An alleged financial predator, a sexual predator and a mass murderer make their separate ways to “under watch”
Under watch:
In an early 2009 piece on white collar crime, The Economist magazine mentioned something those who have read my books would predict: “Many [Club Fed and other white collar] prisoners suddenly discover, post-conviction, that they had a drinking problem….” I would add that those who don’t figure this out might benefit from greater introspection. In the spirit of The Economist’s discovery, several recent stories follow for which the evidence of alcoholism is in the alleged crime itself.
Tax preparation service Mo’ Money co-founder and CEO Markey Granberry, who said that customers not receiving completed copies of tax returns or tax refunds was “not his fault” and, further, not a “Mo’ Money, Money Co USA Taxes Problem, this is a systemic problem,” whatever that means (I suspect he’s trying to blame the IRS for his woes). He told reporters, “I don’t have the money.” His wife of 20 years filed for divorce last September after she had him arrested for domestic assault, claims he withdrew $750,000 from a joint account in 2009 and could be hiding assets other than his $1.4 million home in Shelby County, TN, his Lamborghini, Bentley, Lexus, Mercedes and Escalade. (I guess she doesn’t have the money, either.) He’s behind $55,000 in property taxes on various properties listed in his name, with at least four properties slated for tax sale. Living a grandiose and luxurious lifestyle while failing to keep up with financial obligations indicates late-stage alcoholism has begun to take hold. His chief enabler, his wife, took the rocket ship up with the addict’s successes and, now, she’s crashing with him. Unfortunately, Granberry has also adversely affected tens of thousands of innocent people, from customers to landlords—including my wife and me, who rented an office to a franchisee of his, who apparently also was a victim. (By the way, we rented knowing there might be a problem based, more than anything else, on Mo’ Money’s advertisements, which were moronic. The tenant, while skipping out on his lease obligation, at least left the office in good shape.)
LAUSD teacher Mark Berndt who, in the latest in a series of teacher scandals, has been accused of seeking sexual gratification by spoon-feeding his semen to his third-grade students (and yes, for the unbelieving, his DNA matches that of the semen found on a spoon and a small container apparently found in his classroom trash). When I asked the late Fr. Jack Shirley, a long-time correspondent and long-recovering alcoholic, what percent of priests involved in Catholic Church sexual scandals might be alcoholics, he didn’t hesitate: 100%. There is unlikely any difference in the underlying root cause of sexual abuse committed by priests vs. that committed by teachers. The countless forms and styles of alcoholic egomania boggle the mind.
One L. Goh, 43, a nursing student at Oikos University in Oakland, CA who left the private school several months before allegedly murdering seven innocents in a shooting spree. The primary explanation for his horrific behaviors: he sought revenge against a female administrator with whom he had “problems.” Failing to find her at the school the day of the shootings, he apparently decided to inflict his rage on others. “Other” explanations offered by the media include: 1. His brother, U.S. Army Sgt. Su Wan Ku, was killed in an auto wreck in Virginia sometime in May of 2011. 2. His mother, Oak Chul Kim, recently died after returning to Seoul, Korea from Oakland, California. 3. His father, Young Nam Ko, lived in Oakland, but had recently moved. 4. He owed approximately $23,000 in federal tax liens for the years 2006 and 2009 that he had been paying down. Since most of us have “problems” and even those of us with terrible personal challenges learn to deal with them, the best explanation is that Goh, like nearly every other mass and serial murderer in U.S. history, is an addict. (The failure to identify the correct root cause of most murder is addressed in the April-May 2007 issue of TAR, issue # 29, in which the top story focused on Cho Seung-Hui, who also committed mass murder in what became known as the “Virginia Tech massacre”).