D

Re: A Conversation With Sandra Crenshaw

As promised, here is the transcription of my conversation with Sandra Crenshaw. Thanks to intern Holly Bauman for her help.

TR: Hello, this is Tim.

SC: Yes, Tim, this is Sandra Crenshaw. How are you this afternoon?

TR: Oh very good. How are you?

SC: Listen I am, uh, looking into some concerns I have with your blog, Bethany.

TR: Okay.

SC: Anderson.

TR: Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.

SC: Uh-huh. I was wanting to, if you could check with your attorneys on what is called a public disclosure of private facts. And, uh, I think that, uh, that, uh, that Bethany in portions is definitely in violation of them and could also be considered torturous interference because when I was—with a business relationship—because what I was doing was asking her for her qualifications. Uh as a [unintelligible] write book.

TR: Right.

SC: And she also disclosed the name of the book and also that’s really not in reach of a smart of a person to unveil that they are going to be writing a book about public corruption and exposing that when they are coming out with tell-all book. I mean it’s really not—especially in this, uh, atmosphere of the culture in the African-American community. I do hope you know that Mr. Shaw and his wife, who are co-bloggers of you guys—that was not a voluntary suicide.

TR: What do you mean it wasn’t a voluntary suicide?

SC: That was not a voluntary suicide. There is nobody in the African-American community who knows everything that’s going on here knows that Mr. Shaw and his wife did not voluntarily take their lives.

TR: [pause] Well, so you are saying someone forced him to kill her and himself? I don’t, I guess I don’t understand.

SC: Well that is the, that is the feeling. And so what we’re saying is, getting back to your issue, um—

TR: What does that have to do with D Magazine? That confuses me, too.

SC: Okay. You published what—okay, I e-mailed Bethany—

TM: Right.

SC: —the information about me wanting to find someone to write the book for me.

TR: And this was after, if I remember, in our comments section, she had offered to copy-edit your blog posts before they went up.

SC: That’s correct.

TR: And then it was as a result of that that you sent her a note about this book.

SC: Telling her—I sent her a note asking her to e-mail me her resume.

TR: Right.

SC: And I responded to her resume—

TR: And then, she then posted that on her blog.

SC: She then posted, which is a violation. It’s an invasion of privacy. It’s called public disclosure of private facts. Okay? And it is also torturous interference with a business relationship because she published the name of the book, which I had not gotten it copyrighted yet, and she also, uh, exposed me to, um, the people I was trying to get the book written, and I said that I was waiting till all these trials were over, and I was going to publish this book.

TR: Well Ms. Crenshaw—I mean—I don’t—if you have a problem with something that Bethany did then—

SC: But you turned it—

TR: All I did was point to that. I mean, I pointed to her post. So, I mean, uh, uh, I don’t see, with respect to this e-mail—whether you are right or wrong about public disclosure of private facts or not—but that has nothing to do with D Magazine.

SC: No, I just ask you would you check into the legalities of it?

TR: Well, no. I am not going to pay. I’m sure you understand. I’m not going to pay our lawyers to answer a question for Bethany.

SC: No, no, no. See, okay. Yes, she is the first, uh, violator. However, I don’t know to what extent you published it as well. And that you—

TR: By pointing to it you mean?

SC: Yes. And it was public disclosure. Now you don’t have to pay an attorney. I was trying to avoid additional public, public, public while we were going through and investigating and putting all this together for my legal team. Now, I was trying to ask you to check on that for yourself without having me send a letter over to you and force you to have to check with an attorney. I was just trying to ask you for your own cover, for you to check into that to see if there are any violations yourself because you are repeating what is known to be uh private facts. You knew that that was something that I had e-mailed to her.

TR: Well, uh, no. I mean I—

SC: No, you don’t have to. You don’t have to do a thing for her.

TR: Well let me get back to the Shaws because you seem to imply that we have something to do with that, and I’m still a little—

SC: No I did not.

TR: Okay.

SC: No I did not imply that y’all had anything to do with the Shaws. I have not seen—of course, you know, I have just gotten on this blog since y’all are writing about me.

TR: Right.

SC: But, um, and, uh, you know going through all this media defamation, what I’m seeing is that Mr. Shaw said that the reason why he and his wife decided to take their lives, they could not stand the public humiliation they were going through.

TR: I hadn’t heard that. Did they, I mean, the only thing that I had heard were the phone calls that they made to their son. Did they leave a note that said that?

SC: Well, they had talked to the pastor.

TR: Uh huh.

SC: They had talked to the pastor the day before. And they told him that they couldn’t stand the public humiliation and, um, and other things that we know that are going on in the community that they were, um—

TR: But public humiliation is different than what you suggested earlier, that they were actually forced, that he was actually forced to commit that act. And, I’m sorry, maybe that was my fault, but to me that suggested that someone was in the room when that happened. That’s not what you mean, right?

SC: No. Okay, let me back up. Can you hold a second? Can you hold just one second? Hello? [pause] Are you still there?

TR: Yes.

SC: Okay, I’m having to talk real low because I’m in a library.

TR: Okay.

SC: Um, what I said to you was that Mrs. Anderson—okay?—will be getting—Mrs.—okay, my attorney will be sending Mrs. Anderson a cease and desist letter.

TR: Okay.

SC: Okay? While we are investigating the public disclosure of private acts and invasion of privacy.

TR: Okay. I think as soon as you send an e-mail, I mean, you have given up any claim to, you know, invasion of privacy.

SC: No, no. I sent it to her private e-mail. I did not send it to a blog. I sent it to her private e-mail for the purposes of, of soliciting business from her. I wanted her to write something for me. And then when she put it on the blog, okay, when she put it on the blog, that was an invasion of my privacy. She also disclosed the name of the book and what was the nature of the book. And what I’m saying is, is that I was not in a position to have that to be publicly released. That particularly with the subject of my book are the same people who most people feel are responsible for Rufus Shaw’s death. And they think that the same people that I’m writing about—okay?—are the same people that had him and his wife kill themselves.

TR: [pause] Well, I mean, look, it’s an undeniable tragedy what happened to the Shaws. But, I mean, one person who is very responsible for that, and it’s Rufus Shaw. And I understand that that family was under a lot of pressure, but ultimately that was his decision. And I think based on at least what I know about the phone calls that were made in advance of his actions, that he thought them through. So with all due respect to you, and certainly the Shaw family, um, you know, trying to place the blame on other—

SC: We are not trying to place the blame on anybody. I simply said to you that in the African-American community, the same people who are suspected of putting a hit on the Shaws are the same people that I’m writing about in my book.

TR: Alright, but now you are saying that a hit was put on the Shaws.

SC: That’s what the suspicion is in the African-American community of people who are in the know.

TR: Wow. Obviously that’s a great story. And if you’ve got details to back it up, you are going to have yourself a blockbuster of a book, but—

SC: Ho, ho, ho, okay—if I live. If the same doesn’t happen to me because the reason why he was considered the subject of the deal is because he was threatening to expose these same people and he had begun to do some of those things through his blog. In fact, um, it was also highly felt in the African-American community that because his wife—

TR: Ms. Crenshaw, can you leave the library so you don’t have to keep whispering? Because it, it—[laughs]

SC: Are you having a hard time hearing me?

TR: No, it’s just, honestly, it just sounds kinda funny because you keep whispering. Especially because what we are talking about is such a serious matters—

SC: Okay.

TR: [in mock whisper] It just makes it sound even that much more like there is a conspiracy afoot.

SC: Well, I understand that someone who is not involved in this, um, can think of it in light. But what I am saying to you is Rufus Shaw and his wife had learned that Jim Schultz had come up with some other information. I don’t think I can step outside cause I think my battery is gonna—

TR: Okay.

SC: Okay, I am just going to get through it.

TR: Okay.

SC: Now, um, these same people of which I was going to write about, okay, Mr. Shaw and his wife were—you can call them bag people or you can call them extortionists or you can call them whatever you want to. But it is widely known publicly what Mr. Shaw does, okay? So when they were not able to keep a lid on this with Craig Watkins—okay?

TR: Uh-huh.

SC: Then everybody started getting all upset was, “Why does my wife have to go to jail? And if you think my wife is going to jail and go down by herself, you’ve got another thing coming. Because it never should have got to this. This should have been taken care of. My wife has steered millions of dollars of contracts to you MFs, okay? And she has to go through all of this public humiliation for nothing. Okay? And if y’all are the son of a bitches that y’all think y’all are, y’all got all of that goddamn power, then why is Shultz having access to all of this information?” So, he started deep-throating. And instead of people deep-throating on Lynn Flint Shaw, they started deep-throating Jim Schultz on, on, on their co-conspirators.

TR: Okay.

SC: And then trying to make it look that it was other people who were doing it, but they were the ones doing it.

TR: In other words—let me see if I follow here. So the Shaws are—were—had their hands dirty, but they had co-conspirators. And then when Schutze started publishing some of this information, you think that Rufus Shaw’s—his point was, “Hey there’s no way”—I mean, he’s talking now to these shadowy figures I assume—

SC: No, no, no. Look, look. What happened was—hello?

TR: Yah.

SC: What happened was, when the lady went to the DA with the forgery, that was not supposed to go to the press, but allegedly Mr. Price leaked it to the press, okay? And so when he leaked it to the press, they couldn’t fix it. They couldn’t push it up under the rug because it was in the public domain. So Craig still tried to resist and fix it himself but there was so much public pressure on Craig to go ahead and give it to someone else. So they were upset about this change. In other words, if you’re one of the deals, people are supposed to close in and protect you. And even if it meant—

TR: Where, where are you getting this from, though?

SC: [pause] Okay. Much of it is out there in the public domain. The public pressure on Craig. [pause] Right?

TR: Alright.

SC: Okay, the public pressure on him to recuse himself. Jim Schutze’s articles. Jim Schutze’s articles. Jim Schutze is the one putting pressure. Jim Schutze is the one digging into the information. He is the one that everybody is deep-throating. Because of the protracted [unintelligible] chairperson.

TR: Well, the only thing that we know so far, that I’m aware of, is that Flynn Flint Shaw forged the DA’s signature. She had a serious conflict of interest while on the DART Board. And that Rufus had medical bills. So I mean, so the simpler explanation is the family got themselves in some financial trouble. Lynn Flint Shaw was embarrassed by a serious misstep, and that led to the murder-suicide.

SC: Okay.

TR: Alright?

SC: I’m not going to try to convince you otherwise. I’m not going to try to convince you otherwise. I’m just simply saying to you that the same people who we feel are [phone connection gets fuzzy and falls apart]

TR: You’re starting to break up on me now.

SC: I said, the same people that those of us in the know, in the black community, that we feel are responsible are the same who I was getting ready to write about.

TR: So now you have, you have given up plans to write that book?

SC: [unintelligible] You don’t get it. Let me do this. I’ll send y’all a copy of the letter, and you all just go ahead and forward that [unintelligible]

TR: Okay. [pause] Hello? [pause] Hello? And … scene.