Last night I watched an hour long special on Bernie Madoff. Several of the interviewed people used the word "sociopath" to describe Madoff. However, if you read the description I gave below, maybe the correct term would be psychopath. He was very organized, charming and had a very normal looking life for a wealthy person. He also had no concern for his victims. The unusual thing about Bernie Madoff is that his victims were wealthy people who were duped. This is part of the reason his actions are so news worthy. If the victims had been poor working people, the news media would probably have ignored the story.

However, as in my dealings with psychopaths, Bernie Madoff left a lot of damaged lives behind.

BACK TO MY STORY
I went back to my office and called Dan Gane. I had always considered Don to
be one of the more reasonable, rational people I had met while I was at Gamma Supplies and I was hoping he might be able to have reason prevail. I explained in my excited state the offer I had made to Gamma Supplies and the stated reason for their rejection. I toldhim I was interested in peacefully settling this matter, and I would go on my way and Gamma Supplies would not have to worry about me in the future. Dan said he would convey my message, but he didn't think it would do any good.

By now my emotions were running out of control. I was furious that “they” had
rejected my offer and preferred war, and at the same time I was scared because I
knew “they” could not just leave me alone. In rejecting my offer for the consulting
contract, “they” were declaring all out war, and at the same time they had totally
eliminated any attempt to go the Tenneland. I left work hurriedly and went
home to talk to Anita.

I had been keeping Anita informed of what was going on at Gamma Supplies, but she very little help in terms of advice on what to do. My emotions were so out of control that I would shout at her instead of rationally discussing the issues. As I talked to her the one thing that became clear was that she didn't want me to take the Tenneland job. It was also evident that my fear was becoming contagious and
she was beginning to react to situations in a scared manner. Soon I was trying to
calm her and trying to alleviate her fear that “they” might try to block the sale of the house. When I saw how frightened she was becoming, I decided to try to keep things more to myself. That was particularly difficult because of the hyper state that I was in.


PHONE TERRORISM

That evening I called Paul Jones and informed him that I thought it best that I didn't accept the Tenneland offer. He said he was sorry to hear that and then hung up. Immediately upon hanging up, the phone rang. I answered and there was just a dial tone. I hung up. About thirty seconds later the phone rang again. I answered again and again there was just a dial tone. I hung up and turned to Anita and said, “It is just like at work. It's them”.

Just then the phone rang again so I motioned to Anita to answer it. She slowly picked up the phone and got the same response that I had gotten – a dial tone. She just looked at me with a terrified look on her face and hung up the phone. From that point on, I became terrified of the telephone.

With my rejection of the Tenneland offer and Gammma Supplies' rejection of the consulting contract, I considered myself at war with whomever had set me up as a witness in the law-suit. I spent time at home documenting as much as possible what had happened during the previous seventeen months at Gamma Supplies, and I spent most of my time at work getting ready to leave. I had handed in my letter of resignation in the first week of December and my last day of work was to be December 14, 1977. I dreaded each and every day of those two weeks because Gamma Supplies' plan seemed to be to create as much anger, anxiety, paranoia and fear as possible. Every action done by people at Gamma Supplies was designed to keep my emotions running out of control.

Almost daily, Darth or someone else would do something to make me angry. The
actions ranged from minor comments made by Jay and Carl concerning my status at Gamma Supplies to more serious actions like those of Jeff Teller. Jeff had been out of work for a couple of days with a virus and when he came back to work he said the doctor had told him a serious illness had been going around that affected the throat and respiratory system and that it was important to get antibiotics immediately to prevent serious complications. I told him good luck and to be sure to stay far away from me because I didn't need to get sick.

The next day Jeff came into my office and started coughing. I asked him to leave, but he just stood there and coughed more in my direction. I was furious and yelled at him to get out of my office, but he ignored me. I didn't know what to do. I felt like hitting him, but since I couldn't do that, I pushed my way past him and rushed out of my office. Jeff followed in close pursuit, coughing all the time! Finally, I lost him but the situation was absurd beyond description. Here was an ill man deliberately coughing on me apparently in the hope that I would catch the virus. With the extreme stress I was under, catching such a virus could have serious consequences.

With all of the other excitement going on, I had forgotten to notify Costeal that I would accept their offer. I was not really looking forward to working at Costeal, but the job helped solve two major problems. First, Costeal would move my belongings by the end of the month. That meant I could close on the sale of the house by the end of December. Second, Costeal was located in Louisville, the home of the Better Supplies' attorneys. That meant I would be near someone I thought I could count on being an ally against whoever was behind the Gamma Supplies' scheme. The sooner I got a statement in writing, the sooner I would feel better. I made a call to Cruz Little, but he refused my call since I was still a Gamma Supplies employee. Idecided I would contact him after I left Delta Oil and was living in Louisville.

I was also looking for anyone associated with Delta Oil who would support me and my
story in the future. George Hammond seemed like the best candidate. George had been Vice President of Sales at Gamma Supplies and been give the G. T. Cline award for outstanding service the previous February. Then under the direction of Darth, George had been driven from the company in the fall. I thought if anyone was bitter about their treatment at Gamma Supplies, it would be George.

I left work early one afternoon in order to call George from my home. Mrs. Hammond answered the phone and I asked to speak to George. She informed me that he was visiting his brother and would not be back until Christmas. By then I would have have left the area which would make it very difficult to get together with him. I still had not identified myself to Mrs. Hammond, but I continued to ask more and more probing questions which she answered with candor.

Finally I said. “Look, my name is ***** ***** and I worked with your husband at Gamma Supplies. You don't know me , but it is important that I talk to your husband.”

Mrs. Hammond calmly replied, “Oh, I knew who this was.”

When I asked how she knew me, she just ignored me. I don't know how she knew me or how she knew it was me on the phone since I had never met her, but it seemed as if she had been expecting my phone call. At that point I decided it would not do any good to talk to George, so I thanked Mrs. Hammond for her time and hung up. This would not be the last time someone knew of me before I ever met and/or talked to them.

The last few days at work were spent getting my personal item from the office. A computer print-out catalog of all of the Gamma Supplies formulas which I kept in my office disappeared, but that didn't bother me since I had another copy at home. One evening I was going over a list of things with Anita that needed to be done before I left Gamma Supplies. I told her there were two things that I really wanted to take with me from my Gamma Supplies office, but I didn't know if I could get them out before I left. One item was an antique rider-beam balance that was no longer used and was in the office closet. The other item was a set of books on chemistry which I felt I could use in the future. I told her that I would try to get the items the next day.

The next morning I was sitting in my office when Darth walked in. He didn't even look at me. Instead he walked right over to my closet and stared at the rider-beam balance sitting on the upper shelf as if he were checking to make sure it was still there. After peering in the closet for thirty seconds, Darth finally faced me, looked at my books and then knelt down at my bookcase and started going through my books.

Finally I said. “Can I help you with something?”

“I just looking for the book on urethanes.” He said.

I reached down, picked out the book and handed it to him. He flipped through it and thengot up and walked out of the office with the book. It was the only time in the year and a half that I had been at Gamma Supplies that Darth had asked me for a book. The coincidence was too much and his actions had been exaggerated. The implication was obvious.“They” knew what I was planning to do and “they” were creating anxiety and fear by letting me know through the use of suggestion. The actions seemed so absurd, and I kept wondering why things were being done in such a manner.

That evening I was using Anita as a sounding board and thinking out loud.

I said, “OK, they set me up as a witness, got my testimony and then dumped me. But that is stupid because I can always come back and testify against them if the Judge's ruling doesn't hold up and the case goes back to trial. Unless they plan to kill me.”

Then I realized that there was a second possibility. “They are going to say I'm insane; that I don't know what I'm talking about! That's what Darth meant when he said no one will ever believe me. That is why all the effort is being made to create fear and anxiety. That is stupid! I have documents to support what I say. But then this whole thing has been stupid.”

There is an old saying which goes “What is the difference between ignorance
and arrogance?” The answer is “I don't know” and “I don't care”. In the following years I debated with myself about whether my captors were just stupid or insanely arrogant.

Anita sat there with a blank look on her face and said nothing. The pieces all fit into place. I had been set up as a witness. They had my sworn testimony in my deposition and the cover-up on how my testimony was obtained was to say I was crazy. It all seemed so neat except for one minor technical difficulty. I had not signed my deposition and I had not given the power of attorney to anyone. That meant my testimony was of questionable value as it was. Since Gamma Supplies had signed my name to other documents without my knowledge, it was important that I make it know to Cruz Little as soon as possible that I had not signed my deposition. It was important that I get everything in writing while I still could remember details. After all, part of their plan was that I would not be able to remember facts and details about what had been done. And of course, as Darth said “they” wanted war! And this was war.

I did not want war. No sane person wants to take on what I thought were corporations over anything. There is no way an individual can win that war. In the Karen Silkwood case, she lost her life and it took fifteen years before her heirs won a lawsuit in which the compensation was so small that the attorneys said that it wasn't worth the effort. And in the battle with the tobacco industry, tobacco executive Jeffrey Wigand lost his wife, family, health and retirement compensation. The American system is designed to make sure corporations do not lose. And I was smart enough to know that and I did not want war with big corporations. I also didn't know at this point that big corporations ultimately were not the real source of my problems. Things were actually worse than I realized!


Chapter III

The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing. Ultimately, after endlessly repeated rebuffs, it succeeds. This is one of the few points in which one may be optimistic about the future of mankind, but in itself it signifies not a little. Sigmund Freud


The week before Christmas, the movers picked up our furniture and took it to Louisville. We made arrangements with our attorney to close on the house on December 27, and gave him the power of attorney in our absence. Anita and I then began our trek to Scranton, Pennsylvania to spend the holidays with my parents. I was scheduled to begin work at Costeal on January 9. I could use the two weeks of rest, but I really needed longer. But since I wanted to get something in writing before I forgot the details, I wanted to get to Louisville and start work as soon as possible.

The weather for the trip to Scranton was atrocious and we had to stop in Indiana the first night because of icy roads. There was a strong wind and near blizzard conditions which made driving impossible.

The next day we continued our trip and stopped in Louisville for a brief visit at Costeal. I took the opportunity there to call Cruz Little again since I was now no longer a Gamma Supplies employee. Mr. Little was not in so I left a number with the secretary where I could be reached in Scranton.

We arrived in Scranton late on December 23rd. We had not even given Christmas
gifts a thought since things had been so hectic. That evening Anita and I sat down and made a shopping list for the next day. Early in the morning, we began a full day of Christmas shopping for my relatives and Anita's family.

The festivities of the holidays helped take my mind off Gamma Supplies. Still, now that I was in a non-hostile environment I was surprised at how much anger and anxiety I had. Some nights I would wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. It was becoming obvious to me that my experience at Gamma Supplies had taken a greater toll on me that I had initially realized.

Christmas day was pleasant, but my mind just was not on what was going on around me. Despite the gift giving and festive mood, there was always that underlying feeling that things were not good. Also, during that Christmas I could sense that my parents were concerned about my well-being.

Christmas day was pleasant, but my mind just was not on what was going on around me.
Despite the gift giving and festive mood, there was always that underlying feeling that things were not good. Also, at the Christmas I could sense that my parents were concerned about my well-being.

The following day in the afternoon of December 26th I received a call from Cruz Little. I informed him that I had some information relevant to the ongoing litigation between Gamma Supplies and Better Supplies and that I would like to speak to him in some detail concerning that information. He said he was interested but was not sure what was the best route to take. I said I would think about it and would get back in touch with him.

Since I needed some legal advise, I contacted an old high school friend who was now a practicing attorney in Scranton and sought his advise. We talked business over dinner with our wives present. My friend Chet told me the best thing to do was to make a formal statement and to have my attorney present. Then Chet, whom I consider a good friend, gave me some advise.

“Russ, you know revenge can be costly.”

I replied, “You don't understand Chet. Maybe part of this is revenge, but they won't leave me alone. To them I'm a RUNAWAY SLAVE and they won't be happy until I'm not any kind of threat to them.”

I left that evening feeling for once that I had received sound advise and that I knew the best course of action to take.

I spent the first week in January organizing documents concerning Gamma Supplies and preparing for my new job at Costeal. Unexpectedly on Wednesday, January 4, I got a phone call from Dan Gane. My mother answered the phone and at first I was reluctant to take the call, but then in a moment of optimism I decided to talk to Dan. He said Darth had asked him to call me and tell me Arnold Cline and Darth wanted me to come back to Gamma Supplies and that Darth wanted to come to Scratnon to talk to me. I didn't know what to say, but I assumed Dan called because they knew I would not talk to Darth. I had not told anyone at Gamma Supplies about the Costeal job, but I was sure they knew. I asked Dan for some details. He said Darth would fly into the local airport and then drive to to meet me. Since I was still confused as to why Darth would come to Scranton, I continued and went along with the plan. “You know the only reason Darth wants to talk to me is because I'm a threat to them”.

Dan totally ignored my comment and then continued by saying “Darth wanted to fly in on Monday, January 9th”! Suddenly I knew the real purpose of the call. “They” were still harassing me. “They” knew I was to begin work in Louisville on that date and they were creating an impossible “no-win” situation. I decided to call their bluff. I said Monday would be fine and that I would be waiting on Monday to talk to Darth about returning to work at Gamma Supplies. That concluded the conversation.

Of course, Darth Korey nor anyone else from Gamma Supplies ever showed up at my parents house to talk to me on that Monday or on any other date, but the conversation did serve the purpose of letting me know that my every move was being monitored.

I started work at Costeal with great apprehension. Not only was I afraid of more harassment and terrorism would occur there, but I also had caught the same virus that had caused Jeff Teller to be so ill. At least the symptoms were the same as the ones that he had described. I was not feeling well when I began work on the first day, but I couldn't call in sick. Since I did not know anyone in the area I had no easy way to find a good doctor. Since in the past I had always been able to fight off illnesses quickly, I decided to let the illness run its course.

My worst fears were realized at Costeal when the strange events involving the workers there began to happen. I was beginning to understand what Darth meant when he said no one would believe me. I was now in a fight to preserve my veracity and my sanity. I started keeping a daily diary in which I documented events and the people involved. A rational person would have a hard time explaining the events that I was describing in the diary unless they accepted the fact that peoples actions were being orchestrated to make me sound and look paranoid and schizophrenic.

One incident which involved almost all of the personnel at Costeal technical center occurred in late January. There had been a severe ice storm in the area and most roads were virtually impassable. As a result, I was about twenty minutes late arriving at work. When I walked in the door, all the lights were off and no one was present. I walk into the coat room to hang up my coat and found about a dozen coats hanging on the hooks and I recognized the coat of my boss. Yet, when I walked into the office area, no one including my boss, was there and there were no lights on. I walked back to the lunch room and an adjoining room and they were empty and dark. Finally, I walked into a small laboratory and there I found three workers standing there.

“Where is everyone”? I inquired.

“I guess they are late because of the storm,” was the reply. I was suspicious. Something was going on. I counted at least a dozen coats and yet I could only find three people. I exchanged pleasantries and then left and walked back out to the main office. The scene I saw left me stunned. All the lights were on and everyone was busy working as though they had been there all along! I just couldn't believe someone had gone to all that effort to shock my nervous system and to make me look crazy. It remind me of something out of a grade B horror movie. It was like the scene where the rich old aunt walks into a room and finds a body hanging from the ceiling. She runs out to find help and when she returns, the body is gone! She must be crazy. Whatever the purpose was for the orchestrated event, the
result was an increase in my anxiety and an increase in the flow of adrenaline.

Events like that became a daily occurrence at Costeal as did the continuing harassing phone calls. The incidences would always involve a couple or almost all of the workers there. On one occasion I went into the lunch room and found several men eating, but no women were present.

“Where are the girls today?” I asked.

“They all went out for lunch today.” One of the workers replied. No one else said anything else.

I sat down and started to eat lunch when another male worker came in and asked the same question I had asked. This time the same worker responded, but I noticed his response was loud, deliberate and seemed artificial. I thought no more of it and continued to eat my lunch. A few minutes later, I got up to get something from my desk in the office area. When I returned to the lunch room a minute later, there sitting at the tables were all of the office girls eating lunch. No one said anything and by now I didn't question such actions. I had been conditioned at Gamma Supplies that when I questioned such things I was either given a ridiculous rational or I was ignored.

These events were meant to create fear, anxiety, worry and paranoia. I was slowly beginning to loose my ability to rationally analyze a situation and my mind was beginning to conjure up all sorts of irrational scenarios. The absured orchestrated actions created stress and triggered my defense mechanisms which meant the actions generated the flow of adrenaline.

As an added note, I called the company Costeal here because this company produced nothing original. They merely copied successful existing products and then copied them and sold the product through a large retail outlet like Sears. My orginal assignment there was to retroengineer an adhesive on a press and stick shelf paper.
Once the adhsive was copied, Costeal could then produce an identical product and sell it through some retail chain. Costeal had no direct sales to the customer through their own stores or outlets.

One incident which was meant to raise fear and anxiety involved the taking of my
picture. One day two workers were talking about a light meter they were holding when they walked over to a couple of feet of me sitting at my desk. They pointed the meter in my direction, made a couple of remarks about the meter reading and then walked off. Later that day I was sitting at my desk working when I happened to look up. There across the room, standing at about the same place the two workers had been with the light meter, was one of the workers pointing a 35 mm camera at me. I quickly put my hand in front of my face and got up and walked away.

The next day there was a birthday party at lunch for one of the employees and a similar type of incident involving picture taking occurred. My first reaction was fear and the thought that “they” wanted a picture of me. If I had thought about it, “they” had all my photo albums in storage plus, they could have taken my picture many times before without my knowledge. But the visibility of the incidences was meant to raise my defense mechanisms and make the adrenalin flow without actually physically or verbally threatening me.

In addition to all of the psychological stress I was under, my physical health was rapidly failing. I was running a fever and my throat was constantly sore. In addition to my sore throat, my throat felt constricted and I was having difficulty swallowing. My condition continued to worsen until one day I back to the motel from work, laid down and started to experience severe chills and fever. At that point I knew I had to see a doctor.

Since I did not know anyone in the Louisville area, I had to find a doctor through the people at work. The next day a coworker recommended a doctor whom I called immediately for an appointment. The following day I saw the doctor who diagnosed me with a severe throat infection. He prescribed some antibiotics and told me to come back in two weeks. I felt my illness was a lot more serious that the doctor indicated, but I accepted his judgment that the antibiotics would clear up the infection.

I took the medication, but for some insane reason I continued to go to work everyday. I tried to get as much rest as possible, but getting rest at the motel suddenly became difficult. First, the temperature in the motel room became noticeably colder. It was the middle of January and we had no heat in our room. My wife complained to the motel manager, but it did not do any good. On one occasion I decided to go to bed early but the blaring of a radio kept me awake. After trying unsuccessfully to locate the radio, we called the front office and the manager admitted that he had “accidentally” left the radio on in the laundry room. He said he would turn it off. An hour later and two phone calls later the radio was still blasting away. Out of complete frustration, I got out of bed, got dressed and went looking for the laundry room. I finally found the radio in an empty laundry room blaring at full volume. I turned it off and returned to bed wondering if the whole incident hadn't been planned to deny me precious sleep. I finally got to sleep around 1:00 AM!

My physical condition continued to deteriorate and now my throat was visibly swollen to the point that I could hardly eat anything. Finally I returned to see the doctor. This time the doctor expressed serious concern and decided I should take a different, more powerful antibiotic. He also made an appointment for me to see a throat specialist, but that appointment was not for another two weeks.

By the time I saw the throat specialist, the infection was “under control”, but he warned me that if I didn't get some rest, the problem would probably reoccur. With that diagnosis, I decided I had to leave Clopay and get my physical health back.

The people at Closteal seemed to be aware of the fact that I did not intend to stay there very long. I did not try to keep my plans a secret and used the company phones to talk to employment agencies.

The closer I came to leaving, the more direct the threats became. At one point during dinner on a business trip to Chicago with another Closteal employee, the subject turned to how companies treated employees. The discussion became quite heated. The co-worker finally turned to me and said, “Trust us or you will trust no one. You will stand alone.”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. How could he make a threat like that? “I still have friends and I will trust them and not you or big business.” After my comment, neither of us said much the rest of the evening.

Now that the extreme right wing element is no longer in office in Washington, people are now beginning to discuss the use of torture by the american government. The only reason the average american knows about torture now is because 1) the use became widespread and with rendition, international, 2) technology such as the internet makes it harder to keep it hidden and 3) it involved non-american victims so foreign media picked up on it. The truth is, torture of american citizens has been going on for at least 50 years. There are even several documented cases of it. For the most part, the victims of american government/industry torture are individuals whom the media ignores. Thus it is kept hidden from the american public. In america, no publicity means no torture! That is not true, but that is what the public believes.

Back to my story:

I was becoming suspicious of everyone. I was making plans to attend the American
Chemical Society meeting in Anaheim, CA and I was not trying to be very secretive about it. If “they” were going to flaunt the fact that they knew everything I did, why try to hide anything. I was also interacting with one employment agency and their representative said they had an opening in Los Angeles. I told the rep. That I was going out there in a few weeks and maybe I could talk to the company while I was out there. She said she would check and get back to me. She never did call me back, and I became suspicious and carefully wrote it in my diary. The job opening in Los Angeles coming to my attention exactly when I was planning to go there seemed like too much of a coincidence to me. I wonder if someone could have put her up to it.

The longer I was at Costeal, the more it seemed that my real purpose in Louisville was to make a sworn statement for the Better Supplies' attorneys. I kept calling Cruz Little and told him of the events at Costeal and how important it was that I get something in writing. He seemed to be dragging his feet, but finally we agreed that I could make a sworn statement on Wednesday, February 15, 1978in his office building. I had hired Mr. Leonard G. Smart to act as my attorney, at Cruz Little's recommendation and per my friend Chet's instructions. I arrived at Cruz Little's law firm office in an anxious state and I had trouble speaking because of my reoccurring throat problems. I had tried to keep this appointment secret for my own safety, but a couple of days prior to the sworn statement Cruz Little called me at work to remind me of the date. His blatant disregard for my safety annoyed me.