A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
Here's one of a powerful prosecutor and a disgraced judge chumming it up at dinner from 2021.
This was taken some time in the Spring of 2021, according to the source who provided.
On the left is former- then current- St. Louis County Judge Michael Burton and the right is St. Louis County Prosecutor- equivalent to a District Attorney- Wesley Bell.
Judge Burton retired in August 2021. His retirement received scant media attention, but it was covered by the St. Louis Record.
The 21st Circuit Judicial Commission is accepting applications to fill a circuit court seat, which will be vacated by Judge Michael Burton who was first appointed to the St. Louis bench in 2004 and became presiding judge last year.
“I would not want to be the person to replace Michael Burton that is for darn sure,” said Eastern District Court of Appeals Judge Lisa Page. “He is going to leave huge shoes to fill.”
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Burton is leaving at a time when he is accused of sending an ex-parte email involving immigration attorney Evita Tolu and court insiders, according to media reports. Tolu’s complaint alleges that a Guardian Ad Litem (GAL), a psychologist, and a social worker drained her finances in family court litigation and gave custody of her children to their alleged abuser. Tolu practices law in Florida, Missouri, and Hawaii.
Page said Burton is well-versed in domestic violence issues.
“I completed the Domestic Violence Summit with him in 2013 where Missouri’s Judicial Education Program sent us all over the country to learn best practices in domestic violence cases in the courts and when we came back, we held what was called a domestic violence summit for trial judges,” Page said. “Not only did I learn a tremendous amount but I think he could have been teaching the people in those other states about domestic violence. He's just that good.”
Burton was not only brought up repeatedly in the now infamous Zoom Conference of nearly forty corrupt Guardian ad Litem from St. Louis County, but he wrote an infamous email to that group. The conference is below.
The notorious email is here.
In it, he states in part, “As judges, we cannot comment to the public about pending litigation that is pending on our docket,..That being said, Judge Hemphill and I thought we could reach out to some leaders of the bar to discuss the problem. We want to be proactive.”
He was referring to the lawsuit filed by Evita Tolu against GAL Elaine Pudlowski and others; this lawsuit was also the main subject of this Zoom conference.
Judge Burton retired in August 2021.
Prosecutor Bell has been criticized by many St. Louis County litigants I have spoken to as the place where criminal child and sexual abuse goes to die. Indeed, it seems that in St. Louis County, you are more likely to lose custody if your child discloses abuse than have the alleged perpetrator be charged.
Prosecutor Bell has found the time to prosecute Angela Freiner for this email sent to a judge, Nicole Zellweger.
The court does not have the right to hold my daughter against her will or traffic her across the country! If she is not returned to me today there will be consequences for your conduct. You have stepped over the line for any time of immunity as a judge!
Apparently, the “there will be consequences” portion was enough to have her charged.
Check out the podcast with Angela where she talks more about those charges.
Angela’s daughter also disclosed child molestation charges against her father- though the alleged crime occurred out of state- and she has lost all custody to the man accused of molestation.
That picture may go a long way to explaining why there is so much corruption in this county.
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