An open letter to Camille Salanave

15 February 2023

Michael P Faller
2010 Bittern Dr
Idaho Falls, ID 83406-6659

Mr Faller:

Enclosed, please find one antique mantelpiece clock - a Salanave heirloom, straight from old San Francisco, in need of repair.

I would address this to Camille directly but she does not reply to her mail and, in fact, Camille has been evading me for over 20 years.

I am sending this to you because we can barely afford to pay our storage fees each month, and I do not want to see this antique clock end up in a dumpster.

I would have shipped this heirloom to Camille back in 2001 - but Camille Salanave has been avoiding me these past twenty years, and I did not know where to send it.

It was only a few weeks ago that I discovered that 2010 Bittern is now, and always has been, Camille Salanave's home address.

I am also writing to apprise you of the fact that, based on information and belief, your new house was built, in part, with money that was acquired via what I am forced to soberly call a premeditated murder.

Based on information and belief, Camille Salanave knew there was something wrong but although she knew she was dealing with people who had criminal inclinations - I refer to my older brother, Thomas Childers, and my mother, Eleanora Penny Salanave - she did not see it in her best interest to endanger her inheritance by asking too many questions; and so she placed her trust in criminals. Now it is too late.

To explain how this is so we need to go back to Bridgeport, Connecticut, and the end of the 20th century.

Penny grew up in Bridgeport. Her parents lived there. They were elderly. They needed help. I was the only one helping them. I pressured my mother to fly back to the East Coast with me and see things for herself. We visited my grandparents together in the summer of 2000.

As I reconstructed events later, Penny brought with her the combination to my grandmother's safe - entrusted to her, in case of emergency, years before - and, persuading me to distract my grandmother upstairs for fifteen minutes, my mother surreptitiously cleaned out my grandmother's safe, taking everything, including my grandmother's will and the deed to my grandmother's three-story, hundred-year-old Victorian house.

Six weeks later my grandmother discovered the empty safe and died of shock, lying on the floor for three days before her body was discovered.

A little thought will lead one to the conclusion that it would have been trivial for my grandmother to call the police and report a burglary or to call her lawyer and ask for another copy of the will he had drafted and which he almost certainly had a copy of.

We infer that my grandmother had a medical condition which my mother was privy to. Regardless, it is clear, in retrospect, that my mother counted upon her mother not surviving the discovery of the looted safe long enough to do anything or tell anyone. That makes it premeditated murder, as I assess matters.

I know all this because the police called me when they discovered the body and because when I arrived in Bridgeport 72 hours later, with my mother, the first thing I saw was an empty safe, in the kitchen - a safe I did not even know existed - and because I took a photograph of this empty safe, in my grandmother's kitchen - a safe that I still have, today.

The police assured me that my grandmother's death was not the consequence of a burglary. The house had been locked from the inside and all the windows as well.

Which brings us to Camille Salanave.

We all agree that Penny Salanave is at the root of this situation we are dealing with, now.

But Penny Salanave did not exist in a vacuum. Penny was surrounded and encouraged by other people whom, collectively, enabled her to do the things she did by not asking hard questions.

You may have noticed at some point in time that Camille began using the phrase, "not my problem". If so, she would have learned this poisonous mantra from Penny Salanave.

Camille might have helped me figure out what happened in Bridgeport, twenty years ago. Camille might have helped me stop Penny from evicting us in 2001, too. But Camille refused to communicate.

Camille might have helped me stop Penny from disinheriting me. But she didn't reply to my 2014 letter, either. No one ever told me that I was going to be disinherited. I was blindsided.

We can infer that Camille knew that I was going to be disinherited because Camille has been evading me for over twenty years.

We can all understand why Camille might still be afraid to communicate with me in 2014, because Penny was still alive, and there was still the danger of Camille being disinherited if word got back to Penny that Camille was communicating with me.

But after Penny died, and Camille inherited $200,000, there was no longer anything stopping Camille from reaching out.

From where I stand, Mr Faller, it looks like Nancy Malcolm and Camille Salanave helped Thomas Childers conceal his cocaine addiction from the Superior Court so that he could become Penny's conservator.

After we identify Penny Salanave as the root of this situation, we would have to tag Thomas Childers, as the poisonous fruit of a poisonous tree.

I would describe Camille Salanave and Nancy Malcolm as suspected accomplices.

That brings us to you, Mr Faller.

I realize, you're an old guy. I'm almost old enough to retire, myself - one more year.

None of these people are your relatives. Why am I bothering you? You just want to enjoy the sunlight.

I don't mean to ruin your day.

But my search for the adults in the room has left only two people standing. You and me.

As I calculate it, Penny Salanave commingled the stolen funds from my grandmother's estate on the East Coast with the funds on the West Coast, so that, as I analyze things, monies due to me were redistributed amongst the beneficiaries of the trust.

As I analyze matters, some of the money that was used to build the new house you live in were stolen from my grandmother, whose death Penny caused, making events look an awful lot like a premeditated murder.

I'm not going to mention it again. It's a horrible state of affairs.

I refer you to the 09 July 2014 letter to Camille, visible at https://www.salanave.org, for any details you do not already possess regarding my first attempt at contact, in 2001, when I actually drove all the way up to Idaho.

I refer you to https://www.112washingtonterrace.org for an explanation of why I was driving across the United States, in 2001.

It is my impression that you do not like Thomas Childers. If I am correct then I compliment you upon your insight into Thomas' character. As I stated above, he is a cocaine addict, with all that implies.

Please see https://www.salanave-runyon.org for more information about Thomas Childers' character.

For additional background, see https://www.ca-civ393104.org and https://www.ca-jv160250.org .

I'm sorry we never had a chance to get acquainted under other, better circumstances.

But Leon Salanave was a fine man. It was an honor to be raised by him. From Leon's character I infer that his father, Edward Salanave, was also a man of sterling character, and Leon's mother, as well.

I'm not sure but I think this mantel clock might have been made from a kit by Edward Salanave.

I say this because I saw a similar one on eBay, that actually worked, going for less than $70. It had the exact same metalwork on the corners. But it was different in other respects. It seemed possible to me that clocks as kits that you built into cabinets that you assembled yourself might have been A Thing, a hundred years ago.

Regardless, whomever built this deserves better than to have their life's work thrown in the dumpster. It has survived this long. It's now in a position to survive another century, with care.

Perhaps you or someone can repair this old clock and send it on to Jacob.

I don't know what the story is, there. I saw what I thought might have been Jacob's web page, on Myspace, once. He seemed to like marijuana. I like marijuana, too. He seemed to have a job at Idaho's particle accelerator. I can see how those two aspects of his life might have collided. Now he is off in Montana. Did something drive him out of the state? None of my business, but maybe receiving this old blast from the past, ticking away on his mantel, might make a difference, that makes a difference. I don't know Jacob but I still wish him well.

If you think what I am doing has any value, you might consider asking Camille to send me some money for twenty years of storage.

At $1 per square foot, per month, 20+ years of preserving the Salanave family's legacy, per Camille's request, has cost me perhaps $240, plus shipping.

If Camille compensates me for the clock's storage, you can expect a handmade telescope or two, next.

For the eyepieces, you'll need to talk to Thomas Childers; it is my understanding that, shortly after Leon died, Thomas seized Leon's entire collection of telescope eyepieces.

Sincerely,

Richard Childers
PO Box 970
Fortuna CA 95540

PS: I know that California, and Californians, get a lot of bad press, there, in Idaho. With good reason.

However, as a native of Arizona, myself, I know, now, that most of the people in the San Francisco Bay Area are here for money. Few come to California seeking to make it their permanent home.

Most are running away from something, plan to get rich, and plan to return to where they came from. Few of them care what becomes of California after they leave.

This goes a long way towards explaining why California has become such a dump. We are a magnet for not just the nation's trash, but the entire world's.

I point this out because when Camille's stepfather traveled from what I presume was his native Idaho, all the way to San Francisco, to go to dental school, then, to become a dentist ... he was no different from any of these other fortune seekers.

He came to San Francisco ... got his education ... established his reputation ... seduced another man's wife, destroying the Salanave family and tearing Camille and Jonathan away from their father, and their grandfather, moving them back to Idaho, where, I infer, this predator originally came from ... and left San Francisco a worse place to live than it was when he arrived.

And so when you disrespect California, and Californians, please be honest enough to trace the problem all the way to its roots - which lead back to the heartland, where all the people who ruined San Francisco came from.

Food for thought.

For more information related to these events, please see (in approximately chronological order):