By Tori Marlan
One might wonder what Robert Larson, the business manager, was doing at In These Times in the first place. Why would a lawyer, certified public accountant, and MBA with Republican leanings take a $21,000 job at a liberal political magazine? “Ironically, money is not important to me,” says Larson, who now admits to embezzling over $100,000 from the publication. Nor, he says, are politics. “I’m not a political ideologue.”
For the first three years, Larson didn’t steal a cent. Which isn’t to say he didn’t think about it. “It’s always a temptation when you can write checks and you can sign them,” Larson admits. But he managed to keep the temptation at bay until August 1995, when he got wrapped up in the idea of putting out a publication of his own–one “centered on radio programming,” sort of a TV Guide for listeners. He planned to call it “RadioActive Chicago.” He needed start-up money. On August 24, 1995, he began to take it. According to Obis, Larson wrote himself two checks, one for $500 and one for $3,700. And then he wrote another check. And another. Typically, says Obis, he stole between $1,000 and $2,000 a week.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Paul Obis joined the staff as publisher in the summer of 1997. He knew the magazine biz inside and out. He had started Vegetarian Times in 1974 as a newsletter with three subscribers and turned it into a slick, successful magazine. Its circulation had reached 300,000 by the time he sold it in 1990. It didn’t take Obis long to realize that Larson had to go. “He was unable to provide me with monthly operating statements,” he says. “It was June and he had not yet filed 1996 taxes. He had an accounting system that nobody else in the office understood. Within two weeks I told Mr. Larson he should seek employment somewhere else.”
Upon hearing the news, Weinstein was angry at Larson, of course, but he was also somewhat delighted at what this might augur for the publication: “I thought, ‘Hey, we must be doing better than we thought we were.’”
He was in Tennessee in late February when he came across a number of “blowdowns”–fallen trees that obstruct the narrow trail. Rather than wait for someone to clear them away, Larson paid a guy with a VW van to take him to Hot Springs, North Carolina, where he met a woman whose trail name was Treasure. She accompanied Larson to the southernmost part of the trail, in Georgia, and there they began to hike north.
