Before releasing him, members of the West Virginia Parole Board should have been given more information about George Martin West, the former prison inmate and ex-parolee now at the center of the abrupt closing of Charleston's historic Quarrier Diner, a state government spokesman said Wednesday.
"The Parole Board should have been provided with a more complete picture of Mr. West's case when it was asked to consider discharging him from parole," Lawrence Messina, director of communications for the West Virginia Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety, said in an email to the Gazette-Mail.
"Specifically, the board should have been notified that Mr. West had allegedly bounced a pair of $2,500 checks, that these allegations prompted the filing of misdemeanor criminal charges, and that Mr. West appeared in Kanawha County Magistrate Court to answer the resulting warrant," Messina wrote.
The Division of Corrections and its Office of Parole Services are reviewing the handling of the West case, he said.
The criminal charges stem from an event that occurred while West was still on supervised parole following a conviction and prison term for fraudulent schemes in Huntington.
A warrant was issued for his arrest in Wood County on Feb. 23, weeks after a Jan. 14 performance by "American Idol" finalist Bucky Covington at Timothy's, the bar located beneath the Charleston diner. Two checks, totaling $5,000, were returned days after the show, allegedly on a closed account, according to Rick Modesitt, president of the Parkersburg-based entertainment firm that booked the performance. Modesitt said he placed a call to West's parole officer on March 1.
"I contacted his parole officer in Huntington, while he was still on supervised parole," said Modesitt.
The officer, Modesitt said, told him West claimed to have receipts showing that he had paid the amount due.
"I said, 'Well, he didn't pay me.' He said, 'Well, I'll ask him for the receipts,' and I never heard from him again," Modesitt said.
Frustrated, Modesitt wrote to members of the parole board on April 24, telling them, "I am writing to you regarding a parolee by the name of George West who is apparently continuing his criminal behavior after being released."
The letter came too late. West was released from parole on March 15, 2017.
"I know how the system is supposed to work. This was a complete breakdown in protection of victims," Modesitt said.
"How was he free?" asked Anna Pollitt, who owns the diner and bar with her husband, Dave, and leased the businesses to West.
Pollitt said she was not aware of the charges against West or the two checks allegedly written on a closed account to pay for the Covington performance.
"If he was still on parole, there is no excuse for him to not be put back in jail and be held responsible," she said. "He was charged with the same sort of thing he went to jail for in the first place. So why on earth would he not be kept?
"A lot of this wouldn't have happened had he just been stopped back then," she said, referring to the long list of unpaid bills and former employees who say they were not paid for several weeks before the diner closed at the end of June.
In its email, the Division of Corrections did not respond to a question about why West was granted parole after having only paid a fraction of his court-ordered restitution from the Huntington case. In a Nov. 22 email to the newspaper, Messina wrote, "Parole Services maintains the position that the Parole Board not discharge this offender until all restitution is paid."
Restitution totaled $36,000. Court records show that payments to the four victims began 10 months into West's parole and two days after the Gazette-Mail contacted his parole officer, in October 2016. The last payments were received March 8, for a total of $3,500, according to Cabell County Circuit Court records and interviews with the victims.
"We weren't shocked, I have to tell you that. He comes across as such a refined, good person that people are very, very easily sucked in and fooled by this man," said Leanna Taylor, one of the four victims.
"He belongs in jail, is where he belongs," said her mother, Betty Elliott, who said she lost more than $30,000 to West.
"I appreciate the division conducting a review," Modesitt said, "because it is a broken system, the way it's working now."
Reach Maria Young at maria.young@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5115 or follow @mariapyoung on Twitter.