Start burrowing into property deeds, and you never know where you’ll end up.

This month’s digging has led us to 1229 Chickering Road, where transaction number 10 on our list features a former owner who has moved from a fine house in leafiest Belle Meade to The Big House.

That address is across the street from the 60-acre spread of HCA co-founder Thomas F. Frist Jr. and wife Patricia, at 1304 Chickering, valued for tax purposes at $12.2 million. Up the road at 1208 is a home now on the market for $3.2 million; down the way at 1311 is another on sale for a few bucks shy of $6 million. The neighborhood’s convicted-felon population was fairly low to start with, and it has now decreased by one.

There was no Nashville media coverage when federal prosecutors in North Carolina secured a guilty verdict in June against John Kent Colvin, who had lived in the house at the corner of Chickering and East Brookfield Avenue since 2004 with wife Sherrie. The jury found that Colvin, 54, had taken part in a $20 million investment fraud scheme through his Disciples Limited company and other entities. He is now in jail, awaiting sentencing.

The foreclosure sale of 1229 Chickering to its mortgage holder was the least of last month’s Headline Homes when ranked purely by price, but it may end up being the most talked about.

Highest-priced single-family home transactions recorded in Davidson and neighboring counties in July 2010, ranked by dollar value:

1. 5879 Fredricksburg Drive, Nashville 37215
Buyer: Aaron R. Kaalberg, trustee
Sale price: $3.45 million
Sellers: Jeffrey L. & Carrie C. McLaren
Agents: None of record

Kaalberg is an attorney at Bass Berry & Sims PLC. We have not been able yet to figure out whom he represented in this purchase, but they buyer apparently paid cash: No deed of trust has been recorded.

The McLarens paid $534,600 for this Forest Hills parcel in 2003, according to Metro property and tax records, and built a new house on the 1.58-acre lot in 2006. The four-bedroom home must be something special on the inside, given that it came in at only $1.47 million in the city’s 2009 round of tax appraisals.

2. 4204 Two Rivers Lane, Franklin 37069
Buyers: Kerry L. and Edmond Martin Cash
Sale price: $1.825 million
Sellers: Jack Stephen Burton II & Sheree Gustin Burton
Seller’s agent: Tim Thompson (Johnson & Thompson)
Buyer’s agent: Russ Barger (Pinnacle Realty)

Ed Cash is a star songwriter and producer in the contemporary Christian music scene. His family’s newly constructed, Louisiana-style home sits on 9.5 acres out in the horsey expanses off Del Rio Pike.

3. 5521 Iron Gate Drive, Franklin 37069
Buyers: Robert & Barbara Sturgeon
Sale price: $1.67 million
Seller: David A. Hart
Seller’s agent: Shawn Hackett (Re/Max Elite)
Buyer’s agent: Mary Elcan May (Fridrich & Clark)

This home is in the gated Laurelbrooke development near the Davidson County line, as is the Waterstone Court sale below. According to its realty listing, the Iron Gate home clocks in at almost 10,300 square feet, with six bedrooms, six full and three half baths (including a “luxury bath w/ walkthrough shower” in the master suite), a gourmet kitchen, a game room, a wine cave and a theater.

4 (tie). 4913 Maymanor Circle, Nashville 37205
Buyers: James C. & Carlita U. Emerson
Sale price: $1.5 million
Sellers: John and Cynthia Smith
Agents: None of record

This one is in the elegant Hill Place subdivision near Belle Meade.

4 (tie). 4424 East Brookfield Drive, Nashville 37205
Buyers: Robert & Caitlin S. Harris
Sale price: $1.5 million
Sellers: Anne A. & Michael James Dobbs
Seller’s agent: Jimmy Pilkerton (Pilkerton Realtors)
Buyer’s agent: Mary Beth Thomas (Fridrich & Clark)

6. 3 Oxmoor Court, Brentwood 37027
Buyers: Michael D. & Connie J. Andres
Sale price: $1.49 million
Seller: Mary Elizabeth Fuller-Gerald
Seller’s agent: Donnie Stanley (Pilkerton Realtors)
Buyer’s agent:  Kay Wallace (Pilkerton Realtors)

7. 1805 Waterstone Court, Franklin 37069
Buyers: Marc E. & Karen L. Rosen
Sale price: $1.3 million
Sellers: Richard A. Halstead and wife, Alice L. Halstead
Seller’s agent: Laura Baugh (Worth Properties)
Buyer’s agent: Donna Mauldin (Avenue Real Estate)

8. 153 Cheek Road, Nashville 37205
Buyers: Cole & Christen Barfield
Sale price: $1.285 million
Builder/seller: HR Properties of Tennessee
Agents: None of record

9. 1435 Tyne Blvd., Nashville 37215
Buyers: Michael H. & Elizabeth L. Schatzlein
Sale price: $1.28 million
Sellers: Debra A. & Brian S. Crew
Seller’s agent: Denise Cummins (Zeitlin & Co.)
Buyer’s agent: Yvonne Kelly (Zeitlin & Co.)

Michael Schatzlein was named CEO of Saint Thomas Health Services in May.

10. 1229 Chickering Road, Nashville, 37215
Buyer: JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A.
Sale price: $1.275 million
Sellers: Shapiro & Kirsch LLP, trustee in foreclosure against Sherrie R. & John K. Colvin
Agents: None of record

Colvin was indicted in August 2009 on charges of conspiracy and mail fraud. “Using countless false statements and omissions,” the indictment said, Colvin and an accomplice “were able to collect well over $20 million dollars from investors during the course of the scheme.”

The feds said Colvin had met the accomplice, Scott Hollenbeck, when they were both working for Merchant Capital LLC, a Brentwood investment firm. (The SEC pursued civil fraud charges against Merchant Capital in 2002, but an Atlanta judge cleared the company in 2005.) Hollenbeck is currently serving a 14-year prison term for his part in a different scheme known as Mobile Billboards of America.

The indictment alleged that Colvin and Hollenbeck promised investors “guaranteed” interest rates of 12 percent or more on mortgage-backed investments that were supposedly insured against loss by a “surety bond program” that was a fiction. They actually invested the money into a speculative coal mine in Montana, losing most of it.

A jury in Raleigh’s U.S. District Court convicted Colvin on June 11. He was remanded to custody pending sentencing, which is set for Sept. 20. Separately, in Nashville’s U.S. Bankruptcy Court, the trustee administering his Chapter 7 case has cited irregularities in his statements as grounds for dismissal.

The bank took title to this property for less than the $1.5 million it is owed on the defaulted mortgage. Metro’s tax appraisal on it is $1.68 million.

For more than 40 years, this property was the home of Bill Powell Sr., the former head of Capitol Chevrolet in Nashville who was accused of the 1968 murder of his business partner, W. Haynie Gourley. Powell’s trial the following year was among the most sensational legal proceedings in Nashville history. A jury acquitted him.

JPMorganChase had not yet put the home back on the market as of late last week, but presumably it will do so soon. Watch for the sign in the yard, if you’re looking for a house that comes with a story.

Check out www.tinyurl.com/headlinehomes to see Headline Homes for every month since January 2008 — an ongoing chronicle of life at the apex of the local real estate market. And be sure to send your tips about Nashville-area home activity to tom.wood@nashvillepost.com.