Early Life
Jim was born in Los Angeles on June 4, 1931. He was the only child of father Richard Boniface Piper, born in Englewood, Illinois and mother Mary Elizabeth Miller, born in Seattle, Washington.
Jim had a an interest in mechanics at an early age and built "hot rods" in his parent's garage during his teens in the 1940s. He later earned a degree in Mechanical Engineering from USC in Los Angles where he also played football, graduating in 1953. After college he joined the United States Marine Corps and became a fighter pilot.
Family and Married Life
Jim married his first wife Susan Jane Lefler in 1956. They had their first child Peter in April 1957 while Jim was still in the Marine Corps stationed in Pensacola, Florida. They had two more children before calling it quits in 1963.
He married Christina Logan in 1964. Christina had one child from a previous marriage and they had two more children together before being divorced in 1983.
Business Life
After leaving the Marine Corps in late 1957 Jim briefly pursued becoming a commercial airline pilot but soon decided instead to use his mechanical engineering knowledge to open a machine shop making hydraulic parts for the aerospace industry.
In the mid 60s he founded Cadillac Construction in Los Angeles where he bought older run down houses in the Inglewood area, demolished them and then designed and built 4-6 apartment units on each property. These early construction projects were also the testing ground for his invention of a unique hydronic water and space heating system.
In 1971 Jim founded Piper Hydro to begin manufacturing his hydronic heating system, and when the first "Arab oil embargo" hit in 1973 he decided to add solar water heating panels to his system to make it more energy efficient. By 1978 he had acquired 13 US Patents and in 1979 took the company public in an IPO that raised several million dollars which allowed the company to expand considerably. That same year Jim was interviewed by Harry Reasoner on 60 Minutes.
During the mid 70s Jim was taking a hard look at how the US Federal Government was favoring nuclear and fossil fuel energy producers and thwarting smaller scale energy efficient producers like his. He testified in Congress and wrote a book "Fight for The Sun" that unfortunately was never published. We found this lawsuit that Jim filed against the Atomic Energy Commission in 1974 apparently to defend one of his patents. James R. PIPER and Thomas P. Johnston, Appellants, v. The ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION, Appellee.
In 1985 Jim and his board of directors made a deal to merge Piper Hydro into Catalyst Thermal Energy Development after developing a new marketing and sales strategy that started to take off in a big way. LA Times - Firm Produces the Energy for Apartment Projects
Ferraris
In 1961 Jim bought his first Ferrari, a 1954 250 Europa GT. Over the years he owned a number of Ferraris, was a member of the Ferrari Owners Club and traveled to Italy to tour the Ferrari factory.
Retirement
In 1986 Jim stepped down as President and CEO of Catalyst Thermal Energy Systems after making a deal with the Catalyst Board to provide marketing of the energy systems. After bringing many contract deals to Catalyst from multi-family project developers he soon realized they had no intension of accepting any of those contracts and were actually in the process of shutting the company down. He then filed suit against Catalyst for breach of contract and waiting for the lawsuit to wind its way through the courts he decided to move to Lake Chapala in Mexico just south of Guadalajara.
Black Widow
In early 1989 Jim met Socorro LaPine in Chapala, Mexico. At first she seemed like a lovely woman, but we later learned that she was plotting to kill him and steal all of his assets including his prized Ferraris.
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