The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Adam Starchild.md

category	aliases	tags	summary	relations	created	updated
Business & Finance	Adam Aristotle Starchild Malcolm McConahy	Person OffshoreFinance ChildAbuse	President of the Church of the New Revelation and Ocean Living Institute, incorporator of Brother Paul's Children's Mission, and founder of the Virgin Islands trust company that held Francis Shelden's fortune.	type with role start fn head_of The Church of New Revelation president 1974 1 type with role start fn head_of Ocean Living Institute president 1974 1 type with role start fn founded Brother Paul's Children's Mission primary incorporator 1975 1 type with role fn founded Trust Company of the Virgin Islands founder and original owner 2	2026-04-28	2026-10-09

Adam Starchild, a name New Jersey authorities described as an alias, was listed in the Kearny, New Jersey, telephone book. Incorporation papers in three states showed him as president of The Church of New Revelation and of the Ocean Living Institute, both incorporated in Delaware in 1974 with principal places of business in New Jersey, as primary incorporator of Brother Paul's Children's Mission and as a trustee of the Educational Foundation for Youth of Illinois. The Internal Revenue Service granted the church and the institute tax exemption without investigating their claims to be charitable organizations. Gerald Richards told police that all four organizations were fronts for the production of child pornography. Starchild told the Traverse City Record-Eagle they had not been set up as fronts but might have been "used" for that purpose by Dyer Grossman, who held offices in all three.¹

The Shelden Trust

In his deposition in the litigation over the trust, Francis Shelden testified that in July 1976 Dyer Grossman suggested that he contact Starchild, "an investment counseler specializing in offshore investments," whom Shelden had never met. Shelden telephoned Starchild in New Jersey, and Starchild recommended that he bring his stock certificates to New Jersey. Shelden testified that Starchild convinced him of his "alleged expertise in establishing tax shelters" and recommended that he form an offshore trust. The certificates were lodged in a vault at the Mid-Atlantic Bank of New Jersey, and two bank accounts of between 30,000 and 40,000 dollars were opened, one in Shelden's name and one in Starchild's, which Shelden said was "so he would have some money for administering my affairs."²

At a meeting at Shelden's house in Antigua, attended by Shelden, his brother Alger Shelden, Jr., L. Bennett Young and Starchild, Starchild stated that a trust was essential and recommended an irrevocable trust; at Young's insistence a revocable trust was decided on. The instrument was signed on September 28, 1976, by Shelden and by the Trust Company of the Virgin Islands, Ltd. "by Adam Starchild," and Starchild, as director of the trust company, acknowledged the appointment of Young as protector, which Shelden had made on October 9, 1976. In December 1976, Shelden testified, Starchild told him by telephone that Michigan had issued criminal warrants for his arrest and that Starchild was coming under scrutiny by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.²

According to the opinion's introduction, on September 18, 1976, Shelden, who by 1978 was being sought by the Federal Bureau of Investigation under a fugitive warrant, established a revocable trust with the Trust Company of the Virgin Islands, Ltd., organized in the British Virgin Islands, as trustee, and delivered to Starchild, "founder and original owner" of the trust company, securities he valued at about two million dollars, including all the stock of FDS Land Company of Michigan and Windigo Ranch, Inc., of Colorado. When Starchild failed for months to provide an accounting of the 1977 dividends, Shelden, on the advice of a Dutch tax lawyer, Antoon Kasdorp, removed the trust company by a document notarized in Amsterdam on April 13, 1978, and named as successor trustee Edward Brongersma, a member of the Dutch Senate, who accepted the same day. Shelden testified that Starchild had promised quarterly financial statements and that none arrived throughout 1977; that Starchild's 1978 list of 1977 dividends was in his view grossly in error; and that Starchild kept telling him, "Oh, the accountants are working on it."² The litigation over who controlled the trust ran through the federal courts into the mid-1980s; in 1985 Starchild, of Tarpon Springs, Florida, appeared as counsel for the defendants.²³ On August 24, 1982, Judge Charles W. Joiner received a mailgram from Starchild, sent from Tarpon Springs, Florida, attacking L. Bennett Young and charging that "he will resort to any method to illegally obtain the funds to which he knows he has no entitlement, and no money should be handed over to him." The judge ordered the parties to respond and, on October 4, 1982, denied the Trust Company of the Virgin Islands' motion for rehearing. The Sixth Circuit affirmed on March 8, 1984.² Federal cases of 1988 to 1990 were captioned United States v. Starchild (Adam Aristotle), a/k/a McConahy (Malcolm).⁴

The McConahy Identity

The writer S. Dovey wrote that Starchild was Malcolm Willis McConahy, an offshore tax attorney who faked his death in 1975, that he had been expelled as a scoutmaster in Minneapolis in 1965, and that he had been charged with possession of child pornography in Wisconsin before his association with Shelden. Dovey also wrote that he structured the transfer of Shelden's assets to the Virgin Islands trust to protect them from investigation, and described the church as the vehicle through which Brother Paul's could receive court-ordered juvenile delinquents on North Fox Island. He was linked through these networks to John David Norman.⁵ The federal court record shows Starchild as owner of the Virgin Islands trust company in 1976 to 1978 and as counsel in 1985, after the 1975 date Dovey gave for his death.²³

Footnotes

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1. Wright, Marilyn. "Porno Ring Uses Church, Tax Laws." Traverse City Record-Eagle, 1977, reprinted in U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime. Sexual Exploitation of Children, hearings, 95th Congress, 1st session, Serial No. 12, 1977, pp. 82-83. https://archive.org/details/micro_IA41153502_0041 ↩︎

2. National Bank of Detroit v. Shelden, 730 F.2d 421 (6th Cir. 1984). https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/433085/national-bank-of-detroit-v-francis-d-shelden-the-trust-company-of-the/ ↩︎

3. Detroit Bank v. Trust Co. of Virgin Islands, Ltd., 644 F. Supp. 444 (D.P.R. 1985); Shelden v. Trust Co. of the Virgin Islands, Ltd., 535 F. Supp. 667 (D.P.R. 1982). https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1559036/detroit-bank-v-trust-co-of-virgin-islands-ltd/ ↩︎

4. CourtListener case captions, United States v. Starchild, 1988-1990. ↩︎

5. Dovey, S. Eye of the Chickenhawk. Thehotstar, 2023. ↩︎