Rich Maine vacationers face prosecution for poisoning neighbor's trees (2024)

A wealthy CEO who improved the sea-view from her $3.5million Maine vacation home by poisoning her wealthy neighbor's trees faces fresh criminal investigation after paying $1.7 million in fines and settlements.

Amelia Bond secretly sprinkled four pounds of the lethal herbicide Tebuthiuron on trees belonging to Lisa Gorman in 2022, before offering to pay for their removal when they started dying.

Bond, former head of the $500 million St Louis Foundation, has since paid $1.5 million in compensation to Gorman after tests revealed her ploy.

But the state's attorney general is now considering charges after the poison leached into a nearby park and beach, uniting residents of Camden in fury.

'Anybody dumb enough to poison trees right next to the ocean should be prosecuted, as far as I'm concerned,' said neighbor Paul Hodgson.

Gorman, the widow of the late L.L. Bean's president Leon Gorman, became suspicious when the trees, along with large areas of vegetation began dying in her yard overlooking the picturesque Laite Beach and Camden Harbor.

Bond's vacation home is immediately behind hers further up the hill and the trees had obscured her view but appeared sympathetic when they began withering.

But Gorman asked the landscapers Bartlett Tree Experts to look at the trees, and they took soil samples which showed two oaks had been treated with herbicide, which had spread to other trees including maple, blueberry and dogwood.

The local authorities in November 2022 also tested the site and spoke to Amelia Bond, who admitted using poison on the land.

She told Maine state investigators that she purchased the poison in her home state of Missouri, intending to put it on two oak trees she claimed she thought were dying.

She and her husband, Arthur Bond III, an architect and the nephew of former US Sen Kit Bond, have so far paid $4,500 to resolve Maine Board of Pesticides Control Board violations, and $180,000 to resolve violations with the town.

The couple have footed a bill of $30,000 for additional environmental testing, and paid more than $1.5 million to Gorman in a legal settlement.

But Maine Attorney general Aaron Frey has announced an investigation amid growing anger at the spreading damage in the town of 5,000.

'Wealth and power don't always go hand in hand with intelligence, education and morals,' said Tom Hedstrom, chair of the Select Board.

'This was atrocious and gross and any other word you want to use to describe abhorrent behavior.'

Rep Vicki Doudera, D-Camden, said she intends to address the $4,500 maximum fine that the Maine Board of Pesticide Control Board was allowed to assess.

'It makes me so livid,' Doudera said. 'This situation, the minute I heard about it, I thought, 'Wow! These people are going to get a slap on the wrist. That's just not right.'

Tebuthiuron is the same herbicide used in 2010 by an angry Alabama football fan to kill the Toomer's Corner oak trees at Auburn University, following a Crimson Tide loss to their archrival.

The incident earned jail time for Harvey Updyke, who acknowledged poisoning the trees.

The poison contaminates soil and doesn't break down, so it continues to kill plants.

And at Auburn University, it took the removal of about 1,780 tons (1,615 metric tons) of contaminated material to achieve negligible levels of the chemical in the soil.

A lawyer for the Bonds, members of the town's toney yacht club, said his clients have no comment, but they 'continue to take the allegations against them seriously'.

'They continue to cooperate with the town of Camden, state of Maine and the Gormans, as they have done over the last two years,' he added.

And Hodgson said the couple were far from the only entitled out-of-towners to have illegally improved their sea-view.

'They just pay the fine because they have plenty of money,' he added. 'That's the town we live in.'