I do want to hear
The evening after His arrest for the shooting incident in Dec 2007 Terry Clarke contacted Mattingly telling him of the trouble he was in. Mattingly told him to get $20K out of the bank, and bring it to Leonardtown. When Clarke met with Mattingly John told him the reason he had told him to bring the money was because although he had represented Clarke in one, or two civil cases, he was not the right Lawyer to handle the problems Clarke was then facing because he had a rather tenuous relationship with SA Fritz. The money was to show whichever lawyer he hired that Clarke was loaded and prepared to spend whatever it took to get out of the trouble he was in. It was also going to be used to keep the L-Town machine greased. Mattingly recommended Dan Slade or Shane Mattingly because both were successful lawyers that worked well within the system and with the SA’s office. They first visited Slade’s office where they met with Slade, Asst County Attorney David Weiskopf was also present. There are cel photos floating around of some of them throwing Clakes money up in the air like they had just hit the lottery for $1Mil.
The money was left at Slade’s office, and that’s where all the hoopla of the missing money started. Slades first statement given to investigators claimed he had given the money to Weiskopf to return to Mattingly’s office. Weiskopf’s first statement said he didn’t return the money and he thought that Slade’s secretary may have taken it.
Clarkes first statement said that after leaving the money at Slade’s office for a few days Slade had told him he couldn’t legally accept a cash retainer of that size without reporting it, Slade gave the cash back to Clarke and had him write a check. After a few more days of thought Slade decided to give Clarke his check back and told him to seek other council. That’s how Shane Mattingly ended up representing Clarke. The SA’s office dropped the initial charges against Clarke in Jan 09, with the intention of filing charges later on because the Feds had become involved in his case.
When Brown approached the victims of Clarke’s assault there were no charges filed and his intention was to try to avert the victims from filing civil suits against Clarke for his actions. Clarke had learned that an investigator had told these people they should file civil suits against Clarke because he is loaded and they could receive quite a bundle from him.
The deal Brown made to take an Alford plea to a misdemeanor required him to admit making the deal with Clarke in order end this affair as painlessly as possible. To this day I’m not sure where the money really ended up, but since Brown copped a plea to it I have to assume it some how ended up with him.
The reason that the charges were dropped against Mattingly was his lawyer had 6 different Grand Jury Statements Clarke made at various times up until he gave the one that Fritz, White and Alioto were satisfied with enough to turn all of Clarkes charges into a couple of Misdemeanors with no threat of jail time.
Mattingly never advised Clarke after he retained Shane, but Clarke was initially concerned enough about what was happening to write letters to Mattingly saying that neither Mattingly or Brown had tried to do anything illegal on his behalf.
I’ve never revealed this before but the reason that Brown decided to take the plea deal was that on Sept 7 just 6 days before the witness tampering trial was supposed to start his public defender was called and told that the state was going to try John, and Daniel separately with Brown’s trial being tried first on Mon Sept 13 at that time they made the offer for the plea deal that Daniel had to accept or refuse by the next day (Sept 8). Brown was not at all confident of going to trial with John Getz as his attorney and without the presence of Clark Ahlers in the courtroom. If you remember Getz initially refused to represent Daniel and only did so after being ordered to do so by Judge Wallace. Daniel wasn’t very happy with the communication Getz was having with Danny White before Getz was forced to take Daniel as a client. White made a number of plea offers through Getz to Daniel the whole time Getz was refusing to represent him, and Getz seemed too friendly with White. The special prosecutor never intended to continue to seek a conviction against Mattingly after the results of the States first Trial against him.
I know this story sounds like an unbelievable tale But it’s the truth and it’s the reason I have worked so hard to get as much of this story public as I could.
Clarke couldn’t say much about Fritz in his newspaper if he wanted to. He still hasn’t been sentenced, an won’t be until after the election.
Sorry Vrai. That’s the best I could do