Dunard Morris is a storyteller.
When U.S. District Court Judge Rodney Sippel sentenced Morris in 2012 to 78 months in federal prison for embezzling millions of dollars from a Chesterfield urology company to feed his lavish lifestyle, he chided the former CEO for consistently lying to court staff.
Morris even at one time lied about being a war hero, as he ran up $10,000 monthly bills at fancy restaurants, bought multiple Rolex watches and sports cars.
On Thursday, a different federal judge, Nannette Baker, believed one of Morris’ stories, or, at least, she didn’t believe that the U.S. Attorney’s Office proved that Morris had lied. He had been accused of violating his probation by seeking permission to travel to San Francisco, using a fraudulent letter about a medical visit to justify the trip.
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Under questioning from defense attorney Rick Sindel, the probation officer who filed the allegation said that Morris always answered her questions truthfully, and never missed his probation appointments. She hadn’t spoken to the doctor whose office said the letter was faked. Morris had been arrested by U.S. marshals on Tuesday morning and held in jail for two days. Baker set him free.
“I have not heard enough evidence to show that the defendant failed to answer truthfully,†the judge said.
He wasn’t free for long. Morris was arrested again the next day as the U.S. attorney refiled the probation violation charge. He is scheduled for another hearing in front of Baker on Wednesday.
Dismas connection
Until Morris was arrested last week, I had been talking with him nearly every day for about a month. He told me about the connection between two nonprofits that run halfway houses — both of which I had written about.
When it comes to telling stories, Morris has nothing on Marvin Shelton or Randy Howard. Shelton, who is not a psychiatrist but advertises psychiatric services, operates a group of houses in the ºüÀêÊÓƵ area, portraying them as places of respite for the homeless, for people addicted to drugs, for veterans, for the mentally disabled and for people getting out of federal prison.
In fact, the homes are nothing of the sort. Morris, using a word others have also used, calls the home where he lived, “a hellhole.â€
Howard is executive director of Dismas House of ºüÀêÊÓƵ, the nonprofit halfway house that has a $43 million contract with the Bureau of Prisons to house men getting out of prison and help them reintegrate into society. That contract is currently up for bid. The family that runs the nonprofit, former ºüÀêÊÓƵ city and county parks director Gary Bess and his wife, Vivienne, and her brother, John Flatley, and his sons, has paid itself millions of dollars in salaries over the past several years while often failing to provide the promised services to the men who live at Dismas House.
In 2017, Flatley paid himself $484,000 for being on the board at Dismas, according to tax records. Vivienne Bess was paid $318,000. Howard made $144,000. The salaries are obscene compared to what other people in the nonprofit prison reentry field make.
When I asked Howard about his connection to Shelton, he told me he had never heard of him.
He said Dismas had never referred people to Shelton’s homes.
“We have no relationship,†Howard told me. “We do not do any referrals there.â€
Morris begs to differ.
When he got out of prison, he was sent to Dismas. After his time there, when he was released from Bureau of Prisons custody, he still needed residential care, according to the terms of his probation. A social worker at Dismas referred him to Shelton’s home at 2508 North Euclid Avenue.
Morris was not alone. A former Dismas social worker tells me several men from Dismas were referred to various homes Shelton runs. Those homes are fraught with problems. The ones on Beacon and Ashland avenues in ºüÀêÊÓƵ are run down and often lacked heat or water service in the past year, various residents have told me. Shelton doesn’t provide any of the promised addiction or mental health services.
Like the managers of Dismas House, Shelton and his partner, Stacey Smith, profit off the most vulnerable members of society, while providing them little help.
Shattered promises
“It seemed legit at first,†the social worker told me about Shelton’s operation, known as The Community Counseling and Housing Services. She asked that I not use her name because she still works in the field and fears repercussions. “But when you get into the details, it doesn’t look right.â€
Morris lived at the house on Euclid for most of 2017. There were five men in the house, each paying $500 a month. At least once, during winter, the heat was shut off. According to Scott Anders, head of the federal probation office in ºüÀêÊÓƵ, his office supervised 12 former federal prisoners who went from Dismas to various Shelton properties in 2017. Anders said that since that year, no other people under the supervision of his office were living at a Shelton house, but he wasn’t sure why. The referrals, Anders said, were not made by his office, but by Dismas.
The houses Shelton runs have gone downhill since then. When I have stopped by his office in Hazelwood — in a building that houses a car wash, behind a Jack in the Box — he has not been there.
Several times in the past month, he has hung up on me when I called. On his nonprofit website, which has been taken down since I started writing about him, he said he had a relationship with Dismas. Both Morris and the former social worker say Shelton used to have free run of the place.
How did he come to house so many men from Dismas House, I asked Shelton.
“You should be able to obtain that information from Dismas,†he said on a recent occasion when he answered the phone.
Indeed, I should.