Divided by a Fortune in Dirt

All that separate Patricia Wise and her sister Barbara Kennerly are a chain-link fence and 12 years of warfare over a fortune in dirt.

Their homes adjoin--Wise in a little farm bungalow, Kennerly in a vine-encrusted trailer in the backyard--but the two never speak, their relationship severed by a twisted courtroom epic that has seen one player mysteriously killed and a proud old Ventura County farm family left in tatters.

Kennerly, 57, says she doesn’t even know whether the family’s third sister, Gertrude Hall, “is alive or dead.” Surrounded by weeds, a path of weather-grayed plywood leading across the mud to a locked gate, Kennerly’s trailer sits forlornly on the edge of the land that could make them all wealthy women.

If only Kennerly hadn’t tried to bill the estate for attending her mother’s funeral; if only Hall and Wise hadn’t sued Kennerly for $120 million. Then they might have their birthright. And the cousin who tried to play peacemaker, some say, might not have had her head bashed in and her throat cut.

Max Gisler could not have envisioned such a legacy when he emigrated from Switzerland in 1876, bringing a wife and 13 children. They gave up a mountainside farm near Lake Lucerne, summers gathering edelweiss, trips to the village selling butter and eggs, for ranch life in Ventura County.

The site of the Gisler family home is now the parking lot between Sears and Target at The Esplanade mall in Oxnard. Of all the land amassed by Max’s son Gabe, one of his most successful heirs, the only parcel remaining is 22 acres of beans, peppers and onions in Camarillo.

That parcel happens to be in a prime commercial spot. Bordered on three sides by the Ventura Freeway, the Camarillo Airport and a new Target store, it is worth millions.

It is also the focal point of the longest, nastiest probate fight Ventura County has ever seen. The value of the land itself has risen and fallen with the years, peaking at $6 million in the bull market of the late 1980s and falling more recently to about $4 million.

The lawyer for one side says the case may be about to reach a turning point. Held up since 1989 by Kennerly’s bankruptcy, the land trust could be settled once the bankruptcy closes later this year.

But that trust has already been around far longer than anyone expected, dating back more than half a century.

It began when Gabe Gisler died in 1942, leaving the land to his wife, a German immigrant named Margaret Reimann. When Reimann died in 1955, she passed the 22-acre field on to their son William and his wife, Angela.

Other pieces of property handed to other descendants were sold off, but the 22 acres and little green cottage remained in trust for William and Angela Gisler and their three daughters--Patricia, Gertrude and Barbara.

The family tried to sell the land in 1966 for about $200,000--its approximate value now per acre--but the buyers defaulted.

If that sale had gone through, the sisters would have lost a potential fortune but saved a lot of heartache. Instead, a few years after William Gisler died in 1969, family ties began to unravel.

*

The Bank of A. Levy had taken over from an ailing relative as trustee for the estate. In 1975, the bank decided to sell the land for about $200,000. Angela Gisler and her daughters objected, saying they had no idea the bank was planning such a thing and complaining that the property was worth far more.

Barbara Gisler had met a San Diego lawyer, Paul Kennerly, and brought him in to argue in court for the family. Paul Kennerly, who eventually married Barbara, succeeded in having himself and a family friend named to replace Bank of A. Levy as trustees.

The two new trustees promised not to take any compensation for their work. But in 1979, Paul Kennerly had Barbara added as a third trustee, and she took no such pledge.

Paul and Barbara Kennerly moved a trailer to the property, out behind the green house where sister Patricia was living with her husband, Jack Wise. Gertrude had married Clyde Hall and moved to Texas.

The Kennerlys administered the trust, paying bills and keeping all financial records. Then, in 1983, Angela Gisler died. She had named her cousin as the executrix of her will, to settle an estate that--apart from the land trust--amounted to only about $22,200.

That cousin was also the namesake of Angela Gisler’s mother-in-law--Margaret Reimann--who lived on her own family’s ranch across the freeway at the foot of what is now the Spanish Hills luxury development.

Reimann was, by almost all accounts, a sweet and charitable woman. She was wealthy but didn’t flaunt it. The elderly spinster lived in the family’s old ranch house, drove an aged Mustang and spent most of her time doing church work.

In her own will, Reimann left most of her sizable estate to the Catholic church. But she also planned to leave a healthy sum to cousins Patricia Wise, Gertrude Hall and Barbara Kennerly.

Then came Angela Gisler’s death.

The Gisler land trust should have closed out at that point, with the property divided among the three sisters. So the trustees, two of whom had said they would work for free, submitted a bill to the trust for their services.

Barbara and Paul Kennerly’s bill totaled about $500,000.

Barbara Kennerly included a $237 tab for attending her mother’s funeral. There was another $19,115.58 for mileage, $12,000 for clipping news articles and $11,000 for time she spent talking to her mother about the trust.

The other two sisters were not pleased.

*

Crying fraud, they asked the court to cut the Kennerlys out of the trust. When that failed, Hall and Wise eventually filed suit against the Kennerlys, seeking $120 million.

In the meantime, Reimann was trying to settle Angela Gisler’s small estate. Her most valuable possessions were some diamond rings and a mink stole, with a total assessed worth of $5,900.

Reimann told the court that she tried twice to deliver an inventory of the property to Barbara Kennerly: One time no one came to the door, the second time Kennerly saw her coming and ran back inside the trailer.

Hall and Wise said their sister did not want the jewels or fur, that she just wanted cash. So Reimann proposed to the court that Hall and Wise divide the items and pay Kennerly for what would have been her share.

The Kennerlys objected. In various filings, Barbara Kennerly accused Reimann of getting involved in the Angela Gisler estate “with the intention of destroying” the land trust, said that she had “destroyed the birthright of Barbara A. Gisler,” complained of her “unexplained hostility” and said that “instead of being a peacemaker for the best interests of all benefactors, executrix Margaret C. Reimann has been the agent provocateur.”

Indeed, Reimann was more deeply involved than ever at this point in early 1986.

A judge had removed Barbara and Paul Kennerly as trustees for the land trust and ordered them to turn over all documents and financial records. They declined, and continue to decline, and eventually began amassing court fines of $1,000 a day.

The court needed someone to replace them at the helm of the trust. The Bank of A. Levy wouldn’t touch it. But Reimann would. She agreed to take over the contentious position that no one else wanted, and wound up administering not only Angela Gisler’s estate but also the land held in trust for the sisters.

Soon after, the court ordered Reimann to sell Angela Gisler’s jewels and fur. Wise bought two rings and Hall bought two others and the mink stole.

“Nothing satisfies them,” the Kennerlys wrote of Reimann and her lawyers in an objection to the sale. “Now they have returned to pick the bones of my mother’s very small estate by this purported sale.”

A judge confirmed the sale that summer, and in August, Reimann completed the settlement of Angela Gisler’s estate (the land trust was still unsettled). She requested no payment for her services.

The final settlement won approval from the court in early September. Later that month, the Kennerlys appealed.

*

Reimann, 73, would not live to see through the appeal. On the morning of Sunday, Nov. 2, 1986, she followed her ironclad routine: got up before dawn, dressed and went out to the garage about 5:30 a.m. to leave for morning Mass.

About 10:30 that night, Mark Wise--son of Patricia and Jack Wise--called the Sheriff’s Department to report that Reimann had never shown up for church and hadn’t been seen all day. Other friends and relatives were wandering the ranch with flashlights, looking for her.

By 11, they found her. A neighbor saw her lying in the garage next to the Mustang, in a pool of blood. She had been struck on the head and her throat was cut. There was no weapon at the scene.

Reimann was dressed for church--she had her offering envelope at the ready--and her Sunday clothes were still tidy. All of her jewelry was in place, her purse was by her side, and none of her $85 in cash was missing. The car had not been disturbed, nor the house broken into. There was no sign of a struggle.

Investigators explored several possibilities. They looked for connections with other nearby crimes. They used a national FBI database to scout for similar killings elsewhere. They considered serial killers. Reimann’s estate offered a $50,000 reward for information.

The detectives followed a number of leads--”most of which seemed to dead end, though. It always came back to the Gisler trust,” said Sgt. Bob Young of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department. “It always seemed to be a financial thing. There was no other motive involved, although we’re certainly open to other prospects.”

Or, as another person familiar with the investigation put it, “I think that when Margaret Reimann signed on as trustee, that was the beginning of the end of Margaret Reimann.”

Young says detectives interviewed and gave lie detector tests to everyone associated with the Gisler trust, with a notable exception: The Kennerlys refused to cooperate.

“You would think they would want to come forward and clear the air around this thing,” Young said. “I would still be more than glad to sit down with them any time, any place.”

But the Kennerlys today give the same response they gave 10 years ago: “Anything like that, I’m deferring to my attorney, and he says talk to nobody,” Paul Kennerly said in a recent interview.

“All I know is from the newspapers, and I don’t want to touch on the subject too much,” he said. “They said everybody’s a suspect who stood to inherit [from Reimann]. Well, Barbara and I quit seeing her, had nothing to do with her. So we had nothing to lose, stood to inherit nothing. Others stood to inherit, so they were the suspects.”

*

Reimann had, indeed, cut the Kennerlys out of her will. She left $100,000 each to Wise and Hall, but nothing to Barbara Kennerly. And in Reimann’s obituary, Wise and Hall were listed as next of kin, but there was no mention of Kennerly.

After Reimann’s death, the three sisters should have taken over as administrators of their mother’s will. But Wise and Hall succeeded in having Barbara Kennerly excluded.

The Kennerlys took the matter all the way to the state Court of Appeal, which eventually affirmed both the settlement of the estate and the appointing of Wise and Hall as administrators.

By 1988, the Kennerlys were in a state of full-fledged war against not only the sisters but also the Ventura County court system. They had judge after judge excluded from the trust probate, filed lawsuits against almost everyone involved and adamantly refused to hand over financial records or even respond to questions from opposing attorneys.

The case took on grand terms for them. Not merely a family squabble, it became a sweeping struggle against forces conspiring to seize land from pioneers and prevent ordinary people from getting rich.

Frustrated at every turn in Ventura County courts, Paul Kennerly finally came up with a strategy that worked: In 1989, he had his wife declare personal bankruptcy in federal court in San Diego.

This put everything on hold and moved all court hearings 3 1/2 hours down the California coast.

And that’s where it remains.

Fred Rosenmund, an Oxnard lawyer who has represented Wise and Hall for more than a decade, says he has a small hope that when Barbara Kennerly’s bankruptcy is settled in the next few months, the courts can force a resolution to the land trust as well.

But it won’t come easily. “Unfortunately, the sisters are all still at complete odds, so there’s really no hope of any kind of settlement,” Rosenmund said.

Barbara Kennerly has clung to the increasingly dilapidated trailer in her sister’s backyard. Jack Wise, who along with his wife declined to grant an interview for this story, commented during a brief exchange that he has put rat traps along the rear of his property because the Kennerly lot is so infested.

Gertrude Hall, who spends a great deal of time traveling in her recreational vehicle, could not be reached for comment.

For her part, Barbara Kennerly has claimed that Jack Wise has threatened her with garden implements and says she is constantly afraid for her safety. She says she was never particularly close with her sisters, both at least 10 years older. “We got along. But I was a child when they were out dating,” she said. “We had totally different interests. I was very studious, interested in books. They had none of that.”

*

Now, though, Kennerly has little of anything. With no children, with her few outside assets being sold through bankruptcy, Kennerly passes the days in mortal determination to get what’s coming to her.

She and Paul say they would like to just partition the land in three and be done with it. But with all the lawsuits, the attorneys’ fees, the sanctions, accusations and acrimony, it’s no longer that simple.

So the landowners on one side sell to Target and a major shopping center goes in. The landowners on the other side talk of building a baseball stadium. And the Gisler field just sits there, green and untouchable.