The starkly new face of the Netherlands' monarchy

AMSTERDAM — Even by the unconventional standards of the Dutch, their new king is going to be a bit of a novelty.

He has a license to fly commercial airliners. He's married to a South American, a lively Argentine who's more popular than he is. He says he won't mind it if people fail to address him as "Your Majesty" because he's no "protocol fetishist" — an amusing description here in a city that caters to nearly every fetish imaginable.

But his biggest break with Dutch history of the last 120 years is the simple fact that he's a he. Queens have reigned over the Netherlands since 1890, a matriarchy that will come to an end Tuesday when Crown Prince Willem-Alexander is sworn in as monarch.

His soon-to-be subjects are taking the shift in stride, though no one alive today can recall a time when people spoke of their koning (king) rather than their koningin (queen).

"It's strange," 68-year-old Ineke Flier says, rolling the word around in her mouth. "But he's nice.… He can do a lot of good things for Holland."

Chief among his duties will be to represent the Netherlands as its head of state, its standard-bearer around the world. Here at home, he's supposed to be the uniter-in-chief, a symbol of Dutch identity, cohesion and continuity.

But some are wondering whether things will feel different when the nation's public face is one that has whiskers. The last king was Willem-Alexander's great-great-grandfather, Willem III; first-born daughters of the House of Orange-Nassau have succeeded him since. (In the Netherlands, the monarch's eldest child is heir to the throne regardless of gender, unlike in Britain, where a son takes precedence over older sisters. The British Parliament is currently amending that rule.)

"Having a female head of state has been so much the style that [there's] a kind of feeling it's going to be harder for a male to fit the mold," says James Kennedy, a historian at the University of Amsterdam. "Some people say that the Dutch monarchy has taken on … a caring, nurturing style — the maternal thing. How is Willem-Alexander going to be able to do that?"

The prince, who turned 46 on Saturday, will also be the youngest sovereign in Europe, where most of the remaining crowned heads are gray (or balding).

But that doesn't faze his compatriots, who are confident that his feckless days as "Prince Pils," the nickname he earned as a beer-swilling college student, are well behind him.

"He's serious enough to be king," says Flier, a retired designer. "The world is changing. In America it's a young president."

Contrast that with Britain's Prince Charles, who at 64 is seemingly no closer to ascending to the throne than when he was Willem-Alexander's age nearly two decades ago. Charles' mother, Queen Elizabeth II, is in excellent health at 87.

In fact, Willem-Alexander's succession is possible only because of a tradition that would horrify the British royals. Beatrix, the prince's 75-year-old mother, is voluntarily stepping down as queen, as did her mother before her, in 1980, and her grandmother, in 1948.

Those abdications, almost in the manner of CEOs opting for a comfortable retirement, illustrate just how different the Dutch royal family is from the House of Windsor.

As institutions of hereditary privilege go, the Dutch monarchy is a relative newcomer, created after the Netherlands won its independence from Napoleon about 200 years ago. It's therefore not so freighted — or burdened — with the same weight of history and expectations that surround its much older British counterpart.

Tuesday's investiture of Willem-Alexander, the oldest of three brothers, isn't even a "coronation." Dutch kings and queens are sworn in, not crowned, during a special joint session of the two chambers of parliament, which form the Netherlands' democratically elected government. The prime minister remains the country's political leader.

"It's often been said that this is a republic ruled over by a monarch," Kennedy says. "There is this kind of notion that the queen or the king really does need to know this was once a republic and that monarchs are kind of guests in the Netherlands. They serve at the pleasure of the people."

Particularly in the 20th century, the Dutch royals have cultivated a far greater sense of informality and closeness to the people than has the British monarchy, which strives to maintain an otherworldly aura through its matchless pomp and circumstance.

Juliana, the present queen's mother, was often seen riding her bicycle in public, sometimes to the supermarket. Today's princes and princesses are expected to hold down "real" jobs, making them more like royal professionals than professional royals. Willem-Alexander's career focus has been water management. (The commercial pilot's license is just a hobby.)

As queen, Beatrix is credited with dispatching her duties with businesslike efficiency and dedication but also with a certain aloofness, in contrast to Juliana's affectionate style.

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With new arrest, ricin case takes a strange turn

TUPELO, Miss. — Federal agents of all sorts invaded northeast Mississippi several days ago, on a mission: Find the man who sent a poison-laced letter to the president. But the United States government quickly found itself entangled, once again, in a misunderstood land dominated by squabbling tribes and petty vengeances.

Agents first arrested an Elvis impersonator, released him, then on Saturday arrested his nemesis, a karate instructor. Gradually investigators concluded that what they had descended upon was probably less about the president — or the U.S. senator and retired state judge who also received letters — than a serious case of indigenous bickering.

That shocks no one here. "Tupelo is a kaleidoscope," said sociologist Mark Franks, who grew up in nearby Booneville. There are true geniuses walking the streets of Tupelo, he said, and incredibly wealthy, generous people. But also, "every wall-eyed uncle and 'yard cousin' — just referencing the local pejorative — makes it into Tupelo, Miss. It creates a peculiar culture."

Tupelo is best known as the hometown of Elvis Presley, after whom it has named streets, waterways and dry cleaners.

Unlike many other Southern towns its size, it boasts several excellent museums, street art and a large public arena. An arena large enough, in fact, to attract the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus this month. That's when someone shot Carol, a circus elephant, in what seems to be the first elephantine drive-by ever. Carol is recovering, but Tupelo Police Capt. Rusty Haynes said his investigation has stalled. "Because, to be honest, there are a lot of possible perpetrators."

So people in the area were bemused more than surprised when the FBI, Secret Service and other agencies showed up looking for the soul who had sent letters laced with ricin to President Obama, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and retired Mississippi judge Sadie Holland.

The agents quickly nabbed an odd character in nearby Corinth named Paul Kevin Curtis. He worked as an Elvis impersonator, spun wild conspiracies about the local hospital selling body parts and apparently signed the poisoned letters with his own initials.

But the FBI found no evidence of ricin in Curtis' home. No incriminating research on his computer. They decided he hadn't sent the letters after all and released him Tuesday. Within hours agents had raided the home of his archenemy: J. Everett Dutschke, karate instructor.

Curtis claimed Dutschke wanted to frame him. It wouldn't be the first skirmish between Tupelo's most famous son and a karate man. In 1973, several men climbed on stage during a concert by the actual Elvis. Elvis felt threatened and fought the men, alongside his bodyguards. He felt sure the men had been sent by estranged wife Priscilla's new boyfriend, his own personal nemesis: Mike Stone, karate instructor.

Curtis, 45, and Dutschke, 41, seem locked in an elaborate piece of tribute performance art. Their lives have entwined for years, feuding over small-town grievances as labyrinthine and intricate as any global conspiracy. They met in 2005, and were friendly for a time. When he wasn't teaching karate, Dutschke worked for Curtis' brother Jack at an insurance office. Both men knew Sen. Wicker, and both had connections to the 80-year-old Judge Holland.

It's unclear at what moment the hostilities began, but a few years ago Curtis, who worked at the local hospital, developed a theory that doctors were harvesting organs to sell on the black market. He wrote a book about it called "Missing Pieces." Dutschke published a local newsletter at the time, and after some negotiations apparently rejected Curtis' writings.

There was the question, too, of who had the bigger intellect. Dutschke was a member of Mensa, the club for people with high IQs. A few years ago, Curtis posted a fake Mensa certificate on his Facebook page, which sent Dutschke into a rage. "I threatened to sue him for fraud for posting a Mensa certificate that is a lie," Dutschke told Tupelo's newspaper, the Daily Journal. "That certificate is a lie."

"Aw, yeah. I don't know why Kevin did that," Curtis' father, Jack, said recently in Cleveland, Miss. "These boys were just after each other."

Both men have made multiple trips to jail. Curtis was arrested for, among other things, assaulting a Tupelo lawyer — for which he received a six-month sentence from Judge Holland. In January, Tupelo authorities charged Dutschke with molesting children. He pleaded not guilty, but he shut down his karate school, called Tupelo Taekwondo Plus, while awaiting trial.

After the FBI released Curtis, the two enemies' paths diverged. Curtis headed for New York. "Can you believe that?" Jack Curtis said. "Now he's got publishers all trying to jump the gun on each other to publish his book first. Isn't that something?"

Dutschke, meanwhile, watched federal agents in protective masks search his home, his karate studio and his van.

On Wednesday, Dutschke slipped from sight, traveling with his friend Kirk Kitchens to a remote house in neighboring Itawamba County.

They entered the house and turned on the television, then slipped out the back door and down a wooded path, where they met a waiting car, Kitchens later told a Memphis television station.

Itawamba County Sheriff Chris Dickinson said Dutschke had escaped surveillance.

But the next evening, Dutschke pulled into the driveway at his house and stepped from his minivan like a man returning from routine errands.

On Saturday the U.S. attorney charged him with "knowingly developing, producing" and stockpiling ricin. If convicted he faces maximum penalties of life imprisonment and a $250,000 fine.

Hours before his arrest, Dutschke answered his door by opening it just enough to look out with one dark eye. He held a kitten, which also looked outside. "I'm sorry, I just...," he started. His voice was soft. "I can't talk. I'm so, so sorry."

Could he say, at least, what started this mess?

"Just look around you," he said. "This place is crazy."

matthew.teague@latimes.com

Twitter: @matthewteague

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FBI: Mississippi man arrested in suspicious letters case

TUPELO, Miss. — A Mississippi man whose home and business were searched as part of an investigation into poisoned letters sent to the president and others has been arrested in the case, according to the FBI.

Everett Dutschke, 41, was arrested about 12:50 a.m. Saturday at his Tupelo home in connection with the letters, FBI spokeswoman Deborah Madden said. The letters, which allegedly contained ricin, were sent last week to President Barack Obama, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi and earlier to an 80-year-old Mississippi judge, Sadie Holland.

Madden said Dutschke was arrested without incident. She said additional questions should be directed to the U.S. attorney's office. The office in Oxford did not immediately respond to messages Saturday.

Dutschke's attorney, Lori Nail Basham, did not immediately respond to phone or text messages Saturday.

Charges in the case were initially filed against an Elvis impersonator but then dropped. Attention then turned to Dutschke, who has ties to the former suspect and the judge and senator.

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Efforts to split Santa Monica-Malibu district gain new traction

The PTA at Point Dume Elementary in Malibu is a fundraising machine. Parents collected about $2,100 per student in the 2009-10 school year, money that helped pay for music and art programs, as well as a dedicated marine science lab.

But now the Santa Monica-Malibu school board wants to funnel much of that money away and, in the name of educational equality, give it to other district campuses.

The move has sparked an effort in Malibu to secede from the district, igniting a battle between one wealthy community and its less wealthy neighbor that echoes across the state.

The district's effort to redistribute PTA money adds to the trend in California since the 1970s to equalize funding between rich and poor schools. Gov. Jerry Brown rolled out a new plan earlier this year that would radically alter the status quo, moving the lion's share of educational dollars to poor schools.

Some Malibu parents are just fed up.

"It's not fair," said Maria Kuznetsova, who has a 6-year-old son at Point Dume. "You don't want to donate to somebody else. You know how it goes. It disappears."

Still, secession is a hard idea to swallow for some in the community known as much for its liberal politics as its sandy beaches and Creamsicle sunsets.

Deborah Allen, who has two sons in the district and helps run Malibu High's booster club, said she has no problem with the policy that will send money her school raises to students who need it most.

"Some of the kids in Santa Monica, the only hot meal they get each day is lunch," Allen said. "So if half of my money, or whatever portion, goes to them, I'm OK with it."

::

Only in this awkward marriage between two beach cities could Santa Monica be considered the poor spouse. Its median household income is 27% higher than the rest of the county. Its ocean-front homes are the stuff of California dreams, although there are less affluent pockets inland.

The city's wealth, however, pales in comparison with Malibu, where median incomes, at $133,000 a year, are nearly double Santa Monica's.

When the Santa Monica school district first added a campus in Malibu more than 60 years ago, the joining of the two communities made sense. Santa Monica had an established system; Malibu was just a rustic beach town.

But over the decades, the two cities have grown — and grown apart. Malibu opened its own high school in 1992. It now has three elementary schools and about 2,000 students. Leaders of the separation movement say it's time the for city to make its own educational decisions for its schools.

The core of the problem is the mismatch between the wealth of Malibu, population 13,000, and the political power of its southern neighbor Santa Monica, population 90,000. Santa Monica has 10 schools and about 9,000 students. There hasn't been a Malibu resident on the school board since 2008.

In 2003, Malibu parents launched the first of at least three serious attempts to secede from the joint school district.

The latest effort was sparked in 2011, when the joint school board unanimously passed a policy that beginning in 2014 will bar PTAs from raising money for professional development or staff, such as instructional aides.

Instead, the district will funnel privately raised dollars into a foundation that will distribute the funds more equally among all schools. PTAs could still raise money for classroom items under the new plan.

The goal, Supt. Sandra Lyon said, was to ensure that "every student gets the best education we have to offer."

In a presentation to the school board, she showed how some PTAs in the district raised thousands of dollars per student for their schools while others brought in less than $100.

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Problems keep proliferating at discredited private foster care agency

A decade ago, a team of Los Angeles County auditors delivered a damning assessment of Teens Happy Homes, a private foster care agency responsible for hundreds of children.

Agency workers bought beer and cigarettes with public funds intended for mistreated children, auditors found. It billed the state and county more than $100,000 for care it never provided. Employees wrote checks to themselves worth thousands of dollars and kept no receipts.

The auditors' conclusion: The county needed to give Teens closer supervision or cancel its contract.

Not only did the county Board of Supervisors continue the Teens contract but it tripled its value, from $1 million a year to as much as $3.6 million, according to the agency's tax returns. Between 2008 and 2011, 1,154 children lived in its homes.

Interviews and an examination of public records by The Times found that questionable financial practices proliferated in recent years. At the same time, children suffered abuse and neglect repeatedly.

Robert Fellmeth, director of the Children's Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego School of Law, said the long delay in reviewing the agency is indicative of the state and county's inattention to private foster care agencies that were created over 25 years ago.

"There are some clear failures indicating the need for financial auditing and performance oversight," Fellmeth said. "There is a need for systemic reform in this regulatory scheme."

County Supervisor Gloria Molina said Teens should finally lose its contract, and Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said that if the allegations against Teens prove true, they "would constitute a serious misuse of public funds and represent a grave threat to the health and safety of the foster children."

Philip Browning, director of the Department of Children and Family Services, said in an interview Thursday that he was startled to learn of the depth of problems at Teens, and that he was enlisting the help of retired homicide detectives to examine allegations of child abuse and financial malfeasance at foster care contractors.

"My marching orders are to figure out what's going on and fix it," Browning said. "I think we have a long way to go in terms of improving the monitoring of these agencies."

::

Teens' chief executive, Beautina Robinson, grew up in foster care and knew the life from the inside out. She established the South Los Angeles agency's group home in 1990 and expanded with foster homes throughout Southern California.

As a private group, Teens was only loosely monitored by the state and county, which typically audits the finances at private agencies once a decade.

The routine audit of Teens in 2003 faced problems from the beginning. Shortly before auditors arrived, a sewage backup destroyed many financial records. The remaining documents painted a picture of financial chaos.

There were canceled checks showing the agency repeatedly bought cigarettes and beer with foster care money — in one instance, 30 cases' worth. There was $46,000 in unpaid federal payroll taxes. The agency's bookkeeper wrote $13,000 in checks to herself. "The agency was unable to explain the nature of these expenditures," auditors wrote.

The bookkeeper, fearing criminal prosecution, wrote to county auditors, saying Robinson had ordered two workers to "come up with receipts" to help keep staff "out of jail."

The plan fell apart when one manager refused. "He was not going to get caught up in falsifying any documents," the bookkeeper wrote in her letter, which was obtained by The Times.

An attorney for Teens declined to comment for this story.

In the end, auditors told county officials they "should consider whether to continue contracting with this agency due to the nature of these financial issues."

But the agency retained its contract, and the auditor-controller never completed another financial audit to see if problems had been fixed.

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L.A. Unified fight focuses on breakfast program

Los Angeles Unified will eliminate a classroom breakfast program serving nearly 200,000 children, reject more school police, cut administrators and scale back new construction projects unless the school board votes to approve them, according to Supt. John Deasy.

Heading into a fierce battle over funding priorities, Deasy said this week that he would give "maximum responsibility" to the board to decide between those programs and demands by United Teachers Los Angeles to restore jobs and increase pay.

In an April 12 memo obtained by the Times on Friday, Deasy outlined eight items the district would not fund without explicit board approval, including a request for an additional $1.4 million for KLCS-TV public television, small schools that are underenrolled and other unspecified programs.

But the proposed elimination of the breakfast program has drawn the most immediate backlash and pits two of the district's most influential labor unions against each other. Deasy said he proposed eliminating the classroom breakfasts, which were expanded from a small pilot program to 280 schools last year, after "UTLA made it very clear about how this program is a big problem."

UTLA, representing 35,000 teachers, nurses, librarians and others, will not back the program unless it is moved out of the classroom and concerns over lost teaching time and messes are addressed, according to Juan Ramirez, a union vice president. The union posted a video and poll findings on its website stating that more than half of 729 teachers surveyed said they disliked the program in part because it took an average 30 minutes to set up, feed the children and clean up. In a flier to parents, the union said the time lost to the breakfast program amounted to eight instructional days.

"We need to think of our students first, and our biggest concern is instructional time," Ramirez said, adding that the union was willing to seek an alternative nutrition method with district officials.

But Service Employees International Union, Local 99 said more than 900 cafeteria workers among nearly 45,000 school service employees it represents would lose their jobs if the program were eliminated. The union announced that it would begin a week of rallies at schools to save the classroom breakfasts, starting Tuesday at Hooper Avenue Elementary.

Courtni Pugh, Local 99's executive director, said that many of her workers were also L.A. Unified parents who would lose both jobs and extra nutritional opportunities for their children without the program.

The possibility of eliminating classroom breakfasts dumbfounded the program's supporters.

"We'd be out of our minds to cut something that is feeding hungry children," said Megan Chernin, a philanthropist who launched with Deasy the nonprofit Los Angeles Fund for Public Education. The nonprofit has contributed $200,000 to fund an eight-member administrative team to help train educators on how to roll out the program at their schools.

The program was launched to increase the number of children eating breakfast; only 29% of those eligible for free or discounted morning meals were actually eating them when served before school in the cafeteria. Now, 89% of children are eating breakfast and schools are reporting higher attendance, fewer tardies, greater student focus and decreased trips to the nurse's office, according to David Binkle, the district's food services director.

Binkle said the program has brought $6.1 million to the district this year in federal school breakfast reimbursements and that sum is projected to increase to $20 million if the program is expanded to more than 680 schools, as had been planned for the next two years.

Tufts University is evaluating the program and expects to have preliminary findings in the fall.

Deasy said he would recommend that the board restore the program and, in a statement Friday, said he was confident that the board would "enthusiastically and unanimously" do so at its May 14 meeting. But he said the fight over such programs and union demands for more jobs and higher pay would provoke "a very public and intense meeting" in May.

At least one board member, President Monica Garcia, said she would vote to continue the program. Charting a possible way forward were schools such as Malabar Elementary, where students ate together outside their classroom, Garcia said.

She said she wasn't enthralled by Deasy's abrupt move to throw the decisions to the board over classroom breakfasts, more school police and other individual items instead of past practices of bringing an overall recommended budget.

"It's not my favorite strategy, but I understand choices have to be made," she said.

teresa.watanabe@latimes.com

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Assembly passes bill to let noncitizens serve on juries

SACRAMENTO — California would allow noncitizens to serve on juries under a proposal being considered by state lawmakers, potentially expanding a fundamental obligation of American life to millions more people.

The measure, which would apply only to legal residents, would make California the only state to open the jury box to noncitizens who meet all other requirements of service, according to legal experts.

The proposal raises the question of what it means to be judged by peers in a state where more than one in seven residents is not a citizen.

One of the bill's authors, Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski (D-Fremont), said the proposal would help ensure an adequate pool of jurors, help immigrants integrate into American society and make juries more representative of California.

Juries "should reflect our community, and our community is always changing," Wieckowski said. "It's time for California to be a leader on this."

The Assembly passed the bill this week on a party-line vote, with most Democrats lining up in favor and Republicans standing in opposition.

Assemblyman Rocky Chavez (R-Oceanside), who voted no, said the measure was unfair to both the prospective jurors and any defendants whose fates they could decide. Noncitizens may not want the responsibilities of American citizenship, he said, and people on trial should not be judged by jurors who "might not have the same cultural experience."

The legislation goes next to the Senate. Gov. Jerry Brown has not taken a public position on the bill.

There are roughly 2.5 million adults in California who live here legally but are not citizens, according to statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Homeland Security. Wieckowski's bill, AB 1401, would not change other conditions for jury service; those eligible must still be at least 18, proficient in English and have no felony record.

Legal and trial experts had mixed reactions to the measure, which would open a distinctly American institution to non-Americans. Legal proceedings, particularly civil cases, in many parts of the world are not decided by a jury.

"The real goal is to have people in the community make a determination about guilt or innocence. There could be a value in adding different perspectives into the deliberation process," said Matthew McCusker, president of the American Society of Trial Consultants.

But noncitizens may not have the same understanding of the judicial system, he said.

"Jury instructions are remarkably complex," McCusker said. "If you add in further barriers, whether it's language or cultural, you're adding more difficulties in following the rule of law."

Niels Frenzen, a professor of immigration law at USC, said he doubted immigrants would have any more trouble handling jury duty than citizens would.

"There is not often that great a divide of knowledge between immigrants and ...citizens."

chris.megerian@latimes.com

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George Jones dies at 81; country music icon

Three decades ago, an east Texas singer named George Jones took on an impossibly melodramatic, shamelessly sentimental song about a man who desperately clutched at lost love until his dying breath.

His 1980 recording of "He Stopped Loving Her Today" became one of the most revered songs in country music history.

Singers Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard were known for the poetically crafted lyrics of their country standards. But Jones' anguish-drenched vocals elevated "He Stopped Loving Her Today" above its soap-opera lyrics in polls of the greatest country music songs.

George Jones: Career in Photos

From 1955 to 2005, Jones put 167 records on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart — a history-making 143 of them in the top 40 — and won two Grammy Awards. Along the way, he won admirers as diverse as Frank Sinatra, James Taylor and the Who's Pete Townshend.

Jones, 81, died Friday in Nashville, a little more than a week after being hospitalized for a fever and irregular blood pressure, ending a long, tumultuous life that frequently outstripped the songs he sang in terms of sheer drama.

"The world has lost the greatest country singer of all time. Amen," Merle Haggard said Friday in a statement.

Vince Gill, whose 20 Grammy Awards make him the most lauded male country singer ever, said, "There aren't words in our language to describe the depth of his greatness. I'll miss my kind and generous friend."

In George Jones, glorious musical achievement lived side by side with personal heartbreak. Frustration, failure, disappointment and loss gave way later in life to personal and artistic redemption in recent decades.

That Jones continued touring and recording until this month astonished and delighted fans who had seen him struggle with alcohol and drug abuse, multiple marriages and divorces, lawsuits over his erratic behavior, and brushes with death in motor vehicle accidents. His life became the stuff of country legend: Following a drinking binge during which his wife took his car keys so he couldn't drive, Jones famously commandeered a motorized lawn mower and drove himself to the nearest liquor store.

"Hopefully [people] will remember me for my music and forgive me of the things I did that let 'em down," Jones said in 2006. He also understood he wouldn't be absolved of everything: "There are some things you just can't make up to people," he said of the many performances he missed over the years because of his struggles with alcohol and drugs, which led to the nickname "No Show Jones" that followed him for many years in the 1970s and '80s.

Yet, along the way, he continued to deliver hit after hit from 1955, when he first scored with "Why Baby Why," through his final appearance on the pop chart 50 years later as a guest of Waylon Jennings' son Shooter Jennings on "4th of July."

PHOTOS: Celebrities react to the death of George Jones

"In country music, George Jones set the standard long ago," the late Johnny Cash once said. "No one has compared to him yet."

Or, as the now-departed Waylon Jennings famously remarked, "If we could all sound like we wanted to, we would all sound like George Jones."

"George Jones was the ultimate voice of country music," said Robert Hilburn, The Times' former pop music critic. "He was someone whose pure and traditional tone represented to country music singing what Hank Williams represented to country songwriting. When people talk about country music being the white man's blues, they can explain their point by simply playing a George Jones song."

George Glenn Jones was born Sept. 12, 1931, and grew up in Saratoga, a small, dusty town northeast of Houston in the Big Thicket region of Texas. He was the eighth child of George Washington Jones, a pipe fitter and shipyard worker who played guitar, and, Clara Jones, a church pianist.

The modest household was dominated by the sounds of gospel and country music — and the abusive rages of the young singer's father, who turned to alcohol to drown his pain when Jones' sister died from a fever.

"We were our Daddy's loved ones when he was sober, his prisoners when he was drunk," the singer wrote in his 1996 autobiography, "I Lived to Tell the Tale."

As an 11-year-old, Jones made his first money as a singer when he played guitar and warbled Eddy Arnold songs for coins in front of a local church.

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Lenders venturing back into subprime market

Michele and Russell Poland's credit was shot, but they managed to buy their suburban dream home anyway.

After a business bankruptcy and a home foreclosure, they turned to a rare option in this era of tightfisted banking — a subprime loan.

The Polands paid nearly $10,000 in upfront fees for the privilege of securing a mortgage at 10.9% interest. And they had to raid their retirement account for a 35% down payment.

Most borrowers would balk at such stiff terms. But with prices rising, the Polands wanted to snag a four-bedroom home in Temecula near top-rated schools for their 5-year-old son. By later this year, they figure, they'll be able to refinance into a standard loan.

"The mortgage is a bridge loan," said Russ Poland, now working as an insurance investigator. "It was expensive, but we think it's worth it."

In the aftermath of the housing crash, there's no shortage of Americans who, like the Polands, are eager to rebuild their shattered finances. In response, lenders are emerging to offer the classic subprime trade-off: high-priced loans for high-risk customers.

Before the housing bust, a sprawling business arose in subprime mortgages and their cousins, so-called alt-A loans, which were issued to people who had decent credit but did not have to prove income. About $1 trillion in subprime and alt-A loans were originated in 2005 and again in 2006 — more than a third of all home loans, according to the trade publication Inside Mortgage Finance.

But the explosion of mortgage defaults that began in late 2006 vaporized an entire industry of subprime specialists. The Wall Street firms that had bundled the loans into securities soon began to implode as well. Little wonder that loans for the credit-challenged disappeared.

Today's high-risk lenders differ from those during the housing boom in key ways. These lenders say the new subprime mortgages are actually old school — the kind of loans made in the 1980s and 1990s. In other words, a borrower's collateral matters, down payments matter, income and ability to pay matter.

Subprime lenders care because they are holding the loans on their books rather than selling them to investors. They hope a private securities market for subprime loans, also destroyed in the meltdown, will reemerge soon.

For now, the subprime and alt-A business remains small, maybe $8 billion total, estimated Inside Mortgage Finance Editor Guy D. Cecala. That's less than half of 1% of the $1.8 trillion in U.S. home loans last year.

Among those hoping to reverse the trend is the Polands' lender, Citadel Servicing Corp. of Orange County. Chief Executive Daniel L. Perl said he has tested the water by making a few dozen subprime loans since late 2011, mostly with his own money rather than investment capital.

The Polands, among the first to receive Citadel loans, are part of a success story, Perl said. None of the loans has gone bad; about a third have already been paid off. With that track record, Perl recently raised $200 million from private investors. He's hiring 55 employees to help him make loans through mortgage brokers across most of the West, and he's moving from Citadel's Aliso Viejo location to larger offices in Irvine.

"We're looking to build it up over the next 24 months to $30 million to $50 million a month," Perl said. "It's a decent business plan in a credit-barren world."

But lenders such as Perl are proceeding far more carefully than during the housing bubble. Then, borrowers commonly avoided down payments entirely in "piggyback" arrangements that allowed one loan of 80%, another for 20%. Some lenders offered "Ninja" loans — requiring no proof of income, assets or even a job.

Perl now requires 25% to 40% down, depending on credit scores that can drop as low as 500 on an 850-point scale. His potential customers, who pay a minimum of 7.95% interest, include higher-income as well as lower-income borrowers.

"Quite a few" affluent borrowers are good credit risks, Perl said, even though they had recent short sales — they sold homes for less than they owed on their mortgages. Perl also writes mortgages that exceed the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac threshold for conventional loans, which varies but tops out at $625,500 in the most expensive areas.

"They come from all walks of life — doctors and lawyers as well as blue-collar workers," Perl said. "As long as they have the ability to pay and equity in their homes, they are a candidate for one of our loans."

Another lender getting into subprime mortgages is Carrington Mortgage Holdings of Aliso Viejo, a manager of distressed loans and properties that has become a major landlord.

"There are a lot of borrowers who can make a big down payment, document that they have the income to pay the loan and have a good recent job history — but have a credit score that would make it impossible to get a loan," Carrington Executive Vice President Rick Sharga said.

Carrington would like to start making subprime mortgages later this year, depending on the still-evolving regulatory environment for mortgages. Sharga anticipates "a lot of pent-up demand."

In a related development, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray last month encouraged credit unions, which often hold fixed-rate mortgages on their books, to make "responsible" loans that fall outside the bureau's general guidelines for responsible mortgage lending. Bureau rules discourage most lenders from writing mortgages that increase total debt payments to more than 43% of a borrower's income. Credit unions are given more leeway in exceeding that baseline, provided they properly vet applicants and charge no more than 3.5 percentage points above the going mortgage interest rate.

"The current mortgage market is so tight that lenders are leaving good money on the table by not lending to low-risk applicants seeking to take advantage of the current favorable interest rate climate," Cordray told a credit-union trade association. "This actually creates a window of opportunity for credit unions that helped 'write the book,' so to speak, on what it means to underwrite responsibly."

John C. Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, sees no reason that subprime mortgage bonds can't reemerge in "plain vanilla" form, as opposed to the complex concoctions that ended up as "toxic assets" in the meltdown.

"I can't understand why it hasn't come back sooner," he said, pointing out that there's a strong market for bonds backed by subprime auto and credit-card loans.

"California has been famous for devising exotic mortgages," Williams said. "But the reality is that they held up rather well until we started doing things like giving them to people with no jobs."

scott.reckard@latimes.com

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FBI: Miss. man arrested in suspicious letters case

TUPELO, Miss. — A Mississippi man whose home and business were searched as part of an investigation into poisoned letters sent to the president and others has been arrested in the case, according to the FBI.

Everett Dutschke, 41, was arrested about 12:50 a.m. Saturday at his Tupelo home in connection with the letters, FBI spokeswoman Deborah Madden said. The letters, which allegedly contained ricin, were sent last week to President Barack Obama, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi and earlier to an 80-year-old Mississippi judge, Sadie Holland.

Madden said Dutschke was arrested without incident. She said additional questions should be directed to the U.S. attorney's office. The office in Oxford did not immediately respond to messages Saturday.

Dutschke's attorney, Lori Nail Basham, did not immediately respond to phone or text messages Saturday.

Charges in the case were initially filed against an Elvis impersonator but then dropped. Attention then turned to Dutschke, who has ties to the former suspect and the judge and senator.

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