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Duking it out in Duval Austin Stop me if you’ve heard this one. George Parr, the Duke of Duval County, is under indictment for income tax evasion. His nephew Archer, the county.judge, has been indicted for perjury. Various lawsuits involving Archer are stacked up like cordwood in the county’s 229th District Court and in appeals courts, all of them growing out of the divorce he and Jody Martin Parr are trying to arrange. Jody charges that Archer has county employees working for him. Jody has done some time in jail and may do more for interferring with the receiver appointed in a suit brought against Archer and her, a suit she says he arranged. If it sounds a bit confused, that’s because business is proceeding as usual in Duval County. GEORGE’S LEGAL problems are the simplest. The government just claims he cheated on his tax returns from 1966-69. Two other school officials \(Eunice Powell, superintendent of Freer Independent School District, and Bryan Taylor, superintendent of the San Diego Independent School District, of which with tax evasion. The original indictments were handed down in San Antonio, but they were overturned because the men live in another judicial district. A Corpus Christi grand jury re-indicted them. It may be some time before these ostensibly simple charges are heard in a court of law. Parr has filed motions charging everything from theft of evidence to wiretapping by the government. \(In early February one of Parr’s attempts to suppress evidence was settled when the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that, yes, it was all right for the prosecution to move evidence from San George is an old hand at income tax cases. He pleaded guilty to a 1932 indictment, was given a suspended sentence, had the suspension revoked, and eventually served nine months in prison. In the Fifties a whole pile of indictments charging conspiracy, fraud and theft as well as tax-dodging were brought against him. Most were dismissed, and those convictions the government did win were overturned on appeal. Archer’s perjury indictments concern two appearances before a grand jury investigating financial affairs of various governing bodies in the county. The government alleges that Archer lied in testifying that payments of $121,500 he received from the Duval County Conservation and Reclamation District were legal fees, and in testifying that during the period when the payments were time serving exclusively as the special district’s attorney. The younger Parr charges that the indictments are part of a campaign by Republicans to destroy prominent Democrats: “When the Republicans get in, we have this. It happened in the 1950’s.” There is a list of Democrats marked for vendetta, he says, which has been compiled by U.S. Sen. John Tower, Will Wilson and other Texas Republicans. \(Tower says he doesn’t know anything about any Texas OST OF THE action, though, has been in the divorce fight. Archer Parr married Jody Martin, an ex-model with a lot of what used to be called spunk, in July, 1969. She filed for divorce on June 25, 1973, in Nueces County. He filed for divorce on July 3, 1973, in Duval County. A month later, the First State Bank of San Diego filed suit against the couple, seeking a temporary injunction against dissipation of their property, appointment of a receiver and recovery of about $125,000 in loans. Several other creditors of the Parrs joined in the action. On Aug. 15, Dist. Judge 0. P. Carrillo issued the injunction and appointed Emilio Davila, a Laredo attorney, as receiver. Not before the Parrs made it interesting. In testimony in the receivership hearing, Mrs. Parr read a plea she had filed in the Duval County divorce action \(in an attempt to have that case moved to Corpus Christi, which she claims is her legal husband of using county employees to work on the Parr ranch, of accepting $5,000 a month in illegal cash from county flands and of “boasting” that he controls the politics and government, including the judiciary, of Duval County. The bank’s attorney, after recovering his composure during a recess, pointed out that she and her husband must owe Duval County a lot of money and wouldn’t that just be another reason to let a receiver straighten things out? Mrs. Parr answered blithely that she was not sure what the legal consequences were. \(Sure enough, Duval County filed suit against Mrs. Parr shortly thereafter, pointing out that she owed it Archer’s response was much more dynamic: he accused his wife’s attorney of attempting “legal blackmail” by using the threat of Mrs. Parr’s statement in a prior discussion of the divorce case. Her attorney, William Bonilla, answered in turn that a .357 magnum present at the conversation referred to had severely inhibited him, and that to his recollection he hadn’t done much threatening. That’s pretty much the way things have gone ever since. Jody is appealing the appointment of the receiver, claiming Archer conspired with the bank in its suit in order to dispossess her. Archer and the receiver claim Jody has been assigning away her assets to keep them away from Davila. Jody claims Archer has been selling horses. It was Jody who got cited for contempt of court, though. When she failed to appear for a hearing on Sept. 14, Judge Carrillo ordered her to show cause why she should not be charged with contempt. On Sept. 24, the day Carrillo had set for the contempt hearing, the judge recused himself from the case. \(He had earlier denied motions by Mrs. Parr’s attorneys that he disqualify himself from the divorce case, displaying his utter objectivity by hearing the motions himself and appearing When the new judge finally held the hearing, it developed that Mrs. Parr had done any number of contemptuous things. Not only had she failed to appear \(she was sick, she testified, though not too sick to go twice to the Nueces County attorney’s office on that day, and besides, she had March 1, 1974 7 MARTIN ELFANT Sun Life of Canada 1001 Century Building Houston, Texas CA 4-0686 Since 1866 The Place in Austin GOOD FOOD GOOD BEER 1607 San Jacinto 477-4171