The Backstory To The Story...

(Taken (in part) from Chapter Two of the book DECEIT FROM WITHIN: A FAMILY'S FIGHT FOR SAFETY By Christian Benjamin Seaborn.)

On April 11, 1914 my dad (to be...42 years later), John Henry Seaborn, and his identical twin (my uncle to be), Benjamin Charles Seaborn, were born in Seattle, Washington to Charles Nelson Seaborn and Mary Helen (Mimi) Seaborn. They joined a sister. My Aunt Dorothy had been born in March of 1911.

This family of five - as well as their extended family - had many things going for them.

Good looks. Charming people. (Well, except for my grandmother.) Determination to make something of their lives. (Well, except for my grandmother.)

But, alas, there were also an assortment of medical and evil associations attached to the core family of five.

Charles Nelson had been one of four siblings. He (my grandfather (to be)) had been the youngest. When his father, Thomas Seaborn (my Great-Grandfather), was killed in a logging accident in early Seattle, Charles, at fourteen, dropped out of school to take care of his widowed mother.

Charles Nelson and his siblings were all determined to make successes of themselves. To not only lead good, successful lives, but to be in positions to give something to others.

Charles's elder brother (my Great-Uncle Henry Seaborn) was apparently a mathematical genius which would eventually have an influence on his nephew, Benjamin Charles. Henry would go on to being the comptroller of the Skinner & Eddy Corporation, one of Seattle's major shipbuilding and industrial firms during the early 20th Century - a role that placed him at the financial heart of Seattle. Henry would also go on to become one of the early Commodores of the Seattle Yacht Club.

Charles and Henry's other brother, Jack (for whom my dad was named) would create a series of small grocery stores. When the Great Depression hit in 1929-1930 Great-Uncle Jack would just give away groceries so that people who could not afford to pay would not starve through tough times.

Their sister (My Great-Aunt Adelaide) would marry wealth and become one of Seattle's earliest philanthropists supporting the arts in early Seattle.

Meanwhile, during WWI Charles created his own Seaborn Shipyards in Tacoma, Washington, about thirty miles south of Seattle. Through which he would amass a small fortune.

(I don't know if it was like a friendly competition between Charles and Henry, since by all accounts they were quite close. The oldest sibling (Henry) and the youngest sibling (Charles). When Henry was the Commodore of the Seattle Yacht Club he owned a 75' yacht called the Charlette 5 (named for his wife). Earlier, Charles had built an 80' yacht.

Born a dwarf, Dorothy (or Dot as she was affectionately called by her dad and her brothers (but not her mother)) would die from an infected tooth in 1932 at the age of 21 (24 years before I was born). She never grew out of toddler-sized clothes but apparently was quite the piano player. Part of the Seaborn family determination. My grandfather, Charles Nelson, would name his 80' yacht the Dorothy S. in honor of his very little daughter.)

On a dark night in 1924 Charles had been out on a business meeting on a yacht out on Puget Sound. The story went (according to someone my mother had met thirty years later who had been out on that yacht that night), my grandfather had gone up on deck and never returned. Charles' widow (my grandmother Mimi) had insisted that her husband had committed suicide, throwing himself overboard to spite her. Leaving her with their thirteen-year-old dwarf daughter and the ten-year-old identical twins.

Uncle Henry, so the story went, spent a small fortune dredging Puget Sound for the body of his brother.

Later, in 1965 when I was eight-years-old, my mother took me and my brother to meet our Great-Aunt Florence. Mimi's sister. It was a very enlightening meeting for my mother about who her Seaborn mother-in-law (and my grandmother) was.

Florence, a retired nurse by 1965, lived alone in a sparse one-room apartment in downtown Seattle. After settling my brother (who was eleven-years-old) and me down with milk and cookies on that our one and only meeting with Mimi's sister, Florence began to unravel family secrets of how evil her sister was.

Back in 1910, Florence had originally been engaged to marry Charles. She said that her sister told Charles that she, Florence, had syphilis and that Charles should call off the wedding and marry Mimi instead.

That Florence had syphilis was a lie. Mimi just wanted Charles for herself.

Florence then thoughtfully looked at Charles and me saying: "I guess it was all for the best. For these two wonderful boys never would have been born if Charles had married me."

But there was more evil manipulations to Mimi.

First, as for Charles intentionally killing himself, Florence said she never believed it. The man she knew (and had been engaged to) was full of life. There were, she said, rumors that Charles was in financial troubles. But killing himself over that was not something she believed Charles Nelson Seaborn, in the prime of his life at thirty-nine-years-old, would never consider doing. Much less do. (She said she suspected that Mimi had Charles killed in order to collect the $100,000 life insurance policy. Which Mimi did collect on.)

Second, Florence and Mimi's father, Captain Benjamin Kunkler, had amassed his own fortune owning and running a small fleet of tug boats in early Seattle. When their dad died, Florence was supposed to be the executor of the estate. Before any of that could be put in motion, Mimi swooped in. Mimi moved their mother into her home (keeping her captive), sold her parents' home and pocketed the money, and had her sister (Florence) removed from any connection to their dad's vast estate.

Third, when Mimi's second husband, Ray Cook, had called Mimi from Ray's 62' racing yacht, the Circe, telling her that he was having a heart attack (this was years before the 9-1-1 emergency call system existed), Mimi intentionally waited three hours before calling anyone to go to the boat to help Ray. As she envisioned that with Ray dead she, Mimi (as the "grieving" widow), would inherit the Circe (a famous racing yacht that was worth about $200,000 that my dad's identical twin had designed when Uncle Ben had been but 17-years-old).

Fortunately (knowing his wife was evil), in his Will Ray had specifically left the Circe to my dad. Even so, for a solid year Mimi used every legal trick she and her crooked lawyer could muster to (unsuccessfully) wrestle the title to the Circe away from my dad.

Fourth, after the mysterious death of my grandfather in 1924, Mimi tried to charm the wealthy and charming Uncle Henry into marrying her. When he refused (knowing Mimi for what she was), Mimi - scorned - forbid her three children to ever have anything to do with any of their Seaborn relatives ever again.

Apart from dad briefly working for Uncle Henry when dad was eighteen-years-old, dad never again had anything to do with his uncles, his aunt and his cousins for the next forty years. Until, by accident through a Seaborn relative in Baraboo, Wisconsin, mom and I learned of dad's cousin by his Aunt Adelaide. At my insistence in 1975 (when I was eighteen) we (me, my dad, my mother and my brother) went to meet dad's cousin.

Fifth, in 1971 Mimi told her fourteen-year-old grandson (me) that the best thing the boy could do for her and the Seaborn family would be for the boy to commit suicide.

Deceit From Within is more than just a story about a pair of identical twins (my dad and his brother) having been born with a rare mental health illness that made both of them unpredictably violent and deadly (and how we survived that), there was an evil matriarch of the family pulling strings to pit members of the family (my family) against one another all for her own vain and financially selfish means.

This is a book of intrigue, well-known family members, wealth, betrayal and survival. A story spanning over one-hundred years.