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Target 8: Con man charged with polygamy on the run
Updated: July 21, 2006 11:32 AM EDT
Dennis Craig Gould Jr.
GRAND RAPIDS -- One woman's bank account is gone, another faces bankruptcy and a third could lose her house because they trusted Dennis Craig Gould Jr. Gould disappeared June 28 after Michigan State Police arrested him on a polygamy charge.
Gould's failure to show up for his next court date could cost a Grand Rapids woman her home.
Pam Savage says her mother signed for Gould's bail bond to get Gould out of jail. Pam became involved with Gould in mid-April. She met him at a West Side tavern. "He bought me a drink and we started talking. We hit it off and we never really parted since. It was a whirlwind," said Pam.
Even after a state trooper arrested him at her mother's kitchen table, Gould was able to tell a convincing story and keep their trust. "My mom accepted him like one of her own," says Pam. "My step dad who doesn't like anybody, liked him...said that he was like a son to him."
Pam's mother lives on Social Security. The bail bond company has demanded that she pay the $10,000 it lost because Gould jumped bond. "She has ten days to pay it," Pam said, "which is impossible. It's impossible. She could lose everything and he needs to be found."
Gould was charged with polygamy after the woman he married on February 27 learned that Gould was already married to a Van Buren County woman named Penny. His new wife, Jackie Willemstein, says she met Gould last fall and, within a couple of weeks, Gould proposed.
He also asked her to help him with his business. She started writing checks. Today, Jackie said, "I'm probably out $32,000." She's also out the car she signed over to him that he then signed over to the bond company to help bail himself out of jail on the polygamy charge that Jackie filed.
"I had given him all the money I had in the bank," Jackie said.
She started getting suspicious shortly after they married but by then it was too late. Gould left his new bride virtually penniless. Not only that, she broke both ankles when she fell on a stairway and couldn't even get a drink of water for four days but couldn't get any help from him.
"I even called his work and says look, if you guys know where he is you have to get a hold of him. I am in dire need of medical attention," she said. But Gould had disappeared.
While Gould was courting, fleecing and marrying Jackie, he was also still involved with Kathleen Moser who had known him for eight years. She became aware in early January that he was seeing someone else and on March 3 kicked him out. By then, he was already married to Jackie.
"Yeah, but I didn't know that," said Kathleen.
Kathleen met Gould in 1998 but within a few weeks he had disappeared. Police were after him for scamming a truck, camper and boat from West Michigan businesses. At the time she sent flyers to all Michigan campgrounds trying to help catch Gould. When he was finally caught and sent to prison for four years, he was able to convince her that he was a changed man.
After his release in 2002 they resumed their relationship. "I loved him, I believed in him," Kathleen said.
She, too, helped Gould with what he said was his snow plowing business, co-signing loans for two trucks worth $25,000 and $22,000, and a boat worth $16,000. She also took out a $7,000 loan to pay his restitution for his 1998 scam so he could get off parole earlier.
Now Gould is gone and she is on the hook for all of it. "My credit's going to be gone and I'm going to probably have to declare bankruptcy," she says.
Gould not only did prison time in Michigan, he has a record in Oklahoma for fraud from the mid-80's. He is a pudgy, 49-year old. But Gould is still able to con women into relationships and out of their money. Kathleen said, "he took care of you. He made you feel like a queen....took you places and bought you things and at that time, too, he seemed like he had money and I guess I had been struggling."
Pam, too, said Gould portrayed himself as a man with money. She said Gould asked her what it would take for her to stay with him and said she replied that he'd have to have a Harley. She says Gould went out and bought the motorcycle. It was probably with money he scammed from his new wife, Pam now realizes.
"So when I met him and he had money it was her money that he was spending," she says.
He always had a convincing story. One time, according to Jackie, he disappeared for a few days and came home crying. According to Jackie, "...he says 'my son just got shot in Florida over a cocaine deal' and so everybody cried and he was over here for two days and cried."
But it turns out that the young man he was talking about was actually Kathleen's son, who is in Florida but has never been shot and remains alive and well.
"He portrayed himself as a good guy," said Pam. "You really thought he was a good man."
According to her "this guy just played people's emotions and their hearts and he's taken them for a ride...he's a con."
Pam said the last she heard from him was on June 28 when he called her cell phone and said he had bought a used Corvette that they wanted.
"I'm worried that there's another woman on the line," she said, "that there's another woman that's hiding him out at this point because he's got such a line of crap."
A week ago, Target 8 Investigators staked out a Coopersville insurance office after hearing he was switching his policy to a new truck that he was buying across the state in Gladwin. Bail bond agents were watching the auto dealership for him. But it turned out he had already taken the white 2005 Ford F-350 pickup after reportedly paying for it with a bad check.
He disappeared again.
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Steve Faircloth
A Way Out Bail Bonds
(220) 204-9733 Cell
NSIN# SF0105
LIC. #704058
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