"Lawyers have to make a living, and can only do so by inducing people to believe that a straight line is crooked."
- Alfred Nobel
"Hope I'm on the list of people that you hate,
It's time you met the monster that you have helped create"
- Five Finger Death Punch, "Meet the Monster"
As promised here is the second part of the evidence posting. This is also intended to be the last posting I make on here unless something happens that I feel needs to be addressed. The only reason I even bothered posting anything after the "Final Word" post, was due to Michelle Manweiler attempting to anonymously leave an insult in the comments of that post. Frankly I never expected her to make any sort of comment on here, so it did catch me off guard. The initial two posts were done more out of surprise that she even said anything at all, though as usual she said nothing of any substance. I'm not anticipating anything happening, and I'm not expecting anymore tantrum comments from Manweiler after this.
I'm not sure whether I'll bother keeping those two posts that were done in response to her comment, I might just unpublish them now that I feel I've more adequately addressed the situation with the two evidence postings. After thinking the issue over and contemplating my posts, I felt that maybe people needed to see a bit more evidence proving some of what Michelle Manweiler has done before I fully sign off. I made a lot of comments on her actions of the past and things she did during the legal shenanigans of 2006, but it is hard for someone outside of this dispute to take my claims at full value when they haven't see that much evidence being presented. The evidence in both this post and the previous one backs up some of my statements on Michelle Manweiler's actions, and proves that she has not been even the least bit truthful about what actually took place.
As for that final word post, obviously that title doesn't fit anymore and I might change it. After reading that post now I realize that in many cases I was repeating the same point. Keep in mind that the final word post was done piecemeal over the course of months. I wrote it in sections, sometimes moving portions around depending on what I was trying to say. Given that many sections were written months apart, I had forgotten that I previously brought certain topics up multiple times. I didn't have the time to sit and read the entire post from start to finish in one sitting, I still haven't read the entire thing all at once. So you'll have to excuse what is a bit of a poorly assembled write-up. At the moment I have no plans for editing it to read better, so you'll have to take it as is for now.
I initially didn't want to write about the past issues with Manweiler prior to the legal situation, and I've avoided doing so for some time. I've had to go over the entire history of this dispute with multiple people that I should never have had to go over this with. Though I've never gone over it from start to finish with the very person who was involved in it. Which is entirely the fault of Michelle Manweiler, as I tried many times to talk to her about all this before things went off the rails for good. Eventually I got tired of talking to other people about it and just wanted to focus on the legal issue. The problem is that whenever I get into a discussion with someone over the legal incidents, they inevitably ask how this situation started. People want to know why I contacted her in the first place in 2006. I could never focus on just the legal dispute without people asking for some background.
So I felt that I needed to lay out the entire dispute in all its ugliness and finally talk about things that bothered me for many years of my life. I also wanted to show the history of bad behavior and lies by Michelle Manweiler, which is why I went into details that I'm sure people would normally not care about. I felt it was necessary however to get into those details, no matter how embarrassing they were, or how petty Ms. Manweiler's actions at the time were. I felt it was necessary to show a track record of lying on her part.
Through the years people have always told me about false accusations from her, and now I'll show you evidence from 2006 of her doing the exact same thing people accused her of doing back in high school. What I'll present here shows she made false statements to law enforcement, statements which caused them to respond in a much harsher manner than they would have otherwise had Manweiler told the truth. Multiple sources, law enforcement and courts included, all told me that she made false claims - just as people throughout the history of this dispute have come to me and told me of lies and rumors being spread by her in the past.
In the previous evidence post I even showed how her letters from high school contradicted the story she told in her victim impact statement. It is blatantly clear that she was the one behind that behavior back in the day, since I have evidence showing she did the same thing in 2006. When people tell me that she was claiming I was writing love letters to her during times in high school when I was not, then I see her repeating that same exact lie in 2006 in her victim impact statement, it is rather difficult for Manweiler to point the finger at other people back then. Why does your lie now match the lie people accused you of then?
All these years this woman portrayed me as something horrible that was never true, so I felt it was only right that people see the Michelle Manweiler that I see. I wanted to finally tell people about her antics, and let them see the real person behind the mask she hides behind. To give readers a glimpse of what I've dealt with, and despite the length of that post it is still just a glimpse. If anyone decides they aren't interested in certain topics in that post, such as high school events, I made it easy to skip those topics by laying things out in sections and labeling what the section is about.
A few events have happened since writing that final post, and it always interests me how more and more evidence of wrongdoing seems to keep popping up over time. One specific subject involves some research that I did after seeing some views to this blog that raised an eyebrow. I was seeing a viewer from the Virginia State Court System ISP out of Richmond. Needless to say that when someone on a court ISP views my blog it grabs my attention. However, they seemed far more interested in what was said about Charlottesville prosecutor Joe Platania than anything else. Immediately I thought it a good idea to check on information on Joe Platania that would suggest this was him, namely to see if he still worked for Charlottesville. I ended up coming across an interesting write-up of him online. While it doesn't suggest that this viewer was him and it appears he works for Warner Chapman still, there was an interesting piece of information that relates to my inquiry filed with the Virginia State Bar.
I primarily filed my inquiry against my former attorney William Johnson, but included an inquiry on both prosecutors and Michelle Manweiler. I even told the VSB that the primary focus is William Johnson in the inquiry. Since the actions of the prosecutors and Manweiler were pivotal to this entire case I chose to include inquiries on them, even though I figured the VSB would make excuses for them and not take action. This inquiry was not just the little form they have you fill out. I showed up with a thick binder full of evidence and my entire account of what took place in 2006, especially the actions of my attorney. The woman who was accepting the inquiry paperwork was absolutely blown away when I handed the binder to her, stating that in all the time she's worked there nobody had ever turned in something that extensive. It didn't help however, which I expected since other lawyers warned me that the VSB was useless. I expected the VSB to make excuses for taking no action against Manweiler and the prosecutors and they did not disappoint. But what did surprise me is that they completely ignored my inquiry against my former lawyer, even as they admitted there were actions he should have done that clearly he did not do. I expected excuses from them, but I didn't expect them to just ignore it.
When speaking with an appellate attorney who served on the disciplinary board of the VSB, he initially expressed disbelief when I told him that the VSB completely ignored my inquiry on William Johnson. When I offered to send him the response letter from them proving it he responded "I'm not saying you're lying about that, it's just that what your lawyer has done is very serious, and I just can't imagine them ignoring his actions". I guess some lawyers still have faith in the Bar, but clearly the VSB isn't interested in doing anything other than protecting lawyers from taking responsibility for their actions.
Getting back to Platania's write-up that I discovered after those views, I found that Joe Platania is on the disciplinary board of the Virginia State Bar. Now it potentially makes much more sense why they chose to completely ignore my inquiry against William Johnson. While the write-up did not say when Platania joined the disciplinary board, there is a very good chance he was serving on it back when I filed my inquiry, since it sounded like he has been on the board for some time. Platania had been a lawyer and prosecutor for quite awhile before my case came up.
If the VSB found that my lawyer acted negligently and incompetently in his handling of my case, a conclusion they couldn't help but reach with all the evidence I have (especially tape recordings), then this would endanger the conviction from Charlottesville - Platania's conviction. If he was serving on the board at that time, it makes every sense that the lawyer reviewing my inquiry told Platania about it given that he was named in the inquiry. It doesn't matter whether the lawyer wasn't supposed to inform Platania, if there is anything I've learned it's that a lot of lawyers have no problem acting in an inappropriate and corrupt manner to cover for other lawyers. "Professional courtesy" and all that garbage. By completely ignoring my inquiry against Johnson and focusing on the inquiries that they could easily dismiss, it helped avoid anything that would put at risk the false conviction Platania had against me. If indeed Platania was part of the disciplinary board when I filed my inquiry, I firmly believe that his participation on the board ensured the VSB would ignore the inquiry filed against my lawyer's actions. Perhaps one day a light will get cast on that particular event.
While we are on the subject of views to this blog, I initially had several paragraphs detailing an amusing trend by Ms. Manweiler and potentially her friends/family. There were two trends actually. It at first seemed that Ms. Manweiler was avoiding viewing the blog from her home, instead opting to view from her work computer at the Department of Treasury. I don't know what would have been the point of this given that she is likely aware that I know she works there. It's especially obvious when the same computer from there has been viewing the blog for some time. Regardless, she recently broke that habit when she viewed the blog from her home late at night after looking it over a bit at her work. It's always possible that it could have been her husband on the blog that night and not her, but I have no reason to believe that he's even bothering to view this page anymore.
The second trend was that a number of viewers connected to Michelle Manweiler (I highly doubt all could have been her) were disabling their Javascript before viewing my blog. One such viewer was from the Analysis Group, who has been viewing the blog since 2013 if memory serves, that was taking part recently in that Java disabling trend. There isn't any point to disabling Java before viewing this blog unless you are trying to hide from any visitor tracking on the site, and since not all these viewers could have been Michelle Manweiler, it would certainly suggest that my blog has become a topic of conversation among Ms. Manweiler and her friends (something which I already suspected given some of the views I've received even before the java disabling). Needless to say if the reason for disabling Java was to try to defeat any visitor tracking (which there really isn't any other reason), it didn't work for them in the least. I still saw the views, and since 99% of the regular traffic I get on this blog does not disable Java, it was a big red flag for me to have a number of viewers start turning it off within a short period of time.
I initially had screenshots to demonstrate how I still see the views, and to show that the only information that is hidden from me when Java is disabled is that I can't see what the monitor resolution of the viewer's computer is set at (info which quite frankly I couldn't care less about). However, with Ms. Manweiler's recent home view it appears they are no longer bothering to turn Java off, though it is possible she could have forgotten to do it given that she viewed the blog so late at night. The only reason I even felt like bringing it up (and mocking them a bit in the original write-up) is that I don't even remotely see the point of anyone attempting to hide their views of this blog anymore. I've already got logs showing regular visits from Manweiler and her friends/family going back to the first time she started viewing this page. As I've already said earlier in this post, unless something comes up again I don't have plans on any further posts, and I wouldn't even have bothered with making any posts after the "Final Word" post if Manweiler hadn't left her insult in the comments section. So I'm not sure what point there was in such a sudden push to hide views of this blog so late in the game. What would they have even accomplished at this point, since it is already well documented that they have all been here before.
So now we move on to the real point of this write-up. As I mentioned in the previous evidence posting, Michelle Manweiler lied about events that were related to this dispute during the court case of 2006. However, this was not just limited to her account of the events of high school. Ms. Manweiler exaggerated and even outright lied to police and the DA's office on the events occurring in 2006 throughout the case, her intent being to push law enforcement into taking far more heavy handed actions against me than they would have done otherwise. One such lie involves her claim that I had made "in person" contact with her in Charlottesville, when in reality there was never a time that I even knew of her location in Charlottesville. This false accusation by Ms. Manweiler was relayed to me through several sources.
The first sources were law enforcement. Detective Rudman, the Charlottesville officer in charge of the case, had stated I was accused of making "in person" contact in Charlottesville by Michelle Manweiler, when he was interviewing me in Hampton after my arrest.
At the first bond hearing prosecutor Joe Platania informed my father, who had arrived to bail me out, that Ms. Manweiler claimed that she saw me out front of her residence in Charlottesville on multiple occasions. Platania further added that Ms. Manweiler claimed that in one instance quite some time prior to my arrest, while allegedly sitting in front of her Charlottesville home I was supposed to have called Manweiler on her cell phone telling her I was waiting outside to kill her. My father is a retired Newport News police detective with 21 years on the force - he's not going to mishear something like that, especially involving his own son. He relayed this accusation to me when visiting me at the jail, right after the hearing when my bond was denied. I told him that not only were the events described a complete fabrication, but that it doesn't even make sense that someone wouldn't call the cops to have me arrested on the spot if an event like that occurred.
Keep that fact in mind - this accusation was stated by Michelle Manweiler to have taken place well before she went to the Charlottesville police to have me arrested, at least a month if not more from the sound of it. Forget the fact that I never even knew her location in Charlottesville let alone her cell phone number - how many people reading this would not call the police immediately after an act like that? If I saw someone outside my home and they called me on my cell to say they were waiting outside to kill me, I would have had no hesitation in hanging up and dialing the cops. But we are supposed to believe that a serious event like that took place, and yet Ms. Manweiler decided to not immediately call the cops or take any action at all until much later?
Further evidence is in court documents. When Detective Rudman dropped off the paperwork from the two year protective order to me at the jail after the conclusion of that final hearing, the specific form I was given actually states on the back of it a list of accusations. One such accusation is that I was accused of making "in person contact" with Michelle Manweiler "within the city limits of Charlottesville". A final source of these false accusations was my former attorney William Johnson, who also told both my mother and I that Ms. Manweiler made the accusation of "in person" Charlottesville contact at the final protective order hearing (and this is in the tapes my mother recorded during her conversations with Johnson).
I have in my possession copies of multiple pages of William Johnson's handwritten notes on the case, which required a surprise visit to his office to get after he continued to ignore requests I made for copies of my file. Two of these pages were records of what Johnson had overheard in court during the final protective order hearing, questions he wanted to ask Ms. Manweiler, and notes of what Michelle Manweiler told him during his talk with her at the hearing. He specifically writes down that the accusation was made that there was in person contact between Michelle Manweiler and I within the city limits of Charlottesville. Below is a snip from his notes that shows where he recorded the false accusation:
"Conduct in C'ville - Personal contact other than contact by electronic means". Translation: Michelle Manweiler claimed that I was physically present in Charlottesville making contact with her, not just contact over the internet via email. There is a big problem with that claim of hers. There are only three times in my life I've actually visited Charlottesville.
The first time was an 8th grade field trip - a trip also attended by both Michelle Manweiler and her mother Carole Manweiler who was chaperoning. The second time I entered the city of Charlottesville was when Detective Rudman drove me there with his fellow officer on the day of my arrest. In actuality we probably did not enter the city until after midnight, as Rudman had been instructed by his supervisor to turn around when halfway up to C'ville and transport me from the Hampton lockup himself, so it would be more correct to say the day after my arrest. The third time was when my mother and I journeyed to Charlottesville after my release from probation.
The reason for the visit was that we needed to go look through the case file at the Charlottesville Circuit Court, to ensure William Johnson hadn't withheld any paperwork from me, before we went to the Virginia State Bar. We were too worried to make the journey earlier because we were concerned that Charlottesville law enforcement might try something, since they would have been alerted I was coming down there while on probation. So we wanted to wait until I was off probation to avoid potentially being confronted by some rather corrupt individuals within their law enforcement. Both my mother and I made an attempt to hide our presence while at the courthouse as well, as we were there during the normal hours of operation and did not want to run into prosecutors Platania or Chapman.
Those three instances are the only times in my life I've been to Charlottesville.
Someone unfamiliar with the case might ask - "but how do we know you didn't actually go down there like she claimed?" You mean besides the fact that I have evidence showing I never made that trip, and witnesses who can attest that I was mostly a homebody that rarely left his house unless I was at work? And I worked at a secure facility with Northrop Grumman, where I had to use a badge to gain entry and clock-in/out using my SSN, thus verifying my presence there. What else? The prosecution actually told the judge at the guilty plea hearing that I never made any in person contact with Ms. Manweiler in Charlottesville, though obviously Platania made no mention of Manweiler's previous accusations nor took any actions against her for it (not surprising). My former attorney definitely admits on tape I never came down to Charlottesville as well. But the most important evidence proving I never visited Ms. Manweiler in Charlottesville? Michelle Manweiler's own victim impact statement proves it actually:
"Because I've worried that Richard might figure out at any time where I live or work..."
- Michelle Manweiler, 2006 Victim Impact Statement
That is a screenshot snip taken directly from the victim impact statement I was provided with during the case. Considering Michelle Manweiler said she was supposedly worried the entire time that I would eventually figure out where she lived in Charlottesville, then obviously I could never have been to her residence in Charlottesville in the first place prior to my arrest. It certainly proves that there was never a moment where she witnessed me in Charlottesville. After all, I would have had to have some massive luck to randomly run into her in a city like Charlottesville without at least knowing the location of her residence there. I would have had no possible way of knowing the classes or personal schedule of a woman I hadn't even seen since 1999. How likely is it that you would run into a single individual in a decent sized city if you didn't even know where to start looking? The events of 2006 are evidence enough that I don't have that kind of luck. Running into an individual also would make it easy to locate their residence simply by following them, and Ms. Manweiler fully admitted I had never known her residence or her work, so that clearly didn't take place. Thus Ms. Manweiler is on record claiming to police that she witnessed something, when it is clear she had not in fact witnessed said event. It doesn't take a lawyer to know that false statements to police and the courts are a criminal act.
As for her supposedly being worried? Understand that the entire dispute in 2006 was roughly about seven months, from first contact in December of 2005 to my arrest in the summer of 2006. That's how long she sat around waiting until she finally went to the police. She claims the entire time she was in fear for the safety of friends/family/roommates/coworkers (all people I couldn't have cared less about and most of whom I didn't even know anything about), yet Michelle Manweiler waited months before having me arrested. She conveniently waited until after her graduation from law school to take action. So either she was lying to be dramatic and never was in fear for the safety of anyone, or she's a rather cold individual who thought people were in danger but waited until it was convenient for her to actually take action to stop that danger. Can anyone explain to me why someone so terrified that I would hurt her and other people waited until after she graduated law school to do anything about it?
During that time period, Ms. Manweiler received enough written emails from me to count on one hand. They were large multiple page emails, but there were still not very many of them. Majority of any contact was far more of links to jokes sites from YTMND.com (99% of which had nothing to do with the situation, I was bored at the time and had nothing to write about) than actual emails. So considering this dispute lasted over the course of seven months, if I didn't bother finding her address in Charlottesville in that seven month period (something which would have taken me mere days to do had I cared to try) it was pretty clear that I had absolutely no interest whatsoever in knowing her location in Charlottesville. Even to this day I have no idea where she ever lived in Charlottesville because I had never even tried to find out.
I never cared where Michelle Manweiler lived in the city. But please someone tell me how I was such a threat, that a guy with not even parking tickets on his record needed to get a felony (it was supposed to be a misdemeanor in the state of Virginia, they upgraded it to a felony for no stated reason) for sending angry emails to a woman who hadn't even been in his physical presence since 1999? Go ahead and tell me that isn't Michelle Manweiler receiving a blatant case of favoritism? Must be nice to have your own personal gestapo willing to destroy the lives of people who piss you off. Wish I had something like that back when I received messages from a guy I got into an argument with online who kept telling me he was tracking me down to "gut" me "like a fish". It is ironic that between the two of us I'm the only one who actually received death threats in their life - not Michelle Manweiler. I guess in order to receive extra protection from police and courts you have to have a rich banker father who attended the same flagship university as his kid.
The reality is that the first time Michelle Manweiler and I were ever in each others presence since our 1999 graduation, was the 2006 preliminary hearing when I was dragged out in shackles and a prisoner uniform before the court. Ms. Manweiler is absolutely aware of the fact that the preliminary hearing was the first time she laid eyes on me since high school. To be more accurate she didn't really lay eyes on me, she avoided looking at me and just stuck her nose in the air like usual (again that's not a figure of speech, it is something she really does). Maybe in her mind she thinks she was being brave or dismissive, but all I saw was someone who was too much of a coward to look me in the eye because she knew she was wrong in what she was doing. Especially since she only had the guts to give evil looks at my mother and not me, specifically Ms. Manweiler and her parents watched with evil glares as my mom ran out of the courtroom in tears. This is based on what our neighbor who attended the hearing with my mother told us. She's the one who coined the Ms. Rottweiler phrase that this blog is named after.
So you might be wondering why Manweiler contradicted her earlier accusation. Obviously she forgot her lie over the nearly five months it took for the entire legal episode to conclude, or maybe she was too busy trying to write a dramatic impact statement that she didn't realize what she had unintentionally revealed. At this point the prosecutors already knew Ms. Manweiler lied to them and that this situation wasn't what she made it out to be, and yet they still continued to hammer me for a criminal charge they knew I didn't commit nor deserve. So it isn't like Ms. Manweiler had to walk on eggshells still, nobody would have laid a finger on her unless the entire lie was dragged out in the public eye, that would have been the only thing that would have forced them to take action against her. There simply wasn't enough evidence in my possession at the time to risk trying to go forward with what my family and I already knew. This isn't the first time Ms. Manweiler has made an accusation like this as I have mentioned before.
As recounted in the "final" post I put up (in addition to other postings), I brought up how during the William and Mary dispute Ms. Manweiler falsely claimed to Officer John Coleman that I was driving to the W&M campus to follow her around. He specifically stated Ms. Manweiler told him this and was attempting to get me to confess to it. My mother and two sisters were present at this interview since the officer had come to my parent's home to speak to me, and all of them remember the officer saying this, as well as his reaction and speedy departure after my mother pointed out how I didn't have a drivers license or car yet. Ms. Manweiler can deny she ever made that false accusation back in 2000, but this officer said in front of me and other witnesses that this was an accusation coming directly from Michelle Manweiler.
I'll admit the remote possibility exists that officer John Coleman could have been suspicious of whether I had ever gone down to the campus or not, so maybe he came up with a lie in the hopes of tricking me into confessing to something that Ms. Manweiler never accused me of doing. When he got called out by my mother when she mentioned my lack of license and vehicle, maybe it caught him off guard and that would explain his sudden departure. But why the hell should I believe that scenario, when I'm currently staring at written evidence in my hand saying Michelle Manweiler made a similar false accusation in 2006? Why should I give any doubt or consideration to a woman who has done nothing other than lie to me during the entire history of this dispute? Why should anyone believe that scenario when multiple sources say she did the same act again in 2006?
Also I'm well aware of how much of an idiot move it was to once again contact the same woman that had once made false accusations against me to law enforcement. I had thought the woman that was graduating UVA law school would not be the exact same girl who was a freshman at William and Mary, and that having more to lose (such as her ability to be an attorney) would make her unlikely to attempt the same previously failed action due to the high risk. Quite obviously I was wrong on both counts.
My poor decision however doesn't excuse Michelle Manweiler providing false statements/evidence to police, doesn't justify the corrupt actions of the Charlottesville law enforcement, nor does it warrant a felony charge I never committed. The amusing thing is though, neither this blog nor this situation would even exist today had things not been taken as far as they were. I have no problem accepting punishment for mistakes I legitimately do in life, so long as the punishment actually fits the crime. I wrote to her knowing she did not want to receive any contact, so if I needed to be punished for lashing out at a person whose "games" of making up stories about me resulted in harassment and abuse for years, then sure I would have conceded to that punishment without issue. I would have accepted the misdemeanor computer harassment charge as long as I was punished the same as anyone else who did the same thing - since Michelle Manweiler isn't more valuable than any other person just because daddy has money and she went to a good college. Even if that meant jail time in addition to misdemeanor computer harassment, I would have accepted the punishment and moved on.
Anywhere else but Charlottesville, and anyone else other than a UVA student with a banker alumni father, that's how it would have otherwise played out. I was even prepared to plead guilty to things I knew I wasn't guilty of so long as they had been misdemeanors. I regret that I was willing to do that, but I was indeed willing to just take my licks and walk away. But the Manweilers couldn't have that. When they went after me for a felony I wasn't guilty of simply because she was a UVA student and lawyer with a rich father (and C'Ville had bumped a misdemeanor to a felony for exactly that reason) - that was something I wasn't going to walk away from and neither were the guilty parties. Throw in the fact that Michelle Manweiler lied to get that charge, the violations of my civil rights to cover for her actions, and ridiculous penalties they didn't even give to rape and manslaughter cases in Charlottesville - and you have a situation where a line was crossed that really should not have been.
Turning back to the subject at hand - as stated earlier we have two separate instances where a law enforcement entity said Ms. Manweiler made an accusation, an accusation that turned out to be false, and they are essentially identical with some minor change in details. In 2000 she claimed I was following her with a car on the campus of William and Mary according to Officer John Coleman, something I couldn't have done since I did not possess a drivers license or a car until years later. In 2006 she claimed I had been coming to her residence in Charlottesville (and apparently that I'm supposed to have called her cell phone with a threat), when even she later contradicts that claim by admitting she knew that I wasn't aware of her location. Both false claims involve her stating I made in person contact with her, and both were relayed to me by a law enforcement official (and in 2006 they were additionally passed on via the courts and my lawyer). Someone explain how Michelle Manweiler is innocent of any wrongdoing?
I'm sure Manweiler will deny that she made that false accusation in 2006, it would be rather risky for her to not deny it quite frankly considering that was a criminal act. But how does she explain multiple sources, some of which are court documents, all stating that she claimed I was visiting her home in Charlottesville? Michelle Manweiler knows just as well as I do that I never went to her home in Charlottesville, so why is everyone else saying she told that lie if this accusation hadn't actually come from her? The court isn't going to just randomly write down on the paperwork given to me that I made in person contact with Manweiler in the city limits of Charlottesville, unless this accusation had been made by Ms. Manweiler during the hearing. Why did my lawyer also write that down in his notes on the hearing unless that was something he heard during the session? If the court misunderstood what she was accusing me of and said it out loud (obviously otherwise how else would my lawyer have heard it to write it down), then why did Michelle Manweiler not speak up in court and correct the mistake right there?
Why did detective Rudman tell me during the interview on the day of my arrest that Ms. Manweiler said I went to her home in Charlottesville? She knows I didn't go down there just as I know it, so why did Detective Rudman tell me that she made this accusation?
Why did Joe Platania tell my father at the bond hearing that not only did Manweiler claim I sat in a car outside of her Charlottesville home on more than one instance, but that I'm supposed to have called her cell phone during one of those events to make a threat? Again Michelle Manweiler knows I never did this, so why did Platania tell my father that she made this accusation unless he got it straight from her?
With me possessing proof from multiple sources that she made these claims, what evidence does Michelle Manweiler have in her possession to prove she never made those statements? In addition, how does anyone expect me to not harbor an extreme hatred for this woman when everyone else is saying that Michelle Manweiler made accusations that I know to be false?
I mentioned in Part One about how Michelle Manweiler also deleted her Myspace profile after my arrest, an act which removed an original source of evidence while a criminal investigation was on-going. While I could understand that a regular person might not necessary recognize this as a destruction of evidence and thus a crime, someone who graduated from law school and passed the bar exam would definitely know better given their training. Multiple sources accused Ms. Manweiler of this act as well.
I'll get into the video demonstrating the two snips from the audio tapes I have that my mother recorded during her meetings with my former attorney, but first I have related pieces of evidence to bring up.
The image below is taken from the same two pages of William Johnson's notes on the day he met Ms. Manweiler at the final protective order hearing. As you can clearly see, he records that Michelle Manweiler took down her Myspace profile:
Depending on the social media platform a profile can be reactivated, though I have never tested that with Myspace. But by deleting the profile Ms. Manweiler would have caused the deletion of all emails in her inbox, regardless of whether the page could've been brought back or not. Myspace emails don't work like regular emails, at least not back in 2006. The messages existed as a link between two profiles. If something happens to one of those profiles, the link is severed. Both Ms. Manweiler and I discovered this back before I was arrested. I had eventually grown tired of contacting Michelle Manweiler, so I told her I didn't have plans to contact her again and to go ahead and block me. She followed through and blocked me, and when I went back to re-read the email I sent her I noticed all messages in my sent folder were deleted. Johnson's notes confirm that the emails were deleted on Ms. Manweiler's end as well when she blocked me, which became an important piece of evidence I presented in a much earlier evidence posting in this blog.
I did initially intend to stick to that promise of not contacting her any further, but Ms. Manweiler's silence the entire time had angered me. I eventually decided that I hadn't gotten everything off my chest, and felt no need to keep that promise when I was dealing with a woman who has never honored her own word. I then created a second profile to contact Ms. Manweiler, and that is where some of the emails came from. This blocking of my original profile and the deletion of the emails sent plays an extremely important part in the evidence proving Michelle Manweiler was tampering with emails and splitting them up, as detailed in the Evidence Against Manweiler Part 2 post.
One of the emails I sent to Ms. Manweiler on this second account was a critical email however. It was an email proving that not only did I have no intent to cause physical harm, but that none of my comments to Michelle Manweiler had ever been threats to do harm. Prior to sending this email to Ms. Manweiler, there had been some confusion that occurred at my work. I had made a comment to a coworker, and they had reacted to it in a way I did not expect. After thinking it over, I realized that even though I knew what I meant to say, my comment could be taken another way entirely. While I tend to feel that sometimes people are over-analyzing things too much, when I know what I'm trying to say in a comment I tend to not look at every angle of how it can be misinterpreted.
When I realized this issue, I figured I needed to clear any misunderstandings up with Michelle Manweiler. I sent an email to her where I stated what I had actually intended by the comments I had been making, and that at no point was there ever the intention on doing harm because I wasn't that kind of person. However, Michelle Manweiler made sure that this email, which would have shown me to be innocent of the felony charge, never made it into the hands of the Charlottesville law enforcement. This isn't the only evidence she withheld from police, but it is some of the most important evidence.
While I informed my lawyer William Johnson of this evidence, like everything else in this case he was lazy and uninterested in it. Once he was told about this email, he decided not to go to Charlottesville or hire an expert to look over the shoulder of the C'Ville PD and their work with the computer evidence. Johnson would rather just write a letter to the Assistant Prosecutor Joe Platania, asking the prosecutor to keep an eye out for this evidence of my innocence which would endanger the felony conviction that Platania was pursuing against me. I'm assuming that sounds as unbelievably stupid to everyone else as it does to me. The neighbor who was attending the hearings with my mother has a son who is a retired Federal judge, and he couldn't believe my attorney was doing something that stupid. He said the prosecutor was just going to ensure no one would find that email.
Below is a snip from the letter where William Johnson brings this evidence up. As typical of his laziness, he couldn't even listen carefully enough to ensure he even got the right quote from me. I never told Manweiler I was joking, I said that I realized that my statements could be misinterpreted, told her I'd never harm her, and I explained to her exactly what I meant by the comments.
As I mentioned many times in this blog, the Charlottesville law enforcement claimed they damaged my computer hard drive that they confiscated. My lawyer and I were informed that it would take them 9 months to repair the drive before they could manage to get anything off of it. When William Johnson brought this up at the bond hearing to the judge, Prosecutor Joe Platania became visibly upset, clearly showing that this was information the Charlottesville law enforcement wanted to keep secret. I believe they wanted to keep it secret for a good reason - they were lying and had never damaged the hard drive in the first place.
They knew Michelle Manweiler had lied to them and they didn't want this embarrassment to become public given the media coverage of the case. By conveniently claiming they couldn't obtain evidence from the hard drive for months, it allowed them to not have to turn over evidence proving my innocence and thus opening them up to legal action. They could then continue their court case and convict me before anyone was the wiser. I've spoken to people who know more about obtaining evidence from hard drives than I do, and none of them believe what the Charlottesville law enforcement was telling my lawyer. They all stated they hoped someone that incompetent with handling computer evidence was fired and not allowed to handle computer evidence again. Given that the Charlottesville law enforcement also claimed to have somehow "lost" the tape recording of my interview with Detective Rudman after my arrest, allowing Platania to falsely claim I had confessed to all charges when I had not, and you have a great deal of evidence in this case conveniently disappearing.
Regardless of the truth of whether they had actually damaged the hard drive or not, this resulted in me being unable to obtain evidence proving my innocence. Now you can understand just how serious Michelle Manweiler's actions were when she deleted evidence by taking down her Myspace page right after hearing of my arrest. With the claimed damage to my hard drive, Michelle Manweiler's inbox would have been immensely helpful in obtaining the evidence she had withheld from police.
This is assuming of course that my lazy bastard of an attorney would actually have issued a subpoena (or whatever was necessary) to obtain what was in her inbox, something of which I am 100% certain he would have refused to do. But with Michelle Manweiler taking down her Myspace profile (and thus deleting all the emails), that option wasn't even available to us in the first place. Then throw in the Charlottesville police claiming they damaged my computer badly enough that it needed repairs before they could find anything, and this ensured that the only evidence against me was the bits and pieces of emails Ms. Manweiler printed up and handed the police - printouts which were conveniently missing the evidence that would have shown she was never threatened or in danger.
While the Charlottesville law enforcement could have subpoenaed Myspace for access to their database to recover the original emails, this would have required its own legal battle and more spent resources by the Charlottesville law enforcement. It was quite clear that the Head Prosecuting Attorney Warner Chapman and his assistant Joe Platania had no intentions of verifying evidence handed to them by Manweiler (because they knew already what she had done), and were going forward in their prosecution no matter what. By deleting her profile and thus deleting critical evidence she hid during a criminal investigation, especially doing this as a lawyer who would know better, Manweiler committed obstruction of justice at the very least.
So now we get to the tape recordings I previously mentioned about posting. I have two separate clips in this video.
The first was from a recording taken in August 2006 as I recall. It is mentioned exactly what day in the recording it is when this talk was occurring, but I didn't want to listen to the entire recording to get to that point this time. It happens rather close to when the guilty plea hearing was about to take place. It also isn't the specific section that I wanted to initially include. The snip I'm using happens much earlier than when Johnson finally admits Ms. Manweiler was wrong to delete her profile and shouldn't have done it. However by the time I had reached the portion that I'm now using, I was no longer inclined to listen to the tape any further past this point. The way the man talked down to my mother, made excuses for everything, and showed an absolute lack of care about the case angered me greatly and I just had to stop. My anger towards the people involved with harming me in this case has steadily increased over the years, so listening to something that was making me even angrier just isn't a good idea right now.
In this snip Johnson admits Manweiler took down her Myspace profile. However he attempts to make rather poor excuses for this act. While he admits that Manweiler removed her profile (thus deleting evidence), he attempts to pass it off as no big deal because computer evidence typed by both parties on the computer can still be recovered regardless of whether you deleted it physically.
First, just because one is not successful in the commission of a crime does not mean that a crime did not take place. If I attempted to shop-lift from a store but I am caught in the process and the item recovered, does this mean I didn't commit a crime just because the item was returned to the store before I got out the door? Of course it would still be a crime. Thus Ms. Manweiler is still guilty of having deliberately deleted evidence, regardless of whether cops could still have the chance to retrieve it.
In addition, it is not at all true that you can always recover this evidence. Considering the Charlottesville law enforcement claimed they damaged the hard drive, and in turn said they hadn't even recovered anything yet, confirms this - assuming they weren't just lying about the damage in the first place. Because of this claimed damage of the hard drive, evidence of my innocence could have still potentially been recovered from Ms. Manweiler's profile inbox (assuming she hadn't deleted the email itself) but this was not possible after she took down the page and thus deleted everything.
This snip is also good because it confirms that the Charlottesville law enforcement had told my lawyer they damaged the computer. Considering it was months after my actual arrest (the guilty plea hearing was coming up), Johnson states in this clip that he hasn't seen any evidence because the police still hadn't gotten the computer back from forensics yet. This is further confirmed by Johnson in other recordings (he admits to everything that was going on and all the assertions I've made about this legal case). But this snip was just intended to prove two things - that I was not lying about having recordings of my former attorney from the meetings my mother and I attended, and that Johnson knew Ms. Manweiler had deleted her Myspace profile and thus destroyed evidence.
The second snip I've used came from outside the courthouse after the sentencing hearing. There was a bit of wind that day outside the courthouse, but the original recording still came out just fine when you listen to it in the recorder. However, my way of transferring an analog tape to computer back in 2008 did not come out as clear as the original tape recording.
The only method I knew of was to connect a special wire that hooked up to the headphone jack of the recorder and then plugged into the mic jack of the computer's onboard sound card, and then recorded it with some software. With me not being even remotely an audio expert however, my recording on the computer picked up plenty of the wind interference. I'm not worried since the original is just fine, and I'm not going to travel out to retrieve the originals from their hiding place just to put a short clip on Youtube. If the volume is turned up high hopefully what is being said can be made out clearly enough.
In this conversation, the sentencing hearing had concluded and my mother was bringing up some of the absolutely ridiculous claims Ms. Manweiler made up in her victim impact statement. Her purpose was asking my lawyer why he didn't have those statements corrected. One of the claims she made in the impact statement shows that Michelle Manweiler isn't above using any underhanded tactics to get what she wants. In her attempt to make me look as much like the Anti-Christ as possible, she had attempted to claim that a guy who only wrote angry emails to her (and never even been in her presence until the preliminary hearing) was a danger to children.
It really shows what a scumbag Michelle Manweiler is deep down that she'd make up statements like that with no proof whatsoever just to make me look as evil as possible, when in reality this was a case of a guy running his mouth to her over the internet. My mother and I of course greatly took issue with Ms. Manweiler's assertion of her claim I'd hurt children, but as it turned out so did William Johnson. What surprised us however was that not only did he admit he knew that I'd never hurt children as Ms. Manweiler claimed, but he went so far as to admit he knew I never had any intentions of harming Michelle Manweiler or her father, mother and brother. This guy just had me sentenced to a felony charge while fully admitting he knew I never had any intention of harming anyone (and thus hadn't committed the charge in question, certainly not warranted of a misdemeanor charge being bumped to a felony for no reason). That tells you plenty right there about who William Johnson is as a lawyer. Like Michelle Manweiler he's the kind of lawyer who is only in the profession for the money.
After that sentencing hearing I'd love to say my troubles in Charlottesville ended, but Warner Chapman and Joe Platania weren't done playing games yet. The first thing that happened was that I was removed from the holding cell, and told to wait with two other inmates outside the courthouse (one of them in the orange jumpsuit of the guys who do details like cleaning jails and courthouses) for the Sheriff's deputies to drive us back to the jail in the transport van. Well we waited. And waited. Three inmates were standing outside the courthouse for awhile with no one watching us. Finally a different deputy saw us outside and immediately demanded to know why we were standing outside with nobody watching us. We explained the situation and the deputy went to investigate. As it turned out we had been completely forgotten - no ride was even coming for us. The three of us ended up having to pile into the back of a squad car, a very tight fit, to be transported back to the jail.
Once back at the jail I was told to gather up my belongings to be processed out. An hour or two passed and nothing. My mother began calling the jail, and they tried to claim that the paperwork for me hadn't been sent from the courthouse. When my mother called the clerk at the court, the clerk was very angry with the jail. She said that the paperwork got there before I did, and said she would make a phone call and tell the jail that they better release me and stop delaying. My mother called the jail afterwards and they immediately said they had the paperwork, but that they were in the middle of feeding inmates so they couldn't release me yet.
Hours passed after they had finished feeding inmates lunch and still nothing. My mother called again and this time they claimed it was shift change and they couldn't let me out yet. More hours passed and finally they took me out of the cell. Even though my sentencing hearing had occurred earlier in the day, I didn't walk out of the jail a somewhat free man until late at night. Even the inmates in the cell block with me said that they had never seen something like that done before, and that there was a clear and deliberate attempt to hold me in that jail as long as possible. Remember when I said in previous posts that a corrections officer told me to get a change of venue because someone had it out for me? Anyone still questioning why I have so much hatred for the Manweiler family after the favoritism they clearly received?
The recordings can be found here. I've turned off commenting and rating because I'm not interested in receiving either on this video, it was done to demonstrate a few points and back up some of my claims. As of this publishing, the clip is still being prepared by Youtube and may not yet be available until a few hours after publishing this post.
Now you might ask - why did you plead guilty to a charge you did not commit? As I've already said, with Ms. Manweiler's deletion of evidence and the Charlottesville law enforcement claiming they badly damaged my computer hard drive, I had no evidence of my innocence at that time. In addition, while we knew Ms. Manweiler tampered with the emails, as briefly outlined in one of the Manweiler Evidence posting found in the popular posts section, at the time we simply didn't know what exactly she had done to the emails at the time until after the case had concluded and I was released.
It was already blatantly clear that Charlottesville was attempting to play favorites when it came to Michelle Manweiler. I had no illusions of a trial going well with no evidence yet of my innocence, especially with being accused of threatening a UVA student in a UVA town. A UVA town so sympathetic to the students, that they gave former student Andrew Alston a slap on the wrist for stabbing a volunteer firefighter to death. I would have definitely preferred the hearing to argue my case as is my right as an American, but Joe Plantania and Warner Chapman deprived me of that right by threatening me. If I went to trial on the one felony charge and happened to lose, being it was my first felony it would result in a suspended sentence. But by stating they would file a felony count for each claimed email, being convicted of more than one count means getting prison time. This increased the risk of an already uncertain trial to an amount that was not acceptable. I would have likely spent years in prison for a crime I didn't commit, and by the time I got out all evidence would have been lost. The prosecution threatened me for a number of reasons of course, first among those reasons was as a favor to the Manweilers, especially since Michelle Manweiler was taking a post-graduation trip around Europe. Sorry Mr. Defendant, you don't get to have access to your Constitutional rights because Ms. Manweiler is taking a vacation so we can't be bothered over minor issues like your right to a fair trial.
As you can see by the email below, the prosecutors stated that if I tried to contest the charge in court they would attempt to file multiple felonies for each email. My attorney was also told that the prosecutors would make sure I went to the worst (IE most violent) prison in the area. Given that they reportedly ensured that Andrew Alston was sent to a white collar prison for voluntary manslaughter, they certainly could have ensured I went to a really violent prison. Which I'm sure having me brutalized in prison for years on a false felony would have done so much for my disposition towards Ms. Manweiler after my release. Real smart people working in Charlottesville clearly. With no ability to prove my innocence at the time, there was no other option but to give into their threats and hope I could still find evidence to prove what they did afterwards. The proof of the denial of my right to a fair trial is detailed below:
Both the act of warning my lawyer he was being fired, and especially threatening me if I attempted to fire my lawyer, crossed a major line as a prosecutor. Johnson had no idea he was being fired because neither I nor my family had any desire to let him know ahead of time. There is no doubt he would have attempted to cause some damage to the case had he known ahead of time what was going on. The lawyer I attempted to hire had talked to Joe Platania (with my full consent) to get information on the case before taking it over on Thursday, the week before the guilty plea hearing. Johnson shows up Friday at the jail cursing me and saying "If you want to fire me, tell me to my fucking face! I had to find out from the fucking prosecutor!"
By interfering in a defendant's affairs with his own legal counsel, Warner Chapman overstepped himself as a prosecutor. If that kind of thing can't get you disbarred, there is a serious problem. But his act of threatening me when attempting to fire my attorney definitely is a violation of my right to legal counsel. William Johnson freely admits to this happening on the recording I did on my meeting with him after my release. I even deliberately misquoted him when talking about Chapman's threat, and Johnson happily corrects my misquote - proving he remembers the conversation. So either Johnson lied about the threat to avoid being fired (which would result in some serious trouble for him), or Warner Chapman actually threatened me as Johnson stated. Which do you think Johnson is more likely to testify to considering he can't deny the conversation took place now?
Another question you might ask is, considering I've said I have all this evidence proving what was done to me, why haven't I done anything about it yet? I have actually done a few things, such as contacting the Virginia State Bar (who, as I mentioned in the beginning of this post, completely ignored my inquiry filed against my former attorney). I've actually spoken to quite a few attorneys since my release. There are options out there to get this charge thrown out. Some of those methods are more obscure than others and known by post-conviction/appellate lawyers who did some digging. There is only one problem in going through with these options.
If you've ever seen the movie "Training Days" you've heard Denzel Washington saying "It's not what you know, it's what you can prove". That advice is all well and good if you are law enforcement or a prosecutor (unless you're Charlottesville, then it's what you can cover-up and lie about). But for us lowly civilians it isn't just about what we can prove - it's mainly what we can pay for. If you're innocent of a criminal charge, our "justice" system will only dispense actual justice when you can pay for it. Lawyers ask for ridiculously high prices on their services. Some people lose their entire life savings and homes trying to defend their innocence (assuming those assets weren't already seized by law enforcement under the ridiculous seizure laws we have currently). Taking on a case like this is easily going to cost a lot of money. I was already quoted on prices by lawyers who wanted to take the case, so believe me when I say I know what the costs are. I also have to hire expert witnesses to testify in order to be successful - also expensive. It isn't what you can prove, it's what you can pay for.
I spent years unemployed because nobody wanted to hire a felon in my chosen profession. I was 26 when I became a felon because of Michelle Manweiler's lies and the favoritism she received. For a brief 8 months after my release from jail I held a job hauling tool bags and heavy equipment for electricians before my muscular disorder cost me that one. The only reason I even got that job in the first place right after my release was due to a family member knowing the owner, and the owner being upset over what was done to me. Unfortunately the owner eventually had to make the decision to fire me when I just couldn't physically do the job, and I was told they delayed for some time on that decision because they knew my situation. I didn't get a job again until I was in my 30s, this time at least in my chosen field. What should have been the best years of my life went completely down the drain. Guess I'm lucky some of those years weren't spent in prison for a charge that Michelle Manweiler lied to get.
In the five years I've been with this company I think I may have finally clawed my way back up to just where I was in 2006 before my arrest, so that's more years lost just getting back to where I was in my mid-twenties. But I'm still not in a position that affords me the kind of money to go the post-conviction route. While I had family members volunteer to take out loans and put up collateral to help, I have refused and will continue to refuse. There are no guarantees even with the evidence I have, and regardless I'm not having my family end up any further in the hole for my mistakes and battles. It'll be years before I could afford to challenge and overturn what was done to me through the appellate/post-conviction options in court. In my opinion there isn't much of a point worrying about the post-conviction path anymore and have made other plans.
So there you have it, a brief showing of the evidence in my possession. This is just the tip of the iceberg, but I'm still not expecting this to change the minds of those who are close with the Manweilers. I could post a confession from Manweiler admitting what she did and those people would still refuse to believe she did anything wrong. At least those outside of her circle of friends will get to see her lies.
Any people who know her that can ignore something so blatant here just because they are friends/family of Manweiler, should keep their mouths shut about any social justice issues they like to harp about - it just makes you nothing more than a massive hypocrite when you continue to support her actions during this case. Hell just the little bit I've posted here demonstrates criminal actions committed by her. I have proof from multiple sources, including the court, that says she made a false claim to officials that even she later contradicted. What proof does Michelle Manweiler have that says she never made the statements that all these other sources claim? I'm betting she won't have anything other than her denial of it happening. If you can witness something like that and still think she hasn't lied to everyone, then you have bigger issues than I do.
From the very beginning of this dispute Michelle Manweiler attempted to portray herself as the sweet innocent victim, while making up fairy tales of me being the big bad wolf. Was it for attention? Sympathy from friends? In the end it doesn't matter what her motivation was, the fact is that it was the biggest lie she has ever told. Michelle Manweiler has never been a victim, no victims exist here. And I was never the bad guy she claimed me to be until I was pushed into becoming one - if I'm going to be forced to wear her false label around my neck because of her lies, I might as well live up to it since I'm penalized for it regardless of what I do.
As I said at the start, I consider this my last post on this blog. I don't foresee anything else coming up any time soon that would require further posts from me. Granted I thought that would be the case with the large post I did, but then Ms. Manweiler surprised me with making a comment. I don't expect any further comments however, so for now this should be the last post.