Atlanta's Billy Carter, P.I. –– the truth please?

I met with Private Detective Billy Carter of Atlanta and Attorney Kenny Schatten in Schatten's Atlanta office in 1999. It was a Saturday in the spring of the year, and Mr. Schatten called giving little notice for me to travel that day to Atlanta from Warner Robins for the meeting. Mr. Schatten introduced Carter as a famous Atlanta private detective, having been featured in the book, Praying for Sheetrock by Melissa Faye Green. At that time Mr. Carter explained there was another woman in the North Atlanta area who was suffering some of the same horrors in her divorce as I had been suffering. I figured at the time apparently it was a Georgia trend for affluent women to suffer horrors in divorce situations.

At that time Mr. Schatten explained that both he and Carter believed my husband, Gerard J. Sniffen, Jr. had murdered our son, Gerard J. Sniffen, III. I told them I didn't believe it was true. I believed my son was removed from the divorce situation under other circumstances, because he was a potential witness on my behalf. I didn't believe my husband was capable of murdering his own son.

If Mr. Schatten and Mr. Carter believed my husband murdered our son, then why did Mr. Schatten suggest I not contact police, and continue to pay them for services? If Mr. Carter spoke with authorities in Alabama, as stated in the letter below, then when I hired him in 2006 he still didn't have any answers. So what's going on? Fraud? Legal Scam? Wouldn't it be Mr. Schatten's responsibility as my attorney and Mr. Carter's responsibility as a private detective to notify police of a potential murder?

Not long after that meeting and after all the false Georgia arrests and coercion tactics used against me, along with continuing harassment in Houston County, Georgia, I left the state. About the same time, I received a letter around the same time from Mr. Schatten that Mr. Carter was willing to help me get the truth for a fee of $2500.00.

Curiously, Mr. Schatten suggested in the correspondence that my child's death was a "private matter" and that I should not notify police. I explained to Mr. Schatten at that time I didn't have the money. The divorce had not been finalized and I was living in the streets and motels in Kentucky trying to survive.

Not long after, Mr. Schatten mentioned that my situation was the joke of the annual Cobb County "legal" Christmas party, saying, "I was at the Christmas Party last night laughing with Judge Grubbs and Michael Broadbear about you and your case."

The coercion tactics used against me in Georgia to sign the divorce papers hadn't worked. And my entire life now is spent to insure that no other American will experience the "justice system" and levels of corruption as exist in the state of Georgia, which apparently crosses state lines for those who, as Mr. Schatten explains, "have so much money you'll never get the truth."

In the meantime, after that 1999 letter, I was able to, by the Grace of God, finally get the public police records from Baldwin County, Alabama which prove the body identified as my son was not my son. This was 2004. Up until that time Deputy (now sheriff) Hoss Mack and Corporal John Garner had stonewalled my attempts to get the records which document "shoulder-length brown hair" on the deceased and exhibit a photograph of a tattooed leg wrapped in green hospital sheets that is not the picture of a dead body. My son never had shoulder length hair in his life. The elaborate tattoo was to coverup a teenaged attempt at a homemade tattoo created by some of his cadet friends at Camden Military Academy. Autopsy reports showed 3-inch identical, well-healed scars at each knee indicating knee surgery. My son never had any surgery on his legs, nor any scars. Autopsy recorded the body weighed 144 lbs. My son weighed about 170.

The autopsy didn't show that the Cobb County police who investigated my son's disappearance failed to question his brother and sister who were both living in the home, ages 23, and 17 respectively. They questioned four people, and I don't believe they would have questioned me if I hadn't called them to verify information. The 35- year old married Marietta woman who was sleeping with my son, Mary Rose; a newly found friend, "D. J. Call" and the father were the only people interviewed by police. One other less important was a bank officer to check bank account activity. SO why hadn't they questioned the mother, brother and sister? And about the time I notified them that my son had been involved briefly with a felon in cocaine and had been victimized, his name curiously disappeared from Cobb County police computers, and then curiously reappeared.

If someone died in Baldwin County, Alabama then there is a missing person unaccounted for because the body that was autopsied was not the body of my son. Among many other fraudulent and criminal elements surrounding this, it also means insurance collected on my son's death was in error.

In 2006, I found the Carter "Coast to Coast" website on the net and having the funds decided to hire Carter to finish what he'd begun as Mr. Schatten explained in writing Carter "already had some information." So I paid Carter $2500.00. And then a few months later Carter needed $3000.00 more to "buy some information in Alabama." On that occasion Carter had me drive the money and deliver it to him at a Starbucks in Buckhead. He wanted to meet me in person. But after that he never had any more information.

And for the grand total, $5500.00, the same things Carter said initially–– that there was something wrong with the number of bullets discharged at the death scene, is the only thing he could ever come up with.

At Carter's Coast-to-Coast website on the second page he listed Kenneth Schatten as his contact attorney beckoning women who had been beaten or abused to contact him through Mr. Schatten. But when I notified Atlanta police and the GBI that Carter had taken my money, had a website, and were apparently doing nothing on my case, the site was removed from the internet. I lost contact with Carter in 2008 when his cell phone was no longer in operation.

That's when, being a regular civilian that trusts the system, I looked at the state site and found that Carter's private detective license had expired even before I hired him.

Mr. Schatten was never notified by me that Carter was hired in 2006. I never spoke with Schatten about it until this past summer when he was continuously withholding my alimony checks past ordered date, month to month finally advising me to take down my blog from the internet. He said I was making "some people" angry with my blog, but he wouldn't say who.

Schatten was assuring when he explained that money can do anything, cover up anything, buy anything and he said there is so much money spent in keeping the truth covered up I will never find out what happened to my son. He said I should forget about it because "everybody else has forgotten about that."

Funny, Mr. Galbraith, a Kentucky attorney also said there was "too much money" against me for any lawsuits, but he wouldn't tell me whose money it was, either.

In 2001, FBI Agent Brian Blanchard of Louisville, Kentucky said, "The railroad has money to hire lawyers you will never win against." Although Blanchard insinuated I was up against the railroad, I have tended to believe the people involved are connected to organized crime. I had been advised by assistant U.S. Attorney Danny Smith of Lexington to take my information down to Louisville to the FBI office there. The only issue the railroad would have with my divorce is whether the trailing spouse can be awarded stock options as a portion of the marital estate division. It would have had no interest in the children or their health, welfare and/or safety––other than through HMO insurance programs.

While I do not believe "the railroad" is involved, as FBI Agent Blanchard implied, I do believe employees of the railroad and vendors or associates of the railroad could very well have been involved or aware, considering my husband was in the engineering department of the railroad since 1978, and held the position of assistant vice president. That Mr. Schatten implied he murdered our son should raise questions within the railroad, among vendors, associates as well as among law enforcement entities connected in several states.

When I spoke with Mr. Schatten this past summer, he was very interested in Carter's location and our last contact. He wanted to know when I last spoke with Carter and whether I knew where he could be contacted. Schatten explained that Carter often went to Brazil and worked for the United States Government there, and it's where he made really good money. In fact, he said he went there with Carter, once suggesting it was government work.

Mr. Schatten also suggested "they" have my son where "they" have told him if he should try and contact his remaining siblings or myself then we will all be killed. It's very difficult for my family to live with this kind of information, that a son is living in fear and under threats, considering the horrors we've experienced ongoing nearly 12 years. I explained to Mr. Schatten to advise his contacts I will not compromise, and we will not live under threats of death and acts of destruction, stalking and violence in silence.

If Mr. Carter can't or won't deliver the truth, it would validate his credentials and integrity if he could at least refund my money.