View Single Post
Old 07-22-2017, 09:48 PM   #184
tshiggins
 
tshiggins's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Denver, Colorado
Default Re: Campaign: Facets

High Lonesome News
“The Rest of the West”

Taverner challenges McShane will
By Brooke Greene

PAONIA, COLORADO – Harold J. Taverner, owner of the Gunnison Supply Depot chain, declared his intent to challenge the last will and testament of JoBeth Catherine McShane, owner of the Café Nepenthe occult store and Nova Nepenthe recreational marijuana supply, in Grand Junction.

Taverner is a first cousin of McShane, murdered by kidnappers in October of last year. Sheriff’s deputies in Grand County, Utah, discovered McShane’s body several days after McShane’s car was found, abandoned, on the shoulder of Highway 191, north of Moab.

Neither police nor federal investigators have made any arrests, although one of the alleged kidnappers, Alvin Carr of Dallas, Texas, was found dead following an altercation with a friend of McShane’s, Beatrice Lawrence, of Moab.

Lawrence suffered critical injuries in the incident, and currently serves probation for interference in a federal investigation, following a plea.

Attorney Joseph Connelly, of Grand Junction, filed an intent to challenge McShane’s will on behalf of her cousin, in Colorado’s Mesa County District Court, on Monday, March 23.

According to Connelly, Taverner expressed concern that his cousin’s businesses have attracted drug users and other “undesirables” to the Western Slope. Although business records indicate both Café Nepenthe and Nova Nepenthe made profits every year, Connelly said, Taverner felt liquidation of the businesses would “serve the community best.”

“The death of Mr. Taverner’s cousin under such terrible circumstances indicates the seedy nature of the businesses she controlled,” Connelly said. “While Ms. McShane’s death was a tragedy, he hopes it can serve as a wake-up call for those who value our traditional western values of family, community and hard work.”

Krystal Swan, named as inheritor of both of McShane’s businesses, has served as manager of Café Nepenthe for nearly 10 years. Swan said that while McShane never had children of her own, she had adopted many members of the Western Slope counterculture as her family. McShane had adopted a “craft name,” in the pagan community as “JoCat Nightshade,” and eventually led two different “covens,” or pagan congregations.

Café Nepenthe opened its doors as a small occult shop in 1983, where it offered a variety of top-quality incense and perfumes, as well as candles, crystals and other items values by the pagan community. However, the business took off in the early 1990s, when it began to offer high-end, organically-grown spices and essential oils attractive to many newcomers to the area, who prospered during the “dot-com” boom.

Eventually, the Café Nepenthe Web site became well-known as a market-place and community center for people throughout the region who sought organic produce and top-shelf, limited production wines and brandies made in local orchards and vineyards. The businesses really took off in 2013, when McShane opened Nova Nepenthe as a distributor of recreational marijuana, following legalization by the Colorado Legislature in 2012.

McShane’s success in the rapidly expanding niche for organic produce and other items sought by recent arrivals to the Western Slope stands in stark contrast to her cousin, Taverner’s, more traditional business model. The chain of Gunnison Supply Depot stores has eight farm and mining supply locations in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.

Taverner, the son of McShane’s maternal uncle, Herman J. Taverner, is a member of the Colorado Western’s Slope’s “super lobbying” group, Club 20, and a prominent contributor to conservative candidates throughout the Rocky Mountain West.

Although he has declined to seek election to political office, himself, Taverner has been a vocal critic of marijuana legalization and what he calls the “destruction” of the west’s traditional culture in the face of the region’s ongoing economic change.

Taverner gained some attention, in 1991, when he opposed efforts by Solar Energy Global (SEG) to create a training facility for those who wished to learn more about renewable energy, in general, and how to install and maintain solar panels, in particular.

Herman Taverner had originally established Gunnison Supply Depot to serve the coal mines and ranches the valley formed by the North Fork Gunnison River (“North Fork River”). Success in the 1950s and 1960s allowed the chain to expand, and it targeted areas where resource extraction, ranching and farming appeared in close proximity.

The firm began to provide petroleum and natural gas well-head equipment in 2008, and has prospered as a result of the “fracking” boom.
__________________
--
MXLP:9 [JD=1, DK=1, DM-M=1, M(FAW)=1, SS=2, Nym=1 (nose coffee), sj=1 (nose cocoa), Maz=1]
"Some days, I just don't know what to think." -Daryl Dixon.

Last edited by tshiggins; 07-22-2017 at 09:51 PM.
tshiggins is offline   Reply With Quote