When George Martin West showed up at Charleston's historic Quarrier Diner in December 2015, he looked like the Christmas miracle the owners and staff desperately needed.
"He has been amazing, from the very beginning. Just amazing," co-owner Anna Pollitt said in a 2016 interview with the Gazette-Mail.
West asked for extra work hours, even if the owners weren't able to pay him for all the time he wanted to put in, she said. He quickly improved the quality of food and updated the menu, doing away with canned items and whipping up trendy flatbreads. He also managed to spiff the place up, cleaning and straightening, painting and redecorating, creating a fresh look that was appealing to customers and staff.
He was, quite simply, "an answer to prayer," Pollitt said, even if he was straight out of prison with a lengthy criminal record.
Now the diner has abruptly closed, the Charleston Police Department confirmed it is investigating the matter, and a long list of questions about West remain, including his location.
nnn
Many in Charleston who had long worried the Quarrier Diner would face the wrecking ball were delighted when the Pollitts bought the deserted landmark in 2010 and spent a substantial sum to restore it to the glory of its heyday in the 1950s.
The plan was for the Pollitts' son, Timothy, to run the place, including a basement bar. But Timothy Pollitt died suddenly in April 2011, right before the renovated facility was scheduled to re-open. Reeling from the tragedy, the couple eventually did open the diner, but it struggled mightily and never achieved the level of success they hoped it would.
By late 2015, they were ready to call it quits - until a twist of fate led West from the Pruntytown Correctional Center in Grafton to their door.
"We were going to close at the end of the year," said Pollitt in an earlier interview. "That's the only reason we used the work release program. When we tried it before, it was always people doing drugs, stealing from you. It wasn't worth it. But our cook didn't show up, and we needed someone to help. And since we were going to close anyway, I just thought, 'Well, why not?' And then this guy shows up."
By the end of spring 2016 he had become the general manager, and by early summer he had worked out a deal to lease the business for what Pollitt said was a "very, very small amount," adding, "As long as the bills are paid, whatever comes in, he can keep."
A few days later, she said, he asked, "Why don't I just buy the place?"
The offer was startling. Who would have thought a guy fresh out of prison would have the money for such a purchase? The Pollitts were thrilled at their unexpected good fortune. It was to be a private cash transaction for an undisclosed, but "substantial," price. Neither the Pollitts nor West would clarify the amount or the source of funds he would use. The sale of the business, the building and the downtown property on which it sits was announced in August.
Then things got complicated.
nnn
"George West? Yes, I know a George West," said Betty Elliott, adding, after a pause, "But I knew him as Giovanni back then."
At 95 years old, Elliott's hearing isn't as good as it used to be. But her mind is as sharp as ever, said her daughter, Leanne Taylor, who lives with her in Huntington. Elliott and her late husband, F.E., got to know West shortly after he moved into the house next door around 2008.
He would visit with F.E. Elliott in the evenings - the harried doctor who abbreviated the name Ford Ezell on his birth certificate never got around to writing the full name, so he was F.E. all his life. F.E. thought Giovanni was great, Betty Elliott said.
Their friendship began when West was mowing his grass one day and decided to mow the small front lawn of his elderly neighbors, as well.
"I said, 'Are you mowing our grass?' And he said, 'It's fine. I'm doing mine, I can do yours.' He said, 'It's no trouble,'" Betty Elliott said. "I don't know many of the neighbors here, except just to wave to them, you know. But he was such a help to us, bringing in our plants, and he would come over and visit with F.E. They would sit and trade stories, and after a while, he was just like family. And that's how we thought of him."
West joined the Elliotts and their extended family for holidays, helping decorate and cook. When F.E. died in 2010, Betty Elliott bought West a plane ticket so he could come with her and other family members to Texas, where F.E.'s ashes were to be scattered.
After 70 years of marriage, there was suddenly a giant void in her life that West helped fill, running errands for her, leaving friendly notes and candies, caring for her after a particularly bad bout with pneumonia that required hospitalization.
"He was wonderful, absolutely wonderful," she said.
Along the way, she said, he told her about his deceased parents and the trouble he was having settling their estate. He also showed her documents he said were from the IRS, indicating he had millions of dollars in several accounts that were frozen because of what seemed to be a simple paperwork mix-up, she said.
In return, she shared the kind of personal details many people reserve for their closest friends and relatives, including information about the $100,000 check she got from State Farm.
"He knew that I had this death benefit, from when F.E. died, but he said he was going to pay off my house for me, that I shouldn't worry about that. Well, I went ahead and paid it off, and when I told him that I had done that, he just looked at me, like, 'What'd you do that for?'"
In hindsight, she said, she's glad she paid off the house. Most of the balance of the death benefit, she added, went to West as loans he never repaid, and eventually would be included in the criminal case against him.
She doesn't remember the first time he asked to borrow money. It was a relatively small amount meant to be a short-term loan, just until he worked out his paperwork trouble with the IRS. But the reported paperwork troubles dragged on, and the loans began to pile up.
By the time it was all over, Cabell County court records show Taylor had lost $3,500, and Betty Elliott estimated she had handed over more than $37,000 in loans, although she agreed in court to settle for roughly half that amount. She didn't suspect anything was wrong until the day she heard West had been arrested.
"I was the stupid one, I tell you, I was the stupid one," Betty Elliott said. "'Cause here I am thinking he's just like my son. If he needs it, he needs it. And I never did once put 'loan' on the check. And when they called him in, he said, 'Oh, that was for work I did on the house.'"
She cringed looking back at how easily she became a victim.
"He got to where it was like our money. Not my money, our money. We were going somewhere in the car, and I said, 'Our money, huh?' He said, 'Have we got enough money for me to have a thousand or 15 or whatever that last check was?' And I said, 'Yes.' And then I said, 'You better be getting your money.'"
"I trusted him, right up to the very last. He is so believable, that's the hard part. He can be the sweetest, nicest, have the saddest look on his face, and you just wanna hug him."
F.E. Elliott, Taylor said, would "roll over in his grave."
Looking back, Betty Elliott said, the various lies were woven into the very fabric of their friendship, so intricately entwined in the most mundane conversations of everyday life, that it now seems West was grooming her - and others - from the very beginning.
nnn
Richard Gardner became acquainted with the man he knew as Giovanni West in an online chat room. They met at Starbucks for coffee, and Gardner said he understood West was a chemical engineer who worked at Marathon Oil.
"He was so smooth," Gardner said, laughing ruefully. "He drove a brand new Cadillac, had a nice apartment, dressed in work attire." He paused, and then, still incredulous, added, "He took phone calls from work!"
At their fifth meeting, Gardner said, West produced a copy of his account holdings, purportedly showing money he inherited from his parents had been frozen because of a tax issue.
"He was always one step ahead, and really he was working two or three people at the same time. Maybe more," Gardner said. "He didn't have a job. He never did work at Marathon! But he was so savvy. I have never loaned money to anyone in my life - in my life - and I loaned it to him."
The loans totaled $7,400. He filed a civil suit in an effort to get the money back and later joined the criminal case filed against West.
nnn
Pam Fraley was working as a bartender at Stats, a popular watering hole in Barboursville, when she met George "Giovanni" West.
"He was nice, really nice," she said. "We exchanged phone numbers - he exchanged phone numbers with a lot of people in there. And then one day I just got a text that his partner had gotten them in financial trouble and everything was frozen, all of his accounts, and he needed to go get medication for his mother. Come to find out, he was talking about Betty."
Fraley and Betty Elliott eventually met in court.
"'Do you know of anyone that could loan me some money,' I think is what it said. I basically said, 'If you need some, I have saved some up. I will loan it to you.'"
The first loan was just $1,500, she said. As loans go, West seemed like a relatively safe bet to her.
"Said he was working at Marathon, and his partner would agree to all this, saying he'd been there with him," Fraley said. "At the time, he was coming in with all his watches and stuff on, and drinking his Ciroc - he had to have a special vodka at the bar that we didn't carry, and he kept asking for it, and it's expensive. I think that's probably when he was getting money from Betty to come in there and act like he was a high roller."
There just weren't any visible red flags that she could see. Plus, she said, to back up his story, he showed documents he claimed were from an online scam his partner had been caught up in.
Later, when West asked repeatedly for more money, Fraley said he would text her copies of documents purportedly from the IRS, showing millions of dollars in assets that were scheduled for release on April 2, 2013.
"I said, 'Maybe I need to have you sign a contract.' He said, 'Yeah, I'll do it,'" Fraley said. "For some reason with me he wasn't the smartest, sending me all these pictures and stuff by text, writing me the checks, signing the contract. He didn't do that with anyone else."
She kept the printouts in a stack, thumbing through them - "Here's photocopies of the checks he gave me. ... Here's a picture of the bank statement showing all the money he had. ... Here's another forged document."
She got suspicious when the funds he was waiting on still hadn't been released by the end of April 2013.
"He was supposed to have gotten his money, and they still didn't unfreeze the account. He sent me some type of text about knowing a loan shark. 'Do you know any loan sharks, 'cause I need more?' I said, 'No.' After that I was just like, 'This is not right,'" she said. "'Cause he kept saying he was going to pay me back, and he never did. And he just kept asking for more money. So then I just started figuring something was up."
Fraley said she finds it hard to believe she, of all people, was tricked.
"I've been in the bar business for 30 years, so I'm a pretty good judge of character. But I also have a big heart," Fraley said.
By the time she stopped loaning West money, the total was more than $11,000. She had several friends in law enforcement who she said advised her on how to proceed. She met with two deputies from the Cabell County Sheriff's Office and showed them the text messages and photos, the contract West had signed.
"If I hadn't have known them and already had this information for them, they would've probably just thrown it on the desk and said, 'We'll get to it as soon as we can,'" Fraley said.
Instead, she said, one of the deputies told her, "I think we can have a case." She thought about it, talked with her husband and then said, "Let's do this."
West was arrested by the Cabell County Sheriff's Office on May 3, 2013.
nnn
West was indicted on four counts of fraudulent schemes in August 2013 and pleaded guilty to one count on Jan. 15, 2015, in Cabell County Circuit Court. On March 27 of that year he was sentenced to one to 10 years in prison by Judge Alfred E. Ferguson.
He was sent to the Pruntytown Correctional Center in Grafton to begin serving his sentence. Approved for the prison's work release program, he landed at the Quarrier Diner in December 2015 and was granted supervised parole the next month.
A few months later, his plans to buy the diner were announced.
Contacted by a former acquaintance of West's, the Gazette-Mail began looking into what appeared to be inconsistencies in his story and ended up with a long list of unanswered questions. Among them: How could an ex-con still on parole get the liquor license he would need to own a bar?
"He did tell us his record had been expunged," Pollitt said.
"His record has not been expunged," said Joe Fincham, who prosecuted the case against West through the Cabell County's Prosecuting Attorney's office in Huntington. "In order for him to have his record expunged he would file a notice, and we would respond."
Usually such actions are reserved for young defendants caught up in a single instance of poor decision-making, so youthful mistakes don't follow them for life, Fincham said, not for repeat offenders like West.
Court records and a private investigator's report show West has been convicted and served time in Ohio and Alaska on multiple charges including writing bad checks and theft.
"He is very good at making unbelievable things sound believable," Fincham said, adding, "I don't know if it's compulsive or what it is, but it's very practiced, like he's trying to game the system, but it's people. There's no problem that can't be solved with a lie."
nnn
The sale of the Quarrier Diner from the Pollitts to West was announced in August 2016, but the closing was repeatedly delayed for a variety of vague reasons, from bank holidays, personal holidays and unexplained delays.
During an interview with the Gazette-Mail in September, Pollitt said she was appreciative of the concerns several people had expressed, but she ultimately was unconvinced she and her husband had anything to worry about.
As for the validity of things he reportedly told her and others, including whether he once lived in California; really went to the University of California, Los Angeles; has a master's degree in business administration or communications; studied chemical engineering; or inherited millions from his deceased parents, "I just don't care," Pollitt said.
"He has not asked for a single penny from us. What difference does all that make to us when he's here running our kitchen and doing such a wonderful job?" she said.
"All we can go on is our experience, and our experience with him has been great," she said. "My husband is a CPA. He's gone through the books. Everything is where it's supposed to be. So I can't speak but for what we have experienced. He has been wonderful."
There were too many good things she'd seen from him, she said - not just the work he'd done, but the way he treated other people when he didn't know anyone was watching.
"He has just proved himself time and time again as being a considerate, loving person, not just to me, but to others. He has been wonderful," she said.
Plus there was the sharp increase in business they had seen since West came on board.
"Normally 40 to 50 [customers] would be a good day. We were averaging 30 to 35, and if we had almost 50, we'd be excited. [Since West took over] we have been consistently over 50 and as many as 70 or 75 for lunch," she said. "For Sunday brunch we were hoping - hoping - for 50 to 70. We have had as many as 119, and we average 80 to 90. It's just amazing."
Beyond that, West's offer to buy the diner has "given me my life back," Pollitt said.
"If he really has weaved a web, then he should get an Emmy for his performance," she added.
nnn
The Quarrier Diner abruptly closed at the end of June, initially citing water and sewer problems. This week, Pollitt said it appeared West had moved out of his apartment, leaving a long trail of unpaid bills and unpaid workers in his wake.
The diner and bar will remain closed, she said, until someone else buys or leases the place.
Charleston police now are investigating allegations made against West, said Lt. Steve Cooper, Charleston's chief of detectives. West's whereabouts are unknown.
Reach Maria Young at 304-348-5115
or maria.young@wvgazettemail.com.