The search continued for eleven more days, yielding nothing. Larry Lee Hillblom was declared lost at sea. The videotape was tucked away, to be used as evidence in securing a proper death certificate. In the meantime, three separate memorials were held: one for family and friends at the Concordia Lutheran Church in Kingsburg; one for business associates at the ranch in Half Moon Bay; and one for the islanders at Joe Lifoifoi’s church on Saipan, where the bishop presided. Hillblom was universally extolled as being unique, curious, and, above all, adventurous. At the family service in Kingsburg, a DHL courier spoke of Hillblom’s humility, bringing more than a few members of the audience to tears. At the ceremony in Half Moon Bay, Patrick Lupo recalled talking to Hillblom the day before the accident. “He told me that he was preparing a joint venture for a new satellite with a group of cable companies and that they would have an audience of 1.5 billion,” Lupo reminisced. “I rolled my eyes but in thinking about it, this was an example of Larry’s vision. If he was ever stymied in his quest to achieve it, it was because of our inability to manage his incredible vision.”
But there was business to attend to as well. After the Kingsburg service, Dotts met with one of Peter Donnici’s law partners in San Francisco. Although Dotts had not been invited to the reading of the will—a snub that both he and his boss, Bob O’Connor, resent to this day—Dotts was ordered to make an inventory of his Hillblom files so that arrangements could be made to transfer everything to San Francisco. No record of Larry Hillblom’s business or personal affairs was to remain on Saipan. “Very quickly after Larry died,” Dotts says, “they [Donnici and Waechter] were sort of closing ranks and gathering information and cutting off other people to sources of information.”
According to the thousands of photocopied pages of In the Matter of the Estate of Larry Lee Hillblom that have since made their way from the bowels of the Saipan Superior Court Building to a cluster of plastic containers in my spare bedroom, Joseph Waechter became vice president of the Bank of Saipan’s trust department on June 24, 1995—the same date that the bank, which still operated a single branch in a small strip mall next to a Subway Sandwiches franchise, founded its trust department to service the trust called for in Hillblom’s will. Three weeks later, Waechter strode into a tiny building not far from Oleai Beach, a cement structure supported by latte stones and cooled by the trade winds that drifted in and out of its open-air windows. He was accompanied by an attorney from the Carlsmith firm, a bearded lumberjack of a man named John Osborn. Awaiting Waechter was a young Filipino carrying a steno pad and pen, a well-liked reporter for the Marianas Variety newspaper named Ferdie de la Torre, but Osborn motioned his client past the gallery to a small wooden chair at one of the tables in the front of the courtroom. Already seated at the opposing counsel’s desk were two African-American attorneys.
Waechter had been in San Francisco at the time of Hillblom’s disappearance, looking for a loan to complete the Vietnam projects, which were spiraling overbudget. The prematurely white-haired Waechter was exactly six months from resigning from Danao, Hillblom’s Vietnam holding company. He was looking forward to moving back to Saipan to be with his Filipina wife, Annie, and their young daughter, who had refused to live in the communist country. Waechter had worked there for a year and a half, in very trying conditions, and he had spent five years attempting to fix UMDA, now a typical Hillblom clusterfuck featuring everything from Air Mike to a giant ecoresort Hillblom had planned in a remote village on Palau to a laser-based television network on Guam. Waechter was ready to get out. But then Peter Donnici had sat the terminally loyal Waechter down at his office and pulled out the trump card: Waechter owed it to Larry to protect his last will and testament, he’d said. After all, with the exception of two unhappy years at a buttoned-down venture capital firm, Waechter had worked for Larry Hillblom his entire professional life. But that was a double-edged sword. Waechter’s days as DHL president had ended badly when he was fired by Patrick Lupo.
Waechter had attended the Kingsburg service the next day, then he’d flown back to Saipan, where he’d delivered a self-deprecating eulogy at the last Hillblom memorial and driven up Capital Hill to meet with the estate’s law firm.
That Peter Donnici had engaged the very firm that he and Larry had vanquished in the Continental case might have been irony enough, but the Carlsmith firm’s managing partner at the time turned out to be someone with an even more personal connection to Hillblom: David Nevitt, the FSM’s former attorney general and a named defendant in People of Micronesia v. Continental Airlines. Apparently, that kind of personal history did not matter on a place as small as Saipan, where Carlsmith was the only law firm of any real size and depth.
Waechter had shifted uneasily in his seat as Nevitt briefed him on what was to be his number one priority: taking control of the Bank of Saipan, which Hillblom had named as the executor in his will. “How can someone like me,” Waechter had asked, “avoid conflicts of interest? I’m on the boards of several companies owned by Larry’s estate, including the third most valuable: UMDA.” Nevitt had brushed him off with the folksiness he’d honed as a country lawyer in rural Washington State. Carlsmith, he’d assured Waechter, would bring in the big guns from Los Angeles if necessary, and the whole enchilada would be wrapped up within six months.
Of course, Waechter hadn’t believed him. No one who knew Larry would have. When Joe Lifoifoi found out that he had agreed to be the executor of Hillblom’s estate, the islander had proffered a warning. “Watch out for the Palauan boy,” Lifoifoi had growled between gentle sloshes of betel nut juice. “He’s going to come after you.”
And so he was. The two African-American lawyers sitting a few feet away from Waechter now were proof of that. Their client was a thirteen-year-old Palauan boy named Junior Larry Hillbroom, né Junior Larry Barusch. Junior’s mother, Kaelani Kinney, had had a brief relationship with Hillblom in the early 1980s, but Hillblom had cut it off after she’d gotten pregnant.
Kinney had suddenly reappeared; she was suing for paternity on behalf of her son. As her lawyers conferenced one last time before entering her claim, Judge Alex C. Castro entered the courtroom, his burly frame hidden beneath the traditional black robe. A former police officer and attorney general distinguished by a thin mustache, Castro often came across as foreboding but, among his acquaintances, he was known for a robust sense of humor. One such acquaintance had been his fellow judge Larry Hillblom.
Joe Hill, the shorter of Kinney’s two lawyers, stood first and motioned for an injunction to delay probate until his client had a chance to prove paternity. Castro interrupted him almost immediately to correct Hill’s spelling: “Hillblom, not Hillbroom,” Castro admonished.
Hill replied that the spelling was correct. Junior’s mother, he explained, was half Japanese. Because Japanese often pronounce the English “l” as an “r,” that’s how it had been officially recorded. (It was actually more convoluted than that. Kinney originally had put down the name Larry Barusch on the birth certificate, believing that Hillblom was Barusch, a Guam attorney who had never even been to Palau. “Larry could have been using the name,” Dotts admits. “Later, she kind of figured out that it was Hillblom. So she changed it.”)
Waechter sat respectfully as the lawyer continued. Hill was a well-known figure on-island. He had come to Saipan from Alaska seeking adventure and found it fighting on behalf of the island’s thousands of guest workers, particularly the Chinese who toiled in third-world conditions at the island’s two dozen garment factories. But Hill was more thoughtful than fearsome. Castro immediately denied his motion to delay probate until Junior Larry Hillbroom’s paternity could be proven.
As Hill returned to his seat, Waechter rose for the executor oath, which was quickly administered by Castro’s clerk: “I. Joe Waechter. Do solemnly swear. That I will faithfully. Impartially. And to the best of my ability. Discharge all of the duties. Of my trust. According to law. As executor. Of the last will. And testament. Of Larry Lee Hillblom.”
Castro nodded. “Thank you. You can be seated.”
Waechter stepped forward and sat down in the witness chair, gripping a copy of his first “Petition for Letters and Instructions”—essentially a to-do list forwarded for the court’s approval that Carlsmith had prepared. His attorney eased into a light volley of questions establishing the long-standing friendship and business relationship that had existed between Waechter and Hillblom. Then it was time to get down to business. Larry had died with only about $200,000 in the bank versus millions in short-term debts. The estate was already experiencing its first cash crunch.
“Your Honor,” Waechter explained, “we need to borrow twelve million dollars from DHL, International, and three million from DHL Corporation. And these obligations will be secured by the estate’s stock holdings in those companies. The funds will be used to complete development in Vietnam as well as buy the estate’s holding company in order to solidify the estate’s position in the bank.”
“Is there some urgency with regard to this particular request?” Castro asked.
“This is a loan that would have taken place if Mr. Hillblom had lived,” Waechter said, not mentioning his unsuccessful attempts to get the loan elsewhere. “Mr. Hillblom has—the largest portion of the proceeds will go to continue developments in Vietnam investments there. Today, Mr. Hillblom has invested $63,413,000 in Vietnam. And in coming to close of development and construction there, and without this continued funding, the construction stops. Those projects never get into operation. There is never a return on the investment. So it’s urgent that this loan take place and that those monies be sent to Vietnam immediately.”
“All right,” Castro said. “Subsection C, please?”
“Yeah,” Waechter replied, thumbing through his copy of the petition until he reached it. “This is to loan,” Waechter started before stumbling. “Again,” he said, “part of that fifteen million dollars is to loan $3.7 million to the Commonwealth Holding Corporation for acquisition of the Bank of Saipan . . . to ensure control of the executor and provide for an orderly and efficient administration of the estate and its assets.”
Once again, Castro nodded his approval. The judge had no objection—not even a single question, although Castro might have misunderstood what, exactly, Commonwealth Holding Corporation, aka CHC, was. Waechter had obfuscated by calling CHC the “estate’s holding company,” a statement that was factually incorrect. CHC was not owned by the estate. It had been crafted by David Nevitt and his associates as a nominee for Larry Hillblom’s former business associates; the company’s owners were none other than himself, Joe Lifoifoi, and Peter Donnici. In other words, Hillblom’s best friends were borrowing from his estate in order to gain control of it, while what Waechter had just described to Castro sounded more like the estate fortifying itself.
Waechter sailed on. “The rest are pretty much cleaning house, including paying off one loan at thirteen percent and investing to finish an apartment complex on Saipan.” Two recent typhoons had done $350,000 in damage to an apartment complex that Larry owned on Mount Tapochau. Those bills were now coming due, and the estate was already delinquent on lease payments for a parcel of land that Hillblom had purchased near the old navy base. Finally, Waechter had thrown in expenses for the mansion in Dandan, still occupied by Josephine and her brother Jaime.
“Is there anything unusual that’s in the, any of those household expenses?” Castro inquired.
“No,” Waechter replied. “Nothing unusual there. It’s the telephone, utilities, cable television bill, employees, the maintenance guy’s salary, pool maintenance.”
Castro thumbed his copy of the petition. “Based on your prior relationship with Mr. Hillblom and your knowledge of his business affairs,” the judge finally asked, “are these the types of actions that Mr. Hillblom would take himself were he to be alive?”
Waechter nodded, taking time to choose his words carefully. “I believe all of these actions would of—or are things that happen in the normal course of Mr. Hillblom’s business affairs would have taken place had he been alive.” That was an important point, he thought. Hillblom’s will expressly authorized its executor to do what he would have done.
The judge made an appropriately grim face and paused. “Petitioner,” Castro announced, “is hereby authorized to do all acts requested in this petition within the four corners of his fiduciary duty to this court.”
Copies of his final order would be stuffed into the attorneys’ pigeonholes at the clerk’s office a few hours later. Castro’s only concession to Joe Hill was that Waechter submit monthly reports detailing the estate’s activity and that copies of those reports be sent to all interested parties.
Of course, “interested parties” was a relative term. Few people were not interested in Larry Hillblom’s estate—or more to the point, in who would win it.
Thirty-Six
Secrets
Under oath, Joe Waechter would later admit that he had been aware of “the Palauan boy” for some time. The eleven-year-old had been conceived on one of Hillblom’s junkets as a legal adviser to the CNMI in the early 1980s. He and Donnici had traveled to a pan-Asian political conference held in the neighboring archipelago of Palau, known as one of the most beautiful places on earth and home to some of the best diving waters in the world. The purpose of the conference had been to promote tourism in Micronesia, although the downing of a Korean Airways jumbo jet by Soviet fighters that year had cast such a pall over the conference that its delegates would end up talking more about fighting communist aggression than luring honeymooners. During the day sessions, Larry had been atypically passive, sitting against the wall in an aloha shirt loaned to him by a Palauan senator to cover up his dirty tee—an abomination in the eyes of the Japanese and Taiwanese delegates—but on the second night, Hillblom had cut loose in the bars, which is where he’d met a kind of tough, foulmouthed sixteen-year-old named Kaelani Kinney. Later that evening, he had taken her back to his room at the Nikko Hotel.
Eight years later, Waechter had been in Koror, Palau’s capital, working on a couple of UMDA projects when Joe Lifoifoi had found him in his hotel and told him a story: Earlier that day, as Lifoifoi and Larry and their entourage of local politicians were returning from the Rock Islands in Larry’s boat, a deranged woman had appeared on the dock and attacked Larry from behind. She was demanding money and yelling that Hillblom was the father of her child. Lifoifoi had told Waechter that Larry’s friends had had the woman, whom Waechter described as “crazed,” arrested.
Lifoifoi had urged Waechter to prevent future embarrassments. UMDA was then building the island’s cable television system and negotiating to lease several large plots of land in order to develop resorts and an eighteen-hole golf course. Lifoifoi, UMDA’s de facto ambassador, had said the locals were bothered by Larry’s behavior. So Waechter had brought the issue up with Larry the next day: “Why would this woman attack you?” he had asked him. “Is this your child or what? It must be . . .”
Larry had squinted over Waechter’s shoulder: “Absolutely not. Not my kid. Can’t be. Not mine. Absolutely not. She’s out of her mind. Crazy.”
Larry had left Palau the next day, before the “crazy woman” was released from jail, leaving Waechter to deal with it. He’d put it out of his mind until a short time later, after he’d returned to Saipan to hear that the crazy woman had appeared at Larry’s mansion in Dandan at two o’clock that morning, climbed the fence, and started screaming, once again demanding money. She’d woken Larry and Josephine. Larry had called the police and had her arrested, but later that morning, at the house, Waechter could see that Josephine was still upset. So he’d prodded: “What’s going on here, Larry? Is it dangerous? Is this woman going to have you knocked off? Is this your kid?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Are you sure this is not your kid?” Waechter had persisted. “Because you ought to do something to take care of it if this woman keeps coming back.”
“This
is not my kid,” Larry had replied, kind of agitated. “She just wants my money.”
Waechter had broached the subject a third time, after a Palauan businessman named Polycarp Basilius offered to take Waechter to see the boy. By then, UMDA’s investments there had begun to sour. The leases they’d signed were being challenged in court by local tribal chiefs after they’d already sunk millions on deposits and built a road out to a remote village where they’d planned a huge resort. Waechter had politely declined Basilius’s offer, unsure how Larry would react or whether it was really his job or not to settle Hillblom’s family issues, but the next day at breakfast, several of their Palauan partners started chiming in about Larry’s kid. Lifoifoi was growling louder that something had to be done, that it didn’t look good, that Larry needed to do the right thing. So when Waechter had returned to Saipan, he’d given Larry the “come to Jesus” speech.
“Larry,” he’d said, “if this is your kid you’ve got to do something about it, recognize it or support him or whatever. Are you sure this is not your child?”
“Absolutely,” Larry had repeated.
“Then you need to take affirmative action to prove that it’s not. It’s jeopardizing our business, hurting our business relationships down there. It’s a small island.”
But Larry had become indignant, defensive even. “I don’t have to prove anything,” he snapped. “If these people think he’s my kid, let them prove it. I’ll do a blood test.” Later, the woman had shown up at Mike Dotts’s office on Saipan looking for Hillblom. Bob O’Connor had been instructed to give her some cash and a plane ticket back to Palau rather than call the police.
King Larry Page 23