The con queen
Shirley Gordon wanted it all and knew how to get it. Her gifts for theft and deception brought her a fortune and a legitimate claim to the title
By CHRIS TISCH
Published June 24, 2007
On Jan. 31, 1969, a stunning young woman tried to steal a $28 red and white dress from a Tampa department store. Shirley Gordon was caught and arrested. It was her 18th birthday. That theft launched a remarkable criminal career. Over nearly four decades, Gordon became the grande dame of local cons, jackals and thieves. Through identity theft and fraud, she stole more than $1-million. Her crimes funded a lavish lifestyle. She drove Jaguars and BMWs.
She stuffed her homes with gaudy furniture and wall-sized televisions. She wore gold jewelry and silk clothes.
Gordon was convicted of almost 40 felonies. But her crimes never stopped. She ran scams out of prison cells and once conned her way out of jail.
In 2005, a prosecutor named Beverly Andringa decided to try to send Gordon away for 30 years.
But Gordon had acquired a benefactor.
Gordon's chiropractor -- a young woman with a successful clinic and a waterfront home -- hired a team of powerhouse lawyers and paid more than $30, 000 to bail Gordon out of jail.
Dr. Rhonda Schroeder also bought Gordon a $450,000 house and more than $150,000 in furniture. She even planned to take the stand during Gordon's trial and provide her a false alibi.
Andringa was baffled. Why would a successful person like Schroeder have anything to do with a career con like Gordon?
Andringa would learn it was a scam more devilish than she ever had seen, the coup de grace of the grande dame's career.
Food stamps put dinners on the table during Gordon's youth in St. Petersburg. She despised growing up in an area known as a ghetto, she would later tell a judge. So she stole.
She was arrested seven times for shoplifting before age 25. She graduated to kiting checks and defrauding banks.
At the same time, she claims, she won the first Miss Black St. Petersburg beauty pageant. Her attractive face and tall, curvy physique caught the eye of the son of the area's most powerful heroin dealer. They married on a cruise ship.
The drug dealer, Joe "Bonimo" Rodriguez, had money and power that drew comparisons to The Godfather. He used his heroin fortunes to build the Three Oaks Motel, the centerpiece of the area's drug trade in the 1970s.
Gordon was often there, sometimes working as the office manager, enjoying the easy life.
But Bonimo was convicted of heroin charges in the mid 1970s and again in the early '80s and died in prison in 1983. His son and Gordon split.
"She was used to the money and I'm sure when that dried up, that's when she started these more elaborate schemes," said Troy Hitchcox, a former St. Petersburg police detective who investigated Bonimo and knew Gordon in the late 1970s.
Gordon used fake credit cards to stock her St. Petersburg apartment with furniture, including a big-screen TV that wouldn't even fit through the front door.
She had a son with a handsome South Florida man named Kenneth Day. Gordon offered gifts to Day's family and seemed to live far above her means, Day's mother said. Day eventually ended the relationship.
Gordon began seeing Gregory Buchanan. He had a crooked past, which included stealing from his family's barbecue restaurant.
Together, Gordon and Buchanan made a formidable pair of cons. She was the mastermind, he did her bidding.
The couple's first big heist: their own wedding.
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The bride wore an off-white Christian Dior gown. The groom and wedding party wore sharp tuxedos and new shoes. The theme of the Aug. 6, 1983, ceremony was peaches and cream.
Gordon rented four white limousines to take the wedding party on a ride along the beach at sunset. Hors d'oeuvres and a buffet awaited 150 guests at Richard's Restaurant. The manager said it was the largest wedding party he had ever seen.
There was one problem. A credit card number Gordon used to pay the $1,700 bill didn't work. Gordon, who had been picky with the staff, assured a manager she would take care of it after the reception.
She never did. The couple flew to the Bahamas for their honeymoon.
When they returned, the couple bought a new 2, 600-square-foot Pinellas Point home that today would sell for $500,000. They filled it with $9,000 in furniture.
The couple bought it all -- the wedding, reception, honeymoon and even the new home -- with bogus checks and credit cards.
St. Petersburg police assigned five detectives to the case.
Gordon and Buchanan were arrested. Though police sought to keep Gordon in jail, she lied to a judge about her charges and persuaded him to consider releasing her. The judge soon realized his mistake, but lines were crossed and Gordon was let go.
Gordon turned herself in three weeks later and pleaded no contest.
Investigators called Gordon a "risk to the business community" who "would have a dire effect on the economy of this city" if she were not imprisoned.
But she had plenty of excuses. Doctors, she said, had diagnosed her with an impulsive shopping disorder. And poverty had motivated her to steal.
"The reality that I've come to acknowledge is that for years I have been a victim," Gordon wrote in a letter to the judge. "A victim not of recession but self depression."
The judge gave her five years in prison.
A paperwork foul-up again caused jail officials to release Gordon by mistake. She and Buchanan vanished.
Two months later, police in California found the couple and extradited them to Florida.
Gordon emerged from prison in 1986 unreformed. She committed dozens of crimes over the next 15 years and spent almost half that time in prison.
She ran credit card scams from her jail cells and tried to escape by forging memos from judges or faking deaths in her family to get funeral leave. She was so slippery, the Pinellas jail posted her photo around the facility as a warning.
But her most incredible capers were yet to come.
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On a summer day in 2002, a couple walked into the courthouse in St. Petersburg and asked to be married. A clerk pronounced them man and wife.
The groom was 59-year-old juvenile detention officer Earl Presley Sr. He had terminal colon cancer.
His new wife: Shirley Gordon.
Just five days earlier, Gordon had divorced her husband of 18 years, Greg Buchanan. Neither Presley nor his family knew about him.
Presley shifted to Gordon 25 percent of an annuity he had for his son and grandson.
Presley's adult son, Earl Presley Jr., was suspicious, but he was more focused on his father's health than his money.
Earl Sr. died four months later.
When insurance papers didn't arrive at Earl Jr.'s house, he called the company and learned Gordon's address had been substituted for his. Someone posing as him there had accepted the papers.
Earl Jr. filed a criminal complaint, but prosecutors said there was nothing they could do because it was a civil dispute. Earl Jr. said Gordon came away with thousands.
"Shirley Gordon took advantage of my father at his weakest moment," he said.
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Over the years, Gordon had driven a number of classy cars. But her desire for a new Infiniti in early 2004 would lead to her undoing.
Gordon used the identity of a Pembroke Pines woman named Lillian Gordon, which is her mother's name, to get credit from the luxury carmaker.
With longtime paramour Greg Buchanan back at her side, Gordon went to a Zales jewelry store in Bradenton, where she got credit to buy almost $5,000 in jewelry.
The next day, Gordon went to the driver's license office and, posing as Lillian Gordon, said she needed a new license. Gordon's photo was snapped and placed on the license.
Gordon then went to an Infiniti dealership in Sarasota. She made a scene about slow service, at one time bellowing: "No one wants to wait on me?" She demanded the shiny silver sport utility vehicle on the showroom floor, which had 11 miles on the odometer.
When the salesman asked for her driver's license, she handed over the fake. She was out of the dealership with the $37,000 vehicle in about a half-hour.
It has never been proven how Gordon was able to steal so many people's identities. When she worked, it was usually at a financial or telemarketing company, where investigators believe she may have retrieved enough personal information about clients to steal their identities. She often chose people with names similar to hers.
Eight months after Gordon drove off in the new Infiniti, the real Lillian Gordon found out her identity had been stolen and called police.
Detectives found Shirley Gordon and questioned her. She denied having the Infiniti -- never mind the Infiniti keys on her key chain.
Investigators showed her a copy of the bogus license with her photo on it. Gordon claimed ignorance.
They arrested her.
When the real Lillian Gordon sent a letter to State Attorney Bernie McCabe, his secretary recognized Gordon's name.
She brought the case to prosecutor Beverly Andringa, one of McCabe's top assistants.
"Beverly, you're not going to believe this," the secretary said. "She's at it again."
Andringa decided Shirley Gordon's run needed to end.
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In 25 years as a prosecutor, Andringa had earned a reputation as a tenacious investigator with a keen eye for detail.
When she began looking into Gordon, Andringa kept seeing the same name.
Dr. Rhonda Schroeder, a 32-year-old Pinellas chiropractic physician, appeared to be making a very good living at her family's clinic.
She had been valedictorian and homecoming queen of her Northside Christian high school class. She owned a waterfront home in St. Pete Beach. She was a Tampa Bay Business Woman of the Year nominee.
She was also a churchgoing woman who did missionary work in South America.
So why was Gordon driving Schroeder's Cadillac Escalade? And carrying her credit cards? And talking on Schroeder's cell phone?
In June 2005, Schroeder bought a $449,000 new home in St. Petersburg and transferred the title to Gordon.
Schroeder spent more than $150,000 on furnishings, including a hulking stone fountain that sat in the front yard.
The pink home towered over the other houses in the neighborhood. It had white columns and tall glass doors in front and a pool in the back. Neighbors called it the Don CeSar of the block.
Andringa summoned Schroeder to her office. When she told Schroeder about Gordon's past, the chiropractor smiled and said Gordon had warned her that Andringa would say nasty things about her.
Andringa tried to convince the chiropractor that Gordon was a career con woman who had somehow fooled Schroeder into bankrolling her. But Schroeder wouldn't budge.
After the meeting, Gordon was waiting for Schroeder. The two women hugged tightly.
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Andringa planned to win a conviction against Gordon for the Infiniti scam and ask a judge to sentence her to 30 years in prison.
Gordon planned to put up a fight, with lots of help from Schroeder.
The chiropractor hired three lawyers for Gordon, including two of the area's most admired defense attorneys.
At trial, Andringa presented two days of condemning evidence.
Gordon had left behind a paper trail, including her own photo on the fake Lillian Gordon license.
And witnesses -- the Zales manager, the Infiniti agent, the man who issued the driver's license -- had no trouble remembering Gordon's looks, fancy fingernails or demanding nature.
To counter, Gordon's lawyers summoned to the stand Alicia Waddell, Gordon's hairdresser.
Waddell told jurors Gordon was in her shop for seven hours for an "up-do" on the day of the crimes.
Andringa asked for records. Waddell said rats had eaten them.
When Schroeder came to the stand, she walked with a bounce and smiled.
She told defense lawyers that Gordon had been at her clinic that day, and she had records to prove it.
At the defense table, Gordon wore a bounty of gold jewelry. Her hair was streaked with hues of cinnamon and plum. Her fingernails gleamed from a French manicure.
She smiled as Schroeder answered her lawyers' softball questions.
When they were done, it was Andringa's turn. She was convinced Schroeder had altered her books to make it appear Gordon was at her clinic the day of the crimes.
"You have much more than a doctor-patient relationship with the defendant in this case, don't you?" Andringa asked.
Schroeder admitted they were friends who often shopped together. The house and car she bought for Gordon were investments, she said.
Andringa peppered Shroeder with questions about discrepancies in her records.
Why, she asked, wasn't Gordon billed for the clinic visit until after she needed an alibi? Why were there no other records of the visit?
"I can't explain it," Schroeder said as she swiveled in the witness stand, crossed her arms and gave Andringa a dirty look.
Andringa had clobbered her credibility. Schroeder shoved open the door as she left the courtroom.
The jury returned with a verdict in two hours: guilty. A judge sent Gordon to jail.
At sentencing two months later, Gordon's once-elegant hair was a frizzy mess. Her fancy clothes had been traded for a green jumpsuit. Her fingers and ears were bare.
Andringa asked the judge to give Gordon 30 years in prison. Gordon's lawyers asked for 18 months.
Judge Dee Anna Farnell told Gordon that if this country cut off a hand for stealing, "You would have run out of body parts."
She gave Gordon the 30 years.
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A few weeks after Gordon's trial, Schroeder called Andringa and asked for a meeting.
The next day, Schroeder gave a tearful confession. She admitted to falsifying her records for Gordon, Andringa said.
Schroeder told the prosecutor Gordon convinced her she had been in her office that day, so she altered her records to make it look that way. Considering how Gordon could talk people in circles, Andringa found the story plausible.
But how had Gordon persuaded Schroeder to give her a furnished house and to pay her lawyer fees and bail money?
It began with a conversation Schroeder had at her clinic in the fall of 2004. She was telling someone about the break-up of her engagement.
Gordon, a patient in the clinic that day, overheard the conversation.
The Grande Dame swooped in.
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You should go out with my brother, Gordon told Schroeder. He's Pedro Martinez, Gordon said, the famous baseball player.
Martinez, a pitcher with the New York Mets, is an eight-time All-Star who earns $15-million per year.
Gordon set up a date at a Fort Lauderdale hotel on Jan. 10, 2005.
Schroeder noticed the man she met looked like photos she had seen of Martinez. But she should have looked closer.
The man she met had a scar over his left eye. The real Martinez does not.
The man was an imposter who was helping Gordon lay a devastating trap that would cost the chiropractor close to $1-million.
After their date, Schroeder and the bogus Martinez never again met face-to-face. But they talked by phone, text messaged and e-mailed. The imposter sent romantic messages potent enough to convince Schroeder she was dating a superstar.
"I love you very much! I adore you even more," he wrote on April 23, 2005.
Two days later, he wrote: "The light of GODS LOVE shines through YOU!!!"
The fake Martinez told Schroeder he wanted to marry her. Schroeder bought their engagement rings.
"Nite my wife i love you," he wrote on Aug. 21, 2005.
Meanwhile, Gordon and Schroeder had become inseparable. They began calling each other "sister."
The fake Martinez always had an excuse for why he could not visit Schroeder, but he sent gifts and flowers. In daily phone calls, he played the doting and sometimes jealous boyfriend.
Schroeder said she would do anything to keep him happy, including helping his "sister" financially.
The trap grew deeper when Gordon's friends and family accused Schroeder of dating Martinez for his money. To show otherwise, she spent more money on them and Gordon.
A few months after Schroeder's date with the imposter, Gordon persuaded the chiropractor that her "brother" wanted her to buy a house for her.
Gordon said Martinez would pay her back later.
So Schroeder bought the $449,000 custom-built house with a down payment of $22,450 and transferred ownership to Gordon.
Gordon and some of her family moved in. Schroeder made the mortgage payments.
At the imposter's urging, Schroeder spent more than $150,000 decorating the 3,300-square foot, two-story home with opulent furniture.
Gordon placed photos of Martinez around the house, portraying him as family.
Schroeder leased Gordon a new $45,000 Cadillac Escalade. She bought her gas and paid her bills.
She let Gordon use her credit cards and bought her more than $20,000 in jewelry and a tummy tuck.
Perhaps most emblematic of the ruse was the looming fountain Gordon asked Schroeder to buy for the house.
While the two women shopped, Gordon called the Pedro imposter and asked him to help persuade Schroeder to buy the fountain, which was adorned with lion's heads, cherubs and angels.
By early 2006, Schroeder was complaining of financial troubles. And she had not seen "Martinez" in more than a year.
In a text message, the imposter wrote: "Despite our situation and more so your financial concerns, you are SO YOU!!!!!! Tell me how can I not adore you?"
In another message, the imposter wrote:
"Ha Ha Ha!!! You told our sister I need to sex you up in order for her mortgage to be two months ahead? I just love it! Call me when you are ready!"
Then he wrote: "Take our sis a check!"
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Soon after Gordon's trial, Schroeder finally realized something was amiss.
She had been speaking with Alicia Waddell, the hairdresser who also had testified for Gordon.
Turns out Gordon had tried to set up Waddell with a man named "Ramon." The offer had striking similarities to the Martinez set-up.
The women also discovered a gold-trimmed rose Waddell asked Gordon to give to "Ramon" had wound up as a gift to Schroeder from Martinez.
Schroeder realized she had been taken. She went to Andringa.
Andringa told Schroeder she would look into charging Gordon and her conspirators with fraud.
Though Andringa found enough evidence to corroborate Schroeder's story, she decided she could not charge anyone with scamming the chiropractor.
The reason: Schroeder had damaged her credibility too much by testifying at Gordon's trial.
Andringa also decided not to charge Schroeder with perjury. The woman had lost enough, she figured.
Schroeder filed a lawsuit in May 2006 against Gordon and Buchanan, accusing them of racketeering and seeking the return of all she had given them. The case is pending.
On March 8, the mortgage company filed for foreclosure on the house. Federal officials put a lien on it to recoup $228, 000 in restitution Gordon owes for bank fraud she committed in the 1990s.
A St. Petersburg Times reporter visited the house in April and found the ex-girlfriend of Gordon's son living there.
Gordon's son, Kenny Day, later called the reporter and said he, too, stayed there sometimes.
In a short interview, Day denied Schroeder's claims.
"Nobody put a gun to her head and asked her to do all that," he said.
But Day refused to answer questions about Pedro Martinez.
"You're not getting anything about that, " he said.
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So who was the Pedro Martinez imposter?
Andringa believes it was two men.
She said the man Schroeder met in Fort Lauderdale was Kenneth Day Sr., the father of Gordon's son.
Day is 17 years older than Pedro Martinez, but Andringa said he resembles the ballplayer.
When Andringa showed Schroeder a photo of Day, she identified him as the imposter. She pointed to the scar above his left eye.
Day's mother, Lucille Diaz, told a reporter that Day got the scar when he fell from a tree at age 12.
Cell phone records also show Day and Gordon talked 16 times the day Schroeder met the imposter. Gordon's cell phone contacts list also identifies a "Pedro" who has Day's number.
Diaz said her son is a ladies' man who has 14 children by a half dozen women. He works as an electrician.
Day did not return a message left with his mother, who said her son did not conspire with Gordon.
Day's work as an imposter likely ended with the date in Fort Lauderdale, Andringa said. From then on, Greg Buchanan -- Gordon's long-time paramour and partner in crime -- became the voice of Martinez, the prosector said.
How does she know that?
Cell phone records show the imposter always called Schroeder from one number. The records show the caller was making other calls, too, including some to the Pinellas County Jail, which were recorded.
The man speaking on those phone calls: Greg Buchanan.
The Times has tried many times to speak with Schroeder.
She first refused to speak to a reporter who approached her at Gordon's trial.
Over the last few months, she has not returned several phone calls, nor did she respond to a letter sent to her business. She did not respond to an e-mail sent to her in May. Schroeder also instructed her lawyers not to talk to the newspaper.
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Today, Shirley Gordon sits in a federal prison in Tallahassee, where she is serving an 18-month prison term for violating federal probation. She declined a written request for an interview.
Her partner, Greg Buchanan, was sentenced to three years in state prison for stealing the identity of a college professor from Wisconsin and using it to get his own Cadillac Escalade. He is scheduled for release in 2009.
On Saturday, Gordon is set for transfer to state prison, where she will stay until she is about 80 years old.
On that day, the prosecutor who finally put Gordon away for good will do something she never has done in her long career.
Andringa will call the prison to make sure they know with whom they are dealing.
Shirley Gordon by the numbers
45 Arrests in lifetime
18 Age at first arrest
25 Age at 10th arrest
32 Age at 20th arrest
37 Age at 30th arrest
52 Age at 40th arrest
54 Age at 45th arrest
56 Age now
39 Felony convictions
3 Stints in state prison
8 (and counting) Years spent in state prison 2 Escapes from jail
35 (at least) Aliases
7 Names in the longest alias: Ann Gordon Clarkson Rodriguez Buchanan Presley
$1-million Amount of money and property stolen in lifetime
$449,000 Cost of home Dr. Rhonda Schroeder bought for her
$150,000+ Amount Schroeder paid to furnish the home
$45,000 Value of 2005 Cadillac Escalade Schroeder leased for Gordon
$100,000+ Value of cash and gifts Schroeder gave Gordon and her family:
At least 40 Pieces of jewelry purchased by Schroeder for Gordon and her family
Major players in Gordon's life
- Shirley Gordon: She was convicted of nearly 40 felonies over the past 38 years. She masterminded a number of sophisticated frauds, including one that took her chiropractor for nearly $1-million.
- Greg Buchanan: Gordon's one-time husband, paramour and partner in crime. He is currently serving a three-year prison sentence for using the identity of a college professor to buy a new Cadillac Escalade.
- Earl Presley Sr.: Gordon married him in the summer of 2002 as he was dying of colon cancer. They married just five days after Gordon divorced Buchanan. Presley's son says Gordon got thousands out of his estate after he died.
- Dr. Rhonda Schroeder: Gordon's chiropractor became so close to Gordon in 2005 that they called each other "sister." Schroeder bankrolled her new friend with thousands of dollars in gifts, including a new home. But Schroeder didn't realize she was the target of the most vicious scam of Gordon's career.
- Beverly Andringa: A 25-year veteran of the Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney's Office, Andringa sought to put Gordon away for a long time. But she had to battle a team of hotshot lawyers paid for by Schroeder.
- Kenneth Day Sr.: A handsome south Florida man who once dated Gordon and is the father of her son. Prosecutors say Day played a key role in the scam that ensnared Schroeder.
- Kenny Day Jr.: Gordon and Day's son was living off-and-on at the house Schroeder gave Gordon, even after the chiropractor filed suit to get the house back, the bank moved to foreclose on it and the federal government placed a lien on it for $228,000 in restitution owed by Gordon.
- Dee Anna Farnell: The judge told Gordon that if we lived in a nation that cut off hands for stealing, Gordon would have no body parts left.
Times staff writer Chris Tisch spent more than two years following the case of Shirley Gordon. For this report, Tisch reviewed thousands of pages of documents from court files, police reports and news articles going back nearly 40 years; attended Gordon's trial and sentencing; and spoke with people connected to the case who agreed to an interview. He can be reached at tisch@sptimes.com. Times researchers Carolyn Edds and Cathy Wos contributed to the report.