When John Churchill came to town in early 2016 looking for answers about his son’s death, he brought a close friend — recently retired Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Maj. Ron Hartley.
They wanted to see the West Palm Beach house whereSteven N. Churchill, 54, had died six months earlier of an accidental heroin overdose.
“Every place has their dope holes,” said Hartley, alluding to drug cases he investigated during his40-year law enforcement career. “That is kind of what I was expecting.”
But driving along North Flagler Drive, they passed a marina, a sailing club, a waterfront park and gated homes on lush lots overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway.
“I start thinking to myself, ‘Maybe we’re lost,”’ Hartley recalled.
After double-checking the address, they found themselves in front ofa Mediterranean-style estate with a main house, open-air loggia and two guest cottages on 1.2 acres draped in palm trees and backing up to a dock.
The black metal entrance gate was closed. So, they walked along the property’s walled borders, sneaking peeks of ornate stonework, a red barrel-tile roof and a swimming pool — all the while wondering how a troubled alcoholic with a long record of arrests could ever wind up at such a home, let alone die there.
Their next stop was the police station, where the investigating detective explained how Churchill’s body had been found— slumped across the back seat of a dust-covered Jaguar parked in the garage. The detective said police found no foul play and chalked up the death as another tragic statistic in the surgingoverdose epidemic.
Assuming they had gotten all their answers, they left town.
In May 2016, about 10 months after Steven N. Churchill’s death, someone else died of an overdose in the same house —Joshua Gray Hodgson, an addict with a rap sheet of drug-related offenses.
When Churchill’s parents learned about it, they recalled Hodgson’s name: He had found their son’s body at the house in July 2015 but waited nearly two hours to call rescue crews.
“Something’s not right,” Hartley said. “If you get a couple of overdoses at the same place, it is usually a flophouse or some place where they go to shoot up. You don’t expect that in a mansion on the Intracoastal Waterway.”
But this is no ordinary waterfront estate.
And its owner is no ordinary man.
He’s the widower of a Standard Oil heiress, whose family fortune reaches back to Florida pioneer Henry Flagler. He married the heiress on her deathbed and inherited the bulk of her estate, $43 million, along with lingering bitterness from her suspicious relatives.
Tall and elegant with blue eyes, a trimmed mustache and a rakish debonair look, he’s confident and dignified. In video depositions taken in 2010, he smiles warmly and speaks with a slight German accent, at times stroking his mustache or twirling a pair of reading glasses — images at odds with the man mentioned in police reports about petty crimes, odd disturbances and the two overdose deaths at his homes.
His name evokes the aristocracy of his native Germany: Wolfgang Von Falkenburg.
Friends call him Wolfie.
He seems like a man who has it all. But he can’t resist the lure of the street.
Chapter 1: The Wolf of Palm Beach
He has regaled friends with stories about an intriguing past: Growing up in post-World War II Germany, dabbling in the ’60s Paris fashion scene and living a jet-setting lifestyle with a free-spirited Palm Beach heiress who took painting lessons from Salvador Dali and once belly-danced with a boa constrictor draped around her neck.
Wolfie, 75, declined multiple requests for a sit-down interview. But he answered some questions in a series of short phone conversations before telling a reporter to stop calling. And a tantalizing portrait emerges from court documents, video depositions, police reports and interviews with people who know him.
He has never been employed in his adult life. He owns or controls property in Africa and Hawaii; a Santa Monica, Calif.,bungalow that he claimed was once owned by silent movie actress Mary Pickford; and a rusticBraxton Dixon home nearNashville.
Although he has sold most of the Palm Beach properties he inherited, he still owns one oceanfront home on the north end that he rents to Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert F. Kennedy.
He’ll show up at the occasional Palm Beach society event — he attended socialite Brownie McLean’s 100th birthday party last summer — but far less frequently than he did when his charity-minded wife was alive.
Described as intelligent and charming, he also can be mischievous; he once wore a gorilla costume to a charity event that raised money for the animals.
But he has made his share of enemies, too — from wealthy Palm Beachers to his own sister — because of quarrels over money, real estate deals, broken promises, even his noisy exotic birds.
His name has appeared as both plaintiff and defendant in more than a dozen Palm Beach County lawsuits since the 1980s, including two in which he was accused of stalking.
The most voluminous lawsuits accuse him of hijacking the estate of his longtime companion, Standard Oil heiress Anne Terry Pierce McBride, better known as “Annabelle.”
“That deathbed wedding, it was as low a thing as anybody can do,” said Allen Pierce, Annabelle’s brother, who sued over his sister’s estate and once was jailed for killing someone. “He waited until she was down for the count and then he moved in on her. It was all about greed.”
Except for a 1989 charge — a judge had Wolfie arrested forcriminal contempt of court, saying he lied about his assets in a lawsuit — he hasn’t had any serious criminal infractions in Florida.
In 2010, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of possession of less than 20 grams of marijuana after he was pulled over in his Lincoln Town Car by Palm Beach police, who wereresponding to an anonymous tip. Adjudication was withheld.
Lately, when he’s not traveling, he often spends his days at his North Flagler Drive home. It’s a house police are familiar with. Since Wolfie moved in nearly five years ago, they’ve responded to more than a dozen calls, including a violent home invasion last summer.
Although police have said Wolfie had nothing to do with the two overdose deaths, the incidents prompted some friends to lecture him about the company he keeps.
“I’ve said to him, ‘Why is somebody always dying in your household? Is that just bad luck?”’ said Al Davis, a West Palm Beach resident and self-described recovering drug addict who says he has known Wolfie for more than 20 years.
Chapter 2: 'I didn't know she was wealthy' -- Wolfie meets Annabelle
Wolfie’s meandering path to the Flagler Drive house began in war-torn Hamburg, where he was born in 1942 and raised with two brothers and two sisters. Friends say he told them his father served in the German navy, on a submarine in World War I and on a destroyer in World War II.
Wolfie studied language in France and archaeology in Greece before embarking on a trip around the world, he said in a 2010 deposition. He started living in the United States in 1971, in West Hollywood, Calif., according to a 2013 court affidavit.
In the deposition, he said he arrived in Palm Beach for the first time in 1973 because of a sore back injured when he tried to lift a suitcase in Tahiti.
He was told to seek pain relief by swimming in the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. “It didn’t help me,” he said.
But the Palm Beach visit came with a reward. He met a woman who would change his life: Annabelle, an artist and musician who came from one of America’s richest families.
At the time, one friend recalled, Wolfie bore a resemblance to a young Omar Sharif, with a mustache and wavy hair. Wolfie said he was introduced to Annabelle by another woman he’d been dating.
In the deposition for a lawsuit challenging his inheritance, a lawyer broached a delicate question.
“Mr. Von Falkenburg, I certainly don’t mean to insult you,” said attorney Amy Beller, “but did you in this time period we are talking about in the early 1970s, did you have a practice of befriending wealthy ladies in order to sustain your lifestyle?”
“I didn’t have that practice,” he replied. “I did not know (Annabelle) was wealthy because all I knew that (on the day they met) she had melted chocolate in her purse and a guitar over her back.”
Chapter 3: Standard Oil roots -- Annabelle's story
Annabelle was born into a life of privilege. Her mother, born Rebekah West, came from a wealthy St. Louis banking family and her father, Dickson W. Pierce, was an advertising photographer who according to published reports was descended from President Franklin Pierce.
In 1946, when Annabelle was 2, her mother divorced Dickson Pierce. A year later, she married William Hale Harkness, a wealthy investor and a co-founder of Time magazine. His grandfather was Daniel M. Harkness, a half-brother ofHenry Flagler and an early investor in the Standard Oil Co., formed in 1870.
“Uncle Bill,” the nickname Annabelle and her brother, Allen, used for their mother’s new husband, helped surround his stepchildren with lavish comfort — a chalet in Switzerland, a Manhattan apartment and Holiday House, the family’s oceanfront estate in Watch Hill, R.I.,now owned by pop star Taylor Swift.
Annabelle attended private schools around the world before going to Rollins College, a small liberal arts school in Winter Park. She first came to Palm Beach on vacations with her mother.
Before she got involved with Wolfie, she had been married twice. Her first marriage, from 1966 to 1970, was to Anthony McBride, an aspiring actor who hung out in the Malibu surfing crowd and whose stepfather was CBS newsman Mike Wallace. The other, to a man named Alin M. Gillieaux in November 1974, lasted less than a year, according toClark County, Nevada, marriagerecords.
Exactly when Wolfie started dating Annabelle is unclear. But he said in court that he lived with her “every waking moment, and sleeping moment” from 1975 until her death in 2005.
They forged a unique bond,made legalin 1982 with a marriage ceremony at The Breakers.
Chapter 4: 'Her own happy rainbow' -- Annabelle's Hawaiian lullabies
Annabelle fancied herself a musician and painter, passions encouraged by Wolfie. She played guitar, ukulele, lute, drums and harp. Shewrote and recorded Hawaiian lullabies on her ownHoney Bee Records label.
Her paintings showed influence from Dali, her one-time teacher and her mother’s friend. She displayed her artwork in galleries on Worth Avenue and Clematis Street. Some of it, including fantasy depictions of her and Wolfie in tropical and celestial settings, adorned thealbum covers.
She inherited a Dali painting from her mother but stored it out of sight in one of her Palm Beach homes, Wolfie said. Her own artwork adorned the walls.
“She was a really sweet, down-to-earth lady, kind of like a hippie, into nature,” said Mario A. Perez, of West Palm Beach, who got to know her in the 1990s after he met Wolfie on the beach one day and was later hired to help manage some of their properties.
She enjoyed belly dancing and attended conventions under the stage names “Shazadee” and “Daphnie West,” a hobby that one friend saw as a rebuke to her mother’s passion for ballet. In a 1980s video, Annabelle dances with a boa constrictor draped across her shoulders next to Wolfie in blooming pantaloons and fez cap, say friends who have watched it.
“Annabelle was very eccentric because she was willing to do anything,” said Robin Sweet, a Palm Beach friend who saw the video. “She was vivacious, super-energetic. Nothing ever stopped her. She was just her own happy rainbow.”
With Wolfie, Annabelle practiced yoga, doted on their two Pekingese dogs and attended occasional Palm Beach events like murder-mystery dinners at The Colony hotel and charity fundraisers.
“Wolfie took wonderful care of her. He loved her. They were quite a couple,” recalled Pat Levey, a Palm Beach artist.
Wolfie’s care for Annabelle extended to helping invest her money.
“I don’t have expertise, but I think I have a natural gift in real estate,” he said in a 2010 deposition. “Real estate and construction is sort of a thing that’s in me, that I know and feel about.”
They did not appear to be prominent in Palm Beach society.
“I wouldn’t make (Annabelle) out to be Marjorie Merriweather Post,” said one Palm Beacher, who recalled passing Annabelle on North Ocean Boulevard one day in the 1990s as she drove into town in “an old yellow Cadillac. The air conditioner was broke. She had this long blond sort of Rapunzel hair and it was flowing out the window.”
To one relative, Wolfie and Annabelle “appeared to have abig brother/little sister relationship” — not a romantic one.
“There is no doubt in my mind that he loved her and that she loved him, but it wasn’t in the way that a romantic couple would love each other. They were companions,” Ninette Pierce, Annabelle’s stepsister,said in a 2010 deposition.
“I think over the years he became addicted to her and her lifestyle.”
Chapter 5: 'David the homeless man' -- Wolfie's circle of friends
On June 1, 2005, Annabelle died of breast cancer and renal failure. She was 61. In the days after her death, Pierce came to Palm Beach and stayed at her late stepsister’s oceanfront home in the 1300 block of North Ocean Boulevard.
She arrived to find out she wasn’t the only person staying there: “David, the homeless man,”she said in a deposition.
“He was an acquaintance of Wolfgang, and Wolfgang said that he wanted to help put a roof over his head,” she said. “For some reason, Wolfgang took a liking to this guy. He said David helped him fix things around the house, but this guy was a raging alcoholic.”
David the homeless man was just one of several people invited over the years to hang out or live in homes owned by Wolfie and Annabelle, often rent-free or in exchange for services.
Some held jobs or were known on the island: A yoga teacher (who died a few days after collapsing in one of Wolfie’s Palm Beach homes). A Worth Avenue salesman. Property managers.
Others had rap sheets.
In 2010, Wolfie said a man named Tyrone Preston stayed at Wolfie’s North Ocean Boulevard home in Palm Beach. In April that year, police arrested Preston, who was 66, after he was found sleeping in a Lexus parked a block from Wolfie’s house. A crack pipe containing cocaine residue was found in Preston’s pocket, according to apolice report. Prosecutors declined to pursue the case.
A recent guest at North Flagler Drive was Melvin Bruno, 38, a drifter with more than a dozen arrests in South Florida since 2009 on charges such as drug possession and assault and battery.
In 2016, Bruno was arrested, accused ofvandalism and destruction of propertyat the North Flagler Drive house after two women living in cottages next to the houseclaimed he slashed their tires and was harassing them. He now has a warrant out for his arrest forfailing to appear in court in 2016.
Chapter 6: Poison on the nightstand -- Hodgson's history
Perhaps the most important guest to Wolfie was Hodgson, the second person to die in the North Flagler Drive house. He came into Wolfie’s life not long after Annabelle died.
Described by one relative as handsome and bright, he came from a Virginia family that is descended fromFrances Hodgson Burnett, the early 20th-century author of the famous children’s books “Little Lord Fauntleroy” and “The Secret Garden.”
“He was smart and intelligent and interested in everything,” Wolfie told The Palm Beach Post.
Hodgson also struggled with drug addiction. He was arrested nearly 40 times in Florida from 2001 to 2014 on charges ranging from drug possession to car theft, even assault. Some police reports cited Wolfie as the victim.
Wolfie, who never had children of his own, told The Post he considered Hodgson like a son. And despite warnings from Hodgson’s family about his addiction, Wolfie said he tried to help him get clean.
He said he brought Hodgson with him to Europe to keep him off drugs. Wolfie said he forbade Hodgson from using drugs at his houses or bringing friends there while Wolfie was away.
Still, Hodgson caused chaos at a time when Wolfie was defending himself in bitter court challenges to his late wife’s estate.
In June 2010, Hodgson was accused of stealing checks, credit cards and a Rolex watch from a house Wolfie owns near Flamingo Park in West Palm Beach.
“Wolfgang stated that Joshua is basically a junkie who steals to support his drug habit, that he wanted to pursue criminal charges against him because ‘enough is enough’ and he needed to go to jail,” reada police report. But a few weeks later,Wolfie backed down because Hodgson, who faced five years in prison, promised to enter rehab.
The following spring, a confidential informant made a sinister accusation to Palm Beach police: Hodgson tried to poison Wolfie at his North Ocean Boulevard home by filling an empty water bottle with “a toxic degreaser” and placing it on Wolfie’s nightstand.
“Hodgson has been constantly supplying Von Falkenburg with crack/cocaine and keeping him ‘high’ in order to use his money and his rental property located in West Palm Beach,” said a March 2011Palm Beach police report, quoting the informant. Police said Wolfie “reiterated” what the informant told them.
“Hodgson, who is known as a habitual drug user, recently had a local drug dealer move into Von Falkenburg’s rental apartment, which they are both using … for drug dealing and prostitution,”the report continued, citing the confidential informant. “When Von Falkenburg realized what was going on with his rental apartment, he began an eviction process.”
Angry about Wolfie’s eviction plans, Hodgson gave Wolfie drugs and got him high, the informant told police. Later that night, Wolfie was lying in bed when he saw a plastic bottle that looked like cranberry juice. Wolfie began to drink it but “immediately knew it was something bad and spit it out,” the police report said.
The next day, police conducted “a taped controlled call” between Hodgson and Wolfie. In the call, Hodgson admitted he put degreaser in the bottle but left it on the night table by mistake.
Wolfie told police he didn’t want to pursue criminal charges. Thepolice report noted “that Von Falkenburg appears to be of sound mind and fully aware of his actions.”
Police returned to the oceanfront mansion three months later after a 911 call about a fight. They arrived to find the bedroom door pulled off the rail and Wolfie being treated by paramedics for cuts to his lower left leg.
Wolfie said “that Hodgson and him have been living at the house for over the past year and that they have been in an intimate relationship together,” according toa police report. Wolfie also told police “that Hodgson has a bad drug problem and his anger is a result of the drugs.”
Hodgson was charged with domestic battery against a person over age 65. Wolfie posted his bond.
In September, policesaid Hodgson stole Wolfie’s credit cards and went on a spending spree at Walmart and CVS. Hodgson was arrested again on charges of grand theft and credit card fraud.
When asked by The Post why he kept taking back someone who’d committed crimes against him, Wolfie replied: “He’s like my own son. I couldn’t say, ‘Stay away.”’
Chapter 7: 'He's a little devil' -- Two sides of Wolfie
Friends who knew Wolfie when Annabelle was alive remember him as playful and mischievous, an amiable guy who easily struck up conversations at parties or on the beach.
“He’s a little devil because he loves to tease and probe people,” said Robin Sweet, who said she hasn’t spoken to him in years. “He’s not hurtful in any way, but he likes to pull people’s chains and see their reactions.”
In 2001, Wolfie wore a full gorilla costume at a CityPlace charity event where Annabelle helped raise $25,000 for the Mountain Gorilla Conservation.
“He had the head on the whole time and only those of us who knew him knew who it was. He was dying because it was so hot, but he woudn’t take it off. He was so cute,” recalled Levey, the couple’s friend.
But that warmth can turn icy without warning, according to people who’ve spent time with him in the years after Annabelle’s death.
Gayle Alexander, who said she worked as Wolfie’s business manager for about 10 years, said he uses his wealth to manipulate people.
“There is a side of him that is gentle and generous, like he wants to help you. He dangles that carrot in front of you and from then on, you are following that carrot,” she said.
Alexander is among the latest in a long line of associates, residents and neighbors who have gone to court to settle disputes with Wolfie.
After Wolfie fired Alexander in 2016, she went to work forPalm Beach real estate broker Earl Hollis. Last year, she helped Hollissell Wolfie’s house in the 1100 block of North Ocean Boulevard for $10.6 million.
A few months after the sale,Hollis accused Wolfie in a lawsuit of cheating him out of a $256,000 commission, half of which Alexander stood to gain.
Wolfie argued that his listing with Hollis had expired before the house was sold. Court documents indicate Wolfie also may have felt he had overpaid Hollis years earlier on a different sale.
“I’ve been in business 60 years. This is the strangest one I’ve ever had,” Hollis said.
Hollis described Wolfie as “charming as hell” and “terribly intelligent” but also “very moody … hot and cold.” He added: “He’s not a very rational person. He doesn’t like to pay anybody. When he says something or even signs something, he doesn’t want to do it.”
Tim Gannon, a co-founder of the Outback Steakhouse restaurant chain, said he had a similar experience.
In March 2011, hebought a home in the 1300 block of North Ocean Boulevard from Wolfie for $5.5 million. That same day, Wolfie bought a house two blocks to the north from Gannon for $3.2 million. Gannon, in an interview with The Post, said he “swapped” the homes because he needed more space.
The house Wolfie was selling “was in horrible condition. The roof leaked. The floors buckled. Water stains on the wall. There were 4 feet of weeds in front of the house,” Gannon said. As part of the deal, according to Gannon, Wolfie agreed to give him $100,000 for repairs.
But at closing, he said, Wolfie changed his mind.
“He said, ‘I’m not paying the money,”’ said Gannon, who never filed a formal complaint in court. “I had a decision to make. I had to give up the $100,000.”
Gannon said, “A lot of people are dismissive about him: ‘Oh, that’s Wolfie.’ I’m not. To put it blankly, he’s just a guy who doesn’t belong on Palm Beach.”
The only home on Palm Beach that Wolfie still owns — the house Gannon sold to him — has a famous part-time renter, Ethel Kennedy, who used to spend time about a half-mile down the road at theKennedy compound that once served as the winter White House for her brother-in-law, President John F. Kennedy.
“Ethel loves the house,” Gannon said. “It’s like a little palace with chandeliers and high ceilings. But I don’t think she has any dealings with (Wolfie).”
A woman who answered the phone at the home said Kennedy had no comment.
Chapter 8: Screeching co*ckatoos -- Antagonism on Palm Beach
On early 2017, a Palm Beach neighbor accused Wolfie of turning another of his homes, in the 1100 block of North Ocean Boulevard, into a hotel.
“Wolf’s hotel guests include wedding partiers who install tents. … Others bring their own major sound equipment systems to amplify the neighborhood with music for their parties. No resident-to-resident courtesies need apply,” North Ocean Boulevard resident Thomas W. Moloney wrote to Mayor Gail Coniglio, who also lives nearby.
The town investigated but closed the case on July 19, two weeks after Wolfie sold the property.
It wasn’t the only time neighbors complained about the house while Wolfie or Annabelle owned it.
In 1987, Wolfie’sscreeching macaws and co*ckatoos prompted a costly lawsuit from a next-door neighbor about excessive noise. About two years later, a judge issueda restraining order against Wolfie and Annabelle after the couple was accused of “harassment” and “antagonism” toward the neighbor who sued them.
The neighbor, Cleveland industrialistJoseph E. Cole, was a founding trustee of the Kravis Center, a former minority owner of the Cleveland Indians baseball team and in 1960, the Ohio chairman of John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign.
Wolfie “is large and intimidating … has trespassed on their property on numerous occasions, looked in their windows and yelled at the Coles’ friends, gardeners and guests,” says a1989 order by Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Richard Wennet.
At one point, the judge held Wolfie in criminal contempt for lying about his assets. Wennet ordered Wolfie and Annabelle to pay more than $80,000 in attorneys fees andscolded them for “abuse of the judicial process.”
In 2001, the house was the setting of another court case in which a judge issued a temporary restraining order against Wolfie after renters accused him of harassment.
The renters claimed Wolfie stalked them and walked into the house without permission — and with “the smell of marijuana reeking from your body,” according to a letter in court records that their attorney sent to Wolfie.
The injunction was dropped two months later and the case was dismissed in 2003 after Wolfie said the renters left town.
Jupiter attorney Steven Selz, who represented Wolfie in the lawsuit filed by the renters, sued him in 2006 to recover $36,000 in fees.
Wolfie “has been repeatedly cited in other similar cases in this jurisdiction for contempt of court and has by his conduct demonstrated a disregard for the rule of law and the power and authority of the courts,” Selz said ina 2009 court filing.
Selz eventually was paid and the case was closed in 2009.
Chapter 9: 'Blue Blood' -- Annabelle's wealthy mom
One of Wolfie’s earliest forays into the court system goes back to 1982, when Annabelle challenged her mother’s will in New York — a move eerily similar to a challenged will 20 years later in Palm Beach County.
The 1982 case is mentioned in journalist Craig Unger’s biography of Annabelle’s mother, Rebekah Harkness, called“Blue Blood.” The book, published in 1988, offers an unflattering snapshot of Wolfie.
Annabelle “had a propensity for getting involved with eccentric men. Her latest beau, Wolfgang Von Falkenburg, known as Wolfie, was a tall German with an imposing Teutonic bearing, to whom Rebekah had taken an intense and immediate dislike,” according to the book.
“Brusque and abrasive, he infuriated Rebekah’s friends and associates in Palm Beach. He was outspoken about his right-wing political views. But his past was a mystery. He was the subject of dozens of rumors that never checked out.”
A copy of the book was once kept at one of Annabelle’s Palm Beach homes. Wolfie told The Post he never read it. “My wife didn’t want me to read it because she thought I would get upset,” he said. “I hexed the book and it never became successful.”
According to the book, Rebekah was “incensed that Wolfie referred to (Annabelle) as his wife,” even though they had not yet been married. Rebekah died of cancer in June 1982. Three months later, Wolfie and Annabelle got married.
That summer, Wolfie and Annabelle raised questions about changes made to Rebekah’s will a year before she died. The changes left most of her money to the Harkness Ballet Foundation.
Annabelle’s mother justified her decision by writing in her will, “I feel that the provisions I have made for my children during their lifetime as well as the provisions of the late William Hale Harkness, made for them by his will, are generous and ample.”
That didn’t stop Annabelle and her brother, Allen, from asking a New York court to declare their mother’s will invalid. They claimed their mother made the changes while “under the influence of narcotics” she was taking while she was sick, according tonews stories at the time.
Wolfie also was involved in the challenge, according to “Blue Blood.” The book says he and Annabelle launched a three-year probate fight after meeting with their lawyer, Roy Cohn, who once served as general counsel for Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist crusade in the early 1950s and would later mentor future President Donald Trump.
Wolfie and Annabelle lost their challenge in 1986. But the case would echo two decades later in Palm Beach County.
Chapter 10: Bad blood — Afraid her brother might kill Wolfie
Wolfie’s marriage to Annabelle ended in 1989. Although the divorce records have been purged, Wolfie offered a sensational explanation for their split in the 2010 deposition: Because of bad blood with Annabelle’s brother, Allen.
“Your honor, the facts of this case … are like a James Patterson novel. Mr. Von Falkenburg is a man who uses aliases,” said John Pankauski, an attorney for Annabelle’s stepsister, Ninette.
Wolfie said he used aliases — Frank Jensen, John Wayne Rassmussen and Frank Wolf, to name a few — at his wife’s insistence to hide their assets because she was afraid that her brother, Allen, might try to kill Wolfie.
Her brother had been convicted of second-degree murder for shooting a man with a Derringer he pulled from his back pocket during a fight outside a Hialeah convenience store in 1977.
The sentence was reduced on appeal to manslaughter and Allen Pierce, represented by attorneyRoy Black, was released from Florida State Prison in 1985 after serving eight years.
“Allen has a very bizarre temper. Annabelle, who is afraid of him, too, took it really serious,” Wolfie said in 2010.
“She said her brother was threatening me and we are better off to get a divorce because he wants to shoot you.”
In an interview, Allen Pierce admitted he never liked Wolfie, but he claims he never threatened him.
Chapter 11: Deathbed wedding -- Annabelle and Wolfie together again
Around 1993, Annabelle started talking about remarrying Wolfie — this time in Hawaii, where she assumed her brother wouldn’t find them, Wolfie said. The Hawaiian wedding never happened.
Wolfie said she again brought up the re-marriage idea around 2000, not long after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
“It was very much my wife’s idea. She was adamant of not dying without being married,” he said.
After undergoing a mastectomy in 2001, Annabelle refused chemotherapy. She opted instead for alternative treatments, such as vitamin C drips that Wolfie also took with her as a show of “companionship,” he said in his deposition.
But her condition slowly worsened and in late May 2005 she was taken to Hospice of Palm Beach County in West Palm Beach.
Within hours of her arrival, she changed her will. Two days later, she and Wolfie remarried in a bedside ceremony performed by Annabelle’s longtime estate-planning attorney Michael Tannenbaum, who had overseen the changes to her will two days earlier.
No relatives attended the wedding, and no photos or videos of the ceremony were taken.
Three days after the wedding, she died.
Not long after Annabelle died, her relatives and friends started raising questions about her will. But it would be late 2009 before her brother, Allen, filed the first lawsuit accusing Wolfie of conspiring with Tannenbaum to hijack her estate.
Two of Wolfie’s nephews sued later.
According to their accusations, Annabelle was sedated on morphine when Wolfie persuaded her to remarry him and change her will — steering the majority of her estate to Wolfie while drastically reducing their bequests from several million dollars to $500,000 apiece.
Wolfie denied trying to influence Annabelle. He said she changed her trust about once a year and the changes she made on May 27, 2005, were her idea.
“She actually asked me what I wanted,” he said in the deposition. “And I told her, I said, ‘Annabelle, whatever you give me is fine with me.’”
Tannenbaum said in a deposition that he had discussed the changes with her in a private meeting — without Wolfie — a few days before she was admitted to hospice. And he insisted Annabelle was lucid when she signed the final documents.
“I was frankly shocked when she died,” Tannenbaum said, “because she was so well and so with it and so alive when I met her two days earlier.”
But Ninette Pierce, who had been working for 11 years as a trauma nurse when her stepsister died, said she reviewed the medical records of Annabelle’s final days at hospice. “She was in no shape to sign paperwork. She had been given morphine,”Pierce said.
Wolfie’s sister, Gisela Finucane, said ina sworn affidavit in 2010 that when she arrived in West Palm Beach a day or so after Annabelle’s death, “Wolfgang told me that Annabelle refused to execute the deathbed will and trust when Michael Tannenbaum asked her to do so; rather, it was only after Wolfgang spoke with Annabelle and convinced her to execute these documents that she signed them.”
Finucane said in the affidavit that she stopped speaking to her brother because of the probate fight. Her son,Christian Finucane, said two years later in an affidavit: “Wolfgang also told me that he married Annabelle for the money and that he was not going to let it go now.”
Pierce said she was“totally shocked” to learn about her stepsister’s deathbed marriage. She said Annabelle had told her, during a walk on the beach six months before her death, that she wouldnever get married again.
Asked by a lawyer why she thought Annabelle and Wolfie tied the knot a second time,Pierce replied: “I think they got married again so that he would inherit everything.”
Two Palm Beach County Circuit judges —Jack Cook andSandra McSorley — ruled inWolfie’s favor, citing among other reasons a four-year statute of limitations that expired more than six months before the first lawsuit was filed in late 2009.
Allen Pierce, in an interview, vowed that he isn’t giving up. In January, he filed a complaint against Tannenbaum with the Florida Bar.
Tannenbaum said the complaint, which isn’t public, has been dismissed.
Chapter 12: Body found in Jaguar — Churchill’s story
On 2013, not long after he prevailed in the challenges to his inheritance, Wolfie bought the North Flagler Drive house for $2.75 million.
Less than two years later, Steven N. Churchill would die there.
Born in Virginia, Churchill made his way to Florida and sold boats at marinas in Fort Lauderdale, Bradenton and Sarasota.
“He was a born salesman when he had it all together,” his father, John Churchill, said. But he also was a chronic alcoholic who drank vodka off and on for 25 years, an addiction that got him into trouble and strained his relationship with his parents and his only son.
State records show Churchill was arrested 33 times in Florida from 1994 to 2015 on charges ranging from burglary and simple battery to DUI and disorderly conduct. In 1997, he wasacquitted by afederal jury in North Carolina oncharges of helping a drug ring smuggle cocaine and marijuana throughout the Carolinas, Florida, Virginia and West Virginia.
In his final years, Churchill had been in and out of hospitals and rehab centers, arrested several times in and around Singer Island for offenses related to drugs and alcohol, and committed to mental institutions regularly, his mother, Gloria Churchill, told authorities.
Gloria said her son often visited her in Sarasota to get away from his destructive environment in West Palm Beach. His final visit was in spring 2015.
He returned to West Palm Beach in June. By the end of the month, he was in trouble again.
Police arrested him on charges of disorderly intoxication June 29 after he was found passed out in front of a convenience store on Singer Island wearing only boxer shorts.
He was released from the Palm Beach County Jail on June 30. The next day, he cashed a $1,300 disability check and withdrew $300 from an ATM on Singer Island, Gloria said.
A day later, he was found dead at Wolfie’s North Flagler Drive home.
Wolfie, in a brief interview with The Post, said he had never met Churchill and never invited him on his property. On the night Churchill died, Wolfie said he was visiting family on the African island Republic of Mauritius.
The person who did invite Churchill to the North Flagler Drive house was Hodgson, according to a police report.
Hodgson told police he found Churchill’s body in Wolfie’s Jaguar around noon on July 2. He waited until 1:45 p.m. to call police and rescue crews. “It is unclear why he waited to call them,”the report said.
Hodgson was high on drugs when officers arrived,investigators noted, and he gave conflicting statements.
Initially, he said Churchill was a friend who had come by the house the previous night. (Hodgson later told friends he knew Churchill decades ago in Virginia.) He said he allowed him to spend the night because Churchill needed a ride to the Tri-Rail station the next day.
Hodgson said he didn’t see Churchill use drugs or drink any alcohol the night before and didn’t know how he died.
But minutes after giving his statement, he admitted that he had lied.
“As investigators examined (Churchill’s) body, Hodgson became extremely emotional and advised that he had not been completely forthcoming,”police said.
In his new version, Hodgson said he picked up Churchill at a gas station on Singer Island just after midnight, then drove him back to the North Flagler Drive home “where the two of them got high on heroin.” Churchill used Hodgson’s belt to wrap around his arm when he injected the heroin, Hodgson told police.
Hodgson said he woke up hours later and found Churchill unresponsive. He took his belt off Churchill’s arm and flushed the needle and other paraphernalia down the toilet, the police report said.
Wolfie told The Post that Hodgson later said he found Churchill’s body in a chair in the house and with help from a friend moved it into the car.
In the days after her son’s death, Gloria Churchill called the Medical Examiner’s Office several times, offering her suspicions of foul play.
“Gloria Churchill said since the time of his death several of Steven Churchill’s friends have called her, telling Gloria that Steven’s death was no accidental overdose,”according to an ME report.
But the medical examiner ruled Churchill’s death an accidental heroin and alcohol overdose.
It was in January 2016 that Churchill’s father came to West Palm Beach with his retired law enforcement friend, Hartley.
After a brief stop outside the North Flagler Drive home where Steven died, they met with Jeremy Banks, the detective who investigated Churchill’s death. According to Hartley, Banks showed them the crime-scene photos and he agreed the home was an unusual setting for a heroin overdose, but he also told the men there was no foul play.
John Churchill and Hartley left West Palm Beach for the three-hour drive back to Tampa, assuming that was the last they would hear of the home.
Chapter 13: The ‘funny farm’ — Melvin Bruno’s story
More than eight months after Churchill’s death, police were called to the North Flagler Drive house again. Two women renting cottages on the west side of the property complained they were being harassed by a man living in the main house.
They said they were afraid that the man, Melvin Bruno, 38, would rape them. Police arrested Bruno that day on misdemeanor charges of slashing the tires of one of the women’s cars after she rebuffed his advances and cursed at him.
Wolfie told police he invited Bruno to his house in early January 2016 after Bruno “missed his bus.” The day after Bruno’s arrest, Wolfie called police to report that Bruno, whom he described as “a person who likes to play and throw knives,” damaged a pool table, lamp shade and iPad with them in the house a few days earlier.In that report, Wolfie told police that he took Bruno in “because he was homeless and looked like he needed help.”
Bruno’s presence on the property prompted the women to move out.
“I called that place ‘the funny farm,’” said one of the women, who asked that her name not be used because she feared retribution from Bruno. “I felt like it was a very unsafe place to live.”
The March 2016 misdemeanor charge of criminal mischief at Wolfie’s North Flagler Drive house has been Bruno’s only arrest in Palm Beach County, according to records. But his name would appear in a West Palm Beach police report less than two months later, as a witness to another overdose death at Wolfie’s house.
Chapter 14: A second overdose death — 'It's got to raise red flags'
In his final days alive, Hodgson had been living with his mother in Vero Beach, taking Suboxone, a medicine used to treat addiction, and trying to stay clean, friends said. He had been asking Wolfie to loan him money so he could go to Colorado to start a marijuana farm, they said.
Hodgson and his mother came to West Palm Beach to attend the last day of SunFest 2016 with Wolfie. The next day, houseguest Al Davis said he overheard Hodgson and Bruno talking about going to a hotel on 45th Street to get their fix.
When her son disappeared, Hodgson’s mother drove back to Vero Beach without him.
The following afternoon, Davis said he was sitting out back by the pool with Wolfie, Bruno and Perez, the man who had met Wolfie on the beach. According to Perez, Bruno suddenly sat up on the couch, said, “Someone is watching me” and walked directly to a bathroom where he found Hodgson’s body. Bruno took a needle from Hodgson’s hands and flushed it, Perez said.
When rescue crews arrived, they remarked that the house looked familiar. “They said, ‘Weren’t we here last year?’” Perez recalled.
Others in the house described a bizarre scene: As police examined Hodgson’s body, Bruno pounded away on the keys of a piano in a nearby room.
The medical examiner would rule Hodgson’s death anaccidental overdose of fentanyl and cocaine.
“I regret that he is dead because he was my joy,” Wolfie said about Hodgson. “I don’t want anybody to die in my house. But I’m not responsible.”
Hodgson’s mother, Susan Clarke, of Vero Beach,told police her son had used heroin for 15 years and had been trying to get clean. In a brief interview with The Post, she described Wolfie as a family friend.
Bruno left town not long after Hodgson’s death. He didn’t show up for a court date on the tire-slashing charge, prompting the judge to issue a warrant for his arrest. Davis and Perez said they believe Bruno had been living for a while in Wolfie’s Santa Monica house near the Pacific Ocean, a bungalow supposedly once rented to actor Elliott Gould.
When Churchill’s parents learned from their son’s friends about Hodgson’s death, their immediate reaction was to wonder whether police might take a closer look for connections between the two fatalities.
Hartley, though, said he never reached out to Banks or anyone else at the police department.
“I didn’t want the police to think I was sticking my nose into their investigation, but if it raises red flags to me, it’s got to raise red flags to them,” he said.
“I know West Palm is busy and overwhelmed like most law enforcement agencies, but I think I would have dedicated a little more people and time into that investigation there because when you’ve got people using drugs in a place like that, there’s more to that story.”
Banks and Detective Regina Wood, who investigated Hodgson’s death, would not respond to requests for comment.
In response to written questions from The Post in February, a police spokesman, Sgt. Dave Lefont, said that Banks and Wood did investigate connections between the two cases. But the police files of Hodgson’s death don’t mention Churchill.
“The police don’t seem to want to give it another thought,” said John Churchill, 77, who said he considered suing Wolfie but was advised by a lawyer that a case would be hard to prove.
“I’ve been suspicious since Day One,” he said, “but I don’t have any proof of anything. I’m just a grieving father. I wanted some answers and I didn’t get them.”
On May 5, about three years after Steven N. Churchill’s death, his family and relatives plan to charter a boat out of Fort Lauderdale for a funeral service where they will dump his ashes into the Atlantic Ocean.
“It took a while,’’ John Churchill said, referring to the family’s struggle for closure, “but we are ready.”
Epilogue: ‘Nobody’s interested in my story’
In one of his brief phone interviews, Wolfie said he couldn’t understand why The Post was writing about the two overdose deaths, which were among more than 700 accidental heroin-related fatalities in Palm Beach County in 2015 and 2016.
“There are so many overdoses all the time,” he said. “They’re just drug addicts. I think you are wasting your time. They’re losers.”
Last June, Wolfie agreed to sit down with a reporter but never showed up. Contacted that day by phone, he said he changed his mind.
Two months later, police were called to the North Flagler Drive home again.
Two masked men broke into the house early one morning in August and ran into a bedroom where Wolfie was asleep with a guest who recently had been released from prison, according to a police report. While one of the men jumped on the bed and knocked the guest unconscious, the other held a knife to Wolfie’s throat and said:“Your friend better pay his debt.”
The intruders got away.
Wolfie still lives at the North Flagler Drive house, a place so dark and brooding one visitor referred to it as “Dracula’s house.” And he still invites guests there, according to friends. He loves to watch TV. A friend says one of his favorite shows is “American Greed.”
The Post spoke to Wolfie one last time in September.
“There’s nobody interested in my story,” he said before hanging up. “Who the (expletive) cares what I am doing? Write whatever you want. I’m not interested. Good luck and have a good day. Bye-bye.”
Staff researcher Melanie Mena contributed to this story.
This story grew from The Palm Beach Post’s award-winning Generation Heroin project published in 2016, which featured short profiles of each of the 216 people who died of a heroin-related overdose in Palm Beach County in 2015.
One was Steven N. Churchill, whose body was found in July of that year in a Jaguar owned by Wolfgang Von Falkenburg parked in the garage of Von Falkenburg’s West Palm Beach house.
When contacted in early 2016 for the Generation Heroin project, Churchill’s family shared with The Post their suspicions that his death may not have been an accident — even though the medical examiner had ruled it an accidental heroin overdose and police found no foul play.
In early 2016, staff writer Joe Capozzi and researcher Melanie Mena started reviewing police reports about a witness in the case, Joshua Hodgson. That summer, Capozzi tried calling Hodgson to ask about Churchill but soon learned why he couldn’t reach him: Hodgson had overdosed and died in May 2016 in the same house
Off and on for the next year and half, Capozzi spent days at the Palm Beach County Courthouse reviewing hundreds of pages of court files about lawsuits involving Von Falkenburg, including accusations that he hijacked his late wife’s estate while she was on her deathbed. The research was tricky because Von Falkenburg’s last name is spelled at least three different ways in case files.
Capozzi and Mena reviewed police records about calls to properties he owns, including the North Flagler Drive house, as well as police records of some people who have hung out at his homes.
Capozzi spoke with more than 40 people including friends, relatives and associates of Von Falkenburg, Hodgson and Churchill. The homicide detectives who worked both overdose cases refused to comment.
A key source of material for background about Von Falkenburg was three hours of video depositions that he gave in 2010 during a lawsuit challenging his inheritance.
West Palm Beach police say they may have lost or deleted a video recording of a witness during their investigation into the death of Steven N. Churchill in 2015.
Under Florida law, police departments are required to retain records of criminal investigations that result in no criminal violations for at least four years.
In the police report about Churchill’s death, Detective Jeremy Banks said he conducted a sworn video recording with witness Joshua Gray Hodgson after Hodgson changed his story about the events leading to his discovery of Churchill’s body in a North Flagler Drive house.
“As investigators examined (Churchill’s) body, Hodgson became extremely emotional and advised that he had not been completely forthcoming,” Banks wrote in his report. “I conducted a sworn video recorded statement with Hodgson. Below is a brief synopsis of the sworn interview. Please refer to the actual video recorded statements for complete and accurate details.’’
But when The Palm Beach Post made repeated requests last year and this year for a copy of the video statement, the police department said it didn’t exist.
“The video statement was believed to have been created by one of the homicide detectives, who did not manage to save, or he accidentally deleted, or never actually captured the video from the cellular phone used at the time,’’ Sgt. Dave Lefont said in an email to The Post in February.
The medical examiner said Churchill died of an accidental overdose after police ruled out foul play. His body was found in the back seat of a Jaguar in the garage when police arrived. But Hodgson later admitted he moved the body into the car after finding it inside the house. He also waited nearly two hours before calling police.
Banks has not responded to multiple requests for comment.
