Fraud on the Court

by Mike Chalek

  “I had another thought too,” I told him. “I’m worried that maybe I should have disputed that will after all. Does it make me look like I was admitting to some kind of guilt, that there really was some ‘good reason’ that I deserved to be left out and disowned that way?”

  “I don’t think you need to worry about that,” he said.

  “When you take the case, I am going to want to find out what Al meant, you know. Even if we have to subpoena Glenn into the courtroom to do it,” I replied.

  “I’ll be in touch at some point soon to let you know my decision,” he said.

  We hung up the phone with the understanding that I would check in on him personally when I made my next trip out to Tallahassee, which was scheduled for later in January. I would be staying with Robert for several days while I attended to a few matters, including keeping myself firmly in the forefront of Mallory Horne’s thoughts.

  While I waited, I put my hard earned researching skills to the test. I started finding out what I needed to do to request copies of the Chalek divorces, and how I could look through the old files for any mention of a document concerning individuals with the last names Chalek, Sutton, Higginbotham or Yarber, even if I only knew approximate dates to search. I planned a circuit of the various county repositories so that I could maximize my time in Florida.

  Then I got on a plane and left my beautiful new home in the Rocky Mountains. I wasn’t thrilled about returning to my “birth” state, but I also felt a compelling need to see my case through to the end. And I wasn’t going to turn down the chance to spend a little more time with my family. So Robert picked me up at the airport once again and I got busy working on a case that didn’t even technically exist—yet.

  My court record searches were a mixed bag of results. I had great success with Alex and Adela, identifying the dates and case numbers of both of their previous divorces. To my shock (although nothing should have surprised me at that point), I found that Adela had lied to the caseworker and the courts. She had actually been married and divorced twice before her marriage to Alex, as opposed to once as she had sworn in the adoption petition. I went ahead and ordered and paid for copies to be sent to my home documenting all seven events: four marriages and three divorces.

  Back in Gainesville, I went to find the original chancery book where my adoption petition, a public document, had first been located back when Doug Diamond and I were working on it. The record, the entire book in fact, was nowhere to be found.

  I left the archives and went upstairs, asking the clerk where I might track down the missing ledger.

  “That book is no longer available to the public,” he told me.

  “Do tell,” I replied.

  “It was a staff decision,” he said, betraying just a hint of defensiveness.

  “I’d like to talk to whoever is in charge of giving the thumbs up on that type of decision,” I told him.

  He directed me across the street to the courthouse, telling me I should ask for Karen.

  I went straight over, and soon had the manager of official records standing before me.

  “I’m looking for the chancery book that has the filing of my adoption petition,” I told her.

  “What years would that be?” she asked.

  I told her. It was a ridiculous question, she knew exactly which book was missing.

  “That book has been removed from circulation,” she said.

  “It’s a public record,” I replied. “You don’t have that right or authority.”

  “It was a staff decision. That book is simply not fit for public consumption, so it has been moved to a new location.”

  “I’d like to talk to your superior,” I said.

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “Then I would like a copy of the page that relates to my own adoption petition.”

  “I would be glad to do that for you, as long as you realize that it will be redacted to remove any identifying names.”

  “You would white out a public document?”

  “It is the decision of this staff that we will do so, yes. In the public interest.”

  The conversation had become so inane, and so circular, that I gave up. I thought once again, only in the redneck, backwards, backwater, small town, small-minded deep South…

  You get the picture. I may have said it before, that I’m a little prejudiced when it comes to a certain part of the country. I tell myself that I’m moderately justified in holding these opinions, even if they’re not true.

  I called Mallory and let him know what had happened.

  “Don’t you have those copies somewhere in your files?”

  “Well maybe, but I just moved, Mallory. I haven’t even pulled everything out of boxes yet.”

  “Mike,” he sighed. “I know I told you to document everything. But I’m pretty sure that if a judge needs to see what’s in that chancery book, he can override the staff decision and have it on his desk in a matter of minutes.”

  “Got it,” I replied.

  “I understand your frustration,” he said.

  “I’ll let you know what else I find.”

  * * * * * *

  These are the primary characters involved in my story of a black market purchase that became a hastily finalized adoption:

  Alex D. Chalek—Adoptive Father

  Al had been married and divorced once before, as he had indicated to the court. The caseworkers verified this by sending a short “confirmation request form” to the county of the marriage and divorce proceedings.

  The welfare department, as they were known back then, did not request a full copy of the divorce, either the petition or the decree. If they had requested these documents they would have discovered that Al’s first wife sued him for divorce on the grounds of extreme and repeated cruelty.

  It was not an unsupported claim. In the complaint, his wife documented three specific dates when Al had struck her: twice in the face and once with a shove that threw her violently across the room. Not only did his soon-to-be ex-wife swear to these charges in court, she brought along a corroborating witness.

  Although Al denied all allegations, the judge granted his wife her divorce and also her request that Al be required to pay all associated court and attorney fees. The year of the divorce was 1944. At the time, Al was still an active member of the US Air Force, as noted in the decree. Just two weeks after his divorce was granted, Al married Adela. Both of them lied on the application and said it was their first marriage each.

  I also discovered more about Al’s service in the armed forces. The closed adoption record said that he had enlisted several times, and had been variously a fighter pilot or a member of the Navy’s counter-intelligence unit. Since the work in counter intelligence was something Adela had mentioned to the caseworker in passing, I had briefly wondered if it might not be a bit of exaggeration or bravado that Al had used to impress her when they were dating.

  Once I obtained a copy of Al’s military service and discharge papers I was able to confirm that Al had, in fact, been both a fighter pilot and a part of military counter intelligence, although with the Army and not the Navy. According to his Summary of Military Occupations, he had conducted investigations of sabotage, sedition, espionage, and civilian personnel or property [which] were involved.

  When I thought about it, the profile of such a soldier, someone who had served in those types of positions as a part of the second world war and its aftermath, supported his development into the overbearing, manipulative, pathologically disciplined man that I had known as my adoptive father. And his skills and training would also explain how he could take off one face and put on another outside of our home, the face of a charming, handsome salesman who was at ease with the world and himself.

  To say the least, Al had a few skeletons in his closet, some warning signs that the welfare department had clearly missed. But these were nothing compared to what Adela had been hiding. Her past was a clearly documented path through a troubled a
nd dysfunctional adolescence into a violent and equally troubled adulthood.

  Jessie Eula Adela Sutton Chalek—Adoptive Mother

  At first glance, the marriage applications for Adela were fairly standard. Three applications, three marriages, all in the state of Florida and with only the name of the husbands changing from one form to another.

  However, as I looked at each of the marriage licenses and applications and compared them closely, I noticed an odd discrepancy. Her age at the time of marriage to Alex was inconsistent to the ages and dates of the other two marriages.

  On the first marriage application, Adela’s mother had been required to sign a consent because Adela was underage. On the application it stated that Adela was sixteen, and her mother consented to the union.

  This marriage took place to a man named Perry, who was 23, seven years older than Adela. They were married in October of 1940.

  The second marriage was to a man named Joseph. The application was dated in March of 1943, and Adela listed her age on that application as being 20 years old. No matter what form of math I employed, I couldn’t create a scenario in which Adela had celebrated four birthdays in a span of less than three years. I chalked the whole thing up to human error and proceeded to examine the third application for marriage, the one in which she and Alex were joined in holy matrimony in January of 1945. At this point, Adela listed her age as 21 and that should have cleared up the matter and been the end of it.

  However, something still struck me as odd about the ages and dates. I knew that the closed adoption record had information on Adela’s age and birth date at the time of my adoption hearing. I pulled out the appropriate pages for comparison.

  In the adoption petition, Alex Chalek is described as being 31 and Adela as 25. The year was 1953. I grabbed my pen and paper and went back to computing years, ages, and possibilities.

  From the date of the Chaleks marriage in 1945 to the date of my adoption hearing in 1953, over eight years had passed. Which meant that Adela’s age should have been 29 or 30. Now I understand that for many people 30 is a significant milestone and one they may dread admitting, but lying to the court as a matter of pride seemed an extreme measure—even for my adoptive mother, the master of extreme measures.

  I wondered, had she lied about her age to Al when they were dating? Did she feel compelled to maintain the lie? Or were one or more of the previous marriages the real instance of a fabricated age?

  Enough of this, I thought.

  It was time to find a more authoritative source of Adela’s birth date and proper age.

  Fortunately, there were two. Adela’s death records and the detailed welfare department recommendation in the adoption file. Both of these referred specifically to Adela’s date of birth as December 15, 1926.

  So, working backwards, Adela had just turned 18 when she married Al.

  She was 16 when she married Joseph.

  And she was a mere 13 years old when she married her first husband, Perry, a man ten years her senior.

  Dear God, I thought.

  Not only had Adela lied on the marriage application, so had her mother.

  What in heaven’s name could convince a mother to do such a thing?

  The answer to that question was long gone to the grave, along with Adela, her mother and the first husband.

  What remained, however, were the divorce petitions. Still slightly sick to my stomach from the disturbing revelations, I opened the divorce files for Adela and started reading.

  (If anyone still has questions regarding the validity of Adela’s birth date, the recently opened federal census from 1940 confirms that she was born in 1926).

  When she was 14, Adela filed for divorce from her first husband, citing not only a “violent and ungovernable temper” (a common legal term in those days), but also “excessive cruelty.” For an entire year she had been trapped in a child-marriage to a man very much her senior, and her allegation was that he treated her cruelly and abusively.

  What effect might this diseased relationship have had on a young girl’s emotional development? I only had to look at the second divorce to find my answer.

  The second husband filed for divorce after a short six weeks of marriage. In court, he testified to a repeated sequence of promiscuity and fits of rage on Adela’s part. Quoting directly from the divorce petition:

  Plaintiff further represents that during the time that he and the defendant lived together as man and wife that she frequently and without any justification or excuse flew into fits of anger, cursing and abusing your plaintiff.

  Plaintiff further represents that the defendant immediately after his marriage to her began associating with other men, going out at night with them and spending a great portion of her time sneaking out with men, notwithstanding, the fact that your plaintiff was endeavoring to keep her from doing so.

  Plaintiff further represents that each time he accused her of going out she would fly into a fit of temper, cursing and abusing your plaintiff, but she would continue to go out each day and night and when your plaintiff would try to make her stay at home she would fly into fits of anger, cursing and abusing him. Which fits of ungovernable temper she exhibited daily until finally six weeks after his marriage to her she deserted your plaintiff…

  The husband’s father also testified at the hearing, because the young newlyweds were living in his parents’ home during their brief marriage.

  Q: How did they [the newlyweds] get along?

  A: Right after they were married his wife started to walking off from the house and coming up town and meeting soldiers and going to Lake Bradford and Wakulla Springs and around and when she would come home Joe my son would get after her about where she had been and she would fly into a fit of temper cursing him and carrying on like a crazy person. She would tell him that she had not done any thing wrong just rode around with the soldiers. We tried to talk to her but she would not pay any attention to any of us…

  Q: Did you ever see her with soldiers?

  A: Yes sir, I have seen her with them and they have come by the house to get her. My son had to go [to work] and then the soldiers would come by the house at night and get her…

  Q: How often would she get mad?

  A: It was every day, from the time they were married.

  For her part, Adela responded the the petition in the following manner:

  Comes now the Defendant…as for answer says; That she neither admits nor denies the allegations contained in said Bill of Complaint and that she rests within the sound discretion of the Court the granting or denying of divorce as prayed for…further, that she waives any further or other notices of subsequent hearings that may be had in said cause.

  I was jealous, briefly, of her ex-husband’s ability as an adult to end his abuse at Adela’s hands. I had no such recourse as a child when she flew at me in a rage. The law provided protection to him, while Adela proceeded to find a new outlet for her ever simmering anger.

  The mention of Wakulla Springs as a place that the soldiers would frequently take Adela brought up a long-buried memory. Boots would frequently reminisce when I was little about the time that she had been cast as an extra in a famous black and white Tarzan movie that was filmed in Wakulla Springs. I guessed that her pronounced beauty, especially in her younger years, was one of her few sources of pride. Family members confirmed that it was true, Boots had once acted in the classic film as a stand-in for Jane Goodall, Tarzan’s love interest.

  Too bad for me that she hadn’t pursued a career in acting and taken herself to Hollywood.

  Lenora Fielding—Baby Broker

  I cast my net far and wide as I sought to document every lie, every fabrication and every crime of omission that had been woven into my fraudulently finalized adoption. But even then, I only completed my investigation with help from some of the most unexpected places. I owe a debt of gratitude, in particular, to a kind stranger I met on a flight to Atlanta.

  I had been puzzling for a while over the quest
ion of the supposed lawsuit and “recent publicity” that had caused such discomfort to Lenora Fielding around the time of the adoption study. I wanted to know what the charges had been, and whether the birth mother had won her claim. The way the adoption record had phrased it in transcribing the first home study visit with Adela, was this:

  Mrs. Chalek was a little reluctant to discuss the means by which they secured this adoptive baby, but finally brought out that they got him through Mrs. Fielding in Jacksonville. Mrs. Fielding is the wife of a Jacksonville police officer who has had a good deal of damaging publicity in the recent suit which an unmarried mother has brought against her, implying black market dealings with babies…while they were waiting to hear further from Mrs. Fielding, the publicity came out about the other case, and the Chaleks were very much concerned. It was at this point they got in touch with Attorney William D Hopkins, since Mrs. Chalek comes from Tallahassee and had known Mr. Hopkins personally, in addition to having him secure her previous divorce for her. Mr. Hopkins is also State’s Attorney.

  I underline this last bit, because I realized after my fourth or fifth reading of the closed adoption file the reason why the name William Hopkins sounded so familiar to me. This “family friend” of Adela’s, who helped finalize my fraudulent adoption in concert with a notorious black market baby broker, was none other than the State Attorney of Florida from 1947-1973. Bill Hopkins, as he was otherwise known, had created a huge name for himself in 1959—just six years after my finalized adoption—when he convinced an all-white jury to find a group of young white men guilty of assaulting and raping a black female student from Florida A&M. In the case, he argued persuasively that the consistent enforcement of law is a necessary function of the system.