The Burlington Free Press from Burlington, Vermont • Page 4

4A The Burlington Free Press Monday, March 25, 2002 TAX FIGHT: 22-year standoff ends in arrest Robert Woodward's last words recorded "We did not hear the shots but we heard his yells and the next three minutes of his hellish agony." Mary Rives, friend of Woodward VTri FDsW mM) r-. 1 1 n. A iv i -A I lit' I i i Cv By Brent Hallenbeck Free Press Staff Writer BRATTLEBORO The last moments of Robert "Woody" Woodward's life were recorded in two telephone calls Dec. 2. One was made to police; another was a desperate plea to his friends.

Charles Butterfield, president of the All Souls Church board of trustees, called 911 to report that there was a distressed, knife-wielding man in the church who needed to be removed. Woodward, with help from parishioners, used a cell phone to call Mary Rives and Keith Carlson of Amherst, where Woodward lived before moving to Bellows Falls. The couple were in New York City and didn't get the message until later. What they heard was chilling. "We did not hear the shots but we heard his yells and the next three minutes of his hellish agony," Rives said after attending a candlelight vigil Tuesday in Brattleboro for Woodward's 38th birthday.

All Souls Unitarian Universalis! Church is a cedar-sided building tucked off of a tree-lined road in West Brattleboro. Woodward was clearly distressed as he entered the church's spacious, windowed sanctuary. Parishioners have said he told them he was seeking political asylum and that Continued from Page 1A the department's chief, who was not available Sunday. The arrest ended a standoff dating from the summer of 1999, when the Siwooganock Bank of Lancaster foreclosed on the house and 95 acres with a stunning view of the Connecticut River valley. Powell had been making mortgage payments to the bank; the foreclosure was for his refusal to pay property taxes, which the bank had been paying instead.

Essex County Sheriff Amos Colby had refused to carry out the eviction requested by the bank, and the bank had sued him. "You just can't go around shooting people over a civil suit," the sheriff said in an interview in August of 2000. State police said they went to Powell's house early Sunday and removed three children. While they were at the house, police said, Deborah Beaton, a friend of Powell, arrived with another child. She was ordered to stay off the property, but ran onto it and was arrested for trespassing, police said.

Two of the children in the house belonged to neighbors, Illuzzi said. The other child was Powell's, as was the one who arrived with Beaton, he said. The children were later released to family and friends. Illuzzi said Beaton was Powell's girlfriend, but he did not believe she was the mother of Powell's children. State police found two firearms on the property at midday Sunday, Illuzzi said, but he did not know what kind si-.

3 Woodward called her. She believes the call was made before the shooting, but didn't start recording on her answering machine until after he was shot. She heard him speak of political assassination. He called out her name and said he loved her. Rives said she has replayed the call thousands of times in her mind.

"Woody was our 9-11," Rives said. "He was terrorized and riddled with bullets in front of 20 people who were also terrorized by witnessing it." Rives and Carlson put together a collage for Tuesday's vigil that showed pieces of Woodward's life a postcard from his travels in Mexico, the title for his 1981 Volkswagen Rabbit, headlines reading "Slain man was seeking sanctuary" and "Phone message shows Woodward's pain." They included a note Woodward wrote on the backs of four pieces of paper torn from a day-by-day calendar called "Just for Vegetarians." The note was for Rives' son after his high-school gradua-tioa Woodward wrote that he didn't want to give him a gift. "Stuff is transitory, like life," he wrote. "It comes; it goes. I find, for myself, the less stuff around, the calmer and clearer I am." He told Rives' son that instead of giving him a gift, he cleaned the teen's bedroom.

"Time is way more valuable than stuff," Woodward wrote. He signed the note, "Your friend, Wood." He punctuated it with a smiling face. Contact Brent Hallenbeck at 660-1844 or the government wanted to kill him. Butterfield asked Wood ward to sit down or go to another part of the church. TOBY TALBOT, The Associated Press file Aaron Powell stands behind a chain and a no trespassing sign at his home in Lunenburg on July 13, 2000.

Powell was arrested Sunday after he was released from a hospital in Lancaster, N.H. Woodward remained distressed. Butterfield left the sanctuary to call 911. Police arrived, and Butter field was still out of the room when he heard the shots. He said 15 or 20 church members remained in the sanctuary when Officers Terrance Par they were.

A Vermont game warden and a professional dog handler from New Hampshire were sent to Powell's house Sunday to round up his dogs, Illuzzi said. Law officers had said they would arrest Powell if they found him off his property; he left it only occasionally and furtively. In between times, a loose network of supporters brought him food and helped him meet other needs. Colby said Powell was considered a threat because he had been communicating with right-wing extremist groups like the Montana Freemen, which engaged in a ker and Marshall Holbrook fired their weapons. Some said the officers had no justifica Dean about inaction by law officers.

"Notwithstanding the bank's request that we storm the property, the state police used a measured response and accomplished the objective without harm to person, animals or property," said Illuzzi, who is also a state senator. Charles Hickey, the bank's lawyer, said, "I believe that the bank has acted appropriately. We were placed in this position because of the inaction of the sheriff." he said. "They are nothing but gangsters to me." Powell has a prior felony conviction, for escaping from a state police barracks after a domestic dispute. Possessing firearms after conviction for a felony is a federal crime.

Illuzzi criticized the bank for its aggressive stance against Powell. The bank could have added the property taxes onto the balance due on the mortgage note, rather than foreclose, Illuzzi said. He added that the bank complained to Gov. Howard nearly 3-month standoff with the FBI in 1996. Colby said Powell also regarded as a hero Carl Drega of nearby Columbia, N.H., who killed two New Hampshire state troopers, a judge and a newspaper editor before Vermont State Police killed him in a shootout in 1997.

In an interview in 2000, Powell would not say if he was armed. "If you say, it could be an excuse for foreign agents to come onto my land," tion for shooting Woodward, Butterfield said, while others felt only fear. The church had a cere mony the following week to rededicate the church sanctuary. Butterfield called the ceremony "a cleansing." Rives isn't certain when WOODWARD: Dec. 2 shooting divides Brattleboro self an activist who writes letters to newspapers espousing vegetarianism or advocating for 3 suburban Chicago.

"I hate seeing things broken down like that because it stops any discussion of what can we do." Polomsky thinks police probably acted too quickly in shooting Woodward, but she wants a grand jury to sort through the facts. "It's not a cut-and-dried case," she said. "I totally feel empathy for the fear of the people in the church." Moss Butler, finishing lunch at Mike's Restaurant on Elliot Street, said there was an anti-police sentiment in town before the shooting. "This seemed to add to it," Butler said as he headed back across the street to his job at a laundry. "Nobody was protesting until now." Edmonds said such feelings are common for those who came of age in the rebellious 1960s.

"I think there are people in my generation who have grown up with an intense dislike for anyone in a police uniform," said the minister, who held those views while taking part in the civil-rights 'movement in Mississippi in the '60s. Now he urges his congregation to hope for justice in the Woodward case while contemplating what it's like to be a police officer in a life-or-death situation. "I've grown in wisdom and compassion," Edmonds said. "I've Continued from Page 1A Woodward, like Namaya, was a political activist. Many of Woodward's activist friends from outside Brattleboro like Rives are pushing for strong action against what they see as Woodward's unnecessary death.

Some suggest sit-in protests at the police station or angry marches through town. Namaya admits he's pushy and even obnoxious when arguing his causes, yet he urges Woodward's grief-stricken friends to be patient, to wait for state prosecutors to finish their investigation of the shooting before abandoning the memorial services and candlelight vigils for more drastic action. He is in an unlikely position, bridging the gap between the dead activist's friends with whom he sympathizes and the town he simultaneously lives in and fights. "This has seriously divided the community," Namaya said. "I want the activism to heal the community and not exacerbate the rift, and that's hard to do." The differing opinions reveal a culture clash that has long simmered in Brattleboro.

An industrious, blue-collar town of residents steeped in patriotism and faith in institutions, the town became a haven in the 1960s and 70s for liberal urban expatriates seeking back-to-the-land simplicity. The new and the old guard have argued not just over the shooting of Robert Woodward but also the war in Afghanistan and the future of the nearby Vermont Yankee nuclear plant. "That is certainly a dynamic in Brattleboro," said the Rev. Fred Edmonds of the Centre dozen veterans drank at the bar, unaware of the vigil. Stan Thomas, born and raised in Brattleboro, doesn't want to convict the officers before their case is heard.

"I want the cops to have a fair chance as much as I would want Woodward to have a fair chance," Thomas said. He's angry with Woodward's liberal, activist supporters. "You've got your granolas and you've got your normal people," Thomas said. "We were here long before the granolas." Thomas said four of five letters about Woodward in a recent issue of the Brattleboro Reformer were written by Woodward's out-of-state supporters. "They don't have the slightest, idea what happened here," he said.

"I'm not saying the cops are right or wrong. All I'm saying is let the authorities who are supposed to be investigating this investigate it." Attorney General William Sorrell is investigating the shooting. He has not said when he plans to conclude his inquiry. Steve Martin, sitting beside Thomas, isn't sure what to think about the Woodward case. "Hard to know," the Brattleboro man said.

"There are so many rumors that go around." Wisdom, compassion Little is known about why Woodward was so distraught, why the Buddhist sought sanctuary at a Christian church service and why police shot him seven times. Townspeople have filled in the gaps with speculation. Edmonds, as a religious leader of the community, has sought to quell those rumors and the fury surrounding the case. He declined to host a memorial service for Congregational Church on Main Street. He said the collision of beliefs, generations and geography has a link when it comes to the Woodward case.

"What I think is not present in this community," Edmonds said, "is a desire to sweep this under the rug." Not going away Brattleboro's roots remain visible in the churches built of brick and stone and white clapboard that line Main Street, giving the town of 12,500 residents its stee-pled skyline. Peppered among the traditional architecture are signs of many views, many voices. Flyers tacked to the bulletin board Tuesday at a basement Main Street coffee shop promoted an upcoming human-rights film series, a planned "walk for peace" and a candlelight vigil that night honoring Woodward's 38th birthday. Namaya helped organize the vigil on the steps of the municipal building on Main Street, where the police department is housed. Woodward's friends spoke wistfully of his kind, caring nature, and angrily of his death.

Stephen Monroe Tomczak, a friend of Woodward's since their college days in Connecticut in 1983, said the 70 people at the vigil will not rest until the officers who shot Woodward face the same accountability ideally, a grand-jury investigation that anyone shooting another person would face. "Let it be clear," yelled Tomczak, of Walling-ford, "We are not going away." Next door at American Legion Post 5, a half- the homeless. "I've always been against police brutality," she said, "but now it's in our face." She rarely spoke publicly in protest she laughed nervously when taking the microphone in front of the crowd at Tuesday's vigil but feels compelled to talk about the death of her friend. "You know how sometimes people search for a calling in life?" Rives said. "In this case I feel as a friend of Woody's, as a very close friend, that I'm not seeking a calling, that this calling chose me." Namaya feels that same sense of change.

He said concerns in town a few years ago that police were profiling by race and struggling to fight drug trafficking led him to push for a civilian police board. The board would review how well police are trained, how well they're paid and whether they're overworked. Namaya feels more strongly than ever that such a board is needed. "When I heard this I was absolutely devastated," he said of Woodward's shooting. "I felt personally responsible.

I could have done more, I could have pushed harder." He said he's pushing harder now, not only to seek justice for the man he now knows as Woody, but to keep the peace in his adopted hometown. "It's a. very small town. We should have a very good dialogue," Namaya said. "This isn't about a liberal or conservative cause." Contact Brent Hallenbeck at 660-1844 or press.com MATTHEW the Free Press Paula Schumacher (front) of Greenfield, and Roy Morrison of Warner, N.H., participate in a candlelight vigil to commemorate the 38th birthday of Robert Woodward on Tuesday outside the Brattleboro Municipal Center.

Woodward was shot and killed by Brattleboro police officers in December. Woodward at the Congregational' Church shortly after the shooting, saying the community needed a service to promote healing. "We never did have the healing service," Edmonds said. The service might have to wait until the investigation into the shooting is completed. Others see what Edmonds sees, that the dispute over the Woodward case has to do in part with the old-timers and the newcomers.

"I think there's always that different point of view," said Namaya, a family-nurse practitioner at a holistic medical-care office. "It's such nonsense. What is an outsider? Everybody is an outsider. The only natives as far as I know are Native Americans." Jessica Polomsky manages a Main Street hemp-products and activist-material store called Save the Corporations From Themselves. She bristles at the mentality of the Woodward debate.

"I think it's making it too simple because I know plenty of people who were born in Vermont who feel things weren't handled properly," said Polomsky, who moved to Brattleboro a decade ago from A calling Rives said her friend's death has changed her life. She is working to hold vigils and ally with groups fighting police brutality. Rives, Tomczak and Namaya are using the Web site to carry on their mission. Rives considers her.