Speeding Ticket Put the Brakes on Fugitive’s Flight : Crime: Attorney Lynn Boyd Stites vanished shortly before he was indicted in a fraud scheme. A traffic stop 2 1/2 years later in Illinois proved the undoing of his double life.

One of the odd things about Robert Allen Newman was the way his mind seemed to wander.

Felix Gonzalez, owner of the Miami boatyard where Newman kept his 65-foot yacht, Christl Dolphin, and four other vessels, found it hard to get Newman’s attention.

“Robert,” he would say, but Newman would not answer, staring off as though lost in thought. He told people he was a former government scientist, a background that seemed to fit his distracted air. But in hindsight, Gonzalez said, Newman may simply have lost track of “what name he was using that day.”

Until his arrest in November on a lonely stretch of interstate in Southern Illinois, the scientist-yachtsman had been collecting aliases along with his boats. Sometimes he was Newman; other times, Jack Archer or Gary Donald Davis.

His real name is Lynn Boyd Stites, and he was a fugitive Los Angeles attorney and central figure in the Alliance insurance fraud and legal corruption case.

Although his behavior seemed peculiar at times, several who knew Stites by other names said they were amazed to learn of his alleged involvement in an elaborate and sophisticated fraud.

“He did not strike me as that kind of guy,” Gonzalez said. “His feet were never here on the ground. I really thought he was a scientist or something.”

A dozen lawyers--most of them from the San Fernando Valley--and six law firm clients and employees pleaded guilty or were convicted in the Alliance case, a scheme to extract millions of dollars in legal fees from insurance companies by rigging and prolonging complex civil litigations in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties.

Stites, 48, who formerly practiced law in Woodland Hills and West Los Angeles, was indicted with the others in April, 1990, in one of the largest prosecutions of attorneys in U.S. history.

But Stites, whom authorities accused of masterminding the scheme, did not stick around to fight the charges. He vanished shortly before the indictment and remained on the run until his arrest in Illinois after a routine traffic stop.

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Stites, being held without bail in San Diego, refused an interview request. Prosecutors with the U.S. attorney’s office in San Diego, who expect to bring Stites to trial in September on racketeering and mail fraud charges, also declined to discuss his life on the run.

But interviews and public records--including federal court documents filed in Miami, San Diego and Illinois--give details of Stites’ 2 1/2 years of flight.

Among other things, his penchant for secrecy and intrigue--described by various associates and witnesses--seemed to prepare him well for life underground.

“He’s a master of deceit. He’s an accomplished liar,” Assistant U.S. Atty. William Q. Hayes said in a court hearing in December, arguing that Stites was a flight risk and should not be granted bail.

Using rented mail drops to establish residence, Stites obtained driver’s licenses as Gary Davis and Robert Newman in Oregon and Georgia.

He proposed marriage to two women under two names, promising a life of wealth and luxury but never explaining the furtive existence he wanted them to share.

He presented himself as a physicist or research scientist who had worked on top-secret government projects. In fact, Stites had earned an engineering degree and worked briefly in the aerospace industry before becoming a lawyer--a background that helped with his cover story. Even Stites’ limp--the result of a near-fatal auto accident outside a Century City law office six years ago--became part of his new identity. He said an explosion during a lab experiment knocked a heavy test stand onto his leg.

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Drawing on money he had stashed in Switzerland, Stites was a man on a spree. He had at least $496,000 wired from Switzerland to a Miami bank account, and he wrote himself $185,500 in checks from the account in just four months of last year, according to a declaration filed in January by an IRS investigator.

Showing that old habits die hard, he continued to skirmish with insurance companies. And he indulged his taste for risky, even reckless behavior by flying through speed traps as he crisscrossed the country in his maroon sports coupe.

The Illinois ticket that may have grounded Stites forever was not his first. He had been cited for speeding in Nebraska, Texas, Colorado and Oregon, according to state motor vehicle records--although in those cases he had paid the fines and tooled away without his real identity becoming known.

Stites apparently was in contact with members of his family. After his arrest, a greeting card from Stites’ ex-wife, Erma Miller, was among the items authorities found when they searched a posh Miami Beach condominium overlooking Biscayne Bay that Stites had rented.

In Florida, he apparently was visited by his 20-year-old daughter and at least one of his three sons. Brandt R. Stites, his 22-year-old middle son, appears to have spent time with him in Colorado. When Stites, posing as Gary Davis, rented storage space in Denver for his Corvette, van and power boat, he left word that an employee, Brandt Stites, be given access to the vehicles, workers at the storage firm told federal authorities.

Despite these contacts and his wealth and toys, Stites must have been lonely because he spent some time searching for a mate.

About November, 1990, a few months after his indictment, Stites began courting Sharon Barry, a Northern California woman he met through a dating service. Barry declined to be interviewed, but her relationship with Stites was described in an affidavit filed in Miami in connection with a search warrant request.

According to the document, Stites told Barry that his name was Jack Archer and that he was a nuclear physicist who had been involved in top-secret government projects. He also said he was a millionaire who traveled the world and had a home in Argentina.

At one point, Stites showed Barry more than $100,000 in cash and offered her $500,000 to quit her job, marry him and move to northern Italy.

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But Barry became suspicious when Stites emptied his pockets once and she saw driver’s licenses for Gary Donald Davis and Lynn Boyd Stites.

When Barry confronted him, “Archer explained to her that the identities related to the secrecy of his work with the government, and he needed to change his identity from time to time for protection,” the affidavit said.

Maybe Stites was spooked. In any case, he told Barry that he had to leave on a trip and never contacted her again.

An avid skier, Stites also spent time in Colorado, where he continued his romantic quest.

In the Feb. 20, 1991, personals section of Westword, a Denver weekly, he introduced himself as a “wealthy gentleman skier” seeking an attractive thirtysomething female.

The ad concluded: “Take a chance, you won’t be sorry.”

“That’s funny, isn’t it?” said Angela Martin, a Denver-area woman who took a chance and would have married Stites had their romance not come to an untimely end on the shoulder of an Illinois highway.

“It was a painful experience,” said Martin, who said she once had a nine-hour conversation with Stites but obviously never got to know him.

As before, Stites told Martin that he was a scientist who had been engaged in classified work--although the name he gave her was Gary Davis.

Stites had been divorced in 1989, but he told Martin that he was a widower whose wife was killed in Switzerland by a hit-and-run driver. He said he kept money in Swiss banks, and while away on a trip, he mailed Martin a message on tape in which he stated he was in Switzerland.

Stites bought his maroon Dodge Stealth at a dealership near Denver, using the name Gary Davis and a Portland, Ore., mail drop as his home address. Money for the purchase was wired to the dealership from Switzerland.

As Davis, he also rented space at a storage business for a Corvette, a van and a 21-foot power boat.

The boat was purchased in June, 1991, in the Denver suburb of Aurora for about $14,000 in cash. The sellers, Franklin and Diana Mattox, said they were paid the money by a secretive youth in his late teens or early 20s.

Diana Mattox said the youth told her that he was reluctant to give his name or address because “his mother was a very famous person” who might be harassed by curious fans. “I thought, ‘Oh, boy,’ ” Mattox said.

Soon thereafter, Stites went into the boat business in Florida. He bought the Christl Dolphin in January, 1992, for $164,000. He also paid $360,000 for four large boats that had been damaged by Hurricane Andrew, with the idea of fixing them up to sell them.

To the staff at Florida Yacht Charters & Sales Inc., the Miami Beach firm that brokered the sale of the Christl Dolphin, Stites’ behavior seemed odd and even outlandish.

He called himself Robert Allen Newman but said he had a partner, Gary Davis, who also peppered them with faxes and calls during negotiations over the yacht.

Although he was never sure, Florida Yacht sales manager Kent Brennan said he suspected that Newman and Davis were the same person.

Money for the Christl Dolphin was wired from Switzerland by Michael Ueltschi, an attorney in the Swiss capital of Berne. Ueltschi had performed other services for the Stiteses, such as arranging the lease of a chalet in the elegant resort village of Gstaad, and helping with residence papers so the children could attend Swiss schools.

When Stites was under investigation in the Alliance case in 1989 and the IRS was about to put a lien on his home in Bell Canyon in eastern Ventura County, the attempt was thwarted by the transfer of title to Elizabeth Ueltschi.

Michael Ueltschi acknowledged in a telephone interview that Elizabeth Ueltschi is his mother. But he said he did not understand Stites’ legal battles: “I was very much surprised that he is in jail. I know him only as a very serious and nice person.”

Stites proved a smarter lawyer than boatman. The Christl Dolphin came cheap because it needed work, but before putting it in dry dock, Stites took it on a shakedown cruise. In a brisk wind about a mile out in the Atlantic, the backstay broke and the mast snapped--a catastrophic failure that luckily caused no injuries but established the boat as a money pit.

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Stites was on his own because his insurance for the boat was limited to damages in dry dock.

Bill Barrere, whom Stites hired as captain and foreman to oversee repairs, said that when he offered to consult a maritime lawyer about his rights under the insurance policy, Stites grew irate, saying he knew all about lawyers and insurance matters.

Like everyone else, Barrere thought Stites was a scientist--not a lawyer with a knack for driving insurers up the wall.

“What I thought was odd was the irritation that came over him when it was suggested that I contact an attorney,” Barrere said. “I guess he felt insulted.”

Despite occasional tantrums, Stites could be “very charming,” Barrere said. And when it came to repairs for the Christl Dolphin and Stites’ own nautical education, money was no object.

Needless costs and interminable delays were the rule because Stites kept changing his mind about what he wanted done.

As a result, the Christl Dolphin never made it back in the water. It was still a work in progress when Stites took off for his final spin.

En route to Colorado to marry Angela Martin, he was flying up Interstate 24 near the small town of Metropolis, Ill., when the game came to an end.

It was about 8:30 on Saturday morning, Nov. 21. Stites had just crossed the Ohio River from Paducah, Ky., when he was pulled over for allegedly doing 80 m.p.h. Similar encounters had ended happily for Stites and this one would have, too--except that he had lost the original of his Oregon Gary Davis license.

He showed a photocopy, but the state trooper, Steve Pankey, asked for a second identification. Stites opened the rear hatch and produced a Gary Davis birth certificate. But as he did, Pankey “noticed several small manila envelopes containing what appeared to be a very large sum of money,” the arrest report said.

Pankey got a search warrant and went through the car. He found more than $32,000 in $20 and $100 bills, as well as diamonds and jewelry, passes to Disney World, and “miscellaneous documents and notes relating to addresses in Switzerland and Russia,” according to an affidavit filed in federal court in Benton, Ill.

More important, he found identifications for Newman and Stites to go with the one for Davis. He ran the names through the computer, and “Stites” brought up the federal warrant.

Stites was transported a few days later to the Metropolitan Correctional Center, the federal lockup in San Diego. He remains there, facing a racketeering charge and 36 mail fraud counts. He could get a long prison term if convicted.

Since his arrest, the government has filed a companion civil suit seeking forfeiture of Stites’ boats, his sports car and the $32,000 in cash, on grounds that they were obtained with proceeds from illegal activity.

Stites’ frame of mind is as good as can be expected for someone “who’s never been in jail before,” said his lawyer, Jennifer Keller. And he is “working hard to help me prepare his case.”

Keller acknowledged that Stites’ flight did not enhance his prospects for acquittal but said that problem is not fatal to his defense.

Said Keller: “Many an innocent person has taken off when he realized the deck was being stacked against him.”

Times researcher Ann Rovin in Denver contributed to this story.