Investigation into Hilton Head couple’s disappearance focuses on finances

This story originally was published in The Island Packet on May 11, 2008.

Editor’s note: This report includes graphic details about suicide that may be disturbing to readers.

The investigation into the disappearance of a Hilton Head Island couple is now focused almost exclusively on the finances of the property management company that kept the books for the couple’s four island businesses, authorities said last week.

Detectives from the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office and FBI already were homed in on financial problems at The Club Group before its chief financial officer apparently killed himself on March 11. That investigation appears to have intensified in the past two weeks, since the company released an audit accusing the dead man, Dennis Gerwing, of embezzling $2.1 million from eight clients.

Investigators have a “fairly lengthy list” of people to interview, but are waiting to do so until the financial inquiry into The Club Group is completed, Sheriff P.J. Tanner said. That inquiry is expected to take the better part of a month, he said.

“We’re holding off on any interviews until we’ve completed the financial inquiries to see where they will take us,” Tanner said. “It’s kind of hard to ask questions involving The Club Group — and those associated with The Club Group — until we’ve analyzed all of the financial aspects of the case. We don’t need to do anything prematurely.”

Tanner said his office is nearly finished scouring computers, BlackBerry devices and cell phones belonging to Gerwing and the missing couple, John and Elizabeth Calvert. Tanner would not say what, if anything, has been learned.

Also unknown are the contents of two suicide notes left behind by Gerwing on the same day he was publicly called a “person of interest” in the case. Results of a toxicology report, which would determine whether he had drugs or alcohol in his system, are also pending.

Tanner said the two notes — one on paper and the other scrawled nearly illegibly on a bed sheet — are still being analyzed by the State Law Enforcement Division. He said he probably won’t release most of the contents until the investigation is complete.

The toxicology work was handled by a private lab in Pennsylvania.

Tanner said, however, that neither the report nor the suicide notes are critical to the case at this point.

“While it may seem there’s not a lot going on with the case, there are a lot of things going on internally that aren’t being made public,” the sheriff said.

Tom Gardo, spokesman for The Club Group, said the company has been in constant contact with the authorities.

“We are totally cooperating with law enforcement authorities and (answering) any questions that they’ve been bringing to us,” he said.

Gerwing, 54, kept the books for the Calverts’ businesses until last year, when the couple decided to bring the work in-house. People close to the Calverts say the couple had uncovered financial irregularities, an accusation consistent with The Club Group’s audit, which began shortly after Gerwing’s death.

The audit, done by a national firm that specializes in crisis management and forensic auditing, alleged that Gerwing had siphoned $2.1 million from The Club Group and the accounts of eight of its island clients. He put the money in a secret, personal checking account, according to The Club Group.

The eight clients included the Calverts. Mark King, president of The Club Group, met with all of the affected clients and presented a plan to repay them by liquidating Gerwing’s estate, which includes a $1.2 million home in Columbia, a $430,000 home in Hilton Head Plantation and a powerboat.

Additional repayment will come from selling off some assets of The Club Group and from some of King’s personal assets, the company has said.

In a previous interview, Sheriff Tanner said detectives aren’t taking The Club Group’s audit or statements accusing Gerwing of embezzlement at face value. He said some of those statements could be “self-serving.”

The Club Group has four divisions: property management, retail, golf management and real estate sales (including boat slips).

At least one of the affected clients has dropped the firm.

Heritage Villas, a condominium complex near Harbour Town, voted to terminate its relationship with The Club Group on March 21 — after the audit began, but before its findings were released.

“We had an inkling that there was going to be some money missing,” said Mel Roy, vice president of the Heritage Villas Board of Directors.

The secret bank account activity — which Gerwing allegedly held under the name of The Club Group — started four years ago, according to an April 25 letter sent by the Heritage Villas Board of Directors to its 110 owners. The homeowners association gave Gerwing $125,000 to put in a Capital Fund CD before a roofing project, but it was never opened, the letter stated. Instead, the money was mingled in the account with cash from seven other Club Group clients on Jan. 18, 2007.

“We had neither knowledge of, nor access to, this account, but had been assured by (Gerwing) that the CD was in place and available,” wrote John M. Ware, president of the board of directors. “Request for documentation (to prove that CD was in place) was deterred.”

Of that $125,000, the association is missing $62,112 plus interest, according to the letter. That loss is among the smallest of the eight regimes that are missing money, the letter said.

Gerwing had handled that account and because he was so instrumental in providing property management services, the regime decided it was time to terminate the long-standing relationship.

Roy said a “small amount of money” is missing, but declined to offer details because the complex’s insurance company is conducting an independent investigation.

The board of directors’ meeting with The Club Group was “emotional and intense,” according to meeting minutes obtained by The Island Packet.

Employees at several other property management companies have said they haven’t heard about other clients jumping ship. Gardo, The Club Group’s spokesman, said Heritage Villas is the only client to have done so.

As for the repayment plan, Gardo said it is progressing as expected.

“It’s my understanding that we’ve had productive conversations with all eight of the clients about recovering their losses, and those steps are moving forward,” he said.

The Calverts, a couple who split time between a house in an expensive Atlanta neighborhood and a yacht in Harbour Town, disappeared on March 3 after meeting with Gerwing.

Their car, a 2006 Mercedes, was found later that week parked at the Hilton Head Marriott Resort and Spa in Palmetto Dunes, about six miles from where they were last seen. It, along with the couple’s yacht and airplane, offered no clues about the couple’s fate.

John Calvert, 47, owns four island businesses, including one that operates the Harbour Town Yacht Basin and another that rents 125 vacation properties.

Elizabeth Calvert, 45, had been a vice president in United Parcel Service’s legal department in Atlanta. When she and her husband vanished, she was a business attorney with HunterMaclean in Savannah, Georgia’s largest law firm outside the state capitol.

Gerwing, a gourmet and world-traveler, was found dead in the blood-spattered bathroom of a condo he had moved to after his home, cars and office were searched by deputies and the FBI. He slashed his inner thigh, wrist and both sides of his neck, severing the femoral artery and both jugular veins. His body was found in the bathtub next to a knife.

This story was originally published January 29, 2020 at 10:28 AM.