Attorney could face bigamy charge

A Boise man left for the FBI Academy late last year thinking he was married to a Spokane Valley attorney. But the man was told three months ago that his wife forged his name on divorce papers, took sole ownership of their 160 acres in southern Idaho and two years ago married a hospital executive from Davenport, Wash.

Now, a Spokane Valley Police detective is unraveling the complex web of questionable documents, stories from a bewildered business partner and testimony from dual husbands, neither of whom says he knew about the other.

“You could write a novel on this one,” Detective Lyle Johnston said.

Johnston has forwarded paperwork to Spokane County prosecutors seeking to charge 33-year-old Virginia S. Lauver with four felony counts of forgery and one count of bigamy.

Lauver, who serves on the Special Olympics Washington board of directors, was arrested Jan. 31 on a forgery warrant out of Boise. She posted a $20,000 bond and was released. She could not be reached Thursday at her Spokane Valley office, and the phone number listed for her home has been disconnected.

Lauver’s former law partner, Gabrielle Roth, said she filed a police report in December after finding her signature forged on business checks worth about $44,000 and her notary public stamp on a quit claim deed that gave Lauver ownership of 160 acres in Ada County, Idaho, that had belonged to Lauver’s first husband.

“I discovered that deed in November. I was pretty scared, even as an attorney, about what my liabilities were,” Roth said Thursday. “That’s when I turned everything over to the Ada County Sheriff’s Office.”

The detectives from Boise tracked down Lauver’s first husband, Mike Stuckle, who is currently training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va. A message left at Stuckle’s room at Quantico on Thursday night by a reporter was not returned.

Stuckle told the Boise detectives in December he was married to Lauver, but that she had moved to Spokane in 2001. Since then, she had been returning to Boise either every weekend or every other weekend to visit.

“He didn’t know a divorce had been filed. He was under the impression that they were still married,” Johnston said. Lauver “got married the second time on Dec. 22, 2002. But she continued to visit her first husband in Boise up until he left for the academy in 2004.”

Lauver married Ronald Gleason, who is chief financial officer at Lincoln Hospital in Davenport, in December 2002. That was just 11 days after she filed for divorce with Stuckle by allegedly forging his name. Even if Stuckle had signed that divorce document, Lauver and Gleason were married for six months before that divorce became final, Johnston said.

A message was left at Gleason’s office late Thursday but was not returned.

Gleason “was under the impression that her first husband was deceased,” Johnston said.

Roth, the law partner, said that’s the same story Lauver told her and other lawyers at the firm of Stamper, Rubens, Stocker and Smith where they both previously worked and met.

“She let everybody know that the first husband passed away, that he had committed suicide and left her with a significant amount of debt,” Roth said. “When I saw his name on the deed and understood that he was dead, that was a big concern.”

But that wasn’t the first warning sign. Roth said she agreed to join Lauver’s firm on April 1, 2004 – April Fools Day, she acknowledged with a chuckle.

A month later, the two attorneys opened new accounts at Sterling Savings Bank. They included a $50,000 line of credit, a checking account, a client trust account and a $10,000 loan for remodeling a new office space, Roth said.

A couple of weeks later, Roth said, a banker called saying checks had bounced. The banker “explained that one of the checks she thought I had signed (was) for $30,000,” Roth said. “It was a pretty scary moment.”

Roth said she had the banker fax over the financial paperwork and saw her name forged on several checks.

“Initially, I took some time to match up the bank statements and figure out where the money went,” Roth said. “I confronted (Lauver) about the missing money.”

Roth said Lauver explained that she and her husband had a very large tax bill and that she needed to use the company funds. Lauver promised to repay the money in about a week from an investment that was about to mature, Roth said.

“Then I confronted her about the forged checks. I asked her why she forged my name on them. She didn’t have a response,” Roth said.

Johnston said Lauver admitted signing Roth’s name to the checks but claimed that since it was a joint account she was entitled to those funds.

“Lauver had signed the victim’s name to some of the checks and took the funds from those accounts to cover her personal accounts and things like that,” Johnston said. “She said she signed her partner’s name to avoid suspicion that she was improperly using funds.”

Lauver also admitted to the Ada County detective that she signed her first husband’s name to the quit claim deed and on the divorce documents, Johnston said.

“I never talked to the first husband,” said Roth.

When Lauver often traveled to Boise, Roth said, “she always said it was for client issues or to handle her husband’s estate.”