The Interior Decorator Tells All

It is said that psychiatrists, hairdressers, and bartenders may become repositories of their clients’ innermost secrets. We may add to that short list the profession of interior decorator. When the Grants moved into their Fort Wright, Kentucky, mansion in 1979, they summoned several local artisans to do alterations and general fixing-up for them. One of those called upon was a worker we shall call Raul Mitchky, for reasons he will best understand. He was amazed at the behavior of Shirley Grant. Willy-nilly, he found her confiding in him about all manner of things that she would certainly not wish to share with those who were contributing to her lavish lifestyle. Raul told me: It was funny, because she was very candid. She made this one comment. There was a photo [of her] in one of their [Dawn of a New Day] magazines. “That God-damned photographer!” she said. It was at Las Vegas. She was holding a drink, and they cropped the picture, but the top of the swizzle-stick was still showing!

But that was nothing. Shirley apparently didn’t care what Mitchky knew. Camilla Warrick, of the Cincinnati Enquirer, had directed me to Mitchky because he said he had become aware of a large quantity of pornography present in the Grant home. He told me how he discovered itWhat totally flabbergasted me was, I was doing the master bedroom and they had this big dresser in there and [Shirley Grant] said to me, “Would you just take everything out of it and put it on the bed and cover it up because the people from the church are coming to pick [the dresser] up.” It didn’t dawn on me at first, because a lot of people ask me to move stuff. I opened up these drawers and started taking [pornographic material] out, and it wasn’t simple little stuff, you know, like Hustler or Playboy. It was all really, real filth porno. Action porno, everything. And the [dresser] was just full of it. I mean, I couldn’t believe—you’d think that someone might have a few, but this was drawers full of it.

I asked Mitchky, “Shirley didn’t seem to mind you going into those drawers and removing those drawers?” He replied:She told me to do it. She’s the one who told me. I’d touch nothing, you know, without permission.... It’s amazing. How can someone like that repeatedly and continually fool so many people? ... He’s screwed so many people, and the way [Shirley Grant] would be so candid about it: “I have to go to the church and collect the envelopes today and get some cash in the bank.”

Mitchky’s dismay is shared by many of us. While working at the Grant home, he got to talk to Misty, the Grants’ daughter. He had noticed that there were no religious artifacts at all around the house. He himself is a deacon in a Baptist church, and he found it strange that the Grants, so devoted to religion, had no signs of it around the house. He told me:It was funny.... I asked [Misty] if she went to Sunday school. She said she’d never been to church, ’cause they don’t let her come to church.... And I’ve seen this publicity that he puts out [Dawn of a New Day] and they’d have pictures of [Misty], like on the seashore with a halo around her head, picking up sea-shells. I thought it was awfully strange.

Mitchky also got in behind the scenes with the Grant mailing campaigns:I had to get water to clean my tools up, and [Mrs. Grant] told me I could use this laundry room down in the basement. It was their supply room for holy oils and prayer shawls and mother-of-pearl praying hands [all the “gifts” they mailed out].

For the job he did at the Grant mansion, Raul Mitchky was paid in cash—in bundles of $5 bills. He was aware that these bills represented the love offerings of many hundreds of poor folks who had mailed in what they could to assist in God’s work. W. V. Grant is seen on television in a number of United States markets. His penetration of Canada has been minimal.

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