Kindle Notes & Highlights
Paul Dunn did not pitch the championship game. His name did not appear on the Cardinal’s official roster, not even on the list showing players who played fewer than forty-five innings. Dunn’s name appeared in no newspaper box score. It is nowhere to be found in the extensive files of the Cardinals’ parent organization.
They asked to interview Dunn and this time Jardine and
Dunn agreed. Unlike Jardine’s meeting with UPI, Dunn’s defense team did not bring copies of the Pocatello eyewitness statements to the interview in an attempt to prove Dunn played for the baseball club there. Instead Jardine and Dunn threw the professed eyewitnesses under the bus. They conceded Dunn had not played for the Pocatello Cardinals. “I was not part of the roster,” Dunn admitted. “I was simply one of two or three rookies that they looked at.”
(At the same summer school apostle Joseph Fielding Smith talked about his recently published book, “Man, His Origin and Destiny” that claimed the earth was only 6,000 years old. During a question and answer session Smith told instructors, “I hope you take what I’m saying, because if you don’t, you have no business in the church school system.”)
interviewed Affleck, off-camera, at his corporate office in Salt Lake County. Upon entering the building I encountered a huge blowup of the Dunn/Osmond ribbon-cutting.
Jardine insisted it’s legal to execute agreements after the fact and backdate them.
Mike Hines helped the prosecutors prepare for trial. Hines was sorting through files when he noticed that, in 1980, AFCO had paid for a Las Vegas honeymoon for Sharene Minor Hansen, Dunn’s secretary in the Church Office Building. Strange for a company to finance a secretary’s honeymoon, Hines thought; doubly strange if the secretary’s boss had resigned from the company’s board of directors two years prior. Then, in Hines’s mind, something clicked. Before her marriage Hansen had typed her initials “SM” at the bottom of Dunn’s correspondence. Following her marriage in 1980, she typed “SMH.”
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The Wall Street Journal ran a front-page article headlined, “Investment Firm Goes Bust.” Despite Dunn’s 1978 resignation, the Journal reported Dunn “continued to have ties with AFCO until it entered bankruptcy proceedings in 1982.” (Later, in a deposition, Dunn admitted attending board meetings after 1978, but only to deliver prayers or inspirational messages. He had to make some explanation because AFCO minutes showed he continued to attend.)
In 1984 Affleck took the witness stand in his own defense and admitted that he had lied about Dunn resigning in 1978. Siegler believed him. Yet no indictment was brought against Dunn. Said Siegler, “We were under substantial political pressure not to proceed against Dunn.”
Hines related. “Then he said, ‘All I can tell you is that I’m an attorney and have a position with the LDS Church. I want to alert you that the brethren have talked about the AFCO case, and the consensus is it should be handled in a bishop’s court and not in a court by the law of the land.”
Hines said Dunn also had no explanation why he continued driving an AFCO company car.
“I called KSL…and talked to Spencer Kinard and said before you run any news story you might want to check out this thing very carefully. Period,” Dunn told the Republic reporter.)
if he wasn't involved as of 1978, why would he call the news in order to protect a Japanese investment in 1981?
had played for the Cardinals, Olsen thought it would be a nice surprise to present Dunn a plaque inscribed with the years he played, in front of thousands of fans. So Olsen had missionaries go to the Cardinal’s vast baseball library to get that information. To the missionaries’ amazement, the librarian could not find a trace of Dunn pitching for the major league team or for any of its multitude of farm clubs. The plaque idea was quietly dropped, but the word got out.
Dunn’s own bank, in 1976,
Donald M. Bennett sent Dunn a letter telling him the collateral had no value: …the property is in the name of AFCO Development Corporation and there are several prior liens. There is no information in the Report indicating that you have any legal interest in the property. Because of the prior liens and because your name does not appear as having a legal interest in the property, the value of the Trust Deed as security for your loan becomes questionable.
“The General Authorities were very strong on Arturo,” says Ron Clark, publicity director for the Osmond Family. “We were told, even out of the First Presidency’s office, to work with Arturo.” Clark would not name which general authorities, but he said it was “several” “It wasn’t just only Paul Dunn,” he said.
Riffo never did come up with sufficient cash to buy the Osmond Studios. He had to be evicted from Merrill’s house. After the FBI investigated,
The Republic however, did not write about Dunn’s involvement with AFCO and business ventures.
Besides, the business part wasn’t as sexy.
yes it is. one is a "white" lie. the other one is stealing the retirement savings of faithful members. it is taking advantage of people's faith and trust in a general authority. far bigger.
“That is something to leave to the Lord. You can’t paint him without painting the whole church.”
Truth-paint hurts all the guilty.
While in Phoenix LeFevre took the opportunity to lobby against the Dunn story. “He started to raise questions about your motives,” Robertson said. Then he wondered about “publicly discrediting a man who has done so much good and how the stories he told were for the purpose of illustrating sound moral principles.”
I have not always been accurate in my public talks and writings.
have indulged in other activities
Years later Paul Dunn’s wife, after he died, told a friend that her husband had not written a single word of his public apology, that the First Presidency had forced him to sign it.
He noted that hardly anyone cried at Dunn’s funeral, that the brethren tried to put the best face on it. He cited a statement from a previous apostle, "Perhaps it is (God’s) own design that faults and weaknesses should appear in high places in order that His Saints may learn to trust in Him and not in any man or men.”
She wanted everything post AFCO left out “so it doesn't look as if you're beating a dead horse.”
