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Country Justice

(Photo: George Lange)

Marilyn Perry, the president of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and a friend of Hoelterhoff's who's having a house built nearby, formed a partnership with Reller, poetically named Hiawatha, to buy back the property at auction. But when they failed to do so -- a first auction was thrown out on a technicality and Hiawatha successfully challenged the procedure of a second one, which they'd lost -- Bradley, who had befriended Reller a few years earlier, volunteered his services.

The deal he offered Perry and Reller was that if the bidding in a third auction went above what Hiawatha could afford, Bradley would buy the place and allow the flight attendant to remain on as a tenant at a reasonable rent.

But Reller and her supporters began to wonder if Bradley had other intentions. "I became suspicious when he tried to talk her out of bidding at all," the soft-spoken Perry says.

Bradley admits that his team did bid against Reller. On his instructions, a third party -- a business associate of his -- placed the winning bid of $350,000, beating out Hiawatha. After the auction, Bradley arranged to take over the title to the property from his associate.

Despite Bradley's promises that Reller would be able to stay on as a tenant, their relationship rapidly deteriorated after he became her landlord. He served her with an eviction notice days after the closing and is now renting the house to a "senior guy at First Boston; he's another Harvardian."

He's also currently suing Reller for $125,000 in damages, claiming she stripped the place on her way out. She counters that she merely removed her personal possessions, which included not only things like her twenties Magic Chef oven but also a medicine cabinet, doorknobs, and a pedestal sink. She says she knows nothing about the armoire that has Bradley so upset.

Reller says she returned to her house last September for the final time to clean up and collect her remaining possessions, only to discover that Bradley was already there with a cleanup crew. She called up Manuela Hoelterhoff, who reacted with characteristic combativeness.

"She says, 'I'm coming right over,' " Reller remembers. "She calls the police and she calls my lawyer and it was a fiasco -- my lawyer, his lawyer, the state troopers. There were like ten people screaming and hollering and I'm crying."

Hoelterhoff didn't spare Bradley's feelings. "Her eyes were popping, she was so furious," the flight attendant continues. "She's screaming at him, 'You disgusting old man. Don't you have another shirt? We've seen you in that for five days in a row.' Because he fancies he's like a country squire, he's always threadbare."

Hoelterhoff's mood didn't brighten any when, attempting to depart, she discovered the path of her beloved royal-blue seventies Mercedes sedan blocked by vehicles belonging to Bradley and his workers.

"She got out of the car and yelled at him, telling him to get his goons out of the way," Marilyn Perry says. "We could hear it from some distance."

On the same day Bradley is entertaining the young members of the Minnewaska Trail Club, Reller has come over to Hoelterhoff's house -- a charming bungalow with meandering additions -- to prepare a superb lunch for her and Perry that includes an enormous chicken salad and an excellent lemon tart. She now lives about a half-hour away, and the three women reminisce about the golden days when they were next-door neighbors. "She was our friend and chef and a fierce Scrabble player," Hoelterhoff says. "He's ruined our group. And for what? Greed and power."

Hoelterhoff is working on a book about Hitler the opera lover, and the way the works of Wagner fueled his desire to conquer the world. It requires little provocation to get her to list similarities between the Führer and the fellow on the hill charging her with harassment.

"You cannot conduct a reasonable conversation with this man; he is a monologuist," Hoelterhoff observes. "Hitler was also a very narcissistic personality, known for rambling monologues -- from vivisection to vegetarianism to operatic divas to how he invented the Volkswagen."

After Reller clears the table and does the dishes, the group reconvenes in the living room to screen a videotape Bradley shot at the cottage and submitted to the court. It purports to document how Reller raped his property. Gloom settles over the women as they watch Bradley point out such things as holes in the walls, exposed wiring, and a pile of refuse he describes, ominously, as "old mattresses and also some decaying flesh."

"This is a man who's obsessed with winning," Perry says.

To Hoelterhoff, the ultimate blame for the legal limbo in which she finds herself may not even lie with Bradley but with the state of rural justice. "I'm being failed at this point by the system," she says. "They have no understanding out here what the First Amendment is. You're not dealing with sophisticated people. They're flustered by it.

"Clearly, what we need around here is more serious crime," she adds, her sense of humor returning. "Or we need Judge Judy to start a local show. It would be immensely helpful and possibly entertaining."