(5 of 6) Disappearance of John Iverson
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(C) 1994 THE ABSOLUTE SOUND. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Not one word of this article may be reprinted without the written
permission of the publisher.
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PART 5 OF 6
TAS Journal
Special Report
The Strange Life and
Bizarre Disappearance of
John Iverson
After hooking up with the Tans, Iverson spent the next four
years shuttling back and forth between Chatsworth, Singapore, and
Lake Havasu City, where he had earlier set up a small workshop
after moving there with his father. The Singapore trips lasted for
months at a time. Early on, Seifert went over to assist in
development of the EK-1, but failed to last more than eight weeks
before he had a falling out with Iverson over their grueling work
schedule, which allowed Seifert neither a life outside the shop nor a
normal sleep pattern.
"His idea of a day of work was that you wake up in the
morning and of course, coincidentally, you were already on the
bench," says Seifert. "You'd spend the morning drinking coffee and
talking about how great things were going to be when all of this stuff
was done. Then you went to lunch and slowly wound up to some
work. By late afternoon you were working, and you'd work till you
dropped. When you got tired, you'd just clear away the bench and go
to sleep."
After three years of development, the EK-1 was finally
released in the US in 1980 at the outrageous price of $3000. It was
actually a system, including a Panasonic-built strain-gauge cartridge
and Iverson's factory-tuned preamp. While it was said to image
better than any playback system on the market, the lack of inputs
for any other cartridge in a preamp that costly restricted its appeal.
It proved little more than a minor commercial success.
Not long after that, in early 1982, Iverson and the Tans had
their own falling out. Rosick, a close friend of Iverson's dating back to
his Omega loudspeaker days, had by then been hired as general
manager of Electro Research in Chatsworth. Rosick says that Iverson
simply sucked money from the Tans while incessantly delaying the
EK-1 with his intractable design approach and his unwillingness to
let the Tans impose any practical limits on him. Iverson's view, as
told to friends and family, was that the Tans took his design for the
EK-1 and then, no longer needing him, forced him out.
Rosick, meanwhile, was kept on by the Tans as they
subsequently formed Robertson Audio, fueling a rift between himself
and Iverson. Robertson began selling amplifiers shortly thereafter
which were rumored to be Iverson's designs, although Rosick says
they were the work of David Tan. Rosick continues to this day to
draw salary as general manager of Robertson Audio's US operations,
though the firm has not offered any products here for some time.
(Through Rosick, the Tans declined to be interviewed for this article.)
Iverson was known throughout his career to be mistrustful of banks
and notoriously contemptuous of paying taxes. "Dammit, I earned
this money-why should the government come and take it away?" he
would complain to his aunt Jo. One time, his shop in Lake Havasu was
burglarized while he was in Singapore, and Rosick sent some workers
to Arizona to secure it. He says they found $800 in gold Krugerrands
missed by the thieves. The coins had been stuffed into an
upholstered chair.
Eventually, Iverson came back to Lake Havasu and formed
Electron Kinetics. In 1983, he approached Art Ferris, whose company
Apax Marketing distributed a variety of electronics-related products,
to sell his new Eagle 7 amplifier, a 300-watt behemoth. "I said, I
can't sell that boat anchor," Ferris remembers. "It didn't even have a
power switch. I mean, the house lights would sit there and pulse
with the switching of the amplifier."
Nonetheless, Ferris agreed to take the amp on the condition
that Iverson design a smaller, more saleable piece. He returned with
a prototype of what became the Eagle 2. Ferris was pleased enough
with what he heard to sell 70 units to dealers in advance of
production. But when Iverson came back and asked him to get
dealers to pay up front to finance their manufacture, Ferris cut his
losses. "My problem with John was that he would make agreements
and then just change direction on you, and in business, that's death,"
he says, adding, "I did the best I could to get him started. Printed up
invoices for him and everything."
Iverson did get the company off the ground, and the Eagle 2
became his first popular success since the A75. By the mid-1980s,
Electron Kinetics was occupying a 9,000 square-foot plant on Empire
Drive in Lake Havasu and employing as many as19 people. As a local
businessman, Iverson enjoyed keeping a low profile- "he was not the
type of guy who got his picture in the paper for volunteering to help
with the London Bridge Day Parade or donating $2400 to the boy
scouts," says ex-Herald reporter Charlie Downs. But he grabbed the
spotlight anyway in 1986 when his fight with Citizens Utilities, the
local power company, made headlines in the newspaper.
Iverson was irked over the poor consistency and high rates of
his power. So he obtained a surplus diesel generator which he
claimed to have modified, improving its efficiency to where he could
create his own juice at lower cost than he could buy it. It seems
unclear if there was really anything unique about the generator. But
the lengthy write-up in the paper no doubt embarrassed Citizens.
Eventually, the matter was settled when Iverson left the location.
According to Russ Sherwood, who worked for Iverson, his refusal to
pay $22,000 a year for liability insurance forced the landlord not to
renew his lease. While that may have been a factor, Munro says,
Iverson was also looking to downsize at the time in the wake of their
marriage. "He told me he hadn't been a child, he had worked all his
life and was never able to really play, and now he wanted to play
with his woman."
But Iverson's power trip against Citizens was one that would
come back to haunt him. Years later, when he and Sherwood got
picked up in the desert for spooling up cable, it was Citizens Utility
that pressed the charges, landing Iverson Friday visits with his
probation officer. Iverson called her "that bitch." Says Doug Iverson,
"John and humility were not generally put in the same sentence. It
was a situation he said many times he found unacceptable."
For whatever reasons, Iverson left the plant at Empire. He was also
in debt by then to a local bank, from whom he had borrowed "at
least $100,000," says his brother, to expand the business when it was
still at Empire. It was a rare and singular move for Iverson, who
despised borrowing, and, justly, expected to be paid in cash. "My
brother never liked to owe anybody anything, and he expected
people to pay up what they owed him. I give you this, you pay me
this much. That was how he thought," Doug says. John still owed the
bank a portion of that loan when he disappeared.
Electron Kinetics moved from its grand factory into Iverson's
1500 square-foot, one-room brick workshop, dubbed "the Shack,''
and generated revenue by selling existing inventory and upgrading
older products for customers in the field.
Sometime before that move, however, Iverson had begun
changing, say his friends and family. The death of his father softened
him, says his brother, and when his mother and stepfather took up a
home in Lake Havasu, John moved in with them and matured
further. "Up till then, it was like John had been raised by
lumberjacks-he had no social graces," Doug says. "My mother really
took this lump of clay and molded it."
It was around this time period that Iverson married Kathy
Munro. Jerry Munro, a prominent Havasu physician and Iverson's
close friend, had in fact worked for NASA at White Sands National
Laboratory during the Apollo program, where Kathy believes he and
Iverson were introduced. Iverson's family thinks the connection was
made when Munro became Al Iverson's doctor. But wherever they
met, they built a strong friendship as Iverson, who suffered fools
badly, found one of the few people in Havasu with an intellect that
matched his own. Like Iverson, Jerry Munro was a heavy drinker,
and the two spent long nights talking and packing it away.
Munro's wife Kathy was a spunky California native. After Jerry
died of a heart attack, Iverson confessed his love for her, proposing
for four hours. "He told me, 'I've been in love with you for 10 years,
ever since I met you.'" Munro says. "I said 'What?!' I never had an
inkling. He said, 'I would never come on to my best friend's wife.'"
The two exchanged vows in February of 1987, marking the occasion
with a memorable cake fight. It was Munro's third marriage,
Iverson's first.
Munro also enjoyed the sensitive side of John that few people
saw. He called her Honeylamb, and she referred to him as her
"diamond in the rough." "What John lacked in social abilities, Kathy
made up for," says Kathy's sister Judy Gagnebin. "They
complemented each other, and Kathy somehow understood this crazy
man."
"John was really in love with her," says Iverson's cousin Patty.
"Every time we'd see him he'd say, 'I've got myself a woman. I can't
believe I'm so lucky. I've never been so happy in my life. My
honeylamb spoils me.'"
In the wake of the wedding, Electron Kinetics was still on
Empire Drive and appeared to be climbing. Friends who saw John and
Kathy at the CES show in Vegas in January of '88 say he looked the
best they'd ever seen him. He told at least one acquaintance he'd
stopped drinking.
Within a year, however, Iverson had shuttered his factory, and
he and Kathy took to the road. They would load up the motor home
with their Labrador retriever and their cat, and travel around the
country peddling Electron Kinetics amplifiers to High End dealers.
Mark Schneider remembers meeting John for the first time as they
pulled up to a store he managed in Chicago in 1988. "He was sort of
like Hemingway," he says, "a hard-smoking, hard-drinking, two-
fisted kind of guy. When I shook hands with him I barely got my
hand back in one piece. The next morning, I knocked on his door and
got dragged in for the strongest cup of coffee I've ever had. It kept
me up for three days." As for he and Kathy, "they looked like the
model couple to me. He seemed really happy with her."
And yet, though John and Kathy got along well, the two were
divorced shortly afterward. The move was said to be a kind of
divorce-of-convenience to protect Kathy's assets from John's
liabilities, be they tax, bank, or otherwise. "John didn't believe in
paying taxes," says Funder of the Havasu Police. "So rather than her
being at risk, she just divorced him, but they were still living
together." Subsequently, John also transferred whatever modest
assets he had-his shop building, his motor home-into her name.
After Iverson moved Electron Kinetics into the Shack, the company
officially became an inactive corporation, but continued to plug along
at a lower volume. John hired a worker or two-basically high school
students-to handle the upgrades and repairs while he worked on
new designs and other projects.
Kurt Peters was one of those high school students, and, along
with a buddy, was one of the two remaining employees of Electron
Kinetics when Iverson disappeared. Now a student at Arizona State,
he calls his ex-boss a "very, very carefree" individual who usually
showed up wearing shorts and sandals. As a boss, Iverson was
generous with his knowledge, and seemed to enjoy the paternal role.
"It was very much a learning experience," Peters says. "He'd have me
come in after hours and teach me different things I could do with the
equipment. I learned a vast amount about audio."
Of course, working for Iverson in close quarters could be a
learning experience in more ways than one. Peters says he drank
Jack Daniels frequently at the shop, and smoked about four packs of
cigarettes a day, often lighting a new one before the one in his hand
had been fully exhausted.
Furthermore, Iverson's interest in guns extended to his
workplace, where he would occasionally pick up whatever weapon
was lying around and fire it into an old speaker. One night, Peters
left Iverson at the shop, drinking with some friends. When he came
back the next day, he noticed there was a manhole cover missing
from the street. It turned out to be inside, where John and his
buddies had used it as a backstop for target practice. "There was
glass all over the floor, and empty shell casings everywhere," says
Peters. "The whole bathroom ceiling and door were just shredded
with lead."
Another time, Iverson accidentally drove the Toodler onto the
hood of Peter's car, though he apologetically paid to fix it. "Working
for him was a real adventure," Peters says wistfully. "There were a
lot of trying times, but I have to admit, I'll never have a job like that
again."
In the last year before Iverson disappeared, Electron Kinetics'
customer base had shrunk to about five loyal dealers. Iverson took
frequent trips to California, each time bringing back amps for
upgrade. The firm sold new pieces as well, taking one of the 50 or so
boxed amps from the Empire Drive inventory, upgrading it to the
current generation Eagle 2c, and shipping it out. And Iverson
developed a bridging circuit for the Eagle 2, allowing him to
introduce a powerful monoblock, the Eagle 400a.
...continued...
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(C) 1994 THE ABSOLUTE SOUND. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Not one word of this article may be reprinted without the written
permission of the publisher.