HAGERSTOWN, Md. (AP) – A Hagerstown woman has agreed to testify against her husband in a case alleging they illegally sold 26 antique cars and other assets belonging to a man with dementia after obtaining his power of attorney.
Prosecutors agreed on Monday to drop charges against 25-year-old Angie Meldron if she testifies truthfully at the trial in September of her 40-year-old husband Daniel.
Angie Meldron was charged in January with taking the victim’s property and neglecting him by allowing him to live in unsanitary conditions with no heat at his home in Boonsboro, Maryland.
Investigators allege the couple sold the antique cars for $325,000. They also allegedly deprived him of investment and bank accounts worth another $307,000.
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) – One man planned a Florida home invasion and fatally shot a couple who had 13 adopted special needs children, one of eight suspects in the internationally publicized case told investigators. According to court documents released Tuesday, Fredrick Thornton, 19, said martial arts instructor Leonard Patrick Gonzalez Jr., 35, organized the July 9 attack and killed Byrd Billings, 66, and Melanie Billings, 43. Gonzalez proclaimed his innocence in a statement he read at a court hearing after his arrest.
Thornton is one of seven people charged with murder. An antique mall owner from the Pensacola suburb of Gulf Breeze, Pamela Long Wiggins, 47, is charged with being an accessory after the fact.
Thornton made his comments during a recorded interrogation in jail. The statement was included in an affidavit supporting a warrant to search Wiggins’ minivan.
Authorities say the Billings’ home was invaded by masked men dressed as ninjas. Their images were captured on a home security system.
The couple was killed in the bedroom of their sprawling home, while nine of their children were in other parts of the home. Another child went to a neighbor’s home for help and the neighbor called authorities. All the children have various special needs and need nursing and other care. The Billings had 17 children total.
Thornton also said that after the home break-in, the seven men gathered at an antique mall in Gulf Breeze, Fla., and met up with a woman, allegedly Pamela Long Wiggins. Thornton said they placed a safe from the Billings home in Wiggins’ maroon minivan.
Wiggins, owner of Magnolia Antique Mall, was charged with being an accessory after the fact after investigators dug up the safe from the backyard of her home in suburban Gulf Breeze. Wiggins was released on $10,000 bond.
Another suspect, Wayne Coldiron, 41, told investigators he met a woman named Pam who drove a maroon minivan at a home in Gulf Breeze before the home invasion.
The affidavit said the home was owned by Wiggins and that “a subsequent search warrant of this residence revealed a number of firearms as well as ammunition as well as a 9 mm handgun which is the same caliber of weapon used in the homicide.”
Wiggins told investigators she was not involved in the home invasion but that Gonzalez was a friend and “had a key to the residence and permission to come and go as he pleased,” the affidavit stated.
Attorneys for Thornton, Gonzalez and Coldiron did not immediately return phone messages Tuesday from The Associated Press. Wiggins has not returned messages seeking comment.
Also Tuesday, investigators said they did not anticipate more arrests in the case and that they were not investigating the Billings’ deaths as a contract hit.
Monday night, Sheriff David Morgan had told CNN that investigators wanted to talk to up to nine more people and planned to make at least one more arrest. Morgan also said his department was looking at a hit as a motive.
But sheriff’s spokesman Ted Roy said Tuesday that investigators only considered a contract hit as a possibility for “a fleeting second during the initial phase of the investigation.”
“Could it still be a motive? I guess it could, but someone else other than the investigators assigned to the Billings case will have to investigate it because investigators working the Billings case sure don’t believe so,” he said.
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum may represent the painter’s estate but has no right to an art collection she donated to Fisk University, Tennessee’s Court of Appeals has ruled.
In the ruling filed last week, the court said any right O’Keeffe had to most of the 101 works of art ended with her death.
The financially struggling university had asked a lower court for permission to sell two of the works: O’Keeffe’s 1927 oil painting Radiator Building – Night, New York, and Marsden Hartley’s Painting No. 3.
The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum objected to the plan, arguing that Fisk was violating the terms of the bequest, which required the works be displayed together, and asking for the artwork to be turned over to the estate.
The Davidson County Chancery Court blocked the sale as well as a proposed $30 million arrangement to share the collection with the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas. Nashville Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle ordered last year that the university had to take the collection out of storage and put it back on display or forfeit it to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.
But the state appeals court overturned that decision, ruling the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum has no right to the work and no standing in court.
Representatives of the museum could not immediately be reached for comment. They will have 60 days to appeal the decision.
Ninety-seven of the works were part of a collection that belonged to O’Keeffe’s late husband, the photographer and art promoter Alfred Stieglitz. O’Keeffe donated those works to the university in 1949 while executing Stieglitz’s will.
The four other works in the Alfred Stieglitz Collection, including O’Keeffe’s Radiator Building painting, were given to the museum later.
The ruling leaves open the possibility for an arrangement such as the one proposed with the Crystal Bridges Museum. It writes that the general intent of the gift was to make the artwork available to the public “in Nashville and the South for the benefit of those who did not have access to comparable collections.” Fisk is a historically black university, and the gifts were made at a time when the South was still segregated.
Fisk was on the verge of running out of operating money when it filed a motion for relief from O’Keeffe’s conditions in 2007.
Fisk attorney John Branham said earlier this year the latest appraisal of the collection indicated a value of about $75 million, which represents about half of Fisk’s total assets.
If the chancery court rules that Fisk does have a right to relief it will also have to decide how Fisk can honor the conditions of the gift as nearly as possible.
Fisk attorneys have argued the proposed deal with the Crystal Bridges Museum does that by keeping the collection together and allowing it to be displayed part of the year in Arkansas and part the year in Nashville.
Art historians say the collection has an appealing unity because many of the American artists were part of O’Keeffe and Stieglitz’s circle of friends. In addition to paintings by O’Keeffe and Hartley, the collection includes works by Picasso, Renoir, Cezanne and Diego Rivera.
In a statement, Fisk President Hazel O’Leary said she was pleased by the ruling but expects the case will take time to conclude.
“The expense the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum has forced Fisk to incur in its effort to gain ownership of the Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Modern Art could have been committed to scholarships for our students,” she said.
AP-CS-07-15-09 1913EDT
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
An original 1955 advertising sign for PEZ candies featuring the company’s trademarked PEZ Girl sold on Sept. 24, 2005 at Jorgen Wiegelt Auktionen for $619. Image courtesy LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and Jorgen Wiegelt Auktionen. PEZ is a registered trademark of Pez Candy, Inc.
SAN JOSE, Calif. (ACNI) – When it comes to protecting its trademarks and copyrights, no one is more PEZ-essive than Patrafico AG, the Swiss manufacturer of PEZ candies and dispensers. Want proof? The parent company of PEZ has filed a lawsuit against the Burlingame Museum of PEZ Memorabilia in Burlingame, Calif., claiming the museum’s owners, Gary and Nancy Doss, infringed on their copyright by displaying a 7 foot 10 inch faux PEZ snowman dispenser on their premises.
Reportedly, the giant figure – which weighs 85 lbs. and was crafted by several local artisans – made it into the Guinness Book of World RecordsTM in 2007, with the distinction of being the world’s largest candy dispenser. A true working model with a tilt-back head, the snowman dispenses a rectangular clear-plastic capsule that can accommodate 6,480 PEZ candies or a standard-size PEZ dispenser. Each dispensed capsule is accompanied by a signed and numbered certificate stating it came from the world’s largest candy dispenser
The first capsule dispensed by the snowman figure was videotaped in the presence of Burlingame’s former mayor, Cathy Baylock, and Councilmember Russ Cohen, on Oct. 7, 2007. The memento was auctioned on eBay to benefit the Burlingame Historical Society. (View the video of the event at www.burlingamepezmuseum.com).
PEZ views the snowman as a three-dimensional infringement on its trademark and, in the federal lawsuit filed in the California Northern District Court, San Jose, Calif., on June 22, 2009, claims the figure’s existence “deceive(s) the public into thinking that the museum is operating under the authority of PEZ.” But that’s not where it stops. The PEZ company is equally unamused by two toy-truck dispensers the Dosses altered to include campaign slogans for both Barack Obama and John McCain (e.g., “Obama ’08 for PEZident”), museum T-shirts that say “Got PEZ?,” and the incorporation of the word “pez” in the couple’s Web sites www.burlingamepezmuseum.com and www.worldslargestpezdispenser.com.
In an interview with Auction Central News, Gary Doss said Patrafico AG’s complaint asks the court to bar the museum from using PEZ trademarks “in any conduct that is likely to cause confusion, deception or mistake” by consumers. Patrafico AG is seeking monetary damages and asks that they be tripled to punish the defendants for their alleged infringement. The complaint also requests that all infringing products be destroyed.
“Over the 14 years we’ve operated the museum, we’ve gotten many cease-and-desist letters (from PEZ), and some of the requests have been so silly,” said Doss, “but it took me by surprise that they would have three lawyers file a real federal complaint in San Jose…Interestingly enough, they have not served me with the complaint, so from a legal standpoint, it’s not really a lawsuit yet. My initial thought was that it’s a ploy to intimidate me to get out of the business.”
Asked why the parent company of PEZ would want to make it so difficult for a museum to stay in business when,essentially, it’s a free means of promoting the candy manufacturer’s products, Doss replied: “I can only speculate, after much discussion about the topic, that they may want to start their own museum. They’ve ignored collectors for all these years, and I guess they want to get rid of me, now.”
Doss said he has “done everything possible” to comply with PEZ Candy Inc.’s previous demands. “Originally we called the snowman ‘the world’s largest PEZ dispenser.’ When they got upset, we changed it to ‘the world’s largest dispenser of PEZ, so there could be no mistake about who made (the snowman). Another concern was the video, so we edited it to remove the word ‘PEZ.’ After that, we got the letter from their attorneys.”
The inclusion of PEZ’s parent company, Patrafico AG, as plaintiff in the complaint was “probably an intimidation tactic,” Doss said, “and for the first few days, they did a pretty job of it. It was definitely intimidating that a big multinational corporation and three New York lawyers were coming after us. But then, out of the blue, we were contacted by a leading trademark lawyer here in the Bay Area, Roger Cole of the firm Fenwick & Smith in Mountain View (Calif.). He heard about the case and offered to represent us pro bono.”
“I’m one of the lucky ones,” Doss concluded. “I’m sure there are many frivolous letters served by big corporations every day. But in our case, someone has stepped in to protect the little guy.”
Auction Central News will report on any further developments in this case.
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PEZ is a registered trademark of PEZ Candy Inc.
Copyright 2009 Auction Central News International. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE
The world’s biggest dispenser of PEZ candy stands 7ft. 10 inches tall. Image courtesy of Burlingame Museum of PEZ Memorabilia.On March 7, 2007, the Burlingame Museum of PEZ Memorabilia was awarded the Guinness World Record™ for the world’s largest candy dispenser. Image courtesy of Burlingame Museum of PEZ Memorabilia.
ROME (AP) – An appeals court on Wednesday upheld the antiquities trafficking conviction of an Italian art dealer whose case led Italy to launch a global search for looted ancient artifacts.
Giacomo Medici was convicted of conspiracy to traffic in antiquities in 2004 and sentenced to a 10-year prison term. The appeals court in Rome upheld his conviction and reduced his sentence to eight years.
Medici, who denies any wrongdoing, said after the closed-doors hearing that he would appeal the ruling to Italy’s highest court. He remains free pending the appeal.
In a 1995 raid on Medici’s offices in Switzerland, police found a trove of artifacts and photos of antiquities, many still in pieces and covered with mud, which authorities later traced to museums and collectors worldwide.
Authorities maintain thousands of Roman, Etruscan and Greek treasures were stolen or clandestinely dug up across Italy in the last decades, then smuggled out of the country and sold by dealers such as Medici.
Rome’s campaign to recover the looted art has pushed top museums, including the J. Paul Getty in California and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, to return dozens of pieces in exchange for long-term loans of other treasures.
The Medici probe also sparked other court cases, including the ongoing trial of former Getty curator Marion True and art dealer Robert Hecht, accused of knowingly acquiring dozens of allegedly looted ancient artifacts.
Both deny any wrongdoing.
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) – The Dutch government has turned over dozens of antiquities stolen from Iraq to Baghdad’s ambassador.
The 69 pieces include cylindrical stone seals older than 2000 B.C. and a terra-cotta relief depicting a bearded man praying.
Dutch Education, Culture and Science Minister Ronald Plasterk said Thursday the ancient artifacts were surrendered by Dutch traders after police informed them they were stolen.
He has called on other countries to do more to halt the illicit trade in stolen antiquities.
U.S. customs authorities and Interpol had alerted Dutch authorities that the items were being sold here.
Diederik Meijer of the Dutch National Museum for Antiquities declined to put a value on the artifacts, saying it could boost the trade.
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Map showing the Four Corners states. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – A mother and daughter pleaded guilty on July 6 to several felony charges stemming from a sweeping federal investigation into the theft and illegal trafficking of American Indian artifacts.
Jeanne Redd, 59, pleaded guilty to seven federal counts of theft of government property, theft of tribal property and trafficking in stolen artifacts. Her 37-year-old daughter, Jerrica Redd pleaded guilty to three similar counts.
The pleas are the first from cases brought against 24 people in a two-year undercover investigation in Utah, New Mexico and Colorado.
In the sting operation, a confidential source paid more than $335,000 for 256 stolen artifacts, including bowls, stone pipes, sandals, arrowheads, jars, pendants and necklaces, according to court documents.
Both mother and daughter declined to comment Monday as they left the federal courthouse in Salt Lake City.
In court, in response to questions from U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups, mother and daughter acknowledged their roles in the artifacts case in which the FBI and federal Bureau of Land Management said they used a confidential source to buy stolen artifacts.
Jeanne Redd acknowledged three instances in 2007 and 2008 when she met the source at her home to discuss deals over an ax, gourd and necklace taken from prehistoric ruins on the Navajo Reservation, a turquoise pendant taken from BLM land and four sandals she dug up on U.S. Forest Service land.
Jerrica Redd acknowledged that in April 2008, she found a black and red pottery jar on the Navajo Reservation. Others she was with found a seed jar and a vase. She said she dug them up, took them back to her house, cleaned and displayed them.
Prosecutors declined to speculate on what the guilty pleas will mean for sentencing _ including whether they think the women will spend time in prison _ except to say they will recommend something on the lower end of federal guidelines.
They said Monday’s guilty pleas could affect others who have been charged and others thinking of illegally gathering ancient artifacts.
“I hope the message is that people will learn that we have sacred, stunning, rare unique artifacts on our public lands and on Indian tribal lands,” said Carlie Christensen, a federal prosecutor. “We need to protect them, we need to treasure them and we hope this will discourage people.”
Jeanne Redd’s husband and Jerrica’s father, James Redd, was also charged in the case. He committed suicide a day after the indictments were announced last month. Another suspect, 56-year-old Steven Shrader of Santa Fe, N.M., killed himself about a week later.
Artifact looting has been a common practice in the Four Corners area, which includes Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona.
Federal officials came under criticism after a series of raids and arrests in southern Utah on June 10, the day the indictments were unsealed. Local officials said federal agents were heavy-handed in those arrests. The FBI, BLM and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder have defended their actions.
Christensen said the case is an ongoing investigation. She didn’t rule out the possibility that additional people could be charged. Mother and daughter, who are from Blanding, Utah, are scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 16.
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
SALEM, Ore. (AP) – A 22-year-old Coos Bay man has been jailed on charges of using a boxcutter to slit the throat of an auctioneer in Woodburn.
Jeremiah D. Thomasson made a brief court appearance Wednesday on the charges of attempted murder and assault. He was assigned a lawyer and held without bail. He is to return to court next week.
Marion County sheriff’s Lt. Sheila Lorance says Thomasson invoked his Miranda right to silence, so investigators haven’t asked him about his motive.
Auctioneer Chuck Boyce had been auctioning items outside a shop when the attack occurred. Deputies told KGW-TV that the perpetrator fled the scene, jumping a fence into a nearby mobile home park.
Boyce was reported in good condition at a Portland hospital after the attack, which took place on June 30. He told station KPTV there was, in his mind, “no reason, nothing justifiable, to do something like this.”
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Information from: KPTV-TV, http://www.kptv.com/
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
One of several versions of the painting The Scream, by Edvard Munch. The National Gallery, Oslo, Norway.
OSLO (AP) – A Norwegian court has convicted a man of involvement in the 2004 theft of Edvard Munch masterpieces The Scream and Madonna.
The Oslo Court of Appeals sentenced Bjoren Hoen to two and a half years in prison.
Prosecutors say Hoen did not participate in the heist but helped obtain the vehicle that the thieves used when stealing the paintings from an Oslo museum.
He had previously been convicted in the case, but Norway’s Supreme Court ordered a retrial, saying testimony may have been tainted.
Hoen told judges Monday he was unsure whether he would appeal the new verdict.
Two other men have been imprisoned and ordered to pay restoration costs for the paintings, which had to undergo repairs after they were recovered in 2006.
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
OLATHE, Kan. (AP) – A lawsuit over a failed effort to open a Hollywood memorabilia museum may force the sale of items owned by actress Debbie Reynolds.
In 2002, Gregory J. Orman lent more than $1 million at 10 percent interest to the project, intended to showcase Reynolds’ Hollywood memorabilia.
But now the proposed Hollywood Motion Picture and Television Museum hasn’t opened, the project is in bankruptcy and Orman, an Olathe businessman, wants his money and interest back – even if it means selling some of the collection.
“I have no desire to hurt the museum or Debbie,” Orman, 40, said on Tuesday. “After almost six years of nonperformance, I just wanted them to live up to their agreements.”
Reynolds’ collection, valued at between $30 million and $60 million, includes such iconic items as the white dress worn by Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch, the fur coat worn by Orson Welles in Citizen Kane, and Judy Garland’s blue gingham dress from The Wizard of Oz.
“My mom has virtually single-handedly worked to preserve what is the most significant piece of Hollywood history anywhere,” Reynolds’ son, Todd Fisher, told The Kansas City Star on Tuesday. “It’s not about the money to her but about preserving that history. She’s dedicated her life to this.”
Fisher, Reynolds’ son from her marriage to 1950s crooner Eddie Fisher, runs the museum. He said there’s no dispute that the museum owes Orman money. It’s just a question of how much.
“We originally borrowed $1.6 million. Now he wants to collect more than $8 million,” Fisher said. “So you can understand why our board, which consists of some pretty savvy people, isn’t thrilled.”
Museum board members include Reynolds’ daughter Carrie Fisher, director George Lucas and actress Elizabeth Taylor.
The museum has been under construction in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., where developers are trying to build a tourist destination called Belle Island. The developers filed for bankruptcy in March, however, and the museum is in limbo.
The museum has had its own financial problems, which prompted Orman to grant it loan extensions in 2003 and again in 2005. In return for not going after the memorabilia securing the loan at that time, the museum agreed to pay various fees and interest that amounted to a 30 percent interest rate.
In 2007, with the loan still unpaid, Orman sued the museum in San Luis Obispo County, Calif. In addition to the principal – another loan brought the amount to just over $2 million – the lawsuit sought interest that by then approached $3 million.
In June 2008, Orman voluntarily dismissed the lawsuit and refiled it in Johnson County, Kan. There it sat until last weekend, when the museum, having filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection itself two weeks ago in California, moved to have the case consolidated with the bankruptcy case.
The bankruptcy filing was intended to stop Orman’s suit, according to the museum’s attorney, Peter Susi.
Orman “is by far and away the major creditor” in the case, he said.
Orman’s attorney, Grant Davis, said his client had “bent over backwards to accommodate the museum.”
“The fact that they haven’t repaid him is driven by choice, not necessity,” he said. ___
Information from: The Kansas City Star, http://www.kcstar.com
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
