Sunday Telegraph article: A Lady's Life of Crime- Amanda Movius, aka Lady Bruce, wife of the Earl of Elgin & Kincardine's heir
Michael Rhodes
aristocratic families, she lived on a 15,000 acre estate in a
historic
country house where she brought up her three doting children. Her
latest home is far removed – it is a jail cell in Texas more than
4,500 miles away.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/7006496/Th...
Her fall from grace has been spectacular ever since going on the run
from the UK, leaving behind a string of unpaid debts. It is a journey
that has taken her first to Europe, then to Hollywood, where she
mixed
with such A-list film stars as Keanu Reeves, and finally to prison
for
theft. Her victims – and there appear to be many of them – have
described her as an 'evil' fraudster who deserves to rot in jail.
Born in Alaska to impoverished parents and whose mother drank herself
to death – she discovered her mother's dead body drowned in the bath
–
the fortunes of the then Amanda Movius were transformed on a holiday
to Scotland at the age of just 22.
Two charged with arson after deadly Australian wildfiresConsidered to
have 'rock star' good looks by her friends back home, the then Ms
Movius met Lord Charles Bruce, an Old Etonian and descendant of both
Robert the Bruce. He is also heir to the 11th Earl of Elgin. It was
the 7th Earl of Elgin who seized the Elgin marbles from the Parthenon
in Greece and brought them to Britain.
Theirs was a whirlwind romance – described as a 'Highland fairytale'
–
that by 1990 had led to marriage and all the trappings that go with a
union with aristocracy. Living in Abbey House on the family estate,
at
Culross, Fife, the couple had three children Antonia, now aged 18,
17-
year-old James and George, who is two years younger.
But with three small children to care for, the marriage was doomed to
failure amid gossip that the American arriviste had embarked on a
series of affairs.
By 1996, the couple had divorced while a custody battle followed.
Lady
Amanda lost the children. Four years later, she had quit Britain for
good, leaving behind her children, a failed Edinburgh clothes shop
and
debts totalling £130,000.
Her father Jim, 72, a retired electrical engineer, would later tell
the LA Times: "Whenever she gets in a tight spot, she bolts."
For years she went largely unnoticed, flitting back and forth from
Europe to the United States, and in her wake leaving a trail of
credit
card debts, failed businesses, defrauded friends and angry ex-lovers.
One detective said: "It is obvious she criss-crossed the world trying
to escape a crap childhood. She thought she had found stability and
all she needed in life when she married Lord Bruce in Scotland. But
Hunting, Shooting, and Fishing Scotland isn't blue collar America.
She
couldn't cope so she just scrammed and kept on scramming when things
got tough."
Along the way, she met suburban property developer David Grimes in
Seattle on the US west coast, whom she married. Their relationship
also soured after about a year. "Everything about her was a mystery
to
me," explained Mr Grimes, who complained his wife would disappear for
days, sometimes weeks, at a time without explanation or reason.
In 2004 they divorced so that by 2006, the now ex-Mrs Grimes had
popped up in Hollywood, claiming to be a screenwriter, even posing
for
pictures with A-list film stars Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Junior
and
Woody Harrelson on the set of the movie "A Scanner Darkly". No one
had
reason to doubt the scriptwriting credentials of the pretty woman
with
the British accent.
Already wanted for dodging a hotel bill in Seattle and using a stolen
credit card, she pleaded guilty to theft in 2007 under the name of
Amanda Leigh Grimes. But she didn't appear for sentencing and a
warrant was issued for her arrest.
Next she popped up in Austin in Texas in the autumn of 2008, using a
new alias Amanda J George. She told a writer she met in a coffee shop
she too was a screenwriter and showed him the photograph of herself
with Keanu Reeves and the other stars. She suggested that they write
a
film together; she almost certainly would have ripped him off.
By now Amanda was also setting herself up on the internet as a rental
agent for expensive holiday homes in Hawaii, in the process
defrauding
among others the travel editor of the LA Times, Catharine Hamm. Ms
Hamm had sent her almost $5,000 for the rent on a house in Hawaii
where she planned to spend her honeymoon. Inevitably, the deal was
bogus and with the wedding just days away, Ms Hamm was forced to find
an alternative. "On our wedding day, the humiliation of having been
ripped off hung over Carl [her husband] and me," wrote Ms Hamm, "I
wondered how I could have been such a fool."
But by now the net was closing in on the 41-year-old.
In April this year and with nowhere to live, she booked into a hotel
room in Austin, but was arrested when she tried to leave without
paying. After being bailed she took a bus to Carmel in California
where again she was arrested, this time for trying to bill meals to a
room that wasn't hers.
Texas authorities issued two more warrants for her arrest, including
one for pocketing $5,000 for offering a rental home she didn't own to
a Canadian man.
By May, authorities had brought her back to Texas to face eight
charges, including identify fraud, theft and driving while
intoxicated. She failed to find her $400,000 bail.
Detective Carl Satterlee of Austin Police Department's Financial
Crimes Unit said: "She appears to have constantly moved from place to
place living off other people's money and stealing from people every
day."
Last month she finally pleaded guilty to four charges and was given a
15-month jail term, which she is serving out in the Travis County
Correctional Unit's building five.
At least, her family are standing by her. Her brother James Movius,
42, a biochemist in Seattle said: "I know she's hurt a lot of people,
including her family. I can understand wanting to seek some sort of
measure of revenge. But I know this woman, Amanda Movius. And I know
she struggles and I know she suffers, and I want her to find her way
to help."
Her children back in the UK have been supportive too. Back in the
summer when internet chatrooms were full of anger aimed at the con
artist, two lone voices struck a rare note of support, defending Lady
Amanda from criticism. One of the boys posted about enjoyable
holidays
shared with his mother. That in turn inevitably attracted more anger,
prompting the other boy to jump to his defence. One of the boys –
either James or George – then wrote: "I think my brother is allowed
to
talk about his mother in this way – he is only trying to cope with
this.
"It's a lot to take. And if reaching out to someone who has been hurt
by what she has done is what he wants to do, then I support it. I am
sorry that you had to be part of one of her scams, but he has every
right to talk about happy memories of our mother."
marquess
former wife of the current marquis of Ailsa, she was done for
something too.
On 16 Jan, 20:34, Michael Rhodes <mig73allenford2...@yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:
marquess
On 16 Jan, 20:34, Michael Rhodes <mig73allenford2...@yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:
Shinjinee
Charles Edward Bruce, Lord Bruce, eldest son of the 11th Earl of Elgin
and Victoria Mary Usher, and has three children
1. Hon. Antonia Jean Bruce b. 14 Dec 1990
2. James Andrew Charles Robert Bruce, Master of Bruce b. 16 Nov 1991
3. Hon. George Benjamin Thomas Bruce b. 5 Jul 1993
http://www.thepeerage.com/p27455.htm
As usual, the press call her Lady Amanda Bruce! (She was Lady Bruce
during her marriage, and then Amanda, Lady Bruce after her husband
remarried Dr Alice Enders in 2001, and then changed her name
presumably with marriage and divorce to David Grimes etc).
The Bruces apparently began a custody battle 15 years ago, shortly
after George's
birth in July 2003 circa 2004.
Here's another article dated 7 June 2009, from which I gleaned the
approximate
date of the custody battle:
http://news.scotsman.com/comment/Unladylike.5342090.jp
[start]
Growing up in a small stucco bungalow with her engineer father James
and a brother and sister, Amanda – Mandy – was friendly and outgoing,
but always a little restless. After travelling through the Far East
and taking a degree in business administration at Washington State
University, she was given the chance to visit Scotland when she was
tracked down by a PR company organising the centenary celebrations of
the Forth Bridge, which had been designed by her great great
grandfather Sir Benjamin Baker.
It was to prove the making of her. No sooner had she set foot on
Scottish soil than the gregarious 21-year-old was making her presence
felt among the rich and famous. She first caused a stir when, it was
claimed, she harassed the snooker player Stephen Hendry, booking into
his hotel and trying to see him. Soon, however, she caught the eye of
Lord Charles, a former pageboy to the Queen Mother and a direct
descendant of Robert the Bruce. He proposed after six weeks and the
pair were married in a midsummer ceremony on the banks of the remote
Tamana River in Alaska in 1990; she was already pregnant with their
first child, Antonia.
The gap between their backgrounds could not have been greater: when
the Elgins flew to Alaska for the ceremony, they were treated to a
boat trip and a Kentucky Fried Chicken meal. Back in Fife, their union
was celebrated with a champagne reception for 1,200, including all the
country's top aristocrats.
Still – initially at least – they seemed to be happy and very much in
love. At first, they stayed in a wing of the 40-bedroom family pile in
Fife, but, after the death of an aunt, they moved to the more
comfortable house at Culross and Lady Amanda threw herself into
charity work.
However, the differences in their upbringing were starting to take
their toll. In an interview after they split, she claimed her
husband's relatives looked down their noses at her, making sneering
remarks about her clothes and excluding her from family gatherings.
"The day I told him I was leaving, he was totally shocked," she said
at the time. "But I knew I was suffocating in that family; that I'd
never be a part of it, that I'd never be accepted."
Traumatic divorce proceedings followed, with Lord Charles claiming she
wanted a £1m divorce settlement and was using her sons and daughter as
bargaining chips, something she flatly denied. In the end, the
children stayed with their father, with a court forbidding their
mother to take them out of the country.
[end of extended quote from The Scotsman: "Unladylike: FROM Alaskan
oil town via Scottish aristocracy to a Texan jail cell: Dani Garavelli
follows the journey of Lady Amanda Bruce" The Scotsman. Published
Date: 07 June 2009. Retrieved 24 January 2010 IST. URL:
http://news.scotsman.com/comment/Unladylike.5342090.jp]
Shinjinee
On Jan 17, 1:34 pm, Michael Rhodes <mig73allenford2...@yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:
[snipped]