Monday, July 05, 2010

Stevens Claiming Mental Defect To Avoid Embezzlement Trial

Phyllis Stevens, the former Indianapolis resident and gay rights activist charged with stealing $6 million from Aviva, the Iowa-based insurance company which employed her, is claiming she suffers from multiple personality disorder and is incompetent to stand trial. A psychiatrist hired by the government to evaluate Stevens concluded that she understood the criminal charges against her and was competent to stand trial.  "She said that if she is convicted and is 'boxcarred,' her prison term would be for a few hundred years," said Dr. Loren Olson, a Des Moines psychiatrist. "She said she heard the term in jail." Stevens and her same-sex partner, Marla Stevens, are scheduled to go on trial for theft and tax evasion charges on August 16. Stevens' psychiartrist says the stress of a trial could cause her to revert to a child-like personality during the proceedings. Stevens claims she suffers from this disorder from physical and mental abuse as a child. "She may well have some fragmenting of her identity, but I am confident she knows who she is," Olson said, later adding that "I don't think she would lose contact with the mature Phyllis."

Stevens seemed rather lucid when she first learned from her employer that she was suspected of embezzling money from the company. She quickly hopped a plane to Indianapolis and attempted to withdraw large sums of money from her account at National City Bank for what she described to bank tellers as an extended trip to Germany before joining Marla at the Bellagio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Stevens used part of the money she embezzled from Aviva to make large contributions to Democratic candidates supportive of her political agenda, including U.S. Rep. Andre Carson. If Stevens is crazy, she's crazy like a fox. I understand her partner, Marla, is counting on her poor health to keep her out of jail if she is found guilty.

4 comments:

Marycatherine Barton said...

Yes, Marlo and Phyllis are going to make Iowa work very, very hard to put those two bold gals away. And yes, based on these charges, if he hasn't yet, Andre and all who took campaign contributions from them should be scolded for not returning the money.

Sean Shepard said...

And as evidence of the defect, she might only need produce evidence that she is a Democrat. ;-)

Gary R. Welsh said...

Carson says he gave up the contributions. Not sure to whom he gave the contributions. Marla and Wilson Allen were part of the Julia Carson dirty tricks operation. They particularly enjoy defaming people who oppose the Carson political machine. Wilson has been caught red-handed stealing opponents campaign signs. It's funny how the cars driven by Julia Carson's 2006 opponent, Kris Kiser, and his campaign manager both had their brake lines cut at the same time when you know who was seen roaming the area where the cars were parked. That same campaign manager had a very old police report dug up by you know who and distributed by then-Washington Township School's Superintendent Eugene White to other school board members, forcing the campaign manager to resign his seat on the board. They are the most despicable people you will ever run across in politics. And some of these operatives drew government paychecks while they were doing nothing but political work for the Carson machine, which is a felony crime called ghost employment in Indiana. Marla is headed to jail where she belongs. Hopefully, Wilson will slip up and get caught in the act and get the punishment he has earned.

Gary R. Welsh said...

LOL, Sean. We have people who are out blogging their political views (Democrats I must add) every day on the Internet in this town and who are also drawing disability checks for bipolar disorder. A former FSSA employee in the Daniels administration told me that welfare workers constantly complained about how this mental defect was being increasingly used by people to defraud the government. Unfortunately, he was unsuccessful in convincing Mitch Roob that measures should be taken to tighten up controls on determining disability to knock down most of these claims. He said that in some counties as many as 50% of the people claiming disability were based on a claim that they were bipolar.