Comments@THE GUSS REPORT-Earlier this year, this column was first to report that LA City Councilmember Curren D. Price, Jr. is presently – and has for a long while – been married to two women simultaneously, first wife Lynn Suzette Green and second wife Del Richardson.
While Price and those who are paid to speak on his behalf have consistently denied it, it’s a fact.
Don’t look for the story in the LA Times, accused more than once of failing the public by protecting local politicians, but after my first five columns on the story (links below) Price quietly hired Irvine divorce attorney Sven Buncher to step into the case after more than five years of dormancy. Since one only hires a divorce attorney if seeking a divorce, and yet no action has been taken on the never-finalized case, Price presently has two wives.
And it was no accident -- unless you believe that Price’s first divorce attorney, Green’s attorney, Green herself (she is also an attorney) and Price (who, while not an attorney has a law degree) all forgot to finalize the divorce and divide their shared property.
Price and his legal team in a subsequent divorce effort claimed that they could not locate Green. But she was openly practicing law, living and voting in Mercer County, New Jersey, when an alert Los Angeles court clerk instructed Price’s team to obtain her address through the U.S. Postal Service. It was then that they stopped pursuing the divorce, leaving the case dormant ever since.
Last week, the office of LA District Attorney Jackie Lacey confirmed for me that it is still investigating the matter, which goes far beyond the bigamy of Mr. Price:
- Did Price’s second wife, Del Richardson, know she was marrying an already married man, which would be a separate bigamy charge for her?
- Did Mr. Price, his first divorce attorney (and present Mayor of Carson, California) “Little Al” Robles and their process server Antonio Inocentes defraud the courts by claiming that they attempted to serve Green at 4519 Don Arturo Place in Los Angeles, an address shockingly owned by Price’s second wife, Del Richardson? (Another Price attorney, Stephen J. Kaufman, confirmed for me that Green never resided there….so why did Price allow his divorce attempts to claim that she did?)
- Since Green’s LA County voter registration was – at that very time – changed to the Don Arturo address owned by Richardson, did someone steal her identity to make her seem un-locatable to serve divorce papers? The USPS confirms it would not change her voter registration to an address at which she never resided, and without a catalyst.
And then there’s the issue of Price’s Los Angeles City Ethics forms in which he must disclose his financial interests, and those of his wife, to ensure that he doesn’t cast votes which would benefit him, his family or friends. But since Price is presently married to Green as well as Richardson – and he knowingly failed to disclose that – it would appear that his ethics forms are all fraudulent, and some of his votes could be felonies, and not just for Price. The same might apply to votes Price cast while serving as a state legislator in Sacramento.
Is there a smoking gun which will collapse Price’s entire house of cards? Is the DA aware of it?
My earlier articles are linked here:
(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, and has contributed to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. Verifiable tips and story ideas can be sent to him at [email protected]. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
