WHOSE BOND SHOULD BE REVOKED?
by Sharon Rondeau
(Aug. 24, 2014) — On Monday, Marvin William Young is scheduled to attend a status hearing on charges stemming from a meeting he had last year with Larry David Godwin, the man who now illegally possesses everything Young’s father worked for until his death on February 25, 2011.
Judge Carroll Lee Ross, who hung up on The Post & Email several weeks ago, will preside.
After attending his father’s funeral, Marvin sought the services of an attorney and was referred to Atty. Clifford Wilson, who told him that he could not represent him because he already represented his father’s widow, Deborah Jean Gray Young. Wilson possessed the will and presented Young with a copy. Questioning the validity of its signatures, Young sought alternate legal counsel. Young told The Post & Email that he contacted several attorneys who initially appeared interested after having seen the signature page but ultimately declined to help him.
Marvin believes that Deborah Jean signed her late husband’s signature to the will. He described the size of his father’s estate as “seven figures” and consisting of commercial storefronts, a large expanse of land, farm machinery and numerous vehicles.
General Sessions Court Judge J. Reed Dixon signed off on the estate in February 2012, despite the absence of required witnesses’ signatures. When The Post & Email attempted to speak with Dixon, he would not take the call, and his clerk nervously told us, “That estate has been settled for more than two years” in an attempt to end the call quickly.
Marvin compiled extensive documentation of a broader criminal enterprise involving his father’s will and estate and presented it to then-District Attorney General R. Steven Bebb. While Bebb reportedly admitted that evidence of a crime existed, he denied it in a subsequent phone call with Young, who legally recorded the conversations. Young also spoke with Tenth Judicial District Investigator Calvin Rockholdt, who, like Bebb, chose to do nothing despite a promise to investigate.
Young also met with Monroe County Sheriff Bill Bivens to inform him of the forgery, recording the conversation. After exhausting law enforcement and prosecutorial options, in April of last year, Young decided to show the evidence to Godwin personally. He and Godwin spoke on the front porch of Young’s father’s estate, during which Godwin appeared reasonable and concerned, and the two men agreed to travel to town to file appropriate papers.
However, an hour later, Young found himself arrested on a charge of carrying a handgun without a permit and on two felony charges of “especial aggravated kidnapping” and “especial aggravated burglary.”
“When I went to see Larry David Godwin, we came to an agreement on my father’s porch. We went to town to execute that, and when we got to where we were going, he turned on me and said that I had abducted him,” Young told us. He said that Godwin and his witness perjured themselves during the preliminary hearing because their statements did not match those given to police on the day of his arrest.
Young said that after he was arrested and jailed, police reported that they found a set of keys at Jenkins Realty in the bottom drawer of the bathroom vanity belonging to Godwin which Young had allegedly stolen, hence the “especial aggravated burglary” charge.
CDR Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III (Ret.) wrote an executive summary on Young’s case after speaking with him extensively about his case last winter and seeing Young’s documentation. Fitzpatrick is now in jail after having challenged the legitimacy of the McMinn County grand jury foreman and reported criminal activity on the part of judges and prosecutors in the Tenth Judicial District. The McMinn County grand jury charged Fitzpatrick with “aggravated perjury,” “extortion,” “harassment,” and “stalking,” and a trial jury convicted him on the first two charges without evidence or the existence of a police report detailing alleged incidents.
In Tennessee, property is often offered and accepted as bond to allow a defendant accused of a crime to go free pending the outcome of the charges. Tennessee residents and individuals traveling through the state have reported having cash extorted by Tennessee Highway Patrolmen unlawfully.
Since grand jury deliberations are kept secret, it is unknown what evidence was used to indict Young on the charges of “especial aggravated kidnapping” and “especial aggravated burglary” without a police report. In Tennessee, as in many other parts of the country, grand juries have become tools of prosecutors seeking retaliation or the silencing of individuals who have blown the whistle on crime in the community.
The Founders intended grand juries to act as a buffer between the citizens and the government as stated in the Fifth Amendment.
The Post & Email is in possession of a notarized witness’s statement alleging that Godwin is a criminal and Young his victim filed with the Monroe County court clerk, Martha M. Cook on August 21, 2014.
Young believes the attorney he hired after he was first charged allowed the two-year statute of limitations on challenging the settlement of his father’s estate to expire purposely. “I very much believe that he’s in cahoots with these people,” Young said. In June, Young dismissed the attorney for non-performance in his case.
At Young’s last hearing in late June, Judge Carroll Ross told Young to have an attorney with him for the next date on August 25 despite the fact that he is now indigent.
Eastern Tennessee has been likened to a penal colony in which innocent people are seized off the street by “law enforcement” in order to ultimately populate the local jail, garnering more state funds for the sheriffs’ departments. Eastern Tennessee is a haven for the illegal manufacture, distribution and use of methamphetamine.
Conditions in the Monroe County jail have been described as “a dungeon” and “medieval,” with a Tennessee Corrections Institute (TCI) supervisor informing The Post & Email more than two years ago that the jail did not meet state minimum standards for operation and should be closed.
Monroe County Sheriff Bill Bivens was reportedly friendly with Charles William Young. Marvin also reported that Godwin’s brother is “super best buddies with Bill Bivens.”
On August 7, the citizens of Monroe County elected a new sheriff to replace Bivens effective September 1, although two lawsuits have been filed challenging victor Randy White’s qualifications for office.
Prior to his father’s death, Young had lived in Florida, where he operated a business for several years. He believes that Monroe County has “come after him with a vengeance” for demonstrating that his father’s estate was illegally taken and fabricated the case against him. “If they convict me on this thing, I am looking at 40 years. I may never see the light of day again,” Young told us.
The Post & Email has reported the evidence of criminality in the Young case to the Knoxville FBI and FBI headquarters in Washington, DC. Young reported that the Knoxville FBI “hung up on him” when he tried to report the crimes of “fraud” and “perjury.” “They put me on hold for seven and a half minutes, and when they came back, they said, ‘Marvin, there’s not anything we can do for you.’ And I was like, ‘I didn’t give you my first name.’ They made a phone call to Monroe County and just hung up on me.”
Fitzpatrick also has suspected that the Knoxville FBI is helping to obscure the crime in the Tenth Judicial District rather than investigate and make arrests of those involved.
In April 2010, Ross ordered Fitzpatrick jailed for attempting a citizen’s arrest on a long-serving Monroe County grand jury foreman; denied George Raudenbush his constitutional right to an attorney in 2011, on which the case was eventually reversed; thrown Fitzpatrick out of the courtroom during Raudenbush’s trial for having a paper and pen, which Ross called a “recording device;” and insisted in court that employing a grand jury foreman for decades is acceptable.
In December 2011, Fitzpatrick observed Judge Amy Reedy hand-picking jurors for the coming term from forms on her desk with their full identification and personal information visible in violation of state law.
During Fitzpatrick’s sentencing hearing last Tuesday on the felony convictions, Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood exclaimed, “So what if the grand jury foreman is serving illegally? Who cares?”
Young believes that Tennessee’s Tenth Judicial District is the most corrupt area in the country in regard to its use of grand juries to issue false indictments. He said that if an individual is not part of the “good-ole-boy network,” he is easily prosecuted on false charges by those who are. He told The Post & Email that many residents are aware of the corruption but are motivated to stay quiet because “they have a mortgage to pay.”
On July 9, Young received notification from Deputy Prosecutor A. Wayne Carter that he had filed a Motion for Revocation of Bond on the grounds that a judge had denied Young a restraining order he had requested against Godwin. Carter claimed that that rendered Young “a threat to the public safety” and “has no regard for previous court order’s [sic].” Carter also prosecuted the most recent case against Fitzpatrick.
Young had possessed a written statement from a witness who said she had heard Godwin say, “The next time I see Marvin Young, I’m going to kill him.” However, the judge would not accept the evidence in electronic format. It is unknown how Carter connects the judge’s denial of the restraining order with Young’s alleged “threat to the public safety.”
Young has advised an agent at the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) that he has been told by sources within Monroe County that if he is sent to prison, he will be killed. The Post & Email has written to the same agent, whose name will be made public on Monday.
“My father hated Obama with a passion. In my opinion, they knew he had some money, and this was absolutely an inside job. These people knew that my father needed to be taken out. His wife had MS, and her body was supposed to be donated to science, but it was cremated two days later by [Larry] David Godwin. He even said in the preliminary hearing that he was in town April 10, when I showed up on my dad’s porch, taking care of having his wife’s body donated to science and finalizing cremation. That’s a contradiction right there. How do you donate a body to science and then finalize cremation?” Young said.
“My father was supposed to have hit his head in the front and fell backwards. I thought you had to pass out forward and hit your head. At that point, it’s kind-of hard to fall backwards. So if my father was removed from the scene…If this woman was wheelchair-ridden, it would have been very easy for someone to move in on her. The man who married her was living in a 12-foot camper on his brother’s property from Polk County, FL, where he has a rap sheet that stretches all the way from me to you, and all of a sudden, he’s in control of a million-dollar estate. The commercial property is nearly adjacent to his brother’s commercial property in Tellico, and the very place he picked for us to go take care of this paperwork just so happened to be Jenkins Realty, where his sister-in-law works…You just can’t imagine the connections here,” Young told us.
The Post & Email has previously asked if judges and prosecutors can be criminally prosecuted for violations of their oaths of office and of state statutes. Judges and court personnel are generally required to be bonded with surety bonds as a means to insure them against liability.
According to a bonding company:
A public official bond is a type of surety bond that allows a number of public officials to show that they can be trusted for their services. It is often the law that public official’s bonds are required because many people will need to work with money or other sensitive information. The whole purpose of public official bonds would be to protect the taxpaying citizen who may need the service of such an official. In the event that unethical services are provided, the citizen will be able to file a claim against that bond to protect themselves and recover any money lost.
There are a number of different public official bonds available for a number of different job types. Some of the most common include court clerk, commissioners, notaries, deputies, sheriffs and other law enforcement, tax collectors, city managers, city treasurers, judges, mayors and city officials.
Another website which sells bonds reports that “it’s important to remember that surety bonds aren’t insurance; they’re a form of credit. Any claim paid on a bond will have to be repaid by the offending official…”
Young’s hearing is scheduled for 9:00 a.m. on Monday at the Monroe County courthouse in Madisonville located at 105 College Street.