Wealth and hubris fuel the tale of a politically connected Missouri couple who allegedly poisoned their neighbor’s trees to secure their million-dollar view of Camden Harbor. The incident that was unearthed by the victim herself — the philanthropic wife of L.L. Bean’s late president — has united local residents in outrage.
To make matters worse, the herbicide used to poison the trees leached into a neighboring park and the town’s only public seaside beach. The state attorney general is now investigating.
“Anybody dumb enough to poison trees right next to the ocean should be prosecuted, as far as I’m concerned,” said Paul Hodgson, echoing the view of many exasperated residents in Camden, a community of 5,000 nestled at the foot of mountains that sweep upward from the Atlantic Ocean and overlook a harbor filled with lobster boats, yachts and schooners.
Amelia Bond, former CEO of the St. Louis Foundation, which oversees charitable funds with more than $500 million in assets, brought the herbicide from Missouri in 2021 and applied it near oak trees on the waterfront property of Lisa Gorman, wife of the late Leon Gorman, L.L. Bean’s president and grandson of L.L. himself, according to a pair of consent agreements with the town and the state pesticide board.
Bond’s husband, Arthur Bond III, is an architect and the nephew of former U.S. Sen. Kit Bond. Their summer home, owned by a trust, is situated directly behind Gorman’s home, farther up the hill.
Poisoned someone else’s trees, their property, and the beach and it was just for their summer home. :smh:
Throw the book at them.
An open and shut case as far as I can tell. You don’t have the right to destroy other people’s property.
No they don’t. But they probably have the
rightwealth to get out of it with a fine that’s probably less than whatever interest is generated by their smallest savings accountTake that house so they never see that view again.
I’m with you on that. 👍
Too much trouble, just burn the son of a bitch
Think of how much better their neighbors view will be without that house there
Honestly if you’re poisoning your neighbour’s plot for something as petty as a part time view, you don’t belong in that community.
They must be so reviled. How would they even get service?
The perps have a whole bunch of money, tho’.
What does the penalty look like and how will this return the trees to the community?
$215,200, which includes $30k for environmental testing and monitoring. Tebuthiuron doesn’t readily break down and so will continue to kill plants in the area until it’s either physically removed or diluted somehow, which will likely take multiple years. Unless they excavate and replace the soil, no trees will grow there for quite some time. And even then it’ll take 30-40 years for them to get anywhere close to their original height.
1.7 million at this point actually, and that’s only so far.
Much more importantly to these rich shitheads, the entire local community of 5000 hates their guts. Hard to enjoy your summer home when youre reviled by everyone around you.
Need pictures so future neighbors can be aware.
They could be fined a small amount for cutting down the trees and then include a provision that the trees must be replaced with trees of the same size. If they were large trees, then that could get super expensive very quickly. There was a story about tree law on Reddit where someone cut down 32 trees on their neighbor’s property and were charged $1k each plus the cost of replanting, it ended up just shy of $2M.
Yeah. You don’t mess with tree law. Since there’s no guarantee that the trees transported will take and it has to be done again.
The poisoned water way is a new twist on the old I’m an idiot who’s going to pay dearly for my hubris motif.
Not my area of expertise, I’m afraid. I just know it’s illegal to damage other people’s property. That’s just basic property rights.
The penalty is stiff glares from the locals for a while, and no.
It’s extremely unlikely that this can be pinned on “them”. People this rich never do their own dirty work and give orders in ways that are deniable. Only exceptions are control freaks and idiots.
IANAL but I didn’t think you can hire someone to commit a crime for you without exposing yourself to a lot of liability. People are certainly prosecuted for hiring someone else to commit murder.
Except murder is always illegal. Spraying pesticides can be legal. They could claim they just hired someone to spray pesticides and it was that person’s responsibility to check the legality or other bullshit to avoid responsibility.
You can delegate responsibility but not accountability. The owners would still be accountable.
Didn’t read the article, did you?