A Life Hangs in the Balance
Geoffrey
Holdermiller
Ruskin
813-325-6811
813-567-1299
I am writing to you for help
to save what little time is left. I beg of you to take the time to read this
entire letter. This is the true story of Mechael. Happening as I write this
letter to you. Mechael took a job with a Conveyor corp. back in late 2003.
Within a matter of days the owner began to sexually harass her to the point of
causing extreme fear in Mechael. During her employment she began to see the
owner because she was too scared to stop it... This turned out to be the
biggest mistake of Mechael’s life. Some time later in the spring of 2004 his
behavior became unbearable, sometimes violent and way past the point of sexual
harassment. She decided she had to break it off. He would not stand for it and
began to harass her. It became so bad that he was stalking her where ever she
went. He threatened to slice her, threatened her children, and killed her guide
dog. Mechael called the police to file a stalking report but they never
responded.
Mechael has a disability
called Lupus Eryhematousus. Lupus is a chronic autoimmune disease in which the
immune systems turns against the body and harms healthy cells and tissues. Lupus
can affect many parts of the body including the joints, skin, kidneys, lungs,
heart, and brain. Lupus is characterized by periods of increased or intensified
disease activity, called flares. It commonly causes a nervous system disorder
which results in seizures. These seizures are greatly intensified by stress and
infections. Lupus is treated by physical and emotional rest, healthy diet, and
prompt treatment of infections, avoidance of known allergens and aggravating
factors and a multitude of different drugs. You might think of it as a “self
allergy” where the body attacks its own cells and tissue causing inflammation,
pain, and organ damage.
Mechael finally told him that she was going to
file sexual harassment charges against him. He then called the police and
accused her of embezzling funds from the company and began to destroy her life.
He succeeded in convincing the police. He told the police that she had forged
over 60 checks including her own payroll checks. Some with his signature, some
with his wives own signature, some with computer signatures, and some with
other office personnel signatures. She was charged with forgery, organized
crime, extortion, and a slew of other charges. He told her that he had
connections everywhere including inside the jail so don’t try anything.
Mechael was held for 26 days
in jail. During her stay her seizures were at their worse. The staff at Orient
Road Jail did nothing to help her, they just let her convulse on the concrete
until she was black and blue from head to toe. Later she was finally taken in
for treatment but they incorrectly drugged her causing her to have 2 strokes
and she was paralyzed from the waste down. When she was finally released they
wheeled her out to a bench and just left her. Besides all of the physical and
emotional damage she had undergone she had lost her home, most of her
belongings, and almost lost her children.
You need to understand that
Mechael is a wonderful person with a heart of gold. She is absolutely the
sweetest young woman you could ever meet. She would take the shirt off her back
to help you if you were in need of it. She was a strong woman and very
intelligent. In her short 35 years Mechael spent time in the Navy, went to
school to become a teacher, taught school, and moved on to other fields such as
a mortgage broker, construction estimator, construction supervisor, paralegal,
and office manager. To this day she still amazes me on how intelligent she
really is and how strong she is. Throughout most of these years she was the
sole provider for her family. I know it must have been difficult for her but
she was always a survivor. But now she was living in a trailer, unable to work,
and to make matters worse she had been abducted from a convenience store and
raped. She does not know positively but believes that the owner was behind the
rape also. This was her final devastation. This is when our paths crossed.
At this time her case had
been going for over a year with an incompetent public defender. The public
defender never in that entire year subpoenaed a single record from the owner to
help Mechael prove her innocence. That is when I stepped in and hired an
attorney and a private investigator. He was immediately sent subpoenas for
records and then tucked tail and ran. He knew that he was about to be
uncovered. He then sent a letter that he no longer wanted to testify and never
supplied any of the records which would have cleared her of these allegations
and he never showed up for any of his depositions. The State then offered a
plea bargain because they knew that they had screwed up. What a waste of the
taxpayer’s money. What a disaster for Mechael, an injustice that should have
never occurred. The owner was still at this time stalking her and threatened to
hurt her children if she didn’t take the plea. Mechael’s attorneys advised her
to take the plea bargain because the state was still going to try to prosecute
her. They told her that it was going to cost her a lot of money to fight it. I
and our private investigator advised her not to but she was so petrified of
what He would do to her and her children that she did so to just get it over
with. That later also turned out to be a mistake. The plea was for 18 months probation
with early release in 9 months.
Now it gets even worse. The
probation officer Irma was the same officer that Mechael had it out with in the
past when working as an office manager and the officer was harassing some of
the employees at her office. They had a mutual dislike for each other and this
officer now took advantage of her position. This Officer soon caused a
violation by withholding information from her new officer after she had moved
and she was once again arrested. This was in the early afternoon on the fifth
of January. They took her to booking where the stress once again caused her to
have multiple seizures and again they did nothing to help her. When she was
finally able to call to let us know we called the jail to complain. They said that
they would help her but instead they proceeded to yell at her and put her into
another panic only to worsen her problems. They left her in booking to suffer
in agony until the next morning’s court hearing. She was then sent back to
booking to suffer more until that next evening when she was finally able to see
a nurse, although she received no medical treatment. By the time she got to the
nurse she had so many seizures that her memory was gone. She could not even
remember what prescriptions she needed. When I talked to her that evening she
was in excruciating pain and she said that she could not even remember what I
looked like. You would think that Mechael has suffered enough by now but that
is not so. She was recently diagnosed with ovarian cancer and had to undergo
surgery for a ruptured cyst. So now she is being held without bond and not
receiving any medical care.
On Thursday of last week she
had a hearing and told her attorney to accept the 180 day offer because she knew
that she would qualify for house arrest and there was no way that she would
ever make it through probation with that officer and once again just wanted to
get this behind her. The judge agreed and for some reason put off the
sentencing for Tuesday the 17th.
In all of Mechael’s past
years I think her only problems with the law were a couple of NSF checks spent
at the grocery store to feed her children whom she would die for to take of.
Her biggest mistake in life was having an affair with her previous employer who
brought these charges against her. I still don’t understand how the states
attorneys’ office ever filed charges against her. When I first reviewed the
case I saw plain as day the sixty checks that he signed to each under oath that
Mechael had forged them. Yet it was clear that these signatures were not only
hers but his, his wives, the computers, and other office personnel. Know one
even questioned the checks that were actually her payroll checks. Was she
working for free? Sometimes I just don’t understand the legal system. Doesn’t
the States Attorney pay any attention? What amazes me more is that Mechael
asked me not to be vengeful and goes on to elaborate that everything happens
for a reason and that she knows now why this happened to her. You see Mechael
came up with a wonderful idea a couple of months ago and her being in jail just
instilled in her that much more of what our purpose in life truly is. Her plan
was to start a non profit organization called the Starfish House and the
Starfish Foundation. She told me this story that she used to tell to her Sunday
school class. It went something like this:
There once was a woman who
walked slowly along the sea shore. She stopped every so often to pick up a
starfish and return it to the sea. A passerby asked her why she was doing that
because there were thousands of starfish on the beach and she could never save
them all. Her response was that she knew she could not save them all but if she
could save just one than it was worth all of the effort. I know that this
translation is not per say but I did my best so I hope you get the point.
Tonight Misha called me and
told me her mission statement for the Starship Foundation. I feel compelled to
tell it to you because it brought tears to my eyes.
To help those that others can
not or will not help. Mainly people who for whatever reason can’t qualify for
help elsewhere. To provide short term and eventually low income housing to
people but only in conjunction with life changing educational programs, drug
treatment programs, counseling, and life skills programs. For people who are
coming out of jail, providing job recourses, clothing, temporary transportation
basically a network of 100% support available for those who truly want to
change but don’t have the support or the ability to do so. Eventually we will
have property donated in the Ruskin/Wimauma area to develop into a townhome
community with a market, daycare, community hall, schools, and its own
transportation. The residents will have to donate their own time at these
places as part of the community dues. They will also have to attend continuing
education classes, parenting classes, AA classes, and vocational classes.
Basically all residents have to continue to grow and prosper as adults. All the
services will allow these people to function without public assistance or
funding. They will also receive budgeting and credit classes and learn how to
make healthcare and financial decisions. I envision an ever-growing network of
people who had a helping hand from the Starfish Foundation each bringing their
own unique talents, ideas, and experience to the table. All anyone ever needs
is to be built up and to have the power to change. So many people that are in
jail loose everything and they need to change the people they are around and
the environment they have. Some people are not ready to change and it is
expected that there are going to be those individuals that just don’t work out.
But if just one life is saved it is all worth the effort. Can you put a price
on just one life? What about the exponentiallity of that life, for example; the
people that I helped as a result of being helped once before? One time someone
helped me and gave me and my children a place to stay and showered us with
acceptance and love and I know without that help I would not be the mom or the
person that I am know. I want to simply give others the chance that I had.
So along comes Tuesday’s
hearing and we expect to go to a quick and painless hearing and she would be
home in a couple of days. Well things didn’t go as expected and I feel that it
is my entire fault. During the entire time that Mechael was in jail I had been
sending out pleas for help and trying to get the story public and expose this
man. I even e-mailed him hoping to get him to screw up but I feel that might
have tipped him off and caused all of this to occur. What occurred is the Judge
paraphrased conversations Mechael had while in jail. The conversations that he
referred to were during a day when she was under much duress and was going off
about doing whatever it took to get her out of their. He was so upset that he
sentenced her to 2 years in a
I have a witness that will
testify that this man told her that he was going to destroy Mechael and was
also written checks as Mechael to pay for cash payrolls to the employees he was
using to construct his new facilities at that time. Also I have a witness that
knows Karpy must have an insider because he knew things that no one could have
or would have known also witness to the fact that he was trying to get her into
trouble. We also have witnesses that talked to Mechael and were told about the
situation and how bad Dan Karpy was at that time before any charges were ever
brought against Mechael. The proof is in the signatures on file in the
courthouse. Shouldn’t the States Attorney also be held liable? Do they not have
time to look at the evidence they were supplied with? Please help or at least
point me in the right direction of who can! Justice must prevail. Mechael is
scheduled to be taken to State Prison after
Sincerely,
Geoffrey Holdermiller