Was Alabama Governor Robert Bentley, and perhaps his mistress, involved in planning the unlawful eviction in Missouri that left my wife with a shattered arm?

Robert Bentley and Rebekah Caldwell Mason

Alabama Governor Robert Bentley reportedly misused law-enforcement resources in an effort to find dirt on me and stop our reporting on his affair with aide Rebekah Caldwell Mason. But what if Dr. Bentley's efforts went beyond information gathering? What if he--perhaps with the assistance of "de facto" governor Mason--actively tried to hurt my wife, Carol, and me?

Specifically, what if Bentley and/or Mason were involved in a scheme to have us unlawfully evicted last summer in our new (and we hope temporary) "home" of Springfield, Missouri--an event that led deputies to brutalize Carol and leave her with a shattered left arm?

A timeline of events--plus our observations since being forced to live like refugees in the city where I grew up but no longer have meaningful connections--suggests an Alabama-Missouri "game plan" was at the heart of our eviction. And it seems likely, to me, that Bentley and Mason were part of it.

I spoke about that possibility, and other topics, in an interview with San Francisco-based Peter B. Collins last week. A podcast of the full interview is available at the Collins Web site.

As for Bentley, let's consider the following timeline:

* August 31, 2015--I break the story at this blog of Bentley's affair with Mason and note the crippling effect it's had on Alabama government.

* August 31, 2015--Missouri court records show a judgment was entered against us in an eviction case styled Trent Cowherd v. Roger Shuler.  A hearing was held in the case on August 27, but a judgment was not entered until four days later, just a few hours after I had posted the Bentley/Mason story at 6:07 a.m.

* August 31, 2015--On the same day I broke the Bentley/Mason story and the eviction judgment was entered against Carol and me, G Shuler Properties LLC was formed in Missouri. The organizer is my mother, Gondolyn "Gondy" Erma Shuler, and the registered agent is my lawyer brother David Shuler. To my knowledge, my mother has owned our original two-bedroom family home in Springfield--plus several parcels of family land near Osage, Arkansas, for many years. My guess is that all of them have a pretty modest value. So why, after all these years, did my mother need to form a company that apparently consolidates her property under one entity? What was my brother's purpose in doing this, and is it a mere coincidence that it took place as Carol and I were about to be victims of an unlawful eviction, a process with which David was involved.

* September 8, 2015--Carol and I file both a Motion to Quash Execution of the eviction, plus a Notice of Appeal. The Notice of Appeal, by Missouri law, puts an automatic stay on the eviction. I notified all attorneys in the case of the appeal notice and stay, including my brother, David Shuler, who was representing our mother, Gondy Shuler, because Trent Cowherd had included her as a defendant, without having any grounds for doing so.

X-ray of Carol Shuler's broken arm:
Did a doctor make this happen?

* September 9, 2015--In the early afternoon, six to eight deputies storm through the front door of our apartment, with one of them pointing an assault rifle at me and others brandishing handguns. The force of the cops' entry slammed Carol (who had been looking out the peephole to see what was going on) up against the wall. As she later tried to retrieve some of our personal belongings, as she had been given permission to do, three cops surround her, and one slams her rear-first to the ground (either this, or the slam against the wall, was enough to give Carol a concussion, I believe--although she has not been diagnosed with one, mainly because doctors were concerned primarily about the condition of her arms). In the process, a cop yanks so violently on her arms that the left one was broken to the point that it requires trauma surgery for repair. Greene County Sheriff Jim Arnott states on the scene he is going to charge Carol with "assaulting a police officer," and a deputy (Scott Harrison) who drove Carol to jail says she was looking at a felony charge and $100,000 bond. Those plans apparently change when it is discovered that Carol has a broken arm and has been the victim of, not the perpetrator of, an assault.

Are Robert Bentley and Rebekah Mason evil enough to have helped orchestrate this fiasco? Given all the lies they've told the people of Alabama recently, a reasonable person could conclude the answer is yes. What kind of "physician" (Bentley is a dermatologist) participates in a scheme that inflicts serious injury on someone?

If Bentley and/or Mason were involved in the planning, who was their primary liaison in Missouri? That question is foremost in my mind at the moment because it points to criminal activity--and it has some possible answers that are extremely disturbing.