Fla. couple who adopted 12 children found slain

[Fanny Mae]

http://arc-sos.state.al.us/cgi/uccdetail.mbr/detail?ucc=1998-03088&page=name

This doc gives another addy for Henry C Tice. The addy would be 165 Bay View In Daphne, connected with his import business. It is also a residential addy.

[cece]

http://www.northescambia.com/?p=9737

Coming Monday: Exclusive NorthEscambia.com Look At Billings Murder Investigation

July 26, 2009

Monday morning, NorthEscambia.com will have an exclusive look behind the scenes and inside the investigation the Billings murders investigation.

You’ve read the stories on NorthEscambia.com and watched Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan on all the major television networks, but Monday morning we’ll take a closer look at the investigation and stories behind those numerous press conferences. You’ll see a side of the investigation and a side of the “humdinger” sheriff that you have not seen before.

Our exclusive behind the scenes look at the events since July 9 will be Monday morning here on NorthEscambia.com. Tell a friend today, and make sure you don’t miss the story tomorrow.

[Fanny Mae]

http://www.northescambia.com/?p=9737

Coming Monday: Exclusive NorthEscambia.com Look At Billings Murder Investigation

July 26, 2009

Monday morning, NorthEscambia.com will have an exclusive look behind the scenes and inside the investigation the Billings murders investigation.

You’ve read the stories on NorthEscambia.com and watched Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan on all the major television networks, but Monday morning we’ll take a closer look at the investigation and stories behind those numerous press conferences. You’ll see a side of the investigation and a side of the “humdinger” sheriff that you have not seen before.

Our exclusive behind the scenes look at the events since July 9 will be Monday morning here on NorthEscambia.com. Tell a friend today, and make sure you don’t miss the story tomorrow.

Thanks Cece. I will be waiting with much interest tomorrow.   

[cece]

http://www.pnj.com/article/20090726/NEWS01/907260331/Huge-debts--huge-troubles&referrer=FRONTPAGECAROUSEL

Huge debts, huge troubles
When she was arrested on July 15, Pamela Long Wiggins owed millions

Travis Griggs • tgriggs@pnj.com • July 26, 2009

When Pamela Long Wiggins was arrested July 15 and charged as an accessory after the fact for the July 9 slayings of Byrd and Melanie Billings, it wasn't her first brush with the law.
The arrest capped a mounting tide of legal and financial troubles for Long Wiggins, an antique mall owner who bought and developed more than a dozen Panhandle properties during the housing boom, then collapsed under the weight of the market crash that followed.

Court documents and legal paperwork reveal an erratic trail of multiple mortgages, marriages and other significant legal troubles in the 47-year-old Gulf Breeze resident's life.

According to court records, when Long Wiggins was arrested, she owed several banks millions of dollars, was married to two men at the same time, and faced foreclosures on more than a half-dozen of her Santa Rosa County properties.

Last week, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers employees confirmed that her wetland development projects in Gulf Breeze are the subject of an Environmental Protection Agency investigation that alleges she defied multiple notifications and cease-and-desist orders and illegally cleared and filled protected wetland properties.

In a bizarre twist, she remains a suspect in an Albany, Ga., cold-case arson investigation from 1993, where firefighters say one of her failing — but insured — business projects suspiciously burned.

Two days before Long Wiggins' arrest in the Billings case, investigators found a safe from the Billingses' house buried in her backyard, along with other evidence investigators believe connects her to the crime.

Of the eight people charged in connection with the deaths, Long Wiggins is the only one who has been released on bond.

She is the only one smiling in her mug shot.
The Classy Lady

A stone's throw from Bob Sikes Bridge, a quiet residential road called Soundview Trail winds through a string of luxurious waterfront homes with lush, tropical landscaping.

Located on the north shore of Santa Rosa Sound, many of the towering two- and three-story homes are appraised at more than $1 million, making it one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in Gulf Breeze. Until last year, Pamela Long Wiggins called it home.
(2 of 4)

A resident of Gulf Breeze since the 1990s and the owner of Magnolia Antique Mall, Long Wiggins amassed a paper fortune buying and selling Panhandle real estate during the housing boom. According to property appraisers' records, she has owned at least 20 properties in the area — including a condo on Pensacola Beach, several cookie-cutter rental houses in Tiger Point and vacant waterfront lots on Santa Rosa Sound.
Advertisement

In 2002, after several successful years, she bought a vacant lot on Soundview Trail and started building her own three-story home. She got a contractor to bring in truckloads of fill dirt to raise her yard above the low-lying soggy areas that surrounded it.

She ran into problems when code enforcement officials said her construction permit did not allow for clay dirt filling. She disagreed with their interpretation of the permit and continued with construction.

At one point, the Corps of Engineers sent her a notice of noncompliance, but soon construction was finished and she moved into the Soundview Trail home, which was complete with two towering white columns and a view of sailboats cruising on the sound from her front porch.

In 2005, she expanded her empire to the sea, adding a 47-foot motor yacht, the Classy Lady, to her growing array of assets. She invited friends out to spend the day on the yacht, which she kept docked at Palafox Pier.

Former real estate associates of Long Wiggins said when the market was strong, she did well.
The bubble bursts

Court records show Long Wiggins borrowed heavily during the housing boom, taking out no fewer than a dozen mortgages, including many adjustable-rate and balloon mortgages — the types largely blamed for getting the United States into the home-lending crisis.

She was overextended, and when the housing market crashed, it took Long Wiggins with it.

Sales ground to a halt, property values plummeted and Long Wiggins was trapped in a homeowner's nightmare: owing the mortgage company far more than the property is actually worth. But Long Wiggins' problem was multiplied.
(3 of 4)

She had more than a dozen properties to make payments on, including her home on Soundview Trail, which was appraised at $227,000 in 2008.
Advertisement

Late last year, she moved into one of her rental homes on Ramblewood Drive and put her expansive Soundview Trail property up for rent. A tenant moved in, but it was too little, too late.

The foreclosure notices started flooding in.

According to clerk of court records, in the six months leading up to the slayings, banks started foreclosure proceedings on at least seven mortgages held by Long Wiggins — amounting to more than $2.2 million in unpaid loans.
New husband

On Dec. 31, she married Hugh Wiggins in Okaloosa County, which came as a surprise to Jimmy Malden Jr., a Baldwin County, Ala., man to whom she still was legally married.

In April, she hastily deeded two of her vacant lots to her new husband, filing forms with the Santa County Courthouse that appear to be photocopies of a previous deed with the old names and dates scratched out with a pen and rewritten by hand.

Long Wiggins fell behind on her slip lease for her yacht at Palafox Pier. Sometime in January, the Classy Lady disappeared.

"They kept it here for a while, and then she got into us for about $3,000," said Marina Management President Leo Cyr. "We came here one day, and the boat was gone."

The boat's location was unknown for a while, but when, on July 15, Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said his office had lost touch with Long Wiggins and considered her a "person of interest" in the Billings case, calls flooded in from local residents who had spotted the Classy Lady docked in Orange Beach, Ala.

Police and a News Journal photographer were there within minutes, and Long Wiggins was escorted peacefully off the Classy Lady, as a news camera clicked away.

Jimmy Malden Jr. said he knew it was coming.

Tie to Gonzalez Jr.

Speaking to a reporter from his cell phone in Baldwin County, Malden, Long Wiggins' estranged husband, said his wife had a tendency to pal around with shady characters.
(4 of 4)

"I'm not sure what to call them. I don't want to say 'mobsters,' " Malden said. "But mobsters."
Advertisement

The alleged ringleader of the Billings slayings, Leonard Patrick Gonzalez Jr., — who was called a pistol-waving "nutcase" by one of his former neighbors — lived in one of Long Wiggins' rental houses on Sterling Point Place.

During an interview with investigators after the murders, Long Wiggins said she and Gonzalez were friends.

When she and Hugh Wiggins drove to Okaloosa County to file their marriage license, Gonzalez and his wife, Tabatha, signed as witnesses on the paperwork.

Gonzalez even had a key to Long Wiggins' personal home on Ramblewood Drive, and she told investigators she had given him permission to come and go as he pleased.

Other suspects charged with the murder told investigators that they met at Long Wiggins' house before the murder, and that they may have used her red minivan on the night of the crime.

When they searched Long Wiggins' home on July 13, investigators uncovered a safe stolen from the Billingses' Beulah home buried in her backyard. Investigators also found several items of black clothing stuffed into a garbage can in her driveway, and inside the home they found boxes of ammunition and 10 guns, one of which resembles the murder weapon, according to Wayne Coldiron, one of the men charged in the killings.

[cece]

(I'm not sure if these are repeat articles)

http://www.pnj.com/article/20090726/NEWS01/907260330

EPA eyes suspect's real estate ventures

Travis Griggs • tgriggs@pnj.com • July 26, 2009

Pamela Long Wiggins' real-estate development in the Gulf Breeze area has landed her in hot water with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.


In March the agency filed an administrative complaint seeking federal civil or criminal penalties against her, alleging she illegally cleared and filled wetland lots near Santa Rosa Sound.

While building a home on Soundview Trail in 2003, Long Wiggins disregarded letters from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers warning that she was violating construction permits by trucking in loads of red clay to build up the wetland lot.

Long Wiggins argued that she was within her rights and continued bringing in fill dirt, starting what Corps employee Edward Sarfort dryly calls, "a long history of noncompliance."

Construction projects in wetland areas are a sensitive issue because if done incorrectly or carelessly they can cause a great deal of water pollution to a sensitive ecological environment.

The Clean Water Act of 1977 and the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 both define rules for developing on wetlands, and allow criminal and civil charges to be brought against violators.

Sarfort said that during another project in 2005, Long Wiggins skipped the permit process entirely on a waterfront lot on Wild Roost Road near the Naval Live Oaks Reservation of the Gulf Islands National Seashore.

According to Santa Rosa County Community Planning, Zoning and Development Division records, Long Wiggins began clearing trees and dumping red clay fill dirt onto the low-lying wetland lot less than a month after she purchased it and without getting a permit. Neighbors protested the construction, circulating petitions and making phone calls to any agency that would listen — from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

In June, the Corps of Engineers filed a cease-and-desist order against Long Wiggins. Violations continued at the lot, Sarfort said, and the case was turned over to the EPA, which has the power to pursue civil and criminal charges for noncompliance.

Long Wiggins' plan had been to level and subdivide the lot and make three or more small waterfront homes, according to Corps of Engineers records. But facing overwhelming pressure from both government regulators and angry neighbors, the project was delayed. Then it stopped entirely.

In 2005, she took out a $639,000 mortgage with the intention of developing the lot, but in 2008, it was appraised at about $414,000.

But the worst may be yet to come.

In April, the EPA reopened an administrative complaint against Long Wiggins that seeks to impose class II civil or criminal penalties, which include fines up to $157,000. The exact wording of the case has not yet been released, but EPA officials said Friday that the charges stem from her failure to correct problems caused by the 2005 wetland construction project.

[islandmonkey]

http://www.pnj.com/article/20090726/NEWS01/907260331/Huge-debts--huge-troubles&referrer=FRONTPAGECAROUSEL

Huge debts, huge troubles
When she was arrested on July 15, Pamela Long Wiggins owed millions

Travis Griggs • tgriggs@pnj.com • July 26, 2009

When Pamela Long Wiggins was arrested July 15 and charged as an accessory after the fact for the July 9 slayings of Byrd and Melanie Billings, it wasn't her first brush with the law.
The arrest capped a mounting tide of legal and financial troubles for Long Wiggins, an antique mall owner who bought and developed more than a dozen Panhandle properties during the housing boom, then collapsed under the weight of the market crash that followed.

Court documents and legal paperwork reveal an erratic trail of multiple mortgages, marriages and other significant legal troubles in the 47-year-old Gulf Breeze resident's life.

According to court records, when Long Wiggins was arrested, she owed several banks millions of dollars, was married to two men at the same time, and faced foreclosures on more than a half-dozen of her Santa Rosa County properties.

Last week, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers employees confirmed that her wetland development projects in Gulf Breeze are the subject of an Environmental Protection Agency investigation that alleges she defied multiple notifications and cease-and-desist orders and illegally cleared and filled protected wetland properties.

In a bizarre twist, she remains a suspect in an Albany, Ga., cold-case arson investigation from 1993, where firefighters say one of her failing — but insured — business projects suspiciously burned.

Two days before Long Wiggins' arrest in the Billings case, investigators found a safe from the Billingses' house buried in her backyard, along with other evidence investigators believe connects her to the crime.

Of the eight people charged in connection with the deaths, Long Wiggins is the only one who has been released on bond.

She is the only one smiling in her mug shot.
The Classy Lady

A stone's throw from Bob Sikes Bridge, a quiet residential road called Soundview Trail winds through a string of luxurious waterfront homes with lush, tropical landscaping.

Located on the north shore of Santa Rosa Sound, many of the towering two- and three-story homes are appraised at more than $1 million, making it one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in Gulf Breeze. Until last year, Pamela Long Wiggins called it home.
(2 of 4)

A resident of Gulf Breeze since the 1990s and the owner of Magnolia Antique Mall, Long Wiggins amassed a paper fortune buying and selling Panhandle real estate during the housing boom. According to property appraisers' records, she has owned at least 20 properties in the area — including a condo on Pensacola Beach, several cookie-cutter rental houses in Tiger Point and vacant waterfront lots on Santa Rosa Sound.
Advertisement

In 2002, after several successful years, she bought a vacant lot on Soundview Trail and started building her own three-story home. She got a contractor to bring in truckloads of fill dirt to raise her yard above the low-lying soggy areas that surrounded it.

She ran into problems when code enforcement officials said her construction permit did not allow for clay dirt filling. She disagreed with their interpretation of the permit and continued with construction.

At one point, the Corps of Engineers sent her a notice of noncompliance, but soon construction was finished and she moved into the Soundview Trail home, which was complete with two towering white columns and a view of sailboats cruising on the sound from her front porch.

In 2005, she expanded her empire to the sea, adding a 47-foot motor yacht, the Classy Lady, to her growing array of assets. She invited friends out to spend the day on the yacht, which she kept docked at Palafox Pier.

Former real estate associates of Long Wiggins said when the market was strong, she did well.
The bubble bursts

Court records show Long Wiggins borrowed heavily during the housing boom, taking out no fewer than a dozen mortgages, including many adjustable-rate and balloon mortgages — the types largely blamed for getting the United States into the home-lending crisis.

She was overextended, and when the housing market crashed, it took Long Wiggins with it.

Sales ground to a halt, property values plummeted and Long Wiggins was trapped in a homeowner's nightmare: owing the mortgage company far more than the property is actually worth. But Long Wiggins' problem was multiplied.
(3 of 4)

She had more than a dozen properties to make payments on, including her home on Soundview Trail, which was appraised at $227,000 in 2008.
Advertisement

Late last year, she moved into one of her rental homes on Ramblewood Drive and put her expansive Soundview Trail property up for rent. A tenant moved in, but it was too little, too late.

The foreclosure notices started flooding in.

According to clerk of court records, in the six months leading up to the slayings, banks started foreclosure proceedings on at least seven mortgages held by Long Wiggins — amounting to more than $2.2 million in unpaid loans.
New husband

On Dec. 31, she married Hugh Wiggins in Okaloosa County, which came as a surprise to Jimmy Malden Jr., a Baldwin County, Ala., man to whom she still was legally married.

In April, she hastily deeded two of her vacant lots to her new husband, filing forms with the Santa County Courthouse that appear to be photocopies of a previous deed with the old names and dates scratched out with a pen and rewritten by hand.

Long Wiggins fell behind on her slip lease for her yacht at Palafox Pier. Sometime in January, the Classy Lady disappeared.

"They kept it here for a while, and then she got into us for about $3,000," said Marina Management President Leo Cyr. "We came here one day, and the boat was gone."

The boat's location was unknown for a while, but when, on July 15, Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said his office had lost touch with Long Wiggins and considered her a "person of interest" in the Billings case, calls flooded in from local residents who had spotted the Classy Lady docked in Orange Beach, Ala.

Police and a News Journal photographer were there within minutes, and Long Wiggins was escorted peacefully off the Classy Lady, as a news camera clicked away.

Jimmy Malden Jr. said he knew it was coming.

Tie to Gonzalez Jr.

Speaking to a reporter from his cell phone in Baldwin County, Malden, Long Wiggins' estranged husband, said his wife had a tendency to pal around with shady characters.
(4 of 4)

"I'm not sure what to call them. I don't want to say 'mobsters,' " Malden said. "But mobsters."
Advertisement

The alleged ringleader of the Billings slayings, Leonard Patrick Gonzalez Jr., — who was called a pistol-waving "nutcase" by one of his former neighbors — lived in one of Long Wiggins' rental houses on Sterling Point Place.

During an interview with investigators after the murders, Long Wiggins said she and Gonzalez were friends.

When she and Hugh Wiggins drove to Okaloosa County to file their marriage license, Gonzalez and his wife, Tabatha, signed as witnesses on the paperwork.

Gonzalez even had a key to Long Wiggins' personal home on Ramblewood Drive, and she told investigators she had given him permission to come and go as he pleased.

Other suspects charged with the murder told investigators that they met at Long Wiggins' house before the murder, and that they may have used her red minivan on the night of the crime.

When they searched Long Wiggins' home on July 13, investigators uncovered a safe stolen from the Billingses' Beulah home buried in her backyard. Investigators also found several items of black clothing stuffed into a garbage can in her driveway, and inside the home they found boxes of ammunition and 10 guns, one of which resembles the murder weapon, according to Wayne Coldiron, one of the men charged in the killings.

What's super weird is that I was looking to rent a 4+ bedroom because the rental I was in was only 3 bedrooms and I was expecting Eli to make it out of NICU, the house that I wanted had been in a short sale for 15 months and I had just about given up on it so my dad was in town and told me about a rental in Gulf Breeze proper..........it was 1206 soundview Trail  Thank God the house I'd been watching went into foreclosure in late April and I put an offer in on it and we got it, but I love to give my dad a hard time telling him he tried to get me to rent a murderer's house   Scary isn't it

[Fanny Mae]

What's super weird is that I was looking to rent a 4+ bedroom because the rental I was in was only 3 bedrooms and I was expecting Eli to make it out of NICU, the house that I wanted had been in a short sale for 15 months and I had just about given up on it so my dad was in town and told me about a rental in Gulf Breeze proper..........it was 1206 soundview Trail  Thank God the house I'd been watching went into foreclosure in late April and I put an offer in on it and we got it, but I love to give my dad a hard time telling him he tried to get me to rent a murderer's house   Scary isn't it

WOW!! A fine mess you would have been in. 

She is another of the wheeler-dealer types that needed to be in jail for the arson. Too bad they couldn't make a case on her.

I have seen people on the Alabama coast having to tear down their houses when they have used clay for fill on the beach. I guess she just strutted on through that too.  I wonder how much she was into the Safe Harbor marina for her docking of her boat? 

[Fanny Mae]

I know you are gone now Cece. But thanks for the links. 

[islandmonkey]

What's super weird is that I was looking to rent a 4+ bedroom because the rental I was in was only 3 bedrooms and I was expecting Eli to make it out of NICU, the house that I wanted had been in a short sale for 15 months and I had just about given up on it so my dad was in town and told me about a rental in Gulf Breeze proper..........it was 1206 soundview Trail  Thank God the house I'd been watching went into foreclosure in late April and I put an offer in on it and we got it, but I love to give my dad a hard time telling him he tried to get me to rent a murderer's house   Scary isn't it

WOW!! A fine mess you would have been in. 

She is another of the wheeler-dealer types that needed to be in jail for the arson. Too bad they couldn't make a case on her.

I have seen people on the Alabama coast having to tear down their houses when they have used clay for fill on the beach. I guess she just strutted on through that too.  I wonder how much she was into the Safe Harbor marina for her docking of her boat? 

I know-can you imagine the fear you'd have living in one of her rentals

I know how rigid the Island Authority is about what you can and can't use, and I'd be pizzed if someone hauled in clay and screwed up our pristine white beach..because so few yards have grass here and only the sand, so can you imagine your white sandy yard getting all mixed in with clay fill

[Fanny Mae]

http://www.northescambia.com/?p=9737

Coming Monday: Exclusive NorthEscambia.com Look At Billings Murder Investigation

July 26, 2009

Monday morning, NorthEscambia.com will have an exclusive look behind the scenes and inside the investigation the Billings murders investigation.

You’ve read the stories on NorthEscambia.com and watched Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan on all the major television networks, but Monday morning we’ll take a closer look at the investigation and stories behind those numerous press conferences. You’ll see a side of the investigation and a side of the “humdinger” sheriff that you have not seen before.

Our exclusive behind the scenes look at the events since July 9 will be Monday morning here on NorthEscambia.com. Tell a friend today, and make sure you don’t miss the story tomorrow.

[Fanny Mae]

http://www.northescambia.com/?p=9737

Coming Monday: Exclusive NorthEscambia.com Look At Billings Murder Investigation

July 26, 2009

Monday morning, NorthEscambia.com will have an exclusive look behind the scenes and inside the investigation the Billings murders investigation.

You’ve read the stories on NorthEscambia.com and watched Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan on all the major television networks, but Monday morning we’ll take a closer look at the investigation and stories behind those numerous press conferences. You’ll see a side of the investigation and a side of the “humdinger” sheriff that you have not seen before.

Our exclusive behind the scenes look at the events since July 9 will be Monday morning here on NorthEscambia.com. Tell a friend today, and make sure you don’t miss the story tomorrow.

Bumping this for Cece.

[islandmonkey]

EXCLUSIVE: Behind The Scenes Of The Billings Case With Sheriff David Morgan
July 27, 2009
 

It was a chance meeting in the lobby of the Escambia County Sheriff’s Department on July 10, the day after the murder of Byrd and Melanie Billings, that Sheriff David Morgan won’t forgot.

He does not use the lobby of the building often; on that day he just happened to be there when Ashley Markham, the Billings’ daughter, was being led inside to talk to investigators.

NorthEscambia.com sat down with Sheriff David Morgan Friday afternoon at his office for an exclusive interview to learn more about what the days since the Billings murders have been like for him personally.

Humdinger. Twinkies. Beanie Babies and Bubblegum

The sheriff that was such a commanding presence with terms like “humdinger,” “beanie babies and bubblegum” on the national television networks, Larry King, Anderson Cooper, Good Morning America — the list just goes on and on — was at a loss for words meeting Ashely Markham in his department’s lobby.

“You just feel so helpless,” Morgan told NorthEscambia.com in an exclusive interview. “There’s really not a lot you can say that can ease the pain, the mourning…the grieving.”

“I did not really know what to say to her,” he said, “other than to say ‘is there anything I can do?’.”

“Find the people that did this,” Morgan said Ashely Markham replied.

Four days later, on July 14, Ashley Markham was at the sheriff’s department for a press conference. She knew that Morgan was about to announce some good news, but that’s all she knew.

The next time Morgan and Markham would see each other, they were on every major television network in the country and many others around the world. She stood by Morgan’s side with her husband Blue, unaware of what the sheriff was about to say.

At the press conference Morgan recounted that lobby meeting, as tears built in Markham’s eyes.

“We have found them, and they are in custody,”  Morgan said at that press conference. The sheriff hugged and comforted her, then turned back to his press conference. She put her face into her hands and cried as he announced that seven people were in custody for the murder of her parents.

“That press conference was for them, not for anybody else,” Morgan told NorthEscambia.com.

The Phone Call

It was a short time after the initial deputies were called to the Billings’ home in Beulah. Morgan was at home with his wife Susan; they had just finished dinner. It would be the last ordinary dinner the first term sheriff and his wife would enjoy together for weeks.

The phone rang. Morgan was told about the murders, and about the large number of children in the home.

“My first reaction was to drive out there, because of all of the children,” he said. “It tugs at your heart. But we had a lot of capable, competent people from the sheriff’s department out there. The best thing I could do was ask them what they needed from me and let them do their jobs.”

The Longest Days

Since the murder, the sheriff said he’s been working many 17-18 hour days, but is quick to point out that many of his investigators have pulled longer hours. In fact, he said he’s left his office many times at 1:30 to 3 a.m., his investigators still at work from the day before. He was running on as little as two hours sleep when he would arrive back at the department’s administration building as early as 4 a.m. to do the morning shows like Good Morning America and the Today Show.

“I would walk the circuit of satellite trucks,” he said, “ABC first then all the way down the line to CNN and MSNBC. It was grueling.”

International News

“I was oblivious to all that,” he said of the worldwide television coverage of the press conferences he was doing in the days early after the murders. “We were just soldiering on.”

In the beginning, he thought the press conferences were being carried just locally, and he was doing them to update the local community on the case and reassure our area that they were safe — even though killers were on the loose.

“It was my job. It really wasn’t a big deal,” he said. “I’m ultimately responsible, and I felt as sheriff a horrendous need to reassure the community.”

He said working with all of the media, with perhaps the rare exception of a tabloid or two, was pleasurable — and effective.

Thanks to the media, the community’s eyes were on the lookout for that red van believed to have been used in the crimes.

“If I lived another 100 years, I would probably never see that again,” he said of the media’s cooperation during the Billings case. “We agreed on this one thing — capture these folks.”

The Feds

Some of the media swirled with rumors that several federal agencies had become involved in the case for one reason or another.

Morgan said that he did turn to outside agencies to assist in the investigation, in the interest of time. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and the FBI provided assistance early. From crime lab to ballistics testings, it was all about fast turn around, he said. The FBI provided help with fingerprint analysis and video enhancement. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) provided lab testing.

The outside agency services were all things that the Escambia Sheriff’s Department can do in their modern facilities. But with the number of suspects and the large number of items to be processed from the crime scene, Morgan felt early that using those outside agencies would serve them well to get results as fast as possible. He was right.

“It was my job as sheriff to ensure that the process moved along,” he said.

Steal The Moments

The sheriff’s wife Susan attended at least two of the press conferences, rare moments where she was able to see her husband over the past weeks.

“We’ve just had to steal the moments that we can,” the sheriff said.  “There’s been no schedule for sleep or meals. There’s been no quality time, no anytime for us.” They did steal time for dinner together one night — at midnight.

Susan has, like any good wife, been his biggest critic. “You speak too fast, looked the wrong way, stop it with all the metaphors; she’s been very supportive.”

Morgan had hoped to get home early this past Friday afternoon so the couple could have dinner together. Our NorthEscambia.com exclusive interview was to be his only interview for the afternoon at 1:30 Friday, but it was bumped to 2:30 so he could meet with the State Attorney’s office on late breaking developments in the case. We noticed him steal a few glances from behind his desk at the clock on the wall by about 3:30.

But when he was done with our interview, it was not going to be time to go home. People Magazine had called and left a message with his secretary while we had waited to go in and see him. They were still waiting for a callback.

We learned at the end of our interview that another person of interest in the case was in the building, and the sheriff was to meet with his investigators as soon as our interview was done.

Dinner would have to wait.

Credit Where Credit Was Due

Morgan frequently credited his investigators, officers and support staff during our interview for their help in the Billings case. But there’s more.

“I prayed to God everyday that He would give us the ability to do our best because so many people depend on us everyday to stay the course and make the right decisions,” Morgan said. “I prayed that God would be good enough to give me the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of Job.”

In the Old Testament, Job was a God-fearing man that suffers great trial after great trial that leave him without his belongings, his children or his health. Despite the great trials, he remains patient and faithful to God and is finally rewarded by the Lord. Solomon was the wise king of Israel that had to decide to which of two mothers a child belonged. So he ordered a sword to cut the child in half, knowing that the real mother would be willing to give her child up rather than see it die.

“The credit (for the work in the case) needs to be spread around, and it needs to go to Him.”

Morgan office photos by NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge. Press conference photos courtesy WEAR TV 3, click to enlarge.




http://www.northescambia.com/?p=9752

[cece]

http://www.pnj.com/article/20090726/NEWS01/907260331/Huge-debts--huge-troubles&referrer=FRONTPAGECAROUSEL

Huge debts, huge troubles
When she was arrested on July 15, Pamela Long Wiggins owed millions

Travis Griggs • tgriggs@pnj.com • July 26, 2009

When Pamela Long Wiggins was arrested July 15 and charged as an accessory after the fact for the July 9 slayings of Byrd and Melanie Billings, it wasn't her first brush with the law.
The arrest capped a mounting tide of legal and financial troubles for Long Wiggins, an antique mall owner who bought and developed more than a dozen Panhandle properties during the housing boom, then collapsed under the weight of the market crash that followed.

Court documents and legal paperwork reveal an erratic trail of multiple mortgages, marriages and other significant legal troubles in the 47-year-old Gulf Breeze resident's life.

According to court records, when Long Wiggins was arrested, she owed several banks millions of dollars, was married to two men at the same time, and faced foreclosures on more than a half-dozen of her Santa Rosa County properties.

Last week, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers employees confirmed that her wetland development projects in Gulf Breeze are the subject of an Environmental Protection Agency investigation that alleges she defied multiple notifications and cease-and-desist orders and illegally cleared and filled protected wetland properties.

In a bizarre twist, she remains a suspect in an Albany, Ga., cold-case arson investigation from 1993, where firefighters say one of her failing — but insured — business projects suspiciously burned.

Two days before Long Wiggins' arrest in the Billings case, investigators found a safe from the Billingses' house buried in her backyard, along with other evidence investigators believe connects her to the crime.

Of the eight people charged in connection with the deaths, Long Wiggins is the only one who has been released on bond.

She is the only one smiling in her mug shot.
The Classy Lady

A stone's throw from Bob Sikes Bridge, a quiet residential road called Soundview Trail winds through a string of luxurious waterfront homes with lush, tropical landscaping.

Located on the north shore of Santa Rosa Sound, many of the towering two- and three-story homes are appraised at more than $1 million, making it one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in Gulf Breeze. Until last year, Pamela Long Wiggins called it home.
(2 of 4)

A resident of Gulf Breeze since the 1990s and the owner of Magnolia Antique Mall, Long Wiggins amassed a paper fortune buying and selling Panhandle real estate during the housing boom. According to property appraisers' records, she has owned at least 20 properties in the area — including a condo on Pensacola Beach, several cookie-cutter rental houses in Tiger Point and vacant waterfront lots on Santa Rosa Sound.
Advertisement

In 2002, after several successful years, she bought a vacant lot on Soundview Trail and started building her own three-story home. She got a contractor to bring in truckloads of fill dirt to raise her yard above the low-lying soggy areas that surrounded it.

She ran into problems when code enforcement officials said her construction permit did not allow for clay dirt filling. She disagreed with their interpretation of the permit and continued with construction.

At one point, the Corps of Engineers sent her a notice of noncompliance, but soon construction was finished and she moved into the Soundview Trail home, which was complete with two towering white columns and a view of sailboats cruising on the sound from her front porch.

In 2005, she expanded her empire to the sea, adding a 47-foot motor yacht, the Classy Lady, to her growing array of assets. She invited friends out to spend the day on the yacht, which she kept docked at Palafox Pier.

Former real estate associates of Long Wiggins said when the market was strong, she did well.
The bubble bursts

Court records show Long Wiggins borrowed heavily during the housing boom, taking out no fewer than a dozen mortgages, including many adjustable-rate and balloon mortgages — the types largely blamed for getting the United States into the home-lending crisis.

She was overextended, and when the housing market crashed, it took Long Wiggins with it.

Sales ground to a halt, property values plummeted and Long Wiggins was trapped in a homeowner's nightmare: owing the mortgage company far more than the property is actually worth. But Long Wiggins' problem was multiplied.
(3 of 4)

She had more than a dozen properties to make payments on, including her home on Soundview Trail, which was appraised at $227,000 in 2008.
Advertisement

Late last year, she moved into one of her rental homes on Ramblewood Drive and put her expansive Soundview Trail property up for rent. A tenant moved in, but it was too little, too late.

The foreclosure notices started flooding in.

According to clerk of court records, in the six months leading up to the slayings, banks started foreclosure proceedings on at least seven mortgages held by Long Wiggins — amounting to more than $2.2 million in unpaid loans.
New husband

On Dec. 31, she married Hugh Wiggins in Okaloosa County, which came as a surprise to Jimmy Malden Jr., a Baldwin County, Ala., man to whom she still was legally married.

In April, she hastily deeded two of her vacant lots to her new husband, filing forms with the Santa County Courthouse that appear to be photocopies of a previous deed with the old names and dates scratched out with a pen and rewritten by hand.

Long Wiggins fell behind on her slip lease for her yacht at Palafox Pier. Sometime in January, the Classy Lady disappeared.

"They kept it here for a while, and then she got into us for about $3,000," said Marina Management President Leo Cyr. "We came here one day, and the boat was gone."

The boat's location was unknown for a while, but when, on July 15, Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said his office had lost touch with Long Wiggins and considered her a "person of interest" in the Billings case, calls flooded in from local residents who had spotted the Classy Lady docked in Orange Beach, Ala.

Police and a News Journal photographer were there within minutes, and Long Wiggins was escorted peacefully off the Classy Lady, as a news camera clicked away.

Jimmy Malden Jr. said he knew it was coming.

Tie to Gonzalez Jr.

Speaking to a reporter from his cell phone in Baldwin County, Malden, Long Wiggins' estranged husband, said his wife had a tendency to pal around with shady characters.
(4 of 4)

"I'm not sure what to call them. I don't want to say 'mobsters,' " Malden said. "But mobsters."
Advertisement

The alleged ringleader of the Billings slayings, Leonard Patrick Gonzalez Jr., — who was called a pistol-waving "nutcase" by one of his former neighbors — lived in one of Long Wiggins' rental houses on Sterling Point Place.

During an interview with investigators after the murders, Long Wiggins said she and Gonzalez were friends.

When she and Hugh Wiggins drove to Okaloosa County to file their marriage license, Gonzalez and his wife, Tabatha, signed as witnesses on the paperwork.

Gonzalez even had a key to Long Wiggins' personal home on Ramblewood Drive, and she told investigators she had given him permission to come and go as he pleased.

Other suspects charged with the murder told investigators that they met at Long Wiggins' house before the murder, and that they may have used her red minivan on the night of the crime.

When they searched Long Wiggins' home on July 13, investigators uncovered a safe stolen from the Billingses' Beulah home buried in her backyard. Investigators also found several items of black clothing stuffed into a garbage can in her driveway, and inside the home they found boxes of ammunition and 10 guns, one of which resembles the murder weapon, according to Wayne Coldiron, one of the men charged in the killings.

What's super weird is that I was looking to rent a 4+ bedroom because the rental I was in was only 3 bedrooms and I was expecting Eli to make it out of NICU, the house that I wanted had been in a short sale for 15 months and I had just about given up on it so my dad was in town and told me about a rental in Gulf Breeze proper..........it was 1206 soundview Trail  Thank God the house I'd been watching went into foreclosure in late April and I put an offer in on it and we got it, but I love to give my dad a hard time telling him he tried to get me to rent a murderer's house   Scary isn't it

Good morning everyone.

Wow, IM.  It is a good thing you didn't get involved with the Soundview Trail house.  Sometimes things work out for the best & I'm glad you got the house you wanted. 

[cece]

I know you are gone now Cece. But thanks for the links. 

You're always welcome Fanny Mae.   

[islandmonkey]

http://www.pnj.com/article/20090726/NEWS01/907260331/Huge-debts--huge-troubles&referrer=FRONTPAGECAROUSEL

Huge debts, huge troubles
When she was arrested on July 15, Pamela Long Wiggins owed millions

Travis Griggs • tgriggs@pnj.com • July 26, 2009

When Pamela Long Wiggins was arrested July 15 and charged as an accessory after the fact for the July 9 slayings of Byrd and Melanie Billings, it wasn't her first brush with the law.
The arrest capped a mounting tide of legal and financial troubles for Long Wiggins, an antique mall owner who bought and developed more than a dozen Panhandle properties during the housing boom, then collapsed under the weight of the market crash that followed.

Court documents and legal paperwork reveal an erratic trail of multiple mortgages, marriages and other significant legal troubles in the 47-year-old Gulf Breeze resident's life.

According to court records, when Long Wiggins was arrested, she owed several banks millions of dollars, was married to two men at the same time, and faced foreclosures on more than a half-dozen of her Santa Rosa County properties.

Last week, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers employees confirmed that her wetland development projects in Gulf Breeze are the subject of an Environmental Protection Agency investigation that alleges she defied multiple notifications and cease-and-desist orders and illegally cleared and filled protected wetland properties.

In a bizarre twist, she remains a suspect in an Albany, Ga., cold-case arson investigation from 1993, where firefighters say one of her failing — but insured — business projects suspiciously burned.

Two days before Long Wiggins' arrest in the Billings case, investigators found a safe from the Billingses' house buried in her backyard, along with other evidence investigators believe connects her to the crime.

Of the eight people charged in connection with the deaths, Long Wiggins is the only one who has been released on bond.

She is the only one smiling in her mug shot.
The Classy Lady

A stone's throw from Bob Sikes Bridge, a quiet residential road called Soundview Trail winds through a string of luxurious waterfront homes with lush, tropical landscaping.

Located on the north shore of Santa Rosa Sound, many of the towering two- and three-story homes are appraised at more than $1 million, making it one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in Gulf Breeze. Until last year, Pamela Long Wiggins called it home.
(2 of 4)

A resident of Gulf Breeze since the 1990s and the owner of Magnolia Antique Mall, Long Wiggins amassed a paper fortune buying and selling Panhandle real estate during the housing boom. According to property appraisers' records, she has owned at least 20 properties in the area — including a condo on Pensacola Beach, several cookie-cutter rental houses in Tiger Point and vacant waterfront lots on Santa Rosa Sound.
Advertisement

In 2002, after several successful years, she bought a vacant lot on Soundview Trail and started building her own three-story home. She got a contractor to bring in truckloads of fill dirt to raise her yard above the low-lying soggy areas that surrounded it.

She ran into problems when code enforcement officials said her construction permit did not allow for clay dirt filling. She disagreed with their interpretation of the permit and continued with construction.

At one point, the Corps of Engineers sent her a notice of noncompliance, but soon construction was finished and she moved into the Soundview Trail home, which was complete with two towering white columns and a view of sailboats cruising on the sound from her front porch.

In 2005, she expanded her empire to the sea, adding a 47-foot motor yacht, the Classy Lady, to her growing array of assets. She invited friends out to spend the day on the yacht, which she kept docked at Palafox Pier.

Former real estate associates of Long Wiggins said when the market was strong, she did well.
The bubble bursts

Court records show Long Wiggins borrowed heavily during the housing boom, taking out no fewer than a dozen mortgages, including many adjustable-rate and balloon mortgages — the types largely blamed for getting the United States into the home-lending crisis.

She was overextended, and when the housing market crashed, it took Long Wiggins with it.

Sales ground to a halt, property values plummeted and Long Wiggins was trapped in a homeowner's nightmare: owing the mortgage company far more than the property is actually worth. But Long Wiggins' problem was multiplied.
(3 of 4)

She had more than a dozen properties to make payments on, including her home on Soundview Trail, which was appraised at $227,000 in 2008.
Advertisement

Late last year, she moved into one of her rental homes on Ramblewood Drive and put her expansive Soundview Trail property up for rent. A tenant moved in, but it was too little, too late.

The foreclosure notices started flooding in.

According to clerk of court records, in the six months leading up to the slayings, banks started foreclosure proceedings on at least seven mortgages held by Long Wiggins — amounting to more than $2.2 million in unpaid loans.
New husband

On Dec. 31, she married Hugh Wiggins in Okaloosa County, which came as a surprise to Jimmy Malden Jr., a Baldwin County, Ala., man to whom she still was legally married.

In April, she hastily deeded two of her vacant lots to her new husband, filing forms with the Santa County Courthouse that appear to be photocopies of a previous deed with the old names and dates scratched out with a pen and rewritten by hand.

Long Wiggins fell behind on her slip lease for her yacht at Palafox Pier. Sometime in January, the Classy Lady disappeared.

"They kept it here for a while, and then she got into us for about $3,000," said Marina Management President Leo Cyr. "We came here one day, and the boat was gone."

The boat's location was unknown for a while, but when, on July 15, Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said his office had lost touch with Long Wiggins and considered her a "person of interest" in the Billings case, calls flooded in from local residents who had spotted the Classy Lady docked in Orange Beach, Ala.

Police and a News Journal photographer were there within minutes, and Long Wiggins was escorted peacefully off the Classy Lady, as a news camera clicked away.

Jimmy Malden Jr. said he knew it was coming.

Tie to Gonzalez Jr.

Speaking to a reporter from his cell phone in Baldwin County, Malden, Long Wiggins' estranged husband, said his wife had a tendency to pal around with shady characters.
(4 of 4)

"I'm not sure what to call them. I don't want to say 'mobsters,' " Malden said. "But mobsters."
Advertisement

The alleged ringleader of the Billings slayings, Leonard Patrick Gonzalez Jr., — who was called a pistol-waving "nutcase" by one of his former neighbors — lived in one of Long Wiggins' rental houses on Sterling Point Place.

During an interview with investigators after the murders, Long Wiggins said she and Gonzalez were friends.

When she and Hugh Wiggins drove to Okaloosa County to file their marriage license, Gonzalez and his wife, Tabatha, signed as witnesses on the paperwork.

Gonzalez even had a key to Long Wiggins' personal home on Ramblewood Drive, and she told investigators she had given him permission to come and go as he pleased.

Other suspects charged with the murder told investigators that they met at Long Wiggins' house before the murder, and that they may have used her red minivan on the night of the crime.

When they searched Long Wiggins' home on July 13, investigators uncovered a safe stolen from the Billingses' Beulah home buried in her backyard. Investigators also found several items of black clothing stuffed into a garbage can in her driveway, and inside the home they found boxes of ammunition and 10 guns, one of which resembles the murder weapon, according to Wayne Coldiron, one of the men charged in the killings.

What's super weird is that I was looking to rent a 4+ bedroom because the rental I was in was only 3 bedrooms and I was expecting Eli to make it out of NICU, the house that I wanted had been in a short sale for 15 months and I had just about given up on it so my dad was in town and told me about a rental in Gulf Breeze proper..........it was 1206 soundview Trail  Thank God the house I'd been watching went into foreclosure in late April and I put an offer in on it and we got it, but I love to give my dad a hard time telling him he tried to get me to rent a murderer's house   Scary isn't it

Good morning everyone.

Wow, IM.  It is a good thing you didn't get involved with the Soundview Trail house.  Sometimes things work out for the best & I'm glad you got the house you wanted. 

Tell me about it!!! I actually never even went to look at it as I didn't want to move of the Island, but I remember him telling me it was the 1st house one the right, so when I was snooping around when the story broke and rode down Soundview Trail, I was shocked to see that her house was the 1st one on the right (however the rent was far cheaper than anything I'd seen on the beach ).

I was thrilled to get the hosue I wanted, not many foreclosures are in that good shape.....we were extremely fortunate and blessed that all that I had to do was put up a fence

[Fanny Mae]

Well now! As soon as last Friday there was another "person of interest" at the sheriff's office. Doesn't seem to me like the Billings murder case has been wrapped up.   

 http://www.northescambia.com/?p=9752

[islandmonkey]

Well now! As soon as last Friday there was another "person of interest" at the sheriff's office. Doesn't seem to me like the Billings murder case has been wrapped up.   

 http://www.northescambia.com/?p=9752

You have top be kidding me....NOT

[Sister]

Quote from above article:
Morgan frequently credited his investigators, officers and support staff during our interview for their help in the Billings case. But there’s more.

“I prayed to God everyday that He would give us the ability to do our best because so many people depend on us everyday to stay the course and make the right decisions,” Morgan said. “I prayed that God would be good enough to give me the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of Job.”

This man sounds like he knows what he is doing -- not afraid to look and get help wherever it can be found.
Island, that story about the house gives me the shudders, it's amazing when we discover how much we are protected from and seldom every know it.  You and your family remain in my daily prayers.

[islandmonkey]

Quote from above article:
Morgan frequently credited his investigators, officers and support staff during our interview for their help in the Billings case. But there’s more.

“I prayed to God everyday that He would give us the ability to do our best because so many people depend on us everyday to stay the course and make the right decisions,” Morgan said. “I prayed that God would be good enough to give me the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of Job.”

This man sounds like he knows what he is doing -- not afraid to look and get help wherever it can be found.
Island, that story about the house gives me the shudders, it's amazing when we discover how much we are protected from and seldom every know it.  You and your family remain in my daily prayers.

So true sister about being protected and never even knowing about it......I cringe when I think that I could have lived there (and wondered why the rent was wayyyyyyy off from anything else). Also, thank you so much for your continued prayers for my family~we really appreciate it more than you know.

[Fanny Mae]

Why would someone go to the trouble to form corporations and never use them? Maybe so they could have official letterhead on their paperwork? Or be a legit corp in case anyone checked before doing business with them? Or have a legit business for invoices? Especially import invoices? Hum.....