Missing Millionaire: Was She Kidnaped or in Hiding?

Where is Jean Fay Drexler? Has the wealthy 74-year-old widow been kidnaped and is she being held against her will, as feared by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Miriam A. Vogel?

Is she staying with friends to avoid authorities who have decided she needs help to protect her $2-million fortune, as claimed by an acquaintance?

Or is there some other reason why she disappeared last week after leaving a Los Angeles convalescent hospital, where attendants said she was “confused, disoriented” and unable to express herself sensibly?

To find answers, Vogel this week held “rather bizarre proceedings,” as she termed them. She kept Drexler’s former lawyer, Thomas Carver, in jail for contempt of court and only released him “temporarily” Thursday pending the outcome of his appeal to a higher court.

She called in the Los Angeles Police Department and the district attorney’s office to investigate. And she authorized any peace officer who finds Drexler to take her into custody.

“I believe Mrs. Drexler is being held against her will,” Vogel said in court. “She might have been kidnaped.”

The judge did not say why she thinks someone is holding the missing woman, or who that someone might be, or what the motive might be. But Vogel believes that she has been listening to lies in her courtroom and, at times, she has fumed with exasperation.

Accusation Made

“I give up,” she snapped at one point, during the questioning of lawyer Carver and Juan A. Flores, director of a Los Angeles center for the needy, on Tuesday. “You are two of the most accomplished liars I have ever heard.”

She accused the two men of trying to fool the court with a “convoluted, idiotic scheme.” She said that she was “shocked” and “aghast” that “an officer of this court (Carver) would come in and misuse it.”

In April, Carver resisted a court order placing Drexler under the public guardian’s conservatorship. And, when he was ordered to court on Aug. 4 to reveal Drexler’s whereabouts, he refused. Superior Court Judge Kurt J. Lewin jailed him for contempt of court.

Vogel took over the case when Lewin went on vacation.

She listened Tuesday to Flores, a middle-aged father of five, describe how Drexler had been brought to his Queen Anne Place home on May 17 by a man named Vasquez. She was wearing “old raggedy clothes and crying,” he said.

Flores, who said he met Drexler about two years ago through St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church on Pico Boulevard, not far from downtown Los Angeles, said that she stayed at his house until June 23, when he took her to Midway Hospital for treatment of a hip injury.

She was “terrified” about coming to court and “afraid to return” to her Hollywood Hills home, threatening to kill herself if forced to go back, Flores said.

In mid-July she was transferred to the Beverly Palms Convalescent Hospital and remained there until Aug. 4, when he picked her up, Flores said. She wanted to return to his house, but Flores said that was no longer possible because his daughter and her children had moved home.

“She told me she had many friends in Los Angeles, and they would take care of her,” Flores said.

Flores said he drove Drexler from the Beverly Palms to his home to pick up her things and took her to Farmer’s Market for lunch. Then, he said, he drove her to St. Thomas the Apostle Church, where he attended afternoon Mass before going to work at the church’s center for the needy.

Drexler remained in his car when he went inside the church, but he told The Times that from where he sat, he had a view of the parking lot, and he saw her get out of his car, walk toward a brown 1987 or 1988 automobile and get in.

On Aug. 4, the same day Flores picked up Drexler at the convalescent hospital, Carver was in court, refusing to tell Judge Lewin where she was. He asserted the attorney-client privilege, although another Superior Court judge had replaced him as her lawyer April 15.

Carver changed his mind Tuesday. The last time he saw Drexler was “probably on Aug. 1 or 2” at Beverly Palms, Carver said. The last time he knew Drexler’s whereabouts was Aug. 4, when Flores picked her up from the hospital.

Vogel was skeptical. She declared that she “does not believe the bottom line” that Carver is unable to provide information about where Drexler is.

Drexler, whose husband, Troy L. Drexler, died in 1969, came to the attention of authorities in November, when City National Bank filed a petition with the Superior Court seeking instructions about how to handle her trust account.

The bank reported that Drexler seemed to be under the undue influence of others who appeared to be depleting her assets. She had withdrawn about $39,000 from her account in a matter of weeks. When investigators looked into the report, they said they found that she was living in her home with a younger man.

“She has been the frequent prey of men approximately 50 years younger than herself who have utilized every available means to take from her an estate valued at $2 million,” a court document said.

“Currently, Moises Vasquez, a 25-year-old illegal alien, is living with her and has been found to possess her power of attorney and several quit-claim deeds executed by (Drexler) in his favor.”

After the public guardian had been appointed to look after Drexler and her property, two deputy guardians, Beverly Ehlers and Marsha Nave, went to her home. The garage door opened and a car carrying Vasquez and an elderly woman, believed to be Drexler, drove away. That was on May 17, the day Flores testified Vasquez brought Drexler to his home.

Since then, the Public Guardian’s office has changed the locks and posted a 24-hour guard “to wrest control of . . . (Drexler) and (her) estate from Moises Vasquez and attorney Thomas Carver.”