SORRY FOR BAD FORMATTING. Original is here and in good format:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22murphy+village%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=19981215185616.13433.00000887%40ng120.aol.com&rnum=6
Subject: SLICK CONS
From:
fatthor@pipeline.com
Newsgroups: alt.law-enforcement
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 20:03:44 GMT
Simple living and slick cons: 'Travelers' walk both roads
MURPHY VILLAGE, S.C. -- Patsy Hart had never heard of the Travelers, never
imagined such
people could exist. Then Pete Sherlock walked into the bar.
She was working as a dancer; he was dark and handsome, tipped in 20s and 50s,
said the sweetest things. Sometimes, though, he'd speak to his buddies in a
language she couldn't understand.
Not until they married did she realize he was part of a subculture she
couldn't understand, one from another century and another continent.
Pete Sherlock was one of the Travelers. For 10 months of the year they roam
the country, working as painters, roofers, sealers and pavers.
Some do their best and obey the law. Others, police say, are some of the
smoothest, most relentless con men in America, preying on the old or gullible
with schemes hatched by their forefathers and honed to perfection over the
years.
Honest or dishonest, Travelers are unquestionably different -- clannish,
insular and mysterious.
In Murphy Village, the nation's largest Traveler settlement, ``they' ve
created an old-world community where time stands still,'' says Tom Landis of
the state attorney general's office.
Most parents here pull their children out of school after eighth grade. The
boys go on the road with the men to learn the business. The girls, not even
old enough to drive, marry cousins to whom they were promised years earlier.
And almost everyone's a cousin: In this village of 3,000 there are only a
dozen last names.
Her own husband, Patsy Hart says she discovered, had first married at 17 -- to
his cousin, who was a few years younger. He was one of about 40 Peter Sherlocks
in Murphy Village, each distinguished by a nickname. His was ``Bad Pete''; he
had been convicted in Georgia for ``theft by deception'' in a scam.
``I couldn't believe that this all could happen here, in this day and age,''
Hart, 37, says of her time in Murphy Village. Four years after leaving, she
sounds as if she still can't.
Most people have heard of Tinkers, who have have long traveled Ireland in
caravans and today call themselves ``Traveling People.''
England and Scotland also had such nomads, and in the 19th century members of
all three groups came to the United States. They traded livestock, sold wares
and plied their trades as they moved from town to town. Some people, accusingly
and inaccurately, called them Gypsies.
A group of Scottish Travelers known as ``The Terrible Williamsons' ' became so
notorious for home-repair scams in the 1950s that many changed their names.
Today, estimates of the overall Traveler population -- Irish, Scottish and
English -- vary widely, from 20,000 to 100,000.
All three groups have this in common: They make their living on the road;
they marry inside their extended clans after elaborate courting rituals; they
speak, when they wish not to be understood by outsiders, an ancient mixture
of Gaelic and English known as ``Cant.''
For most of the year, the men and older boys follow the warm weather around
the nation, offering to paint or roof barns and houses and to pave or seal
driveways.
They drive their pickups and work trucks door to door, pointing out how badly
a job needs to be done and offering to do it for a low price.
Travelers, police say, are great salesmen. ``They're charming -- nice,
clean-cut. If you start talking to them, you're a goner,'' says John Wood, an
investigator for the Pinellas County, Fla., Department of Consumer Protection.
``They've got the gift of gab,'' says South Carolina state investigator Joe
Livingston.
Many of those who say they have been cheated by a Traveler, such as Martha
Andrews of Decatur, Ga., who was the victim of an attempt to bilk her in a
home-improvement scam, use the same phrase: ``He was the nicest young man. .
. .'' Even the Travelers' most stern critics, including investigative reporter
Don Wright, who wrote the book Scam, say you can't help liking them.
But in many cases, police and consumer protection officials say, the paint
washes off with the first rainstorm or the driveway cracks with the first
frost. Sometimes, no work is done at all.
How many of the Travelers are crooked? That might depend on who's talking.
``They're criminals,'' says Tom Bartholomy of the Better Business Bureau in
Fort Wayne, Ind. ``I've never met a legitimate Traveler.' '
Some bureaus where the Travelers pass each year have a kind of early warning
system. When complaints start coming into one office, staffers call their
counterparts in the next city: The Travelers are coming.
Wood, the Florida investigator, says Traveler crimes often are neglected
because the offenders choose victims, most of them elderly, who are too
embarrassed, befuddled or ignorant to complain. And if they do, he says,
police usually treat the case as a dispute over a contract, not a crime.
Local police, Wood complains, usually don't even realize they're dealing with
a criminal conspiracy: ``If you call about Travelers, they think you're
talking about insurance.''
Some people familiar with the Travelers, however, insist that most are
honest. Despite their disdain for secondary education, the Irish Travelers of
Murphy Village ``basically are law-abiding people,'' says Clarence Dickert,
superintendent of schools for Edgefield County, S.C. ``They get some bad
raps.''
``They're not all criminals; it's not that simple,'' says Jared Harper, an
anthropologist who studied the same Travelers.
But he says Traveler society has no particular regard for ``country people''
-- non-Travelers -- and many doubtless take advantage of those who can't
bargain or don't take care what they agree to.
The Travelers themselves are famously secretive. None in Murphy Village would
agree to an extended interview or offer examples of solid workmanship or
satisfied customers. Larry Otway, a Travelers' rights advocate, says
centuries of persecution have made them leery.
But based on dozens of interviews with law enforcers, business people and
consumers, there seems to be little question that Traveler society has more
than its share of con men. This year, like every other, has brought a raft of
complaints against Travelers.
In a typical case, police in New York City have accused some Scottish
Travelers of stealing more than $250,000 from about a dozen senior citizens
in the area.
By using a concealed water bottle to spray walls and ceilings, investigators
say, the Travelers allegedly convinced homeowners that their roofs were
leaking.
One resident, Nicholas Visceglia, 83, agreed to pay $9,000 after some
Travelers showed him water on the fuse box of his home in Queens. When a
neighbor called to see what was going on, one of the four Travelers, a
71-year-old grandfather, kept answering and hanging up.
Visceglia was about to go to the bank for the money when police, alerted by
the neighbor, showed up and arrested the Travelers, who were spraying a
useless and possibly flammable liquid on the roof.
Birth of the village
Murphy Village is one of the oddest settlements in America, an ostentatious
suburban subdivision with the social structure of an Appalachian hollow.
Its origins date to the 1960s, when some Irish Travelers were living in a
trailer park in North Augusta, S.C. After they had trouble finding someone to
sell them enough land on which to build homes and a church, their priest
served as a sort of real estate front man. In thanks, they named their
settlement after him.
Today, huge $200,000 to $400,000 houses line U.S. Route 25 outside North
Augusta. Shiny new pickups and luxury sedans sit in the driveways. Statues of
the Virgin Mary stand in the yards, a testament to the Irish Travelers'
1950s-style Roman Catholicism. The village has almost no crime, drunkenness
or divorce.
When she moved to Murphy Village in 1991 after marrying Pete Sherlock, Patsy
Hart says, she was stunned by the homes. One is built around a solid marble
floor; one has a $10,000 chandelier imported from Italy; in one, a $300,000
certificate of deposit hangs in a frame on the wall.
How, she wondered, do itinerant painters afford it?
The Travelers attribute their material riches to hard work and thrift. Hart
says she saw another explanation, one police have long alleged.
Some Traveler men laugh and boast about cheating the ``country people.' '
They charge for watered-down paint and paint they don't use, and they act so
nice that sometimes the ref -- Cant for non-Traveler - - doesn't even know
he's been cheated.
But con artistry isn't all that's different about Murphy Village.
Once, Traveler girls didn't marry much earlier than any others. But settling
down in Murphy Village increased the risk of intermarriage with the
``country'' folk. A daughter might fall in love with a country boy and leave
the fold, the greatest disaster a Traveler parent can imagine.
So young Travelers are paired off early. Girls are often engaged at 7, 8 or 9
to older boys who go on the road with their future fathers- in-law.
To show off their girls to potential in-laws at dances, some mothers tart them
up in tight, sequined dresses, teased hair and thick makeup.
Sometimes, lined up with other girls and their husbands or fiances, they dance
provocatively to rock music played by a disc jockey with a leering drawl.
``Burn the house down, couples,'' he'll bray, `` .. 'cause ya know you
caannn!''
The Travelers insist that no girl is forced to marry, and none does so before
South Carolina's legal age of 14. But Hart says she knows of girls who married
even younger.
``Mind your own business,'' she says she was told when she objected. ``You're
causin' trouble.'' Finally, she split with Pete Sherlock.
She now lives in Conyers, Ga., with her two sons, 13 and 10. She hopes to have
her story made into a movie.
`Only the Travelers know'
On March 15, 1997, after televised reports of truancy and underage marriage in
Murphy Village, a state task force of police and social workers raided the
village.
Fourteen were arrested, some for tax evasion and food stamp fraud. But most
Travelers were on the road. Those who weren't didn't cooperate. And
prosecutors discovered that, under an archaic state law, girls could marry at
12. A revision of the law was rushed through the Legislature.
Today, most observers say little has changed in the village. No one has gone
to jail, the task force has been disbanded, and only a few Traveler boys are
in high school.
Given the maze of shared addresses, identically named children and resistant
parents, ``It's almost cost-prohibitive (for truant officers) to try to go in
there and figure out who's who,'' says Joe Livingston, a state police agent who
has investigated the Travelers for years.
Asked about the reports of underage marriage, he shrugs and says, ``Only the
Travelers know for sure.''
It could be the village motto.
Even the parish priest, the Rev. Patrick Clarke of St. Edward's Roman Catholic
Church, refuses to discuss the Travelers. He asks, ``Do you expect me to be a
source on my parishioners?''
His parishioners have a saying: ``God forgives the Travelers.'' Father Clarke
hears confessions every Saturday at 3.
Rick Hampson, Simple living and slick cons: 'Travelers' walk both roads., USA
Today,
10-08-1998, pp 01A.
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Well, OMNI ? These are my kinda people from my heritage. What do you think of
my famuly?
MAX
I recently caught a performance by a musician whose playing has been described as "the wild, traveler's style." Paddy Keenan is one of the world's foremost pipers and apparently the musical style of his family is distinctive from the more traditional style of most Irish musicicians. His father was described as a traveler and a fine musician in his own right. If you think "Amazing Grace" is inspiring on the pipes, check out Paddy Keenan's solo of "Loch Erne Shore." Pure spirit transposed as music.
The legend about being given license to steal by Jesus himself, I think that is about Romanian Gypsies.
I knew some Travelers when I grew up in Georgia (Their compound is just across the river in South Carolina).
Its true, they seem to be nice, likable people. But then the best con men are. I wonder if this clan has a branch in say, oh, Hope, Arkansas.
There was also a movie called "Southpaw" about Francis Barret who was an Irish boxer who carried the Irish flag at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.
He was from a traveler community in Ireland. Most of the movie has to do with his overcoming poverty, discrimination (they wouldn't let him train at one gym) and a rough environment growing up in a trailer park of travelers.
I am curious as well. I will ask my 94-year-old grandmother what she knows about this topic.
I'm curious. What is it about her face that made you think that she was a Traveller? Thanks.
Minutes segment. My suspicions were already up when I first saw her picture: They said she moved around a lot, had an alias, was involved in organized shoplifting, was driving an expensive SUV, her little girl was all dolled up. One of their scams is to buy a nice new car on credit, never make a payment, then move around frequently making it very difficult to recover the vehicle.