Discussion of bunkers forbidden at hearing

No column this week, but I'm passing along this story that appeared on Page One on Sunday, June 27, 2010.

WEST CHESTER — Richard Steven Newman said almost nothing in court as a Chester County Common Pleas judge added another year to his state prison sentence. His former wife kept her thoughts private as well, talking only with her husband and family during the brief hearing.

But what remained completely unspoken in the case of an "obsessed" husband stalking and ultimately attacking his ex-wife were the boxes that police found buried in the ground behind Newman's former home in West Bradford.

Two underground "bunkers" had been constructed there, far away from where anyone inside could be heard or seen. At one, there were wire restraints screwed to the wall, jugs full of water stored inside, and a trap-door mechanism hidden under leaves and dirt that would keep the person inside from raising the lid and escaping his or her confinement.

The purpose of those bunkers was clear to Newman's ex-wife, Barbara Sexton, when she learned of them, seven months after Newman broke into her home in Lancaster County, clubbed her boyfriend with a hammer, and tried to drag her from the house.

"She expressed her belief that they were designed by the suspect to restrain her," wrote state police Trooper Samuel Laureto in his report of the discovery of the bunkers.

Newman, 51, a former high school industrial arts teacher in Downingtown and West Chester, is now serving a sentence of 12 to 44 years for the February 2008 attack on Sexton and her now-husband, Michael Vidolin, after he pleaded guilty but mentally ill to charges including attempted murder, aggravated assault and burglary.

Mention of the bunkers — which Newman's former attorney, Richard Meanix of West Chester, referred to in court documents as "forts" or "sanctuaries" — was, however, barred by the sentencing judge in Lancaster County from being mentioned by the prosecution in its plea for a long period of incarceration.

Meanix had argued that the purpose of the boxes was in no way sinister, but that Newman had built them to provide him a place to retreat to when he was overcome with anxiety brought on by his agoraphobia. Bringing up their existence at sentencing would be prejudicial and irrelevant to the charges he pleaded guilty to. Judge Hoard F. Knisely agreed.

Additionally, because police determined that the construction of the bunkers in West Bradford had not involved any criminal activity, local authorities did not mention their existence on Wednesday when Newman appeared in county Judge Howard F. Riley Jr.'s courtroom for sentencing on a violation of his 2007 probation for stalking Sexton at her job in West Sadsbury.

But they remain forefront in the mind of the Lancaster County prosecutor who handled Newman's case there.

"It is certainly one of the most troubling things I've even seen in a case," said Assistant District Attorney Susan Ellison, a 17-year veteran prosecutor and head of the Lancaster County District Attorney's Domestic Violence Unit.

The matter has taken its toll on Sexton as well, Ellison said. "She is terrified of him," she said in an interview last week. "I don't think that this is ever going to go away for her. It is a comfort to know he is incarcerated, but in the back of her mind she knows there is a possibility he could get out of jail."

Meanix, contacted Friday, declined comment.

In a response to Meanix's request to keep mention of the bunkers from being used against Newman, Ellison laid out what authorities believed Newman intended on the night of Feb. 12, 2008.

He rode a bicycle from his home in the Romansville area of West Bradford near what is now township park property to Sexton and Vidolin's home in Warwick, Lancaster County, a distance of more than 42 miles. He broke into the home and waited in the basement until after 1 a.m., when he knew the couple had gone to bed, removing his shoes and leaving there a change of clothes, plastic bags, a flashlight and a ski mask.

He then went into the bedroom and struck Vidolin in the head several times with a hammer while he slept, so hard that he had to be taken to the hospital for treatment. Newman then tried to drag Sexton from the house, but was stopped when she disabled him with a stun gun she kept for security. He was arrested by township police that morning and taken into custody.

Ellison wrote that she believed Newman intended to kill Vidolin and take Sexton from the house in her car, casting suspicion on her for Vidolin's murder. She, presumably, would be hidden from the world in one of the bunkers.

The attack came less than six months after Riley sentenced Newman to 30 days to 23 months in prison with three years probation on three counts of stalking, stemming from episodes that occurred 10 times in October 2006, November 2006 and January 2007. He had sent her obscene messages, followed her home from work, sent her mysterious packages, and entered her place of employment.

At the time, Newman was described by his father, Dr. Richard A. Newman of Downingtown, a local psychiatrist, as "a kind, gentle person who always tries to help those who need help." In addition to successfully connecting with troubled high school students, he coached Little League and umpired for youth teams in the 1990s, all the while raising three sons as a single parent.

A Phoenixville psychiatrist, Dr. Johanna Gorman, diagnosed him as suffering from major depression and other emotional and mental health issues, including panic disorder and agoraphobia — the fear of open, outdoor spaces. She said incarceration would lead to "a severe breakdown," but said he appeared to be finally dealing with his divorce from Sexton.

Gorman "does not believe that the type of behavior that (Newman) engaged in and pled guilty to would occur in the future because he is 'very much at peace' now that his marriage to Mrs. Newman has ended," wrote defense attorney Thomas Ramsay of Lionville, who represented Newman in September 2007.

A year later, on Sept. 2, 2008, state police were called to a wooded area owned by West Bradford that had been a landfill at one point but was then being surveyed for use as a township park. Surveyors had found the underground bunker, when a worker tripped over its hatch. Laureto wrote in his report of "an interior trap door with a hooked tension bolt … reinforced with blocks to prevent someone from escaping if pushing up from the inside." There was a "U" bolt attached to the wall with a cable lopped at one end, and milk jugs with liquid with the date February 2008 on one's side.

After some investigation, Laureto interviewed a couple who had moved into a house in a subdivision near the woods in April 2008. They had discovered a hatch underneath their back deck that led to an underground room.

"They debated calling the police but decided not to after talking with their neighbors who described the former resident as very odd," Laureto wrote. That owner was Newman.

On Wednesday, Riley added one to three years to Newman's Lancaster County sentence, which he is currently serving at Norristown State Hospital.

Ellison, the Lancaster County prosecutor, said that the sentences will keep Newman under court supervision for the rest of his life. "

"I think (the court) recognizes that this defendant is going to be a danger to these victims," she said. "He is very much obsessed with these victims, and blames (Sexton) for everything" that has happened to him. "He needs to be supervised for a very long period of time."

Candidates With Color

This column originally appeared on Sunday, June 20, 2010

The news is replete these days with examinations of the political stances of various candidates whose public views seem at first glance to be, well, let us say out of the ordinary.

There is the fellow from Kentucky who, as I recall, suggested that letting people who own lunch counters decide who to welcome into their businesses and who to make creep around to the back door for a chicken salad sandwich might not be such a bad idea. I think he also was quoted as saying that since nothing could be done to prevent at least some people from dying in coal mines, why get all upset when it happens.

I've also heard tell about the woman in New Mexico, I think it is, who apparently thinks a glass of red wine with dinner is something that maybe the government should rethink allowing Americans to have. Something also about coming up with a few "Second Amendment remedies" if the government thinks it can use your money to fund that Social Security scheme also strikes a bell when I think of her.

We don't know much of how to take the fellow down in South Carolina who won the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate because, well, he really hasn't said much of anything, before, during, or after the election — except making an alleged attempt to introduce a college student to the wonderful world of pictures of naked people. We are certain, however, that things will work themselves out in the wash, or the courtroom, for this fellow.

But I know what you are thinking. You are thinking that exciting candidacies like these never happen in Chester County, and what a shame. With the recent exception of the school board election in which the guy who hinted that sticking people's faces in a tub of water was pretty much good clean fun, political candidates in Chester County are usually pretty boring.

Even the guy who ran for township supervisor on the Hot Air Balloon ticket had only an odd predilection for sleeping someplace other than his actual home, and compared to suggesting armed insurrection in Sin City, that hardly ranks.

We're left mostly with Andy Dinniman and his dog when it comes to providing local color in election campaigns. (I once saw state Sen. Dinniman walking said dog on the front lawn of the Chester County Historic Courthouse and wondered if he included the traditional plastic shopping bag in with his legislative briefs, but, alas, things never reached that stage. Another missed opportunity for the front page.)

Let me assure you, however, that we have had our own set of oddball candidates in the past whose stories would rival those of the candidates in Kentucky, New Mexico and South Carolina. For starters, there was the guy who ran for county commissioner on the platformthat he wanted to put a heliport on the top of the courthouse.

I forget his name, but he was ubiquitous at commissioners' meetings for a spell in the early and mid-1980s. He used to march up and down the sidewalk on North High Street in front of the Old Glory statue with a hand-drawn picture of what the heliport would look like after it was constructed next to the clock tower on Thomas U. Walter's architectural masterpiece.

He was adamant about it. It wasn't a joke. He truly believed that what the county needed was a central heliport in downtown West Chester. Taxes had something to do with it, I imagine. He would get righteously riled up at the commissioners' meeting when the trio in power didn't take him seriously enough, and once I remember he brought his one-man protest to the parking lot of the Daily Local News because we wouldn't include him in the candidate profiles we ran in the commissioners' race.

Occasionally I wonder what life would be like today if he'd been successful at convincing the public that a heliport was just what our county needed. It couldn't be worse than having an MTV reality TV star parade through downtown West Chester dressed as a rabbit, could it?

Another of my favorite campaigners was the former mayor of Parkesburg, who told me in a pre-election interview that one of his goals if re-elected was to erect a sign at the borough's edge proclaiming Parkesburg as "The Beverly Hills of Chester County." He had a hard time getting me to understand exactly how that 1.2 square mile municipality could compare with the land of palm trees and millionaire mansions, but that could be my fault. Maybe it was the presence of backyard "cee-ment ponds" that they had in common.

I think he won, though. Which may or may not give you pause if you live in Kentucky, New Mexico or South Carolina.

The Judge, The Boss, and Chihuahuas

This column originally appeared on Sunday, June 13, 2010

I'm at The Table last week for lunch and settling in to work on a late-week edition of The Times and its close-to-impossible crossword puzzles, staring vacantly at the clue for 9-Across — "Erased," five letters — when The Judge sits down.

The Judge tells me he's exhausted because he's been working so hard all week. I'm thinking to myself why he should be tired now, since The Judge pretty much works hard 24-7-365. I don't always stop by his courtroom a whole lot because he works so hard it makes ME tired. He comes in early and leaves late and when his schedule says he's going to be on the bench at 9 a.m. you can't just show up at 9:27 a.m. and figure you've got an extra minute or two to complete your paperwork, because he's been waiting for you since 9:01 a.m.

The Judge said he'd been so busy this week that he'd almost forgotten to tell me that he sentenced a fellow to a state prison term for shoplifting. Not that that in and of itself is necessarily newsworthy, since lots of people get sentenced to go upstate for shoplifting, I've learned. Collecting shoplifting convictions in Pennsylvania is sort of like collecting baseball cards — the more you have of them, the more you're gonna get at the back end. No, what he found interesting about this fellow's case was what he decided to steal. To wit, more than two dozen copies of the DVD presentation of "Beverly Hills Chihuahua," starring Jamie Lee Curtis, George Lopez, Piper Perabo, and Drew Barrymore as the voice of Chloe the Chihuahua.

I say I'm sorry I missed that because that's the sort of story that has legs, as we say in the ink-sloshing business. The Judge says he's sorry he missed it, too. The movie he means. He said he heard it was pretty funny. Seems there's a pampered Beverly Hills Chihuahua named Chloe who, while on vacation in Mexico with her owner's niece, Rachel (Perabo), gets lost and must rely on her new friends before she is caught by a dognapper who wants to ransom her. OK, fine. Whatever. Anyway, all the talk about Chihuahuas made The Judge hungry for some Latino food, he says. The Judge says he hasn't had a nice, inexpensive Mexican dinner in a while.

Over walks The Boss, who couldn't help overhearing what The Judge and I were talking about, primarily because she was eavesdropping anyway. The Boss doesn't actually own The Table, but when the nominal boss comes over and tells her that he thinks the special should be the cheeseburger hoagie on Wednesday, The Boss pretty much looks at him and says, "Let me get back to you on that." Anyway, The Boss says there is this place down at that new shopping center on Route 202 near where they used to have the drive-in movie theater that serves a mean Mexican meal. The Boss has The Judge's attention, because he'd forgotten that he once had a pretty good meal at that very same restaurant. The Boss says she feels comfortable at the restaurant since the owner used to be a pilot and she used to be a flight attendant for the same airline, except that when he was flying east to west she was flying west to east so they never actually met.

This is somewhat confusing to me since I'm not clear what air-piloting skills actually have to do with one's ability to set out a table of nice Mexican food, but The Judge is off and running. He and The Boss are comparing notes about the best types of burritos and enchiladas and whether refried beans are better than rice and how hot the hot sauce should be on a plate of quesadillas, when all of a sudden The Judge mentions that as a matter of fact the best taco he'd ever had was served to him at …

And at this point he says the name of a fast-food restaurant that I will not repeat but which occurs to me used to use a Chihuahua as its national spokes-animal and I wonder if The Judge has worked himself so hard that his taste buds have pretty much fallen off, and whether airline pilots who take second jobs wear their flight uniforms to work out of habit, and what Drew Barrymore thinks of the whole thing.

Oh, and the answer was "blank."