Catch Him If You Can

Abrams says he wrote Tom Thinnes two letters in June 2003 demanding an accounting of the money. Thinnes says he never got the letters, that Owens must have intercepted them at the office.

Abrams says Owens sent him a check for $18,000 made out to him personally on the "Robert S. Owens Disbursement Account," shortly after he sent the demand letters to Thinnes. Owens explained in a note sent with the check that he had already sold the Escalade for $22,500 -- much less than the Blue Book price of $30,000 -- and had subtracted $4,500 to repay himself what he had lent Leslie in mid-April to pay her parents' rent, which he had done.

Owens also wrote that he disagreed with much of what Abrams had written. But Abrams says he never wrote to Owens, just Thinnes.

"The guy must have intercepted Tom's letter," Abrams says. "That was one smooth operator right there. That $18,000 check was Owens' attempt to cool down an escalating situation. He raked in thousands and thousands on that couple, and he seems to have gotten away with it." Rich Robertson was a dedicated investigative journalist who moved from print to television for a stretch in the 1990s.

While working at Channel 12, Robertson met Bob Owens -- who, until recently, freelanced as a private investigator for the station.

In early 2000, Robertson says, Owens persuaded him to leave journalism for the potentially more lucrative field of private investigation. That April, he went to work with Owens in an office at Edifice Lex.

Soon, however, Robertson says he got a firsthand taste of his new mentor's modus operandi.

"This is embarrassing as hell to talk about," says Robertson, who now runs a successful P.I. firm based in Mesa.

It started with the arrest that month of a Phoenix man on serious felony charges. His parents, John and Carol, who live in New Jersey, asked that their surnames not be used because their son Glenn awaits trial on unrelated charges.

"We were supposed to see Tom Thinnes," Carol says, "but Owens called us and said he was sitting in for Tom, like he was in the firm. He told us he would require a $15,000 retainer, and to make checks payable to him."

The couple did as they were told, and sent the first $10,000 to "Robert Owens, Esquire" on March 10. A month later, they sent a $5,000 check to Owens. (They provided New Times a copy of both checks.)

Owens got the second check a few days after prosecutors said they wouldn't be filing charges in the man's case.

"Bob lifted up the check right in front of me and kissed it," Robertson says. "Then he said, `This baby's in the bank!' He knew the case was done. I felt like I'd walked into the Twilight Zone."

No dummies, the New Jersey couple wondered about the $15,000 when their son told them the good news. After several attempts, they say, they got through on the phone to Tom Thinnes.

"He never really answered our questions about why the checks had been made out to Owens," Carol says. "He didn't seem to know that we'd paid anything. My husband asked him if Owens was his partner. He said no, he's an investigator. It was all very weird."

John recalls the same conversation. "I told Thinnes that his guy [Owens] had been ready to take our money and boogie. I think I made my point, especially when I mentioned filing something against him with the [State Bar]. He said we'd be getting our money back."

Later that month, "Owens and Associates" sent a $12,500 check to the couple.

"We paid Bob Owens $2,500 for nothing," Carol says. "It would have been $15,000 for nothing if we hadn't made a stink. How could a big-shot lawyer have a guy like that around him?"

Thinnes says he recalls nothing about this case.

Later in 2000 came the case of Aaron Markley, a Tempe man charged with selling meth to an undercover cop in a Mesa trailer park.

"Owens came into my office and said he'd just been retained by [attorney] Larry Debus," Rich Robertson says. "I read the police report, did some skip-tracing on my computer, and hit the jackpot. It was very exciting."

In this case, the jackpot was a mistaken identity, or, more precisely, a misspelled name. The bad guy's name was Markey, not Markley.

Aaron Markley never had been in the Mesa trailer park. The police had made a very bad mistake.

"Owens was at the beach in San Diego with his wife, and I called him, all pumped up," Robertson continues. "`Great!' he tells me. Next thing I know, there's a story in the paper about how Bob Owens had figured out this situation in 10 minutes. I ask him, `What's up?' He says, `It all happened so fast, I just told the reporter it was me. Sorry.'"

What an Arizona Republic columnist wrote was this: "Bob Owens wants it known that he, not the news media, discovered that Markley was innocent."