The two men have complained to the police about each other, hired lawyers and battled in court. Bauldry, a retired carpenter and heart patient, stands at his bedroom window and monitors Goff's every move. Goff, a telephone-company employee and drag-racing enthusiast, fears Bauldry so deeply that he won't walk from his house to his car without a pistol in his hand.
This has been going on for more than a decade, in a seemingly placid residential neighborhood near the intersection of 16th Street and Bethany Home Road.
Except for the for-sale sign in the front yard, which has been in place on and off since the mid-1980s, the Bauldry property is the picture of perfection. Vernon and his wife, Leona, keep the lawn and bushes green and trim, and the house paint is like new. The family Buick is kept behind the garage door, which is decorated with a large silhouette of an antique car. Across the street, several vehicles mark the Goff property, including a large, black trailer slumping in the driveway, a four-door pickup truck and two large, American muscle cars in various states of repair parked at the curb. A half-dozen or more "No Trespassing" signs are displayed around the front of the house. Except for weeds and crabgrass, the yard is dead. Bauldry feuds with Goff because of the condition of Goff's house. Goff won't clean up his act, because he feels he's being harassed by Bauldry.
This feud--how it got started, where it's been and how it might someday conclude--has been a topic of discussion on this block for years. Neighbors of the feuding neighbors don't know when it will end, but fear that it will end badly. "Sooner or later, Vern's going to take Alan so far that he's going to go off his rocker," says one neighbor.
"I'm afraid there will be a tragedy if something isn't straightened out," says a former neighbor, who fled the neighborhood years ago because of all the malice in the air. "They both, I think, are going berserk."
@rule:
@body:Chicago-area natives, the Bauldrys had been living in their home for several years when the Goff family moved in. Alan Goff was married then, with children. The Bauldrys had children, too, and the two families started off on friendly terms, the Bauldrys say. "Alan and his wife took good care of the house," remembers Leona Bauldry. Vernon says he would regularly accept daytime deliveries of car parts for his mechanically minded neighbor when Goff was at work.
Things started to go downhill when Goff and another neighbor, a dentist who lives next door to the Bauldrys, got into a dispute over a delivery of concrete. Goff and the dentist, who wouldn't be interviewed for this story, poured driveways at the same time, with Vernon Bauldry lending a hand. But there was a dispute over the bill for the mixer truck. The Bauldrys aren't sure why, but the tiff between Goff and the dentist quickly spread to them. "That seems when the trouble started," says Leona Bauldry. "Goff was friendly then, and then all of a sudden he just went berserk for some reason."
The Goffs were eventually divorced, and Alan kept the house, which began to deteriorate.
Since then, the Bauldrys have kept a list of grievances against Goff. His many cars are loud, so loud that Leona's pictures are sometimes shaken off the walls in the front room. Goff keeps beat-up, primer-painted cars and dragsters on blocks in his front yard. Goff has let his yard go to tall weeds. Railroad ties have been kept in a pile at the curb. At night, Goff has placed garish strobe lights in his windows. He decorates his vehicles with profane signs and sayings.
The Bauldrys have complained to the City of Phoenix about Goff's yard before, and the city has cracked down. Goff, threatened with fines under a property maintenance code adopted in the late 1980s, was forced to bring his house and yard into compliance. Goff's maintenance-code file is not currently active, meaning that all of the cars on his property are now licensed, his roof has been repaired, trash and debris have been cleaned up and yard vegetation adequately tamed.
Still, Goff's yard does not meet the standards set by yards like the Bauldrys'. Vernon and Leona--both in their 60s, now free of their children and anxious to move to a smaller place--say they've had their house on the market for two years. They say they've talked to upward of 50 potential buyers, but the scene across the street is scaring away prospects. "The last one we had in says, 'What the hell is that over there, a used-car lot?'" says Leona. @rule:
@body:"We were never friends with the Bauldrys," says Alan Goff. "From the minute we moved in, we knew something was wrong. He would constantly be spying on us, or watching us with binoculars or in some way harassing us.
"He's just a very unhappy person, it seems like." And Alan Goff is unhappy with criticism of his home. He's low on money now and can't afford much maintenance on his house, yard or cars. The Bauldrys, he says, have used the city's zoning codes to harass him. "I did everything they asked me to, and it was like they weren't satisfied," he says of city inspectors. "There's nothing unlawful about it. I'm within code on everything. "It's wintertime and the grass is dead. I don't know what you want me to do. I'm not gonna put in a winter lawn. I have hay fever and allergies and stuff."
Neighbors say the strobe lights are in retaliation for a bright light Vernon Bauldry once rigged to a motion detector on his own house. Every time someone drove down the street, white light blanketed the front of Goff's house. Goff says the almost psychedelic lighting effect of his strobe lights is for security. "We were having vandalism and property destruction," Goff says. "We put the strobe light up and the vandalism stopped for maybe a week. It's nothing that I would do to harass anybody else. It's to show that somebody's here. "I'm just living my life on my own. I'm not doing anything to harass anybody. They're doing everything to harass me."
Goff has kept his own laundry list of grievances against his neighbors. Bauldry, Goff says, has yelled at the Goff children, insulted guests at the Goff home and trespassed on and vandalized Goff property.
Goff also alleges that Bauldry has used his own vehicles to ram Goff's trailer and to knock over Goff's trash can. Goff has sworn in court that Bauldry, while driving a borrowed truck, almost ran over Goff and his daughter.
In another sworn document, Goff says Bauldry has triggered Goff's car alarms to "harass, startle, annoy, irk, vex, disturb, annoy and aggravate" Goff's family, friends and neighbors. The Bauldrys deny all these claims.
"I could've called the police a lot in the last ten years," says Goff, who is in his late 30s. "I could've called them a lot, but the police say, 'We can't do anything unless you catch him doing it.'" @rule:
@body:In 1988, a letter addressed to "Mrs. V. Baldry" arrived at the Bauldrys' house. The single-spaced note came under Maricopa County Attorney's Office letterhead, and above the name of Edward J. Sanderson, Victim Protection Advocate.
"Dear Mrs. Baldry," began the letter, which is reprinted here with errors intact.
"It has come to our attention through the Phoenix Police Department and a witness that your husband and some of your neighbor's are causing theft, vandalism, and malicious mischief to one of your neighbor's property. The witness has seen your husband and other neighbor's steal, vandalize and commit malicious mischif to your neighbor's property. In addition we have on file reports of 'peeping tom' incidents by your husband going back around in back of this neighbor's house and spying on him and other malicious acts by your husband. We also have a report that your husband came within twelve inches of hitting this neighbor's daughter while speeding. . . . We also have many other incidents which have been reported about your husband which we are holding for evidence.
"Up until this point the neighbor has not pressed any charges, but that is going to change here soon if your husband and the other neighbor's do not cease and stop this childlike behavior. "Your husband and these other neighbor's do not own the street or the entire block you live on. You own your own house and it is against the law to steal, vandalize, commit malicious mischief, be a peeping tom, eavesdrop, or in any way harrass you neighbor. "There is nothing wrong with your neighbor's yard. He has paid money for the railroad ties and they are apart of the landscape, the 'NO TRESPASSING' signs are in complience. As long as the weeds and grass are not four feet tall and dead and dried and a fire hazard then that is the way it will be. . . .
"Your husband and the neighbor's will have to stop trespassing on this neighbor's property and stop stealing his property just because you do not like the way it looks or the way it is done. Just mind your own business and quit harrassing him. If you all do not want to be neighbor's at Florence I suggest you stop your malicious acts now.
"We do not live in a perfect world," the letter continues, "therefore do not try to force your perfection on someone who does not ask for it. It is not your husband's job nor the job's of the idle neighbor's to watch everything this neighbor does and question it. It is not your business. We are free American's, but that does not entitle us to eavesdrop, lie, steal, vandalize, and spy on your neighbor's. Only mentally unstable people do these things and we are asking all of you stop this foolishness before someone gets seriously hurt. . . .
"Also we are receiving reports of small children being abused and beaten and screaming wildly. We are refering these reports to Child Protective Services.
"In addition your neighbor, due to his business, is allowed to load and unload his car form a trailor if that is what it takes for him to survive in that business. He has followed the times established by the Phoenix Police Department and has acted in good faith. "Again we must stress that your husband does not control anyone but himself, Mrs. Bauldry we are asking you to remind him of that. If he is not capable of controlling his emotions and actions there are alternatives for him to be taken care of. This goes for all the other neighbor's who are harrassing and causing problems. Looking out prison bars for three to seven years for stealing, vandalizing, malicious mischief and the other items mentioned will not be fun. Also if your neighbor wants to use your driveway to turn around your husband should not seek revenge by stealing, vandalizing, and causing malicious mischeif to that neighbor's house. If your husband needs counseling we suggest he seek it.
"Again, if these actions continue by your husband and the neighbor's who are responsible charges will be pressed. Your neighbor has been a victim long enough of all your actions and it is time that it stopped."
@rule:
@body:At the bottom of the letter, which Alan Goff later admitted writing, was a list of people who were to receive copies, including "Neighbor with Green and White Dodge Pickup," "Neighbor with Red and White Blazer" and "Neighbor with Green Pontiac Sedan."
(Bill FitzGerald, spokesman for the County Attorney's Office, says no Edward J. Sanderson works for that office, and there is no such position as a "Victim Protection Advocate." FitzGerald says he's not sure if writing such a letter is a crime. "Depending on the things they were trying to do, intimidation or whatever, when they were using the letterhead, it could be a violation of law," he said. The age of the document makes prosecution unlikely, though.) Goff's admission of his hoax came during a hearing in city court, which the Bauldrys had requested to protest an Injunction Against Harassment that Goff had sought against them. Such an injunction lasts six months and prohibits the defendant--in these cases, Vernon and Leona Bauldry; Goff obtained injunctions against both--from coming near or bothering the plaintiff in any way. Violating an injunction is a punishable offense.
The injunctions are issued by judges who base their decisions on sworn petitions filed by plaintiffs--people who don't want to be harassed. The defendants--those allegedly doing the harassing--are served notice of the injunction, and a hearing is held if they want to contest it. Goff has filed several injunction petitions over the years, some with fantastic claims, and had them signed by judges. Judges, primarily concerned with keeping feuding parties apart, deny only about 10 percent of all requested injunctions. Only about 10 percent of signed injunctions are contested at hearings. The fee to file a petition for an Injunction Against Harassment is $12. @rule:
@body:In one of his many petitions for injunction, Goff alleged that Bauldry "has attempted to endanger with substantial risk of imminent death or serious physical injury and property damage, assault, premeditate an attempted murder, stalk, case, spy, be a peeping tom, with the intent to kill, harm, hurt, harass and cause imminent substantial emotional distress on the plaintiff, his family, friends and personal property." In the same document, Goff said the "def. his family and friends are constantly conspiring and premeditating filing false, lying, erroneous, deceptive, untrue, mendacious, unfounded, spurious and prevaricate reports with city agencies to harass, harangue, annoy, perturb, upset, irk, vex, nettle, disturb, aggravate, irritate, gall and exasperate the plaintiff his family and friends and property."
Recalling the time Bauldry backed into Goff's street-side garbage Dumpster (the street lacks alleys on either side), which then bumped into and damaged Goff's car trailer, Goff wrote that Bauldry used his vehicle "to criminally damage [the trailer] with his psychotic, psychopathic, schizophrenic, irrational and unprintable behavior." Finally, Goff said that "def. conspires with cronies, friends to have aircraft buzz, flat-top and hedge-hop our house at less than 500' at all hours of nite and day." The Bauldrys fought that particular injunction, which was signed by a judge last summer. Though another judge later dumped the injunction after a hearing, it was in effect for several galling weeks. "He can go down there and fill these things out like this and they're nothing but a bunch of lies," says Vernon Bauldry. "And then on the end, he signs it and it says on there, 'Everything you say is the truth.' He pays the 12 dollars. [A clerk] takes it and gives it to a judge someplace back there and he signs his name there someplace. How can [a judge] sign those things when he doesn't know what he's saying is the truth or not? "It sounds to me like they're just out for their 12 bucks down there." Says Leona Bauldry: "It works on us mentally to be accused of all these things."
@rule:
@body:Vernon Bauldry has been accused of many of these things before by other neighbors. In fact, one of his other neighbors obtained an Injunction Against Harassment against Bauldry two years ago that mirrors Goff's injunctions, accusing Bauldry of vandalism, intimidation and of using police to harass others. The allegations span years, and seem to form a pattern similar to many of the charges Goff makes against Bauldry. Though they don't want to be identified by name in this story, other neighbors support Goff in his fight with Bauldry.
Bauldry, they say, had goaded Goff into his erratic behavior by spying on him and harassing him for years. They also confirm that Goff hasn't been Bauldry's only target. "He knows everything," one neighbor says of Bauldry's penchant for neighborhood surveillance. "He stands in that window. If he can't see, he gets his binoculars out. "I would be on Alan's side if he would just clean up his yard and clean up his act." Says another of Bauldry: "He gets his jollies from harassing people." A third neighbor says Bauldry's behavior toward her and her family forced them to sell their home and move away. The families were on speaking terms for a few years, she says, but Bauldry turned on her one day because of an offhand remark about one of the Bauldry children. "I was just joking around, you know, and he laughed and I laughed, and I thought that was all there is to it," she says. "And the next day, he didn't talk.
"All hell broke loose then. He made our life miserable." @rule:
@body:The now-departed neighbor says Bauldry caused misery by parking his car on the street opposite her driveway to make it difficult for her family to pull in or out, and sometimes used a blower to move leaves from his yard onto her property. Mostly, though, he "watched every step I made," she says. "He was there with spyglasses, watching us. "I was troubled by it. I was upset. Many nights, I would go to bed crying. I couldn't understand why he would do this to us, when we really didn't do anything to him at all."
Though she's been gone from the street for about ten years, this neighbor saw the beginnings of the feud between Goff and Bauldry. Goff, she says, "was kind of shy, you know. He kept to himself. He tried to keep to himself, and Vern just wouldn't let him do it.
"As long as Vern keeps doing this to Alan, Alan's going to be just as stubborn as he can be," adds the former neighbor. "All I can tell you is, I'm glad I'm out of it." Vernon Bauldry cites his dentist neighbor as his only ally on the street. Bauldry denies any charges of harassment or vandalism. Bauldry says he recently observed his remaining neighbors, including Alan Goff, talking among themselves. He presumes that they're conspiring against him.
"What they talk about, who knows?" he says, adding that he assumes "they're talking about us" and making plans to "side with that Alan to be a witness if he goes to court, to lie." Leona Bauldry defends her husband against charges of spying on the neighbors. Though she's now retired from her job as a hospital clerical worker and able to spend more time with her husband, Leona says Vernon, who, because of heart surgery, has been unable to work since the early 1970s, was home alone by himself for many years. He got into the habit of watching over the neighborhood. "Every now and then, he goes to see what's going on in the street, whether it's the kids or something like that," she says. "I don't think that should bother anybody."
@rule:
@body:Clearly, it bothers Alan Goff. The Bauldrys say Goff's appearance and behavior have deteriorated in recent years. They've got photographs--some of their own, and some taken by the dentist next door--to illustrate what they say.
One snapshot shows a magazine advertisement, apparently photographed through the windshield of one of Goff's vehicles. "Yor dead fuc's!!!!" has been scrawled on the page, an advertisement for Smith & Wesson pistols. Another dashboard sign says, "Fuck off Baldick" and "Get a life geek."
One photograph shows a holstered pistol stored on a dashboard. Another features a crude drawing of a pistol, and says, "Go ahead Fucer (limp dick) make my day!" And one of Goff's license-plate holders once apparently carried the legend, "Fuk off Baldick."
Other photographs in the Bauldry collection show Goff's backyard, where strange, rooftop drawings and slogans are visible. The most chilling shots show Goff, pistol drawn, walking on the sidewalk in front of his house. Vernon Bauldry says Goff wears an Army fatigue jacket year-round, and that he has lately taken to wearing a bandanna around his face and head wear printed with the slogan, "Fuck off." Bauldry also says Goff sometimes points a pistol at him if the men are outside at the same time. "I tell him to come in the house," says Leona Bauldry. "I don't know when the damn guy is gonna flip." Goff says he's not surprised that his get-up troubles his neighbor.
"Everything would bother Vern," he says. "It wouldn't matter if I dressed in a top hat and a tie or coat or whatever. He's the troublemaker. He's the problem." Goff denies pointing his weapons at Bauldry, and says he carries them to protect himself.
"Vern has threatened to kill us," he says. "We just carry em for self-defense. We don't know how rational they are. We've seen their integrity and character, and we know it's zero. Of course it's self-defense."
A neighbor in the line of fire says he doubts that Goff's weapons are real. "The whole thing is an act," he says. "Would you leave a real gun out on the dashboard of your open car?" he says. Says Goff: "Some of em are and some of em aren't."
@rule:
@body:Vernon Bauldry estimates that the police have been called to his street 15 to 20 times over the two decades he's lived there. Alan Goff claims he's been the subject of police surveillance in the past, activity that peaked during the time he was battling with the city over the condition of his yard.
"When we were going through that process, I don't know if it's just me thinking this, but there were police cars following me all the time," he says. "Police helicopters would buzz our house every hour on the hour. Midnight, two in the morning, three in the morning. "If they're out to get you, they will get you. They'll always say, 'Oh, no, we're not doing anything.' You can never prove it."
Phoenix Police Sergeant Mark Yoshimura confirms that the department is interested in the feud. "It is a police concern," he says. "It's not a police matter."
Yoshimura is supervisor of the Community Action Office of Phoenix Police Department's Squaw Peak Precinct. The office, a comparatively new police program, battles crime by organizing "fight back" campaigns in neighborhoods and working with schools. "There's no crime that has been committed at this point," he says of the Bauldry-Goff imbroglio. "It's not against the law to be in a dispute with your neighbor.
"But a neighborhood dispute such as this could have some relation to police services down the road." Should a crime be committed, he says, the feud will be elevated from police concern to police matter. Yoshimura, who says he visited the neighborhood several years ago on a Bauldry-Goff police call, was reminded of the feud recently during a routine patrol of the area. "I happened to stop and talk to some people just walking down the street," he says. "I asked them if they were experiencing any particular problems or if they had any concerns. They said basically that everything was fine, with the exception of a neighborhood dispute going on."
@rule:
@body:Yoshimura "developed further information" about the feud--he interviewed the Bauldrys--and elected to call in the Community Mediation Program of Terros Inc., a local, nonprofit social service agency whose original purpose was to counsel recreational drug users.
The mediation program, which is partly funded by the City of Phoenix, is a Terros offshoot long removed from the bad-trip, phone-bank days. Its role is to help people settle various kinds of disputes, including tenant-landlord fights, neighborhood noise complaints and pet problems. Program officials claim a high rate of success. Most referrals to the program come from city prosecutors, who use the mediation service as a diversion program once a minor crime has been committed by someone embroiled in a dispute. These mediation participants can avoid criminal charges if their mediated agreement succeeds in settling their differences. Since no crime has been committed, Goff and Bauldry will have to participate voluntarily. The Bauldrys have ended up in mediation before, after violating an Injunction Against Harassment brought by another neighbor, and doubt that this will do much good. "My husband doesn't want to go," says Leona Bauldry. "With Alan, we don't get anywhere." Goff acknowledges he's been contacted by Terros, but believes that it's a tactic on the part of the Bauldrys and their attorney to somehow portray him as a drug abuser, which he denies. "They're trying to slander me and degrade me and harass me any way they can," says Goff, who, after a recent exchange of letters between his attorney and the Bauldrys' lawyer, taped over some of the profane slogans he had displayed on his cars. @rule:
@body:And so it has gone for more than a decade. The old couple watches closely while their neighbor stews over being watched. Other neighbors watch, too, feeling for themselves the effects of Vernon Bauldry's ever-present gaze and fearful of the day Alan Goff feels those effects too deeply. "They're both at fault," says the neighbor who moved away. "Alan has lowered himself to the same level that Vern is on." As for Vern and his level, she says, "I don't know what to say about the man. . . . There's nothing more I can say.
