Tag Archives: Business as Usual: How Routine Public Corruption Affects People Like You

Who Framed Heather DeLorme & Why is She Still in Prison? Part 2

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*My apologies in the delay of this post. A few personal things got in the way. With no further adieu…..

Credit Card Theft

Merely two months after Heather DeLorme’s acquittal on grand theft charges from her previous employers Robby & Tanya Underwood,  on August 25, 2017, Tim Duggins and Dan Thornton filed a report with ESCO sheriff’s department alleging that Heather had used the Duggins company credit card for personal use. Heather insisted she was given permission to do so by Jessolyn Duggins. The amount of the alleged unauthorized charges was under $1,200.00 between May 24, 2017 and August 23, 2017.  Officer Barragan and Investigator Harry Kilpatrick opened an investigation and Heather is arrested for petit theft on November 15, 2017.

2017 arrest_Page_12017 arrest_Page_12017 arrest_Page_22017 arrest_Page_3

So the first question that needs to be asked is :

          1.  How did Tim Duggins already have the video surveillance photos of a woman matching Heather’s physical description using the his credit card at Walmart and Walgreens when he made the report to Harry Kilpatrick? These stores do not just give surveillance tape to civilians. It takes intervention from the police to obtain.

During Heather’s this second case, Thomas Williams handled the prosecution. Tim Duggins had agreed to let Heather repay him, but right before they went before the judge to make that official, Duggins, after speaking to Williams, changed his mind.  If you remember Tom Williams was involved in 2016 in investigating or not investigating the LET misappropriation from the citizen complaint by Clark Yates as well as the firing of Philip Nix that same year.  He also was on the periphery of the Ron Clark Ball, one man RICO case in 2017.  In open court, Williams leads Tim Duggins through his story .

Pages from transcript duggins williams

Being absolutely blindsided by this arrest and having been battling for 2 straight years, in November 2018, Heather DeLorme enters a plea for Organized Fraud for $750K ie RICO charges and is sentenced to 5 years in State prison and 15 years of probation. The amount of $750K is for further fraud that was alleged after her initial arrest.

heather plea_Page_1

Fast forward to June 2020. Jessolyn Duggins, daughter of Tim Duggins and her girlfriend, Alyson Caperton are arrested for grand theft, scheme to defraud, using a computer with intent to defraud, money laundering in excess of $100K  from Duggins Supply.

Sat Jul 25 2020 16_00_21 GMT-0500 (10)

They are accused of stealing $450K from September of 2017 to July of 2019. As we saw from Heather’s arrest report her theft is supposed thru August of 2017. So the very next month, Tim Duggins’s daughter decided to pick up where Heather left off? Or is it possible that Heather was set up to take the fall to cover the theft of Jessolyn and Alyson?

Certainly appears someone should have investigated this case better to look at the books prior to Sept. 2017.

Stay Tuned……to be continued.

Who Framed Heather DeLorme & Why is She Still in Prison? Part 1

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Business as Usual: How Routine Public Corruption Affects People Like You Chapter One

The 1st part of the 1st Chapter of Stories About Regular People, Just Like You, Who are Victimized by Corruption

Now, I am proud to present the writing of a guest who has taken up the mantle with me as a fellow gladiator for justice. It’s important to hear this person’s voice and passion about the injustice happening in Pensacola. I could not have explained this situation any better. Due to certain retaliation concerns, this writer remains anonymous. But I have vetted the story and can attest to the veracity of every word. 

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General Summary……This is a story of a witch hunt. Heather DeLorme got  wrongfully incarcerated  for being on the wrong side of some powerful people. To gain a clear understanding of the events that led to the current incarceration of Heather DeLorme, we must look back to the year 2015…

The Background….From September 2008 through February 2015, Heather was an employee of Robert and Tanya Underwood at Emerald Coast Granite and Tile located at 3700 North Palafox.  In the years that Heather was employed, she wore many hats for the Underwood’s and was a close friend of Tanya. Some of Heather’s duties included payroll, granite sales, invoicing customers, vendor relationships, accountant relationships, managing disgruntled employees, notarizing documents, personal shopping for Tanya, shuffling money between accounts to disguise Tanya’s compulsive shopping/shoplifting, house sitting, dog sitting, party planning, and bookkeeping for Robert Underwood’s multiple and ever changing LLC’s . So, it is suffice to say that Heather DeLorme was intimately familiar with how the Underwoods ran their multiple businesses as well as their personal lives.

heather & tanya

Heather was terminated by Tanya in mid February of 2015 after taking a few days off to attend a family funeral out of town and returned to find that she no longer had a job or a friend. The reason for her dismissal was for “talking behind Tanya’s back with Debbie Outzen Matthews.” Heather was devastated and in disbelief that she was shut out of her friend, Tanya’s life without any confrontation or explanation.

On March 24, 2015, Heather began a new job at Duggins Supply, and was forthcoming with Tim and Jessolyn Duggins that Tanya Underwood had just filed a report with the Escambia County Sheriff’s office on March 18, 2015 accusing Heather of stealing from the business. Officers Brissett and Harry Kilpatrick opened an investigation on March 31, 2015.  Heather readily provided Officer Kilpartick with her bank statements and there appeared to be no evidence that any theft occurred least of all by Heather and she was never contacted again for any further questioning. The matter seemed to have been dropped.

 

The 2015 Arrest………On June 19, 2015, Heather DeLorme was arrested for theft at Emerald Coast Granite and Tile while she was at work at Duggins on W Street.

2015 arrest_Page_1

 

In June 2017, Heather DeLorme is ACQUITTED by a trial jury.
acquittal 2017
In June 2015, Tanya Underwood filed a civil lawsuit against Heather DeLorme for civil theft amounting to $54,750 plus treble damages.
Pages from tanya civil heather

 

In June 2018, the case was dismissed for Lack of Prosecution. 
tanya civil dismissal

During the years 2015 to 2017, Heather was put through a criminal investigation as well as a civil lawsuit launched by the Underwoods spearheaded by SAO, John Dubose with Judge Dannheiser presiding. The civil suit was forged by the Liberis Law firm. On May 3, 2017 Heather was defended by private attorney, Michael J Griffith,and was found NOT GUILTY by a trial jury and the civil case is eventually dropped in 2018 for a lack of prosecution because there was no evidence found in the criminal trial that would provide for any type of judgement in civil court. This should be the end of the story, but it isn’t.

The circumstances surrounding Heather’s arrest raise many questions as to the validity of the claims made by the Underwoods.  As five or six ECSO vehicles pulled up to Duggin’s Supply at the corner of Fairfield and W Street, Tanya Underwood, Debbie Outzen Matthews, were inside the Exxon gas station adjacent to the Duggin’s parking lot video taping Heather being taken into custody.

  1. How did Tanya know that Heather was scheduled to be arrested on that exact date and time?
  2. Is it a coincidence that one of the ECSO officers that were questioning other employees about Heather was John Holcomb, a high school friend of Robert Underwood?

 

To be continued……

Business as Usual: How Routine Public Corruption Affects People Like You

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Editorial:

I said there was going to be a followup blog on Jon Beard and his excessive force hi jinks, however, Beard’s personnel records have been delayed and then, well, the nation went into mass chaos with calls for “defunding the police”.  I didn’t want to add any fuel to that fire. So I apologize for not posting on this issue, which is a HUGE PROBLEM, for the ECSO, but I wanted no hand in encouraging behavior that compromises the community safety because of  improper timing.  The harm vs the truth ratio was out of balance for me. Beard’s story will be told, but the timing, to tell it, is not now.

I did want to speak from the heart on the world events.  I do this blog because of my personal sense of duty to do the right thing, not for personal gain, but because it is right. I think I have inspired others to step up, even though there is fear and uncertainty. Some cannot due to circumstances and that I understand. That is why I choose to be the voice for those who cannot speak for themselves. There is no personal gain for me, other than peace of being able to live with my own choices.

I have been labeled as “crazy”, “lone nut”. I have been said to misunderstand events and the law. I have been told my efforts are for naught. None of these things prevented me from continuing on a path I consider my own. Some people I haven’t been able to help as much as I wish. While others, I feel, I aided their cause and progressed their fight for some amount of justice. I listen to everyone who comes to me and do the best I can to make sure everyone feels heard.  That is what is missing in society today. We let people talk, only to form a rebuttal. We try to discredit people whose stories initially seem implausible because of our own experiences.  That is probably the most infuriating feeling in the world.  I take great pains in trying to understand the issues. Yes, I know I’m an anomaly. I’m okay with that. Recently, I have lost a colleague I genuinely love because of petty bullshit. We are all batshit crazy in our own way and it’s okay to be passionate to fault in causes  that are important to us. However, it cannot be okay to be so passionate that we do not have compassion or that we get tunnel vision. I have spent a great deal of time contemplating my own zealousness.  Because of this situation, I took a break to gather my thoughts and analyze my focus. 

In doing “The Devil Got Appointed in Georgia”, I wanted to show that the same corruption exists in so many places and it is what is undermining our country now. The problem of sidestepping laws to aid friends, bending the law, for whatever reason, makes the scales unbalanced. Holding people to differing levels of lawfulness erodes public trust and confidence in the law and legal system. Corruption is the unseen theme in EVERY case I have discussed. It is my priority to expose it.  Wrongful convictions are an epidemic in Florida, as one of the top states in wrongful conviction exonerations. The system is meant to push people, innocent or not, into a system from which their lives are inextricably linked. My agenda is simple: Fix the underlying corruption that destroys lives. Now on to the next case.

An Introduction

This is the beginning of a new series. I wanted to briefly explain the importance of these stories.

Everything that has hurt the people of Pensacola, Escambia County, can be reduced to corruption. Yet no one calls a spade a spade. The “c” word is played down and rarely spoken there. Everyone seems to think it doesn’t really exist, but it does.  Any shortcut, work around, favor done that bypasses the law–no matter how insignificant it may seem—is corruption.  These practices are so ingrained in the culture, most do not even recognize exactly what is going on.  But each of these shortcuts, work arounds, favors means someone else gets hurt in some way. It may not be immediate, or even something the grantor of such things knows happens, but it is a ripple in the water.

Public trust disintegrates; the law is undermined; an example is set;  another line in the sand is crossed; the silent echo magnifies into the universe….By the time the harm is felt it is exponentially worse than the little transgressions that created them.  People cannot protect themselves from the silent danger they don’t know exists.

 

Part 1 of this series will be within the next day or so. It begins with a new case. Stand by.