A Camden couple pleaded guilty in federal court in El Dorado on Monday to helping forge the will of a man who died in a 2015 car wreck that gave the bulk of his $1.7 million fortune to an ex-girlfriend.
John Wayne Kinley Jr. pleaded guilty to wire fraud in a hearing before U.S. District Judge Susan O. Hickey. His wife, Marion Diane Kinley, pleaded guilty in a separate hearing to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
They were accused of signing as witnesses a fake will drawn up by Marion Kinley’s sister Donna Christina Herring. The fake will awarded $1.3 million of Matthew Seth Jacobs’ estate to her daughter Jordan Alexandra Peterson.
Federal court records show Herring used an Internet site to create the will five days after Jacobs’ Jan. 19, 2015, death.
When she found out she needed an original will to file in probate in circuit court, Herring drew up another will, forged Jacobs’ name to it and had the Kinleys sign that will as witnesses, court records said.
Jacobs obtained the fortune from a settlement of a class action lawsuit brought after he was injured in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
He met Herring, a real estate agent in Camden, who helped him spend part of his money buying property, including the $200,000 home he was living in when he died. The house and other assets of Jacobs were turned over to Peterson when the will was probated.
A lawsuit that Jacobs’ family filed against the estate in 2016 said Herring sought to deepen her involvement in Jacobs’ life by, among other things, introducing him to her daughter, with whom he became engaged for a time.
Herring and Peterson pleaded guilty in federal court in January to charges growing out of the forged will scheme. Herring pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Peterson pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. Herring, Peterson and the Kinleys are free awaiting sentencing, which will be scheduled after completion of pre-sentence reports.
Herring and the Kinleys each could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison and fined up to $250,000. Peterson could be sentenced to up to five years in prison and fined up to $250,000.
After Herring forged Jacobs’ will, according to court records, she sealed it in an envelope, marked it with “MJ” on the outside, then hid it in Jacobs’ gun safe. She sent her husband and a neighbor to Jacobs’ home the next day to search for the will, and they found the sealed envelope in the safe.
The federal indictment against the four said that immediately after Jacobs’ death, two of his relatives — his son, Jordan, and brother, Lance Reed — searched Jacobs’ home, including the gun safe, and didn’t find a will.
John Thomas Shepherd, the prosecuting attorney for the six-county judicial circuit that includes Ouachita County, in February successfully petitioned a Ouachita County circuit judge to order Jacobs’ body exhumed and autopsied after receiving information from law enforcement that contradicted the cause of death listed on Jacobs’ death certificate. The petition said an autopsy on Jacobs had not been performed after his death.
Shepherd has not revealed the information uncovered by law enforcement and said it could be at least another month before a final report on the state Crime Laboratory autopsy is completed.
