Longtime KGO AM radio host Ronn Owens and his wife, longtime news radio personality Jan Black, have been dragged into a still-unfolding drama involving their daughter, Laura Owens, who is facing criminal charges in Arizona. And a GoFundMe campaign in January 2025 that was framed as being for Ronn’s medical bills has primarily been used to pay the couple’s mortgage, and other expenses including for their daughter, a court official has found.
Owens and Black filed for personal bankruptcy (Chapter 13) last summer, which was denied by the court in January, and then they filed again in May of this year, this time Chapter 11, seeking bankruptcy protection from foreclosure on their Scottsdale home. As was detailed extensively in the hit Apple podcast Love Trapped, the couple’s bankruptcy has seemed linked, at least in part, to their daughter Laura’s legal troubles, and Laura is reportedly wholly financially dependent on them.
Former Bachelor star Clayton Echard and another man who briefly dated Laura Owens in Scottsdale sought to have her brought up on criminal charges for an apparent pattern of faking pregnancies, falsely claiming paternity, stalking, perjuring herself in court, and more. And a third man, an ex-boyfriend she had when she and her parents still lived in San Francisco, remains in legal entanglements with her as well.
Laura claimed to have made no money of her own in her own bankruptcy filing — though in previous court appearances she had claimed to make income from a podcast she did with her mother, as well as a business they co-owned buying and selling show horses. As the podcast documents, Laura Owens lives in a casita on her parents’ Scottsdale property, and it was there that sheriff’s deputies and district attorney’s office investigators served a search warrant in January 2025, just a few weeks after SFist had reported on Ronn Owens’s GoFundMe campaign.
Now, as the Chronicle reports, the US trustee working on the couple’s bankruptcy case made a court filing Monday, after reviewing bank accounts belonging to the family members, and they found that just over 10% of the roughly $132,000 raised from the campaign was used for pharmacy and medical expenses — around $17,000. Meanwhile, $61,000 had gone toward mortgage payments, and $44,000 had gone to limited liability companies that they own. Other amounts were paid to their daughters and to credit card bills.
In total, during the period that the GoFundMe was live, the family had over $20,000 in monthly income, according to the trustee’s review, and spent over $520,000 out of their bank accounts, with only a small amount of their debt burden related to medical bills.
The federal trustee found that while it didn’t appear any law was broken, there was “a serious question whether donors [to the GoFundMe] received what they were promised.”
The so-called Justice for Clayton crowd has seized on many aspects of the bankruptcy case — in part because of and they published audio from the late July hearing in which Black can be heard responding to the trustee’s claim that donors’ funds were being used to pay a Macy’s credit card bill, and to pay various personal debts.
Owens and Black have reportedly disputed the claims made in the trustee’s filing, and they’ve agreed to have their bankruptcy case dismissed, with a two-year prohibition on filing any other bankruptcy petition.
Owens, who retired from KGO in 2021, wrote in a Facebook post around New Year’s last year, “You all know I’ve been living with Parkinson’s for 23 years. What you might not know is that life has thrown a few more punches my way — four bouts of cancer, most recently colon cancer, and some serious heart issues. It’s been a rough road, and honestly, it’s hard to admit that the financial strain has become overwhelming on top of everything else.”
The GoFundMe remains live, and has raised $137,000 now out of a posted goal of $140,000. While it notes Owens’s medical troubles, the title is simply, “Support Ronn Owens: A Voice That Defined an Era.”
The US trustee said that most of the $132,000 sum from GoFundMe had been spent, and that the couple’s accounts contained nominal amounts.
Meanwhile, Laura Owens is due back in court for a settlement conference on August 28, at which point she may take a plea and agree to settle her criminal case. Otherswise, her case is scheduled for trial in October, and she continues to retain a well known attorney in the area, per Reddit.
Previously: KGO Legend Ronn Owens Suffering from Cancer, Heart Trouble, and Parkinson’s Disease, Turns to Crowdfunding
Image: Ronn Owens via Facebook
Jay Barmann
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