Kid Carolina

by Heidi Schnakenberg

  Back at Sapelo and Darien, the entire community seemed to be in mourning. Dick’s former employees, Sapelo residents, Darien friends, and city officials expressed shock and grief upon hearing the news of Dick’s passing. Karl Weiss, Dick’s attorneys, and the president of the University of Georgia all expressed regret and sadness. Most had expected to never see Dick again when he had departed for Switzerland a year and a half earlier.

  Karl, Dick’s chef of thirty years, said he’d just returned from Switzerland where he found Dick to be “well again and then sick again.” Karl said Dick suffered a relapse recently and he feared the end was coming. Paul Varner said residents of McIntosh County were shocked by his death, including some of those who served on the jury during his divorce trial from Muriel. Others had heard about or visited the Sapelo Island mansion and its extensive guest quarters since they were kids, and said it was hard to imagine Sapelo without Dick. Varner also noted all of the contributions Dick had made to the city, including the millions of dollars for research and charity through the Sapelo Island Research Foundation for the last ten years.

  From Athens, Georgia, University of Georgia president O. C. Aderhold expressed sadness over “the death of a great friend and benefactor, R. J. Reynolds.” Delta Airlines president and general manager C. E. Woolman of Atlanta said that Delta considered Dick “an ally, a friend, and a valued member of the board of directors… we are most regretful of his death.” Woolman said that “Dick was always interested in aviation and his interest affected the right side and the progressive side” of the company and that he was a “cooperator—the kind of fellow a friend is. I never called on him to do something that he didn’t do.” Woolman said Dick was a “partner… he worked with all of us. I was very fond of him.”

  Dick was remembered in Winston-Salem as a colorful, flamboyant, warmhearted man who loved people and loved to be generous with friends, strangers, the Winston-Salem community, and the state of North Carolina. He was recognized as an expert businessman in his own right, who greatly influenced aviation and shipping, and the city was grateful to have the attention of such a charitable former citizen. In addition to his celebrated gifts to Wake Forest, Reynolds Park, Z. Smith Reynolds Airport, and the library, Dick had most recently made large gifts to Winston-Salem’s Baptist Hospital and the University of Georgia.

  The Winston-Salem Journal called Dick North Carolina’s Prince of Wales. Writer Roy Thompson said, “Edward VIII gave up the English crown for a woman he loved and Dick Reynolds gave up his place in the tobacco empire for the life he loved.” He wrote that Dick would be remembered “as an often-married international playboy” and “a maverick, a loner who went his own way” even as he was the life of the party and the gossip columnists everywhere he went. While the tobacco fortune made Dick rich and famous, he spent much of his life trying to find himself outside of it.

  The flag on top of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco building flew at half-mast to pay tribute to Dick. Friends said Dick never had a big enough ego to carry on with his father’s tobacco company. Dick always said, “They seem to be getting along all right without me.”

  Dick’s son John was the first of four sons to fly from Winston-Salem to Switzerland as soon as he could. Funeral plans for the only surviving and firstborn son of the R. J. Reynolds tobacco empire and magnate, R. J. Reynolds Sr., were underway. The boys brought attorneys with them, just in case anything was amiss.

  On December 17, 1964, the funeral services were held at a local chapel in Lucerne, and Dick’s body was brought to the tiny cemetery in the local churchyard of Emmetten, high in the Swiss Alps. The church could be seen from Annemarie’s villa.

  Annemarie was still in the hospital, having just given birth to her six-pound baby, Dick’s first and only daughter. Annemarie had a difficult labor and delivery and had to receive blood transfusions but was recovering well. Staff at Dick and Annemarie’s villa, Schynboedeli, including Sergio Amati, said Annemarie needed time to recover from the shock of Dick’s death and the birth of the baby.

  The boys attended the 11:00 A.M. funeral along with Nancy, who flew in from Greenwich, Connecticut. They learned that Annemarie had intended to have Dick’s ashes spread in the same churchyard and they were glad to have stopped it. But the boys were frustrated by not being able to see their father’s body and irritated that he had not been brought to Winston-Salem to be buried. Marianne was also on her way to the funeral with Michael and Patrick, who had seen their father only five times in their entire lives, but they didn’t arrive in time for the service. Dick had only one surviving granddaughter—Linda Lee Reynolds—who was just born to Zach and his wife. The four boys from Dick’s first marriage were now orphaned.

  The boys also found the circumstances of Dick’s death by what appeared to be an oxygen overdose highly suspicious. No one in the family had seen Dick in nearly two years, except Nancy, who had been to Switzerland on business to discuss the transition of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation to her control. Emory Flinn had also stopped by to discuss Delta business, as well as Dr. Rollings, who strongly disapproved of Dr. Lindemann’s overseeing Dick’s health because he was not a pulmonary specialist. Lindemann was actually a spiritual healer who practiced the same eccentric religious rituals as Muriel, which Dick used to loathe so much. Dick apparently had not wanted any visitors—the one time his son Will trekked all the way to the remote Swiss town to see him, he was turned away at the door. Otherwise, Dick would see only Christian Nissen, the Lindemanns, Guenther Lehman, Karl Weiss, and of course Annemarie and Sergio Amati.

  On top of everything else, Dick’s sons could never understand why Dick, whose heart belonged to the ocean and who cherished his beloved Sapelo Island so much, would end up in landlocked Switzerland, surrounded by the towering Alps. It was as if Dick abandoned the sea and had lost himself in the process.

  Since Dick’s Swiss burial caused an uproar, Annemarie had a stone laid in the cemetery in Winston-Salem after she recuperated. But Dick’s odd burial arrangements were only the beginning.

  Speculation began almost immediately on the size of the estate Dick left behind. Most estimated his worth at around $25 million, which was the figure named in the divorce trial.

  At the time of the funeral there was no information on Dick’s will, except that it would be domiciled in Switzerland.

  In January of 1965, the representatives of the family were called into the little probate office in Emmetten for the reading of the will. Dick had nine wills registered there, most of them dated in the past decade. The last will, dated and executed August of 1964, named Annemarie the sole heir to all of his wealth and declared all previous wills null and void. This was the will that prevailed. Not one of Dick’s six sons would receive a penny from his estate.

  The boys were stunned. How could this be possible? Why would Dick disinherit them all? Marianne was livid on behalf of her boys. Muriel got word of it, too. Something didn’t seem right.

  They were also shocked to learn that Dick’s worth was estimated to be only $10 to $12 million, less than half of what he was worth just as recently as his divorce from Muriel. At the time, the $25 million quoted during his divorce was already considered a gross underestimate.

  This sum caused considerable surprise back in North Carolina too. Unnamed sources tried to explain it by pointing out the large sums of money Dick had given away as well as the large amounts of money that went to his ex-wives in their settlements.

  Dick had supposedly made a statement in his estate papers about his boys, too. He said his six sons had already received “directly and indirectly” substantial sums of money and that receipt of more money would “deprive them of the will to work,” although this statement couldn’t be found in the estate papers that arrived in the United States. Now the thirty-five-year-old new mother, Annemarie, would get everything.

  Annemarie said that she planned to stay in Emmetten in the villa Dick bought for her with her five-week-old daughter. According to local sources, she was actually
in need of therapeutic care for some time following Dick’s death and stayed at St. Anna Clinic with the baby for extended periods of time. Now that Dick was gone, she would have to care for her daughter alone.

  The boys had little sympathy for Annemarie’s circumstances. They had all been alone and abandoned their whole lives. And they had just received the final slap in the face from Dick—the ultimate coup de grâce.

  Dick’s will was said to have been a short holographic will that also named Annemarie sole executrix. Dick had supposedly made a more formal will but hadn’t signed it.

  The will was written in Dick’s scrawl, crooked and running off the page. For a man with so many projects, investments, property, and money in his lifetime, it was amazing that this should be his final will. When the boys’ lawyers brought back a copy, they noted that it was written on Dick’s personal stationery, with “Richard J. Reynolds” in the upper left corner. It read:

  Emmetten N.W.

  Aug. 15, 1964

  My Last Will

  I the undersigned, Richard Joshua Reynolds being of sound mind hereby declare this to be my last will:

  1) My succession, my inheritance, my estate should be governed and ruled by the law of my nationality and particularly by the law of my birthplace (i.e.) by the law of the State of North Carolina

  2) I direct that my only heir should be my dear wife Annemarie Reynolds born Schmitt. Accordingly she will have the only and exclusive rights to my whole estate.

  3) I name as my executor, my wife Annemarie Reynolds, born Schmitt.

  4) I hereby revoke and declare null and void all previous wills and testaments complete with all codicils.

  This last will has been executed by me pursuant to the requirements of the form appropriate in Switzerland.

  Emmetten, N.W. Aug. 15, 1964

  Richard J. Reynolds

  The will contained the seal of the Swiss registrar and was listed as domiciled in Dick and Annemarie’s villa, Im Schyn. The registrar and the Council of the Community of Emmetten went to establish a “Certificate of Heirship,” which stated that the will, along with all the previously registered wills, had been opened on January 18, 1965. They included wills dating from October 21, 1952, November 22, 1961, April 25, 1962, August 14, 1963, and the last will of August 15, 1964. Annemarie accepted her appointment as executrix on February 2, 1965.

  Not long after the will was read, Nancy contacted the boys. She offered each $500,000 as a gift from Dick’s estate, but they had to promise not to contest the will and to never publicly question Dick’s death. They also had to promise not to question the paternity of Irene. Why would they question her paternity in the first place? they wondered. The mere existence of such a statement caused them to question it. In order to pressure them further, all six boys had to sign off on Annemarie’s application as permanent administrator of Dick’s estate, or none of them would receive anything. Paul Varner, who had so successfully quashed Muriel a few years earlier, handled the paperwork.

  The four oldest boys already had a considerable amount of wealth from Blitz’s settlement with Dick in 1946, and they weren’t about to deny their two younger brothers (from Marianne), who had not received as much money. As far as they were concerned, the damage had already been done. This was about Dick’s choice to disinherit them. This was about the absence of love and attention from an absentee father. It wasn’t about the money.

  Eventually all four of the older boys signed the agreement on December 12, 1965.

  Both Michael and Patrick were teenagers at the time, so Marianne had to make the decision for them. She hated everything about the agreement, but she didn’t want to make problems for the four older boys, so she gave in and signed, too. Later in life, Patrick Reynolds contemplated this controversial offer. He wondered, in his family memoir, Why give away money if there was nothing to hide? And how cheaply had they all been bought?

  Meanwhile Annemarie, who just a year before was the modest, seemingly unsophisticated new wife of a millionaire, certainly knew what she was doing now. She set about finalizing the estate as quickly and efficiently as possible. She dumped Golden Isles Airlines, donated the Sapelo Island furniture, and gave more shares of Sapelo Island to the Sapelo Island Research Foundation via a company set up for her called American Properties, Inc. She paid tens of thousands of dollars in inheritance tax, paid herself $50,000 for executrix work, and paid off numerous debts and bills owed in the process.

  In Baltimore, Maryland, the trust that Katharine Reynolds had established decades before, amounting to $11 million and including Reynolds stock, was dissolved and distributed among the seven children. The inheritance from their grandmother, which grew to $2.5 million each, would be the only inheritance the boys would see from the Reynolds family. While they were grateful for the money, it hardly compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars their aunts, uncles, and cousins held for the next several decades.

  When word of this reached Muriel, she was deeply shaken. She had a hard time believing the boys were intentionally disinherited, and she had serious doubts about Irene. In 1957, Dick had been diagnosed with an inactive sperm count due to his alcoholism.

  Muriel also seriously doubted the value of Dick’s wealth. She remembered Annemarie’s stipulation in the divorce trial—Dick invested large amounts of money in European stocks, at Annemarie’s request. And what happened to all that gold he had buried on the island? Muriel recalled Strat’s testimony that Dick had Swiss gold accounts. How convenient that he’d ended up in Switzerland.

  Muriel had not signed anything and had no legal obligation to the Reynolds family. Partly out of a vengeful attitude toward Annemarie, and partly out of her own delusion that Dick had never really wanted to divorce her and was forced into it by his handlers, she immediately launched an investigation. That same month, February 1965, Muriel sent a private investigator, Frederick Sands, to Switzerland, where he retraced Dick’s footsteps over the past few years. He first spent time in Muralto where Dick and Annemarie had gotten married the second time. He interviewed the registrar who married them and learned that the wedding had been odd in many ways. The registrar said he had no idea of the prominence of the man he was marrying and confirmed that there were no guests, no wedding party, no meal, and no flowers. He also mentioned that the marriage license was actually signed a few days before the marriage—also unusual. They discovered that Annemarie had signed a document forfeiting all her rights to Dick’s estate for a settlement of $300,000, which had been set up by a bank called Mercantile Safe Deposit and Trust in Baltimore in 1961. It seemed that Annemarie had also been a short-term victim of Dick’s paranoid suspicion that everyone was trying to steal from him. This document was also brought to the registrar along with the marriage license by Guenther Lehman. Lehman swore to the registrar that the signatures on the documents belonged to Dick, and that he was too ill to appear in person.

  An additional permit from the U.S. consulate was also required for them to marry, and again Dick did not appear in person to obtain that permit. The consul stated that he accepted Dick’s divorce document from Muriel, which was required to obtain the permit, and that the document was sworn to by Dick’s lawyers in Atlanta. The consul assumed it was valid. Guenther Lehman again carried out this task and presented a typewritten letter from Dick with his signature.

  According to the investigator’s report, two days later, the registrar was called to perform the marriage in Dick and Annemarie’s suite. He told the investigator, Sands, that he’d never performed a marriage under such strange conditions. Annemarie took the marriage document to the small sitting room and the registrar saw a man with his back to him. Annemarie placed the document in front of the man and said, “Sign here.” He didn’t turn around, and Annemarie came back and told the registrar, “He has a bad cold today. We would like you to stay for a drink, but I must get him to bed.” The registrar said it all took ten minutes, and he assumed it was an old invalid wanting to marry his mistress before he died. He
also confirmed that it was not against the law to marry in Muralto without any witnesses.

  At this point Humphrey “Hutch” Hutchins came into the picture. Hutch was a friend of Muriel’s whom she had initially hired to write her life story after her divorce. That didn’t happen, but Hutch became one of her best friends and a fellow investigator of Dick’s death. Muriel, Hutch, and private detectives searched the Swiss countryside, Sapelo Island, and various other stops in between, and made many important discoveries.

  The team discovered that large amounts of Dick’s paperwork, investment papers, and other documents on Sapelo Island had been destroyed and burned by Strat Coyner, Dick’s accountant Ledyard Staples, and possibly Nancy, who had been taking care of the island when Dick moved to Europe. Nearly all of Dick’s staff, some of whom had worked for him for over twenty years, were fired once Annemarie arrived. The only employees who remained were Karl Weiss and Guenther Lehman. Nancy brought in some of her staff from nearby Musgrove Plantation on St. Simon’s Island to take over. It began to look like Dick had lost control of the estate ever since Muriel had left. Christian Nissen also reappeared in Dick’s life the summer Muriel went on vacation, and one of Dick’s sons later claimed that he had seen Annemarie on the island in 1959.