A Killer's Charmed life

"I really thought if somebody showed retroactive self-awareness, it could be a good story," Atchity says. But that wasn't the case, he says. The manuscript "was self-justifying, flat, emotionless, almost like he was in the audience watching somebody on stage."

"Did he change" after the murder? Atchity asks. "In this case, the answer is no. You can't ask somebody to go deeper if they can't go deeper. He wasn't feeling the dark night of the soul that one would expect."

***

In 1995, Bond began dating a separated mother of three named Alyson Slavin who owned an antiques store called From Here to Timbuktu across the street from an Italian restaurant he frequented. He shared his manuscript with her, he says, and moved that same year into her 8,000-square-foot home in the swanky Guilford neighborhood.

Alyson is the daughter of Kenneth Blum Sr., the former chairman of Rent-a-Wreck and co-founder of Baltimore-based United Healthcare. In March 1996, Bond sent Blum an extraordinary letter -- later disclosed in court -- asking for a "dowry" before he would marry Alyson. Along with the dowry, Bond asked for a studio apartment, a salary to compensate him for helping Alyson with her family problems and the promise of a severance package if the marriage broke up. "You can pay me now or pay me later," he said.

All this would be "a safeguard," Bond wrote, "to ensure that all parties are operating with the premise of true love and commitment." He described his future wife as "still very much a child ... ill-suited to work for herself, or to be in charge of three needy children who are adept at manipulating her." He also wrote that he "had a past" that makes "interesting reading."

The letter, particularly the request for a dowry, incensed Alyson's father. "That says it all," says Blum, now 82 and retired in Boca Raton, Fla. "At best, I would say he's very strange."

Bond says the letter was intended to "mock" Blum's "dysfunctional family." Indeed, Blum had a history of problems with his children's spouses. He once beat up Alyson's first husband, William Slavin, after finding out that he was having an extramarital affair, court records state. Another son-in-law, Alan S. Cohn -- then a vice president of United Healthcare -- pleaded guilty in 1989 to a kickback scheme aimed at obtaining federal grants to run clinics in poor areas of Washington.

Bond accuses Blum of trying to control his daughter's life with money, and of repeatedly provoking him with insults and harassing phone calls. Blum had been giving Alyson $200,000 a year for living expenses and paid for her children's private education, according to court records. (Bond says the actual figure was closer to $400,000 a year.) Blum eventually hired a private investigator, former FBI agent Dudley Hodgson, to look into Bond's past.

Despite her father's fury, Alyson married Bond on May 8, 2001. Around that time, the investigator hit pay dirt. He acquired a copy of the manuscript from the widow of Bond's former attorney. That discovery, along with the investigator's acquisition of Bond's Ohio juvenile record -- which Bond says should have been kept under seal -- set off a chain of events that has played out in Maryland courts ever since. The grudge match between Bond and Blum has cost Bond more than $600,000 in legal fees and threatened his financial stability. Along the way, with little success, Bond has accused some of Maryland's most prominent lawyers and judges of all sorts of unprovable shenanigans.

After Bond's manuscript was found, he was arrested for allegedly lying on a gun-purchase application about whether he had been in a mental institution. (The charges were dismissed after a psychiatrist certified that he was mentally fit to possess a gun.) Back then, Bond says, he seldom left the house without a weapon, a habit from his days in Jamaica. He had a pocket holster and several handguns, including a 9mm Glock and a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson.

"I had a permit to carry for eight years and never pulled it out and shot anybody," he says. "What more proof do you want that I'm not a danger?"

Around the time of the gun issue, attorneys for Alyson's first husband, William Slavin, tried to introduce the manuscript as evidence in a custody dispute. Slavin said he was concerned about his two minor children, 14- and 12-year-old daughters, living with Bond.

Bond tried to block the manuscript from being used by filing a copyright infringement lawsuit, which he lost. (In the years since, Bond has continued filing lawsuits, asking for attorneys' fees and damages of more than $140 million and also has failed to prevail on claims that Blum, U.S. District Judge Marvin Garbis, attorney Gerald Martin and others rigged cases against him. He suffered his latest setback in February, when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear two cases stemming from the copyright infringement claim.)

Despite the introduction of the manuscript in the child custody case, Alyson Slavin Bond retained physical custody of her minor children. But Bond says the family was riven by resentments and discipline problems, and the next year, he and his wife sent the children to live with their father. Alyson, now 53, did not return phone calls. Her father says Bond "destroyed her life."

As the court fight went on, the couple wasn't as flush with cash as before. Alyson's father cut off financial support. The couple remained in Guilford, but they downsized to a 2,500-square-foot house a few doors down from the home of former Senator Paul Sarbanes.

Few neighbors knew about Bond's history, and those who did weren't particularly bothered by it. They knew Bond as an active member of the community who took special interest in policing compliance with the neighborhood's strict design covenants.

"I don't think anybody who knows him focuses on that," Howard Friedel, an attorney who is the head of the Guilford homeowners association, says of Bond's criminal past. "He's been a positive individual in the community."

***

It's a rainy afternoon, and Bond is thirsty. He asks the waitress at Corks for the super-premium wine menu and talks her into a half-price discount on the $40-a-glass Axios Cabernet Sauvignon. She brings the glasses, but he rejects them. "This is a Pinot Noir glass," he points out, and she whisks proper glasses to the table.

Bond lives by himself now in the Georgian colonial. He says the difficulties with Alyson's children strained their relationship, and they are getting divorced. He still sees a few friends for lunch. But it can be a lonely existence, Bond acknowledges.

On good days, he'll play tennis or Ping-Pong with a pal, Chris Taylor. Bond "matter-of-factly" revealed his past a few years ago to Taylor, who calls his friend a "moral person, a very good guy."

Taylor says he wonders sometimes how Bond can live so well -- "nice house, nice wine, nice car" -- without working. Once, Bond noticed that Taylor was playing Ping-Pong with cheap paddles. The next time they played, Bond showed up with a gift: fancy tournament-grade paddles that run $170 apiece.

Bond won't reveal much about his finances. Sometimes, he fiddles with an unrealized business plan: a syndicated newspaper advice column and Web site called DearBill.tv. Often, he sits in his upstairs office, poring over a legal case that he cannot let go. One afternoon, Bond sorts papers into stacks on his office floor. "I love the smell of litigation in the morning," he cracks, playing off the famous Robert Duvall line in the movie "Apocalypse Now."

Just as Bond is enamored of his writing in his unpublished manuscript, he is in love with his prose in hundreds of pages of legal briefs, which include lines comparing a federal judge to a "blindfolded child ... swinging his stick at the colorful piñata."

"This is fantastic," he says, flipping through stacks of his legal writings. "Look at this introduction ... I love what I wrote at the beginning. Is it aggressive? You better believe it's aggressive!"

On his office counter, there is a list of goals for 2009, among them finding "Mrs. Right!!!!! ♥♥♥ "

Mrs. Right would resemble the wife of agent Ari Gold on the HBO show "Entourage" -- "minus the temper," Bond says. Or, maybe, the Playboy model and actress Shauna Sand "sans the insecurity."

"When I put all these qualifications into Match.com, I had zero matches for the entire United States, which made me laugh very hard, then cry," Bond says. He didn't put "father killer" into his Match.com profile. But he knows that label is with him forever.

"I wish I wouldn't have done it," he says one day after much prodding. "Not because I miss my father so much, but because of what I did to myself."

Manuel Roig-Franzia is a writer for The Post's Style section. He can be reached at roigfranzia@washpost.com.