"A Divorce On Paper Only"

(This post cross-posted at Peach Pundit too)

Rest assured, some folks' worlds are getting ready to get severely rocked. And when Alan Judd's through with this story, a lot of people who thought they might have slipped quietly out under the radar, Kai Franklin for instance, may just be headed to the pokey instead.

Judd's extremely effective investigative work just overturned, thankfully, the inept, lethal anthill that was our state mental health system. (A shame Dr. Andrea Bradford there was allowed to resign; she should be prosecuted for murder, same as the legislators who have continually slashed funding to the state system of mental health care. But that's another story I suppose.)

Expect the same treatment with the Graham case, as Judd picks up where CL left off. From today's AJC cover story:

Franklin and Graham remained in regular contact, according to evidence presented during his sentencing hearing. Graham's co-defendants testified that while he was a fugitive, he sent drug money to Franklin: one bag of cash holding $25,000, another with $20,000. She also got portions of $150,000 that Graham invested in her father's business, King testified. David Franklin said last week that the investment never occurred.

In California, King said, Graham bought a pre-paid cellular telephone to call only his wife, thinking it would be difficult to trace. King referred to the device as "the Kai phone." "They would talk about different things," King said, "but sometimes about paying bills."He said Franklin regularly sent bills to Graham at the house where he was hiding in suburban Los Angeles.

King said Graham told him "he still had responsibilities to take care of for Kai."Graham used postal money orders to pay Franklin's bills, an Internal Revenue Service agent said. They apparently took pains to make the transactions difficult to track.

Franklin, agent Wayne Wright testified, bought the money orders in a "structured fashion" to avoid scrutiny. She had each money order issued for less than $3,000, the amount that triggers reporting requirements designed to detect illicit transactions. And she allegedly bought multiple money orders at multiple post offices on the same day, or in different lines in the same post office.

Wright said authorities have obtained about 60 such money orders. Other alleged discussions between Franklin and Graham during his time as a fugitive were of amore personal nature. When Graham wanted to see his child from a previous relationship, Rivera testified, Franklin picked up the boy from his mother and dropped him off for a flight out of DeKalb Peachtree Airport on a chartered jet. Rivera said he ferried drug money back to Graham in California on the same flight.

The visit troubled King."I just told Tremayne that he has to tighten up," King testified, "because he can't let something like that let the authorities track him through his son." Rivera said he accompanied the boy back to Atlanta several days later. He left the child with Franklin, he said, in her Cobb County home.