The 20 million dollar screw job

So you remember my drug addict brother in law Chuck?  Well I mentioned in my last post that he was once cheated out of $20 million dollars.  Thats as good as any story to tell next.  And lets face it, it isn't every day someone robs you of millions of dollars.  So here we go.

About two or three years ago,Chuck's father was diagnosed with stomach cancer.  This news hit pretty hard seeing that his mother died of stomach cancer only a few years before.  His father left for Mexico to undergo some experimental treatment, and later returned.  All this time he was talking to my brother in law.  He then called Chuck one day telling him he was going to see a doctor, and not to worry if he doesn't hear from him for a few days.  The very next day she shot himself in the head with a 9mm.  We had no idea where this came from.  He seemed to be handling his situation fine.  There was no indication that he was suicidal.

Being the only son of his man, it appeared that Chuck was to inherit his family's farm in Pennsylvania; a 1000 acre farm that has been in his family's possession since 1803.  Then we found out that this farm sat on top of tens of millions of dollars in coal and natural gas, as well as millions in timber (apparently the amish make furniture out of this timber because of its high quality).  Suddenly the white trash drug addict from Jersey had CEO's of coal and gas companies calling his cellphone making offers.  This was....unreal.  Imagine you just got the worst news of your entire life, then found out you were going to be a millionaire.  This simply does not happen to real living people.  Now you must understand my family.  We have lived together in one house for most of our entire lives.  That is my sisters, my mother, my brother in law, my three nieces, and I (And my stepfather for the last 15 or so years).  To find out one of us was going to be a millionaire was essentially to find out we all were.  My nieces could get into any college they desired, my mother could retire and not have to work until she was 70...This was life changing.  The only thing that stood in his way, was his stepmother.  I do not know what mental conditions she has, but as I was told she has been committed to mental institutions several times, and was described to me as "a child in an adult's body."  Clearly someone who is mentally insane could not possibly manage a property like this.

Then came the royal screw.  The only will of his father that anyone could seem to find, was from 2005, which gave everything to his wife, the mentally unstable woman.  In 2005, Chuck and he were not talking due to Chuck falling off the bandwagon again (they reconnected later and even brought my nieces up to this farm on vacation a few times).  One would think that after finding out he had cancer, he would have written another will.  Not to mention we refuse to believe that he would have completely forgotten his 3 granddaughters (two of which who weren't even born in 2005).  

Here is where it gets even more interesting.  No more than 24 hours after his father's death, the neighbors reported seeing the family of his stepmother unloading boxes upon boxes of documents from the house.  They were getting rid of every single piece of paper in the house and tossing it in the trash.  By the time he managed to even get to the farm, his father's office was picked clean.  There wasn't so much as a receipt for groceries in it.  His stepmother was petrified to talk to him.  She locked herself in her car and didn't even look at him.  She published no obituary, and by the time Chuck arrived, his father's body had been sitting in a funeral home for 2 weeks.

What we can only assume was that the family of the mentally unstable wife simply used her as a tool to get this inheritance.  It was obvious they had her completely scared to say anything. Sadly if there was another will somewhere in that house, they probably burned it.  An even more interesting note is that several days later, my brother in law received a call from a local police officer asking him what hand his father was dominant in.  This seemed highly peculiar.  But apparently that question, coupled with how the body was found, and the fact that it took the wife 4 hours to actually call the police after she found her husband dead, may have introduced some doubt that it was a murder and not a suicide at all.  But nothing became of that.

Chuck and my sister tried to find a lawyer who would take the case, but none would.  I brought up hiring a private investigator to look through his father's bank accounts.  Maybe there they could have found out if his father hired a lawyer to draw up a new will before he died.  For all we know there is a lawyer in Pennsylvania sitting on this dead man's will with no idea he is actually dead.  But they didn't have the money.  So his stepmother and her family won.  They got everything.  And Chuck was robbed out of his family's legacy; a legacy that belonged to my 3 nieces.  You just can't make this shit up.  But there you have it.  Wish I could say this story had a happy ending, that we lived happily ever after.  But life isn't a fairy tale, especially not mine.