Willie L Douthit

[BIGSCOTT]

Garry seems to gotten caught up pretty hard and heavy into the Beale codes
and it looks like he is doing some outstanding research as usual.

last time i talked to him,(and it's been awhile) he had found some more pretty
interesting stuff on Willie but I will let him post that if he want's.

 

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[Garry]

I do have some additional documents regarding Laurence Foreman that I haven’t shared.

Previously in this thread we noted that probates existed in San Diego for both Laurence and his wife Mary. I’ve been procrastinating for over three years now.

My interest, in the probate, was piqued by the John Clarence Books in which he reported that Laurence Foreman (aka Willie Douthit) was worth three and one half million dollars.

In November of 2014, I contacted the San Diego Probate Division to see about getting copies of the probate records for both Laurence Foreman (aka Willie Douthit) and his wife, Mary Wells Foreman. The gentleman, with whom I worked, pulled both files and then called me. He said he estimated the Laurence Foreman file consisted of 500 to 600 pages. (It was probably a bit thicker than a 500 sheet ream of paper). Mary’s file was more modest and was probably about 100 pages. He said he was sure I probably didn’t need the complete packages and he felt he could go through the files and copy the pertinent pages that would provide a fairly complete picture. That is what I went with and I was very satisfied with the information he provided. (Plus it was much cheaper!)

I had grandiose plans to scan and post the images of all the documents on my web site. I kept putting it off, working on other projects and after a little prodding, I have finally decided I needed to proceed with the Douthit research with a more modest plan.

Right now, the RootsWeb site I use to post documents is down for security updating and it looks like it will take several months before everything is back up to speed, IF EVER! RootsWeb is a free site supported by volunteers and they were purchased by Ancestry.com sometime ago. I doubt that getting them back on line is a high priority for Ancestry.

I want to first tackle Mary’s probate. Mary W. Foreman died in San Diego, May 31, 1988. Laurence would live another 10 years.

Mary’s probate file is convoluted and involved a trial before it was finally settled.

There are two chronologies, one is the date the documents were filed for record with the court and the other is the dates of the events took place. I have chosen to use the latter chronology in most cases.

In the end, Mary’s will was disallowed and Laurence was assigned all of the estate’s assets.


Whether this loose document was attached to anything within the probate package is unknown. It does show how the Foreman’s wished to eventually handle their estate [January 18, 1982]. They apparently didn’t get around to putting their plan into action until later when both were having health problems. They were living at 16555 Bernardo Oaks Drive in San Diego, California. Mary W. Foreman didn’t die until, May 31, 1988.



It seems that Larry and Mary decided to try and mitigate the impact of federal and state taxes if either should die. They hired a lawyer, Clinton F. Jones, to draw up a living trust in which everything would pass to the surviving spouse. This was in May of 1988.

What Larry and Mary got was a testamentary trust in which the estate was to be divided and Clinton Jones would be the attorney and executor of the deceased spouse’s portion of the estate.
Jones prepared the document and it was signed by Mary on May 4, 1988.

Mary died on May 29, 1988 and on June 2, 1988, Jones filed Mary’s will asking to be appointed executor. It must have been about this time that Laurence realized that something was not right. He hired an attorney, George Howard, to contest the will and it is these court proceedings that provides us a window into the events surrounding Mary’s probate.

More Later,

Garry

 

[Garry]

Mary’s probate package contained four declarations, by people who were present on May 4, 1988. They paint a picture of what was transpiring the day Clinton F. Jones was drawing up the Trust and Mary’s Will.

I’m omitting one since I didn’t receive the second page. They are all similar in content and you will get the idea.

Many will recognize Willie’s brain tumor story.

I realize this is all tedious but we will get around to discussing the $64,000 question of Willie’s wealth.

These statements were given in support of the contesting the Will of Mary Foreman that Attorney Clinton Jones had prepared.











Garry

 

[UncleMatt]

Garry, thank you so much for the research you have conducted! We are ALL in your debt!

 

[whiskeyrat]

Dont recall an 1860 rock, not real sure if i am understanding the thinking above.

the airplane crash in hembrillo happened one afternoon, then doc saw Marvin to the hospital
went and found Tony, buried the gold in several stashes, around Hembrillo, and the Jornado
this took all night and doc was killed the next day, so when did he and Letha move the rock?

bs: I was thinking the rock was moved from its original spot sometime in the 30's shortly after Doc and toni found the cave. The rock is not related to victorio peak IMO.
wr

 

[Garry]

This is the agreement prepared by Attorney Clinton Jones and signed by both Laurence and Mary Foreman on May 4, 1988.



Attorney Clinton Jones also prepared an 18 page document which established the Testamentary Trust (Last Will and Testament of Mary W. Foreman) in which Mary’s portion of the estate is to be divided and Clinton Jones is to act as the administrator.

I’m only including the first page as the document is a cookie cutter version with a lot of legalese wording and probably has only limited interest for most.




Mary Foreman died May 31, 1988, about a month after Jones had created the trust. Since it was Mary's Will and trust, only Mary's signature is on this document.


On June 2, 1988, Jones filed a petition with the court to be named Mary’s executor for the probate of the Letters Testamentary.





As mentioned earlier, this must have been about the time that Laurence realized something was wrong. Perhaps Jones thought he was dealing with an old couple that he could bully into going through with the testamentary trust. He had legal documents that both had signed but he underestimated our Willie.

I mistakenly added the second sheet or Mary's will and it continues to appear as an attached thumbnail. I couldn't figure out how to get rid of but I guess it doesn't hurt anything.

Garry

 

[sdcfia]

It's always been promoted that Foreman retrieved gold from the Caballos in the 1930s, then high-tailed it to CA to live on those fruits the remainder of his life. Maybe. We know he had money in CA. It'd be interesting to look into Mary's past to see if she brought money into the marriage in 1942 - just out of curiosity as to where the dough came from.

I found the signature lines on exhibit 1, post #446, interesting. It appears they could have been signed with the same hand, with Mary's having been given some flourishes so as to appear different than Larry's handwriting. Anyway, a pretty strong effort from Mary if she indeed signed herself, considering her advanced dementia at the time. Probably irrelevant, but may as well turn over every rock.

 

[Garry]

Laurence Foreman’s attorney, George Howard is petitioning the court to void the Agreement and Mary’s Will prepared by Clinton Jones on May 4, 1988. Howard identifies the reasons for the Court to deny the probate.

I have cropped Section Five from the document. It deals with the heirs, their addresses, etc and since some are still living, I’m uncomfortable sharing that info.

This is the first document (Page 2) that hints at the value of Laurence and Mary’s estate.

It also mentions vacant property in San Luis Obispo County titled only to Mary (All of the other property was titled as joint tenants). This property’s value seems to be miniscule in the bigger picture, but it does appear to be something that Mary had before marrying Laurence. I will discuss Mary's posssible inheiritance a little later.











Garry

 

[Garry]

Laurence Foreman’s Net Worth

The following document was filed by Laurence’s Attorney, George Howard, as a supplement in the contest and grounds of opposition to the probate of Mary’s will. Laurence details his and Mary’s net worth on September 13, 1988.





For the reader’s convenience, I have added this summary to the above document. It reflects the total value of assets belonging to Laurence. It also reflects the type of holdings.

Larry may not have had quite the three and one half million dollars value that he apparently related to representatives of the ONFP but he was still worth over two million dollars. Maybe Willie stretched it a little, which I can easily believe, but it’s close enough for me!



Garry

 

[whiskeyrat]

awesome job Garry.
well, that settles it for me, Willie found gold in the Caballos mountains.
Now if we could just figure out if he left any behind.

Stories range from he left most of it in the cave, to the guys from the city cleaned it out, to his nephew laundered it into a casino, to doc took it to Victorio.

Oh and that little thing, like, where it is.

 

[Garry]

Final Judgement

Court Judgement denying Attorney Clinton Jones probate of Mary’s will, October 26, 1988. Judge assigns all of the couples’ assets to Laurence Foreman.





This largely completes the document dump of Mary’s Probate File. I want to give it a rest for awhile before eventually getting into Laurence’s Probate in 1998. His porbate may not add a lot more of our understanding of Laurence’s financial situation. We “will” run into his so-called girlfriend (I’m not sure that is a good description of their relationship) who Larry loaned a large sum of money and it appears to me it may have been unsecured and that a lot of that loan was uncollectable in the final accounting??

Garry

 

[UncleMatt]

Wait WR, doesn't this new evidence show his wealth came from something other than treasure? Why would you think this proves he found gold in the Caballos?

 

[Garry]

Wait, doesn't this new evidence show his wealth came from something other than treasure? Why would you think this proves he found gold in the Caballos?

I certainly don't believe Mary's probate proves anything about where Willie's wealth came from DEFINITIVELY! Gold from the Caballos, inheritance, good investments, etc. all of which may be a possibility at this point.

I do find it extraordinary that an individual with Willie's treasure hunting background would eventually accumulate 2 million dollars. The purported treasure and gold found by many treasure tale personalities has ended with them being penniless. Doc Noss, Jacob Walsh, Adams, Pegleg, to name a few.

We do know that Laurence was working as a baker, earnng about $900 a year in the early 1940s

This may be an entertaining exercise for some. Calculating the value of $1 in 1988 that is now worth $2.08 in 2018 and a quick multpication will give some indication of what our net worth would be in todays dollars. I think most of us would believe we were doing alright financially.



Garry

 

[Ditlihi]

Very nice, Garry! Thank you.

 

[BIGSCOTT]

Great work Garry

something else to remember is back in the day banks paid decent intrest
up to 9%, and some cd's, and certain bonds paid up to 12% you didnt have to
be a stocks whiz to make money, people said that if you kept a certain amount of money
in a bank and it didnt at least double itself every 10 years you needed to find another
bank.

 

[BIGSCOTT]

Lets say willie initiailly got away with a small amount of gold somwhere between
1 and 10 bars at 40lbs each and he just held onto them kinda for keepsakes, also
by this time it was ilegal to own gold, and we know from his book that willie had
a certain amount of paranoia, and the price of gold was locked at around $39.00 pr oz
depending on its purity $2000.00 to $2400.00 per bar, alot of money back then but
to some people no amount of money is worth getting locked up over and willie had a
job he wasnt hurting, then comes the nixon administration and lifting of the ban on owning
gold, along with it's price deregulation, gold shoots up to $800.00 per ounce over several
months his gold now would be worth $500,000.00 per bar.

 

[whiskeyrat]

Wait WR, doesn't this new evidence show his wealth came from something other than treasure? Why would you think this proves he found gold in the Caballos?

UM:
thats my story and Im sticking to it. ha ha.
besides if Willie did not find gold in the Caballos then what the hell am I looking for? Believing that Willie, and Doc Noss, and Drolte, and the Mormons, and Jack Reynolds, and the Palmer brothers (Jack and Reese), and Toni (the indian), and Buster Ward, and et all, did not find gold would kill my enthusiasm for looking for it. Then what would I do for the next 20 years?
Its hard to believe all these stories are false, especially when I have seen actual pictures of the gold bars and assay reports and talked to 2 of the people personally that held said gold bars in the pictures and assay reports.
wr

 

[whiskeyrat]

SDCFIA and NMTH:
Roger Snow asked me to say hi to you both.
NMTH i sent you a pm with a request from Roger.

 

[Garry]

I previously noted there were some dead spaces in Laurence’s residence and type of employment. When did he leave New Mexico and arrive in California, when did he leave Los Angeles and arrive in San Diego? What was his primary occupation that provided his regular income in the late 1940s until the early 1970s?

I ran across a newspaper article recently, mentioning Laurence Foreman, and it provides some additional hints regarding his chronology and yet another version of his treasure story.

The image below was previously posted in this thread but at the time I didn’t understand what Willie was trying to accomplish.

September 18. 1973 - Santa Fe New Mexican, Page 13



I believe the following newspaper article sheds additional light on his previous notice. Note that the Notice was published in 1973 and this article was published in 1977. I have extracted Laurence’s portion and transcribed it at the bottom of the article for convenience.

March 3, 1977 — Los Angeles Times, Page 3





In Los Angeles Tuesday, Laurence Foreman said, “I found that thing they are looking for in 1932 and I’m just waiting for them to drag it out and I’m going to take it.”

Foreman, 69, said he moved 56 gold bars weighing 82 pounds each, and divided the treasure with Roman Catholic priests from Mexico. But he said his own share was stolen by a group of eight armed men.

“I’ve just been laying low all this time because I knew that gold was going to surface sometime,” said Foreman, who moved to Los Angeles from New Mexico in 1934. He is a retired court clerk…..

Foreman said he would divide any gold he gets with Catholic priests from Chihuahua, Mex. whom originally helped him discover gold…..

Foreman said his gold was found in a cave in the Caballo Mountains 30 miles east of Victorio Peak but that the men who took it from him reputedly hid it in the current search area…..

And there always is Laurence Foreman’s belief that the source of all the gold in the first place was rich placer mines in the Caballo Mountains 30 miles away — mines discovered by Franciscan priests in the 1790s.

I’ll leave it to everyone’s own tastes, about Willie’s story, as to what part they believe and what part they don’t believe.

The article does indicate that Willie served as a court clerk in Los Angeles County for a significant amount of time. We don’t know when he started working as a court clerk but the, “The Gum Marker Gambling Case,” previously covered in this thread shows him as a court clerk, by at least 1953, and he apparently retired from that job. This helps to refine Laurence’s work history in my mind.

He also states he came to Los Angeles in 1934. This is only 1 year before I have found a document placing him in California? Not sure about the accuracy but we have Laurence living in Los Angeles in the 1940 census and one of the questions in that census was, where were you living in 1935. A common answer was "Same Place" and that appears on Laurence's census line. This fits with the 1934 statement.

The timeline is interesting. I have skipped Willie's chronology and activities in New Mexico in the 1930s before leaving for California. The line about his own share being stolen by eight men bleeds over into previous stories in the newspapers and from Willie's interviews.

Garry

 

[whiskeyrat]

i think my head is going to explode.