Fla. judge rules will on Kerouac's estate is fake http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090728/ap_en_ot/us_kerouac_estate
By CHRISTINE ARMARIO Jul 28, 2009 TAMPA, Fla. There are new questions about the estate of Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac after a Florida judge ruled that his mother's will was fraudulent. Gabrielle Kerouac left all of her son's assets to his third wife, Stella Sampas Kerouac, when she died in 1973. Ever since, the Sampas family has had control of Jack Kerouac's manuscripts, letters and personal belongings. Jack Kerouac's daughter, Jan, challenged the will in 1994, after seeing a copy and deciding the signature was fake. She died two years later, but Paul Blake Jr., the writer's nephew, continued the litigation. In an order filed Friday in the Sixth Judicial Circuit Court, Judge George W. Greer ruled the will was a forgery. The ruling does not make any decision on who allegedly forged the document. "Clearly, Gabrielle Kerouac was physically unable to sign the document dated February 13, 1973 and, more importantly, that which appears on the will dated that date is not her signature," Greer wrote. The ruling is sure to please some Kerouac devotees who have objected to the handling of the writer's estate, including the sale of his raincoat to actor Johnny Depp for $50,000 and the original manuscript scroll of Kerouac's 1957 classic "On the Road," which was sold to the owner of the Indianapolis Colts for $2.43 million. "They will first see this as a wonderful ending to this story," Blake's attorney, Bill Wagner, said. It's unclear, however, how much the estate is currently worth and what action Blake might take. Wagner said that early in the litigation, they agreed not to question the Sampas family on what assets they still had. Previous estimates of the estate, which included Kerouac's unpublished manuscripts, journals, thousands of letters and the St. Petersburg house where Kerouac lived when he died in 1969, have placed its value at about $20 million. Blake did not immediately respond to a request for comment through his attorney. Lawyer Elaine McGinnis, who was appointed to represent the estate's interest, said she was not surprised by the decision, given testimony from a handwriting expert presented at trial. But she said that whether or not the will was forged remains a mystery. "Everybody is dead now that was ever involved in it, so no one will really ever know," she said. Shortly before his untimely death from alcoholism at age 47, Jack Kerouac wrote his young nephew a letter, expressing his desire to leave all of his work and belongings behind to his mother. "And not to leave a dingblasted (two expletives) thing to my wife's one hundred Greek relatives," he wrote. Gabrielle Kerouac inherited a majority of his estate, but her health was failing as well. By 1970, she required constant care. A doctor testified at the trial that she would not have been able to sign her signature as it appears on the will. She died an invalid three years later under her daughter-in-law's care. "The court does not have to decide who in fact signed her name on the document," Greer wrote in his decision. "It is enough that Gabrielle Kerouac did not herself sign it." Gerald Nicosia, a Kerouac biographer, said that neither Kerouac's nephew nor his daughter were notified immediately after their grandmother's death. When Stella Sampas Kerouac died in 1990, she left the estate to her siblings. Jan Kerouac later become a vocal critic of their handling of the estate. Nicosia, who was close friends with Jan Kerouac, said she wanted to see her father's work put in a library, but that the Sampas family ignored million-dollar offers from university archives in favor of selling the items individually. Jan Kerouac died in 1996 at age 44 after battling kidney disease. Blake, meanwhile, has lived much of his life in poverty and has sometimes been homeless. Nicosia said that today he lives in a rented mobile home in Arizona that does not have a toilet. "While the Sampas family was reaping millions of dollars from a forged will, this man, Jack Kerouac's closest blood relative, was sleeping in a truck for two years," Nicosia said. A Sampas family attorney said he could not comment on the legal ruling until speaking with his clients. The Sampases have previously said their aim was not to profit. . --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
