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$6-million. Hundreds of questions
By ADAM C. SMITH © St. Petersburg Times, published February 4, 2001 ST. PETERSBURG -- Henry Chapman never worried about earning a paycheck. Every day he would lunch at the St. Petersburg Yacht Club and sip Old Fashioneds in the club lounge. When he and his parents weren't taking train trips to the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia or the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, Chapman could be found honing his golf swing on Snell Isle, once even nailing a hole-in-one. But when paramedics responded to a 911 call at his home in the Old Northeast two years ago, they found a different Henry Chapman. Their emaciated, 102-pound patient lay helpless on the floor in tattered pajamas, surrounded by dust, cobwebs and the stench of urine and cheap cigars. The only food in the house was a box of Corn Flakes. Hundreds of empty milk cartons were piled against a dingy wall. Mr. Chapman died nearly two years later. His obituary, like most, offered the barest glimpse of a life: age 84, former resident of Pennsylvania, Mason, former member of the St. Petersburg Yacht Club. The notice said Chapman had no known survivors. What it didn't reveal is this: Henry Ford Chapman was the $6-million hermit of 20th Avenue NE. Only one man knew the extent of his riches: his tax preparer. The main beneficiary of Chapman's more than $6-million estate? His tax preparer. Years earlier, Larry Welke had been charged with trying to cheat an 89-year-old woman out of $62,000. Now, as Chapman neared the end of his life, Welke had changed his will. Welke prepared and typed the will that would make himself a millionaire. To have it notarized, he drove Chapman to Fred's Garage, a gritty auto repair and salvage shop in an industrial area of St. Petersburg. Fred of Fred's Garage, a buddy of Welke's with his own criminal record, served as notary. Were he an attorney, Welke could be disbarred for handling a will without bringing in another lawyer with no stake in the estate. Likewise, several certified public accountants say they couldn't fathom doing what Welke did and keeping their license.
Chapman's relatives have challenged the revised will, but they have an uphill fight. Successfully contesting a will is extremely difficult in Florida. Welke fully expects that he soon will be a multi-millionaire. He can't recall whether he ever thanked Mr. Chapman. Henry Chapman could be a spoiled brat, infuriating and demanding. He also could be endearing in his reluctance to impose on people. In his rare contacts with others, he invariably talked about the 1974 Rose Bowl game he saw with relatives, his trumpet playing days in the University of Pennsylvania's marching band and, especially, the stock market. To the end, he could recite to the penny the dividends of countless stock issues. His dignity and heart showed through his rotting clothes, stench and cantankerous nature. "He was a really, really nice guy," said James Craven, affectionately chuckling over his neighbor's stunning frugality and tendency to bark "G-- d--- it" when his patience was tested even ever-so-slightly. A classical music lover who rarely went to concerts, a sports fan who rarely attended games, Chapman spent his final years holed up in his deteriorating home, poring over Wall Street Journals and quarterly reports. He would venture out to Shep's Food Mart on 4th Street for Banquet frozen turkey dinners and cigars. His introverted nature goes back to his school days. Born with spina bifida, he never could control his bladder. Imagine the emotional pain of a grade schooler who often wet his pants and reeked of urine. An only child, Chapman never dated and never married. He lived with his parents all their lives and relied on them for everything. "His parents always overprotected him," said Helen Halliwill, a cousin who grew up with him in Ohio. "He was a spina bifida child, and his parents were always so afraid he'd hurt himself. I'm afraid Henry really was a bit of a spoiled brat." He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of finance in 1938 but never really held a job. Inherited wealth meant he didn't have to. His maternal grandfather, a Pennsylvania oilman who died in the 1920s, left considerable stock holdings. His father, Francis, was a music professor, movie theater manager and car dealership owner. In 1951, his father and stepmother, Violet, moved to a ranch home they had built on Oak Street and 20th Avenue NE in St. Petersburg. Henry was 36 when he moved with them, happily joining their leisurely and privileged retirement lifestyle. His friends were mostly contemporaries of his parents, and he spent his days bouncing between the Yacht Club and the Tides Bath Club on North Redington Beach. In mid-1954, the Chapmans had an attorney prepare nearly identical wills for Violet and Henry. Their assets were to go to surviving members of their immediate St. Petersburg household. If none were alive, Francis Chapman's cousins or their heirs in the Midwest and California would be the beneficiaries. Francis Chapman died in 1971, leaving Violet and Henry loads of blue chip stocks in railroads, oil, bank and auto companies. Stepmother and son remained housemates and constant companions, eating lunch most every day at the same table in the Commodore's room of the Yacht Club. Violet Chapman died in 1985. "When his stepmother died, time ended for Mr. Chapman. Nothing ever changed in the house after that," said Anthony Glenn, a lawn man who grew fond of Chapman over 10 years of seeing him almost weekly. Chapman never touched his parents' room. To this day, their clothes remain in their dresser drawers, their shoes still neatly aligned. A lifelong penny-pincher, Chapman let the housekeeper go. Dust and cobwebs spread. Chapman slid into isolation. Enter Larry Welke, a 6-foot-4, 350-plus pound tax accountant, former City Council candidate and gun seller. They met in the bar at the Yacht Club. Welke, now 65, says he barely knew Violet Chapman, but often gabbed with Henry when he stopped into the lounge for an after-lunch cocktail, usually an Old Fashioned, sometimes creme de menthe on the rocks. Chapman hired Welke to prepare his tax returns, and Welke says a friendship developed. After the Yacht Club quietly expelled Chapman in the early 1990s because of his bladder control problem, Welke said, the two of them would meet for lunch at Pepin or Kissin' Cuzzins. "People tended to ignore him, and he became very much introverted and private," Welke said recently over a rum and coke in the Yacht Club lounge. "He was just a neat old guy. I enjoyed talking with him, and I learned a lot about the stock market." Welke says he did what he could for Chapman. "I asked him many times, Henry, you enjoying life? Let's get you fixed up, buy you a new set of togs and put you on a boat and go sail around the world. It's your money, spend it, do something. He'd say, 'No I couldn't do that.' Okay, I said. What do you think you're going do with your estate when you pass away? He says, 'I don't care, it just ain't going to my relatives." Welke faced criminal charges the last time he took such a personal role in an elderly person's estate. The charge was exploitation of an aged person. Welke and a woman had gained legal control over an 89-year-old client's bank accounts and wound up the chief beneficiaries of her will. Prosecutors said his client had no idea what she was doing when she signed over her assets. But Welke says he did nothing more than help a woman with her finances and never spent a dime of her money on himself. In 1986, Welke pleaded no contest, paid more than $61,000 restitution and was placed on probation. He was not adjudicated guilty. In 1990, he was charged with aggravated assault after a traffic confrontation. A man told police that Welke pointed a handgun at his 5-year-old daughter and threatened, "I'll shoot her black monkey ass." Welke, who has an extensive firearms collection and sells at gun shows, said he only had a stun gun and pointed it only to protect himself. The other man was the aggressor, he said, and he made no racial comments. Again Welke pleaded no contest and received probation, again adjudication was withheld. As Welke planned how to help Chapman draft a new will, he fretted how those cases might look. He worried about "getting in the soup" over Chapman's will, he said, and consulted lawyer Peter Kersker, whom he often saw in the bar at the Yacht Club. Kersker offered to help set up a trust, but Chapman wanted nothing to do with lawyers. (Kersker said he never knew Welke had arranged for a new will until after Chapman died.) Chapman told Welke he had an old will that wasn't valid any more, Welke recounted, and that he didn't care what happened to his money. Chapman's health took a serious turn in September 1998, just as Welke says he finally persuaded him to draw up a new will. He says Chapman agreed to do it -- but only if no lawyers were involved. Welke recounted the $6-million conversation that took place inside Chapman's home: "You need to do a will, Henry." "Yeah, maybe you're right." "Well write down who you need to give some money to." "I don't ever see any of my relatives. They don't ever come by here." "Well, what are you going to do with it? You going to let the state have it?' With a laugh: "I don't care." "I do." "Well you take it.' "Fine. I'm not going to argue with you." Welke said Chapman wrote out his instructions on a legal pad, and Welke typed them up into a formal document. He has never been able to find Chapman's hand-written instructions. Under the new will, Chapman's multi-million dollar estate did not go exclusively to Welke. Various Chapman cousins received between $25,000 and $50,000, for a total of $200,000. Chapman's neighbors, Pat and James Craven, received $5,000. His lawn man, Anthony Glenn, received $500. "All the rest I give and devise in its entirety to my trusted friend and tax accountant of long standing, Larry E. Welke," stated the will, typed by Welke. Why would Chapman give $200,000 to relatives he supposedly resented so much? Welke said he could only speculate that Chapman wanted to distribute enough money to ensure no "hangers on" or "shirt-tail relative" contested the will. The document had to be notarized. On Sept. 30, 1998, Welke drove Chapman to see Fred Long, an auto shop owner on 28th Street N whom Welke knew through gun collecting circles. Fred's Garage is a place where, as one employee put it, most customers have enough money "for a bag of weed and a 6-pack," not $6-million. Long, his son James Long and employee Al Faiella remember the few minutes Chapman spent in the grimy front office. He was frail and looked homeless but seemed alert. No one asked him questions, and Chapman didn't say much. "He was just an old guy who didn't talk a lot and didn't really take care of himself. You could smell urine on him," recalled Fred Long, sitting at his cluttered desk with a cocked and locked .45-caliber Colt within reach. "But he seemed sharp, wasn't at all doddering." Had the right people known of Long's criminal record, he would not have been allowed to notarize Chapman's signature. In 1993, he was charged with dealing in stolen jewelry and stereo equipment. In 1994, he was charged with grand theft and falsely notarizing a document in a case involving a car Long bought using a fake name and then sold for scrap. Long called the charges "a lot of crap" involving "a $20 car from n-----town." In both cases, Long pleaded no contest and adjudication was withheld. Chris Schons, who heads the Department of State's notaries office, said action would have been taken had police notified his office. "It sounds likely that someone with Fred Long's legal difficulties would have his commission revoked." At the same time the will was notarized, Welke said, he had Chapman's power of attorney paperwork notarized at Fred's. But none of the three witnesses on that document remembers seeing Chapman sign anything other than a will. Nor do they recall one of the witnesses listed on the power of attorney document being present. "That's impossible. He wasn't there that day," garage worker Al Faiella said of that other witness. Two weeks after Chapman formalized his last wishes in Fred's Garage, he fell in his home, too weak to stand up. He managed to dial 911, and paramedics broke through his door. They took him to Columbia Edward White Hospital, where he was too weak to sign his name. Medical records note possible "dementia," his "severely unkempt" and "severely malnourished" condition, and infection. Within a few days, though, staffers reported him alert and talking about current events and football. He told them about family members out West. After 12 days at Edward White, Chapman was moved across the street to Greenbrook Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. Maggie Chapman, a relative in Houston, wrote a get-well letter, offering to come to Florida to help him make the move into a nursing home. Welke called her back. "He said Henry had told him to call and it wasn't at all necessary to come down; he would handle everything," she recounted. Greenbrook's new millionaire resident, always determined to save money, insisted on sharing a room and declined to pay for an in-room phone. He put on weight and dismissed people's suggestions that he consider moving to a more expensive facility. Greenbrook's food, he said, was plenty good. He would hoard supplies, refuse orders from nurses and expel staffers from his room. "He states he is having no problems and that everyone is out to get his money," one nurse wrote after Chapman belligerently refused another medical exam in April 1999. And yet he was adored for his eccentric, Howard Hughes ways. One moment, he was demanding ice cream, the next he was in the courtyard, puffing on a stogie, scouring the Wall Street Journal and cheerfully doling out stock tips to grateful staffers. Henry Chapman was found dead in his bed on June 25, 2000, after a urinary tract infection. Greenbrook promptly notified Welke. For most of the next month, his body remained "on ice" at a funeral home, with few people aware he had died. Welke said that before cremating Chapman, he arranged for a private autopsy because he suspected Chapman had improper care at Greenbrook. The autopsy found that Chapman had a stomach hemorrhage. Chapman's obituary ran in the St. Petersburg Times July 25, a month after his death, and listed no survivors. That same day, Welke notified Helen Halliwill, Chapman's cousin in Ohio. The news of Henry's death spread to Chapmans in Texas and California, who remain baffled about why it took so long to notify them. Let the relatives complain, Welke said. "I had no obligation to call them." When a man is allowed to deteriorate alone, in a dank house with little food or support, does anyone really deserve his money? Welke says he was Chapman's only real friend at the end of his lonely life. But with Welke looking out for him, Chapman deteriorated to the point he could no longer stand and paramedics had to break into his home to rush him to the hospital. Family members in California, Ohio and Texas say they worried about their eccentric relative and regularly phoned or sent cards. But most hadn't visited in years, if not decades. "I'd ask him if everything was okay, and he'd say, 'Everything's fine.' He didn't indicate there was any problem," recalled 87-year-old Frank Chapman, a cousin in California. "He sounded okay on the phone. I had no idea his weight had dropped to 100 pounds. If I had known that, I would have gone right down there." Taxes will eat up more than half of Henry Chapman's estate, but leave plenty for Welke to become a multi-millionaire. The will names nine beneficiaries. Eight of them have serious doubts about the document, including several who would make out better financially by keeping quiet about their doubts. Cousin Helen Halliwill, for instance, will inherit $50,000 under the new will, while the will from 1954 left her nothing. She joined the challenge of the new will because she's convinced Welke faked it. "It's not right for somebody to get all this money illegally," she said. Anthony Glenn, the lawn man, says he saw more of Henry Chapman in the last decade of his life than anybody else. They developed a bond, and Glenn would visit Chapman in the nursing home. If Welke were such a good friend, Glenn says, he would have seen him at least once, or would have heard Chapman talk fondly of him. Instead, Glenn says, he only heard Chapman complain about Welke, whom he suspected had stolen an old gun from his home. "He said to me, 'I don't trust him,' " said Glenn, who is "100-percent" positive that Chapman never would have knowingly signed his last will and testament in a grimy garage. "If Mr. Welke wants to get that money, he can have it. But he wasn't looking after Mr. Chapman's best interests. No way." James and Pat Craven, Chapman's Old Northeast neighbors, recall Welke volunteering to them that Chapman had no will. This was after Chapman went into the nursing home, and well after Welke prepared the will. It doesn't entirely shock them that Chapman left them $5,000. After he went into the nursing home (and could no longer easily rebuff them), the Cravens visited often and ran errands for him. But what mystifies them is the timing. He left them money in September 1998, before he moved into the nursing home. At that time, they say, Chapman had little contact with them and probably didn't even know their names. "The dates don't jive," Mr. Craven said. Contesting the will, Chapman's family contends that Welke exercised "undue influence" over him. They have made little progress. Probate Judge George Greer has declared the criminal records of Welke and notary Fred Long irrelevant to the case, because they pleaded no contest and never were formally adjudicated guilty. When the family began its challenge, Welke sought help from someone with personal connections to Pinellas probate court to assist attorney Peter Kersker: They hired Joan LoBianco Walker, a lawyer who happens to be the wife of David Seth Walker, the other Pinellas probate judge. Welke said he asked Joan Walker about potential conflict of interest problems. He said she assured him he had nothing to worry about, that Judge Greer was just as fair-minded as her husband. The Chapmans' St. Petersburg lawyer, Robert Willis Jr., says Henry Chapman's will highlights a shortfall in Florida's system of ensuring that citizens' last wishes are carried out properly. "The law is inadequate to protect the public" from self-serving accountants and other financial consultants, Willis said. He suggested Florida should follow the example of California, which forbids anyone who prepares a will from profiting from it, unless an independent attorney is involved. Welke dismisses such public policy questions, just as he dismisses Henry Chapman's relatives as greedy money chasers. He took care of his friend for years, he says, and is being unfairly portrayed as a villain. "Henry was just somebody nobody cared about," Welke said. People sure do now. - Staff writer Adam C. Smith can be reached at 727-893-8241 or
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