With no lawyer and no money to hire one, Mark Jamiel descended the steps outside Warren Town Hall on July 10 and stood under a cloudless sky, trying to grasp what had just transpired inside.

Mr. Jamiel’s estranged younger brother, Jonathan Jamiel, and his attorney, Guido Salvadore, had just admitted a will into probate court that would leave the lion’s share of their mother’s estate to Jonathan. Marcelle Jamiel, the family matriarch who shared a portion of her home with her son Mark, and who died on June 9, left an estate valued at more than $1 million.

“I need a lawyer,” said Mark Jamiel, as the sun beat down. “I don’t know what to do. I need someone to take me on a contingency basis.” His gaze drifted down the sidewalk as if an answer might walk up to him, then he added —

“Jonathan has been through a lot of lawyers in just the past few days. None of them want to do what he wants them to do, so he fires them. They have ethics.”

Mr. Jamiel, who is 55 years old, has lived in the family home at 33 Miller St. his entire life and claims to have been his mother’s principle caregiver: taking her grocery shopping, chaperoning visits to the doctor and seeing to her general welfare. He said he had been caring for his mother since she and Jonathan found their father, Amon Jamiel, shot to death while taking a shower at home 30 years ago in 1978, an unsolved murder that remains an open investigation — there were two Grand Jury investigations in the case, the last of which investigated Jonathan in 1986 and identified him as a suspect in his father’s murder; however, due to tainted proceedings and lack of evidence, the Grand Jury did not indict him.

The will, dated and signed on Dec. 28, 2005, by Ms. Jamiel and her attorney, James Reilly, entitles Jonathan, who lives in Providence, to the family home and all of its furnishings, in addition to $50,000 and any residuals. A third brother, who lives in Florida, James “Allan” Jamiel, the eldest, is bequeathed $50,000. Mark Jamiel receives $15,000.

When asked why the will so heavily favored Jonathan, a shadow passed over Mark Jamiel’s face. He reached into an attaché and pulled out a newspaper clipping of an obituary for his mother, steering attention to a paragraph that mentions their father Amon’s death. His finger fell on a sentence in which Jonathan had been named a suspect in his murder.

Reaching in again, he presented two arrest records for Jonathan, printed from the state judiciary board’s website, that show him charged with filing false reports. As he returned the items to their place, he also accused Jonathan, who Marcelle once filed a restraining order against in November 2004 for stomping on her ankle, of intimidating their mother. Mark Jamiel’s lips curled into a tight, wry smile, his eyes unblinking.

“Welcome to my nightmare,” he said.

Last will contested; appealfiled in Superior Court

At the next probate hearing on Aug. 6, Mark Jamiel appeared with an attorney, Matthew Slepkow (Mr. Slepkow declined to say how he was being compensated), who said an appeal was to be filed in Superior Court regarding the December 2005 will. He also asked to submit an earlier will, created and signed five months earlier, on July 29, 2005.

Mr. Slepkow was told by Probate Court Judge Marvin Homonoff that the earlier will could not be heard because the December 2005 will was already admitted at the first hearing.

Mr. Slepkow then asked the judge to allow Mark to be the next natural executor of the will, as was the stated wish of James “Allan” Jamiel, who Marcelle had originally named as executor. (James “Allan” declined the position in a letter he wrote to the probate court this June, because of the complexity of the estate and because he lives in Florida, making the will difficult to administer.)

Mr. Salvadore and Richard Corley, another lawyer Jonathan hired to represent him, protested to Judge Homonoff by arguing Mark Jamiel would present a conflict of interest and would not be a neutral party and therefore should not be named the executor. Mr. Salvadore suggested that Mr. Reilly, who had served as Ms. Jamiel’s lawyer and power of attorney before she died, would be a fair and neutral choice as the administrator of the will. The judge agreed and named Mr. Reilly the administrator. He said that Mr. Reilly was to begin the “marshalling” of the admitted will while the appeal process takes place.

“I’m not going to micromanage this case,” said Judge Homonoff, who stated he is going to trust Mr. Reilley and allow him to make the necessary decisions regarding the administering of the will. If there is a dispute, he said, it will be heard later.

The judge then asked Mr. Reilly what the total worth of the estate was, and Mr. Reilly replied that Marcelle’s cash assests totaled $630,000 and the house’s assessed value was $470,000, though fire insurance places it closer to $800,000.

Before he adjourned the hearing, Judge Homonoff added one more thing — communications between everybody involved should be conducted through their respective attorneys due to the potential “emotional” nature of the case.

“Let’s not make this case anymore unusual than it already is,” he said.

Previous will dividesestate more equally

The July 2005 will, in which Mark was named the executor, stipulates that all of Marcelle’s stocks and certificates of deposit be divided equally between Mark and Jonathan. Jonathan was also to be given $200,000, while Mark was to receive $150,000 to be “used for the repair of the house and the associated structures (which were, along with all of their contents, gifted to him during my lifetime), and for the improvement of his own personal life style,” states the will.

According to town records, Ms. Jamiel had deeded the property to Mark in December 2004. Two years later, however, ownership of the property returned to Ms. Jamiel when she began legal proceedings against him to get it back.

“I didn’t fight it,” said Mark, when asked about it after the first hearing on July 10. “She’s my mother — she wants it back? Fine.”

A possible explanation for her change of mind exists in the same letter James Allan Jamiel sent to the probate court this June, after he expressed his wish to have Mark named executor of the December 2005 will.

He wrote that his mother “was very concerned that the ownership of her home would leave the family, and she was adamant against the transfer of this home to anyone outside our immediate family.” James Allan continued, with a note of suspicion, that “from my conversations with my mother, I learned that she somehow had been led to believe that leaving the family home to Mark would allow the home to leave the family upon his [Mark’s] death, but this transfer of the home would not occur if she left it to Jonathan.”

While he believed his mother had been influenced, he does not say by whom. James Allan stated further that “although Mark tended to her well being and daily needs, from my conversations with my mother, she somehow had been led to believe that Mark was conspiring against her and was about to accuse her of criminal conduct concerning a matter 30 years ago.” She had also been “led to believe that Jonathan would be unable to work and support himself and that he would perish in poverty and homeless if not left the most significant assets of the estate. On the other hand, she was led to believe that Mark would be able to take care of himself financially since he was accustomed to working.”

(Mark said he has been employed at the same job for over 20 years, but did not mention his occupation. When Jonathan was asked if he had a job he replied that he “worked with investments.” Both men did not wish to reveal their places of employment.)

The July 2005 will left James Allan Jamiel $50,000. He told their mother when she was preparing her will that he was financially stable, lived in Florida with no intention of leaving and had no interest in the “homestead,” and “her other two sons were in greater need than my own,” he wrote in the same letter.

The appeal

The appeal of the December 2005 will was filed on Aug. 12 in Rhode Island Superior Court.

“We feel Jonathan exerted undo influence on his mother,” said Mark’s lawyer, Mr. Slepkow, referring to the time period when the December 2005 will was prepared and signed.

While Mark and Marcelle lived in the same house, they did not live together. Mark paid his mother $700 a month in rent to live in a back section of the home that had its own entrance. It was also connected to Marcelle’s front section of the house through a shared door. Mr. Slepkow maintains that Jonathan visited her frequently in the past few years while Mark remained in his portion of the house.

“He had the means [to influence her]. He was alone with her many times and he is of the nature to exert violence and to be intimidating,” said Mr. Slepkow.

Jonathan responded by saying, “That’s false. Because at the time of the will, she was alone with Mark, and I had no contact with her.”

The restraining order that Marcelle had filed against Jonathan in November 2004 for stomping on her ankle was part of that intimidation, said Mr. Slepkow.

“That’s proof that she was in fear of bodily harm from Jonathan,” said Mr. Slepkow. It’s a continuance of the “violent behavior that he’s had directly against his mother and other authorative figures in his life.” Marcelle later lifted the restraining order, claiming it was a mistake, according to a town record. Mr. Slepkow speculates that Jonathan influenced that decision.

The Mark Jamiel appeal also challenges Marcelle’s state of mind.

“We [also] feel she was of unsound mind,” said Mr. Slepkow. She was elderly and, at the time of the December 2005 will, on various medications, he said. Before she died in June, Marcelle suffered from dementia and Mr. Slepkow questions her lucidity at the time of signing in December 2005.

Mr. Reilly feels differently.

“She was always changing her mind,” he said, with a shrug. “She was in a clear mental state.”

According to a medical document filed with the town, Marcelle was given a Mini-Mental-State Examination at the Barrington Urgent Care Center on Dec. 29, 2005 — the same date she signed her last will. The physician who gave the test, Dr. Marcia Robitaille, stated that it was a screening test for dementia and that Marcelle was “alert, orientated and making decisions for herself.” She was also informed that she needed to follow up with a primary care doctor.

Mr. Slepkow challenged the motive of the examination. “It strikes me as peculiar that they had a mental evaluation at the time of the will,” he said.

A recent psychological assessment, conducted on May 29, 2008, gave Marcelle a prognosis of a gradual but steady mental decline. The examination concluded that she was unaware of her condition, her medication, surroundings and that “she is unaware or in denial of family conflict which exists in her family between her sons.”

Mr. Slepkow believes Marcelle could have been experiencing the initial onset of dementia when her last will was signed. He argues that she might have appeared coherent only sporadically.

“Several people have said that she was wishy-washy and wavered on her disposition of her estate,” said Mr. Slepkow. He did not want to disclose the names of those people in light of the appeal.

Mr. Slepkow said that if the appeal is won, he will ask that the July 2005 will be admitted into the probate court.

Jonathan says Mark ‘tricked’ Marcelle

According to Jonathan, he lived together with Mark and his mother until 2004, when “[Mark] made some false accusations and chased me out with false arrests,” he said. Jonathan said the charges were all dismissed. Those records have since been expunged.

 Warren Times-Gazette archives reveal that Jonathan plead no contest to filing a false police report on May 27, 2004. Jonathan had told police in March 2003 that Mark had threatened him inside the family home with the gun used to murder their father. Police determined through gas station and grocery store receipts that Mark was in Massachusetts at the time of the alleged threats. The case was filed for one year.

“As soon as he got me out of the way, Mark started taking her money and making out phony wills,” said Jonathan. “She was a sitting duck.”

Jonathan provided his opinion as to why his mother had a sudden change of heart when she signed the December 2005 will.

“She had incriminating evidence that led her to believe he committed the murder,” he said. And why did she create and sign the July 2005 will?

“Mark finagled her,” he said. “And he tricked her into signing it.”

Jonathan did not elaborate on the exact nature of the “evidence.” He continued to say that if the appeal is won and Mark submits the July will into probate court, it will fail.

“He could never win that,” said Jonathan. “We (Jonathan and his lawyers) have information that proves he committed the murder. There’s a lot of information we have on Mark — he could never win that.” Jonathan became vague when asked what that information was, alluding to an accusation of mail tampering committed by Mark. He suggested talking to a private investigator that his attorney, Mr. Corley, had hired.

When the investigator, Joseph Richardson Jr., was contacted he did not wish to comment and referred all questions to Jonathan’s attorneys. Mr. Corley did not return phone calls. An investigation report filed at the town hall, however, states that Mr. Richardson “was not able to identify the source of missing and/or tampered mail” concerning the accusation.

When asked what kind of relationship he had with mother, Jonathan paused, then simply replied, “I appreciated her.”

He was also possessive. Before Marcelle passed away, Mark was seeking temporary guardianship of her in probate court so he could make decisions regarding her health and well-being. The following is part of an affidavit from a constable, Thomas Noury, who attempted to deliver a notice of temporary guardianship on behalf of Mark to Marcelle while she was hospitalized days before she died on June 9:

“On June 4, I was asked to serve notice on temporary guardianship upon one Marcelle Jamiel at Rhode Island Hospital. I asked to speak with the charge nurse to inform him of the reason of being there. That individual indicated that Jonathan Jamiel was in the building and asked that I speak with him first.

“I was approached by Jonathan Jamiel, who instructed me to immediately leave the hospital or he would sue me, the hospital and everyone else in the hospital who assisted me in serving the notice. I then spoke with [hospital staff] who stated that in light of the entire situation I would not be allowed to serve [Marcelle].

“Mr. Jamiel also made disparaging remarks and threats to me, stating ‘if the law did not take care of it he would take the law into his own hands.’ ”

Mr. Noury never served the notice.

What’s next?

Attorneys from both sides convened again on Aug. 27 to discuss Jonathan’s desire to have immediate control of the home and to evict Mark while the probate process continues.

Mr. Corley argued that Mark has not paid the $700 rent since the passing of his mother.

“[Mark] is basically a squatter,” said Mr. Corley to the judge. “He has no legal claim to the house and he is staying there because he has the only set of keys to the house.”

(Outside the steps of town hall after the July 10 probate hearing, Gary Budlong, a neighbor who lives on Miller Street across from the Jamiel house, said he repeatedly watched Jonathan attempt entry into the house with keys that did not work.)

Mr. Reilly, however, told the court he was comfortable having Mark remain in the house so long as he resumes paying the rent.

“I would like to have someone in there,” said Mr. Reilly in a later conversation. “I’d rather have a tenant.”

Mr. Slepkow said Mark is mentally preparing to one day be required to leave.

It was determined at the hearing that Mr. Reilly would be allowed access into the home in order to take inventory of its furnishings in the company of the counsel for all parties. That was scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 2, at 2 p.m.

Epilogue

Regarding Amon’s murder, Police Chief Thomas Gordon said the investigation is still open.

“A murder investigation is never closed,” said the chief, and he mentioned that he has two men working on it. “The department is going to continue to vigorously investigate this murder.”

Mark and Jonathan both declined to be photographed outside the family home for this story. Jonathan was helpful, however, in suggesting that a photo of him could be found on a website that claims to provide a public list of judicial and prosecutorial misconducts, as well as civil rights and ethics violations in R.I.

“If you want a photo of me, just go online and type in caught.net,” he said.