Star Tribune from Minneapolis, Minnesota • Page 10

WednesdayJanuary 271988Star Tribune 7 Behind She masks off Glenda Bell Bell 10A. i. li.iimibjihih ii.iiu iiuiiiu ii rin.i.,,,,,,, 1 iiTilu n.iyi i These are the key players in the drama. The descriptions of their roles have been out toaether from In terviews with some of the principals, conversations with authorities and the contents of court documents. Glenda Bell In April 1985 she took a job as a secretary at the Minneapolis brokerage of Craig-Hallum.

That summer she persuaded Peter Taubenberger, her soon-to-be husband, to transfer his account to the firm. She told Taubenberger she had information about no-lose investments that could make him millions. But instead of investing the $1.3 million he placed in his Craig-Hallum account, she siphoned off the money, 1 if- it. if I it on everything from Asian-art to a Continued from page 1A Moines diner, waiting for her shift to snd and waiting for prison. "I'm guilty," she said in an interview.

"Listen, all the money's gone. I was so screwed up when I stole the money, I was absolutely bongos. I was into Peter for a couple hundred thousand so I figured marrying him was the only way out of the hole. I was into him so damned deep I didn't know how to get out I screwed him bloody." Next Wednesday, almost a year to the day after she fled the Twin Cities, she plans to plead guilty to bank fraud before U.S. District Court Judge Harry MacLaughlin in Minneapolis.

She is accused of stealing money that Pclcf TauuciYuercjerV Bell's third husband, they met through a Stillwater dating service. The major shareholder of a St. Paul construction firm, Amerect he had no problem arranging a $1 million loan from Commercial State Bank of St. Paul to make the investments Bell recommended. He described his marriage as a roller coaster ride admitting he loved to her son's Catholic As part of her act, she everyone she was dying creating an aura of that forestalled tough Last February, she out of sight, reappear- I i lihi I a-v j- i If spending poison ts donation school.

convinced of cancer, sympathy questions. dropped inn in Inwa Ben even tnougn she tried to him in June 1986. By that December, he thought A Mil 1 fammiwmaiwttM a ne was iu minion i richer. Actually, I he was out i Bruce Hendry Bell's boss, a broker and vice president at Craig-Hallum. He hired her as a secretary, but she played the role of a stockbroker convincing Taubenberger, his banker and even many people at Craig-Hallum.

Unbeknownst to Hendry, she forged his signature on letters to Taubenberger and his banker. Darrell Muellerleile Executive vice president of Commercial State Bank. He approved the milion loan to Peter Taubenberger and gave Bell over $58,000 of his own money, believing that he, too, could take advantage of the same kinds of investments as Taubenberger. Taubenberger gave her to tnvest, money they borrowed from the Commercial State Bank of St Paul. He thought he was shooting the financial moon, rocketing toward a $10 million profit from investments based on information she supposedly gleaned from her boss at Craig-Hal-lum.

In fact, Bell was using the money to pay for extravagances: strolling minstrels at a picnic, cash gifts to needy friends and landscaping at their $300,000 cobblestone home shrouded in the woods of Oakdale. "She has to be brilliant to pull it off the way she did," said Bruce Hendry, her former boss and a nationally known broker and deal maker. "She used confidential information to create a scheme to fool other people. She was wired at both ends." And her stories rang true. "If you didn't believe her, you were the most skeptical person in the world," Hendry said.

The story of what she did and why unfolds from voluminous court files and interviews with Bell, her ex-husband and others involved in the case. Glenda Bell is charming. It's how she survives. At the diner she has befriended Des Moines' bums, serving them pancakes at p.m., and she keeps a hot top on the coffee mugs of the judges and lawyers who stop in each morning to gossip before going off to work. But there is another Glenda Bell, one who aroused sympathy with her stories of being stricken with terminal cancer, yet who tried to poison her husband by doctoring his drinks with an overdose of Libnum.

"I wanted to get him out of my life so bad," she said fiercely. "He almost completely broke my spirit. Peter proceeded to tell me how he was going to make me.a better person." Taubenberger is matter-of-fact when he talks about her today: "Why did I stick with her? Well, I guess I'm old-fashioned. You marry in sickness and in health. And she was supposed to be dying of cancer." When she fled last February, she abandoned a life filled with fancy cars, fine restaurants, jewelry, furs and trips to the Isle of Wight and the like.

It was an intoxicating life that in the end overwhelmed her. On the way down husbands and lovers, friends, her son, a boss who trusted her all have been hurt. Yet, many say they cannot help but still like her. She had nothing worldly to look forward to when she graduated from Waseca's Central High School in 1968 because her father had told her not to plan on college. In high school, she had taken the traditional approach four years as a member of Future Homemakers of America.

Before she was 20, she was pregnant by a man she only described as "Les" and whom she never married. She bore a son and in 1972 married a man named Bill Henry. They moved oacK vvaisrv A Stillwater attorney who I a had an affair with Bell and who received $260,000 in bonds and stocks from Bell, securities she bought with laubenbergersmoney. were turned she stole a blank check. She typed the check for $1 and made out to Taubenberger.

On I New Year's Eve she met with Tau-' benberger and Muellerleile, turned over the check to be deposited at Commercial and repay the $1 mil- lion loan. But within hours she the check back, saying it contained a clerical error and Craig-Hallum, would not honor it. For the next month, Muellerleile and Taubenberger exchanged phone calls about the whereabouts of the new -check. It was a desperate stall while Bell tried to figure out what to Finally, she took off, sending a to Taubenberger telling him not to hunt for her and that she'd soon be 1 dead from cancer. Behind her she left a thicket of civil suits by Taubenberger, Commercial State Bank and Craig-Hallum, each blaming the others for irresponsibil- ity- Last November, Bell was arrested in Corning, Iowa, living under the Ann Johnston and married for the.

fourth time to Dale Johnston, a.r traveling salesman of auto parts. ti "You know, I could have spent somei time with that man," she said. was a fun guy." 'i'if? But she'd been talking too big in ajr small town. She'd told everyone she -was an attorney from New York, graduate of Vassar who $75,000 per case. When she claimed the loss of a $40,000 ruby and diamond ring, the police did the normal checking and only found more ques-' tions.

With the help of her suspicious relatives, she was found out In the end, she was earning money as- a baby sitter. i 5 "Why do you think I'm not in jail?" she said from behind the counter at the hotel diner in Des Moines. "The FBI knows where all the money is, that's why. I just want to get it over with. I want to go to 'Club She moved over to the register give a customer change.

"You know -what the really crazy thing about thisX isr she said. "Here they trust meOJ with the money." Earlier the governor said he would support whatever consensus the Leg- islature reached. Since then, he said, a disappointing revenue forecast indicating that there's no additionak money to spend has stymied his." plans. Legislative leaders have said that the governor didn't provide leadership in funding transportation h' in 1987 and that they are going ahead with their own plan this session." They are talking about tapping the million-plus kitty of the Greater Minnesota Development Corpora- tion, a Perpich project, and say ways are more critical to rural eco-n nomic development. 1 1 1 auDenDer9e'S money, I four months earlier.

"When Peter bought Revere, it was all over with," Hendry said. None of it could have happened without the participation of Commercial State Bank. In April 1986 Muellerleile approved a $1 million revolving credit agreement co-signed by Taubenberger and Bell, and secured by the fictitious investments. On paper, Taubenberger looked like he was worth $7 million. Muellerleile granted the loan on the basis of his 10-year business relation ship with Taubenberger, and accepted Bell's forged letter, carrying Hendry's signature, stating that the loan was backed by Taubenberger's investments.

"He (Muellerleile) could have killed the scheme in 15 seconds just by calling me up to verify the Revere stock," Hendry said. Muellerleile declined to be interviewed for this story. His attorney, Terence O'Loughlin, said, "There was no need to check because (Taubenberger) and his wife provided to the bank a signed financial statement representing that he owned more than $6 million worth of Revere stock. It was based on trust." Muellerleile even gave Bell $58,000 of his own money to invest. She never did.

"I had fun spending that money, but I won't tell you how," she said with a laugh. But the fraud was beginning to unravel. In December 1986, Taubenberger started pushing her to cash out his investments because he was worried about the effects that changes in the federal tax law would have on his profits. Bell said she never had been more desperate in her life. She went to the cashier's office at Craig-Hallum and broke down in tears, saying that her brother and his children had been killed in a car accident in New York.

She waved a check around, saying that the undertaker wouldn't accept it, and she needed another one right away. Flustered by her scene, the clerks ushered her into the back office, a secured area, and while their backs Glenda Bell and Peter Taubenberger. to Mankato, where he worked as a landscaper and she got a job as a secretary for the brokerage of Dain Bosworth Inc. It was an uneventful existence until they moved to Iowa in the late '70s. In 1979 she filed rape charges against a man who was later acquitted.

Then it was the skids for the next four years. She started using cocaine heavily, she said. By 1984 she had divorced Henry, given him custody of her son and entered treatment at St. Mary's Hospital in Minneapolis for cocaine addiction. In October 1984 she married a drug counselor, but that relationship was over within a year.

When her drug treatment was finished, friends told her to move to a place that would make her feel humble, she said. She chose the North Side of Minneapolis and wound up in a duplex on Humboldt Av. N. There she met Brian Webb, a struggling graphics designer who lived upstairs. She was flat broke.

"She was really into money," Webb said. "I lived on the cutting edge while her dreams were about money." In April 1985 she interviewed at Craig-Hallum to be a secretary for Hendry. "Of all the people I interviewed, she stood out," he recalled. There was something about her that stood out as special. And she is.

She had that spark. And I'm in the people business." She sat through the interview eating chocolates, saying she was addicted to them, bhe told him she was living on Sunfish Lake with a rich man who owned a printing business. In reality, she was still on the North Side, living with Webb. Hendry handed her the job. For Bell, it couldn't have been better.

She was working for a broker with a national reputation for making bold and immensely successful investments in financially troubled or bankrupt companies. Hendry's name is synonymous with his conquests of Kaiser Steel a company which he eventually took over, and Erie Lackawanna Inc. While Hendry roved the country scouting investments, he needed somebody back at the office to handle the day-to-day work. Bell, with her warmth and aura of loyalty, was ideal. It was through a Stillwater dating service that she and Peter Taubenberger met in June 1985.

When he called on her, his first impression was that a "very bright, very intelligent" woman had come into his workaholic life. Taubenberger, 37, is an engineer, raised in Maine with a fondness for animals and plaid shirts. "I don't exactly have a vibrant personality," he said. He'd spent two years working construction jobs in Iran during tne reign ot tne bhah, living in a dormitory out in the desert. He went to Iran, he said, because he saw a guy driving a Corvette and wondered why he didn't have one.

The guy told him to get a job overseas. In 1982 he had come to St. Paul and three years later bought out the construction company he was working bar the DFL from the national convention this summer in Atlanta because of its failure to abide by rules that would prohibit the state from holding its caucuses until March 8. Earlier yesterday Esala said she called Jim Carey, executive director of the compliance commission, and advised him of changes the DFL has made in its caucus rules to satisfy the Democratic National Committee. The DFL Party has lived up to an agreement made with the national party last October, Esala said, and made changes including: Dropping a requirement that people seeking election as a delegate or alternate to county and legislative district conventions must declare their presidential preference or uncommitted status.

Dropping a requirement that any subcaucus must have a title that in Star Trbune graphic Billy Steve Clayton ey from him, weeks after they met. On paper, Bell's scheme looks complicated; she appeared to set up investments for Taubenberger, then kept the money for herself behind a paper screen of phony documents. In reality, it was simple all it took was great acting, an insider's knowledge of how Hendry worked, and the blind trust of her husband and his banker, Darrell Muellerleile, a senior loan officer and executive vice president of the Commercial State Bank of St. Paul. "I let Peter think anything he wanted to think," she said.

"He would call me up in the morning after reading the Wall Street Journal and tell me how much we were worth. If people would close their mouths and open their ears they'd learn a lot more." She said it was easy to take advantage of him. "He was too ready for the quick buck. Money was his god." Taubenberger scoffs at his ex-wife's observation: "When the stock market was rising and everybody was making money, everyone was a smart investor. On the day of the crash (last October) you could find a million people who were being greedy." In the late summer of 1985, before they were married, she had persuaded Taubenberger to transfer his in vestments to Craig-Hallum, where Hendry would be his broker.

She explained that Hendry's specialty was investing in distressed companies he expected to increase in value. The biggest investment that Taubenberger thought he made was in a bankrupt company called Revere Copper and Brass. In January 1986 he thought he put $400,000 into Revere "trade credits" part of the debt that Revere owed to creditors. Bell told him a bankruptcy court had ruled that investors could convert the credits into Revere stock for $1 per share. At the time, the stock was trading on the market at $10 per share, and by December, it had risen to $22.50.

Taubenberger thought he had made $9 million on Revere. There was one problem: It was no longer possible to invest in Revere trade credits at the time Bell proposed the deal to Taubenberger. The credits already had been converted id! Ruth Esala the next step is likely to be an appeal to the national party's judicial council, Esala said. The council, set up to resolve internal disputes, hasn't met within recent memory, Esala said. State Sen.

Linda Berglin, DFL-Minneapolis, is a Bruce Hendry for. By the time Glenda Bell met him he was the major shareholder of Amerect Inc. and was driving a bright red Porsche. She told him she was a broker at Craig-Hallum, and he believed her. "She acted like she was a broker," he said.

"She didn't act like a secretary. She said she was making $45,000 per year." Taubenberger fell in love, and the two were married in a rushed Las Vegas ceremony. The honeymoon never started. Within a day, she told Taubenberger that she was having an affair with a rugged-looking Stillwater lawyer named Jack Walsh. In fact, Bell later was to give Walsh more than $262,000 in stocks and bonds, bought with the money she was supposedly investing for Taubenberger.

To this day, she still says Walsh is the man she loved, and only married Taubenberger because of the money. On top of that, she claimed she was suffering from terminal cancer. Her hair was falling out in patches. She said it was because of chemotherapy; actually it was a horrible case of nerves. Taubenberger said he had no reason to disbelieve her.

"It was heart-rending to watch her hair fall out," he, said. In retrospect, he realizes "it was a good prop," and one she expanded on. She had her head shaved and donned a wig. Plus, she was losing weight at a drastic rate. Again, she claimed cancer was the cause, but in fact, she'd had a stomach stapling operation to help her lose weight The cancer story was effective.

It aroused sympathy at Craig-Hallum, at home and with her friends, and forestalled the kind of tough scrutiny that might have blown her cover. At the time, Taubenberger said, he thought her erratic behavior was easy to explain: "The illness, the chemotherapy, the combination of all those things didn't lend to any mental stability." Taubenberger found himself roller coaster ride." on a "It's all been a bad dream, more than just seeming like a movie," he said. She'd already begun siphoning mon- cludes a presidential candidate preference or uncommitted status. Esala did not mention other stipulations by the national party that the DFL ignored, including the elimination of subcaucuses at the precinct caucuses formed to support a candidate or issue. That's something the DFL and other state parties have long done, and it's unreasonable to ask that Minnesota get rid of those, she said.

Nor did she say anything about the national party's proposal that Esala hold a joint press conference with Vick to demonstrate the DFL's sincerity in complying with national rules. She did, however, close her one-page letter with the word "Sincerely," above her signature. If the Compliance Assistance Commission rejects the revised DFL plan, DFL leader calls efforts to comply with national party 'very sincere' Perpich not optimistic on getting funds for highway, transit needs Gov. Rudy Perpich said Tuesday that he's not optimistic about finding money for highway and transit needs this legislative session. "It looks pretty tight," he said after a closed-door meeting all morning with advisers discussing his 1988 budget.

Perpich said he's still putting the budget pieces together. He has said he'll find money for his education initiatives, including $15 million for school desegregation in Minneapolis, St Paul, Duluth and suburbs, to comply with rules of the Minnesota Board of Education. A legislative commission has recommended a 3-cent increase in Minnesota's gasoline tax and the transfer of about $65 million of motor vehicle excise taxes to help fund transportation. That $65 million now goes to the general fund and would have to be replaced with other money to keep the budget in balance. By Betty Wilson Staff Writer' The DFL Party has been "very sincere" in its efforts to bring Minnesota into compliance with national party rules, state DFL Chair Ruth Esala said in a letter sent Tuesday to the chairwoman of the national Democratic Party's Compliance Assistance Commission.

Esala enclosed the DFL's revised rules for its precinct caucuses on Feb. 23, which the national Democratic Party has said are too early and in violation of its rules. "We hope the CAC will review this plan in a timely fashion, find it meets the standards, and vote to bring Minnesota into compliance," she said in the letter to Kathy Vick, chairwoman of the Compliance Assistance Commission. The national party is threatening to.