CHAPTER ONE- THE MISER OF SUGAR LOAF

“And thus I clothe my naked villainy.” -William Shakespeare, RICHARD III

      "The greatest wickedness is often united with the extreme of folly."- The Report of the Trial of the Murderers of Richard Jennings, 1819

    In 1819, the powerful Dutchman, and future president of the U.S., Martin Van Buren, known as the “Little Magician” for his string pulling and pay offs, would quote RICHARD III, at the trial of the murderers of Richard Jennings. Four whites, and a black man stood in the dock. These were the conspirators in the death of Richard Jennings. After quoting Shakespeare, Van Buren turned to the jury and smiled. He was confident they would all hang. 

    It didn’t take too long to locate the publication of “The Report of the Trial of the Murderers of Richard Jennings.” Richard Jennings, “the victim,” who lived with his sons Coe and Ira in the little hamlet of Sugar Loaf, NY was portrayed in the best of terms as “ornery, niggardly and a misanthrope.” At worst, he’s described as “conniving and greedy” and through his litigious nature brought down (karmically speaking) ultimately held responsible for his own brutal murder. It’s part and parcel of the moral of this tale. 

      Surely a man lay dead, and to everyone’s horror five citizens of the community were implicated in the deed, but who could blame them for killing the guy? A man could only take so much with regard to encroachments on his property, before pulling his gun. Were not Dick’s own dealings with his nephew to blame? Maybe he didn’t deserve the worst of it, shot, bludgeoned unmercifully, left to die alone in a snowy-woods, but according to town gossip and the chronicling of the affair by the penny press, he sure as hell didn’t deserve much better.

     The little tract from which the “wickedness” quote is pulled, is a blow-by-blow account of the trial of the murderers of my great, great, great,….. uncle Richard Jennings. It is the skeleton onto which my mother’s family story cleaves. Two writers, attending the trials, compiled these transcripts that were then printed and disseminated to the tabloid news-hungry public. Written by a couple of diligent and incredibly astute court reporters, “Printed by Benjamin P. Lewis and Co. FOR THEMSELVES and Timothy B. Crowell,” it reads like an episode of Murder TV.

     Historically canonized as "the first murder for hire in New York State,“ the pamphlet chronicles the voices of the judge, counsel on both sides, and through witness Q&A testimony fleshes out a narrative, not only of a small town killing, but treats the reader to a moralistic tale of seduction, betrayal, money, greed, race, class, liquor, religion, and above all else- a little piece of property.

       Unlike most of my family, I never had any desire to own property, until I was well into my 40’s. I’d spent my early adulthood of the 1970’s and 80’s in SF and NYC just getting by, renting apartments and never even considered buying one. One reason for that was the fact that I was always broke. But, then in the mid-1990’s, after working steady for as a carpenter for few years, I’d saved up a little money, gotten re-married and was looking to escape from the Lower East Side. Out of the blue, the owner of a 130 year old church in Sullivan County, who I had left my phone number with ten years previous, called me. He wanted to sell the church and wondered if I was still interested. I was. In April of 1995 my wife Melanie and I bought the old Methodist Episcopal Church, that sat on a little less than an acre, in the tiny hamlet of Glen Wild.

     Going back to that conspiracy in Sugar Loaf and the life and death struggle over 50 acres that ended in Richard Jennings’ murder, it’s always the one closest to you, wife, husband, uncle, neighbor, who you want to kill. After an initially smooth run with both my wife AND my upstate Italian neighbors, by the turn of the century I wanted to kill both. 

      After a contentious boundary dispute the neighbors erected a six foot high chain link about two feet from my house, that ran for a hundred yards, literally caging me in. By the time the twin towers came down I was divorced, and penned up like a dog on my own property. With the wife now out of the picture, I concentrated my venom towards the neighbors. I never went anywhere without being armed. When the fence went up, a group of rather large thugs hired by the neighbor to intimidate me, were lurking just over the property line. Seeing the .357 on my hip they taunted, “Big man with a gun.” I retorted, rather lamely, “I’m not scared of a bunch of fat Italians.” This seemed not to bother them in the least. “Ever seen the Sopranos?” they sneered menacingly, doing their best Tony impression. I unhooked the latch on my holster. “Ever seen Deliverance?” They backed off, thus ending the threat of gun play, and escalation of random pop culture, cinematic references. The fence would stay. 

     Five years later, early one spring morning, a police officer arrived on my doorstep. I knew him from a previous encounter, and we exchanged pleasantries. “You know why I’m here?” he asked. I said I had no idea. “It’s about your neighbors…..” he said scuffing the ground the way cops do when they think they know something you don’t. “…they’re missing their fence.” I looked at the spot where the fence used to be and told him that I had noticed that it was missing, but had no idea where it had gone. “You know nothing?” he asked again. “Nope.” I said. “But…..” I added, “if you find out who took it shake their hand for me. I hated that fucking fence.” Not much has changed in 200 years, in regard to the deep seated pathology that can overcome the yeoman when pressed. The disappearance of that fence remains an unsolved mystery.