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$186,000 out of the bank and into the fire

 
Published June 4, 1991|Updated Oct. 13, 2005

This is the saga of a roving husband, an angry wife, an embarrassed bank and $186,000 that literally went up in smoke. After her marriage to Bob Evans broke up in 1987, Maggie Evans found $186,000 in a bank safe deposit box. She thought it was ill-gotten money and burned it.

The bank had given her the wrong deposit box.

At issue now is whether Mrs. Evans or her insurance company can be held responsible for the bank's lost money, which was brought to a lower court as buckets of ashes. "It's one of the most unusual cases I've run into in 50 years," says Don Owens, one of many attorneys involved.

For the past five years, Mrs. Evans, 48, has lived on a 37-acre farm near Arlington, Tenn., where she raised Tennessee Walking Horses. But for many years before, she and her husband advised aerospace defense contractors, earning more than $200,000 annually.

But with Evans on the road 260 days out of the year, things began to unravel in their marriage and in the business.

In June 1987, Mrs. Evans' husband called her from from Boston and said he was leaving her to move in with a longtime girlfriend he intended to marry.

Mrs. Evans flew there to work out a preliminary divorce settlement. Their 10-year marriage ended the following year.

The Clinton Bank, where they once had accounts, called her and said rent was due on her husband's safe deposit box. Mrs. Evans knew of no such box but thanked the bankers and said she would be there the next day to close it out.

On June 11, 1987, she found bundles of cash totaling $186,000 in Box 234, which was rented in the name Bob Evans.

She said she suspected her husband had gotten involved in drugs, kickbacks or espionage. Mrs. Evans said she took the money home, went back where her son had started a roaring fire of tree limbs and fed the money to the flames.

"I threw them . . . as far into that inferno as I could," she said later. "I said "I'm getting rid of this filth.' " That was terrible news for the Clinton Bank when it called three weeks later to tell her there had been an awful mistake.

The bank said the safe deposit box was not her husband's but was rented secretly to a farmer/real estate agent who had chosen Bob Evans as an alias.

The secret box was known to top bank officials but not to the teller who confused the alias with Robert E. Evans, a former customer everyone knew as Bob.

The secret renter, now-deceased Roy Dillard, had accumulated the money legitimately over a long period of years.

The FBI sifted through the ashes but never prosecuted Mrs. Evans for burning money, a federal offense. The Clinton Bank reimbursed Dillard's estate for $186,000 and Ohio Casualty Insurance Co. reimbursed the bank for $100,000 of that.

The insurance company wants to be reimbursed, however, if the bank succeeds in getting restitution from Mrs. Evans or from her homeowner's policy with Tennessee Farmers Mutual Insurance Co.

"Our position is she stole the money and her policy doesn't cover that," says attorney Owens, who represents Tennessee Farmers. "It's like getting insured for the Great Train Robbery."

So far, a Chancery Court and the Tennessee Court of Appeals have agreed with Owens. The state Supreme Court heard the case in April and will rule soon.