Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [24]
THE real estate development that Jim and Susan McDougal would christen in the summer of 1978 was scratched out of the mountains in the northernmost quadrant of Arkansas, near the remote towns of Flippin, Cotter, and Buffalo City. As Susan McDougal would later tell the FBI, she had obtained her real estate license shortly after she married Jim, helping her husband launch a little business in Little Rock that he dubbed McDougal & Associates. The property near Flippin represented Jim’s first big investment. In this isolated area overlooking the limestone bluffs of the White River, McDougal saw his chance to solidify a name for himself among the movers and shakers of Arkansas. The breathtaking views of the river, the world-class rainbow and cutthroat trout dancing through the clear waters, and the picturesque vistas that abounded from this perch atop the Ozark Mountains all made it a perfect destination for professionals just three hours away in Little Rock. It would become a year-round retreat for the wealthy and influential business and political elite of Arkansas. And what better place to start, in gathering up investors, than with the presumptive new governor—Attorney General Bill Clinton—and his well-connected wife, Hillary Rodham?
Susan McDougal would tell the story two decades later: “There were people who would go fishing up there, and there was a landing strip, and he had this idea in his mind that everybody was going to be big buddies and they were all going to go up there.” Susan said, smiling faintly, “He’d get an idea in his mind, and he would build a fantasy around it.”
After Jim McDougal had lost his job when Senator Fulbright was unexpectedly defeated in the election of 1974, he had splurged by buying an expensive green Mercedes. On a jaunt to the mountains with Susan hanging her arm out the window enjoying the drive, McDougal had pulled over impulsively at a little real estate office in Flippin identified as Ozark Realty Co. This small business, run by local notable Chris Wade, was housed in a cabin that “looked like a cigar shop,” recalled Susan. It was a single room, with Wade’s wife manning the desk and children running pell-mell around the office. Wade, who would later plead guilty to federal charges of bankruptcy fraud and submitting false loan applications, was a gregarious man with reddish hair and a complexion that was “almost see-through.” On that mild winter Saturday in 1978, he was pleased to see a balding man wearing a nice-looking suit and aviator glasses, and an attractive younger woman in bell-bottoms and a tank top, enter his office.
On the spot, Jim McDougal hired Wade to carve up twelve hundred acres that he had just purchased in Marion County. He authorized Wade to sell them off as smaller parcels for $500 down, with modest payments of $75 or $100 a month. In McDougal’s master plan, this would fulfill the dreams of countless common people who wanted a little piece of land to build an inexpensive home or cabin but who couldn’t afford to buy it outright.
After just six months, the project hauled in a profit of over $100,000.
That summer, the McDougals returned to Ozark Realty as if called back by a divine voice. In fact, the voice on the telephone was not that of God, but of Chris Wade, who reported that he knew of a hot new real estate prospect. Wade volunteered to drive the couple over rough roads to a 230-acre tract overlooking the river near Cotter, formerly called the Ranchettes development. This property had just been put up for sale by a company that had gone belly-up. On this day, as the threesome bumped over dirt roads to their destination, the development would take on a new name that would