And so this story closes far from where it began — in an Atlanta church, miles from the coastal marina where two people lost their lives after creating new ones. Sunday, 20 months after the apparent murders of John and Elizabeth Calvert, friends and family will gather to mourn them.
They live in memory only, in snapshots of happier times and on dated Web sites. Their names come up in disparate places — in college board rooms, at a dockside bar. An Atlanta lawyer says she can’t delete Liz’s telephone number from her cellphone. A South Carolina dock manager says she’s reminded of John every day she sees his boat, still bobbing in its slip.
Theirs was a life enterprise that grew from Atlanta to Hilton Head Island, S.C.: John, the detail-oriented Atlanta businessman who bought a marina; and Liz, a keen and quick-witted attorney. The Calverts, who’ve not been seen since March 3, 2008, were embarked on an adventure built for two. It wasn’t supposed to end in a hushed sanctuary where people pray for lost friends.
“We all miss them dearly,” Elizabeth Calvert’s brother, Decatur resident David White, said in an e-mail last week. “We are all pained by what has happened to them.”
A DeKalb judge last month ruled the couple, owners of Harbour Town Yacht Basin as well as other businesses, were dead. But what precisely happened to them remains as much a mystery now as early last year, when a business meeting apparently turned deadly.
Sudden disappearance
Something was wrong with the figures, Liz Calvert confided to her friend and former colleague, Teri McClure. She and John were going to meet with accountant Dennis Gerwing about funds they believed were missing from their island enterprises, collectively known as Harbour Town Holdings.
“I said, ‘I hope you’re meeting him in a public place,’ ” recalled McClure, who worked closely for 14 years with Liz Calvert at UPS in Atlanta until Calvert quit to devote more attention to the couple’s coastal businesses. “She laughed and said she was.”
The Calverts were last seen on Hilton Head Island on March 3, a Monday, heading for a late-afternoon meeting with Gerwing.
The next day, John was missing from his offices at Harbour Town, and Liz didn’t show up at HunterMaclean, the Savannah law firm where she worked. Worried harbor employees checked the Yellow Jacket, the 40-foot Hatteras yacht where the couple stayed during their increasingly lengthy visits to the coast. They found only T.C., the Calverts’ cat.
Investigators with the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office got busy. They tracked to a local airport a small airplane Liz flew. It was undisturbed. The couple’s car, a 2006 Mercedes-Benz E320, turned up six miles from the harbor. It, too, produced few clues.
An inquiry into Gerwing’s financial dealings yielded more. Gerwing, 54, was chief financial officer of The Club Group, a property and finance-management firm whose clients included the Calverts. He also was an embezzler.
Rumors flew, even as investigators narrowed their focus: The Calverts had ditched their commitments and fled to a remote isle; they had entered the federal witness protection program.
Investigators, meantime, built a case against Gerwing, and declared him a “person of interest” in the case. On March 11, Gerwing picked up a steak knife and ended his life. He left two notes, one unintelligible, the other damning.
“I have acted completely alone in all actions committed,” wrote Gerwing. “I knew the risk of this happening and believe taking myself out of the game is the best way to move everyone as quickly as possible past all events.”
Investigators said Gerwing had bought three heavy-duty drop cloths and a box of latex gloves. They’ve never been found. Deputies also discovered the empty holster for Gerwing’s Beretta .22-caliber handgun, also missing. He’d stolen $2.2 million from The Club Group, including nearly $120,000 from the Calverts. Gerwing, say authorities, was the killer.
Case closed?
Beaufort County Sheriff P.J. Tanner said his office is still investigating. Chris Wagner, who tends bar at the Crazy Crab restaurant at Harbour Town, hears the talk.
“I got questions about the Calverts every day for a year,” said Wagner, who routinely served the two lunch at the bar, John eating hot dogs, his wife reaching for a hamburger. “I still do.”
The most persistent query these days: Could a sedentary, middle-aged accountant have carried out two killings by himself?
Followed closely by another: Where are they now?
Wagner paused. “There’s a lot of water out there,” he said.
‘Just great people’
He was a Georgia Tech engineering grad, class of 1983, trim and tanned. She was graduated the next year from Converse College in South Carolina, and got her law degree from the University of Georgia in 1987. Like many Georgia couples, they teased each other about their state rivalries. Their banter, said friends, underscored a deep affection.
“They had energy, intelligence, they were capable,” said Nancy Cappelmann, who manages Harbour Town Yacht Basin. “They were just great people.”
Active, too. The Calverts, who split time between Harbour Town and their home on Brookhaven Drive here, threw themselves into civic events. In 2007, John, 47, headed the Yacht Hop, an annual fund-raiser for a coastal hospice. He corralled about 15 yacht owners who agreed to let people tour their boats, eat and drink. “It was successful, too,” said Cappelmann.
Cappelmann is reminded daily of those happier times. She only has to walk past their yacht, still moored, pointing toward the sea. At the height of the mystery, passers-by stopped and took photos of it.
“Everyone,” she said, “misses them.”
Jim Stokes feels the loss, too. He was executive director of the Georgia Conservancy when Liz Calvert was a member of the environmental group’s board of trustees. He recalled a trip they took to Little St. Simon’s Island: She regaled others with her wit, her curiosity.
“She just made a huge contribution here,” said Stokes, of Atlanta. “They were a great team.”
After the 46-year-old woman went missing, conservancy employees kept her name listed on the Web site; call it a corporate version of crossing your fingers. Late last year, after months of hoping, they finally removed it.
“We were tremendously reluctant to do that,” Stokes said.
McClure, the former colleague at UPS, understands. Her cellphone still contains Liz Calvert’s number. Will she delete it?
“I don’t know, maybe not,” McClure said. “Maybe it’s memories.”
Wishes for peace, closure
No one, perhaps, has more memories than White, Liz’s brother. When he learned his sister and brother-in-law were missing, he rallied friends, talked to investigators and watched a reward fund for information leading to their whereabouts and safe return grow past $65,000. No one ever claimed any of the cash, and it recently shut down. The cash will be returned to donors or forwarded to memorial scholarships in the Calverts’ names.
For White, the case closed three weeks ago, when a DeKalb probate judge officially declared the two dead. John Calvert’s aunt and White, who took over administering the Calverts’ enterprises not long after they vanished, had sought the ruling. Though the judge granted the request, it was a hard day.
“My best memories of Liz and John are around the Christmas tree, around the dinner table, and around the living room, sharing good time together as only families can do,” White wrote.
Sunday is set aside for those memories, and more.
“I wish this memorial service will give Liz and John peace as we turn them over to God,” wrote White. “And I wish all the family and friends of Liz and John personal peace, and some sense of closure.”
The service, for family and friends of the Calverts, is at 2 p.m. at Northside United Methodist Church. There, people will gather, and pray, and remember two new lives, lost too soon.
Scholarships named for couple
● Converse College in South Carolina has established the Liz White Calvert '84 Spirit of Converse Scholarship. Calvert, who served on the college's board of trustees from 2004 until her death, was active in the school's $75 million fund-raising campaign. (https://www.converse.edu/Giving/ecommerce_form.asp)
● The Beta Theta Pi foundation, a nonprofit arm of John Calvert's fraternity at Georgia Tech, plans to administer the John L. Calvert Memorial Scholarship, an award given to Tech students who are members of Beta Theta Pi. (www.betathetapi.org/gift )
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