0:00

Hello, this is Robert Riggs. Before I start this episode,

0:04

this is a message to fans in Australia and New Zealand.

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to pick your preferred podcast app. We're developing new stories that I think you'll really enjoy. Now,

0:38

here's today's episode. The baby boomers are now getting really old, and there's,

0:50

and there's a lot of us, and we're saying, gosh,

0:55

I wonder how I protect myself from something like this. Uh,

0:58

'cause if Robert worth hundreds of millions of dollars,

1:01

couldn't get himself an aspirin, what can I do?

1:07

Investigative reporter, Steven Micho, among the Nation's best spent six years unraveling how an,

1:14

an iconic ranch was taken from a dying Texas cowboy,

1:19

a ranch where the biggest producing gas well in the United States was struck.

1:23

In 2004, the ranch and his mineral assets have amassed a $750 million

1:29

fortune. But the cowboy who once owned it and his relatives never saw a

1:36

penny. It's a case of elder abuse like none other,

1:40

according to my guest. Hello,

1:43

I'm investigative reporter Robert Riggs,

1:46

here with a longtime friend and fellow investigative journalist, Steven Micho.

1:51

You may recognize his name in the world of True Crime Micho in

1:56

collaboration with Hugh Ainsworth, another giant of investigative journalism wrote the definitive book about

2:02

serial killer Ted Bundy in 1983 titled The Only Living Witness.

2:08

In 2019, Netflix premiered a four-part documentary entitled,

2:12

conversations With a Killer. Based on 150 hours of audio recordings of their interviews with Bundy in

2:19

prison, they really got into his head. Now,

2:24

Micha is back with a fascinating look inside South Texas ranching

2:29

royal families. If you ate steak in the 1960s,

2:33

it likely came from these ranches. If you cooked with natural gas in the two thousands,

2:39

some of it likely came from there. Sadly,

2:42

people close to Texas Cowboy, Robert East, the sole era to all of this,

2:48

allegedly took advantage of his simplicity.

2:51

He died the lonely death on the iconic ranch.

3:00

Stephen Micho has written about this saga in a,

3:03

an amazingly detailed investigative book called Robert Story,

3:08

a Texas Cowboy's Trouble Life and Horrifying Death,

3:12

and Aida was horrifying. Stephen set the stage for us because this involves two

3:19

prominent Texas cattle ranching families, the King Ranch,

3:23

which everybody in Texas knows about, and the East Ranch,

3:26

which I have to admit I did not know about. Will you give the listeners a,

3:31

a history and how massive they are in the roots of these two ranches?

3:35

Well, the King Ranch goes back to the middle of the 19th century when

3:40

Richard King came down to Texas, became a steam boater,

3:45

hooked up with a guy, and made a another, uh, partner,

3:49

and made a mountain of money during the Civil War running Steamships

3:54

up and down the, uh, Rio Grande River, the Rio Grande. That's,

3:58

that's an oxymoron, the Rio Grande.

4:02

And when the war was over, he moved north from the border with Mexico and

4:09

bought a huge ranch, which became known as the King Ranch.

4:14

And at its fullest extent, it was 850,000 acres. It was a huge, huge ranch,

4:22

and the most famous, you know, ranch probably in the world.

4:25

And it was led by King's grandson replaced him

4:30

because King died young, and so did his successor of the Kleberg family.

4:37

And the K Bergs have basically run the King Ranch

4:42

since the turn of the century, at the turn of the last century.

4:45

So the Bergs are, are the one, uh, one family. The other family is that they're,

4:50

they were an interesting bunch. The Easts all came down from Illinois after the Civil War,

4:56

and it turned out that they were a farm family,

4:59

but it turned out that they had a,

5:02

a knack for taking care of cattle, for raising cattle.

5:05

And they got started about 1880 and

5:10

moved deep into Texas down towards what is now Kingsville,

5:15

and founded the King Ranch there. And it was the beginning, I guess,

5:20

of an empire. And one of the,

5:22

the King Kleberg daughters met a, uh,

5:26

young man from the East family, fell in love.

5:29

They married and began a ranch together, way down deep,

5:33

almost on the Rio Grande River called the San Antonio Viejo.

5:38

It was an old land grant that they had purchased,

5:41

and by the time they had the ranch to its fullest, fullest extent,

5:46

around the time of World War ii, it was itself 200 and some thousand acres. Plus they had other land as well.

5:54

So these were two baronial families, if you will.

5:58

And Robert was a member of the East family,

6:02

and his mother had married into the Kleberg family. So it was,

6:07

um, it, you know, it it was what you would expect among an elite. Right.

6:13

And give me a, are you listeners a sense of the scale? Uh, as I recall,

6:18

the King Ranch covers an entire county in Texas.

6:21

More than that, yeah, because the, the King Ranch,

6:23

like a lot of ranches in Texas is not entirely contiguous.

6:28

They would, they would start with 10,000 acres and then buy 10,000 acres

6:33

somewhere in the area, but they would not necessarily be contiguous with one another.

6:38

They would often that you had to, needed an easement to go from one part of your ranch to another.

6:44

So the King Ranch today,

6:46

I think even still has parts of it that are not actually physically connected,

6:50

if you will, re real estate wise with, uh, Kingsville,

6:54

which is the headquarters. And these ranches may have started out as cattle, but, uh,

7:01

oil and gas was discovered, and that really made them very, very wealthy.

7:05

Empires. Well, you know, it's Robert, the, the whole thing has changed.

7:11

You can call them cattle ranches, but you'll find very,

7:15

very few of these operations, even the huge ones like the King Ranch,

7:20

which is still a giant mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, they can't make money on,

7:24

on cattle. Uh, they, right. And, you know, it's, you know,

7:28

in that land, every cow needs about 30 acres.

7:34

So the, when you start, when you look at it that way,

7:37

the ranches have to be huge. And it's not a very lucrative business anymore because of competition from like

7:43

Brazil. So there's two other ways to make money,

7:47

hope that you find minerals on your land,

7:49

gas or oil or increasingly these ranches are

7:54

devoted to hunting, uh, south Texas deer hunting and bird hunting.

7:59

It's famous for it. And the, the, the ranch that in question in, in my book,

8:04

the San Antonio Viejo is becoming a hunting ranch

8:09

against, I'll emphasize here, the repeated, uh,

8:13

wishes of Robert East, the victim in this thing who said, who dies, of course.

8:18

And, but before his death says, I don't want any hunting on my ranch.

8:23

And that is an issue that we can get into later on. Of course.

8:27

Yeah. Let's get into, uh, Robert, his older brother,

8:31

who was really the business brains, his sister,

8:34

but Robert just it, I'm struck by your book.

8:37

He just wanted to be a cowboy on the range. Yeah.

8:40

Well, Robert wasn't terribly smart. Um,

8:43

he was the second of three children in the family. Uh,

8:48

and he, he lived much of his life in his older brother's shadow.

8:52

His older brother was a very respected and, and talented, uh,

8:57

businessman and cattleman. And there was, as Robert put it,

9:01

tension between the two, friction between the two brothers.

9:05

And the problem with Robert is, as you just pointed out,

9:09

is that all he wanted to do was get in the saddle and go out and ride around

9:13

and, and chase cattle. And the only other thing he chased was skirts.

9:18

He never, never married, but he had lots of girlfriends,

9:21

and he took over the ranch when his older brother died,

9:25

s suddenly of a heart attack in the 19 early 1980s. And Robert was,

9:30

was not equal to what was given him. Yeah. He could,

9:34

he could run a roundup, but he had, he, the business side was,

9:38

was a mystery to him. He hated leaving the ranch, and he hated, frankly,

9:43

leaving Texas. I, in six years,

9:46

I only was able to confirm him actually leaving the ranch once to go to

9:51

Las Vegas. And then a certain, on a few occasions,

9:54

he would go across the Rio Grande to, uh,

9:57

to brothels in north northern Mexico. But that was the extent of his travel.

10:02

He did not care about anything but chasing around after cows. And from.

10:06

Reading the book, he was an honor, unreal, cuss.

10:09

Yes, he was. And his, his resistance to knowing anything about the business and his honoring

10:16

us, his inability of not having emotional intelligence to deal with other people

10:20

seems to me, me to set him up for how he was taken advantage of.

10:24

That you detail in the book. Well, you're correct about that.

10:28

Robert was protected because from his earliest days,

10:32

he was jealous of his older brother. He was obstreperous, as you say.

10:37

And so the family protected him, and they were able to say, okay, Robert,

10:41

get on your horse and go out and chase around cows and we'll take care of the

10:44

business and that, and that's how we're gonna do it. But he, you know,

10:49

I, I believe he had what's been called second child syndrome that he, you know,

10:55

there, his older brother got all of the, all the attention, he got all of the,

10:59

all the good, uh, assignments, if you will. And Robert was resentful of that.

11:04

And what's important about that for this story is that

11:10

that kind of, of, of, again, as I say,

11:14

he called it friction carried over after his brother's death.

11:18

And there was a lot of ill will in the family going forward about,

11:22

well, Robert had a nephew and, and two nieces, his brother's children.

11:27

And although Robert had had control of the land,

11:32

there was no comedy, if you will. And, and Robert was not a leader.

11:37

He was, you know, he was not capable of it. I mean,

11:40

if you ask Robert what his favorite dinner was,

11:43

he'd say any Whataburger <laugh>, that was the,

11:47

that was the level of his sophistication. And his nephew appears to be smart Yeah.

11:54

Business person and really try, wants to help his uncle.

12:00

But his uncle is just so ornery, they can't come to any kind of agreement.

12:04

It's just at odds. Yeah. And there's the,

12:07

the part about it was kind of interesting is that Robert wasn't just

12:12

Ory, but he was stupid, and he was susceptible to fast talking attorneys and to a

12:19

corrupt foreman who had been raised on the ranch. Robert thought he knew and,

12:23

and trusted, but Robert, it was like he had a big target on his back.

12:28

He said, you know, cheat me. Uh, in fact,

12:32

one of his old vaqueros w was once heard to say that the only deal way to

12:37

deal with Robert was to steal from him because of his chip on his shoulder,

12:41

because of the fact he wasn't very bright. And because most importantly is that due to a lot of, of,

12:48

of circumstances, he was isolated.

12:52

And when the, when the conspirators, if you will, the wolves,

12:57

as we call them in the book, found him. He was just, he was an easy target.

13:02

He was a target. And they isolated him out on that ranch.

13:06

Out in the middle of nowhere, there was enmity with his family.

13:11

Robert liked being out there alone. And when he got old and infirm,

13:16

they moved in and, and stole his money.

13:19

Let's pause for a moment, and when we come back, we'll pick it up from there.

13:36

All right. I'm talking with investigative reporter, Steven Micho,

13:39

who's written a Robert Story, which, uh,

13:42

is really a such an in-depth investigative book of,

13:45

of tracking down how, uh,

13:49

an infirm old cowboy lost everything he

13:53

had. Um. And very rich as well.

13:57

<Laugh>, very rich. So I, I know that, I guess it's around 2000,

14:02

the biggest gas well discovery in the,

14:06

in the world takes place on that ranch.

14:08

They brought in a, well, in 19 or 2004,

14:13

that was for a time the most productive gas well in the

14:17

United States and possibly the world.

14:20

It was just enormously productive for a number of years.

14:25

And Robert, at the time, was probably worth about maybe 10 or $15 million after

14:32

the, the well came in. He measured his wealth in hundreds of millions of dollars. You know, it's,

14:38

it's one of the cruel ironies in this story is that had Robert just

14:43

been left alone, this cranky old geezer out of the prairie,

14:47

I don't think any of these con men would've had any,

14:50

wouldn't have been interested in it, because land,

14:53

while valuable is a little cumbersome to, to, to steal,

14:58

but once all of this cash was coming in,

15:02

Robert became a target. And part of the, it wasn't just to steal from Robert,

15:07

but it was to keep Robert separated from everybody else,

15:11

which contributed mightily to his death, his horrible death.

15:14

Do they target him after the discovery of the gas,

15:18

or They already moved in before. It, it already had begun, but the gas was like, wow, you know, we, we,

15:25

we thought we might make 10 or 20 million here, but it, well,

15:30

the foundation, I'll, I'll jump ahead here to, just to give you a sense of it.

15:34

The foundation that grew out of this mess lists assets of

15:39

$750 million. And that that money is almost exclusively gas and oil

15:46

receipts. Gas receipts. My God. And I take it,

15:51

Robert and the rest of the family never got a penny of it to speak of.

15:55

Well, there was a lot of fighting that went on, but it was, it, it, it,

15:59

it really never was about money or, or his, his nephew Mike, uh,

16:04

who kinda led the charge, was only concerned about Robert getting what he wanted, uh,

16:10

because it was his ranch. They, the family never really fought about money.

16:14

They fought about what, where, you know, we're a ranching family,

16:18

and especially with the death of Robert's, Robert's older brother.

16:23

And after that, the death of his sister with whom he was, he was very tight.

16:27

He was all alone out on that ranch with just his vaqueros isolated from his

16:32

family. And the old ways of,

16:34

of dealing with one another simply didn't work.

16:37

So years went by without them exchanging more than a Christmas card.

16:42

I wanna get into how they did it, how they Yeah. Got control. But first,

16:47

how did you get on the story? I know it's, it took six years. Six.

16:51

Years, yep. Working on this as a fellow investigative reporter,

16:54

I'm really impressed by the documentation and the interviews.

16:58

You've got court records, and I know how long it takes to ferret that stuff out so.

17:03

Well, especially if you're dealing in a certain type of courthouse <laugh> Oh.

17:06

Yeah, yeah. No digital. Right. How do you,

17:09

how'd you get the first cent of the story?

17:12

You may remember, Robert, that back in the eighties,

17:16

I co-authored a book called, if You Love Me, you will Do My Will.

17:20

I wrote it with my old writing partner, Hugh Ainsworth.

17:24

And it was the story of Sarta Kennedy East. Remember that name?

17:29

Oh, yes. Yeah. Right. Well, SARTA was Robert's aunt,

17:35

and back in the 1980s,

17:37

she was in her late fifties,

17:41

a widow childless and an alcoholic living alone,

17:46

isolated in her ranch, which was also huge.

17:50

And one day over the hill came a rogue Trappist monk named Brother

17:55

Leo, who was out raising money to build new monasteries,

18:00

and had been sent to Serta,

18:02

who was a Catholic and was sweet talking her out of her fortune,

18:07

half a half a billion dollars, first of all,

18:12

supposedly to build new monasteries, but secondly to relieve the suffering of the poor of the world.

18:19

And Serta went for it. And the only thing that went wrong for Brother Elias point of view was that she

18:26

died before he could put the last dot on the I and,

18:30

and cross on the T. So, uh, Hugh and I did that book,

18:35

and I said, okay, now these family, and I have, I've met them all,

18:39

and now we don't need, we won't see each other again. And then this story kind of erupted years later,

18:46

and I was strongly urged by people who were familiar with the first story to,

18:51

to return to the east family, because I'd spent so much time learning about them.

18:57

And so with the agreement of Mike East,

19:00

who survives, uh, I said, okay, I'll do it.

19:05

And so that's how it all began. Well, in 1996, Robert hired a, a ranch hand. Yeah.

19:13

Who really came to just exor. He was young, just total control over everything.

19:18

Had Robert's health, uh, in mental state already deteriorated,

19:22

or was it on the way? Well, it's interesting,

19:26

the answer to this's a little complex because Robert never was particularly

19:30

bright. So you would have trouble figuring if he was having a good day or a bad day.

19:35

He spent most of his life in the saddle.

19:39

And one of the consequences of it was not only severe bow legs,

19:44

but he could barely walk. After all. He had had a number of, of,

19:48

of accidents on horseback. He had broken bones.

19:51

He had developed various conditions that you run into when you passed 70.

19:57

And his health was deteriorating, uh,

20:01

his limited ability to think rationally and to think

20:06

in his own enlightened self-interest, deteriorated.

20:10

And at the end of his life, as Robert was sort of facing the fact that he was dying or he was going to die,

20:16

he only really ever said one or two things about what he wanted for the future.

20:21

And he wanted the ranch run the way he had always run it,

20:25

which was old fashioned. I mean, for example,

20:29

they all use helicopters down in the valley today. Well, he refused to use them.

20:33

It was all, everybody had to be down on horseback.

20:36

He was backward in that regard.

20:39

But the real core of of his existence was he and his

20:44

sister loved all of the wild animals that lived on the ranch.

20:49

They grew these huge, huge white-tailed deer ranch was famous for the,

20:54

some of the biggest white-tailed deer in the world. And poaching was a problem.

20:59

But he had no interest in the gas and oil business.

21:02

He didn't want Exxon on his land, and neither did his sister.

21:07

So, you know, he was in, in a way,

21:10

Robert had really nothing much further to say or to do. He was, he was old,

21:14

he was not well, but most importantly, he just was vulnerable.

21:19

I've learned a lot about elderly abuse in, of course, of doing this book.

21:24

Maybe we can get into that later on. But he just was this huge target.

21:29

And elderly abuse is, is generally a crime of lower middle class to,

21:34

to working class families. Robert was immensely wealthy.

21:39

He had hundreds of millions of dollars,

21:43

and he was kept out on the ranch, prevented from seeing a doctor prevented from going to the hospital.

21:50

So what were basically issues of old age were just allowed to

21:55

get better or get worse and worse and worse. And until he died,

21:59

a horrible death, as you say. During this period. Yeah. How do these people really get their claws into him?

22:05

Because a foundation is set up and in which the family really

22:10

loses control. Completely. And he loses control of his wealth. And he was so wealthy,

22:16

and yet his health was deteriorating, was kept isolated there.

22:19

O other members of the family couldn't even see him.

22:21

He could have seen the best doctors in the world.

22:25

He could have flown them in. Most of his medical care was really,

22:29

really suspect, including a woman who allegedly was a,

22:33

a doctor who was gonna live on the ranch and take care of him.

22:36

But as we write in the book, there was a,

22:40

a real question about her competence or her even her willingness to take care of

22:44

him. So it's the steep, ugly irony of him being,

22:49

you know, richer than hell and living basically a hermit's life in bed,

22:54

being taken care of by young Mexican, uh, boys, you know,

22:59

who were illegals, but they were convenient.

23:01

'cause none of them spoke any English. Right. And so there's a, we'll,

23:06

we can talk about that a little bit later. 'cause there's one hero in the book,

23:09

uh, that we can talk about who was one of these young boys. But go ahead. I.

23:13

Well, and meanwhile, there are a lot of people getting rich and what, what,

23:16

what, what is the purpose of this foundation? Oh.

23:19

Okay. Let go back. 'cause I, I did, yeah. I skipped,

23:22

I I skipped part of your question. So,

23:25

one of Robert's lawyers in the 1980s cooked up this

23:30

idea of doing a foundation. Then Robert's parents' names.

23:35

Basically, it was going to be devoted to, uh,

23:39

promoting the welfare of wildlife, specifically wildlife,

23:44

to coexist with, uh, ranch,

23:47

ranch animals on the prairie in South Texas. So it was, uh,

23:52

the idea was kind of like the deer and the antelope and the steers

23:56

will play sort of thing. Robert never showed any particular interest in this idea.

24:02

He was violently opposed to any program

24:07

of, of hunting on his ranch beyond very, very limited hunting.

24:12

He didn't like the gas and oil business. And had he had his way,

24:16

they never would've drilled and found that well, that, well that they did. He,

24:19

he, he opposed it. So what happened was,

24:25

you have this isolated old man out on his ranch. You have a, uh,

24:30

a series of unscrupulous lawyers and employees.

24:35

And one by one they got into his will and rewrote it and

24:40

established a foundation called it the East Foundation,

24:44

which exists today, uh, most certainly,

24:48

although there are no members of the east family connected with it in any way or

24:52

ever will be, as far as I can tell, and without anybody knowing it,

24:56

because of the isolation. One document after another was rewritten until at the end

25:03

of his life, Robert's nephew, Mike,

25:07

aware that his uncle was quite sick, but not how sick,

25:10

because he couldn't get to see him end up ha having to sign a document,

25:15

transferring control of the estate to these people in exchange

25:21

for the chance to finally see his uncle. In his dying days,

25:26

he signed, he signed it all the way. Um, four days later, Robert died.

25:31

And that was the, the ranch had then had gone out of the family's control entirely,

25:38

and a new regime pursuing goals that Robert,

25:42

as we discussed, had no interest in, uh, took over.

25:46

And, and the new regime, all of them become full.

25:48

All of them. All of 'em. It was the, the bunch of attorneys and some of the people who had been on the,

25:52

the ranch who had enabled some of this to go on,

25:56

got new jobs at the foundation, right. That sort of thing. But.

25:59

All, all of the young, the cowboys from Mexico that were taking care of him,

26:03

they're all basically fired. Well, everybody got fired when he died. The new management said, look,

26:09

we won't hire you illegals anymore,

26:12

and we will not even pay you for the work you've done in the two weeks since

26:16

Robert died. And, and we have consumed, we have taken over control of the ranch.

26:20

They just, uh, these are in some cases,

26:23

families that had worked for three or four generations on the ranch.

26:26

They just said, you're all gone, you're outta here. And some of them went back to Mexico.

26:31

Others were arrested and deported back to Mexico. And some of them,

26:36

Mike East Robert's nephew, was able to absorb into his, his ranch.

26:40

It was a massacre. And you said there is one hero in that group.

26:44

This is such a heartbreaking story, Robert. It's, I mean, I, you know, I,

26:48

I've been a, a reporter since, you know, since before Dirt, and I'm used to yes,

26:53

awful things, but he's, well, you know, Robert's death is, is horrible.

26:57

But one of the young men, again, who spoke no English,

27:02

put in charge of his care one night, was sleeping in the room next to Robert.

27:07

When Robert, this is, uh, Robert at this time is in his mid eighties.

27:12

He has a, a, a dream, and he dreams Robert's dreaming that he's,

27:17

he's, uh, uh, gathering cattle again.

27:20

And he is go gooing and golfing and going out the, and so, uh,

27:25

Ramiro, the young man goes into his room and gets him back into his bed and says, no,

27:29

you're, you know, you're fine. You know, and he thinks at the moment, he says,

27:34

you know, if he fell out of that crib, that bed,

27:38

I would be blamed for it, because they would say that I was not taking care of him.

27:42

So he had the inspiration of starting to,

27:45

to audiotape all the conversations. Uh, he had, uh,

27:49

he heard or was, uh, privy to around Robert. He had a cell phone,

27:53

surreptitiously. Surreptitiously. Now, the, the, what made it fairly simple for him is,

27:59

is that the Anglos who had taken over control of the ranch

28:04

didn't, couldn't tell, uh, dis disintegrate between one Mexican kid and another.

28:09

He was basically like a piece of furniture.

28:11

They didn't pay any attention to him. So he could fairly,

28:15

fairly easily tape record all of their conversations,

28:19

these things that where they were trying to talk Robert into hating his,

28:23

his nephew. And as he was doing this, he said, you know,

28:27

it's not so much thinking to himself. He says, this is not just to protect me,

28:32

but I need proof that what's going on, because he's being, he,

28:36

he's basically slowly being murdered. And it was when Ramiro finally got the tapes to Mike, and,

28:43

and Mike listened to him that the spell was broken, if you will.

28:48

But as I said, by then, it was too late. All the transfers had been made,

28:52

and they basically had to sign everything away just to say goodbye to,

28:56

to their uncle. You quoted in the book someone that said it was their belief that this was at

29:02

the least manslaughter as to what happened to Robert.

29:06

Were there ever any criminal consequences for anyone? There.

29:10

Was an investigation opened in Star County,

29:14

which is South Texas. They investigated, but without,

29:19

without any witnesses, without anybody be, you know, able to go and, you know,

29:23

and to say this or, or, or access to any of the documents at that point.

29:28

Uh, and the fact that Mike, in order to see his,

29:31

his uncle had signed away his claims to the ranch.

29:35

They had nothing to go on. They had nothing. And, and there was,

29:39

the investigation was closed, and there was never anything close to an adjudication.

29:45

Nobody was ever charged with anything.

29:48

And there have been no consequences whatsoever.

29:52

The foundation has, is now thriving as a hunting ranch.

29:57

Uh, that's where you go to hunt the big deer in Texas now.

30:00

And what do the, uh, federal filings show about that ranch in terms of the management?

30:06

How well paid are they? Well, the, the,

30:09

the c e o earns $490,000 a year.

30:14

And the members of the board are com compensated in that,

30:19

that range as well. Their, their executive, the total executive,

30:24

uh, outlay for last year was in excess of $2 million.

30:29

I, I, I can't comment on whether or not they earned that $2 million.

30:33

But they specified in the, the,

30:37

the documents for the foundation, the four members of the foundation board of directors work six hours,

30:43

I think six hours a month for several hundred thousand dollars a year.

30:48

Oh, boy. Have you received any pushback from the people you've exposed,

30:53

uh, that in how they took advantage of Robert?

30:56

You know, not a word, and I've been a little bit surprised by it,

31:00

because this is not me making up a bunch of allegations.

31:04

It's all You've read the book. Yes. It's all, it's, the facts are all there.

31:08

I mean, much of it is taken directly from their published art, you know,

31:12

they're published papers. Right, right, right. And tape recorded conversations,

31:16

you know, where, where Romero comes in,

31:19

I was concerned early on because the, the foundation or the, uh,

31:24

the ranch foreman was under suspicion by various

31:29

law enforcement agencies for smuggling immigrants,

31:33

smuggling drugs, lots of other Sure. Types of crimes on, on the,

31:38

that's border. And that's center before the cartel works.

31:41

Y y well, yeah. And so I, you know, and, and as you know,

31:45

south Texas at night is very dark <laugh>. And there's, and.

31:49

Very dangerous. And very dangerous. And so I, I, you know,

31:53

I didn't do any driving by myself after, after, after, uh, sundown.

31:57

But as it turned, no, as it turned out, no, I have not been, uh,

32:01

I have not been threatened with anything. And I hope to keep it that way. What.

32:05

Has this taught you? What have you learned about elder abuse in doing the story?

32:11

Well, Robert, you know, since I'm now 75, I, you know,

32:15

elder abuse has a little more immediate meaning to me than it has in the years

32:19

past. But I didn't even think about Robert as the victim of elder abuse

32:26

until the book was published. And the first response,

32:31

I mean the, the vanguard of the reader response was people worried about elderly

32:36

abuse and what had happened to Robert. And I, you know, part of it,

32:41

I think maybe Robert, is that the baby boomers are now getting really old.

32:45

And there's, and there's a lot of us. And we're saying, gosh,

32:49

I wonder how I protect myself from something like this.

32:52

'cause if Robert worth hundreds of millions of dollars,

32:55

couldn't get himself an aspirin, what can I do?

32:58

My first impression as I read it was that it was elder abuse. Yeah. And,

33:02

you know, the baby boomers have got all the wealth in the country right now.

33:05

Yeah. Yeah. And wow, just, it, to me,

33:09

it just signaled that you better not have Robert's personality

33:13

of being this old ornery cuss that isolates yourself. 'cause boy, do you,

33:18

do you become a target. And I then I wonder with the wealth,

33:21

especially the wealth in Texas, how many other cases of this are taking place?

33:26

I'm not in a position to extrapolate. Right. But the formula is, is really,

33:30

really, really pretty clear. Get an old person who's got a lot of money,

33:35

and their mind is, and their mind is, is, is going a little bit,

33:39

and they don't have any, you know, they're, for whatever reason,

33:42

they've been separated from their families. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, and it's,

33:46

it's easy pickings. You should, you, you, you see in the book, I've,

33:51

I've put examples of Robert's handwriting on all these,

33:54

these documents that they Oh yeah. Have him sign.

33:57

And it starts out being a fairly decent signature. And at the end,

34:02

I say in the book, it looks like a drunk an has been walking across the, the,

34:06

you've seen him, you've seen him like they're. Holding his hand. Yeah.

34:09

Exactly. Who, well, we know that they held his hand, you know, to do this.

34:13

We have witnesses who said that, but it, it was so blatant.

34:18

I mean, all they had to do was play on the schisms that had occurred in the family.

34:24

Uh, the natural, I guess then that's the fact that nobody lives next door to anybody out there.

34:29

Everybody's 500 miles from each other,

34:32

and you have a recipe for what happened to poor Robert.

34:37

In effect, this is, you, you could call it the perfect crime. Yeah.

34:41

Do you think they've, have they gotten away with it,

34:43

or do you think your book is gonna cause some law enforcement agency to dig in?

34:48

Well, we've been contacted, one problem is statute of limitations. Yes.

34:53

Which leaves out a lot of things. But there are,

34:56

there are issues that can be raised, such as, for instance, in,

35:00

in the case of fraud, the clock starts when you discover the fraud,

35:04

not when it occurred. I, I really, really doubt that they'll ever,

35:08

they'll ever charge anybody with a physical crime.

35:12

Although the person to whom you, you, uh,

35:15

referred to was Helenita Groves, who is a great, great,

35:19

great granddaughter of, the founder of the King Ranch and Robert's cousin.

35:25

And she went to see him on his deathbed and said,

35:29

your quote is that I've run around and I've seen a lot. And,

35:33

and that was at least manslaughter. And Helenita,

35:37

who is now deceased, was not given to exaggeration.

35:45

In closing, here's my reporter's recap and reflections.

35:50

People over 50 now own over 70% of all personal wealth

35:55

held in the United States. Learn this lesson from Stephen Michel's book.

36:00

If a baby boomer with a Texas fortune can become the victim of elder abuse

36:06

and lose everything, it could happen to you.

36:09

Do you have a plan and family members or people around you that you trust?

36:15

You've been listening to the True Crime Reporter podcast. Stay true, stay safe,

36:20

and stay tuned for more stories from inside the crime Scene tape.

36:26

This is Robert Riggs reporting.