Little Pink House_ A True Story of Defiance and Courage - Jeff Benedict [160]
Suddenly the phone rang. Matt’s wife, Sue, took it in another room. When she returned moments later, her face looked like she had seen a ghost.
“I have very bad news,” she said.
Everyone stopped talking.
“Derek Von Winkle was shot and killed tonight,” she continued.
Susette put her hand over her mouth. “Oh my God,” she whispered.
Twenty-five-year-old Derek Von Winkle was Billy’s son. Earlier that afternoon, police had found him and his stepbrother, who was confined to a wheelchair, dead in their duplex in a neighboring town. Both had been shot to death. Investigators arrested an eighteen-year-old acquaintance of the men and charged him with two counts of felony murder, robbery, possession of a sawed-off shotgun, possession of marijuana with intent to sell, and possession of hallucinogens with intent to sell.
The news rocked the holdouts. In a seven-month span following the Supreme Court decision, three family members from the fort had died: Beyer’s daughter, Dery’s mother, and now Von Winkle’s son.
Susette wanted to go find Billy right away. But she remembered what he had said when Byron’s daughter died: “If something like that ever happens to me, leave me alone.”
Instead, she went home and cried.
May 31, 2006
Bob Albright was concerned. Deadline day had arrived and no one had said yes to the state’s money. Convinced that getting one holdout to break ranks would loosen the logjam and create momentum for others to follow, Albright had offered $980,000 to Matt Dery for the family’s various Fort Trumbull properties, plus an assurance that the city would waive all back taxes, occupancy fees, and sewer and water bills from the previous four-plus years. In fact, the NLDC had owned the properties since 2000 and was therefore solely responsible for the taxes. And a pretrial agreement approved by the court protected the plaintiffs against occupancy fees. Nonetheless, Albright was applying heat and offering way more money than the NLDC had ever offered.
Before sunup, Albright headed to New London intent on sealing the deal. He made Dery a persuasive pitch. The city was at the point where it felt it had waited long enough to carry out its development plan. At midnight the city would walk away from the table and commence eviction actions. With no legal means to stop the city, the state would withdraw its money from the mix and the holdouts would finally lose their homes. In addition, by the time the city slapped on all the back taxes, occupancy fees, and outstanding water and sewer bills that had accumulated during the legal battle, the holdouts would end up homeless—and penniless.
Dery couldn’t ignore the grim reality. At this stage, refusing to settle looked like financial suicide. Dery had another reason to put down the sword. His mother had been a driving force in his willingness to fight on for so long, and with her recent passing that was no longer the case. At least he could rest knowing he had achieved his mother’s wish, even if he accepted the offer.
Convinced he really had no choice, Dery succumbed and settled.
As soon as Dery settled, his friend and neighbor Byron Athenian and Byron’s mother figured they didn’t have any choice either. The state offered to pay them $189,652 for their home and moving expenses. That was almost triple what the NLDC had offered to pay them in the beginning.
By 9 a.m. Londregan knew that Dery and Athenian were going. Pleased, he turned up the heat on the others. In an e-mail to Bullock he said the city would grant Von Winkle an extra two weeks to make up his mind on account of his son’s murder. “As for Kelo, Beyer, and Cristofaro,” he told Bullock, “the city needs their answer today.”
Bullock knew beforehand that Dery was going to settle. But Athenian had surprised him. Nonetheless, the others were holding