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."
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