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CENTRAL ARIZONA COLLEGE
DIRECTOR OF HEALTH INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

HILTON HEAD, S.C. — In the four months since John and Elizabeth Calvert vanished, their fate has remained as much a mystery as it was the day they disappeared.

Detectives still don't know whether the Hilton Head Island, S.C., couple is alive or dead, where they might be if — miraculously — they are alive, and what exactly led to their disappearance on March 3 after a business meeting with Dennis Gerwing, the only "person of interest" in the case.

Among those who knew the couple, there is a growing sense of frustration over the unknowns still surrounding the case.

Police last week gave the first hints that those unknowns are likely to linger; that the entire story may never be known — or will, at best, be some time in coming.

The twists and turns of the case have made it difficult to follow, but the main stumbling block was that Gerwing took his own life before he could be questioned in-depth.

"It's like putting a puzzle together," Beaufort County, S.C., Sheriff P.J. Tanner said in an interview. "There are pieces of the puzzle that are missing that we're hoping to find. We're doggedly trying to find the truth."

Perhaps the biggest disappointment are the final words penned by Gerwing, the chief financial officer of the property management company, The Club Group, which had handled many of the Calverts' business affairs.

Detectives initially hoped two suicide notes — described as nearly illegible and not very lucid — would help their investigation.

They didn't.

Gerwing used a serrated steak knife to kill himself hours before he was linked to the couple on March 11.

"The notes were not as helpful as we would have liked," Tanner said. "The content of the notes did not lead us to the areas we hoped they would ... . The more we're finding out about Dennis' life, the Calverts and The Club Group's financial issues, we have a better understanding of what the notes intended to say. But again, they really didn't help much."

Gerwing drank a bottle of wine before his death and had blood pressure medication in his system, but no other drugs that would explain the incoherent notes or grisly manner of death, Tanner said.

The contents of the notes have not been released.

Gerwing, 54, kept the books for John Calvert's four island businesses, which include the company that operates the Harbour Town Yacht Basin, a firm that manages 125 vacation properties and two ancillary boating companies.

Elizabeth Calvert, 45, is former vice-president of the UPS legal department in Atlanta and worked as a business attorney with HunterMaclean's office in Savannah, that state's largest law firm outside of its capital.

Sources have said Elizabeth Calvert, described as a "bulldog" of an attorney, discovered financial irregularities in her husband's companies and planned to confront Gerwing about them. John Calvert, 47, had severed his business relationship with Gerwing months before the disappearance. The couple met with Gerwing on March 3, the night before they disappeared.

Their car was found several days later in the parking lot of the Marriott hotel in Palmetto Dunes, S.C. Nothing in the car provided any clues or leads, authorities said.

In the weeks following his death, Gerwing's former employer, The Club Group, hired a forensic crisis accounting firm to examine the company's books. That audit found that Gerwing had embezzled $2.1 million from eight clients, including the Calverts, according to The Club Group.

Authorities still don't know whether anyone else was involved in the embezzlement.

Mark King, president of The Club Group and a longtime friend and business partner of Gerwing, contends the former chief financial officer acted alone. Detectives have not yet verified that.

Both the Beaufort County Sheriff's Office and the FBI are conducting separate financial investigations into the Calverts, Gerwing, The Club Group and "everyone that we feel is a part of this investigation," Tanner said. He declined to offer specific names beyond that.

Investigators have finished searching computers, BlackBerries and cell phone records obtained through search warrants and subpoenas, and continue to scour financial records subpoenaed from banks, the sheriff said.

"There's a lot of documentation that we've got to go through and it's taking a long time," Tanner said.

Detectives are continuing to hold off questioning a long list of people until that financial analysis is complete. Tanner said the inquiry has excluded some people initially of interest, but has also added new ones. Again, he declined to provide specifics.

"You want to know what questions to ask and you want to know when someone's lying to you," Tanner said. "Knowing the answers before you ask the question gives you that ability."

Information from the public has dwindled dramatically, considering that developments in case were once featured on most major cable news channels and covered regionally in newspapers.

One reason the case drew so much attention was because the players were people of means. The Calverts own the businesses, a yacht, airplane, an expensive car and a home in an upscale Atlanta neighborhood. Gerwing, a wine connoisseur, owned a $1.2 million home in Columbia, a power boat and a $430,000 house that backs up to the 17th tee at Dolphin Head Golf Club.

Because little new information has been released in two months, the buzz among the resort island's full-time residents has died down somewhat, but nearly everyone still has a theory about what happened. Residents and friends of the couple say they're frustrated with the lack of progress in the case.

What hasn't changed, according to Tanner, is the determination of his detectives.

"They're still aggressively going through records — bank records — looking for other leads and angles to investigate," he said. "No one wants to solve this case more than I do."

But even Tanner concedes the case may cool off, either temporarily or permanently.

"The case may go cold, but a cold case is not a closed case," he said. "The case will always be active until it's solved."

He acknowledged the public's thirst for new information, but said he has to balance what's released with the integrity of the investigation.

"There's going to be a point in time when I'm going to release probably 95 percent of this investigation to you," Tanner said. "There's going to be a day and time when I will sit down with the media and say, 'This is what we know and this is what we don't know.' But this case is nowhere near over."

Right now, no one knows when it will be.