, to some bridge function or similar affair. I don’t dress up too often as I’m usually fooling around outside with the mules and donkey or am grubbing away in my gardens! Anyway, this was the first opportunity my friends had to see the watch I had told them about.

Since the watch was fully insured I continued to keep it at home and wore it once in a while until February of 2000 when the winding stem stopped working properly. I took it to the jeweler who had replaced the watch band two years earlier and she referred me to the Bitterroot Clock Shop for repair work. I took it to the shop where the owner said, Where did you get this watch? I know it - it was stolen! He appeared very nervous to me, hands shaking, and generally agitated. He asked where I had gotten the watch and I told him the whole story. He asked my permission to take the back off the watch so that he could show me his mark inside indicating when he had worked on it. Through his jeweler’s loupe we could clearly see BRC ‘91. He said that shortly after he had worked on it 1991 the owner had called him to report she thought it had been stolen from her bathroom counter by a man who was staying in her home at the time. He said the owner’s name was Linda Seed. He asked if I wanted a reward for the return of the watch and I said no, but I wouldn’t mind being reimbursed for the appraisal, insurance, and repair expenses - approximately $100. He thought that was very reasonable as it was a valuable watch - worth about $5,000, according to him, and she should be glad to pay it, or I should keep the watch. While I was in the shop he tried to call Mrs. Seed but got no answer and left a message for her to call him on her answering machine. I asked him for a piece of paper and wrote my name and phone number on it for him. I went home and told W. C. I had finally found the owner of the watch and she would be calling shortly to claim it. I took the appraisal out of my files so I would have it handy to turn over to Mrs. Seed.

I had expected to hear from Mrs. Seed right away, but a week or ten days went by before we heard anything, and then it was a call from a member of the Sheriff’s Department. I was outdoors tending to the animals when W. C. took a call from someone who identified himself as Deputy Scott Burlingham of the Ravalli County Sheriff’s Department. He told W. C. he understood we were in possession of a watch belonging to Linda Seed and he would come by and pick it up. W. C. asked why Mrs. Seed had not contacted us herself and Deputy Burlingham replied that she was elderly and was hesitant to call on her own. W. C. told him we are elderly also - in our seventies. The deputy became belligerent and said the watch was stolen and if we did not turn it over to him we would be guilty of felony theft and would be prosecuted accordingly. About this time, I walked in the back door and W. C. told me who was on the line and handed the phone to me. Deputy Burlingham went through the same spiel with me. He said Mrs. Seed had reported the watch stolen from her china hutch in November 1997. I asked if the watch had been stolen twice. He didn’t know about that, only that it did not belong to me and I should turn it over to him. I replied that I would like proof that