‘Robin Hood’ of J.C. Penney Gets 4-Year Sentence
A 38-year-old Van Nuys woman was sentenced Tuesday to four years in prison for embezzling more than $200,000 from the J. C. Penney Co.--all of which she claims she gave away, Robin Hood fashion, to deserving friends.
A plain, plump woman whose worst previous offense was running a red light, Catherine M. Walsh pleaded guilty in October to stealing the cash and concealing the thefts by doctoring Penney’s books. The thefts, discovered in the course of a routine audit, took place between May, 1982, and May, 1983, while Walsh was business manager for the Penney store in Thousand Oaks.
Until recently a plaque praising Walsh’s perfect attendance during that period was displayed in her former office.
Before pronouncing sentence for felony theft, Ventura Superior Court Judge Steven Perrin told Walsh he could not claim to understand her.
“I can’t believe you gave away $200,000,” the judge said. He speculated that she has the money tucked away somewhere awaiting her release from prison.
Perrin denied Walsh’s request for a few days’ freedom to take care of such personal business as driving her car back to Van Nuys and closing her apartment.
When Walsh assured him she would return, Perrin said, “My concern is whether or not you would take your own life.”
The judge, prosecutor Robert Meyers and others involved in the case said they were touched by the woman’s lonely presence.
Walsh radiates a “a sense of isolation,” Meyers said in an interview. He added, “That doesn’t explain why someone would do something like this.”
Walsh has been free on her own recognizance since her year of skimming dangerously was discovered. Until Tuesday she was working as a bookkeeper for the Sherman Oaks accounting firm of Brown & Hecox, although not in a position that involved handling money.
Aware she could be sent to prison, Walsh came to the courtroom alone Tuesday, as she has on each of her earlier court dates. She carried a copy of Danielle Steel’s romantic best-seller “Crossings.”
One of eight children of Mr. and Mrs. John J. Walsh of Sylmar, she told The Times as she sat in the courtroom that she had not yet confided in her family, even in a sister with whom she lives in a modest apartment near the San Diego Freeway.
She knew how disappointed they would be in her, she said. “I’m the one the others turn to,” she said when asked why she hadn’t turned to them for support. “You don’t know my family.”
Walsh, who worked for Penney’s for 17 years, would not elaborate to the district attorney’s office on why she took the money or what she did with it.
According to the investigator, she said she believed in “the Robin Hood theory.” She said that all the embezzled money went to about 40 friends whom she refused to name, most of them fellow workers at J. C. Penney.
Pressed as to why she suddenly began stealing from her longtime employer, she quipped: “Menopause.”
More seriously, she told Vinse Gilliam, an investigator for the district attorney’s office, that she got the idea after a Penney’s auditor gossiped about a similar scheme that had been used at a J. C. Penney store in San Diego. “Made me think. Made me wonder,” Walsh said of the auditor’s remark.
“I’ve got an inquisitive mind,” she told Gilliam, according to a transcript of the interview. She might have tried to embezzle, she said, “just to see if it could be done.”
She also told the investigator she felt Penney’s owed her the money for overworking her and treating her like “part of the furniture that was not being dusted.”
“The only time they noticed me is when I wasn’t there or I hadn’t done something they wanted,” she said.
“Maybe it’s my way of being paid back for 14-hour days, seven-day weeks, being dragged out of bathtubs, being dragged out of bed--on days off, 14 and 15 phone calls at home.” She explained that Penney’s personnel often called her at 10 p.m. seeking her help in solving computer problems.
Before sentencing, Walsh was assessed by a court-appointed psychologist and a psychiatrist. She was described in a summary of their reports as “passive aggressive . . . and socially an isolate who was so desperate for normal relationships that she gave a lot of money to people who then were quite naturally nice to her.”
It is sad, the court document noted, “that none of those she said she aided have come forth to help her, although many must be aware of her situation.”
Moments before sentencing, Perrin told Walsh that he had read her probation report and psychological evaluations but didn’t pretend to understand her.
“I don’t think many people do,” Walsh whispered.
“I sit here looking at you, and I don’t know you,” the judge said. “And, you know what? That’s the key to this whole thing, because you don’t want anybody to know you. By your own definition, you continue to circumscribe all conduct and all contact so that you can avoid being known.”
Perrin commented on Walsh’s life, marked by hard work, night school and little apparent socializing except Saturday night dinners with her brothers and sisters. “You’ve lived a very clean, moral and upright life--indeed a very sad life to this point,” he said.
Walsh has cooperated with authorities since she was found out. “You got real cooperative when you got real caught,” the judge said.
Perrin said the four-year sentence (she faced a maximum of five years) was based on the seriousness of her crime. But he also expressed doubt that she had used the stolen money to play Lady Bountiful to her friends.
‘Beyond My Imagination’
“It’s beyond my imagination that you could be literally a slot machine at Penney’s paying out at the rate of $500 a day,” he said. “It just can’t be. Whether you’ve got a rat hole someplace, and you made that deposit against your future, and you’ll do your time and come out and quietly go into a blissful retirement, I just don’t know. I frankly expect that to be the case, but I don’t know.”
“There is no money,” Walsh said quietly after Perrin ordered her to pay $450 to the public defender for representing her.
Walsh reported to the court that she has only $100 in her checking account. She owes several thousand dollars on her MasterCard and other accounts, she said. She also owes $500 on her Penney’s charge account.
Because the theft took place before 1984, Walsh does not have to make restitution, as is now required by law.
Prosecutor Meyers mused aloud in the courtroom on what his office called “the big question”--where all that money went.
Life Style Not Changed
“Miss Walsh did not change her life style,” Meyers noted. “She didn’t start driving a brand new fancy car. She didn’t change to another apartment.”
Walsh drives a 1981 Chevrolet Caprice that she said she is still paying off. The maroon car, with a whimsical little stuffed bear clinging to its rear-view mirror, sat in the parking lot outside the Hall of Justice after she was taken into custody.
“What the district attorney does know,” Meyers said, “is that, in order to get rid of that much money, if she gave it away, the defendant would have had to give $16,667 a month away or $3,846 a week away or $548 a day away.”
In an interview, Meyers said his office had learned “that she may have lent a former employee over $2,000 but we weren’t able to locate him.” No other benefactors had been found by his investigator, he said.
As Meyers observed: “The sentencing is over, but the mystery is still there.”
