Judge orders Draper held without bond

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Staff Writer

ST. JOHNS, Ariz. — It's unlikely Geraldine Draper will be catching any games of the Phoenix Suns this basketball season unless she watches them on a jail facility television.

On Tuesday, Apache County Superior Court Judge Michael Roca extended Draper's term as an inmate in St. Johns, Ariz.

Draper, 46, aka Geraldine Cavanaugh and Geraldine Gillson, was arrested by Phoenix Police on Nov. 21, 2006 for failure to appear at her probation revocation hearing in Apache County and had initially been held without bond. During her arraignment on Dec. 4, 2006, the court set a $10,000 bond, but none was ever posted.

At the conclusion of Tuesday's hearing, Roca ordered the former Gallup resident be held without bond until the disposition hearing scheduled for Feb. 5, 2007.

In 2003, Draper, the sister of McKinley County District Attorney Karl Gillson, pleaded guilty to theft charges in Apache County, Ariz. for the theft of more than $10,000 from her previous employer, the Sanders Unified School District. In that same year, she also pleaded guilty to an embezzlement charge in Santa Fe County, N.M. related to her employment with an insurance company, and she pleaded guilty to embezzlement charges in McKinley County, N.M. related to her employment with the Gallup Area Arts Council, a non-profit arts organization that soon folded after Draper emptied its bank account and wrote a string of bad checks to Gallup merchants.

After being sentenced to probation in those three cases, Draper moved to Phoenix, Ariz.

Paper trail evidence
Tuesday's hearing, which began just before 5 p.m. and ran about two hours, featured testimony by another of Draper's former employers, Thomas D'Ambrosio of Phoenix, who filed a $1.4 million civil lawsuit against Draper involving claims of embezzlement, check conversion, and fraud. Draper had worked as an office manager for D'Ambrosio Land and Investment Inc. D'Ambrosio recently was awarded a default judgment in the case.

D'Ambrosio, 82, appeared physically frail as he walked into the courtroom and was helped in and out of the witness box by county officials. Mary Fehsenfeld, D'Ambrosio's executive administrator, offered lengthy testimony prior to D'Ambrosio's taking the stand. Fehsenfeld said she was hired to replace Draper and to oversee the internal investigation D'Ambrosio initiated once he began to suspect Draper had stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from his businesses. Information collected from that investigation has been turned over to the Phoenix Police, but no criminal charges have been filed as of yet. D'Ambrosio told the court that internal investigation cost him $50,000.

In their testimony, D'Ambrosio and Fehsenfeld claimed that during Draper's employment from Oct. 3, 2003 to Feb. 17, 2006, Draper embezzled cash and checks, stole money through electronic transfers, forged checks, deposited third party checks into her personal bank accounts, made unauthorized credit card charges, and opened unauthorized credit card accounts.

County Attorney Criss Candelaria and Deputy County Attorney Edward "Buzz" France presented exhibits related to the paper trail of evidence D'Ambrosio and Fehsenfeld collected and presented to Phoenix Police Detective Jim Owens. The prosecutors focused mostly on the short time period of Oct. 9, 2003 to Nov. 11, 2003 a time when Draper was under "intensive probation supervision" and subject to much stricter regulation. According to statements made in the hearing, Draper's probation was reduced to the more lenient "standard probation" on May 10, 2005.

Eye-opening statements
Through the testimony of the two witnesses and the introduction of exhibits, a number of eye-opening statements were made concerning Draper's activities in Phoenix:

• Through unauthorized credit card use, Draper allegedly rented a private VIP suite at the America West Arena to watch Phoenix Suns games at a fee of $10,000 per month. She also allegedly rented limousine service to ferry her and her guests to the arena. However, Fehsenfeld said she did not believe this happened during the time Draper was under intensive probation supervision.
  
  
• Draper allegedly wrote forged checks totaling more than $78,000 to purchase items from an upscale shop in Scottsdale, Ariz.
  
  
• Draper allegedly stole a $162,000 check made out to D'Ambrosio's company.
  
  
• One of Draper's checking accounts allegedly had 146 outstanding bad checks on the account.
  
  
• Lisa Fenton, D'Ambrosio's elderly sister-in-law, is also suing Draper because she claims Draper fraudulently convinced Fenton to write her checks totaling more than $34,700. Fenton, who claims in her lawsuit that Draper posed as "the heir to the 'Quaker Oat' and/or 'Uniroyal' family fortune(s)," is also suing her brother-in-law D'Ambrosio.
  
  
• Anthony DePetris, an elderly man who is a godparent to D'Ambrosio's son, has two civil lawsuits against Draper. DePetris, who claims he was defrauded of more than $27,000 by Draper, is also suing D'Ambrosio, his long-time friend and business associate.
  
  
• Either Fenton's or DePetris' attorneys have subpoenaed Draper to testify against D'Ambrosio in an upcoming court hearing. It was unclear which attorneys filed the subpoena.

Draper's reaction
Throughout most of Tuesday's hearing, Draper stared impassively at various people in the courtroom. Her red inmate garb was stenciled with "ACSO INMATE," and she was restrained at the waist with handcuffs and at the ankles with leg restraints. With a head full of gray hair, Draper appeared much older than she did when she attended her July 2003 sentencing in Gallup.

Only twice in the hearing did Draper appear very animated. When Fehsenfeld testified that Draper had written and signed a letter to D'Ambrosio admitting to stealing $117,000 from him and promising to pay him back, Draper vigorously shook her head. Draper's defense attorney, Sara Cooper, told the court that Draper claimed she didn't write the letter. During his testimony, D'Ambrosio stated Draper told him she would pay him back at a rate of $20,000 a month if he would give her a second chance. "She got on her hands and knees and begged me," he said.

Draper also reacted when the judge questioned Candelaria and France about new criminal charges filed against Draper in Phoenix. When the prosecutors explained the case involved allegations that Draper stole an entire house full of furnishings from a former landlord, Draper looked at her defense attorney, shrugged her shoulders, and shook her head.

In that court case file from Maricopa Superior Court, the investigating officer from the Scottsdale Police Department states that Draper admitted to him in a tape recorded conversation that she had possession of the victim's furnishings and she promised on numerous later dates to return the items. That case's Dec. 28, 2006 hearing was continued to a later date.

Throughout the hearing, Cooper objected to some of the testimony and exhibits, but Roca allowed most of the testimony to be heard and most of the exhibits to be accepted. Cooper also asked for Draper's bond to be reduced. Instead, based on what he called the "preponderance of the evidence" presented, Roca order Draper be held without bond until the Feb. 5 hearing.

Draper's mother, Clara Gillson of Lupton, Ariz., and a few family members attended the hearing. Although he had wandered in and out of Draper's Gallup sentencing, Karl Gillson did not attend his sister's hearing. Nor did David V. Draper, the man Draper claims is her current husband. David Draper's whereabouts are of interest to a number of Phoenix-area attorneys as he has been named as a co-defendant in many of the current civil lawsuits against Geraldine Draper.

Reporter Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola can be contacted at (505) 863-6811 ext. 218 or ehardinburrola@yahoo.com.