Late Husband Of Tulsa Cancer Clinic Owner Talked To News On 6 In 1999

One of the more bizarre twists we've learned since a Tulsa cancer clinic was shut down by the federal government, is the Principality of New Utopia. It was a new country that was supposed to be founded by the now-dead husband of Maureen Long, the owner of Camelot Cancer Care.

In an April 1999 News On 6 story, Lazarus Long talked about his plan to build the Principality of New Utopia.

"Certainly, as far as we're concerned, we'd rather live there than any place else we've seen in the world," Lazarus said.

According to Long, back in 1999, he said the country would be built on piers in open water in the Caribbean, between Cuba and Mexico.

"We think it has a lot of romance. It's been hundreds of years since there's been a new country," Lazarus said.

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A year after this interview, a federal judge issued a permanent injunction, stopping Long from trying to raise the money to build New Utopia.

But his plan had at least one supporter a decade ago. Tulsa attorney Mike Fairchild was tapped to be the new country's attorney general.

"I thought it was the craziest, the wildest idea I'd ever heard," Fairchild said, back in 1999. "But once you hear it all, it really seems to make sense on every level. It's a doable idea."

Fairchild still lives in Tulsa, but he declined to go on camera. He told us over the phone that he hadn't talked to Lazarus Long in more than a decade and the more he studied the New Utopia plan, the more he became unimpressed.

Long died last year, but it seems as though the vision for New Utopia still exists. Its website still shows artist renderings, complete with a school of medicine, skyscrapers and canals.

So whose dream is the country now?

If you look on the website, highlighted in blue, is a message from Maureen Long. She's Lazarus Long's widow and the owner of Camelot Cancer Care.

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Her message says that she "will persevere until our dream of the new state becomes a reality."

We talked with Maureen last week, but she denied knowing anything about New Utopia.

"I don't know about websites or have any control over them. I was basically along for the ride," Maureen said.

Mike Fairchild also told us that he thought he was just brought on for an intellectual exercise to design a constitution for a new country. He now says he "disavows" his quote from our 1999 story.