In the summer of 1986, a cancer-stricken nurse named Dianne Creaser signed a will in a weak, barely legible scratch, appointing businessman Earl Jones as one of the executors of her estate.
The next day, at the age of 44, she died at Montreal's Lachine General Hospital.
Although Ms. Creaser had named her ex-husband as another executor of her estate, Mr. Jones went to the Montreal courthouse two months later to get a probate hearing confirming him as the sole person who would handle her assets.
Mr. Jones has been accused of using personal and familial connections to find his clients. But court records reveal that he also found customers – some not far from death – in hospitals and old-age homes, or among the recently bereaved.
The signature of one of Earl Jones' alleged victims.
The Ross sisters believe they are among Mr. Jones's final alleged victims. Last January, after their father died following a long illness, Ann, Cristina and Madeleine Ross searched for someone to administer his estate, valued in the low six figures.
An uncle recommended Earl Jones to handle the fussy paperwork, such as paying taxes and cancelling credit cards. Last winter, Mr. Jones visited the grieving women at the home of their late father, Graeme Ross, whose paintings still decorated the walls.
Mr. Jones impressed the women with his knowledge and long track record.
“The three of us had just come off a year of caring for my father 24 hours a day, seven days a week. When we met with him, we were drained,” said Ann Ross.
Mr. Jones was hired to deal with paperwork, but his mandate did not include handling the women's inheritance. Ann Ross described how Mr. Jones stalled as the women started looking for the money in the spring. Their father's accounts at the Royal Bank and Investors Group were drained, she said.
It was disconcerting and reduced our confidence further — Catherine Craig, whose mother's will had been probated without her family's knowledge
Documents show Mr. Jones was named estate executor for a number of old, ailing, vulnerable people who died within days or weeks of their wills being signed or amended.
Gordon McGilton was the lawyer in some of the probate cases. He was convicted in 2007 of defrauding elderly clients of $1.7-million in unrelated cases.
Mr. Jones and his employees often figured as witnesses and executors to wills and as beneficiaries of estates. In at least one case, Mr. Jones and his employees acted as witness and executor, and were beneficiaries, all at once.
Mr. Jones was a witness to the will signing when Kathleen Helena Brown named him sole trustee of her estate and executor of her will on Feb. 1, 1990. The will named Dianne Gilker one of the beneficiaries dividing Ms. Brown's estate. She specifically left Ms. Gilker a cherished mink coat.
Ms. Gilker is Mr. Jones's sister-in-law and one of his former employees. She declined to comment when contacted, hanging up the phone.
Ms. Brown, an 89-year-old widow living at the Le Wellesley retirement home in Pointe-Claire, Que., died three weeks after signing her new will.
Another widow residing at Le Wellesley, Dorothy Craig, named Mr. Jones as her estate executor two years before she died in 2000.
Ms. Craig's two children were surprised to discover several months after their mother's death that her original will was missing and the remaining paperwork had no legal standing. They hired a lawyer to sort it out. Then “we learned that Earl's lawyer had suddenly probated the will,” said daughter Catharine Craig.
“Maybe it was no more than sloppy filing,” she said. “But it was disconcerting and reduced our confidence further.”
The year before Ms. Creaser died, Etta and Rachel Lauterman, elderly sisters who lived together in an apartment, both amended their wills, on Nov. 8, 1985, to change their executors to Mr. Jones. The sisters died within years, Rachel in 1987 at 93 and Etta the following year at 87.
The Lauterman sisters signed the amendment to their wills before two witnesses, one of whom was Ms. Gilker.
Ms. Gilker was also a witness when James McGuinness signed a will on April 9, 1987, naming Mr. Jones as his sole trustee and executor. Less than a month later, Mr. McGuinness died at 68 at the Montreal General Hospital after a lengthy illness.
Two other former employees, Debra Stewart and Lynn Claude, were also witnesses to some wills.
Ms. Stewart was one of the witnesses for a man in his 60s who died two months after he named Mr. Jones as executor in 2002. The man's son, who asked that their names not be published, said his father had a drinking problem and was estranged from his family.
Ginny Nelles said Mr. Jones approached her and her brother, Donald, at the 2004 funeral of their father, Talbot. Ms. Nelles said her family had confidence in Mr. Jones because he had known them for 50 years and was a godfather to her brother.
Ms. Nelles recalled that he told them he was an estate planner who had worked with their father and said: “If I can help you in any way, I'm here for you.”
Mr. Nelles said the way Mr. Jones found clients underscores that they weren't greedy investors who got what they deserved, but vulnerable people.
“The only greed, as far as I am concerned, was Earl Jones's greed.”
With reports from Ingrid Peritz and Karla Kaminski
