Barons of Memphis

By Marnie Gellhorn

This book is a multi-generational tale of a political family in the mid-south; with all the steamy details that emerge after a crime that shocks the city. In the aftermath of this grisly murder, Memphians are scandalized by the gruesome details that emerge, and all the national attention it attracts. At the center, is the eccentric charmer, socialite and Instagram aficionado, Hunter Baron. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, this trust-fund baby has spent his life in pursuit of pleasure, fame and adventure. Now he’s faced with infamy as the defendant in a high-profile trial. Only his legal team, headed by the city’s legal superstars can ensure that he gets a fair trial in the middle of a media circus. Only Marnie Gellhorn can tell this story, even as she confronts her own past with the suspect.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AL Press
• Release date: Nov 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005423780

Marnie Gellhorn

Marnie Gellhorn is a former overseas correspondent. She has covered stories from all over the world, but most often in areas of conflict, like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. She has dedicated her career to putting a human face of the geopolitics of our international policies.As a frequent contributor to AP outlets, often the only byline you will have seen is Associated Press. But if you’ve read enough of her work, you can almost hear her soft gravelly voice in the stories.The Barons of Memphis is her first foray into fiction and was inspired by her love for her adopted hometown. She and her constant companion, Henri Arthur George split their time between Memphis and Sonoma as she continues to work as a travel writer.She is a frequent contributor to wine & cheese magazine.Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_marnie_gellhorn/

Book preview

THE

BARONS

OF MEMPHIS

Marnie Gellhorn

The Barons of Memphis

Copyright © 2021 by Marnie Gellhorn

All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

For permission requests, please contact the author via the Contact page on the following website: www.therealmarniegellhorn.com.

Proudly self-published through Divine Legacy Publishing , www.divinelegacypublishing.com

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

WITH THANKS

To the many, many people who agreed to appear in this fiction novel as themselves. Thank you for having a sense of humor and letting me take wild and vast leaps with your namesakes. And, as you know, made up names always sound made up – but real people's names with made up characters is just a little naughty fun.

While the novel is fiction, Memphis is a very real place, and bringing Memphis to life for my readers was a much more difficult task, as my narrator shares during the story. With that in mind, while you may recognize the names of friends, neighbors, and local celebrities, the dialogue is entirely of my own invention.

Thank you, my dear friend, Yogi, for being Yogi. To Tawanda and Quinn for giving me hope for future generations; whenever I see how hardworking and dedicated you are, and to each other, I think that despite the bad in the world, everything will turn out okay.

Thank you to Lee Filderman for all of your legal assistance while drafting my courtroom scenes and strategies and for allowing me to use your name for one of the more memorable characters within.

My most gracious thanks to the attorney Kelly Darrow, who is nothing like his character in the book. The real Kelly Darrow is gracious, generous and kind, and a barracuda in the courtroom.

To Eric Gales and Tab Benoit, whose music kept me company as I worked through a myriad of edits.

Thank you to Dr. Asad Khan for your assistance in maintaining the accuracy of the medical findings.

Thank you to my dear, dear friend, Rachel Mathis for being my sounding board at all times.

Thank you to my mother, and my team of early draft readers; Jauclyn Green Williams, Sabrina Price, and Asad Khan (again!) who gave invaluable real-time feedback during my days and afternoons writing.

And of course, thank you to Elizabeth Warren, my dear friend, for copy-editing and correcting my atrocious grammar. One of these days, please sit me down and explain to me what a gerund is!

AUTHOR ’ S NOTE

Sometimes in this modern age of the internet, Zoom, cellphones, and instant gratification, we tend to think that all the vestiges of the past have disappeared. We like to think that these kinds of stories only harken back to Gone with the Wind and Faulkner-types tales. We think we have righted the wrongs and aimed towards equality in an increasingly egalitarian society. That is fantasy, of course, well-made and maintained along with very visible signs of symbolic changes that really symbolize nothing at all, other than our inability to really see. For the first time since the 1940s, the gap between the rich and the poor grew so very, very vast. An adult born into a lower or middle class in the 1980s has a less than 10% chance of making more money than his parents. This is a huge contrast to most of the twentieth century. Upward mobility is more difficult now than it has been for generations of blacks, whites, and all shades in between, for the poor and the middle class. Education has always been seen as the great equalizer, but even that has become a myth. The truth is that even though less than 2 percent of American kids attend elite private schools, each of the ivy league schools (Yale, Dartmouth, Harvard, etc.) admits between 25 to 30% of each year ’ s class from a select group of these ultra-expensive and ultra-elite schools.

It's no secret that these advantages extend to the criminal justice system, even in cases of grievous offenses. Consider T. Cullen Davis, who murdered his own stepdaughter and Stan Farr in addition to shooting several others. He was twice acquitted, even after being caught by the FBI after conspiring to murder the judge in his divorce case along with his ex-wife.

Brooke Astor was the very wealthy widow of the only son of John Jacob Astor IV. When her own son, Anthony Marshall, tired of waiting for her demise and was concerned about being overlooked in the will, he abused and neglected the frail 103 year-old Alzheimer ’ s sufferer. He spent only 8 weeks in jail despite being convicted on fourteen charges of fraud, forgery, and grand larceny.

These old money families such as the Barons, the Vanderbilts, and the Rockefellers have always existed. Some of the more reclusive offspring like Doris Duke or Hugette Clark claim our attention at their passing.

We tend to focus on the Barons of Baltimore, of Savannah, of Peachtree Avenue in Atlanta, the Barons of the Dauphin Islands, Muscle Shoals, and the Garden district of New Orleans. We talk and whisper about the Barons of Memphis and Germantown, but somehow forget the modern-day dynasties that still control the American landscape and divide it into tiny kingdoms. The Barons of Memphis may be a fading, decaying family on the edge of American royalty, but the aristocracy is not. This particular story may be about a dying branch in a southern family, but for every Baron family, there is another, wealthier family with even darker secrets.

                                                                              Marnie Gellhorn

CHAPTER

ONE

The Pyramid



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Hunter Lee Baron III lived what appeared to be the epitome of the charmed life of the southern aristocracy until the night of April 15, 2021. And even then, it could be argued that he managed to skirt the wheels of justice, literally. A perpetual, but loveable, effusive, and ebullient alcoholic, Hunter had made a career out of talking, and he could talk his way out of just about anything. But on that late spring Memphis night, he didn ’ t have to. That ’ s when he lost control of his Kawasaki motorcycle, after being clipped by a harried mother in a silver Dodge Caravan. Miraculously, when his bike slid under the trailer of a Wal-Mart semi-tractor trailer on the I-40, crushing his hip, imploding his femur, and fracturing both ankles, he remained witty and quick thinking. He was able to deflect the arriving ambulances and officers from looking too closely at the wreckage, or even much above the waist. He managed to avoid a breathalyzer test that would have been the instant death to his budding political career. All of that would come later. First, he was airlifted to the local trauma center.

As he was being loaded into the helicopter, he managed to spare a wry smile for the cute blond paramedic attending to him. As he eyed her curvaceous figure that was only partly obscured by her flight suit, he asked, What about my momma? She ’ s all alone at the big house, and I don ’ t want her worried. If Jessica, the paramedic, thought it was odd that a fifty-something, silver-haired man was asking about his momma, she didn ’ t think much of it at the time. Later, it would perplex her.

Whether it was the pain from his injuries or the morphine Jessica had administered as she strapped him in – his eyes then rolled back and he passed out, missing the sights and sounds as the white helicopter accented with black and gold took off in the last rays of the setting sun. If he had been awake, he surely would have taken a selfie.

What he couldn ’ t have known as he slipped into slumber, was the absolute circus he was about to set off among the well-known and the well-to-do in Memphis, Tennessee. If he had, he would have loved it.

CHAPTER

TWO

The Peabody



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Hunter Lee Baron III ’ s childhood played into all the great southern stereotypes. His parents were the toast of 1960s Memphis high society. His father, Hunter Raymond Baron, Jr., was a statesman in the legislature, had a reputation as a great orator, and was a fine attorney and an even finer person. He had the kind of compassion and empathy combined with a keen intellect and a fierce sense of justice, which made him seem like the prototype for the matinee idols of the preceding decades. He was both the Atticus Finch and the Gregory Peck of the greater mid-south legal society in its heyday. His legal successes in that closed southern society and his innate dignity belied his origins in the steel mills of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was the younger son of northerners of very modest means, who had the fortune of much wealthier and more renown southern kinfolk. Starting at the age of 8, Hunter Raymond Baron II had spent his summers on a plantation estate of what is now modern Germantown. It was in the middle of the Great Depression, and his parents were struggling just to survive. But life on the estate seemed almost unaltered by the turmoil that was turning the rest of America on its ear. For Hunter, it was a sanctuary, a school dedicated to culture, art, and class, and a royal castle all rolled into one. It was there that he learned the soft sounds of the Memphis drawl, how to feel comfortable at a formal dining table with a 14-piece setting, and how to, in general, fit in with his much more moneyed and entitled cousins. The patriarch of his Shelby County relations, a man for whom much of the county has named parks, statues and roadways, was much taken with the polite, soft-spoken but bright tow-headed young boy. His manners were simple but correct, and while his clothing was hand-me-downs, he was always clean and tidy. The live-in nanny, May, had no complaints regarding his behavior, nor did the missus in the evenings, after he returned from a day on the bench downtown. The same could not be said for his own Baron children, who had been given all of life ’ s privileges and preferred to spend their days enjoying them. Whether being escorted home by the police after racing their Thunderbirds down Poplar Avenue or being caught (again!) dallying with the housekeeper ’ s daughters in the stables, they enjoyed the highlife. While the Beauregard Baron often despaired what would become of his selfish, arrogant, young sons, he had no such misgivings with young Hunter. As the summers rolled by, he began to admire the boy who worked so diligently at any task he encountered. He began to take young Hunter with him on various errands and include him on his weekend projects.

Beauregard had a love for weekends in the woods--hunting, fishing, as well as craftsmanship. Weekends were spent in a cabin outside Gatlinburg, or in a small barn on the edge of their main property, carving and shaping wooden boats. It was during these weekends that Hunter learned to tie flies, to clean a rifle, to make cornbread and beans over a woodstove or, in the little barn, how to mold a piece of wood to make the fine but subtle curves necessary for a sailboat to stay afloat. By the time he was fourteen, he could cut, sand, stain, and finish a lake-worthy sailboat with minimal assistance. By the time Hunter was sixteen, Beauregard knew that he needed to help this young man make his place in the world.

So he offered Hunter a place in his world. He offered to pay for his entire education, including law school, along with a position at his firm following graduation. It was a magnanimous offer. It was entry and acceptance for Hunter into a world where he was no longer the poor relation. He still needed the charity to get there, but it was also a chance to really become family. And so he did – and after enduring several Wisconsin winters to attend college, he graduated with honors and headed off to law school in New York, where he made his reputation on the moot court and as an editor of Law Review . He graduated magna cum laude and clerked for Jerome Frank in Lower Manhattan. He passed the bar easily in both New York and Tennessee before he took his place at the illustrious firm of Baron, Markham, and Smith, one of the oldest and most prestigious firms in the south. It had been founded in the previous century by another of his southern ancestors. The firm itself was located in the Exchange building in Court Square in downtown Memphis. It was just a short block from the U.S. District court where Beauregard Baron presided.

Beauregard Baron did more than pave the way for Hunter ’ s entry into the Memphis legal society ; he also paved his way into the Memphis Country Club, where the right color, caste, and religion were essential for entry. The fact that Hunter had quietly converted to Judaism a few years before was somehow overlooked, probably at the behest of Beauregard Baron. Not many people wanted to disappoint Beauregard Baron. If he wanted something, then it usually happened.

He himself was a bit perturbed at Hunter ’ s sudden conversion to Judaism but blamed it on outside influences from Hunter ’ s sojourn in New York for law school. It could have been worse, Beauregard thought, he could have become a communist. God knows that plenty of those New York Jews were harboring red sentiments.

Hunter was celebrating a big win the night he met the slightly older, but still beautiful, Belle. Her name was said without irony, but she was, in fact, the belle of Memphis society in the summer of 1958. She was standing by the punchbowl talking to Marilyn Belz when the host of the event, Walter Chandler, brought Hunter over and introduced him to her.

***

Belle Lee

Elizabeth Belle Lee was the third and very spoiled daughter of respectable but average folk in a small hamlet in east Tennessee. What advantages family couldn ’ t give her, her beauty could. She was a tiny doll of a woman, petite but voluptuous. She was fair-complected with natural medium blond hair and light blue eyes. She had a charming, yet slightly aloof air about her, a bit prim even during an era when her classmates raced into wartime marriages, with the fear of danger, Nazis, and the Japanese overriding other dreams and aspirations. More than one of her high school friends entered motherhood before adulthood. While her classmates were writing love letters and mailing care packages, Belle was planning her escape from East Tennessee.

She was the Hancock County Fall Harvest Queen in 1946. It was the biggest post-war celebration that Sneedville, Tennessee, had seen, and it was where the wealthy, older Ronald Sneff caught her eye. Actually, it was his dark red Triumph roadster, which had just been shipped across the ocean a few weeks before. His family was hard at work making their fortunes in baked goods. Their iconic snack had flourished during the war thanks to a clever advertising slogan, Send your love to the boys overseas, send a piece of Heaven cr è me pie! Mothers, sweethearts, even celebrities like Betty Grable and the U.S.O. began sending the Sneff cr è me pies in millions of care packages. When Robert K. Morgan held a Heaven cr è me pie in his hand during a salute to the Memphis Belle during a newsreel, the fate of the tasty snack and the family fortunes were secured.

Now, the somewhat doughy, forty-something heir to the cr è me-covered throne saw a new confection to add to his collection, and Ms. Fall Harvest Queen did not object. After she announced her pregnancy in a breathy whisper during the Sneedville Christmas caroling and Christmas tree lighting, Ms. Fall Harvest Queen became Mrs. Sneff in a small low-key ceremony on Christmas Eve. She wasn ’ t yet showing, so she was able to borrow a dress from the theater department of the local high school. In the last few years, that had become a popular option for teen brides of limited means. While wartime clothing rationing and repurposing had ended, in her family, and her small hamlet, reusing and recycling clothing and fabric was a way of life that had been imposed long before the Krauts invaded Czechoslovakia.

Belle would have been perfectly happy to accept Ronald ’ s offer to take her to Nashville for shopping and lunch at the new Harvey ’ s Department Store, but her mother didn ’ t approve of her accepting such a gift before the nuptials. She tried to explain to her mother, Pearl, that she wouldn ’ t need a wedding dress after the wedding, but her mother just hushed her and said that she didn ’ t need one at all with the theater department's loan outs, now did she? Her sister, Anna, was visiting at the time, and she snorted with laughter as Momma rebuked Belle. Anna and her husband, Earle, were visiting for the holidays before heading back to Nashville, where Anna was enrolled at Peabody College.

Anna was always smirking at Belle now that she was in college. She thought she was so smart, but then again, she had to, because she sure wasn ’ t pretty. Despite a bitter sibling rivalry, it was Anna and her husband, Belle ’ s parents, and Ronald ’ s mother and brother and his best friend, Ted at the ceremony. While the bride ’ s family was at least nominally Jewish, they weren ’ t religious enough to stop the bride from walking down the short hallway of the little church in Luther, Tennessee. After a couple of glasses of fizzy soda (because her parents were strict teetotalers), and a quick bite of cake, Ronald packed up his bride into his sporty red car and they headed off to the house he purchased for her in Nashville.

While the timing wasn ’ t perfect, Ronald was excited to prove his prowess on the county ’ s ice queen. She ’ d frozen out all her other suitors, but he ’ d prevailed. He wasn ’ t na ï ve after all his years in business, so he knew it wasn ’ t his good looks or charm that drew her to him, but he hoped that he ’ d won her over with his indulgences and kind nature by now. He knew he must have made some headway when she ’ d let him fondle her one evening when he brought her home from the movie at the Elks Club, and it had just progressed from there. Courting a woman in such a tiny town was inconvenient for Ronald when most of his business was based in Nashville, but it was just dumb luck that the Hancock County Council had asked him to serve as a judge at the Fall Harvest apple pie contest. He acted like it was a marketing opportunity for the company, but it was really just a scheduling error with his secretary.

If Belle ’ s frequent morning sickness prevented any additional interludes in the brief lead up to the wedding, that was fine with Ronald. They had a romantic honeymoon planned. With Europe in ruins, they had decided to take the train to Los Angeles, where they spent a glorious two weeks touring around southern California. They left just as it began snowing in Nashville and arrived in sunny California at the tail end of 1946. Belle had to shed her veil of bored sophistication when she saw all that Ronald and his money could offer. There were no signs of the previous war and war-related austerity here.

Hollywood was a mecca of abundance; of color, of flash, of sights, sounds and textures; and she reveled in it. She inhaled the heady perfume of the fragrant orange groves as Ronald zipped around in a sleek convertible. It was so intoxicating that she didn ’ t mind his crude caresses with his big clumsy hands as she tried on legions of dresses at Nancy ’ s Department store. He seemed to enjoy taking her on daily shopping trips, while sightseeing through Chinatown, the studios, and the requisite movie star home tours. They spent a lovely sunny afternoon driving through Brentwood, to the Hollywood Hills and beyond to see the homes of Joan Crawford, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Jimmy Stewart, Fred Astaire, and on Ronald ’ s insistence, the legendary Pickfair.

As she took pictures with the new Kodak he ’ d given her at the beginning of their trip, Belle thought about their new Nashville home. It just wasn ’ t as glamorous as any of this. He should have asked her before he bought it. But houses can be changed, and people can move, she thought as the camera clicked. As they drove away from Pickfair, she turned to Ronald and smiled, almost purring and said, You were right, honey, it was worth seeing. That ’ s quite the estate. He smiled and began to give her a brief history of the who ’ s who of celebrities and politicians who had graced the threshold of Pickfair during its heyday in the footloose and frantic 1920 ’ s.

That evening, after a quick swim in the pool at their hotel, the Hollywood Roosevelt, Belle changed into a silky evening dress. She was already elated after running into Tito Guizar and Lina Romay at the pool where Tito was strumming his guitar as Lina sang. She wouldn ’ t have known who they were but sitting poolside with them was the most fantastically beautiful woman she had ever seen. She was awestruck when the lovely Delores Del Rio stopped her, Belle, from east Tennessee, to compliment her on her turquoise two piece knitted wool bathing suit. She was even more ecstatic when she heard them talking about the RKO New Year ’ s Party taking place at the Earl Carroll Theater Restaurant. Ronald had already surprised her by telling her of the invitation, as he handed her a small box containing emerald and diamond earrings that morning over breakfast.

He laid a brief kiss on her bare shoulder as she finished her make-up. Married life was everything she ’ d wished for. She hoped it was always like this.

After a late, late night, a lot of champagne, and even a dance with Guy Madison, the happy couple returned to their room. Too tired to make love, they barely managed to kick off their clothes before falling into the bed. They were instantly asleep.

The next morning, after an enormous breakfast with bacon, eggs, toast, pancakes, orange juice and coffee, they headed out to the Pasadena Tournament of Roses. Belle felt a bit waspish and bit her tongue to keep from snapping at Ronald as he cruised along the highway. She looked at his florid and sunburned face, shiny with sweat in his blue seersucker suit and suppressed a shudder. She ignored the headache building behind her eyes, as she watched Bob Hope, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans pass by as the crowd around her roared. She felt Ronald ’ s sweaty palm as it seemed to sear her hip through her dress. Once the parade ended, they headed back to the hotel to pack for a trip to Palm Springs. The remainder of their honeymoon was spent basking in the sun, poolside as she worked on getting a golden California tan. Ronald spent a couple afternoons playing golf with Cornel Wilde and some other business acquaintances.

Unfortunately, after the long honeymoon, the pregnancy quietly disappeared, and the new Mrs. Sneff was no longer interested in motherhood, homemaking, or her new husband. She was, however, very interested in Dior ’ s New Look and getting her own degree at Peabody. Now that she was back in Nashville, with her sister across town, the rivalry was re-ignited. She eventually convinced Ronald that an education degree would help her relax; there would be no more episodes of feminine hysteria when he pressured her to start a family. But the marriage, and the next one to follow, didn ’ t last long. By 1951, William Bill Braver was her second husband, and armed with her teaching certificate, they moved to Dalton, Georgia, near Chattanooga. She taught at the local high school, but she tired of the cramped living arrangements at the Williams Apartments.

Bill was younger than Ronald, but it didn ’ t seem to matter when Belle looked around the apartment at the sink overflowing with dishes, and the overflowing laundry hamper. Her lesson plans were strewn across a chipped formica kitchen table. The ugly brown couch with the ripped cushions crowded the tiny living room. The sagging mattress in the bedroom made a mockery of the entire marriage. She ’ d run out on Ronald after meeting Bill one evening, looking handsome in his military uniform. She ’ d fallen for the oldest ruse in the book. She thought it was true love, but now that money was tight, romance seemed to fade away.

She had money set aside from her previous marriage, but she kept it safe and secure in a separate account. A childhood filled with hardship had prepared her well. She didn ’ t even let Bill know what she was planning. She waited until his best friend picked him up for work one day, then she packed up all of her clothing and jewelry. Nothing else was worth taking. She ’ d had the smarts to tell him she needed the car that day, so she sped out of town and back to Tennessee in their blue Bel-Air. She initially headed back to Nashville and her Peabody social circle.

Fresh from her second divorce, rural living was beginning to feel a little too small, and too provincial, but Nashville wasn ’ t much better. Anna and her husband were still around, passing judgment on her every move. After the first divorce, she had been cut from much of her social circle. Her large divorce settlement had made up for a lot of it – as well as her reputation as an excellent and gracious hostess. But even that couldn ’ t save her social standing after the second divorce.

By 1953, Belle needed a change of scenery. She headed to Memphis for graduate school and a new beginning far from the prying eyes of home. She was tired of being judged and being told what to do and what to think. She knew what she wanted; and it wasn ’ t a bunch of snotty nosed brats hanging on to her skirts with their grubby fingers. But why couldn ’ t anyone understand that? Why couldn ’ t anyone see that she was more than that? Couldn ’ t anyone see that she had hopes and dreams of her own?

When Hunter Baron II laid eyes on the sophisticated and glamorous Belle Lee in the summer of 1958, he didn ’ t know or care that she ’ d been around the block more than a couple of times. She laughed at his jokes, her eyes sparkled when he looked at her, and if she looked sewed into the tight, satin Chanel cocktail dress, then that was all the better. She had that soft Southern drawl that, even after all this time in Memphis, still made him melt. Especially when the words she was saying revealed a surprising intellect. Hunter liked having someone he could really talk to, and it felt like she understood how he felt about everything. He wasn ’ t a child, but he still felt that childlike optimism, like he could really change the world if he tried hard enough. There were a lot of things he wanted to change, especially in Memphis where the lines between white and black and rich and poor were so starkly written.

It was almost 1960; it was time for things to change there. He liked that Belle didn ’ t think his ideas were too radical or weird. She didn ’ t think that he was some kind