Democratic Underground - Such disputes occasionally end in murder

The WashPost wrote a feature in its Sunday Magazine in May on one such dispute involving a fence, some escaped cows, a lawyer turned cattle rancher, and a murder. I can't provide a link because it's through a proprietary database through work, but here's the citation and a few paragraphs as well as a link that may or may not work for you:

The word was, Perry Brooks's bull -- all 2,000 fence-bending pounds of him -- was loose again. And the word, as is sometimes the case in a small farming town, was right.

snip

Once the prodigal had been located, Brooks's habit was to fire up his truck and go retrieve it, loading it into the back or just tapping it home on foot with the aid of an old hoe-handle and whoever was around to help. That could be a sight to behold. Brooks was worn and bent as an old tree root by decades of hard labor. In recent years, he'd endured open-heart surgery and two hip replacements and had crushed his right hand in a front-end loader. To keep his hip from popping out of joint, he sometimes wore a complicated plastic brace over his dungarees. In combination with the tattered clothing he favored, it gave him the look of Jed Clampett crossed with the Tin Man from "The Wizard of Oz."

But this time, on the third weekend in April 2004, Brooks's bull had crossed into the 675-acre purebred cattle operation of Brooks's neighbor and longtime nemesis, John F. Ames.

Ames, 60, a Richmond lawyer and CPA turned part-time cattle breeder, had spent more than a decade developing a large herd of prized, pedigreed Black Angus cattle. In the years since he'd come to Caroline County, Ames had acquired a reputation as an exacting and ambitious cattleman, a demanding, somewhat aloof figure. Most people who knew him in Caroline were keenly aware that he'd filed more than a dozen lawsuits (and threatened more) against neighbors and business associates since taking over Holly Hill Farm. That reputation for litigiousness left many of his fellow townspeople wanting to keep clear of him.

snip

The feud started like this: In 1989, about four years after he'd arrived in Caroline, Ames sent each of his neighbors a registered letter announcing his plans to build a new fence. He informed them that, under an 1887 fence law, they would be required to pay for half of whatever section of it ran along their shared property line. Some neighbors would be on the hook for $6,000, some for $12,000. Perry Brooks's share would be more than $45,000.

Blood Feud; Robert Frost said good fences make good neighbors. He never knew John Ames and Perry Brooks; Mary Battiata. The Washington Post. Washington, D.C.: May 22, 2005. pg. W.18

Reply #24: Such disputes occasionally end in murder [View All]