It was standard practice at New Times, the old name of the parent company of the Houston Press, to allow former music editors to slide over into roles as staff writers. Ordinarily, I was told, music editors were encouraged to make the jump after three years in that role. I lasted more than twice that long, not through talent, but because Houston was a hard position to fill — I’d been awarded the gig after some six months of vacancy. Believe it or not, ambitious young j-school grads from places like California and Yankeeland didn’t see covering Houston’s music scene as the sort of springboard to glory they’d mapped out when enrolling at Northwestern or Columbia, and so the job sort of fell to me by default. And remained in my hands by default, until I was able to persuade native son Christopher Gray to return home and take my place, which he did with style, aplomb, and a diligence I could not match…
But that’s another story, and it sort of elides the role of Scott Faingold, an able replacement who time and circumstance robbed of taking my place. (Faingold is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met; Houston loved what they got to know of him, but again, timing and circumstance.)
So anyway, at last I was a staff writer…So. What to write about?
Gradually I gravitated towards crime, both on our blog and in the paper. I guess it was in my genes. From my dad, I got music scholarship; from my mom, I got music….and crime. Participation in it. Appreciation for it. Perhaps even a mind for it myself. When your mother engages you as a partner in crime at the age of eight, it leaves a mark on you. When you see a con artist at work from the dawn of your consciousness on a daily basis, you become something of a connoisseur. And that was my lot; I was the son of one of Creation’s greatest bullshitters.
But. But. But she also inherently knew how to spot rival bullshitters and protect me and others she loved from same, and so I was hard-wired with the ability to detect folderol and shoot it down from 800 yards off. I don’t know if her addictions brought this out in her or if she was just inherently gifted, but Bidy’s bullshit detector was a finely-tuned, exquisitely calibrated soul-machine, and somehow, she passed it down to me.
And so I began to sub-specialize. Not just crime, but con artistry became my focus. And I absolutely loved it. Fighting these people made me feel like a superhero. Each day I’d peddle my bike in from the Heights with a sense of purpose. I was on a vector: possessed of both direction and magnitude.
I “ruined” the bad name of oil field con man Clinton Tod Harwell. For years afterward, grateful would-be marks told me they were about to succumb to his seductive sales pitches until they Googled his name and found this story.
There was Jan Merklin, a handyman who preyed on lonely hearts. He sued the Press and me for defamation and lost, because, well, he did the things I said he did. He appealed, and lost again.
There was John (Juan) Edgar Birdwell…well, he walked on the charges I wrote about, but trust me, his lengthy rap sheet up to that time warranted a write-up in the Press…Or if not that, just his pure douchebaggery on Facebook.
There was the two-part saga of Dinesh Kumar Shah, a chillingly psychotic violent con-men who preyed on elderly men and young boys alike. As far as we know, Shah never killed anybody, but I’ve never come across a darker soul in all my days and hope I never will.
And last but not least there was Brian Edgar Culwell. A born con artist, I caught him in a semi-legit phase of his life, back when he and his wife Amelia were running Gold & Silver Buyers. Despite an already lengthy criminal record for fraud of various stripes, Culwell had sweet-talked the Chronicle into running a blow job piece on his new business, Michael Berry into endorsing him daily on the radio, and Mickey Gilley into singing his praises. Gold & Silver Buyers collapsed along with the price of gold; and for years afterward, I was hearing from disaffected former employees telling me of Culwell’s continued shenanigans of various stripes.
His name now mud on these shores thanks to my expose, he decamped to Africa; Malawi to be exact, and controversy followed, as it always does. Here is his attack website on one of his business partners there. I cannot say what is or is not true about his allegations against this Michael Thomas Howard fellow, but it does appear that shit went badly sideways for the Culwells in Malawi, not least because he is now back in Houston.
Would it surprise you to learn that this self-described “visionary, disruptor, and investor” is now deeply into “healthy vaping,” Blockchain and crypto-currencies? New frontiers, man…
Anyway, he sued me too, and lost. Actually he sued me before we even went to print, but we forged ahead anyway. In a last ditch effort to stop the story from running, Gold & Silver Buyers bought a full page ad in the very issue in which my expose appeared. All to no avail — on the inside cover, you could read about what a great company that was, and in the rest of the issue, you’d read about its principal’s multiple stints in prison for scams of several varieties.
I was told that the loss of his ad dollars meant that the Press had to revert back from glossy covers to newsprint. But here’s the thing: the editorial side ruled, and that didn’t matter. We were a First Amendment paper and the story trumped all. We would not be bought off by a cheap-jack conman from Spring.
I wish I could say the rest of the media remains that balls-out for the truth. It hasn’t been my experience. Stories like those above are seldom told these days unless they involve famous people or massive sums of money. Cash-strapped media organizations are intimidated by the prospect of lawsuits to an alarming degree; defending against even the flimsiest suit costs a lot of money. And so these stories fall between the cracks, allowing these psychopaths to continue unimpeded by easy Googling after they get caught once or twice or even three times.
And now I look back on those days with pride. Not everything about them: I wrote short crime stories about very young criminals I’d take back if I could; some of them were guilty of crimes no worse than ones I myself committed at their age and had the luck to get away with. I sacrificed some kids on the altar of humor and readership, and for that I must atone. (Not juveniles, of course; but if I had it to do over, I would not write “dumb criminal” stories about anyone younger than 25 years of age.)
But in the main, I think I did more good than harm. And I wish I still had that sense of purpose, of crusading for fairness and decency, protecting the sheep from the wolves.
None of which is to say I don’t absolutely love what I do now. I don’t think I could have kept up that pace forever. It was kind of a high-wire act. I got sued regularly. Birdwell came to the office looking to kick my ass. (I’d already left the Press by then; I received the call about his appearance there while gazing over a canyon on the outskirts of Grand Junction, Colorado.) I’d had menacing phone calls from people far more sinister than Birdwell. By now, I’d be ready for the smooth sailing of writing about what makes Texas so wonderful, which is what I do now for Texas Highways. But I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t some small part of me that missed the combat of the old days, when deep down inside, I really did feel some days like I was Batman on a keyboard.
And then there was the disbarred attorney who you wrote about who got convicted several times for continuing to practice without a license. You wrote about him and he did not sue you but he sued a client of mine merely for hyperlinking your article to Facebook. I spoke about it to you and then to your successor at the publication and your successor wrote about it, which caused the disbarred attorney to add the publication and that reporter to the lawsuit. The libel suit was tossed, but not without far too much effort just to dispose of a frivolous lawsuit. That disbarred lawyer spent his last years suing anyone who wrote about his habit of suing people for mentioning any of this. He literally died on the courthouse steps, from a heart attack, while doing what he loved, which was to sue people for mentioning that he sued people for mentioning that he sued people for mentioning that he had been convicted for practicing law without a license. And that piece you wrote about it is how I made your acquaintance.
A tale of gold scammery always does me good, especially when it was long ago, far away, and wasn't my money that went missing. It's possible that I helped my step-sister sell some necklaces at one of Caldwell's places if he had one at the HEB way out on Bandera Hwy and 1604. Prices weren't best or worst. Clerk talked about going to some bible college. Anyway, a couple of necklaces tested fake, and they didn't want those, but the bible college clerk said maybe we could fool a pawn shop into buying them.