[NEohioPAL]Be careful who you get involved with.........

[Barry Wakser]

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Super sleuth/plagiarist Detective Jack L. Herman has been placed on paid
administrative leave by the Portage County Sheriff's Department pending
investigation by that office into his theft and deceit.

For an amusing look at how Mr. Herman attempted to exonerate himself, read
the transcript of his telephone interview with David Staples of the Edmonton
Journal at
http://communities.canada.com/edmontonjournal/blogs/cultofpop/archive/2007/05/07/the-strange-case-of-the-plagiarizing-police-officer.aspx

Barry

On 5/11/07, vanbrujah at aol.com <vanbrujah at aol.com> wrote:
>
>  I'd have to agree with Mike and Ike - I can't believe it took this long
> for someone to catch him.
> I guess karma is real.
>
> I'd suspect someone burned by Jack may have passed this info along to the
> local.
> I heard about it a few weeks ago.
>
> Origin of Portage detective's play no mystery
> Thursday, May 10, 2007 Tony Brown
> *Plain Dealer Theater Critic*
>  Sherlock Holmes is a detective who catches thieves in stories.
>  Jack L. Herman, a detective in real life for the Portage County Sheriff's
> Office in Ravenna, made up a story of his own: that he wrote a play titled
> "The Unexpected Return of Sherlock Holmes," produced by two theaters in
> Northeast Ohio and one in Los Angeles.
>  But the ending of Herman's real-life story has a twist: It's all a story.
> The cop is a thief, a liar and a bad speller.
>  The 18-year veteran police officer stole the play, almost scene for
> scene, character for character and word for word, from a Canadian playwright
> named David Belke. In 1992, Belke wrote a play titled "The Reluctant
> Resurrection of Sherlock Holmes," eight years before Herman's play ever hit
> the stage.
>  Herman, reached at the Portage County Sheriff's Office Wednesday, refused
> to comment. He referred questions to his lawyer, David A. Sed, but the
> lawyer did not return telephone calls. The story was first reported Sunday
> in Canada's Edmonton Journal.
>  When Herman was caught last fall, he confessed his plagiarism in an
> e-mail full of misspellings to a now-former friend who runs the theater in
> Los Angeles that staged the play.
>  "As you've probably already guessed, I am guilty of plagurizing [sic] . .
> .," Herman wrote on Sept. 27 to former Northeast Ohio actor Bill Wolski,
> whose Torrance, Calif.-based Coconut Productions had opened a production of
> Herman's Sherlock Holmes play just a few days earlier.
>  "When you asked me for permission to produce this work, I wanted to say
> no," Herman wrote. "But I didn't know how. By that time the lie was set."
>  Belke and his literary agent, Dale Harney, both of Edmonton, recently
> received a check for $2,500 in damages from Herman to fulfill an
> out-of-court settlement that avoided a costly international copyright
> lawsuit, Harney said Wednesday from his office.
>  In his e-mail to Wolski, in his explanations to Belke and Harney, and in
> an interview with the Edmonton Journal, Herman explained that he stole
> Belke's play to help keep alive his Kent-based community theater, the Tree
> City Players, where Herman's play was staged in 2000 and 2002.
>  But Belke, reached at home in Edmonton, said he would have let the
> company have the play for free or a reduced rate of a few hundred dollars.
>  "That's the real shame," said Belke, who earned as much as $40,000 for a
> successful run of his play last year at a dinner theater in Edmonton. "None
> of this need to have happened."
>  The playwright, his agent and Wolski all said they would regret it if
> Herman - who has a history of money problems, according to court papers -
> lost his job because of his plagiarism. But they all said they felt a duty
> to expose it.
>  "I understand [his problems now] completely, and I'm sorry for that,"
> said Belke, who based his play on a character created by Sir Arthur Conan
> Doyle, and came up with an original adventure for the famous detective.
>  "But this is a hole he managed to dig all by himself, and he knew exactly
> what he was doing. He's been profiting off stolen goods for quite some time
> now and continued to profit off ill-gotten goods."
>  Portage County Sheriff Duane Kaley expressed surprise Wednesday when told
> about Herman's plagiarism. He said he would decide what, if anything, to do
> about it after investigating. "I knew he fiddled around in theater, but I
> had no idea about this."
>  In addition to the two Tree City productions, Herman's Sherlock Holmes
> play was produced at another Northeast Ohio community theater, the Stow
> Players, in November 2005. Gene Stebbins, who directed the Stow production,
> said Herman was paid royalties. It is unclear whether Herman made money from
> Tree City and Coconut Productions.
>  In addition, Belke and Harney say their evidence indicates Herman also
> stole other Canadian works. They provided invoices dated in 1999 from what
> was then called Playwrights Union of Canada that show Herman bought a copy
> of the script of Belke's Sherlock Holmes play along with five other scripts.
>
>  Buying scripts, which cost Herman $91.80 with shipping, entitles the
> purchaser to read but not produce a play. Production royalties are purchased
> separately.
>  The scripts Herman purchased in 1999 included "Suddenly Shakespeare" a
> 1988 work by Kim Selody of the Canadian city of St. Catharines. Herman
> produced a play with the same title in 2000, but he says he wrote it
> himself. But both Harney and the Edmonton Journal examined the two
> Shakespeare scripts, and say Herman copied Selody word for word. Selody was
> traveling Wednesday night and could not be reached.
>  Wolski said he has 13 other scripts by Herman, and he now suspects
> they're all plagiarized.
>  As a Kent policeman in 1992, Herman shot and killed a murder suspect who
> fired on Kent State University police officers attempting to arrest him.
>  Herman has been sued several times by creditors ranging from a hairline
> replacement transplant company and a mortgage holder. He divorced in 2005.
>  His downfall as a playwright began when a Sherlock Holmes fan noticed a
> similarity between the plot of Herman's play and Belke's after an
> announcement of last fall's L.A. production went up on a Holmes Web site.
>  Wolski was forced to shut down the Herman play after only two
> performances.
>  "Jack and I were real good friends," Wolski said. "But he's a real piece
> of work. I'm not that angry. I'm just ashamed of knowing anyone who would do
> something like this."
>  Plain Dealer News Researcher JoEllen Corrigan contributed to this story.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blane at neo.rr.com
> To: neohiopal at lists.fredsternfeld.com
> Sent: Thu, 10 May 2007 7:31 PM
> Subject: [NEohioPAL]Be careful who you get involved with.........
>
>
>       Case of the Purloined Play THE PLOT THICKENS / When acclaimed local
> writer David Belke learned that a play shockingly similar to his own was
> being staged in Los Angeles, he and his agent were hot on the trail of the
> perpetrator
>  David Staples, The Edmonton JournalPublished: Sunday, May 06, 2007
> EDMONTON - David Belke's hit play The Reluctant Resurrection of Sherlock
> Holmes is known for its clever plot, but it has nothing on the twists in the
> true-life tale that unfolded after Belke discovered the play had been
> plagiarized.
> In recent months, Belke and his agent, Dale Harney, have used their own
> detective skills to track down and nail the culprit, Jack L. Herman of Kent,
> Ohio, a serial plagiarist of the theatre world and a man who carries around
> a terrible secret.
> Belke's investigation into Herman started last fall -- at 12:55 p.m. on
> Sept. 25, 2006, to be precise -- when Belke got an e-mail from one Peter E.
> Blau of Bethesda, Md., who wrote: "The Unexpected Return of Sherlock Holmes,
> a comedy by Jack L. Herman, is being performed at the Sierra Stage in West
> Hollywood, and it appears to be a slightly revised version of your The
> Reluctant Resurrection of Sherlock Holmes (1992) ... Please tell me more
> ..."
> [image: View Larger Image] View Larger Image Edmonton playwright David
> Belke, right, and his agent, Dale Harney. The pair hunted down the
> perpetrator who plagiarized Belke's hit play, The Reluctant Resurrection of
> Sherlock Holmes. John Lucas, The Journal[image: Email to a friend]Email to
> a friend[image: Printer friendly]Printer friendly Font:
>
>     - *
>    - *
>    - *
>    - *
>
> Belke had never heard of Peter E. Blau, who turned out to be an avid
> Holmes fan. Belke didn't know what to make of Blau's curious e-mail. "I was
> really quite puzzled by it. What he was saying was so weird."
> Belke's 1992 play had been a runaway hit at Edmonton's Fringe Theatre
> Festival and elsewhere. A month-long run at Edmonton's Mayfield Theatre in
> 2005 had earned Belke $40,000, the biggest payday of his long and acclaimed
> career as a playwright. The play has been staged in several other cities by
> other theatre companies, who paid Belke the standard fee, 10 per cent of the
> house for professional companies, about five per cent for amateur companies,
> which amounted to paydays of a few hundreds dollars to a few thousand
> dollars for the playwright.
> The play itself revolves around a haunted country manor, Baffleur Grange.
> Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the famed Sherlock Holmes books, is called in
> to solve the mystery of the haunting, only to find himself haunted by the
> character of Holmes, whom he had grown tired of and had stopped writing
> about a few years earlier.
> On the Internet, Belke could only find a few descriptions of this new
> Holmes play in the What's On section of the Los Angeles Times. The
> descriptions provided little information, but one blurb did say that
> Unexpected Return was set at Baffleur Manor, which seemed odd to Belke. It
> was possible, he realized, that another playwright could have come up with
> the same idea as he had for a play about Doyle and Holmes, but the
> similarity of the names of the settings in the two plays, Baffleur Manor and
> Baffleur Grange, made him wonder if something more was afoot.
> At once, Belke called Harney, who for the past 18 months had been trying
> to sell Reluctant Resurrection as a movie-of-the-week franchise in
> Hollywood. Harney offered to use his L.A. contacts to find out more about
> Unexpected Return and its producers, Coconut Productions.
> Harney found a website for Coconut that listed the characters in
> Unexpected Return: Holmes, Doyle, Desmond, Abigail and Rose Westhaven,
> Robert Scrimshaw and others. Only one name was different than the names of
> the characters in Belke's play, that of Tomas Markoveitch, who had been
> rechristened with a French first name, Dumas Markoveitch.
> Harney tracked down Coconut's producer, Bill Wolski, a used-car buyer and
> aspiring actor and writer, who had moved to Hollywood from Ohio in 2002 to
> pursue a theatrical career.
> Wolski didn't know what to make of Harney's story. Coconut was a small
> theatre company, he told Harney, just a bunch of budding actors who had
> chosen a play they loved, one that had been written by Wolski's good friend,
> Jack L. Herman, who still lived in Ohio. Herman had staged the play with
> amateur companies in Ohio several times, Wolski said, first in 1999, then in
> 2000, 2002 and 2005.
> This had to be a misunderstanding, Wolski thought to himself. He was sure
> Herman had written the play because when Herman was at work on the script
> back in 1999, he had approached Wolski and told him he was writing in one
> particular character, Dumas, with Wolski in mind for the part.
> Wolski also knew that Herman was quite vigilant about protecting copyright
> of his plays and had stapled to the front page of every script a note that
> said, "Copyright, 1999 Herman Plays & Publications. Caution: Professionals
> and amateurs are hereby warned that The Unexpected Return of Sherlock Holmes
> is subject to royalty. It is fully protected under copyright laws."
> Wolski called Herman to sort out the matter. As soon as Wolski described
> Harney's allegations, Herman sounded sad, and a bit angry.
> "Well, I guess I should have seen this coming," he told Wolski. "You being
> out in L.A. and producing my play and giving it as much publicity as you
> can, someone was bound to try and ride my coattails.
> "I guess I should have gotten myself a lawyer before this happened,
> knowing it very well could happen. Someone is obviously trying to lay claim
> to my intellectual property."
> That evening of Sept. 25, Wolski again talked to Harney, and the two went
> over the scripts of the two plays, Harney reading lines from Belke's
> version, Wolski checking them with Herman's version. The two plays started
> differently, but only because Herman had axed Belke's short opening scene.
> After that, the two plays ran almost word for word the same. Harney would
> read one line, only to have Wolski finish it.
> "Oh my God, this can't be," Wolski said at last. "I can't believe this."
> But, a moment later, the reality sunk in. "This is definitely a case of
> plagiarism. There is no doubt about it."
> The next morning, Wolski called Herman and told him: "These scripts are
> very, very similar."
> Herman didn't deny it, but had an explanation. He had been working with
> others on the script over the Internet, sending them copies to get their
> feedback and input. Someone in Canada must have seen his script and decided
> to put their own copyright on it, he said, essentially alleging that Belke
> was the thief, not him.
> Wolski told Herman he had better call Harney and Belke to sort out this
> mess.
> While Harney was dealing with Wolski and Herman, David Belke was doing his
> own sleuthing.
> Hearing that Herman had first staged the play in 1999, Belke immediately
> wondered how the Ohio man had ever gotten his hands on the script. Belke had
> written his play on a typewriter. There were no electronic copies of it.
> The most likely source, Belke decided, was the Playwrights Union of
> Canada, which sells copies of Canadian plays around the world. He contacted
> the union, and soon received a faxed copy of an invoice for six plays,
> including Reluctant Resurrection, sold to Jack Herman of Kent, Ohio, in
> 1999.
> Harney was armed with this invoice when Herman called him on Sept. 26. At
> once, Herman launched into a rambling story about how he had been writing a
> play and collaborating with other people on the Internet, and that one of
> them must have stolen much of Belke's play without telling him, so that
> explained the similarities between the two works.
> "Jack," Harney said, trying to stop Herman's babbling.
> "Jack," he repeated, but still Herman continued his rapid-fire
> explanation.
> "JACK!"
> At last Herman shut up.
> "Jack. I am holding the invoices from the Canadian playwrights union as we
> speak. The Reluctant Resurrection of Sherlock Holmes is right there."
> There was a long pause.
> At last, Herman spoke. "I'm sorry. I lied. I plagiarized it."
> A short time later, Herman called Belke to apologize. Belke asked him why
> he had stolen the play.
> "We were a small community theatre company and we couldn't afford the
> rights to your play," Herman said. "So we just did it without your
> permission."
> "So that's why you performed my play," Belke said. "But why did you put
> your name on my play?"
> "Well, I put my name on the play because I thought the community would be
> more likely to get behind the work of a local playwright."
> By then, Belke realized he wasn't dealing with a professional theatre
> artist. "Obviously, you're in amateur theatre," he told Herman. "Jack, just
> what do you do for a living?"
> Again, there was a long pause and silence.
> And that's when Herman revealed his terrible secret.
> "I know this is going to sound bad," he said. "I'm a police officer. A
> detective."
> Belke could feel the synapses in his brain misfiring for a moment. "You're
> kidding!" he roared.
> "No, no," Herman said quietly.
> Belke had one other thing to ask: why had Herman changed the first name of
> the Polish character Tomas Markoveitch? "You didn't change a word, but why
> in God's name did you change the name of that character to Dumas?" he said,
> giving the name a French pronunciation.
> "I just thought the character was such a dumb ass," Herman replied, "so I
> changed his name to dumb ass."
> Now, to understand Belke's reaction, you have to understand the proud and
> prickly artistic temperament. Belke loved his Tomas Markoveitch character
> and now this plagiarist, this philistine, had literally changed him into a
> dumb ass.
> "I must admit that at that single moment I had never hated a man more in
> my life," Belke says.
> Next, Herman called Wolski to apologize, but Wolski refused to answer the
> phone. Instead, Herman e-mailed him a note riddled with misspellings: "I am
> guilty of plagurizing Mr. Belke's work. I never meant to hurt anyone. ...
> But I am sorry Bill.
> "... I have brought shame on myself, my family and my friends. I may loose
> my job, my home ... everything. But one of the things that I regret the most
> though is compemising your trust in me as a friend. I want you to know that
> it has never been easy knowing that I didn't write this work."
> Herman repeated his claim he only plagiarized to help his struggling
> theatre company, but
> Wolski didn't buy it. He clearly recalls Herman being proud of his Holmes
> play and promoting the play to various theatre companies.
> Wolski and his own L.A. company decided to cancel their run of the play,
> refund the ticket money, and send out a press release outlining Herman's
> plagiarism. To this day, Wolski refuses to accept Herman's apology.
> "I haven't spoken to him since. I absolutely refuse to. I think he's a
> liar. I think of him as a bad person."
> Having uncovered Herman's plagiarism, Harney and Belke were determined to
> make him pay. "It's less about the money," Belke says. "It's more he
> kidnapped my child and tried to pass it off as his own. It was a theft of
> something I hold dear to my heart.
> "On the one hand, you've got to admire the man's chutzpah, the sheer
> idiotic courage that he felt he could get away with it. But the fact of the
> matter is, he did get away with it for seven years. Probably what he was
> thinking is: who in Canada is going to notice?"
> Belke also knew that in 1999 Herman had purchased five other plays, and
> several of them had the exact same names as other plays that Herman was now
> claiming as his own. If Belke didn't make a point with Herman, perhaps he
> would plagiarize many other works.
> In the end, Herman agreed to pay Belke $2,500 in an out-of-court
> settlement.
> Today, Jack Herman is at work at his policing job of 18 years at the
> Portage County Sheriff's Department, where he is in charge of concealed
> weapons permits.
> In a phone interview, he repeats he only plagiarized Belke's play to help
> a failing amateur theatre company. "I'm not a bad person, I just did a bad
> (thing)," Herman says. "... It didn't seem like it was going to affect or
> hurt anybody. Of course, looking back now, I realize it was completely the
> wrong thing to do. I wouldn't appreciate it if someone had done it to me."
> Herman says he was "a little shocked" the matter was still being talked
> about after he had settled with Belke. "Obviously, with my professional
> career, I don't want to have this kind of problem."
> Herman says he has, in fact, written several plays. But did he plagiarize
> any others?
> "No, no, that was the only play that I had that I needed to."
> But in 1999, he bought five other plays besides Belke's, including
> Suddenly Shakespeare, the 1988 play by Kim Selody of St. Catharines, Ont.
> Herman's theatre company produced a play with the same name in 2000, with
> Herman claiming authorship.
> Did he plagiarize that one?
> "No, I did not plagiarize that one, no."
> After talking with Herman, The Journal obtained copies of scripts from
> both Herman's version of Suddenly Shakespeare and Selody's version.
> The two plays are almost exactly the same, word for word.
> dstaples at thejournal.canwest.com
>
>
> (c) The Edmonton Journal 2007
>
>     - *other stories*<http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/sundayreader/>
>
>
>           ------------------------------
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<span style="font-family: georgia;">Super sleuth/plagiarist Detective Jack L. Herman has been placed on paid administrative leave by the Portage County Sheriff's Department pending investigation by that office into his theft and deceit.
</span><br style="font-family: georgia;"><br style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">For an amusing look at how Mr. Herman attempted to exonerate himself, read the transcript of his telephone interview with David Staples of the Edmonton Journal at
</span><br style="font-family: georgia;"><a style="font-family: georgia;" href="http://communities.canada.com/edmontonjournal/blogs/cultofpop/archive/2007/05/07/the-strange-case-of-the-plagiarizing-police-officer.aspx">http://communities.canada.com/edmontonjournal/blogs/cultofpop/archive/2007/05/07/the-strange-case-of-the-plagiarizing-police-officer.aspx
</a><br style="font-family: georgia;"><br style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Barry</span><br style="font-family: georgia;"><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 5/11/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">
<a href="mailto:vanbrujah at aol.com">vanbrujah at aol.com</a></b> <<a href="mailto:vanbrujah at aol.com">vanbrujah at aol.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div>
<div>  I'd have to agree with <span id="st" name="st" class="st">Mike</span> and <span id="st" name="st" class="st">Ike</span> - I can't believe it took this long for someone to catch him.<br>
I guess karma is real.<br>
<br>
I'd suspect someone burned by Jack may have passed this info along to the local. <br>
I heard about it a few weeks ago.<br>
<br>
<h1>Origin of Portage detective's play no mystery </h1>

<div>

</div>


<div>Thursday, May 10,
2007
<div>Tony Brown</div>

<b>Plain Dealer Theater Critic</b>
</div>


<div> Sherlock Holmes is a detective who catches thieves in
stories. </div>


<div> Jack L. Herman, a detective in real life for the Portage
County Sheriff's Office in Ravenna, made up a story of
his own: that he wrote a play titled "The Unexpected
Return of Sherlock Holmes," produced by two theaters in
Northeast Ohio and one in Los Angeles. </div>


<div> But the ending of Herman's real-life story has a
twist: It's all a story. The cop is a thief, a liar
and a bad speller. </div>


<div> The 18-year veteran police officer stole the play,
almost scene for scene, character for character and word
for word, from a Canadian playwright named David Belke. In
1992, Belke wrote a play titled "The Reluctant
Resurrection of Sherlock Holmes," eight years before
Herman's play ever hit the stage. </div>


<div> Herman, reached at the Portage County Sheriff's
Office Wednesday, refused to comment. He referred questions
to his lawyer, David A. Sed, but the lawyer did not return
telephone calls. The story was first reported Sunday in
Canada's Edmonton Journal. </div>


<div> When Herman was caught last fall, he confessed his
plagiarism in an e-mail full of misspellings to a now-former
friend who runs the theater in Los Angeles that staged the
play. </div>


<div> "As you've probably already guessed, I am guilty
of plagurizing [sic] . . .," Herman wrote on Sept. 27
to former Northeast Ohio actor Bill Wolski, whose Torrance,
Calif.-based Coconut Productions had opened a production of
Herman's Sherlock Holmes play just a few days earlier. </div>


<div> "When you asked me for permission to produce this
work, I wanted to say no," Herman wrote. "But I
didn't know how. By that time the lie was set." </div>


<div> Belke and his literary agent, Dale Harney, both of
Edmonton, recently received a check for $2,500 in damages
from Herman to fulfill an out-of-court settlement that
avoided a costly international copyright lawsuit, Harney
said Wednesday from his office. </div>


<div> In his e-mail to Wolski, in his explanations to Belke
and Harney, and in an interview with the Edmonton Journal,
Herman explained that he stole Belke's play to help
keep alive his Kent-based community theater, the Tree City
Players, where Herman's play was staged in 2000 and
2002. </div>


<div> But Belke, reached at home in Edmonton, said he would have
let the company have the play for free or a reduced rate of
a few hundred dollars. </div>


<div> "That's the real shame," said Belke, who
earned as much as $40,000 for a successful run of his play
last year at a dinner theater in Edmonton. "None of
this need to have happened." </div>


<div> The playwright, his agent and Wolski all said they would
regret it if Herman - who has a history of money problems,
according to court papers - lost his job because of his
plagiarism. But they all said they felt a duty to expose it. </div>


<div> "I understand [his problems now] completely, and
I'm sorry for that," said Belke, who based his
play on a character created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and
came up with an original adventure for the famous detective. </div>


<div> "But this is a hole he managed to dig all by himself,
and he knew exactly what he was doing. He's been
profiting off stolen goods for quite some time now and
continued to profit off ill-gotten goods." </div>


<div> Portage County Sheriff Duane Kaley expressed surprise
Wednesday when told about Herman's plagiarism. He said
he would decide what, if anything, to do about it after
investigating. "I knew he fiddled around in theater,
but I had no idea about this." </div>


<div> In addition to the two Tree City productions,
Herman's Sherlock Holmes play was produced at another
Northeast Ohio community theater, the Stow Players, in
November 2005. Gene Stebbins, who directed the Stow
production, said Herman was paid royalties. It is unclear
whether Herman made money from Tree City and Coconut
Productions. </div>


<div> In addition, Belke and Harney say their evidence indicates
Herman also stole other Canadian works. They provided
invoices dated in 1999 from what was then called Playwrights
Union of Canada that show Herman bought a copy of the script
of Belke's Sherlock Holmes play along with five other
scripts. </div>


<div> Buying scripts, which cost Herman $91.80 with shipping,
entitles the purchaser to read but not produce a play.
Production royalties are purchased separately. </div>


<div> The scripts Herman purchased in 1999 included
"Suddenly Shakespeare" a 1988 work by Kim Selody
of the Canadian city of St. Catharines. Herman produced a
play with the same title in 2000, but he says he wrote it
himself. But both Harney and the Edmonton Journal examined
the two Shakespeare scripts, and say Herman copied Selody
word for word. Selody was traveling Wednesday night and
could not be reached. </div>


<div> Wolski said he has 13 other scripts by Herman, and he now
suspects they're all plagiarized. </div>


<div> As a Kent policeman in 1992, Herman shot and killed a
murder suspect who fired on Kent State University police
officers attempting to arrest him. </div>


<div> Herman has been sued several times by creditors ranging
from a hairline replacement transplant company and a
mortgage holder. He divorced in 2005. </div>


<div> His downfall as a playwright began when a Sherlock Holmes
fan noticed a similarity between the plot of Herman's
play and Belke's after an announcement of last
fall's L.A. production went up on a Holmes Web site. </div>


<div> Wolski was forced to shut down the Herman play after only
two performances. </div>


<div> "Jack and I were real good friends," Wolski
said. "But he's a real piece of work. I'm not
that angry. I'm just ashamed of knowing anyone who
would do something like this." </div>


<div> Plain Dealer News Researcher JoEllen Corrigan contributed
to this story. </div>


<br>
</div><div><span class="e" id="q_1127c31b7e31ce67_1">

<div> </div>
 <br>
-----Original Message-----<br>
From: <a href="mailto:blane at neo.rr.com" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">blane at neo.rr.com</a><br>
To: <a href="mailto:neohiopal at lists.fredsternfeld.com" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">neohiopal at lists.fredsternfeld.com</a><br>
Sent: Thu, 10 May 2007 7:31 PM<br>
Subject: [NEohioPAL]Be careful who you get involved with.........<br>
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<h2><font face="Arial" size="2">Case of the Purloined Play</font></h2>
<h4><font face="Arial" size="2">THE PLOT THICKENS / When acclaimed local writer David Belke learned that a 
play shockingly similar to his own was being staged in Los Angeles, he and his 
agent were hot on the trail of the perpetrator</font></h4></div>


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<h4><font face="Arial" size="2">David Staples, The Edmonton Journal</font></h4><span><font face="Arial" size="2">Published: Sunday, May 
06, 2007</font></span></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">EDMONTON - David Belke's hit play The Reluctant Resurrection of Sherlock 
Holmes is known for its clever plot, but it has nothing on the twists in the 
true-life tale that unfolded after Belke discovered the play had been 
plagiarized.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">In recent months, Belke and his agent, Dale Harney, have used their own 
detective skills to track down and nail the culprit, Jack L. Herman of Kent, 
Ohio, a serial plagiarist of the theatre world and a man who carries around a 
terrible secret.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Belke's investigation into Herman started last fall -- at 12:55 p.m. on Sept. 
25, 2006, to be precise -- when Belke got an e-mail from one Peter E. Blau of 
Bethesda, Md., who wrote: "The Unexpected Return of Sherlock Holmes, a comedy by 
Jack L. Herman, is being performed at the Sierra Stage in West Hollywood, and it 
appears to be a slightly revised version of your The Reluctant Resurrection of 
Sherlock Holmes (1992) ... Please tell me more ..."</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2"><a><img alt="View Larger Image" height="14" width="15"> View Larger Image</a> 
</font><h4><font face="Arial" size="2">Edmonton playwright David Belke, right, and his agent, 
Dale Harney. The pair hunted down the perpetrator who plagiarized Belke's hit 
play, The Reluctant Resurrection of Sherlock Holmes.</font></h4>
<h6><font face="Arial" size="2">John Lucas, The Journal</font></h6><font face="Arial" size="2"><a><img alt="Email to a friend" height="15" width="19"><span>Email to a friend</span></a><a><img alt="Printer friendly" height="15" width="19">
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<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Belke had never heard of Peter E. Blau, who turned out to be an avid Holmes 
fan. Belke didn't know what to make of Blau's curious e-mail. "I was really 
quite puzzled by it. What he was saying was so weird."</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Belke's 1992 play had been a runaway hit at Edmonton's Fringe Theatre 
Festival and elsewhere. A month-long run at Edmonton's Mayfield Theatre in 2005 
had earned Belke $40,000, the biggest payday of his long and acclaimed career as 
a playwright. The play has been staged in several other cities by other theatre 
companies, who paid Belke the standard fee, 10 per cent of the house for 
professional companies, about five per cent for amateur companies, which 
amounted to paydays of a few hundreds dollars to a few thousand dollars for the 
playwright.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">The play itself revolves around a haunted country manor, Baffleur Grange. 
Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the famed Sherlock Holmes books, is called in to 
solve the mystery of the haunting, only to find himself haunted by the character 
of Holmes, whom he had grown tired of and had stopped writing about a few years 
earlier.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">On the Internet, Belke could only find a few descriptions of this new Holmes 
play in the What's On section of the Los Angeles Times. The descriptions 
provided little information, but one blurb did say that Unexpected Return was 
set at Baffleur Manor, which seemed odd to Belke. It was possible, he realized, 
that another playwright could have come up with the same idea as he had for a 
play about Doyle and Holmes, but the similarity of the names of the settings in 
the two plays, Baffleur Manor and Baffleur Grange, made him wonder if something 
more was afoot.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">At once, Belke called Harney, who for the past 18 months had been trying to 
sell Reluctant Resurrection as a movie-of-the-week franchise in Hollywood. 
Harney offered to use his L.A. contacts to find out more about Unexpected Return 
and its producers, Coconut Productions.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Harney found a website for Coconut that listed the characters in Unexpected 
Return: Holmes, Doyle, Desmond, Abigail and Rose Westhaven, Robert Scrimshaw and 
others. Only one name was different than the names of the characters in Belke's 
play, that of Tomas Markoveitch, who had been rechristened with a French first 
name, Dumas Markoveitch.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Harney tracked down Coconut's producer, Bill Wolski, a used-car buyer and 
aspiring actor and writer, who had moved to Hollywood from Ohio in 2002 to 
pursue a theatrical career.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Wolski didn't know what to make of Harney's story. Coconut was a small 
theatre company, he told Harney, just a bunch of budding actors who had chosen a 
play they loved, one that had been written by Wolski's good friend, Jack L. 
Herman, who still lived in Ohio. Herman had staged the play with amateur 
companies in Ohio several times, Wolski said, first in 1999, then in 2000, 2002 
and 2005.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">This had to be a misunderstanding, Wolski thought to himself. He was sure 
Herman had written the play because when Herman was at work on the script back 
in 1999, he had approached Wolski and told him he was writing in one particular 
character, Dumas, with Wolski in mind for the part.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Wolski also knew that Herman was quite vigilant about protecting copyright of 
his plays and had stapled to the front page of every script a note that said, 
"Copyright, 1999 Herman Plays & Publications. Caution: Professionals and 
amateurs are hereby warned that The Unexpected Return of Sherlock Holmes is 
subject to royalty. It is fully protected under copyright laws."</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Wolski called Herman to sort out the matter. As soon as Wolski described 
Harney's allegations, Herman sounded sad, and a bit angry.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">"Well, I guess I should have seen this coming," he told Wolski. "You being 
out in L.A. and producing my play and giving it as much publicity as you can, 
someone was bound to try and ride my coattails.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">"I guess I should have gotten myself a lawyer before this happened, knowing 
it very well could happen. Someone is obviously trying to lay claim to my 
intellectual property."</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">That evening of Sept. 25, Wolski again talked to Harney, and the two went 
over the scripts of the two plays, Harney reading lines from Belke's version, 
Wolski checking them with Herman's version. The two plays started differently, 
but only because Herman had axed Belke's short opening scene. After that, the 
two plays ran almost word for word the same. Harney would read one line, only to 
have Wolski finish it.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">"Oh my God, this can't be," Wolski said at last. "I can't believe this."</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">But, a moment later, the reality sunk in. "This is definitely a case of 
plagiarism. There is no doubt about it."</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">The next morning, Wolski called Herman and told him: "These scripts are very, 
very similar."</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Herman didn't deny it, but had an explanation. He had been working with 
others on the script over the Internet, sending them copies to get their 
feedback and input. Someone in Canada must have seen his script and decided to 
put their own copyright on it, he said, essentially alleging that Belke was the 
thief, not him.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Wolski told Herman he had better call Harney and Belke to sort out this 
mess.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">While Harney was dealing with Wolski and Herman, David Belke was doing his 
own sleuthing.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Hearing that Herman had first staged the play in 1999, Belke immediately 
wondered how the Ohio man had ever gotten his hands on the script. Belke had 
written his play on a typewriter. There were no electronic copies of it.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">The most likely source, Belke decided, was the Playwrights Union of Canada, 
which sells copies of Canadian plays around the world. He contacted the union, 
and soon received a faxed copy of an invoice for six plays, including Reluctant 
Resurrection, sold to Jack Herman of Kent, Ohio, in 1999.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Harney was armed with this invoice when Herman called him on Sept. 26. At 
once, Herman launched into a rambling story about how he had been writing a play 
and collaborating with other people on the Internet, and that one of them must 
have stolen much of Belke's play without telling him, so that explained the 
similarities between the two works.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">"Jack," Harney said, trying to stop Herman's babbling.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">"Jack," he repeated, but still Herman continued his rapid-fire 
explanation.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">"JACK!"</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">At last Herman shut up.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">"Jack. I am holding the invoices from the Canadian playwrights union as we 
speak. The Reluctant Resurrection of Sherlock Holmes is right there."</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">There was a long pause.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">At last, Herman spoke. "I'm sorry. I lied. I plagiarized it."</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">A short time later, Herman called Belke to apologize. Belke asked him why he 
had stolen the play.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">"We were a small community theatre company and we couldn't afford the rights 
to your play," Herman said. "So we just did it without your permission."</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">"So that's why you performed my play," Belke said. "But why did you put your 
name on my play?"</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">"Well, I put my name on the play because I thought the community would be 
more likely to get behind the work of a local playwright."</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">By then, Belke realized he wasn't dealing with a professional theatre artist. 
"Obviously, you're in amateur theatre," he told Herman. "Jack, just what do you 
do for a living?"</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Again, there was a long pause and silence.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">And that's when Herman revealed his terrible secret.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">"I know this is going to sound bad," he said. "I'm a police officer. A 
detective."</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Belke could feel the synapses in his brain misfiring for a moment. "You're 
kidding!" he roared.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">"No, no," Herman said quietly.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Belke had one other thing to ask: why had Herman changed the first name of 
the Polish character Tomas Markoveitch? "You didn't change a word, but why in 
God's name did you change the name of that character to Dumas?" he said, giving 
the name a French pronunciation.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">"I just thought the character was such a dumb ass," Herman replied, "so I 
changed his name to dumb ass."</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Now, to understand Belke's reaction, you have to understand the proud and 
prickly artistic temperament. Belke loved his Tomas Markoveitch character and 
now this plagiarist, this philistine, had literally changed him into a dumb 
ass.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">"I must admit that at that single moment I had never hated a man more in my 
life," Belke says.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Next, Herman called Wolski to apologize, but Wolski refused to answer the 
phone. Instead, Herman e-mailed him a note riddled with misspellings: "I am 
guilty of plagurizing Mr. Belke's work. I never meant to hurt anyone. ... But I 
am sorry Bill.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">"... I have brought shame on myself, my family and my friends. I may loose my 
job, my home ... everything. But one of the things that I regret the most though 
is compemising your trust in me as a friend. I want you to know that it has 
never been easy knowing that I didn't write this work."</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Herman repeated his claim he only plagiarized to help his struggling theatre 
company, but</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Wolski didn't buy it. He clearly recalls Herman being proud of his Holmes 
play and promoting the play to various theatre companies.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Wolski and his own L.A. company decided to cancel their run of the play, 
refund the ticket money, and send out a press release outlining Herman's 
plagiarism. To this day, Wolski refuses to accept Herman's apology.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">"I haven't spoken to him since. I absolutely refuse to. I think he's a liar. 
I think of him as a bad person."</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Having uncovered Herman's plagiarism, Harney and Belke were determined to 
make him pay. "It's less about the money," Belke says. "It's more he kidnapped 
my child and tried to pass it off as his own. It was a theft of something I hold 
dear to my heart.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">"On the one hand, you've got to admire the man's chutzpah, the sheer idiotic 
courage that he felt he could get away with it. But the fact of the matter is, 
he did get away with it for seven years. Probably what he was thinking is: who 
in Canada is going to notice?"</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Belke also knew that in 1999 Herman had purchased five other plays, and 
several of them had the exact same names as other plays that Herman was now 
claiming as his own. If Belke didn't make a point with Herman, perhaps he would 
plagiarize many other works.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">In the end, Herman agreed to pay Belke $2,500 in an out-of-court 
settlement.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Today, Jack Herman is at work at his policing job of 18 years at the Portage 
County Sheriff's Department, where he is in charge of concealed weapons 
permits.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">In a phone interview, he repeats he only plagiarized Belke's play to help a 
failing amateur theatre company. "I'm not a bad person, I just did a bad 
(thing)," Herman says. "... It didn't seem like it was going to affect or hurt 
anybody. Of course, looking back now, I realize it was completely the wrong 
thing to do. I wouldn't appreciate it if someone had done it to me."</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Herman says he was "a little shocked" the matter was still being talked about 
after he had settled with Belke. "Obviously, with my professional career, I 
don't want to have this kind of problem."</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Herman says he has, in fact, written several plays. But did he plagiarize any 
others?</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">"No, no, that was the only play that I had that I needed to."</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">But in 1999, he bought five other plays besides Belke's, including Suddenly 
Shakespeare, the 1988 play by Kim Selody of St. Catharines, Ont. Herman's 
theatre company produced a play with the same name in 2000, with Herman claiming 
authorship.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Did he plagiarize that one?</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">"No, I did not plagiarize that one, no."</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">After talking with Herman, The Journal obtained copies of scripts from both 
Herman's version of Suddenly Shakespeare and Selody's version.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2">The two plays are almost exactly the same, word for word.</font></div>


<div><font face="Arial" size="2"><a>dstaples at thejournal.canwest.com</a></font></div>
<font face="Arial" size="2"><br>
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</font><h6><font face="Arial" size="2">© The Edmonton Journal 2007</font></h6>

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