The New York Story
Craig's lies about his income and lowering of support forced Melinda to close the apartment and move back to California a year later. Morgan went to California for a few months then returned to New York to stay with friends while finding a job on May 1.
Before leaving California Morgan declared bankruptcy. She had moved to New York to take a job that failed to materialize with her then employer. She was heavily in debt and also wanted to clear up the 'loan,' money received from Craig Franklin, which was actually money he had given her in his campaign to ensure her support for his ugly strategy during the divorce. He told her he wanted to, 'help her.' Craig had forced Morgan to sign loan papers in December of 1998, never giving her another penny.
While in Misho's office, where the
'loan' papers were signed, Craig also tried to force Morgan to sign a
declaration stating he had never had sex with her. This came as a
shock since such a relationship had never been a possibility in
Morgan's mind. Soon afterward Craig came to her apartment in Los Angeles and, in fact, tried to force himself on her
sexually.
Before she left California Morgan had
answered Craig's objection to her bankruptcy, citing his attempted
fraud and taking responsibility for the pain and damage she had
caused her mother. While in California Morgan had apologized to
several friends she now realized she had harmed.
Before Morgan moved in with John they discussed a number of issues. John confessed that his life had gotten out of hand and he needed help putting himself together. He asked Morgan to help him and offered to pay her. Morgan told John she wanted to get her resumes out and get a job.
Their agreement was as follows:
Morgan would move in. John would pay her to help him confidentially get his life in order. John would pay for all utilities and rent as well as paying Morgan for her assistance. He also agreed to pay for her medical and dental needs.
Morgan would be free to pursue a career outside the home.
They would work on their relationship.
At the time Fund knew John Connelly was working on an article about his relationship with Morgan. Talk Magazine Editor, Tina Brown received a threatening letter from Fund's attorney.
Why would Fund have asked Morgan to move in? Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. John asked and then demanded Morgan help stop the article from being published. Morgan refused to lie, she just listened.
Morgan immediately discovered that John had understated his problems.
The electricity was turned off. The phone was turned off. The cable was turned off. The water was turned off. The rent had not been paid for five months and he was being threatened with eviction. His office at the Wall Street Journal was also filled and needed to be cleaned out. The answering machine was filled with messages from creditors, including the IRS. [A transcript of Fund's answering machine tape will soon be converted to transcript and available as an audio here.]
The place was piled up to several feet in places with trash and papers and dirty dishes and clothing. The bathroom was unusable; the bath tub was caked with filth so that you could not see the porcelain. The toilet was caked with feces. The floor was crawling with vermin. Nothing was clean.
The kitchen was unusable. The refrigerator was empty except for decaying matter. The freezer compartment was crawling with a blanket of vermin. The sink was full of dirty dishes, caked with food, crawling with what must have once been vermin. That was now covered with a layer of dust.
There were mouse feces on the bed,
which had no sheets.
Morgan dug in and cleaned the place. This took her several weeks of 40 hour days. On top of cleaning the place she needed to put together a filing system for the piles of papers, obviously important, that was layered in with trash and dirty clothing on the floor.
In the mess, along with the multiple checkbooks from multiple accounts and banks, Morgan found $30,000 in uncashed checks, some dating from as long as ten years before. John told her to throw them out. John told Morgan she could have them if she wanted. He called them a little bonus but added that they were no good now. Instead, she put them in the desk, determined to see if they could be cashed.
At the same time Morgan prepared a
resume. Morgan sent out to prospective employers. Morgan put the
house phone number on the document.
Morgan immediately began having problems with John over his finances. John would forget to pay bills and utilities would be turned off. Soon John told her to write the checks herself using his accounts. He sat down with her at the newly visible dining room table and taught her to sign his signature.
During the cleaning process Morgan had
found things that confused and surprised her. She found multiple
check books for different accounts. She found multiple social
security numbers, all for John. She found IRS forms that were made
out for other people. John told her the check books were for
accounts he had abandoned because he had lost the check books in the
mess and had been unable to find them. He did not like discussing
this. He told her to use them to write checks so this she did.
Morgan wrote no checks not previously discussed with John.
John began battering Morgan during the
ALEC Conference on August 6, 2001.
After Morgan finished cleaning the apartment, buying new furniture from Ikea and assembling it for their use. She paid for the furniture using her American Express card. They began spending every Sunday at the Wall Street Journal so Morgan could clean out his office and storage areas there. On several occasions they ran into Paul Gigot and others while so occupied. Morgan has 80 CDs with documents scanned in from these sessions.
The battering continued without end, growing ever more severe. John never apologized. He told Morgan it was necessary for him to hit her to retrain her. He started limiting who she could talk with or see.
Morgan, as John requested, had spent her savings on outfitting the home and was out of money. She had expected to be working soon and to be reimbursed and paid for her work.
She repeatedly asked John to write her a check for the accumulating total but he would never find time. Morgan kept a running total of her hours and expenses.
Finally, John sat down with her on the couch and showed her how to duplicate his signature and asked her to handle writing the checks.
The clean-up at the Wall Street Journal was finished on September 9th, Sunday. The article by Connelly had come out three days earlier, on September 4th.
After the publication and before September 11th Morgan let the answering machine take the message as Craig's excited voice offering to, “help John 'get' Morgan.” Morgan erased the message, hoping Craig will just go away.
September 11, 2001
Morgan was supposed to be at a bankruptcy hearing in California but received no notice of the hearing. Craig's attempt to force Morgan to pay was dismissed by the court in January, 2003, after several more attempts on his part. It is likely that papers turned over to the DA in New York included papers making it appear the 'loan' was not discharged in bankruptcy. Craig would have known, given his legal background, that the papers he was producing would not have withstood an inquiry by the DA's office in New York.
In early October Morgan was seriously looking for work. The apartment was cleaned up and offices in New York were getting back to a more normal state. John suddenly told her she could not use the phone. He had the calls changed to his office and sometimes took the instrument to work with him. Morgan could not get her work related calls.
John told her that the only person permitted to call her was her friend, Arthur Prager.
The abuse grew worse and the psychological abuse increased as well.
Morgan would discover receipts from dinners and hotels where John had gone with other women. She heard phone messages from other women. John, a computer illiterate, needed Morgan to get on line at home. He left love letters from other women strewn around the house.
In early November, after a particularly bad battering, Morgan called the police and reported John for domestic violence.
John used his friends in the Jersey
police to evade charges and continue the abuse. John told Morgan Bret
Schindler, then the mayor of Jersey City, was a good friend and would
make the charges disappear.
During this time Melinda intervened. She talked to John several times and told him that if she did not hear from Morgan every eight hours she would call the police. She said the violence had to end. She and another witness had each, independently, heard Morgan being battered over the cell phone Morgan would drop when Fund entered the apartment.
In mid-December John asked Morgan to
marry him. There was a short honeymoon period when the beatings
stopped. Morgan and John
agreed that they should move to Manhattan. Morgan looked for an
apartment. John told Morgan to also look for the ring she wanted.
Melinda agreed to sponsor the wedding in Santa Barbara and made arrangements.
Then, right after Christmas, John began beating Morgan again.
At John’s request, Morgan had gotten him a credit card on her American Express card. She later discovered he had taken Gail Heriot to a hotel and an expensive dinner using this very card. Gail proved herself to have a romantic side.
John came home and again battered Morgan.
Learning of this, Melinda canceled the wedding.
Morgan and John sat down and agreed John will write Morgan the checks for what he owed her. John asked Morgan to write them as he sat next to her.
Melinda tried to talk to John about
his behavior. A conference call took place, requested by John. John asked Melinda to write an agreement and suggest an
amount to compensate Morgan. Melinda agreed.
Going over actuarial tables on line for award damages for the loss of fertility and long pain and suffering, and the work Morgan has done are worth she came up with the figure of $1,250,000.00. Knowing Fund would never agree to that much she checked out how much it would cost to keep Morgan going while she looked for work and pay her medical and dental bills. The amount was $100,000.00. Fund would later characterize the proposed amount, small given the damage done to Morgan, as "extortion" in the civil trial. The trial, if it can be characterized as such, raised more questions about the legal system in New York.
Morgan was vomiting blood and in
constant pain when she finally moved out.
The day after Morgan left, January 14th, John hunted
her down and moved in with her in Manhattan.
Morgan found she was expected to
return to Jersey to clean his apartment because he said he was
having a nervous breakdown and could cope. He threatened to throw
himself out of the window at the Manhattan Institute. He wrote
suicide notes to people, including Andy Frankel, his oldest friend.
John apologizing for ‘doing bad things.”
One morning a group of Morgan's friends came by to see if she would like to go out to breakfast and surprised Fund who was with her at the time. The group included her landlord Caroline Marshal and her husband Mohan Shah, a prominent Indian businessman. This occurred after Fund stopped the checks and was telling his associates Morgan was stalking him.
His behavior became more and more bizarre.
One one occasion he burst in the door and threw himself in the floor sobbing because he had been fired from the Wall Street Journal. Morgan tried to comfort him.
Morgan discovered John stopped payment on the checks he authorized for her a few days before. John then forced her to write a letter saying she lied. Morgan wrote the letter, trembling, afraid of yet another beating. Fund dictated very word. As soon as she could get away Morgan immediately called her mother to tell her what John had done.
She complained to the banks, explaining the circumstances. She was stonewalled. She discovered o John is claiming she stole the money and had gone to a woman friend high up in management at the bank. Now she understands why he has forced her to sign the statement.
John moves in with Morgan. She is expected to provide food for him, clean for him and continuing commuting to Jersey to clean there.
On February 19, 2002, just before her mother arrived, John again battered Morgan.
Melinda calls from the cab, just five minutes away. John runs for the door, leaving Morgan bleeding and bruised. He leaves the scene of the crime, going immediately to his attorney where he writes a retainer check, No. 2009, for $5,000.
At first unwilling, Morgan reports him to the police. Photos are taken.
John is finally arrested while hiding in the men's room at the Manhattan Institute.
An Assistant DA is assigned to the case. His name is Eric Arnone.
Soon Arnone tells Morgan he cannot get possession of the file. It is on Robert Morgenthau's desk and Manhattan's DA will not release it. Arnone tells Morgan during a call one Friday that he is starting to believe her about someone pulling strings to get Fund out of the charges. The call took place on a Friday. The next Monday Arnone was replaced by Bonnie Saard. Morgan was told Arnone quit the DA’s office, but he was still there.
The police announced no photos were taken. The police report in Morgan's possession refutes this. The copy given to Morgan is copied by Gene Gaudette of American Political Journal and appears on line.
Morgan and Melinda believe the legal system will do its job but their belief fades over the next two months. In December, 2002, the DA's office announces it will not prosecute Fund.
In retrospect, what happened became
clear. Fund brought used his contacts politically and in the media
and business to persuade those in positions of power he was being
framed. He got journalists who would have covered the story hired on for more money. He confided in those he sensed would be flattered to be treated as intimates. He seduced women into helping with compliments and help with their careers.
Fund was always looking for what favor would get him what he needed. To accomplish the goal of destroying the credibility of the two women Fund also solicited material from people whose relationships with Morgan and her mother could lend credibility.
The two men were Craig Franklin and Eugene Volokh.
Morgan and Melinda found this out through a sympathetic contact in the DA's office who went through the file, giving them the names. They were never allowed to see the letters, a right guaranteed to those accused under the Constitution. To this day these letters continue to be withheld. Attempts to FOIA the letters, by them and by the media, resulted in stonewalling by the DA's office.
Why would these two men write letters containing libelous accusations?
Each man wanted something. Volokh wanted to be published in the Wall Street Journal. Franklin wanted to destroy Melinda because she had forced him to face his disabilities, making him look at himself as he actually is. She also stood as a block in the way as greed incited him to imagine living out his perverse sexual fantasies.
