View Profile
View Forum Posts
Personal Message
should carvel ice cream founder's body be dug up?
Family revisits ice cream king's death
from newsday
BY ROCCO PARASCANDOLA, NEWSDAY STAFF WRITER
rocco.parascandola@newsday.com
Email this story
Printer friendly format
April 23, 2007
The woman stepped to the counter inside the Carvel store in Bay Ridge and ordered a chocolate ice cream cone. She handed the treat to her daughter, who took it with a big smile.
More than 1,250 miles south, Pamela Carvel, a niece of the late Tom Carvel, walked into the federal courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and filed a complaint. She was not smiling.
Click here to find out more!
She is not convinced that her uncle, the ice cream magnate known for his gravely voice and his famous birthday cakes, died of natural causes 17 years ago in his upstate New York home. She thinks he was slain -- killed because he realized employees had been stealing millions from his company.
To prove it, Pamela Carvel on Friday began the legal process to have her uncle's body exhumed from a Westchester County cemetery and an autopsy conducted.
A private investigator for the niece says the doctor whose name is on Tom Carvel's death certificate has admitted he can't recall signing it -- and the handwriting that appears on another part of the document and explains how Carvel died does not appear to be his.
"If my uncle was murdered and I walk away from this case without doing the obvious -- getting an autopsy done -- then I really couldn't live with myself for the rest of my life," Pamela Carvel, 58, said in a telephone interview. "I need to know if he died from problems with his heart or if it was murder, and everything after that was people profiting from that."
Pamela Carvel, who grew up in Bayside and now lives in Florida, essentially speaks for the family.
She and other relatives have long suspected Tom Carvel was drugged or suffocated by someone he thought was stealing money from him. His death sparked a complex and still-pending battle over his estate, stemming largely from questions about money Carvel had earmarked for donation to children's charities. Pamela Carvel suspects an untold amount was stolen instead of going to those charitable causes.
As one might expect when there are millions of dollars involved, the charges and countercharges through the years have included accusations that Pamela Carvel was herself trying to steal from the Carvel estate after her uncle's widow, Agnes, died in 1998.
That, Pamela Carvel says, is an outright lie and an attempt to divert attention from the actual thievery.
"If I was taking money, why would I be looking to do this?" she asks. "After all these years, I need to bring this to a close by figuring out exactly what happened."
Tom Carvel sold the business in 1989. He was 84 when he died in his Dutchess County home on Oct. 21, 1990. He had suffered from heart disease, and his death certificate says he died of a heart attack.
Pamela Carvel says his death occurred one day before he had planned to fire two veteran employees he had suspected of stealing from him.
She was a frauds investigator working in China at the time. Her uncle died as she was heading back to New York at his behest to help investigate how he suspected his ice cream empire was being systematically embezzled.
While the timing of his death was suspicious, it took a back seat to the family's grief. No autopsy was performed, and Tom Carvel was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Westchester County.
Subsequently, there were more and more suspicions of financial chicanery and missing money, Pamela Carvel said.
Her uncle's estate is said to be worth about $80 million, but Pamela Carvel remembers her uncle saying it was closer to $250 million.
Then there is the matter of Carvel's death certificate. The attending physician, Dr. Robert Athans, Carvel's longtime doctor, has been shown the certificate. The private investigator says Athans doesn't remember signing the document and that the section listing cause of death and contributing factors appears to have been penned by someone else. Athans, 73, who practices in Bronxville, said he could not answer questions when contacted by Newsday. He suggested he'd be willing to discuss Carvel's death at another time.
"I'd rather not say anything now," he says. "I've been told by my own advisers not to say anything while it's under investigation."
The exhumation application is not the first time authorities have been approached by Pamela Carvel. She says the district attorney's offices in Westchester and Dutchess counties, as well as the New York State Police, have all looked at allegations about how Carvel died or about how his finances may have been looted.
None of the probes, she said, was conducted to her satisfaction.
Regardless of what happens, the allegations stand in stark contrast to a man known best for a treat associated with good times."It's part of everybody's childhood memories," Pamela Carvel says. "Whenever people hear my name, it's 'We always had a Carvel cake for my birthday,' or 'We always had a cone on a summer day.'
"It brings back their pleasant moments of childhood."
 |
|||||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Reply With Quote
Visit Homepage
Bookmarks