Did a Brooklyn Couple Kill a Neighbor’s Trees for a Better View in Maine?

In 2017 Stephen Antonson, a Brooklyn home furnishings artisan, and his wife, Kathleen Hackett, an interior designer and writer who counts Martha Stewart among her clients, bought a summer house in Rockport, Maine, a coastal town of fine arts, lobster boats and stunning views of Penobscot Bay.

At $320,000, the small, 19th-century clapboard house was among the lower-priced properties on Mechanic Street, known for its stately homes overlooking the town’s scenic working harbor.

The Antonson-Hackett home had no such vista. Although there was a lot behind their house in sight of the harbor, it was thickly wooded and owned by Ruth Graham, the widow who lived next door.

Almost immediately, the couple asked Mrs. Graham about clearing her land of the trees that blocked their view. She refused. She was an avid gardener, and killing trees repelled her. Also, years before, she had been cited by the town because one of her two sons, unaware of strict rules protecting shore land forest, had cleared some scrub trees from her property.

Mr. Antonson and Ms. Hackett were not about to give up. They even enlisted their two children in their quest for a valuable view.

But Mrs. Graham, nearly 90 at the time, was, like her trees, immovable.

The Allure of Rockport

Although Mrs. Graham was legally blind, she refused to let that get in her way. She hosted neighborhood parties, walked her dog, Charlie, in all kinds of weather and, with the help of a software program, composed musical scores on the piano.

Douglas Cole, a retired surgeon and a friend of Mrs. Graham’s, described her as “such a pistol.”

“She would have us over to her house to dinner and kind of direct everybody what to do,” he said.

Mrs. Graham became a year-round Rockport resident when she moved there with her husband, Wallace, a retired global business executive, in 2010. But he died a short time later. Although Mrs. Graham’s two sons invited her to move nearer to them in Massachusetts or New Jersey, she decided to stay put — captivated, friends said, by the artistic offerings in town and the beauty of the area.

In 2011, a New York Times feature article called Mr. Antonson, 59, and Ms. Hackett, 60, “lucky in real estate,” detailing how they had bought, rehabbed and flipped a below-market apartment in Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn for more than double what they had paid. This allowed them to buy a $1.8 million Italianate rowhouse in Boerum Hill. In the article, they described meeting while both worked for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia a decade before.

Mr. Antonson’s atelier website calls him an “engaging designer” who was “crowned the master of plaster by Architectural Digest.” Some of his plaster-coated ceiling lamps are priced at upward of $20,000.

Ms. Hackett, an author and contributor to Elle Decor and other shelter magazines, is described on the MarthaStewart.com website as a writer with “a passion for the culinary arts and interior design.” On her Amazon author page, she also calls herself “the family CEO, CFO, Chairman of the Ethics Committee, and Secretary of the Interior.”

Ms. Hackett is a co-author of two coffee table books about Maine houses, “The Maine House” and “The Maine House II,” which extol their authors’ “reverence for the land.” In the second book, Ms. Hackett wrote that the authors “felt awe” and “relief” that one of their subjects had “refused to cut down the stately tamarack that blocks his view of the ocean.”

A Letter from Children

Ms. Hackett’s Rockport home also appears in the book. “In a village that was in the midst of unprecedented change, further erasure of the past would not come as a surprise, though the sting would last forever,” Ms. Hackett wrote. “We were determined to leave the house — built in 1860 and added on to willy-nilly — just the way it was. Aren’t those quirks what attracted us to it in the first place?”

The woods that blocked their view of the harbor seemed a different matter.

Just before the summer of 2020, when the pandemic was sending real estate prices soaring in coastal New England as New Yorkers fled the besieged city, Mr. Antonson and Ms. Hackett sent Mrs. Graham a note in a childish scrawl, signed by their two sons, who were both teenagers at the time.

“It means a great deal to us to have such an accepting and generous neighbor,” the note read. “As my brother and I grow older, and our activities become more active and outdoorsy, we’re always looking for an easy and more accessible place to play to maximise our number of outdoor activities. We understand that the land behind our house is owned by you, and since my brother and I are looking for a backyard of sorts, think 25 feet of land is a reasonable number.

“My parents have agreed to pay for the surveyor fees and the attorney fees. Would you consider selling us a slice of land?”

In a P.S., the brothers offered to walk Mrs. Graham’s dog.

Mrs. Graham showed the note to her son Steven Graham, who handled her affairs. In an interview, Mr. Graham said he and his mother had “thought it was ridiculous.”

The boys seemed old for backyard play, but too young to be discussing surveyor and attorney fees. Mrs. Graham, her son said, believed that Mr. Antonson and Ms. Hackett were leveraging her age and infirmity to take advantage of her. She politely declined the offer.

The following year, Mrs. Graham noticed something strange, despite her failing eyesight. Her trees on the property next door had begun to wither and die.

Mrs. Graham contacted an arborist, who referred her to Maine Forest Service officials, who found large bore holes in the trunks of the dying trees. They turned the case over to investigators from the state’s Board of Pesticides Control, who discovered a stand of six to eight cedars, ranging from 30 to 60 feet tall, and another clump of about four maple trees, all dying or dead.

Tests of liquid from inside the bore holes revealed herbicidal poison. The poisoning was “limited to a distinct corridor of trees directly in line with the deck of the Antonson residence,” the board said in a report.

Alexander Peacock, the board director, said in an interview that he had tried to contact the Antonson-Hackett family but had received no response. Mrs. Graham, fearful that the largest of the dead trees could fall on her house, simply paid to have them removed.

“She didn’t want to get involved in an adversarial situation with her neighbor and be uncomfortable every time she came out of her house,” her son said. He and his brother discussed suing Mr. Antonson, he said, but Mrs. Graham told them she did not want her last years consumed by strife.

Mr. Peacock’s team continued to pursue Mr. Antonson and Ms. Hackett. They called, knocked on their door in Rockport and sent letters that reached their Brooklyn address. In the spring of 2023, nearly two years after Mrs. Graham first noticed her withering trees, Mr. Peacock heard from a lawyer for the couple, Daniel Nuzzi. The couple, Mr. Peacock recalled Mr. Nuzzi’s saying, maintained they were not the culprits but agreed to begin talks about a consent agreement on a penalty fine.

Mr. Nuzzi has since retired. This week, The Times emailed questions about the tree poisonings to the couple’s new lawyer, Michael Carey, who responded, “Mr. Antonson and Ms. Hackett have no comment.”

The case took another turn in the fall of 2023 when Denise Munger, who chairs Rockport’s Select Board and had befriended Mrs. Graham on long walks during the pandemic, noticed an alarming sight. “My husband and I were coming into the harbor on our boat and were like, ‘Holy cow, there was a whole new stand of dead trees,’” she said.

“The Board finds that the positioning of the affected trees, in addition to prior correspondence from the Antonson’s to the Graham’s requesting tree removal, indicate that Antonson would have been the only one to benefit from the application of herbicides to the affected area,” the board’s report read.

The couple still said that they had not done it. Nonetheless, early this year Mr. Antonson signed a proposed consent agreement with the board in which he denied guilt and disputed the investigation’s findings but agreed to pay a $3,000 fine — the maximum under current law for the two poisonings.

Ms. Hackett, who during the talks was promoting her second Maine book about the “importance of preservation, restoration, thoughtful renovation and low-impact living,” was not named in the consent agreement.

Just one step remained: a vote of approval of the deal by the pesticide board’s seven-member public policy board at its open meeting in March.

Neighborly arboricide “was something that nobody ever called us about,” Mr. Peacock said. “Now we see the news all over the country.” He speculated that the reason for the increase in reports was “maybe more people paying attention,” but others cited escalating property values along exclusive stretches of the East and West Coasts and a general breakdown in neighborly relations.

There is no reliable data to determine how many such attacks occur each year, but there is abundant anecdotal evidence that homeowners have turned to chain saws and poisons when they can’t see the vistas for the trees.

Next door to Rockport in Camden, Amelia Bond, a wealthy former chief executive of a St. Louis charitable foundation, drew global attention last year and paid more than $1.7 million in a legal settlement and fines after the industrial herbicide she used in 2021 to kill a neighbor’s oaks migrated onto a public beach.

On Nantucket, Mass., this summer, a homeowner, Jonathan Jacoby, was sued and prosecuted after he sawed down what he called his neighbor’s “crappy” trees in the Cisco area and then promoted his home’s “sweeping ocean views” in an ad listing the property for sale for $10 million. On Martha’s Vineyard in 2023, the owners of the Beach Plum Inn and an associate paid a $2.5 million settlement to a neighbor for clearing more than 130 trees from the neighbor’s property overlooking Menemsha Harbor.

In April, the town of Southbury, Conn., won $600,000 in damages in its lawsuit against a New York lawyer and his spouse who the town said had contracted to clear scores of town-owned trees in order to improve their view of Lake Lillinonah. In Issaquah, Wash., this summer, King County sued several homeowners for $7 million, saying they had felled more than 140 protected trees inside Issaquah’s Grand Ridge Park to enhance their mountain views.

‘Pocket Change’

In March of this year, before the vote of the pesticide policy board, board members read letters sent to them by, among others, Mr. Graham and Dr. Cole, Mrs. Graham’s friend and neighbor. “The recent Camden case is nationally notorious,” Mr. Graham wrote. “This act is similarly obnoxious. The fact that it was perpetrated in a manner that took advantage of an elderly, frail and legally blind person is egregious.”

Dr. Cole expressed quiet outrage. “It is discouraging that with no admission of guilt, no requirement for restoring the trees on Ruth’s property, and only a $3000 fine (pocket change found under the sofa cushions in this neighborhood), the message is being sent that crime does pay,” he wrote.

The consent agreement was rejected, and the board directed Mr. Peacock to secure a deal in which Mr. Antonson would admit guilt — a major sticking point in the ongoing talks. Mr. Graham said his family was waiting on the outcome to decide whether to sue Mr. Antonson and Ms. Hackett.

‘This is Not Going to Go Away’

Last month in Rockport, Ms. Hackett warmly greeted a New York Times reporter who had arrived unannounced and introduced herself at Ms. Hackett’s kitchen door. Ms. Hackett’s tone changed when she was asked about the tree poisoning.

“I can’t talk to you about that — my lawyer won’t let me. Bye!” she said, closing the door. Later that day, Ms. Hackett twice approached and challenged a Times photographer who was photographing the dead trees on Mrs. Graham’s former property, questioning whether the owners who had granted The Times permission “knew what they were agreeing to.”

Vicki Doudera, who represents Camden and Rockport in the Maine Legislature, worked with Mr. Peacock this year on new legislation that would stiffen the fines from $1,500 to $10,000 per violation for unauthorized herbicide application, and up to $50,000 when state investigators find clear evidence that a violator “benefited substantially.” Fines escalate further for repeat offenders.

The law takes effect this month, but it does not apply to Mr. Antonson and Ms. Hackett because the tree poisonings took place before its passage.

The Rockport case makes it clear, Ms. Doudera said in an interview, that “this is not going to go away, and I think we have to keep trying to figure this out.” Ms. Doudera is a real estate agent in the region, and she said that in some cases, an unobstructed waterfront view can double the value of a house.

As for Mrs. Graham? The wrangling over the death of her trees outlived her. She died in the winter of 2024, at age 95. Her empty home is on the market for $2.49 million. Her prized roses climb untended, and next door, dead trees still litter an overgrown path to the harbor.

In Mrs. Graham’s obituary in The Penobscot Bay Pilot, her family asked that friends “please consider planting something in her memory.”

This summer, her sons sold the land next door to a couple down the street. The new owners plan to keep it as open space, though they may cull more trees, which would improve their view and, potentially, Mr. Antonson and Ms. Hackett’s view.