Last night, around 2 am, I was sitting in my recliner and (I swear to God) quietly blogging, when I heard a ping indicating that I was getting a Facebook Message. Who on earth would be reaching out to me at that hour? It turned out to be a blast from the past.
It was someone I met years ago because he had read my many blog posts about Andy Johnson. Johnson was a former member of the Florida House of Representatives, and a long time progressive radio talk show host in Jacksonville, Florida. He had gone to a lot of trouble throughout his life (with extremely mixed results) to turn himself into a big fish in that small pond. He pretended to be a progressive, but he behaved like a low rent version of Donald Trump in a polyester suit.
He stole $3,500.00 dollars from me, and over the years, I heard about more and more people who claimed he had swindled them in various ways. The man got away with murder. Some of the comments on some of my Andy Johnson posts and on my blog’s Facebook Page are quite eye opening.
But on this night, the Facebook Message I got was to inform me that Andy Johnson had finally passed away. I immediately Googled him, and sure enough, I found his obituary. Its saccharine tone made me a little nauseated, given all I know about the man.
It’s a weird feeling, speaking ill of the dead. I’m sure there were people who loved him and are saddened by his passing. I know they’d like to think he was as “practically perfect in every way” as Mary Poppins was, and they’d like the wider world to think that, too. But the fact is, at a time when I was so desperately poor that I could barely maintain a bank balance of $1,000.00, and that was only if I didn’t get a flat tire or my uninsured self didn’t have a medical emergency, $3,500.00 was a huge deal to me. And yet this man took that money from me with the pretense of helping me out of a desperate situation, and, instead, used it to pay his own bills and never gave it back, and not only showed no remorse about it, but actually got angry because I wouldn’t shut up about it.
That caused me a great deal of hardship for a very long time. Knowing that he had done similar things to others made me feel even more disgusted. I went to sleep after hearing news of his death feeling, well, odd.
I woke up this morning and realized that my lien on him hasn’t expired. I’ve sent an email of inquiry to the county courthouse in Jacksonville where the lien is on file, as it is where I won the small claims case against him. They were minimal help, but I saw on their website that you can’t look up a probate case number electronically, and they won’t give you that information over the phone. So, get this: I have to send a stamped, self-addressed envelope (remember those?) along with a $2 money order (as they won’t take a personal check), in order to get the probate case number. Then I can send in a letter to them AGAIN, because of course the probate claim letter must include the probate number. Nifty little system they have there. The $2.00 money order cost me an additional $2.55.
I’ve also emailed the funeral home that handled his arrangements to see if they can provide me with any information about who is handling his estate. I’ve yet to hear back from them, but I’ll update this post if there are any future developments. (And if you have any information that might help me, please reach out in the comments below.)
I suspect, given that this is, after all, Florida, and he is, after all, Andy, there will be some way that justice will be denied. He was a lawyer at one point, so I’m sure he knew how to protect his estate in really shady ways. I know a lot of his property was in his wife’s name. And it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if his estate, when all is said and done, turned out to have no value whatsoever. But it’s worth a shot.
In fact, it’s well worth a shot, because the thing about liens in that county, at least at the time I won my lawsuit, is that they increase in value by 6 percent for every year they are not paid. It hasn’t been paid for 15 years. So that $3,916.00 lien (which includes court costs) is worth quite a bit more.
If that interest is compounded annually (and I’m not really sure how they set it up, but a girl can dream) then his estate now owes me $9,384.92. If it’s just simple interest, then I’m owed $7,440.40. That’s not too shabby, either.
So cross your fingers for me, dear reader! It sure would be nice to have a win in the midst of what has been a horrible month at work. It would taste like vindication. If I finally get what he owes me after all these years, I might even take down all my blog posts about him and clear all that negative energy from The View from a Drawbridge for good. Get thee behind me, you shyster.
Meanwhile, if you want the Reader’s Digest version of exactly what Andrew Earl Johnson, Sr. did to me, check out my post entitled, Andy Johnson is a Swindler.
Update: It’s looking, as predicted, like Andy’s got this all sewn up. All his property? In his wife’s name. My lien extension? Mysteriously disappeared from the courthouse records. These posts, that will show, for all eternity, who Andy Johnson REALLY was? Not. Going. ANYWHERE. Because he may have won the financial battle, but because his legacy was so important to him, I’ve still won the war.
As for me? Just glad that there’s one less scumbag in the world.
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