The small town of Oak Ridge police chief, Michael Todd Lacey, extorts people for money on the side of the road and is arrested by the FBI.
A new chief, Janet Van Patten takes his place whom I met. She tells me all about the infamy of Oak Ridge and how terrifying it was in the beginning having FBI agents crawling around her while still investigating Lacey. What I did not know was that her fear had subsided enough to take money from people, behind closed doors—with the town judge, Peggy Darlene Nelson.
Nelson, Peggy Darlene
Former Judge and City Secretary
Van Patten, Janet
Former Police Chief
Van Patten would “void out” paid off traffic tickets, usually in cash, while Nelson quietly dismissed them to free up violators' money from these tickets leaving it all for their taking.
Being told of the scam and asking questions soon got me fired. These two women, both mothers, knowing I was the sole income for my family of five, knowing my youngest baby son is severely brain damaged, didn’t have an ounce of decency to surrender and submit themselves to prosecution. I was already in enough of a severe hardship as it was, I fell into a deep depression setting fire to an anger and fierce vengeance because now they’d directly victimized my sons by plunging us further into uncharted waters of hardship.
I went to the FBI, others and the news media. I filed audio recordings of Van Patten and Nelson admitting to their crimes, the evidence sitting in their records waiting to corroborate it but they all ignored me. And now I was right back to square one before police academy, for which I had saved $8,000 in order to take off work and put myself through, only to end up ensnared in their scheme.
Three years later, I was angrier than ever. I dreamt about it day and night, my days consumed with it, filing complaints with agencies getting little to no response. I had even written to a congressman to no avail. The anger was insurmountable but it did serve as limitless fuel in the gym and many perfect 4.0 semesters being a student again. Meanwhile, there was a far bigger lesson that was in play.
I realized that if I did not stop the anger I was going to die. Having my sons lose me at such tender ages, particularly my disabled son scared me. Suddenly I could feel God's declaration that “vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” with added revelation that we are not designed, nor qualified, to touch anger.
I gave it to God in trust and received His peace promised in return, through Christ Jesus.
Then, just days later Nelson was permanently banned from judicial activity by the state and there had also been an audit of their records.
This was God fulfilling His promise.
The audit revealed the scam, nearly $100,000 missing from the town of 141 people. But in the end, the state comptroller walked away giving Nelson a “repayment plan,” with no prosecution referral. I slipped into anger again, quickly yielding to God; I at least had some evidence to support my cause in the future.
I carried on finishing a bachelor degree, on to a master degree with God working behind the scenes. Then, in the greatest of graduation gifts, Van Patten was arrested in March 2018 for allowing her adult son whose own police certification was suspended to “play police” with her. Van Patten was even more of an imbecile than I had ever thought. Even more baffling was why the local prosecutor would charge her for this but not the life imprisonment case I brought.
I discovered there was new blood in the prosector’s office, very inspiring as the statute of limitations had not yet run out, but presenting my case to the new prosecutor seemed to fall on deaf ears—I still had God's peace and trust in Him. On August 10, 2021, time stopped. An officer I know called me out of the blue, Nelson was in jail. That afternoon I had a copy of her Indictment:
First Degree Felony Theft by Public Servant – $150,000 to $300,000 – 5-99 years or LIFE.
But, there is reason to believe and I do believe, her heist was upward of $1M from 2002 to 2020. All the authorities I went to over the years did nothing or insufficiently acted on Nelson, allowing her greed, selfishness and betrayal to beat down the town until the day her spirit was finally broken. On May 15, 2020, Nelson was handed a subpoena from the Texas Rangers and reportedly told the mayor pro-tem, “I quit, I haven’t done anything wrong, they are coming after me again.” I would have given just about anything to have been a fly on the wall to see it.
Her plea bargain was hardly the climactic ending that I would have hoped for or felt she deserved. I know she lived a hellish life of fear over whatever she was able to pilfer from the town, it was hardly worth it. God's peace remained in me, realizing that His vengeance is not a singular dimension of retribution but a spectrum of judgement, justice and mercy and the final lesson was to accept God's will, cheerfully.
My faith in God was not misplaced; His lesson had more to teach and my understanding further to reach. I learned that this was not about what Nelson or Van Patten did, but to stimulate mortal anger and show me its danger, bringing me closer to God and Christ.
This publication chronicles my fateful stumble into the Town of Oak Ridge, a lair of betrayal and dishonor. Readers of this story will have intimate insight along the way hearing Van Patten and Nelson recorded in their own words, exactly as I heard them and as though you were there.