THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 15, 1995 TAG: 9512150531
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOE JACKSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
On a windy day in October 1994, three federal officials watched as a body was exhumed from a simple grave in Purdy, Mo.
The grave was that of Robert Lewis Chastain - former business partner of Richard M. Hirschfeld, the Virginia financier sentenced in 1991 to six years in prison and fined $460,000 for conspiracy and tax evasion. The question was whether the body was that of Chastain, who died in 1989, or that of a proxy.
It was Chastain's. Now, more than a year later, that exhumation, ordered by a Norfolk federal judge, has come back to haunt the three officials who watched. On Thursday, Chastain's family filed suit in Barry County Circuit Court in Cassville, Mo., against Assistant U.S. Attorney David Barger, FBI agent Richard Oberlander and IRS agent Roy Sheffler. The family is seeking $1.5 million punitive damages and $20,000 actual damages, court records show.
Chastain's family claims that the federal order for the exhumation and autopsy violated Missouri law. Chastain's two sons and daughter, now teenagers, suffered depression and ``mental anguish'' and underwent psychological counseling, the lawsuit said.
``This has been continuing cause of torment we have gone through,'' said Peggy Jensen, Chastain's widow, on Thursday. ``After Robert was exhumed, I wrote a letter to the FBI asking for the results of the autopsy, asking for answers. I waited and waited. I never got an answer.
``I feel like the government had a personal vendetta against Robert and Richard (Hirschfeld) and they thought they could find out something they wanted,'' said Jensen, who is now remarried and living in Salt Lake City. ``We were not notified when this happened. . . I feel like it's not legal what they did. I feel like they're grasping for straws.''
Barger and the others have declined comment, since the matters are still pending in court.
Thursday's suit was only the latest in a series of assaults against the federal officials involved in the investigation of Hirschfeld and Chastain. Hirschfeld, who was released this March, filed court papers in U.S. District Court, six months later saying his charges resulted from a personal vendetta by former U.S. Attorney Henry E. Hudson. He demanded that his convictions be overturned.
Hirschfeld charged that Hudson pursued criminal charges because the prosecutor believed Hirschfeld was responsible for sabotaging his bid to become a Norfolk federal judge. Hudson, the chief federal prosecutor for Eastern Virginia from 1986 to 1991, denied the allegations.
Last week, Hirschfeld filed in federal court in Norfolk polygraph results, which he said proved his claims. He referred to taped conversations between Hudson and Barger, Hudson's subordinate, which he said supported his claims of a vendetta. But Hirschfeld has not yet produced the tapes or transcripts.
For most of the 1980s, Hirschfeld and Chastain were a team. They wined and dined Muhammad Ali. They reportedly tricked deposed Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos into confessing plans to retake his country.
But as federal authorities began investigating their finances, Chastain began to slide. In December 1989, he was found dead of an apparent suicide in a hotel in Vienna, Austria. He was buried in January 1990.
During Hirschfeld's trial, prosecutors raised questions about the circumstances of Chastain's death. They said Hirschfeld received nearly $5 million from Chastain's life insurance policies. Chastain died about two weeks after a suicide clause on the insurance policies had lapsed, enabling Hirschfeld to claim the money, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors hinted, in court papers, that Chastain was still alive, splitting the $5 million with Hirschfeld. They suggested that another body was buried instead. Hirschfeld said he never got the money.
In October 1994, the judge issued a sealed order for the exhumation of the body. On Oct. 18, 1994, Barger and the officials with the FBI and IRS descended on the windswept cemetery. They threatened local officials with charges if they leaked the contents of the order.
Local and federal authorities struck a deal: If it was Chastain, the body would be returned to the same grave. If it was somebody else, he must be buried elsewhere in a ``John Doe'' grave. Two days later, the man who was apparently Robert Chastain was lowered, again, into his grave.
Hirschfeld charged the exhumation was one last-ditch effort to keep him in federal prison before his release. Federal officials have never commented.
``I'm tired of the government thinking they can act in secrecy,'' Peggy Jensen said Thursday. ``We'll see in court what's legal and what's not. I'm tired of them playing with people's lives.'' by CNB