More than two months after Bel Rio owner Jim Baldi asked local artist Chris Butler to display his paintings and pen-and-ink work inside Baldi’s Belmont club, Butler returned to take his work from the walls. By then, Bel Rio had been closed for nearly two weeks, and its owner—the subject of a $300,000 fraud lawsuit from a business partner and a felony embezzlement charge in Albemarle County—was a spectre in the neighborhood.
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Notice of a fraud lawsuit against Bel Rio owner Jim Baldi was posted at his 900 Elliott Ave. home, but neighbors say he has not been seen around the house for weeks. |
“The windows were papered over. There was junk in every corner, boxes of random stuff. The office was still in place,” says Butler. “The liquor was all gone. The beer was still sitting around. It looked like they just threw a bunch of stuff in boxes and took off.”
Now, the Charlottesville Circuit Court awaits contact from Baldi, while the Albemarle County Police Department has begun to seek him out. According to the fraud lawsuit filed by Bel Rio LLC partner Gareth Weldon, Baldi had until Monday, August 2, to file a response to Weldon’s suit in the city court. At press time, however, Weldon’s lawyer, Daniel Meador, had not heard from Baldi or other representation, and no response had been filed in court.
Last week, county police issued an arrest warrant for Baldi, who provided accounting and payroll services for several area restaurants and is accused of embezzling an undisclosed sum of money from WK Foods and Proffitt Management. An employee of Proffitt Management told C-VILLE that owner William Proffitt was the only individual who could comment on Baldi’s connection to the business; calls to Proffitt were not immediately returned.
And while a missing person report for 25-year-old Bel Rio employee Kristian Throckmorton was closed last week after Throckmorton contacted family members, C-VILLE has been unable to confirm that she has returned to Charlottesville. Throckmorton is rumored to be with Baldi.
“She’s an adult, so that’s that,” says Charlottesville Police Sargeant Marc Brake. “Simple as that.”
A half-mile from the dormant Bel Rio, Baldi’s pink, two-story house—on the market for more than six months—sits in a similar state of suspended operation at 900 Elliott Ave. Real estate agent Roger Voisinet says he visited the house twice during the last three weeks, and it looks “just about like it always did.”
“It just looks like someone had breakfast there in the morning,” says Voisinet. “There is stuff out of the bedroom, on the table. You couldn’t tell anyone had left.”
Voisinet says law enforcement has not asked to examine Baldi’s house. In the last year, city police responded to 27 incidents within a quarter-mile of Baldi’s Elliott Avenue home. Police also arrested 19-year-old Demonte Burgess, later charged in the January shooting of Miguel Salazar, in the 900 block of Elliott Avenue for a disturbance at a public housing site. However, neighbors who live next door to Baldi describe his house as “very quiet,” and say they have not seen the man in at least two weeks.
In his recent visit to Bel Rio, Butler reclaimed all but one painting—a slightly claustrophobic image of a human figure secreted into a black orb. He has been unable to locate the painting since Bel Rio closed and Baldi vanished.
“When I saw the inside of the restaurant, I was like, ‘I don’t think they’re coming back,’” says Butler.
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