42 THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINE • Early Summer 2018 TheCoastalBend.com was really more about the actions of Henry and Schooley, and the expectation was that an indictment was pending against them as well, which was in fact the case. Jeff Henry was taken into custody in Cameron County, presumably at or near his property on South Padre Island, and was soon extradited to Kansas, where he was released on bail. John Schooley was in China working on a waterpark project when he was indicted, and was arrested at DFW Airport upon his return to the U.S. All defendants have plead not guilty and have been granted separate trials—an indication that their defense strategies will take an “every man for himself” tact— and that could ultimately lead to the man at the top, Jeff Henry, being pointed to as ringleader and primary culprit. If convicted of all charges, Henry would face from 33 to 139 years in Kansas state prison, and fines totaling $3.3 million. Their trials are expected to take place at the end of the year. For a man in his sixties, such a conviction would virtually guarantee that Henry would die in prison, but Caleb Schwab’s death and the ensuing indictments could mean a death sentence for Schlitterbahn as a company—whether or not there are convictions in the criminal cases. EPR Properties, a real estate investment trust based in Kansas City, Missouri, holds $174 million in Schlitterbahn mortgage debt, which is used to fund invest- ments far beyond the company’s waterparks, including movie theaters and other entertainment outlets, and education centers like the U.S. Soccer National Train- ing Center. In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing in April, EPR warned investors that the criminal indictments in the Schwab case could severely impact attendance at the waterparks this year, could cost the company millions in fines and legal fees and, of greatest concern, could jeopardize the issuance of sales tax bonds related to the development of the Kansas City park. The entire debt is secured by Schlitterbahn waterparks in New Braunfels, South Padre Island and Kansas City, and EPR became the first mortgage holder on all of them earlier this year. If funds are not available to pay the mortgages, as EPR has warned could be the case in 2018, all three properties could be foreclosed upon. The company’s Galveston park is not entangled in the EPR debt, and Schlitterbahn Corpus Christi, already foreclosed upon and repurchased by IBC Bank this spring, is being operated by a third party under the Schlitterbahn brand. Schlitterbahn and other civil defendants settled a wrongful death claim with the Schwab family in January 2017 for a reported $19.7 million. SharedBlame E ven if each and every allegation in the criminal indictments re- lated to the death of Caleb Schwab is to be believed, including the assertion that Verrückt violated eleven vital safety stan- dards prescribed by the American Society for Testing & Materi- als (ASTM) for amusement park rides—engineering and mini- mum safety standards that have been followed throughout the country for over 30 years—Henry, Schooley, and the companies charged were absolutely allowed to get away with it. Lead designer, John Schooley was allowed by Kansas state law to self-certify that Verrückt met ASTM standards. The state notorious for creating a budget crisis by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy to the bare minimum, in an ef- fort to spur economic growth, rendered what little regulation applied to amusement parks in Kansas virtually impotent as state inspectors were cut. Annual state inspec- tions at Schlitterbahn amounted to observing one run per ride, and as long as no one was hurt on those single runs, the park was good to go. Mechanical inspections or review of maintenance or incident reports was non-existent, as was any requirement to keep records. Of saddest irony, Caleb’s father, Kansas State Representative Scott Schwab (R- Olathe), built his political career on a platform of starving state government and