Chief Federal Judge Randa inside Kohler’s BMW
For years Milwaukee Attorney Martin Kohler lived in a vise. What was the nature of that vise?
When Kohler’s PI, Ira Robins, visited my Utah home he provided me with fascinating information that congealed my understanding of Milwaukee’s premier defense attorney. “Marti had me go into the Oriental Drug Store for him, to buy his condoms while he waited outside, hunkered down in his BMW. He was afraid of being seen.”
“… afraid of being seen”? Martin Kohler was, as I had suspected, shame-based. I knew, the moment Ira told me, that I could, indeed, break this little man by telling his true story— until he could no longer ignore who he was. I would, I vowed, integrate Kohler’s self-image with reality, letting Mr. Kohler reap a whirlwind, thereby releasing my son from a false history.
Today, nature has taken it’s course with Attorney Kohler, but the truth about my son remains obscured. Now, I recall my wife—also a lawyer— once lecturing me, “This chap Kohler isn’t your biggest fish. That chap Randa, that chap… he’s a federal judge. He ought to know how serious an offense falsified documents are. He’s your biggest fish. By comparison, Kohler’s just a guppy.”
As my wife would quickly tell, I rarely listened to her advice first off. Of course, she was right. But between Marti and me, well, things were personal.
Martin Kohler could have removed himself from the vise at any time. He simply needed to tell the truth about an abused child, two crooked judges, corrupt colleagues and a bogus trial conducted in an American courtroom. That would have improved his health. But character, like professional integrity, was foreign soil for Martin Kohler. I knew—in my heart— that if he remained in that vise Mr. Kohler would pop.
Judge David Hansher and Chief Federal Judge Rudolph Randa—along with Tom Bailey, Tom Frenn, Robert Elliott, Steve Glynn and Jeffrey Hughes— still sit inside Kohler’s BMW today, waiting, in the dark, hats pulled down low, radio on— softly playing Richard Marx—
“I think about my life gone by, how its done me wrong,
No escape for me this time, all of my rescues are gone, long gone.”
These men fear exposure, hoping someone will do the dirty work for them—again.
How long now until a cop walks past and shines a flashlight in the window?
“Hey, that you in there, Judge Randa? Okay boys, pants up, get out of the car. You too, Elliott, and you, Tom Bailey, out of the car. C’mon, all of you. Clean it up. Pull it inside, Dave. Pants up. Hats off. No, that hundred dollar bill won’t help you now, Steve. Put it away. C’mon. Let the public see what you all really look like. All of you, now, out.”
With Martin Kohler safely in a position where he can no longer defile innocence in the courtroom, it is time to move on.
Where to start?
Robert Elliott? Last seen scratching his armpits and stooping to avoid bumping his head on the “You-Must-Be-18-Years-Of-Age-To-Purchase-These-Dolls” sign? Tom Frenn? Still wondering which end of a fork to use, farting in the presence of females while sitting on his hands, except when he’s picking his nose? No, not fair. Once, when I asked him to protect my son, he did start to claw at his ass. Jeffrey Hughes? Caught jerking-off by his firm’s secretary in his office, dissipating the stress of preparing briefs, forever destined to play the choir boy? Tom Bailey? A man so slick that his tongue suffices for both toast or tarts? Steve Glynn, imagining he can land something academic after he loses his law practice?
These are Milwaukee’s preeminent lawyers, destined for repeat coverage in Milwaukee Magazine. Jesus! What do we really have here?
Rudolph, our red-faced federal Randa and joke of the U.S. Justice Department, “saved” Martin Kohler by accepting a falsified mental health report in his courtroom, using it to separate a father from his son. What kind of a man does that?
Of course, these men are now all subject to public E-blackmail. Their careers—all of them—can be ended de facto by circulating this information. They are now squarely in the vise, squeezed between who they really are and their projected images, false images destined to collapse under the weight of reality as they circulate the state.
It is important that these names circulate Wisconsin. They comprise a model for how the justice system goes wrong when it goes wrong. The law was made unto them in their eyes only, their wisdom soaring above the poor, the black, the weak, the mentally ill and those who just never made it to law school.
Their deeds need to echo throughout the state. These men of the law are being openly ridiculed, belittled, disrespected and challenged. American have a right to know who hijacks their justice system, and how they do it. They have a right to know that, in Milwaukee, one must plan to fight the men of justice if one has ideas of achieving justice.
Some years ago, after a trial so debauched that Pyong-Yang would not have dared stage it, Milwaukee prosecutor Fred Matestick made a Freudian slip when he warned publicly, “no friendly jurisdiction.” …must ever review this case for the defendant. “Friendly jurisdiction” referred to his fear that a legal system and men less corrupt than he and Kohler might review the facts. The entire case had to remain well buttoned-up and away from scrutiny. Enter Attorney Robert Elliott, a man whose moral reflexes never matured beyond “I wonder if that last boy was underage?”, the architect of false rumors of mental disease and –most likely—the driving force behind Randa accepting bogus documents to help out his client, Kohler. Isn’t it ironic; Elliott winds up putting the stake in Kohler’s heart?
These men scolded, scoffed and sneered at anyone who dared challenge them within their amazingly well-sequestered world. They served no society but their own, secret society. Hiding child abuse was mere child’s play, they thought, compared with other, past legal adventures. They have set themselves up as a metaphor for the failings of the legal system in Milwaukee: bloated with ego, redundant with the trappings of success, bereft of integrity, intellectual reflection or wisdom and—above all—cowardly. How apt that the simple smile of a five-year old—a smile that will live inside me forever—, the look of trust toward me, the sheer innocence and faith that I would always protect my son juxtaposed with these men stopping me, have ultimately motivated me, energized me to these ends, to see the names of these men within easy reach of every thoughtful American citizen, their pattern of misconduct recognizable as a generic model for legal corruption in America—how the justice system goes wrong when it goes wrong.
Imagine them all now, sitting in that black BMW together, hunkering, the Chief at the wheel, wide-eyed, listening to Richard Marx, thinking about Marti Kohler and that vise that keeps on squeezing from both sides.
Mark Inglin
Bournens, Switzerland
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