Best American Crime Writing 2006 - Mark Bowden [97]
Ames, by all accounts, is a hands-on cattleman, rising at 4:00 A.M. most days to see to his herd, then leaving for his law and CPA offices in Richmond around 9:00. He shovels feed in winter and helps dip the cattle against ticks in summer.
He was no greenhorn when he took up the country life at Holly Hill. As a child, Ames said in an interview, he spent time at his grandparents’ five-hundred-acre working farm near Newport News. His grandparents migrated to the city to work for the Navy during the Second World War, he said. Ames’s father made his living as a lawyer and accountant, but the family lived on an eighty-six-acre estate near Yorktown.
Although some in Bowling Green see Ames as a powerful squire on the hill, in reality he seems less powerful than powerfully aspiring. His college was Norfolk’s Old Dominion University, known as a commuter school. His solo law practice is in a small gray house in a suburban office park on the outskirts of Richmond. His mother’s house in Virginia Beach was collateral for his $100,000 bail on the murder charge.
Ames kept a low profile in Bowling Green. He was seen at the barbershop and the post office, but seldom elsewhere. He is not a member of the local bar association, and lawyers and others in the town’s small professional class say they have had little contact with him. The same is true at the Virginia Angus Association, where several former board members and employees, as well as several breeders, say Ames was seldom seen at association meetings or social events. Part of that, one association official said, might have been a simple time crunch. Ames was conducing three professions simultaneously, leaving little time, perhaps, for socializing. But an additional factor in his seeming isolation may be found in the files of the clerk’s office in Caroline County Circuit Court, where thousands of pages of filings document the ongoing saga of John F. Ames, Esq. v. the world.
In 2002, Ames sued the giant CSX Corp. for more than $6 million, accusing the railroad of breaching his property line and damaging his fields. The case is pending. In 1999, he sued a Midwestern cattle operation, Profit Maker Bulls. The case was settled out of court. In 1997, Ames sued the Frederick, Md., company that serviced his farm silo for $100,000, accusing it of breach of contract and other offenses. That suit is pending. In 2001, he sued a former client for $87,000 in unpaid fees and other damages.
Other times, Ames just made threats. In the mid-1990s, he threatened to sue the Virginia Angus Association over a disagreement about sales commissions, according to several association officials. In the early nineties, a state employee with business at the farm accidentally ran over one of the Ameses’ dogs while leaving the property. Ames, who was not home at the time, responded by telephoning the man late at night several times over a period of a few weeks to berate him, the state employee said, stopping only when the man threatened to call the police with a complaint of harassment. Ames demanded $100,000 in damages. The man’s personal insurance company paid a couple thousand dollars to settle the matter. (Ames did not return phone calls requesting comment on this incident or any lawsuits he has filed.)
Sometimes Ames was the one being sued. In 1990, one of his neighbors took him to court when he refused to stop using their property as a shortcut to some of his fields. He lost. He was sued by a leading cattle magazine, Angus Topics, for refusing to pay an advertising bill. He sued back, but the magazine prevailed.
In 1997, Ames was charged with reckless driving, obstruction of justice, and assault after a state trooper, who stopped him