The Best American Crime Writing 2006

by Mark Bowden

  “Perry would call and say, ‘I’ve lost a cow, would you keep an eye out for it?’” said Frances Hurt, a neighbor. “It was a riot. We’d call each other and say: ‘Where’s Perry’s cow today? Is he in your yard?’ ‘No, is he in yours?’”

  Once the prodigal had been located, Brooks’s habit was to fire up his truck and go retrieve it, loading it into the back or just tapping it home on foot with the aid of an old hoe-handle and whoever was around to help. That could be a sight to behold. Brooks was worn and bent as an old tree root by decades of hard labor. In recent years, he’d endured open-heart surgery and two hip replacements and had crushed his right hand in a front-end loader. To keep his hip from popping out of joint, he sometimes wore a complicated plastic brace over his dungarees. In combination with the tattered clothing he favored, it gave him the look of Jed Clampett crossed with the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz.

  But this time, on the third weekend in April 2004, Brooks’s bull had crossed into the 675-acre purebred cattle operation of Brooks’s neighbor and longtime nemesis, John F. Ames.

  Ames, sixty, a Richmond lawyer and CPA turned part-time cattle breeder, had spent more than a decade developing a large herd of prized, pedigreed Black Angus cattle. In the years since he’d come to Caroline County, Ames had acquired a reputation as an exacting and ambitious cattleman, a demanding, somewhat aloof figure. Most people who knew him in Caroline were keenly aware that he’d filed more than a dozen lawsuits (and threatened more) against neighbors and business associates since taking over Holly Hill Farm. That reputation for litigiousness left many of his fellow townspeople wanting to keep clear of him.

  The bad blood between Perry Brooks and John Ames, however, was in a class all its own. The sheriff’s department policed it, the newspapers covered it, the local court was openly weary of it, and the families of at least one of the men had learned to tiptoe around it. The feud had even led Ames to apply for a permit to carry a concealed weapon. In his application, Ames told the court that he needed the gun, a Czech-made 9mm semiautomatic pistol, because he carried large amounts of cash for business, but also because he was afraid of his neighbor.

  The feud started like this: In 1989, about four years after he’d arrived in Caroline, Ames sent each of his neighbors a registered letter announcing his plans to build a new fence. He informed them that, under an 1887 fence law, they would be required to pay for half of whatever section of it ran along their shared property line. Some neighbors would be on the hook for $6,000, some for $12,000. Perry Brooks’s share would be more than $45,000.

  The first reaction among the neighbors—several of them retired schoolteachers and nurses living on Social Security and pensions, who kept no livestock—was consternation. “What kind of a person moves to a small town and starts suing his neighbors?” said Hurt, whose elderly mother, aunt, and cousin all received bills.

  Each neighbor wrote to Ames, formally declining to participate. When that didn’t end it, the neighbors banded together and hired a lawyer to challenge the fence law. They also asked their state delegate to take the matter up with the General Assembly. But the legislature declined to get involved. A lower court sided with the neighbors, but Ames appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court, and he won. Two of the justices dissented, saying that the fence law amounted to “economic favoritism” for large landowners and was “woefully lacking” in protection for their neighbors. But the majority found the law to be constitutional.

  Eventually, all of Ames’s neighbors paid up, except for one. “Perry was the only one who refused to roll over and play dead,” said Brooks’s friend Paul Orlett.

  Brooks’s defiance earned him some admiration around Bowling Green and surrounding Caroline County, but it would prove costly. As the fence matter and related lawsuits proceeded, Brooks and Ames went to war. There were two battlegrounds. One was the courtroom, where Ames had the upper hand. He sued Brooks to collect his $45,000, and eventually a lien was placed on Brooks’s farm. Brooks, in turn, sued Ames, claiming that Ames’s property line was in error. Down along the disputed border, a second battle was waged, with shouting, shotguns, security guards, and even a detention on the premises with handcuffs. These incidents spawned more lawsuits—Brooks sued Ames for $2 million, and Ames sued back for $8 million, each alleging trespass and claiming emotional distress.

  But a top-of-the-line fence was built, at the not-modest price of $22.20 a foot (more than three times the average cost of such a barrier, according to Tommy Tabor, a Virginia fence builder who has consulted on fencing materials for experts at Virginia Tech).

  John Ames’s new fence was just over five feet high, with nine strands of smooth, high-tensile wire stretched between posts sunk three feet into the ground. There were two additional strands of old-fashioned barbed wire, one of which was capable of being electrified.

  High-tensile wire is made to withstand several times the amount of pressure that regular barbed wire can take. Struck head-on, by a bull or a truck, it is supposed to stretch, not break. But the new fence did not contain Perry Brooks’s bull. At least twice before, in 1994 and again in 1995, the bull got through. (Generally, farmers and fence builders say, only an electric fence is guaranteed to restrain a bull.) On its second outing, the bull mounted at least one of Ames’s purebred heifers, and Ames sued Brooks for more than $450,000, for costs and “intentional disregard” of the law. The lawsuit also alleged that Brooks had cut or damaged the fence on at least five occasions.

  However relaxed some of Brooks’s neighbors were about his wandering herd, the law treats bull trespass seriously, as do cattle breeders, for whom control of the herd bloodlines is crucial. Virginia’s fence law gives those trespassed upon the right to demand a minimum of $500 for damage, board, and veterinary costs, such as testing for contagious disease. In cases of repeated trespass, the courts have allowed the aggrieved neighbor to take the offending animal to market and sell it in the name of its negligent owner.

  After the second trespass, Brooks was ordered by the court to put up a $500 bond against future trespass. But the larger issues of the $45,000 for the 3,600 feet of fence, and the several-million-dollar lawsuits, were unresolved. And there were signs that everyone’s patience was fraying. In 1995, six years into the feud, an exasperated substitute judge (the local judges had recused themselves from the matter) ordered Perry Brooks to stay off Holly Hill Farm and had the old farmer put up a $2,000 bond to help enforce the ban. The judge also admonished both men. “The parties are hereby cautioned by the Court to maintain peace and order between their persons and properties,” warned Circuit Court Judge L. Cleaves Manning. The words “No Contact!” are handwritten in the margin of the order.

  But on the morning of Monday, April 19, 2004, for reasons that his family and friends can only speculate about, Perry Brooks decided to flout the court order, go onto Ames’s property, and bring the bull home himself. He asked his wife, Evelyn, to go along, but she refused. His son-in-law was unavailable. So was Wick Coleman, his son-in-law’s uncle, who, like a number of farmers in Caroline, worked a second job on the railroad.

  In the end, Brooks recruited Michael Beasley, a farmhand who lived in a trailer on a far corner of Brooks’s farm, and Paul Orlett, a retired Marine infantryman and fishing buddy of thirty years. Orlett looked after his two-and-a-half-year-old grandson during the week. Having no one to leave the boy with that morning, Orlett brought him along.

  The three men and the child drove over to Holly Hill Farm using a path that ran between the two properties alongside the CSX railroad tracks. They arrived at a paddock where the bull had been penned. Brooks and Beasley got out, and Orlett slid into the driver’s seat. He turned the truck around and drove about fifty feet back in the direction from which they’d come.

  Brooks was carrying an old, gray stick, about four feet long, that he used to guide his cattle. The plan was that Brooks and Beasley would walk behind the bull and drive it forward, while Orlett would lead the way in the truck.

 
Brooks and Beasley had just let the bull out of the pen, Beasley testified later, when Ames “pulled up fast in his truck.” He was wearing his gun under his suit. He got out of the truck and confronted the men, Beasley told Orlett later, saying: “Put the bull back in the pen.” Brooks drew his stick back by his ear in reply, Beasley testified. The entire confrontation lasted no more than ten seconds, he said. Brooks never said a word.

  “He didn’t get a chance,” Beasley said.

  Ames opened fire with a pistol. He shot six times, according to Beasley’s testimony. The first shot, Beasley said, hit Brooks in the face. It entered Brooks’s right cheek, according to the coroner, hitting his palate and exiting left, between his upper and lower jaw. Five more shots followed, hitting Brooks in the torso, piercing his heart and spinal cord. Two bullets hit the back of his upper right arm.

  In the moments that followed, according to later court testimony, Ames walked to his truck and put the pistol on the seat beside a Winchester rifle. He picked up his cell phone and made several calls, including one to the sheriff’s department, which in turn notified the state police. When the law arrived, Ames said only this: “I’m not making a statement. He’s over there if you want to try to help him.”

  WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE?

  That is the question that has rattled around Bowling Green in the year since the shooting. What would you have done, if you’d gone to bed one night master of your domain and awakened the next morning to find a registered letter in the mailbox, informing you that you owed $45,000 to pay for your neighbor’s new fence?

  And if you did not pay up, your neighbor was entitled to slap a lien on your property. This, even though your neighbor had three times your acreage and many times your cattle. And one more thing: Your neighbor was a lawyer, which meant that you would be fighting on his battlefield. (During the feud, Ames often served as his own attorney.)

  Where was the justice? According to his friends, and his daughter Kim Brooks, that’s what Perry Brooks wanted to know.

  Brooks’s instinct was to fight. His opening volley was a handwritten note, formal in tone, dated January 25, 1989. “Dear Sir: In response to your letter of Jan. 3, at the present time my finances do not permit me to participate in the fencing project. However, at some future date, if the need for the fence arises, I will be more than glad to participate. Sincerely yours, O. Perry Brooks.”

  By 1993, four years into the feud, Brooks’s stance had hardened. “Dear Sir,” he wrote his neighbor. “I wish to inform you that nobody from holly hill farm [sic] is allowed on my property. This includes you, your wife, your sons or daughters, your farm hands. Anybody associated with you is forbidden.” He signed the letter “O. Perry Brooks, owner.”

  Brooks’s friends—Bobby Lakin, Wick Coleman—and others say that at its core, the feud was not so much about money or class differences (though those played a role), but something more intangible and fundamental. It was about respect.

  “He didn’t treat my father as a human being, as an equal, as someone you would talk to,” said Kim Brooks.

  During the trial over the disputed boundary line, Perry Brooks was asked if it was true that he had once fired a shotgun in the general direction of John Ames. Yes, Brooks testified. And was it true that he had done so in part to “needle” John Ames? Yes, Brooks said again. And why did he want to do that, Ames’s attorney asked him.

  “I think he needed it,” Brooks replied. “Let him know somebody else was around besides hisself!”

  PERRY BROOKS AND JOHN AMES MET, according to Brooks family accounts and court testimony, at a public auction for Holly Hill Farm in June 1985. Holly Hill, a former plantation turned dairy farm, had fallen onto hard times. The auction was not a bankruptcy sale, but the widow of the owner was selling by agreement with the farm’s creditors. Farmers around the county were in attendance that day. Ames, visiting from Richmond, approached Brooks to ask if there were any problems with the property. Brooks, Ames testified later, said no. The property was sold to Ames for about $442,000. Ames added the word “Corporation” to the farm name. Farm stationery listed Ames as vice president and his wife as president and treasurer.

  According to testimony by both Ames and Brooks, they met again in January 1989 near their shared property line. Brooks had received the registered letter from Ames but had not yet formally replied. They talked about the cost of the fence, fencing materials, and the need to keep their herds separated. At some point, Ames reportedly remarked on the beauty of Brooks’s land and said that his own cattle “sure would look pretty on it.” The two men dickered. Ames offered to swap the fence bill in exchange for some of Brooks’s land. Brooks said no. Brooks suggested Ames just tie in this new fence to the one hundred yards of Brooks’s existing fence. Ames said he would agree, but only if they put the deal on paper and filed it at the courthouse. Brooks said no.

  Brooks also told his neighbor that Ames’s proposed fence line was in error. It included a 1.87-acre triangle of land that actually belonged to him, Brooks said, by virtue of an old plat drawn up after the Civil War. That map, which used landmarks such as old sycamore stumps and white pine trees, gave him clear possession of that triangle of land, he asserted. In addition, he and the previous owner of Holly Hill Farm had made a handshake deal about the triangle years ago.

  No, Ames replied, he had more recent legal surveys showing the land was his. The meeting ended with Brooks storming off, according to testimony.

  At least three times in the months that followed, Brooks drove his tractor down to the disputed boundary line and nudged the new fence down, Ames alleged. He picked up posts and even a gate and carted them back to his barn, saying the materials and the new fence were over his property line and so belonged to him. On one of those occasions, Ames called out to him and demanded that he stop. Ames later testified that he had reminded Brooks then that they had talked about fencing the disputed section. Brooks replied, in so many words, that he didn’t care.

  On another occasion, Brooks showed up at the offending fence line with a single-barrel shotgun.

  “What you got there?” Orlett said Ames shouted over to Brooks that day, a query that Brooks heard as a taunt.

  “I’ll show you,” Brooks reportedly called back, and he discharged the shotgun in the air, according to court and other accounts. No one was hit, but Ames was frightened enough to take cover behind a tree, and later contended in a lawsuit that he believed Brooks had been aiming at him and that the incident caused him “severe emotional distress.”

  The feud reached a new intensity in March 1989, when Brooks drove down to the fence and found himself face-to-face with a six-foot-three security guard. The guard, a former Army Ranger, was carrying a .357 magnum. The two men scuffled, and Brooks’s face was bruised. The guard testified later that his gun had hit Brooks while the guard was trying to kick Brooks’s shotgun out of reach. Brooks said the guard had pistol-whipped him. The guard handcuffed Brooks and took him up to the main house, where Ames was in view. On seeing him, according to Ames’s subsequent complaint, Brooks began to bellow, shouting that he was going to come back and “kill everyone on the place.”

  (Both Brooks’s widow, Evelyn, and John Ames declined to comment on any aspect of the feud. Evelyn Brooks has filed a $10.3 million wrongful death suit against Ames, which is scheduled to be heard in civil court after the murder trial in September. In turn, Ames filed an $11.3 million countersuit, accusing Evelyn Brooks, her daughter Jacqueline Coleman, son-in-law Matthew Coleman, and three John Does of a series of crimes including trespass, infliction of emotional distress, assault and battery, conspiracy, fraud, obstruction of justice, breaking court orders, and “terrorism.” Ames later dropped the terrorism count after questioning by a judge and then dropped Evelyn Brooks from the suit entirely.)

  Brooks was detained for a while, then uncuffed when he complained of chest pains, according to court records and Kim Brooks. He was arrested by sheriff’s deputies and charged with trespassing. At the county
jail, he was taken to the medical ward, then transferred to a hospital in Richmond, where he stayed for a week.

  After that, Brooks told daughter Kim and others that he “wanted the war to be over.” Kim Brooks, a nurse, remembers talking with her father at the time.

  “I scolded him,” she said. “I told him: ‘What’s this I’m hearing about shotguns? I don’t ever want to hear about you murdering someone. You made us go to church all our lives, and then you act like this?’” Kim Brooks remembers that her father was contrite and made no further assaults on the fence.

  The ground war at the fence line was subsiding, but the bull’s wanderlust was not.

  THE FENCE THAT SEPARATES Holly Hill Farm from the Brooks farm is a door through time. On one side is John Ames’s Farm Corporation, with its spreadsheets and cold-storage tanks for bull semen and calf embryos. On the other is Perry Brooks’s 246 acres, which, by choice and temperament, he husbanded with methods and tools that in some cases harked back to Colonial times.

  Like many farmers in Caroline County, Brooks was cash poor and land rich. Caroline is the last truly rural redoubt on the booming Interstate 95 corridor between Washington and Richmond, but, in recent years, housing subdivisions have begun to appear. The paper value of Brooks’s land soared, but he rarely had more than $1,000 cash to his name. He lived on $400 a month in Social Security income, rent from a small second house on the property, and what he raised selling his vegetables at the farmers’ markets in Northern Virginia. Most of his farm equipment was rattletrap and bore the marks of his welder’s torch. He spruced up for church on Sunday but otherwise often dressed in tattered clothes.

  “Perry was a little rough around the edges, but he had a heart of gold. He’d do anything for you,” said McGann Saphir, a Virginia farm extension agent for Caroline County.

  Brooks may have been a character, but he was nobody’s fool. He could be fierce, and he was notably stubborn. “With Perry, it was, ‘I may not always be right, but I’m never wrong,’” said friend Orlett.