Katy Vine and Ana Worrel in Texas Monthly:
Erik Maund had always lived the high life, as you might expect of a man whose surname had been blasted on TV ads for decades. By the time he was in his forties, he was an executive at Maund Automotive Group, a car sales business whose first dealership was opened by his grandfather Charles Maund. “If you say the Maund name in Austin in a 7-Eleven, two people say, ‘I bought a car from him,’ ” said Wallace Lundgren, a retired Chevrolet dealer. Austinites could probably recognize the major names in the car business better than they could identify any local politician. And members of the city’s old power circles would recognize Erik—a six-foot-three white guy with short brown hair, a boxy head, and heavy-lidded eyes tucked under a straight brow—as a likely heir to the business.
He and his wife, Sheri, a former dealership office worker, had raised two kids to the cusp of adulthood and lived in a seven-thousand-square-foot white brick mansion next to the Austin Country Club, where he teed off regularly with a close-knit group of friends. He owned a boat and a lake house. On Sundays he often enjoyed brunch at the club with his family.
But on March 1, 2020, as the world was rattled by reports of a highly contagious virus turning up in nation after nation, Erik received a text that demanded his attention. It came from a stranger who knew about a night Erik had spent with an escort in Nashville a few weeks earlier and wanted money to keep quiet.
More here.