Mortal Danger

corporation, Felcher gave Bill Thaw a check for $5,000, made out to the Micronics Corporation of America. Thaw shook his hand and gave Felcher a contract as a “master distributor” for that firm. Smiling, he explained that the check would, of course, be held in escrow to guarantee payment for the tools to be delivered.
    Later, Bill Thaw offered Felcher an option besides simply delivering tools and catalogs—he suggested that Felcher join with him and form a Virginia corporation that would be completely independent of the Philadelphia firm. Felcher agreed, and Thaw obtained a charter from the Virginia Corporation Commission for the new company, to be known as American Minitronics Corporation, naming Leon Felcher president and Thaw secretary-treasurer and responsible agent. When that switch was accomplished so easily, Bill Thaw told Felcher that their Virginia corporation could also be awarded the Micronics sales franchise for the entire southeastern territory, from Maryland to Florida. That would mean commissions from all the sales made by distributors in that area.
    Leon Felcher wasn’t eager to come up with another $5,000, but both Thaw and a man he introduced as his business associate—Donald Hassel—reassured him that this would be a no-fail investment. Somewhat reluctantly, Felcher wrote another $5,000 check to the Philadelphia corporation—for which Thaw had originally worked.
    Felcher was right to hesitate. The company that had hired Thaw would never see either check. Bill Thaw had established a bank account with the real company’s name, but he’d added “of Hampton, Virginia,” opening it with $400 of his own money. Three days after he got Felcher’s first check, he put $3,500 in this account and kept $1,500 in cash. None of it, of course, went to the legitimate Philadelphia firm. Within ten days, Thaw and Hassel had drained the account to its last dollar to pay for their motel bills, apartment rent, and other bills unrelated to either the Minitronics corporation or the Philadelphia Micronics company.
    Bill Thaw and Donald Hassel expanded their nets. They took out more advertisements in newspapers in the Southeast, extolling the tremendous business potential in miniature tools. “Qualified applicants” who made a $5,000 deposit were guaranteed a place in their corporation and were directed to communicate with Leon Felcher, president of Virginia Minitronics in Hampton.
    But the applicants never reached Felcher; instead, Thaw hired a secretary and told her to prepare letters with Felcher’s name typed in. And then he instructed her to sign Felcher’s name. Wisely, she refused, and the letters were sent out with only the typed name.
    Nevertheless, Thaw and Hassel had some takers who expressed interest in joining their nonexistent business. They set up a meeting place for applicants at an upscale hotel in Washington, D.C., and greeted applicants wearing tailored business suits and carrying attaché cases. Their line of patter was as charming as before, but their conferences weren’t as convincing to new applicants as they had been with Leon Felcher. None of the new candidates were willing to write a $5,000 check.
    Finally, one man agreed to buy the distributorship for metropolitan Washington, D.C., for a bargain price—$2,500. Thaw sold the very same territory to another “exclusive distributor” on the same day. However, he failed to find any further applicants as gullible or generous as Leon Felcher. There were no more $10,000 investors, but there were several who managed to come up with $1,000 to $1,500. Thaw kept all the money for himself and used early applicants to persuade others—until they all realized they had been duped.
    William Michael Thaw and Donald Hassel were convicted of mail fraud. They appealed the conviction, but a higher court denied their arguments.
     
    A decade later, Bill Thaw had relocated to Florida, and John Branden was a young married man. John was four years older than teenaged Sue when they married. He always said he had his bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern Florida in Naples, and that he had to scramble to pay his tuition as he worked as a landscape architect to pay his way through. He was a dreamer and was constantly looking for ways to rise above the crowd. For a time, politics seemed like a way to mingle with the movers and shakers, but it wasn’t.
    John told Kate that he had learned to fly small planes when he was a young man living in