He’s Accused of Illegally Seizing Tenant’s Property : Jailed L.A. Slumlord Is Back in Court

A man already serving the stiffest sentence ever imposed on a Los Angeles slumlord was brought into court Tuesday on charges that he improperly confiscated a tenant’s property while administering his rental empire from a county lockup.

Municipal Judge Lorna Parnell gave landlord Nathaniel Wells until Aug. 13 to return the furniture, clothing, toys and other belongings that were seized from Agnes Fowler and her seven children less than an hour after they were evicted from the South-Central Los Angeles home she was renting from Wells.

“He’s carrying on business as usual from behind bars. They thought they stopped him. Nobody stopped him,” said Arturo C. Herrera, Fowler’s attorney.

Wells was sentenced in 1982 to four years in jail and a $9,000 fine after he was convicted of 22 Health and Building code violations, ranging from rodent infestation to unsafe wiring, on several of 60 properties he reportedly owned throughout Los Angeles.

The stiff sentence was imposed, in part, because Wells had eluded authorities and unhappy tenants for years by using a maze of aliases to hide his ownership in slum properties and evade up to 40 judgments won by tenants. Many of the judgments were won by tenants who had complained of improper evictions and confiscations of property.

“We thought we put this guy out of business years ago,” said Deputy City Atty. Bill Cullen as Wells was led into the courtroom Tuesday in handcuffs.

Wells, who is serving his sentence at the county’s Wayside Minimum Security Facility in Saugus, conducts his business through a sister, who visits him at least once a week, Herrera said.

“Then her and her husband, they run the property for him,” he said.

Wells’ attorney, James Grinnell, said he does not know how many properties Wells still controls. Grinnell said he also doesn’t know whether Wells will be able to return Fowler’s property by Aug. 13.

“I have nothing to say to that,” Grinell said after the hearing. “I’m his attorney; I have nothing to say about his property. . . . He’s in jail. That’s all I can say.”

Fowler, 37, said she began paying her rent to Wells’ brother-in-law, Jerry Gray, after Wells was jailed. But she began withholding the $450-a-month rent earlier this year, she said, because the house had become nearly uninhabitable and Gray refused to make repairs.

The plumbing didn’t work, dry wall had been installed in the shower and was crumbling away, the gas company said the water heater was dangerous and needed repair, and the roof leaked, said Fowler, who lived in the house with her seven children, her niece, and her niece’s baby.

“It was raining in every room. The house was really falling down on me,” she said. “I told him if he’d fix the house, we’d pay the rent.”

Fowler said she never was served with a final eviction notice before county marshals showed up at the door and ordered her to vacate the house in late May.

The marshals told her she could have 15 days to remove her belongings, but within less than an hour, Fowler said, Gray and his wife (Wells’ sister) arrived with a rented truck and proceeded to remove everything from the house.

‘Took Everything’

They left most of the children without a change of clothes, she said. They took the family’s furniture, her two sewing machines and equipment she had planned to use to open a beauty shop. They took her estranged husband’s driver’s license, car keys and mechanic’s license, the children’s toys and bicycles and $150 she had left in the house to pay a phone bill, Fowler said.

“They took everything we had,” said Fowler, who has lived in a series of motel rooms and, most recently, a church shelter, since the eviction. “I called Mr. Gray and told him I had to have my things, and he said, ‘Well, it’s gone up, every day it’s going up more and more, and on that particular day it was $600’ ” to retrieve the property, she testified.

With the help of a Legal Aid attorney, Fowler obtained a court order in June directing Wells’ agents to release the property to her for $210 in storage fees. But Fowler and Herrera said they have been unable to recover the property, even though they have a money order signed and ready.

Sought Contempt Order

Herrera on Tuesday asked the court to hold Wells in contempt of the June order and impose daily fines until the property is returned. Judge Parnell said she could not impose fines, however, because Wells had not technically received a copy of the original court order after it was signed.

‘A Closed Case’

City officials said they have no way of knowing how many properties Wells is still managing during his jail term, which is up in October.

“Once he was committed for four years, it was a closed case,” Deputy City Atty. Cullen said.

Herrera said he doubts that Fowler will ever retrieve her property. “I think the property’s long gone,” he said, adding that Fowler’s only recourse is to sue Wells for damages--a process that could take several years. “She would have effectively lost,” he said.