Two months after 85-year-old Dolores Sherman announced her name would appear on the ballot April 5 as a candidate for a seat on the St. Peters (Mo.) Board of Aldermen, the first-time office seeker posted a video on YouTube containing some stinging accusations and calling for an external investigation of an incident that involved a state trooper visiting her home.
Before viewing that video, however, it would probably be instructive to view the video below that appeared in a Jan. 11 post on this blog. It offers an overview of Sherman’s candidacy announcement Jan. 11.
Now, fast-forward to the video Sherman released March 9, a five-and-a-half-minute effort that highlights her appearance at the Board of Alderman meeting April 22, 2010.
At the popular video-sharing site, the video is accompanied by a lengthy description, an excerpt of which appears below:
This video clip shows that some members of the St. Peters (Mo.) Board of Aldermen didn’t take Dolores Sherman seriously when she spoke during the “Citizen’s Petitions and Comments” of their meeting April 22, 2010. Almost a year later, they might be having second thoughts.
On Jan. 11, 2011, Sherman announced she is running for one of two Ward One seats on the board in the City of St. Peters (Mo.), the city in which she says she was prosecuted more than five years earlier for a crime she didn’t commit.
Not only was Sherman sentenced to one year of probation and ordered to pay more than $125 in fines and other costs, but she was ordered to take “Anger Management” classes and dubbed “The Potato Lady” by a local newspaper reporter.
Almost two months later, Sherman released this video of the meeting during which she spoke for almost eight minutes and highlighted allegations that she was the victim of serious wrongdoing involving an officer of the Missouri State Gaming Commission, the wife of one city employee and the wife of at least one sitting member of the board.
After Sherman left the podium and exited the chamber, several members of the board can be heard laughing and at least one could be heard saying, “Hard act to follow.”
After the laughter died down, Alderman Reitmeyer took the microphone and read a flyer about the city’s then-upcoming festival, the Old Town Picnic, which took place June 18-19.
After receiving a copy of Sherman’s news release about the video, I contacted her by phone and asked if she had evidence to support her claim that a trooper from the Missouri Gaming Commission had visited her home Feb. 15, 2006. In response, the small business owner said she had in her possession a business card she had received from the trooper that night and an audiotape of a large portion of her conversation with the trooper. More on that later.
Next, I asked Sherman to describe her experience with the trooper in her home:
She said the trooper arrived in a marked, white patrol car. It was a warm day for February. She saw him walking up the driveway through her glass front door and feared the worst — that one of her adult sons had died in a car accident or something like that — and went out on the front porch to meet him.
The trooper, she recalled, said he was doing an investigation regarding her driving record and began probing her for details behind the investigation. Having just had major surgery that caused her to be laid up for several weeks and unable to drive or leave her home, she found his questioning odd to say the least. Moreover, she said her driving record was clean.
She continued, saying the trooper asked if they could go inside her home. In pain from the stitches holding her together after surgery, she wanted badly to sit down and agreed to let the trooper come inside.
Once inside, she said the trooper began giving her the “third degree” and asking for her driver’s license, proof of insurance and the names of her private physicians — and she had had several, including a surgeon and a cardiologist. She showed him her driver’s license and insurance, but not the names of her physicians. Why? She suspected the trooper was somehow involved in an unscrupulous effort to have her deemed incompetent to manage her affairs.
Angered but in pain, she said, she demanded the trooper provide her some form of identification, and he handed her a business card. She described the card as having a Missouri State Highway Patrol seal in the upper left corner and, in the upper right portion of the card, the address of the MSHP’s Troop C Headquarters on South Mason Road in St. Louis. The trooper’s name and badge number appeared in the lower left third of the card.
Though there was no mention of the Missouri Gaming Commission on the card, Sherman said the trooper told her that he worked evenings, 4 to 8 p.m., at the gaming commission’s office at a casino in the St. Louis area [Note: Though Sherman gave me the name and exact location of the casino, I’m opting to withhold it so as not to besmirch the reputations of any troopers not involved in this scandal].
Soon after she told him she was going to record their conversation, she explained, he asked to go into her attached garage to look at her car — and to be out of range of her not-very-portable cassette recorder.
They went out to the garage, she said, and the trooper asked where all the scratches on her car came from. She responded by telling him the car was sent to her by her son who wanted her to have a car with airbags — something her old car did not have.
Next, she said, he told her he was going next door to speak to her neighbors who, as she mentioned in her video, were involved in a card game with friends.
When the trooper came back, she said, she asked him for a copy of whatever document it was that prompted his visit. In response, he told her to have her attorney subpoena the record. And then he left.
Immediately following my conversation with Sherman, I looked up the phone number for the gaming commission office at the location she specified and placed a call. When my call was answered, I asked for the trooper by name as it appears on the card (a copy of which Sherman faxed to me), the person who answered — a receptionist, I suspect — told me he was “in” and transferred my call to his extension.
When the trooper didn’t answer his phone, my call went to his voice mailbox. After listening to his recorded message and paying particular attention to his voice, I opted not to leave a message of my own. Instead, I contacted the gaming commission’s headquarters in Jefferson City, Mo., with several questions.
Part 2 Coming Tomorrow.
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