Juliette Spindler for Kennebec7 (#4) Valhalla

Juliette Spindler for Kennebec7 (#4)

Valhalla

Since this blog began a week ago so many of you have called or emailed me to ask for my opinion about the disappearance of Charlotte Horne, the controversial columnist for one of America’s leading gossip magazines. Though this subject will be covered in considerable detail in my book The Pollette Saga, I feel compelled to preview some insights I’ve gleaned about the Twenty-first Century’s most talked about missing person’s case.

          Charlotte was last seen on the early morning of May 11^th a year ago. A man living on Hillcrest Avenue in Valhalla, one Abel Corrales, 55, a local storeowner, was walking his sheepdog at around one a.m. after watching late nite TV. During his walk he noticed a woman in a beige raincoat wandering in the vicinity of the secured gate that surrounds the Pollette estate.

          It was starting to drizzle about the time Abel noticed the stroller. He and his dog hurried home before the drizzle became a downpour. The police accepted the assumption that the individual was, indeed, a female because they found ladies footprints in the vicinity the next day. They nailed the point later when they checked Charlotte’s shoe size. She had more than one hundred pairs of shoes in her closet, all the same six and a half size that matched the footprints outside Pollette’s estate.

          As you know the Pollette estate is currently inhabited by Elinor MacEvoy, the former Pollette housekeeper, her 51-year-old widowed daughter, Mary Lou, and her son, the increasingly renown painter, Bobby Pollette, who had been hidden by Ernest in a mental institution for almost thirty years. Occasionally joining them at the estate are Millie Campbell, a black retired cleaning woman, and her grandson Vashon. Campbell and her grandson had been among Elinor’s staunchest supporters during her more difficult years.

          On the night that the woman believed to have been Charlotte Horne was noticed by Abel Corrales outside the Pollette gates, the only known inhabitant at the mansion was Daisy Pollette. Daisy had arrived in Valhalla less than a day earlier from France to attend her father’s funeral and to deal with legal matters concerning Ernest’s estate.

          The police cannot state for certain that the person seen outside the Pollette gates was indeed Charlotte. After all, there are plenty of women in the state of New York, I’ll wager, wearing size six and a half shoes and beige raincoats. What the cops do know is that Charlotte had visited the former Pollette gardener, one Nicholas Pachello, at approximately 10:30 the night of her disappearance. Nick may have been the last person to exchange words with Charlotte prior to her disappearance. Apparently Charlotte bribed Nick into turning over keys to her that would allegedly allow her to gain entrance to the highly secured Pollette manor.

          Nick described Charlotte as dressed in a beige coat, but unaccountably having gray hair. Charlotte is notable for her bright red dyed hair. The Valhalla police found a gray wig in her rental car the next day when the search for her began. Theories have been broached that Charlotte wore a disguise to Pachello’s so that she might not be properly identified if an issue concerning the stolen keys ever arose after Charlotte had carried out her plans.

          You see, Nick Pachello had not been officially employed by Ernest Pollette for some nine years. He claimed that Ernest had given him the keys so that he and some friends could play pool inside the mansion during one of Ernest’s long absences. Nick is not believed in this matter by the police, but neither Daisy nor Elinor have chosen to file any charges against the ex-gardener.

          It gets much, much juicier, but I can’t say a great deal more or you might not need to buy my book. (Believe me, the book is a lot hotter than this pale summary!) Reportedly, one of Nick’s pool buddies was one Patrick Gogel, who was (until he was fired) a dispatcher for White Plains Security which handled all the protection for the Pollette estate. Not juicy enough for you? Well now, it was noted in Charlotte’s computer that Pat Gogel’s brother was Mike Gogel, a young builder who had been murdered in 1999, his body dumped in the Kensico Reservoir.

          Less than one month after the discovery of Mike’s body, Daisy Pollette departed from Valhalla for Paris, never returning to the United States until daddy’s death had made it necessary. According to Nick Pachello, substantiated by Ginny (Pachello) Bugliese, his daughter, Mike Gogel had hinted at a secret affair with Daisy. Mike, apparently, was a handsome devil and a skirt chaser, despite being married, but there is no proof that Daisy had fallen for his alleged charms. Our too rich to be happy gal has left few croissant crumbs for us to follow her anywhere.

          This all happened during a brief period when both Mike and Ginny were helping Nick with maintenance of the Pollette flora. Is this the juicy scandal  -involving a love tryst and murder that Charlotte was beginning to unearth? Daisy? Anything to say? Charlotte…?

          Thanks Kennebec for giving me the blog space. Good luck with Valhalla. It’s a great script. This is a movie that should get made!

See you on the book tour,

Juliette Spindler

New Rochelle

O5/18/2010

Juliette Spindler for Kennebec7 #3 Valhalla

artist: C Twombly


Juliette Spindler for Kennebec7(#3)

Valhalla

I’ve previously mentioned the book, Black Soul, White Madness, by Messrs. Mix (one word name) and Milton Green. Mix is his street name. His birth certificate says Sidney Fauntleroy. Sidney Fauntleroy, I assume, wouldn’t sell nearly as many books as ‘Mix’. Those boys have sold a passel of books. Number Six today on the Best Seller list. I confess: I’m a bit envious. Mix is only 28, and Milton, a part-time Drama student at Montrose Community College, has just reached 30.

          According to what the authors say on the talk shows, Milton found Mix, whose numerous entrepreneurial activities included freelance writing for black gossip magazines and agenting for wannabe rap singers. Together they corralled Oscar Paige, 47, and Olivio Cardenas, 39, warders at the Pensky Center mental institution in upper New York State. The star of the book is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (‘Bobby’) Pollette, the so-called mad son of the recently deceased, incredibly rich artist-adventurer, Ernest Pollette, about whom I have written in past blogs. Oscar was Bobby’s principal warder for some twenty-five years. Olivio had become Oscar’s backup some eleven year ago.

          Bobby, who currently resides comfortably at the Pollette estate in Valhalla, accumulating his own measure of astounding fame, named his two warders the ‘O Brothers.’ He was genuinely fond of the ‘O Brothers,’ prior to getting released into the custody of his 72-year-old mom, Elinor McEvoy, formerly the Pollette housekeeper, later Ernest’s seducee.

          What did Bobby know? He had been institutionalized at Pensky at the age of nine and only released to Elinor at age 39, following Ernest’s death and his subsequent loss of absolute control over his son’s fate. Ernest and the administration at Pensky had effectively colluded in hiding Bobby for 30 years!

          Many of you have commented on the running battle of the talk shows in which I’ve been confronting the authors of the spurious Black Soul, White Madness. I have been accused by Messrs. Mix and Green (sounds like a salad) of being a racist, a malcontent because my book on the Pollettes, The Pollette Saga, Too Rich to be Happy, won’t come out for another few months, of trying to promote my book off the back of their book, bla bla bla.

          The truth is the truth; BS is BS. Warders Paige and Cardenas were keepers, no more, no less. The fact that they appear to have been marginally kind to Bobby during their 25 years controlling him, is the least that we should expect from the people who hold sway over the mentally and emotionally disabled souls housed and hidden behind the fences and bars and gates from the world. Under the O Brothers regime, Bobby frequently got into fights with fellow inmates and twice tried to kill somebody at Pensky.

          The emergence of Bobby Pollette as a genius abstract artist that has the world championing the Pensky Center’s art therapy program and the two warders, Paige and Cardenas, has much more to do with Bobby’s freedom to roam his late father’s estate, the loving care he receives from mom Elinor and his older sister Mary Lou, and of course to the Pollette genes.

          I recently had the exclusive opportunity to interview Bobby, under the supervision of Mary Lou, for my forthcoming book, The Pollette Saga. To conclude this blog, I preview that interview as follows:

JS (Juliette Spindler): Are you happy these days, Bobby?

BP (Bobby Pollette): Bobby happy.

JS: That’s wonderful. Do you like it better here than at the Pensky place?

BP: Bobby likes trees. And flowers. And birds. And butterflies.

ML (Mary Lou Patchett): And wearing your blue and yellow shorts.

BP (laughing): Bobby loves his blue and yellow shorts. Bobby loves colors.

JS: Like your dad. He loved colors.

BP: Likes daddy. Daddy love colors. Bobby love colors. Blue, yellow, orange, purple. Black white, too. .  . Red. . .

JS: You love your father, Bobby?

BP: Daddy die. Bobby paint Daddy smile in Heaven.

JS: Yes, I imagine he might.

BP: Bobby have family. Mommy, Mary Lou…. Daisy. Daisy Bobby sistah, too. Bobby love her. Daisy like a flower.

JS: Bobby, do you know where Daisy is?

BP: Daisy in Bobby’s painting.

…Tell me folks—does that sound like ‘white madness’ to you?

Juliette Spindler

New Rochelle, N.Y.

05/14/2010

Valhalla - Kennebec7

Juliette Spindler for Kennebec7

(Valhalla)

I haven’t written for free since I was about fifteen years old. I’m Juliette Spindler, the “Manhattan Spin Doctor.” I’m a regular in the newspapers here, have my own late nite TV show, and expect to be syndicated nationwide on radio next month. Watch out, Rush!

    Why am I here today? Blogging is one of the essentials in the new media. Blog for free so later you might buy something somewhere... Such as my book that will be coming out in October called ‘The Pollette Saga,’ subtitled, Too Rich to be Happy.  (It’s still being lawsuit-proofed by the lawyers.)

    Ernest Pollette seemed to the world as an almost unreal character. A dashing adventurer- genuine war hero-celebrity abstract painter—the Hemingway of Canvas. You’ve seen his elegant estate so often on TV and in magazines. Three acres of Sherwood Forest near the heart of Valhalla, New York. But the reality of the Pollettes was often a dark, murky cave in Hell.

    When Ernest made his transition to the hereafter at age 79 some ten months ago, I was assigned by the Post to cover his celebrity funeral in Valhalla. And to check out the juicy rumors that were seeping through Valhalla into Manhattan.

    His only daughter, the heiress named Daisy, would return to the States for the first time in eleven years for Ernie’s funeral. Daisy was and is a media target, a modern-day Gloria Swanson. Daisy was living outside Paris somewhere where nobody could find her. Already rich, she had been one of the Montaigne Fashion House inheritors. Her mother had been the lovely Jeannette (Montaigne) Pollette, best known in Valhalla (some say) for fabulous opium parties and for dying sensationally in a bathtub accident back in 1980.

    By the way, here’s a promotional plug for Kennebec. The company is planning a movie called Valhalla, so they’re plugging my book. Both cover some of the hitherto unknown secrets of the Pollette family.

    My editor, Zeke W. Maas, had been counting on a sex scandal to be revealed. Among other things, it was rumored that Ernie had children stashed away all over the globe because, like Hemingway, he had sought adventure in far off places like Botswana, Chile and New Zealand, to mention just a few countries he escaped to.

    “Looking for the light,” he would say. He was a mad genius when wielding a paintbrush. Color, shape and light were his gods.

    Zeke hoped I might unearth some sex scandal featuring underage boys. Funny that in one way, Zeke’s wish was so close to the truth, but alternatively, he couldn’t be further from it. As you now know, if you’ve read ‘Black Soul, White Madness,’ presently Number 5 on the Best Sellers list, having beaten my book to your bookshelves by some six months—there was a young boy. Bobby Pollette, Ernest’s illegitimate son named after Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. More about all that later.

    Charlotte Horne, you probably know, has been missing for almost ten months. The big Missing Persons case of the new millennium. The famous magazine journalist who specialized in sensational gossip, Charlotte had headed for Valhalla about a half day before me. She was last seen poking around the gates to the Pollette estate in the middle of the night, two days before Ernie’s funeral. A guy walking his dog witnessed her presence. Her rental car was found nearby the next morning.

    If the Pollette Saga were a pie, Daisy would be a one quarter slice, and Ernest, Jeannette and Bobby would each be a fifth. That leaves Elinor MacEvoy, the Pollette’s housekeeper for twelve years until Jeannette’s death in the bathtub. How big a slice should Elinor be?  I’ll let you be the judge after my next blog. It’s a juicy pie, folks.

    Some might remind me that I’ve forgotten to mention Rosalind Vasquez, the secret hot tamale Pollette daughter from Chile. I haven’t forgotten Roz; she’s actually contributed to my book. Maybe it’s worth two pies, this Pollette saga!

Stay tuned,

Juliette Spindler

New Rochelle, N.Y.

(05/08/2010)