A FAMILY'S DESPAIR BECOMES FODDER FOR BLOGGER

"I notice so many people

Slippin’ away

And many more waiting in the lines

In the courtrooms today

Oh, in the courtrooms today..

And I ain’t had such misery 

Since I don’t know when,"

"Congatulations," by Paul Simon

By Juan Montoya
It's bad enough that the family of a former mayoral candidate and restaurateur is undergoing  a very pubic and bitter divorce, but to add salt to the bitter proceedings, a local blogger is now using the dissolution of that couple to stir the embers of discontent and increase his readership.
No one is ever totally right in a divorce.
And the divorce of Robert Sanchez and wife Lorrie is turning out to be a nasty, messy affair.
There's charges and countercharges and the usual recriminations as both sides attempt to make themselves look better than the other before the court of 445th District Judge Rene DeCoss. When blinded by the urge for vengeance, the collateral damage is to the families and children.
What makes it even worse is that one side (apparently, the wife's family) is feeding local blogger Robert Wightman the "dirt" on Sanchez. In several posts, Wightman has injected himself into the affair hinting at Robert Sanchez's alleged drug use and infidelities. While piously posing as a marriage counselor and admonishing both sides to step back and think of the kids, he nonetheless sinks his poison pen in the restaurateur back and twists the point.
Now, this is rich. We have a single, celibate (if we are to beleieve he does nothing with his live-in male partner) and openly avowed homosexual offering marital advice to a heterosexual married couple.
For example, Wightman hints at an illegitimate child "born out of wedlock," and conjectures that it belongs to Sanchez and an unnamed woman.
This in vintage Wightman. While on one hand asserting that he is doing it for their own good from his altruistic nature,  he poisons the well and steps back to admire his handiwork. The objects of hs ire are legion in Brownsville and includes anyone who isn't subservient to his superior "intellect."
He gloats that he (a disbarred lawyer) bested Ernesto Gamez at lawyering and attained the drug tests performed on Sanchez and hints at possible cocaine use. But the test pages he posts show that the tests have come back "negative."
We have also been recipients of similar "documentation" alleging infidelities and chronic substance abuse not by Sanchez. but also by his mate. According to those unsigned missives, an investigator named Cipriano Reyna has gathered numerous credible testimonies to prove this.
But what good is it for us – or the public – to linger over these titillating bits of clothesline gossip?
We can only figure that Wightman has a perverse sort of fascination with the Sanchezes misfortunes. Here's something he may not know. We have been assured that Sanchez never struck his mate's father Joe V. Garza, and that the alleged victim and the rest of his family are now occupying the Sanchez's home on Jacaranda Street.
"They're living off of Bob's child support payments," said a close Bob Sanchez acquaintance. "They want the house and part of the business."
A family friend has let Robert Sanchez use of his home while the divorce proceedings continue. The five-bedroom, four-bathroom mansion is located next to a resaca.
It is expected that once more drug tests come back negative for Sanchez, the temporary restrictions on his children visitation rights will be removed and the process of terminating the marriage can continue to the bitter inexorable end.
But why Wightman's interest in the Sanchez family torment?
Wightman sued Sanchez, the writer of this blog, Jerry McHale, Eddie Paz-Martinez, and numerous others claiming he had been defamed. After two years – and more than $250,000 spent by three insurance companies answering Wightman's spurious motions and appeals all the way to the Texas Supreme Court (he lost every one) – they decided to cut their losses and offered him $20,000 each to get rid of the nuisance. They didn't want to hire a federal appeals lawyer to counter his final appeal to the United Supreme Court. It just wasn't worth the money to them.
None of us were in agreement that the companies settled, but had nothing to say in the matter. We never paid Wightman a penny.
At the beginning, Wightman had offered Sanchez to non-suit him if he bought him a round-trip ticket to visit his family in New York and $250,000 in cash.
He had offered the writer of this blog to non-suit him if he signed an affidavit (prepared by Wightman) where it stated that Sanchez paid me a salary and ordered me what to write and reviewed it before posting. All he wanted was the affidavit and the insurance companies with policies on the Sanchez home, business and corporations would pay, he said.
He didn't get his $1/4 million from Sanchez or the insurance companies or his affidavit from me.
The Sanchez divorce is his chance to twist the dagger and finally get his revenge.