Month after Hilton Head couple went missing, there are more questions than answers
This story originally was published in The Island Packet on April 3, 2008.
Editor’s note: This report includes graphic details about suicide that may be disturbing to readers.
What remains a month after John and Elizabeth Calvert vanished from Hilton Head Island is a long list of questions in one of the highest-profile criminal cases that’s ever gripped the resort island.
Those who knew the affluent couple are anxious for answers from an extremely tight-lipped Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office, which has released little substantial information about the fate of the missing couple since their 2006 Mercedes was discovered March 7, four days after they disappeared.
The apparent suicide of Dennis Gerwing, the Calverts’ former business associate and the only “person of interest” publicly linked to the case, created more unanswered questions.
What did Gerwing say in the two notes he left behind?
What role, if any, did he play in the Calverts’ disappearance?
“We were hoping for an update by now,” said Tony Gibus, who operates one of John Calvert’s four island businesses and serves as an unofficial spokesman for the couple’s employees and friends. “We basically haven’t heard anything from the police.”
Beaufort County Sheriff P.J. Tanner said Wednesday that there’s a good deal of investigative work taking place behind the scenes. Detectives are sorting through records obtained through search warrants and subpoenas.
“Just because you don’t see searches and read in the paper about different things that are obvious, doesn’t mean that there isn’t a lot going on with this case,” Tanner said. “There are still a good many people working this case and following leads.”
But those leads have slowed to a trickle, Tanner said.
The Sheriff’s Office continues to await an analysis of Gerwing’s suicide notes, one of which was written on a bed sheet and was described in sheriff’s reports as illegible, according to Tanner.
Tanner, who has held three press conferences, said he has no immediate plans for another.
In past interviews, Tanner has said he’s wary of releasing too much information because it could compromise the investigation.
The Calverts’ friends understand the need for detectives to hold back some information, but are hungry for details about what authorities are doing — and what they’ve uncovered so far — in determining the couple’s fate.
“I just think police are being too tight-lipped,” said Marty Pellicci, general manager of The Crazy Crab in Harbour Town, where the Calverts ate several times a week. “Either they don’t know anything and that’s why they’re not talking, or they know something and they’re holding back.”
It’s hard to tell which is the case. There have been several visible efforts to locate the Calverts, including a three-day search of a Georgia landfill with cadaver-sniffing dogs and two sweeps through the Sea Pines Forest Preserve. But little light has been shed on other aspects of the investigation.
‘IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE’
John Calvert, 47, and his wife Elizabeth, 45, a Savannah business attorney, were last seen at a meeting with the 54-year-old Gerwing, chief financial officer of The Club Group, a property management firm that kept the books for John’s businesses.
Those who know the couple said they planned to confront Gerwing about problems Elizabeth Calvert had discovered in records of their companies, which operate the Harbour Town Yacht Basin and rent 125 Harbour Town vacation units.
Law enforcement officials have remained silent on the topic of money, missing or otherwise.
The Club Group has hired forensic auditors to examine its books. That audit should be finished by the middle of the month. The findings will be sent to the company’s clients and to detectives, said company spokesman Tom Gardo.
“They won’t necessarily be made public,” he said.
Gerwing was found dead March 11 in a Sea Pines villa across the street from his office. He had reportedly been staying there since authorities searched his Hilton Head Plantation home, vehicles and office the weekend before. He apparently locked himself in the bathroom and slashed his neck, arm and thigh at least six times with a serrated steak knife, according to investigative reports released 15 days after his death.
A full autopsy report, including toxicology results, has not been made public.
Initially, there was doubt among some on the island about whether Gerwing actually took his own life.
Now those thoughts have largely been replaced by questions about why Gerwing would have done so and whether the circumstances of the Calverts’ disappearance go much deeper, perhaps beyond their former bookkeeper.
On the surface, Gerwing appeared to be a man of means. He owned a $1.2 million home in Columbia and another more modest house on Hilton Head worth more than $400,000. He had a powerboat named the “Big Girl,” ate expensive meals and drank vintage wines.
Gibus said John and Elizabeth Calvert are understanding people. They would have allowed Gerwing to repay them if he had taken any money, he said.
So there must be another reason he killed himself, some have suggested.
“You don’t kill yourself over a couple hundred thousand dollars of embezzlement or even a million dollars of embezzlement,” Pellicci said. “It’s just bizarre. It doesn’t make sense.”
Finances aside, Pellicci doesn’t believe Gerwing would be physically capable of killing two people and disposing of their bodies without help.
STORY WITHOUT AN END?
Both the FBI and the State Law Enforcement Division are helping in the investigation. The FBI is examining financial aspects of the couple’s disappearance, Tanner said.
The bureau has two full-time Beaufort County agents, one of whom is working the case, said Denise Taiste, a Columbia-based spokeswoman for the FBI. No additional manpower has been brought in, she said.
“We are assisting,” Taiste said. “We’re not taking the lead on it.”
She said she understands how the family and friends of the Calverts feel, and hopes someday they’ll find closure.
“I hope they find their bodies,” Taiste said. “It’s hard to have a loved one who just disappears. There’s no ending to it, no good-byes. I’m sure everyday for the families is just a nightmare.”
SLED declined to say how many of its agents are involved in the investigation, said Special Agent Bobbi Schlatterer, spokeswoman for the agency. She said SLED is assisting in two capacities: providing agents for the investigation and using its lab to process forensic evidence.
National media coverage has waned, but the case still is very much the talk of the town.
In March, stories about the disappearance on islandpacket.com generated 330,191 page views. Forty-one of the 50 most-read stories that month were about the Calverts. Even headlines clearly indicating there were no new developments have consistently been clicked on thousands of times. One such article posted Monday drew 2,631 page views.
On the day Gerwing killed himself, “Dennis Gerwing” was the 90th most-searched term on Google, according to Google Trends, which tracks search data. About 28 percent of those hits came from Hilton Head, 6 percent from Bluffton and 6 percent from Atlanta.
Tourists, especially those from the Georgia capital, where the Calverts own a home in an upscale neighborhood, continue to snap pictures of the couple’s yacht and part-time home, the “Yellow Jacket,” moored to a slip just steps from the 18th green of the Harbour Town Golf Links.
Gibus and John Calvert’s other employees have tried to maintain normalcy as they rent powerboats to vacationers and keep the marina afloat.
But it’s been tough.
“We’re still all very heartsick about this,” Gibus said. “We still need to get some answers and find closure.”
Island Packet online editor Michael Edenfield contributed to this report.
This story was originally published January 29, 2020 at 10:29 AM.