I'll Take Care of You

by Caitlin Rother

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t make anybody a criminal,” he replied, griping that the police had been asking him to come down and make a statement against Nanette, a single mom who was just trying to take care of her kids. And they’d tried to throw him in jail too.

  “I have two kids. I have a family. I have a life,” he said, neglecting to mention that he’d left that family and had failed to keep up with his child support payments for the past four years. “You want to take that life away from me and now, all of a sudden, you’re going to be my friend?”

  Jenny tried to educate him about Nanette’s parenting techniques. “Yeah, but at the same time, I mean, how do you explain having two and three boyfriends at one time to your kids too? How healthy is that?” she asked, adding that she also didn’t think Nanette set a very good example by displaying nude pictures of herself around the house.

  Eric said he didn’t want to debate the nudity issue with her. His first priority was to get Nanette out of jail, “because there’s no reason for her to be in there.... She had no family. She has nothing,” and no way to pay her bail bond.

  Jenny noted that Nanette had passport photos in her purse because she was about to go on a cruise, which meant she had to have some money. Eric said she had the photos because she was part of a travel agency, and it made him nuts when things like this were misconstrued. (Police found no affiliation between Nanette and a travel agency.)

  From there, the conversation turned nasty. “You know, she has things that can hurt you guys,” Eric said. “You have things that can hurt her.”

  Jenny told Eric that Nanette had been siphoning their money, trying to operate under their corporate names, and was ruining their credit. “That’s just pure criminal. That’s not right,” she said. “She just doesn’t give the straight story on anything.”

  But nothing seemed to get through to Eric, who was on a mission to get Nanette out of jail, where she didn’t belong because of “this bull-dinky material stuff.”

  “Well, I don’t call a half-a-million dollars ‘bull-dinky,’ especially when it’s not your money,” Jenny said.

  Insisting that no one had been hurt by these activities, he overlooked the simple and very relevant fact that he was arguing with a murder victim’s daughter. “No one is suffering,” he said. “No one has been beaten up. I think people that rape people should go to jail forever because they hurt someone.... I’m going to try to get her out of jail because no one . . . belongs in there.”

  “I just hope that she’s not leading you down the wrong path,” Jenny said.

  “Forget all the relationships, I’m still her friend,” he said, “until she proves totally otherwise that she did something to hurt me deliberately.”

  Jenny thought it was odd and surprising that Eric had called her on behalf of a woman charged with stealing money from Jenny’s family, and that he was now demanding even more from them. Especially after he and Nanette had been named as suspects in Bill McLaughlin’s murder.

  While Nanette was in custody, Eric tried everything he could to get her out of jail, including asking his parents to put up their house as collateral for Nanette’s bail bond.

  Nanette apparently wasn’t handling her incarceration very well, but with her assets frozen, she had nothing to leverage to make bail, and no one to pay it for her.

  When Jenny and Kim got wind that Eric had asked his parents to help, they approached Sandy Baumgardner to give his mother a call. If they tried to do it themselves, they figured Ronnie Naposki would hang up as soon as they uttered the name “McLaughlin.” In their minds, the longer Nanette was in custody, the more likely she was to crack.

  Sandy was scared to call, but she agreed, knowing she needed to be gentle or Ronnie would shut down.

  Ronnie seemed surprised to hear from Sandy, but she didn’t hang up.

  “I’m a concerned person who is close to this family, and I heard you might be putting up your house as collateral for bail for Nanette,” Sandy said. “I don’t think you know who Nanette really is. She was engaged to Bill McLaughlin, and she may have portrayed herself as something else.”

  “I thought she was a successful businesswoman,” Ronnie said.

  “I’ve never known her to work,” Sandy said.

  “She came over for Thanksgiving and she gave everybody in New York the impression that she was a successful businesswoman,” Ronnie countered, apparently trying to reconcile what she’d seen with what she was now hearing.

  Careful not to bash Eric, Sandy said, “I just hate to see good people get sucked into her schemes. She’s not what she says she is, and I don’t want to see you guys get burned.”

  “I don’t know what to believe any more,” Ronnie said, sounding exasperated. “I’m hearing all these different things.”

  “Please, please, it’s your house. Don’t put that up because she will find a way to make you regret that. Your son has been duped.”

  Ronnie sounded very sad as she thanked Sandy for calling. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said.

  Once Nanette’s bail was reduced to $250,000, she managed to cover the bond, and she was released on April 24, after spending nearly two weeks behind bars.

  Nanette wasted no time before buying a new car, but she was not about to give up her luxury tastes even though her sugar daddy was gone. On May 2, she decided she needed a black 1988 BMW 750iL, with 65,000 miles on it, formerly owned by actor Dennis Quaid.

  Her credit application for the car listed Eric Naposki as a reference and her sister, Stephanie King, in Scottsdale, Arizona, as the nearest relative.

  Nanette claimed once again that she owned the Seashore house, listing it as her current address, with a market value of $1.2 million. She also cited two employers, saying she’d worked for Johnny’s Burgers since March 1995 and for Krishel, Inc., since 1990, claiming she earned a monthly income of $11,000 as a “consultant to people starting up new businesses, writing business plans for companies.” (Krishel wasn’t formed until October 1994, and Nanette told police that she was unemployed.)

  Detective Voth got a tip about the BMW purchase from someone who saw Nanette driving it. Voth tracked down the car, and seeing Cove Motoring on the plate frame, he paid a visit to the dealership, where he learned that Nanette had come in with a big guy, six-foot-one, 250 to 270 pounds, with dark hair and a “bad hairpiece.”

  “Did you fill out the application?” Voth asked the salesman, who identified Eric from a photo lineup.

  “No, they did,” he said.

  Chase Manhattan Bank and California Thrift and Loan had initially denied the loan application because Nanette had no proof that she owned the Seashore house. She left the dealership and came back with State Farm fire insurance paperwork that listed her and Bill McLaughlin as the policyholders.

  She also attached 1993 and 1994 federal tax returns to the application, showing adjusted gross income of $197,089 and $222,271, respectively. California Thrift approved the loan, financing the entire $19,869 price of the BMW, which came to $20,398, and Nanette drove off in her new car.

  CHAPTER 26

  Slowly but surely, Nanette’s relationship with Eric began to unravel as the clamp came down on her financial shenanigans, although it’s unclear exactly when or why they finally broke up.

  As Eric tells it, he had a stop-and-start relationship with Nanette in 1995—mostly off—because he didn’t trust her once he realized she was involved in Bill’s murder. He claimed he was mostly away playing football before he returned to Connecticut, where he’d started dating a new woman by October.

  However, authorities say the couple was still communicating and spending time together for up to a year after Bill’s murder, based on the following facts:

  After Kim and Kevin ran into Eric at the Seashore house, the McLaughlins filed paperwork to evict him and Nanette—and anyone else associated with her—from the house in May.

  In mid-May, the Canadian Football League’s Baltimore Football Club signed twenty
-eight-year-old Eric, who then headed off to training camp. A month later, he left for the Ottawa Rough Riders’ practice fields, another CFL team. (Detective Tom Voth’s notes say Eric was in Memphis on June 14.)

  But on August 10, 1995, Newport Beach police took a photo of Eric’s Pathfinder parked in the garage of Nanette’s newly rented house on Foxhollow in Dove Canyon. Eric claimed he’d left town by then, and had only flown back into town for Nanette’s preliminary hearing, which started August 7. At the close of the prelim, the judge bound Nanette over for trial on charges of theft and forgery.

  During a search of her house, however, investigators found typed instructions on Nanette’s computer to her attorney, dated August 1995, in which she stated that Eric should get $50,000 if she died.

  Prosecutor Matt Murphy also pointed out that Eric, Nanette, and Kristofer posed for a photo with a soccer trophy at the end of the 1995 season—further evidence that Eric was still in contact with Nanette in December 1995, when the trophy ceremony was held, a year after the murder.

  Despite Eric’s claims that he didn’t trust Nanette and wanted nothing to do with her, the police also found evidence that the two of them were conducting business deals together that summer.

  One proposal involved a friend of Eric’s from the nightclub scene, a movie producer named Juan Gonzales (pseudonym), with whom he entered into a limited liability corporation called Midnight Moon Productions (MMP).

  A fifteen-page business plan for MMP, also found on Nanette’s computer, stated: [The corporation] was established for the purpose of producing projects for film, video cable and television, acquiring rights to marketable film and television properties. Eric was the producer in charge of television production, and Gonzales was the executive producer in charge of film, television and commercial production. Gonzales listed credits including feature films starring Clint Eastwood and Quentin Tarantino.

  Gonzales’s phone number, which had an 818 prefix and was noted on the business plan, was found on Nanette’s car phone records on December 8, 13, and 14, 1994. Although police obtained those records with a warrant in early March, there is no documentation that detectives explored that particular connection at the time.

  Eric and Nanette were also working on launching a professional women’s basketball league with Art and Dominic Menaldi. The four of them were to be equal partners, each holding 25 percent of the shares.

  On a parallel track, Nanette was launching some nefarious schemes. She sent out letters from the Dove Canyon house, asking people for guaranteed loans. She said she was awaiting life insurance payouts totaling more than $10 million from one company alone, but she needed money right away.

  To Whom It May Concern, she wrote, I am making this offer as an investment opportunity due to my need for immediate cash to fund my current business venture.

  As her “current business interests,” she cited annual income of “just under $200,000” for the past two years working for Krishel, Inc., half the rights to a patent for a filtration device through Gelman Sciences (this was Bill’s device, and why she mentioned a connection to Gelman, a legitimate company, is unclear), and a 10 percent ownership share of a $21 million Mexican village under development in Rancho Mirage, scheduled for completion in early 1997 (Bill’s desert project).

  At her arraignment in October 1995, Nanette pleaded not guilty to the charges of forgery and theft. Then, on December 12, she had the audacity to file a palimony lawsuit against the estate of Bill McLaughlin and its executrix, Kim McLaughlin.

  Nanette alleged that she’d had an oral agreement with Bill, dating back to August 1991, that she would get half his assets if he died. She said this was based on the fact that she’d been living with him as his fiancée, and had quit her regional sales manager job at Racine Industries, Inc., because he’d asked her to spend time with him instead. Jenny had to admit that Bill had confirmed the last claim with her.

  But Nanette went even further. She claimed that Bill had created a living trust in November 1991 “to shelter certain assets from creditors because of a then-pending lawsuit,” assets that included the Seashore house, which “was bought by decedent for plaintiff,” and two pieces of Las Vegas real property purchased “by plaintiff and decedent together,” among other properties. As his fiancée, she also claimed she was owed half the $9 million in forthcoming Plasmacell-C royalties, $1 million from a nonmarital support agreement, a $5,000 monthly stipend retroactive to the day of his death (presumably for serving as a trustee), half his properties and shares of stock, and more than $1 million in damages for breach of contract.

  The battle grew more complicated as the life insurance company, parties to the McLaughlin estate, and the McLaughlin family engaged in all kinds of legal maneuvering, arguing that Nanette had violated the intent of Bill’s living will.

  The McLaughlins filed a countersuit in the name of the Seashore Drive house’s official owner, W.F.M. Newport, against Nanette Johnston et al, in an attempt to evict her and Eric from the house.

  It worked. Under the final judgment, Nanette and anyone connected to her were ordered to vacate the premises.

  Ultimately, Bill’s friend Don Kalal got possession of the Infiniti, and he continued to drive it for many years in Bill’s honor.

  Nanette was arrested again, on March 7, 1996—this time, on suspicion of filing false financial statements to obtain the BMW and the loan she’d taken out to rent the $575,000 five-bedroom home in Dove Canyon in July 1995.

  Held on $100,000 bail, she was accused of lying on a credit application, using two fake Social Security numbers (her father’s and an ex-boyfriend’s, because her credit history showed debts and a repossession), inflating her income, and lying about her tax returns. She was released from jail a week later after family members posted her bail, and was now looking at eight years’ prison time for the two criminal cases combined.

  “I should write a book when this is all over,” she told the Daily Pilot, saying that she wouldn’t talk about the case until then.

  Later that month, Nanette and the McLaughlins entered into a settlement to resolve their legal battle, which incorporated the civil and criminal cases against her. It appears that all the attorneys hammered out a resolution together, because the plea bargain she signed on March 22 stated that restitution for her crime was also part of the civil settlement agreement, which was attached to the plea.

  In the plea agreement, Nanette stated under penalty of perjury: In O.C. between 1-1-94 and 1-30-95 I willfully and unlawfully embezzled more than $150,000, the property of William McLaughlin. On 12-14-94 in O.C. I forged another’s name on a $250,000 check with the intent to pass and defraud.

  The life insurance company said it was legally required to pay her the $1 million claim because she hadn’t been convicted of murder, so the McLaughlins subtracted the amount accountant Brian Ringler had identified that she’d stolen from the estate ($341,272), then added the taxes the estate would have to pay on the $1 million life insurance payout she was getting. In the end, the family had to suck it up and pay her a final negotiated amount of $220,000.

  On April 3, Nanette signed another agreement pleading guilty to criminal charges of grand theft and forgery, admitting: In O.C. between 10-95 and 3-96 I did willfully and unlawfully make a false statement in writing respecting [sic] my financial condition for the purpose of obtaining credit. This occurred while I was on bail.

  On May 13, 1996, she was sentenced to a year in jail, with five years’ probation, and was sent to the James A. Musick Facility, a low-security camp in Irvine known as “the farm.”

  Nanette’s ex-husband, K. Ross Johnston, accepted her collect calls from the camp so she could talk to Kristofer and Lishele, who were staying with him and Julia. He also took the kids to visit her every week.

  After serving a little more than half her time, Nanette was released on December 23, 1996, just in time for Christmas.

  CHAPTER 27

  Eric Naposki rejoined the Barcelona Dragons in the W
orld League during the spring seasons of 1996 and 1997, leading the team in his last year with 165 tackles and 16.5 sacks.

  The Dragons coach, Jack Bicknell, told the Hartford Courant that Eric was one of his favorite players, describing him as “a guy who basically was in the right places at the right times, but just couldn’t stay healthy.”

  Fox analyst Matt Millen also expressed admiration for Eric, saying, “With his size and the way he plays, he could have played in any league. This guy is scary and will hit you.”

  Although Millen was referring to Eric’s on-field performance, court records show that his ex-wife Kathy filed a petition for a restraining order against him in Milford, Connecticut, in 1996. The records have since been destroyed, along with whatever allegations Kathy made against Eric, and the reasons for dismissal. A court clerk said a judge may dismiss a petition simply because no one shows up at the hearing.

  The state of Connecticut was still attempting to garnishee Eric’s wages in 1997, when it notified the WLAF that Eric owed a whopping $76,300 in support payments to Kathy. But that year’s season with the Barcelona Dragons was Eric’s last. He retired his #91 jersey midseason after suffering more injuries.

  “Well, I’m not coming back here,” Eric told a Courant reporter in June from Barcelona. “I’m going to step aside and let some of the younger guys get a chance. If something happens where I can get into an NFL camp, sure I’ll give it a try, but if not, it’s all over for me.”

  The Dragons hosted—and won—the World Bowl that year, but Eric, a team captain, missed that opportunity as well.

  “I never got the chance to prove what I could do at the next level,” he told the Courant.

  By September 1997, the momentum had been lost on the McLaughlin murder investigation, and Eric’s relationship with Nanette appeared to be over for good.