Wilburn Hendricks, Ulleia Cordy, Marvin Quist, Beatrice Lindemann, Hollister Pike, Dorothea Halpern. The chamber stayed silent through every name. When I sat down, Theron Aley stood up. He spoke for 14 minutes. He read passages from his 2-year file.
He named each medical examiner sign off. He named each missing taser barb. He named each living witness who had been afraid to come forward. When Theren sat down, the commission unanimously voted to permanently revoke Sentinel estate protection services Florida security license to ban any of its principals from working in the security industry in Florida for life and to refer the matter to the Florida bar for a parallel review of the attorneys who had drafted the unlawful Bayou Pines bylaw 14.3. Outside the chamber on the Tallahassee capital steps on a bright June afternoon, the Empire of Spencer Vorhees, Carlen Vorhees, Dr. Garner Vorhees, and Sentinel Estate Protection Services was officially over.
The sentencings came down over the following 16 months. Spencer Vorhees took 22 years in federal custody on civil rights. RICO manslaughter on two of the six elderly deaths which the exhumations had reclassified and conspiracy. He will be 68 when he is eligible for release. Carlen Vorhees took 12 years on conspiracy, mail fraud, and money laundering.
Dr. Garner Vorhees took 15 years on obstruction of justice, false official autopsies, and conspiracy. He surrendered his medical license at the time of his arrest. He will never sign another death certificate. 31 Sentinel guards took prison terms ranging from 3 to 9 years. Seven HOA board members across three counties took prison terms ranging from 18 months to 4 years.
Two HOA attorneys were disbarred. The drafter of Bayou Pines bylaw 14.3, a Sarasota attorney named Hollister Fry took 28 months on conspiracy. The civil settlement against the Vorhees personal assets and Sentinel's corporate assets totaled $41 million. Of that amount, 26 million was distributed in restitution to the families of the six deceased elderly victims and to the surviving Sentinel detainees who had been physically injured during a sentinel encounter over the 4-year period of the firm's operation. The remaining 15 million was placed into a permanent endowment.
We named the endowment the Annalie Tolmage Civil Rights Project. It is named in memory of our daughter who died at 36 in 2021. The project provides free federal civil rights legal representation to any Florida resident who believes they have been the victim of police impersonation, private security abuse, color of law violation, or HOA sanctioned physical force. There is no income test. There is a toll-free hotline staffed by two retired federal prosecutors.
There is a board that by Estelle's quiet insistence includes Theron Aley, Muriel Donnelly, Camille Mortonson, and Win Castayano. By the end of the project's first year, we had taken 940 calls, supported 61 active federal civil rights investigations, and helped prevent in the bureau's quiet count four additional likely deaths in sentinel style operations across Florida. The Bayou Pines Estates HOA was reorganized under new bylaws. The new HOA president was Ruben Halverson, the 81-year-old retired pipe fitter who had been pulled out of his Cadillac at the front gate in the summer of 2023 in the incident that had started this whole case. He sent me a handwritten card on his first day in office.
Hayes, we are sorry. We are starting over. The gate is open. Please come over for coffee. I framed it.