Murray bennet story part 12
BABY, SHERIFF AND EXPENSIVE LUNCHEONS
Another happy and exciting event occurred in Murray's life on December 10, 1960, and that is when his wife Betty gave birth to their first daughter Sherry. His wife had a short stay in the hospital and brought the baby home to a happy household.
Pioneer natural gas built a large Pipe threading plant in Louisiana, and Murray had to go there to give it an assessed value, he and his wife traveled to Louisiana and rented a motel room. Once in the motel room he set up a meeting with the county assessor and his assistant to pick him up and take him to the plant so that they could both look over the property and plant to come to an agreement on the value.
Murray was surprised when the County Sheriff and his deputy showed up, as it turned out the County Sheriff was both the County Sheriff and the County assessor. On their drive out to the property Murray knew the Sheriff was corrupt because he almost immediately asked him if he had any money on him and he replied no, he just had travel expenses back at the motel room.
Upon arrival him at the factory they did a thorough walk-through and when finished the sheriff asked Murray what his valuation was, and he gave him a figure. Of course, Murray knew the true value of that property and factory and gave him a low valuation which he always did to save his company tax money.
The Sheriff told Murray if he gave him $6,000, he would lower the evaluation even lower, Murray's reply was he does not deal with dishonest thieves and crooks and with that said the sheriff got extremely angry. He told Murray he was not dishonest or a thief or a crook and the deputy was going ballistic, for a while Murray did not think he would get out of there with his life but they cooled down and drove him back to the motel where his wife was waiting.
The owner of Pioneer natural gas also owned another outfit named, Plaines machinery and decided to build a $25 million, 20-acre facility in Houston located at the corner of I 45 and FM 1960,, but hit the water table 2 foot down. They could not build on that site as is so he bought a concrete company to put a layer of 22-inch concrete on the entire 20 acres.
This is an example for everone in WA, never give up, find some way around your problem but whatever you do solve it, do not let it defeat you.
2 truck drivers who had parked their trucks for a short time next to the fence of the property somehow ended up in co-hoots with a wealthy individual by the name of Hankamer. Those two drivers ended up getting a $50 million bond issued by Municipal Utility Department 36 (MUD) on that property, all it took was that they post the fact that they were going to issue the bond in the newspaper for two weeks.
After that time had lapsed then they were able to vote the bond issue in with just two votes by Texas law, because in Texas the land votes and Hankamer had purchased 2 small 1 ft. square parcels of land adjacent to the 20 acres for the truck drivers, that is all it took it was a true scam.
Later Hankamer who had purchased additional land sold it at an undisclosed ridiculously low amount an acre to 10 of his Wealthy friends. These individuals made up the Municipal Utility Department 36 (MUD) board which was required by Texas law to hold monthly meetings. These were no ordinary board meetings; they were lavish expensive lunches.
Recent Comments
21
See more comments
Where there is a will there is a way. Thank you very much for sharing Joe.
Lisa, truer words were never spoken.
Thank you very much Joe🤩