For weeks, people around the county have awakened to find their cars have been broken into. But on January 23, a complaint that people were going through cars in the Old Trail neighborhood led to the arrest of three teens who police say have broken into more than 200 vehicles.

Christopher Ballard, 18, is charged with five counts of grand larceny; Kristie Ryder, 19, is charged with two counts of grand larceny, and an unidentified 17-year-old faces eight counts of grand larceny, which is a felony that carries up to 20 years in prison.

The rash of car break-in reports has been coming in since November, says Albemarle police Sergeant Darrell Byers. Most recently, seven vehicles in Mill Creek were reported hit January 16, over 20 off East Rio on January 17, and more than 20 reported on January 20 in the Georgetown Green and Pantops areas. Most of the vehicles were unlocked, says an investigator.

Police were already looking for the alleged perps January 23 when the call came in from Old Trail in Crozet. The suspects “attempted to leave the area at a high rate of speed,” says Byers.

The alleged getaway vehicle, a Honda Pilot, was (more)

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We say zee-bra, she says zeb-ra. Actually, we say crosswalk, and the one iconically depicted on the cover the Beatles’ Abbey Road album is now a protected English landmark, thanks in part to a former Charlottesville resident.

Even a crosswalk?

“We list anything that has special architectural significance,” says Emily Gee of English Heritage, Britain’s department of historic structures, which on December 22 landmarked the Abbey Road zebra. Earlier last year, the governmental body put the Abbey Road Studio, where the Beatles recorded the album, on its list.

Gee says the photograph for the 1969 album was Paul McCartney’s idea, and the London street was closed down for 15 minutes so the four former Liverpudlians could take their now-immortal stroll.

More recently, a debate erupted about whether a crosswalk was an architectural structure, says Gee. Ultimately, preservationists determined that the lamp poles on either side counted as structures.

“And the paint on the street is a chemical structure,” informs Gee. “We checked.” And of course the crossing met (more)

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It had been over 40 years since Jimmy Gunn had been behind bars, and he was terrified of going back. He began telling friends that it wasn’t fair that a 60-year-old with myriad health problems couldn’t serve his 30-day marijuana sentence on house arrest. He even called the Hook to complain about what America’s war on drugs was doing to him. And six days after entering the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail, he was dead.

But a marijuana sales conviction last fall coupled with a 1969 possession conviction may have given authorities little option.

Gunn had a history of poor health. He was bipolar, took medication for panic attacks, and relied on an inhaler to treat his emphysema, according to friends and family.

Still, to his friend Teague Herren, Gunn seemed healthy enough when Herren drove Gunn to court on December 9. They were hoping the judge would consider a motion for home electronic monitoring and a restricted driver’s license. Instead, Gunn was taken to jail.

“I dropped him off at court, and a week later he’s dead,” says Herren, “for a pot charge.”

Gunn was an artisan carpenter whose work graced the home of the late Dave Matthews Band saxophonist LeRoi Moore. But after a bout of cancer, Gunn had relied on disability insurance, and friends suspect he supplemented his income by selling pot.

According to his attorney, Jessica Phillips, who filed the motion requesting home monitoring, Albemarle Circuit Court Judge Cheryl Higgins and the Commonwealth’s Attorney were open to Gunn serving his time at home as long as the jail said he qualified.

It seems that in 1969 Gunn was convicted of possession of marijuana for five grams of marijuana, which is roughly the equivalent of a “dime bag,” ten dollars worth of pot. Then it was a felony. Today, it would be a misdemeanor.

Phillips checked with jail officials, and says she was told Gunn was wouldn’t qualify for house arrest due to his prior conviction, even though though it was handed down during the Nixon Administration. And even though he was in very poor health, according to Gunn’s ex-wife Debbie Davis.

“He wanted home arrest,” says Davis. “Given his age and his health, and given it was only for pot, I don’t understand why he wasn’t given it.”

Gunn’s recent legal troubles began last year after he sold marijuana to an undercover officer. After that, the Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement Task Force raided his house and found approximately four pounds of pot in dozens of plastic baggies, according to an inventory sent to a forensic lab. An old shotgun added an additional charge: possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Anyone who is convicted of a reefer offense in Virginia automatically loses his driver’s license for six months. That posed an additional hardship on Gunn’s ability to get his medications. He’d lived in the same Barboursville cottage for 30 years, but after his October 6 conviction, he was evicted.

When they learned that Gunn’s death followed the confiscation of his ever-present inhaler, some of Gunn’s friends initially cast blame in the direction of the Jail.

Other jail deaths: Four other inmates have died in the jail or after they were taken to the hospital in the past 10 years, according to information provided by the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail.
Kenneth R. Banks was in for six months with a sentence revocation/probation violation. He’d been playing basketball in the recreation area September 1, 2009, and was found unresponsive on the ground. He was taken to UVA Medical Center, which notified the jail he died of cardiac arrest.
Jane A. Barbour had been sentenced to 90 days for possession of alcohol by an interdicted person, which means she’d been forbidden to have booze as a result of  other offenses. She came into the jail on June 6, 2006. Two days later, she was found face down and unresponsive in her cell, and pronounced dead by the emergency medical technicians. Official cause of death: accidental choking.
Lloyd L. Fitzgerald was serving a 10-day sentence on the weekends for a DUI when he was discovered dead in his cell when breakfast was served March 13, 2004. The coroner called it cardiac arrest.
Walter B. Ditchkus Jr. was brought in on a public drunkenness charge and tried to hang himself February 13, 2001. He was taken to UVA Medical Center and died February 21, 2001. The jail does not have a cause of death in its records.

However, Colonel Ron Matthews, the Jail superintendent, notes that Gunn had been placed on suicide watch December 12 because he’d tried to harm himself with a plastic fork. It was shortly after 11pm the next day, when Gunn told an officer that he was cold, says Matthews.

“Five minutes later, the officer finished his work and went to check on him,” says Matthews. “He was unresponsive.”

According to court records, Gunn was in a coma when he was taken to UVA Medical Center and placed on a respirator. On December 14, the charges against him were dismissed, and his family and friends were able to see him. The next day, he was taken off the respirator and died.

Prisoners with medical issues “get better care in jail than they do out on the street,” says Colonel Matthews. When inmates are on suicide watch, they aren’t allowed to have items that they could potentially harm themselves with, like inhalers, and they’re checked every 10 to 15 minutes, he says.

“As an administrator,” says Matthews, “that’s the worst thing that can happen when someone under your care dies.”

The medical examiner determined that Gunn died from a pulmonary embolism— a blood clot from the leg that blocks the main artery to the lungs.

Gunn’s emphysema would not have been a factor in the pulmonary embolism, says Dr. Samuel Coughron, who was Gunn’s doctor and who had prepared a letter for the jail detailing his patient’s condition.

“In general, when something like this happens, you’re screwed,” says Coughron. “You’re dead before you hit the floor.”

Jimmy Gunn’s family and friends still are grappling with his death, and some remain concerned about whether an inability to get his medications and inhaler could have played a role in his death.

“It was a needless death,” says Teague Herren. “He wasn’t suicidal.”

–updated 11:30am with Gunn’s November call to the Hook

–edited 11:25pm on Sunday, January 22

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For former billionaire’s wife Patricia Kluge, the auctions, the lawsuits, and the loss of the winery bearing her name combined to make 2010 seem to be a very bad year, an annus horribilis as the Queen of England once quipped. Unfortunately for Kluge, 2011 may be worse.

Last year, Kluge put her jewelry, furnishings, and even her clothes up for auction in a bid to stave off creditors. Yet in December, she and her husband, a one-time state wine leader, lost their 960-acre winery to foreclosure, crushing the couple’s dream of bringing high-quality Virginia wine to the national market.

Now, another auction looms. Albemarle House, the mansion where Patricia Kluge once entertained kings, princes, and U.S. presidents in haute grandeur, has been foreclosed upon.

“That house was built at a time when an inkling of that style existed,” says architect David Easton, who designed Albemarle House. “The issue in this day and age: It is not 1900.”

On the steps
Creditors have slated February 16 as the day (more)

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A trusty looking for a snack from a vending machine in the lobby of the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail led to the facility being locked down for a week.

Metal rods were discovered missing from the vending machine in the lobby January 6 in an area only available to jail employees and trusties, says the jail’s superintendent, Colonel Ron Matthews.

“To be on the safe side, we closed down the jail and did a 100 percent search,” he says. The missing 16- to 18-inch rods did not turn up, and the individual suspected of having access to the machine denied having a snack attack.

“We stopped all inmate movement,” Matthews explains. “We were looking for something that could potentially injure someone.”

That meant that for approximately 530 inmates, all recreation and visitation came to a halt. At a jail built to house just 329 inmates, the lockdown left some inmates crammed into a 5′ by 8′ cell with up to three other people.

The inmates were only told that they were locked down for security reasons with no further explanation, according Marjorie Sunflower Sargent, who received a letter from a friend incarcerated there.

“We are very stressed out,” Kevin O’Connor wrote to Sargent. “Some people experienced panic attacks and others traumatic psychological and emotional consequences… What the hell is going on? Please help us.”

To Sargent, a human rights activist, locking so many people in an overcrowded facility is “unconscionable.”

When a search did not turn up the vending rods and a week had passed, Matthews tried a new strategy.

“We offered him immunity,” he says. The trusty ‘fessed up that when he tilted the vending machine to get candy, the rods came out. He said he threw them in the trash and they were taken out with the regular trash.

On January 13, the lock down ended.

As for the inmate responsible for his fellow prisoners being locked down for a week— how safe is he?

“He won’t go back to the general population,” says Matthews. And he has the option of going to another facility.

The jail superintendent says this is the second lock down he’s had since coming here in 2004, and observes, “That’s part of corrections life.”

–updated January 17 with the more common spelling of “trusty.”

Updated January 18 with the Marjorie Sargent and Kevin O’Connor remarks.

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Since his release from prison two years ago for the infamous 1989 graduation rape, Jeffrey Kitze has had a hard time getting a date. Returned to prison last year for unwelcome dating overtures, he was found guilty Monday, January 10, of stalking a Charlottesville woman.

Singles are often told that volunteering is a good way to meet people, and that’s the avenue Kitze tried following his January 2009 release after serving 20 years for raping and beating his sister’s UVA Law School roommate. Kitze donated time to the Virginia Organizing Project, but it was the attention he lavished on a fellow volunteer at a group called Food Not Bombs that resulted in the stalking conviction.

Wearing prison stripes, Kitze, 49, did not testify during the three-and-a-half hour trial, but according to the victim, he had plenty to say to her.

She told the court she first encountered him while riding her bike on Water Street in October 2009. He allegedly remarked that he knew her name from watching her on public access television and said the two would have plenty in common even though she was in her 20s.

Kitze soon started showing up at Food Not Bombs events. While cooking with the woman one day, he said she wouldn’t believe how old he was.

“I bike 100 miles a day,” the victim quoted the lovelorn Kitze. “I’m in shape. I have a beautiful body.”

By November 2009, she saw him walking by her then-residence on Nalle Street in the Fifeville neighborhood.

“Here,” she said in court, “was the (more)

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When Aaron B. Tobey decided to exercise his First Amendment rights by displaying the Fourth Amendment on his chest while going through security at the Richmond International Airport, he expected that he might be detained for further questioning.

“He was astounded he was arrested for disorderly conduct,” says his father, Charlottesville accountant Robert Tobey.

At the airport conveyor belt, Aaron, 21, removed everything but his shorts to reveal what he’d scrawled on his torso: “Amendment 4: The right of the people to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated.”

“He thinks like I do,” says Robert Tobey, explaining that his son, a graduate of Western Albemarle High School and now an architecture student at the University of Cinncinnati, finds that new airport security procedures that force passengers to choose between a full body scanner that produces what some consider a virtual strip search or an invasive body pat down are “security theater,” says Tobey père.

The account of the incident, first reported in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, said Aaron stripped down to his underwear, but his father says it was just a pair of running shorts. And the elder Tobey, who took part in protests during his own youth, contends that his son acted respectfully and complied with the security procedures. But apparently the Transportation Security Administration was not amused with (more)

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Patricia Kluge and Bill Moses close out 2010 with another foreclosure in their future, this time on five lots in their 24-lot Vineyard Estates subdivision.

The parcels in Meadow Estates, phase one of the high-end gated subdivision in southern Albemarle, total 122 acres and are assessed at $6.9 million. Vineyard Estates LLC owes $8.2 million, according to a property auction notice.

Partner First Colony Corporation from North Carolina went bankrupt, a demise that precipitated the first foreclosure of the year, when the 6,600-square-foot Glen Love Cottage, the only house built in the subdivision, according to county records, went on the block in March. Kluge and Moses bought back the property, assessed at (more)

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When murder suspect and UVA lacrosse player George Huguely spoke with police in May, he allegedly described an altercation with former girlfriend Yeardley Love in which her “head repeatedly hit the wall,” and his lawyer called Love’s death “an accident with a tragic outcome.” Now, the defense is trying to prove that.

Lawyers for Huguely were in a Charlottesville court December 15 seeking access to Love’s medical records, a request the prosecution calls “a fishing expedition.”

Although the medical examiner determined that Love died May 3 from blunt force trauma to the head, Huguely’s attorney, Fran Lawrence, argued that the cause of her death was unknown, and that’s why he subpoenaed records from UVA Athletics Department, UVA Student Health, and from the Charlottesville-Albemarle Rescue Squad, the last of which Commonwealth’s Attorney Dave Chapman had already agreed to enter the court record.

Amphetamines were found in Love’s body, according to the toxicology report, in an amount that would be consistent with her prescription for Adderall, a stimulant widely used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, said Bill Gormley, who (more)

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A Charlottesville jury has awarded what’s believed to be Virginia’s largest wrongful death award— more than $10 million— and seemed to send a message to the family of a woman who died when a cement-laden truck from Allied Concrete rolled and crushed her car three years and a half ago.

“It speaks to the level of tragedy the family experienced,” says Bryan Slaughter, a trial lawyer who watched part of the December 7-9 proceedings. “It also says Allied’s conduct is not going to be tolerated in this community.”

Jessica Lester, 25, was driving to work with her husband, Isaiah Lester, on June 21, 2007, when they crossed paths with a mixer driven by Allied employee William Donald Sprouse, who chose curvy, two-lane Route 53 over Monticello Mountain to haul 36,000 pounds of cement to a bridge rebuild in Palmyra, rather than taking Interstate 64 and U.S. 15.

Trial testimony showed that Sprouse had a history of driving infractions. On the fateful day, the plaintiffs allege he was driving too fast around a curve when he lost control of the truck, which overturned on top of the Lesters’ Honda.

Jessica Lester grew up on an organic farm in Nelson County where she was home-schooled. A graduate of Piedmont Virginia Community College, she was training to become a nurse coordinator for UVA neurosurgeon Greg Helm. Instead she became his patient.

The neurosurgeon testified (more)

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Fairfax Deputy Police Chief Steve Sellers will be the next Albemarle County Police chief, county exec Bob Tucker announced Monday..

Sellers, a 28-year-veteran of the Fairfax County, has led the investigations division for Fairfax including heading a task force that successfully investigated snipers John Mohammed and Lee Malvo, who terrorized Northern Virginia in 2002.

Sellers succeeds John Miller, who retired September 30 after 21 years as chief.

“We are very happy to bring someone of Steve Sellers’ caliber,” says Tucker in a release.

Sellers, 49, says he’s wanted to be in law enforcement since he was five years old. He got both his B.A. in business administration and master’s in public administration at Virginia Tech. He’s also a graduate of the FBI National Academy.

Although the population of Fairfax recently topped the one million mark (to Albemarle’s less than 100,000), Sellers says Albemarle and Fairfax share similar demographics as far as an educated population. The two jurisdictions also face similar crime trends, economic uncertainty, and traffic issues.

“There’s a lot,” he says, “I can transfer from Fairfax.”

In November, two of Albemarle’s six supervisors said that personal integrity would be an important quality they’d seek in a new chief. Earlier this year, in March, four officers were disciplined for unspecified “inappropriate” behavior “while on the clock.”

“I don’t support or condone any behavior that erodes the public trust,” says Sellers. “I have 28 years with a highly regarded, ethically sound police department. Truthfulness is an absolute must. Truthfulness, integrity, and public trust are very high on the list.”

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It was quite a different scene from the Sotheby’s auction in June that drew throngs of people and sales of $15.2 million when Patricia Kluge decided to unload her household furnishings. The December 8 auction was less glitzy and had fewer bidders, who apparently hoped to pick up the foreclosed Kluge Estate Winery and Vineyards for a song.

The opening minimum was $19 million. And as much as the auctioneer cajoled bids— in $100K increments only— no one raised their paddles. The bank, Farm Credit, took possession.

More than 50 people milled about the auction pavilion before the sale, most of them curious onlookers rather than serious bidders; people had been warned to bring $250,000 in cash or cashier’s check for a deposit.

Trustee Bill Shmidheiser compared the crowd to a soccer team in which there are really only three or so players who matter, and the rest just show up. “Most of these are just showing up,” he said.

The auction was scheduled for noon December 8, but was delayed about 15 minutes until one of the five registered bidders arrived. Not present in the crowd: debtors Kluge and her husband, Bill Moses.

The pair ran into trouble when (more)

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Ever since a woman walking her dog on Free Bridge Lane discovered the body of Anthony Lorenzo Johnson on the ground beside his ‘81 Buick Regal back on February 21, 2005, the case has remained open for Albemarle police. That changed December 6, when an Albemarle grand jury indicted a man who would have been a minor when he allegedly killed Johnson.

Nearly six years later, Joseph Michael Harris, now 22, has been charged with first-degree murder and three other felonies in the homicide and robbery of Johnson, 22, whom his family called “Bunny.”

Over the years, Albemarle police worked with Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents in investigating the case, according to a release.

Johnson, who was from the tiny James River town of Columbia, worked for Piedmont Concrete at the time of his death, and he left three children. He’d been shot once in the head. The investigation is ongoing, say police.

“It’s nice to be able to give a little bit of closure to the Johnson family,” says Albemarle Lieutenant Greg Jenkins.

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It was only a poster, but it meant everything to Wendy Marsters.

The Northern California high school teacher has been listening to Dave Matthews Band since 1995, and she catches the band’s show every time they happen near her home. But for the final show on the final tour before a fan-freaking hiatus, she decided to cross the continent.

“I knew it would be epic— ” she says in a phone call from Chico, “epic in Dave Matthews Band-ness.”

And she even found an epic seat in Charlottesville. As the 20th person in line for the November 20 show at John Paul Jones Arena, the 41-year-old parlayed her 12-hour wait into primo, second-row seats.

“I had the best seat in the house,” says Marsters “And I wanted a poster as a symbol of this trip.”

Every DMB show has a different, limited edition poster, and Marsters paid $40 for one of the 650 Methane Studios posters printed just for the Saturday event.

“There’s key shows that sell out and are important and people collect the posters,” explains Marsters. And because the Charlottesville show was the last one until 2012, there’s one offered on eBay for $400.

After the three-and-a-half hour concert, Marsters went to the nearby McDonald’s restaurant while the Arena traffic cleared. She started talking to a young man from Richmond who’d also been at the show, and who asked how much she wanted for the poster and offered her $250, she says. No way, responded Marsters.

“It’s priceless to me,” she says she (more)

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After a four-month job search that drew over 80 applicants from all over the country, City Council went with the tried and true and picked Maurice Jones, the acting city manager, to become Charlottesville’s CEO.

Former NBC29 sports reporter Jones has spent much of his career at City Hall, starting as director of communications in the late ’90s, a position he held for six years. After a stint at the Miller Center, where he served as director of development, Jones came back to Charlottesville as assistant city manager under Gary O’Connell, who left the city manager slot open earlier this year when he took a job with the Albemarle County Service Authority.

Although speculation swirled that Jones was the top pick earlier this week, it wasn’t until Friday that the city officially announced that Jones will take the $170K-a-year position.

How big a role did being ensconced (more)

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The woman whose website about a local drug task force landed her in jail for a month won a victory in court Wednesday on charges of stalking an ATF agent. Even as her own attorney calls her blogging and photography habits bizarre, Elisha Strom has been found not guilty for her behavior.

The brash 35-year-old maintains she was merely needling Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Special Agent John Stoltz when she posted photos of him, his car, license plate, and house on her blog, I HeArTE JADE.

“Ridiculing the ridiculous,” is how Strom characterized her activities in a eve-of-trial posting on her blog, which originally tracked the activities of the Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement task force until she was ordered to cease contact with its members. She turned her attention to the other law enforcement officers including the ATF’s Stoltz.

“I was very concerned for my safety and the safety of my family,” Stoltz testified during the December 1 trial in Greene County General District Court. Aware of her history with JADE, Stoltz said he’d discussed her state of mind with those officers, and he noted that Strom, who lives in Bedford, had driven more than 70 miles to follow and photograph him.

Stoltz said he was troubled by an incident he heard about in which Strom admittedly fired a gun and by her previous connection to white supremacists. (Strom’s estranged husband is Kevin Strom, who led a local white separatist group until he was convicted of one count of child porn possession in 2008.)

Greene Commonwealth’s Attorney Ron Morris presented more than 20 entries from iHeArTE JADE, including (more)

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The man who drove the wrong way down Interstate 64 in June pleaded guilty to drunk driving, but not the attempted capital murder of a police officer.

Michael Dennis Hogberg, 26, of Crozet faces a maximum sentence of 15 years for his guilty pleas to driving under the influence for the third time, felony driving with a suspended license, and felony eluding.

After entering the three guilty pleas in Albemarle Circuit Court November 30, Hogberg said he was not guilty of attempting what Virginia code calls the “willful, deliberate, and premeditated killing of a law-enforcement officer” on June 20, which was his birthday.

Defense attorney David Heilberg asked Judge Cheryl Higgins to dismiss the capital charge, arguing that attempted capital murder relies on circumstantial evidence of the defendant’s state of mind and intent to kill.

“On his birthday, he did a terrible thing,” said Heilberg. “He has not denied that. To convict him of attempted capital murder is a different thing.”

While it’s possible to kill without intent, said Heilberg, “You have to have intent to kill to be guilty of attempted capital murder.” And his client, said Heilberg, was too intoxicated to form that intent in the 15 seconds he drove toward Virginia State Police Trooper Kevin Frazier on I-64 at approximately 75mph without swerving.

Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Elliott Casey argued that Hogberg knew he was going the wrong way, recognized that Trooper Frazier was law enforcement, and recognized that if he hit Frazier head on, he would have killed him.

“The defendant never deviated or swerved from Trooper Frazier,” said Casey. “That period of time is a lot of time.”

“That’s a lot of time if you’re sober,” replied Judge Higgins.

Casey noted that when (more)

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For six years, the Starlight Express, brainchild of entrepreneurs Oliver Kuttner and David New, has ferried passengers to New York City and back. The two have sold their locally grown bus service to Ruckersville-based A. Goff Limo, and the new owner stands ready to get in Amtrak’s face for Charlottesville-to-NYC travelers.

Dan Goff is so confident that passengers will choose the bus over train that after the holidays, he plans to put the Starlight’s pick-up/drop-off point, which has been on East Market Street, literally in Amtrak’s face at its station on West Main Street.

“That’s the center of the city,” says Goff. “We don’t have a physical location on Market Street.”

And although the unpaved parking lot at the Amtrak station has been a source of controversy for years now, it does offer more parking, says Goff, in a location where passengers can wait for their departure in restaurants and find multiple transportation options when the bus returns at midnight.

Since purchasing the bus company in a deal consummated in August, Goff (whose wife, Ana, founded A. Goff in 2000) has added (more)

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