After a preliminary hearing before Loudoun County District Court Judge Dean Worcester, it now appears that a Grand Jury, meeting in mid May will determine whether the surviving charges against Middleburg Eccentric co-founder and Editor in Chief, Dee Dee Hubbard, will go to trial in Loudoun County Circuit Court.

Evidence presented at a March 16 preliminary hearing resulted in a reduction in the amount of money Hubbard has been accused of deliberately mis-depositing, and brought into serious question the timing and motives of both those who brought charges against her, and those who handled her arrest on November 30.

The Hearing

Eight witnesses testified at the March 16 preliminary hearing, described by Judge Worcester as a "screening process to make sure the evidence is sufficient to charge you..." Hubbard had not been formally charged by the Commonwealth before her arrest, and was released on her own recognizance when she finally appeared before a magistrate.

Following standard procedure, all those called to testify at the hearing (which lasted, with recesses, well over three hours) were sent out of the courtroom, and called in one by one to testify, thus ensuring that no one would hear the testimony of another witnesses before giving their own version of events.

Mis-deposited Checks

The first five witnesses were tenants or former tenants of buildings owned by Jack Goehring and, at that time, managed by Hubbard.

Under questioning by Assistant Commonwealth's Steven E. Sincavage each identified as genuine rent checks they had written and delivered to Hubbard, made out to Jack and Mary Kirk Goehring's "Piedmont Standards Corporation." The checks, totaling just over $8,000, had been deposited into the wrong accounts, a point not in dispute.

Under cross-examination, all but one agreed their checks had been properly endorsed for payment to Piedmont Standards.

All testified that before Hubbard's arrest they had been approached by Middleburg Police Chief Steve Webber, accompanied by officers they did not recognize to identify the checks. The unidentified officers were, it appears, members of a Virginia State Police investigating team.

All agreed they had no idea that Webber and the other officers were in fact investigating Hubbard for an alleged crime until after Hubbard's arrest and parade down Federal Street on November 30, 2010.

Hubbard's defense attorney, Edward B. MacMahon, noted that properly endorsed checks should have been caught by bank staff before they were actually deposited into the wrong account. Middleburg Bank, he asserted, had in fact offered to make good on any such mistakes they had made in the Hubbard case, and had been turned down.

Twenty Years

John Bennison, formerly a full partner with Jack Goehring in the rental business in Middleburg, and still a one-third owner, with the Goehrings of the building which houses Middleburg's Back Street Cafe, testified that he had worked with Hubbard for more than twenty years.

Asked if she had ever mis-deposited a check, he laughed and told the court, yes, but rarely. Such things happen in business, he said, noting that Hubbard had always corrected her mistakes as soon as she learned of them. Such errors, he said were almost inevitable in the course of business, and in Hubbard's case, were always, in his view, "honest mistakes."

Goehring vs. Goehring

Hubbard's accuser, Jack J. Goehring, was of a different opinion, and testified at some length. Under oath, he swore that:

1) Hubbard had deliberately stolen more than $9,000 from him by mis-depositing rent checks.

2) that she had never made good any of the mis-deposited checks and still owed him $9,000 or more.

3) that he had signed affidavits at Middleburg Bank charging that Hubbard, her son, her daughter, her son-in-law, her daughter-in-law, and her ex-husband had "stolen his identity."

4) that he had not, or could not remember, taking a watch from a local jeweler in lieu of rent, and

5) that he could not remember Hubbard having worked for him on a construction project on property he owns on the site of the Civil War battle of Middleburg [the location of a privately-constructed battlefield monument, and a new building, identified as "The Union Club"].

Goehring appeared to testify against himself when asked about the "identity theft" affidavit he signed at Middleburg Bank, admitting under oath that he had signed the accusatory documents only to compel the bank to sift through the records of what amounted of every adult member of the Hubbard family living in the Middleburg area.

Unaware of what her husband had said on the stand, Goehring's wife and business partner, Mary Kirk Goehring, also appeared to contradict her husband, almost point by point, under cross-examination.

Presented with a series of checks from Hubbard to Piedmont Standards, totaling more than the mis-deposited checks in question, and written well before Jack Goehring accused her of embezzlement, Mrs. Goehring readily testified that they were, indeed, checks from Hubbard, and that they had been properly deposited to the Goehring business accounts.

Asked about an expensive watch, accepted by her husband in lieu of rent from a prominent Middleburg jeweler, Mrs. Goehring testified that, much to her surprise, her husband had, indeed, taken the watch. She first found out about it, she said, when she could find no records of checks received to cover the rent in question, and demanded that Hubbard cover the missing amounts. Hubbard, she said, wrote a check covering the mysteriously "missing" rent checks. Mrs. Goehring then found out about the watch, realized that there were, if fact, no "missing" checks, and that Piedmont Standard owed Hubbard the amount she had mistakenly paid. Mrs. Goehring duly credited, she said, the Hubbard account.

Mrs. Goehring also testified that the Middleburg Battlefield construction project had come as a surprise to her, and that at first, she had no idea it was going on. The Goehrings live in McLean. She later discovered, she testified, that Hubbard had indeed worked on the project.

Goehring vs. Webber

Goehring also testified under oath that Middleburg Police Chief Steve Webber had given him advance notice of the date, time, and place of the impending arrest and parade of the Hubbard down Middleburg's Federal Street.

Both the Virginia State Police and Webber have consistently denied that they had alerted either the press or the public about Hubbard's impending arrest. The Mayor of Middleburg, the Town Administrator, and nearly every member of the Middleburg Town Council and Town Staff have also told the Eccentric that they were unaware of the impending arrest.

Jack Goehring, on the other hand, testified that he, for one, knew what was about to happen to Hubbard. Under cross-examination he swore that after "pestering the Chief about it for weeks," Steve Webber had informed him in advance of the date, time and place of the Hubbard arrest.

Webber, despite claims that the arrest was solely in the hands of the Virginia State Police, was well aware of those facts. An exchange of emails between Hubbard and Webber published in the Eccentric explicitly reveals that the Middleburg Police Chief himself, not the Virginia State Police, lured Hubbard to a mid-day meeting at Mello Out on November 30, ostensibly to discuss "Christmas in Middleburg." She was, instead, called out of the building, met by five armed police officers, handcuffed, and walked in the rain down Federal Street to police cars that would take her directly to the County jail in Leesburg.

Who else was informed, and by whom, has not been determined. At least two photographers armed with 35mm cameras appeared at Mello Out on November 30 and captured Hubbard's arrest. One of them, still unidentified, sold the resulting pictures to the Loudoun Times Mirror, reportedly after an unsuccessful effort to sell them to Leesburg Today and Middleburg Life.

Hubbard insists that on November 30 she had no idea she was even under investigation, much less that she was to be arrested.

A full investigation of Webber's actions by the Middleburg Town Council will not take place, according to Mayor Davis, until after the Hubbard case has been settled. The impact of the Chief's decision to retire, effective June 28, on that decision has not been determined.

Intent

Unless Hubbard's attorney decides to move directly to trial, a Grand Jury hearing on May 16 will decide whether or not the charges against Hubbard merit further consideration.

That 13 checks totaling a little over $8,000, were mis-deposited is not disputed.

The issue for a jury to decide will be whether or not Hubbard deliberately set out to mis-deposit the rent checks in question.

In his summation Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Sincavage compared the Hubbard case to someone who stole a TV, watched it, and then returned it after it was discovered missing.

Hubbard's attorney, on the other hand, claims that, at best, the dispute between Goehring and Hubbard might have been "... a civil case, and one that would have been thrown out because all the money in question had already been repaid."