14 years and still rollin' over in his grave

Somebody should write a book about Colin Gravenor, who died 14 years ago yesterday. (That's a painting of him by famed artist Mark Ulriksen of New Yorker cover fame.) Gravenor's the guy who bought Nun's Island from the nuns. He also pocketed untraced millions as the owner of the parking lot across from the old Forum. He sat on a fortune worth of land he got cheap in the west end, up north and right smack downtown. He wasn't just rich, he was lucky. With the help of wily testimony by someone the courts believed to be respectable, Gravenor wriggled out of a just divorce settlement with the mother of six of his kids -- all of whom he left without a penny in an unheated house. He died under the shroud of mystery, of ill determined circumstances, and that's when all the fun began, with a messy tug-of-war over his will. Although he died at home, which usually calls for an autopsy -- especially in the case of shifty millionaires whose cash was in pressing need by those who fought over his will, his wife waived one and coroner's office bizarrely refused to go ahead with one anyway, even though they should have. Well, here's looking at ya, Colin -- rolling over in somebody else's plot, next to your first ex wife. (Who'da known that wee ordinary woman would have the last laugh, eh?)