THE NORTH COUNTRY GAZETTE

Box 408 Chestertown, NY 12817

by June Maxam

Editor/Publisher

Aug. 6, 2003

The History and Testimony of June Maxam

In 1981, recognizing the need for news coverage of northern Warren County, NY, especially governmental and political affairs in the up county towns that weren’t being addressed by the daily newspaper serving the area, The Glens Falls Post-Star, I began a weekly newspaper, The North Country Gazette.

   I have worked in the journalism field for 35 years, beginning when I was a junior in high school when I became the news correspondent for the then local weekly.  After high school, I became a full-time staff member of The Post-Star while working as a freelancer for numerous other newspapers including The New York Times and Albany Times-Union. 

   The Gazette focused on events and government in northern Warren County, located in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State, a resort area with little industry except for tourism. My home is in Chestertown, NY which is about 20 miles north of the nationally known resort area of Lake George and about 75 miles north of the state’s capital, Albany.

   For the first five years, I focused pretty much on the everyday affairs of the area, school news, clubs and covered the school board meetings, town boards and zoning and planning boards.  But I didn’t do editorials, it was straight news and the newspaper flourished and grew.  I became known for my governmental reporting, budgetary analysis and especially my coverage of the local town justice courts and police news.

   But the turning point came in 1985 with two events—the reelection campaign of the then sheriff, Frederick Lamy, and the advent of editorials and a regular column of commentary to the Gazette, then known as Cheers and Jeers, now known as Viewpoints.

   A veteran newspaperman from New York City had suggested I create such a column to discuss issues, evoke comment and discussion, but what he didn’t tell me was while such a column flies in New York, it doesn’t fly in rural upstate New York.  While the readers loved it, the politicians and those frequently the subject of Cheers and Jeers began the attacks, usually personal. It the proverbial “kill the messenger” syndrome.

   The second event which was to shape the next l5 years of my life was the arrest of the sheriff’s brother by a New York State trooper who was a friend of mine. Sheriff Frederick Lamy’s brother was charged with driving while intoxicated, and operating an uninsured, uninspected and unregistered motor vehicle, an ATV, on the roadway.  But the case never really got to court as the district attorney refused to prosecute the case and the town justice dismissed it, saying that an ATV is not a motor vehicle.

Outraged, the state trooper came to me showing me the dismissed tickets and asking if I could write something about it in my newspaper, especially since it was in the middle of the sheriff’s reelection campaign.

    At the time I was also employed as a news correspondent with the daily newspaper and I prepared a news article questioning the handling of the case as well as penning an editorial in my own newspaper.  Within days, I received a second visit from the state trooper, asking me to “help him out” because the district attorney had filed a personnel complaint against him with his supervisors complaining that the trooper had sought out publicity for the case and had embarrassed the district attorney and sheriff.

    The trooper in essence asked me to lie for him, to say that I had sought him out for the story, that I was doing a study on drunk driving arrests.  I agreed to do so, in essence covering for him because my principles supported him for making the arrest despite the defendant being the sheriff’s brother, not the DA for dismissing the case because he was the sheriff’s brother.

   I was called to the state police station by the trooper’s superior officer and asked to sign a false statement that had been prepared for me by the zone sergeant.  I felt I had no choice but to sign that statement and from that time on, my feelings about the criminal justice system in Warren County changed and I began to wonder just how far the corruption went, how far would the police lie to protect their own, how far would the district attorney’s office go to cover for those with political connections or those in office. The “favored”.  Double standards was what I labeled it and editorialized on.

    Shortly after I helped the state trooper out of his “jam”, the sheriff began his retaliation and I was arrested for a seat belt ticket although I wasn’t even on the highway and the arresting officer had absolutely no idea whether I had a belt on or not.  And the arrests have been coming ever since.

    The town justice at the time, E. Wendell Ross, held the second mortgage on my property, a restaurant where I also produced The Gazette.  After an incident which occurred in his court involving one of my retaliatory tickets in August, 1986, I made my first complaint ever to the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct which led to his public censure in 1989 for 2l counts of misconduct.  Coincidentally, in 1986 I was recognized by the New York State Bar Association, receiving their Media Award for a three-part series appearing in The Gazette on the operations of the town and village court system.

    Upon learning that I was the complainant against him, Ross engaged in an egregious pattern of harassment that continues until this day. While I have since sold the property and moved, Ross lives a short distance away from me and his residence is directly across from that of my parents.  “Ill fight you to the bloody end”, Ross screamed at me at one point, “I’ll make your life a living hell”, and that he has certainly tried to do.  Incidentally, Ross also owns the local station for the New York State Police.

    In his years long crusade against me, Ross has enlisted the aid of Charles Redmond, a retired New York state trooper and two of his friends, Donald and Eleanor Lambert.

    The Gazette increased its governmental and political reporting, expanding into investigative reporting and uncovered many abuses in town and school government, eventually forcing the termination of the school superintendent amid charges of financial irregularities.  In late 1986, Ross along with the then school superintendent, the town supervisor and other public officials stormed The Post-Star and demanded my dismissal because they didn’t like “the other side” told, they simply didn’t want the taxpayers and residents to know about the abuses in government, the squandering of tax dollars, the outright violations of law occurring in bidding procedures and government operations. While they could control The Post-Star and others, they couldn’t control me and so the intimidation and attacks began. When the town supervisor learned that I was using the set of law books at the town hall for my research, he had the law books removed and thrown away!

    Ross had also demanded that the town board remove The Gazette’s designation as the town’s official newspaper for the purpose of carrying legal advertising, thus beginning the assault on my revenues, my advertisers.  Although against state law, the town acceded to Ross’s demand.

  The following January 1987, one evening about 5 p.m. I returned home to my residence which was next door to the state police station owned by Ross. Virtually as soon as I entered my residence, I saw a vehicle I recognized as belonging to Ross’s daughter-in-law park in the police parking lot and saw a man exit the vehicle who I recognized to be the town judge. As he stood outside the driver’s side of the vehicle, I saw him lay a rifle across the roof of the car and suddenly the air resonated with gunshots, aimed at my house.  I had nowhere to go and my legs were rubber as I tried to dial 911 while the house was repeatedly hit.  I saw a patrol car from the sheriff’s department across the road. There was virtually no way he could have not seen the town judge firing the rifle at my residence but when the call for assistance can over the scanner, the deputy refused to answer.  I watched the judge get back into the car and then drive directly to his daughter-in-law’s residence a short distance away.  Within minutes the car came back past my residence en route to his, in sight distance from mine, and I saw her discharge him at his residence.  I had to wait for a state trooper to come from some 12-15 miles away.  The trooper who arrived was Charles Redmond, a longtime friend of Ross.  Redmond refused to do anything because I hadn’t obtained the license number of the car.  “The next time it happens, get in your car and follow them, get the plate number”, he said.  I thought that was damn poor advice and besides, why did I need the plate number. Anyone could drive the car---I knew for fact who had fired the shots at my residence.  It was the town judge.  They refused to arrest him.

   Within several days, as my truck was parked at my parents house which is directly across the street from the residence of that town justice, the back window of my pickup truck was shot out, the hole placed exactly where my head would have been had I been in the truck.  Again, no arrest was made. Thereafter, I received death threats by phone, trapped in a phone trace.  It was the town judge.  No arrest was made.  Bullet holes were found in the fender of my truck, a dead rat was placed underneath my truck.  No arrest was made.

   In 1989, The Gazette and I became heavily involved in the election campaign of William E. Montgomery III, a young attorney who was challenging the incumbent district attorney.  Montgomery won the election and soon became embroiled in a bitter controversy over drug enforcement with Sheriff Lamy. As has become the pattern for the Warren County Sheriff’s Department, whenever they feel threatened by a critic or activist, they seek to destroy the credibility of that person, that person’s business, his livelihood, his family with false arrests, causing extreme financial and personal hardships…and so Lamy and his group did to Bill Montgomery.  Lamy and a city judge, David B. Krogmann filed complaints against Montgomery with the state and soon a full-fledged investigation by the Commission of Investigation was begun against Montgomery, lasting some five years, including a Grand Jury inquiry conducted in Manhattan.  Eventually the SIC filed a public report that stated while Montgomery may have made some poor judgment choices he had done nothing wrong but out of the Grand Jury came a charge that Montgomery had made felony false statements and that he had allegedly tried to assert his influence and intervene in a sheriff’s department investigation involving his brother.  Montgomery was criminally charged with a felony at a time when he was still the district attorney.  The accusations and resulting public firestorm resulted in him losing his reelection bid in 1993 amid a huge public controversy.  He was eventually acquitted following trial but Lamy had achieved his goal, he had effectively used his position to squash his adversary, his critic and nemesis. Centrally involved was Lamy’s undersheriff, Larry Cleveland, an alleged pedophile who was to become sheriff himself in 1999 when the Governor elevated Lamy to become one of the state’s three commissioners of the state’s Commission on Corrections which oversees the operation of the state’s jails.  Cleveland was subsequently elected to the position of sheriff in 1999 amid a controversy and allegations involving child molestation.

    Throughout the long battle against Montgomery, I supported Montgomery personally and professionally and The Gazette undertook an investigation into the circumstances involving Montgomery’s brother.  Involved at the center of that matter was Richard Oehler, nephew of Wendell Ross.  The Gazette wrote extensively of the case. Allegations of police corruption, abuse of power and drugs came forth.

    By 1992, The Gazette had become well-known for its governmental and political involvement, especially its reporting of the law enforcement community.  I was also well known for my criticism of the lack of drug enforcement in the county.  Many of the sheriff’s deputies were among my supporters, many of whom were providing information to the newspaper.

    Ross had been forced to “retire” as town justice at the end of 1991 in the middle of yet another state investigation of him which appeared to be leading towards removal from office. He had been censured by the state commission in 1989 for 21 counts of misconduct as a result of my complaint against him.

    In January 1992, with a new supervisor taking office in the Town of Chester, the town board sought to mend fences with The Gazette and renamed the newspaper as the town’s official newspaper.

    Ross, Lamberts, Redmond and others stormed the next town board meeting, demanding that the act be rescinded.  The night of the meeting, shots were fired at my house while I was home, damaging the siding of my house.  The marks remain on the front of my house, a somber reminder.

    The sheriff’s officer who arrived to take the report was a friend.  It was known who had fired the shots but there were no witnesses and the matter could not be prosecuted.  But, the former town judge, Wendell Ross, called Sheriff Lamy, admitted to having fired the shots and asked if he was going to be arrested.  The State Police sergeant supervising the Chestertown barracks told my friend, the sheriff’s officer, that Ross wasn’t going to be arrested because I deserved to be shot at, I was responsible for Ross no longer being on the bench and that he had been a good judge. 

   Ross was not arrested even with his admission.

  During the investigation of those gunshots, I was asked by the sheriff’s department if I would be willing to become involved in an undercover drug investigation of various residents in the county including some alleged “dirty” cops.  Somewhat suspicious, I agreed.

   But what I didn’t know then, nor apparently did the officer, was that Lamy and Cleveland weren’t interested in drug enforcement, they were interested in what they could learn about my involvement with Montgomery.  During the 8-month alleged “investigation” during which Lamy refused to undertake even one arrest for simple marijuana possession despite copious information, my phone was allegedly illegally wiretapped by the police, my phone conversations with Montgomery and others recorded and then played for others, even at meetings of the county board of supervisors!!

    The officer, Kathy Dudley, sustained serious sexual harassment by male officers in the department and Ross, Redmond, Lamberts and others began lobbying Lamy to remove Dudley from working the Chestertown area and to stop associating with me.  Three months into the alleged drug investigation, Lamy called a meeting of the other officers and told them of the “undercover” operation, effectively endangering both Dudley and myself and blowing the investigation.  Dudley was transferred to the farthest work zone away from me and was told by Lamy and Cleveland that she could not talk to me, could not associate.  She routinely “tossed” her patrol car every morning before going on duty, petrified that they would plant drugs in her car.  She never found any.

    I had not been compensated for any of my time or money that I had in the investigation and even Lamy acknowledged that I had expended over $3,000, but he simply refused to make any drug arrests.

   In June 1992, I undertook an extensive 15-part series looking at every aspect of the sheriff’s department operations, a revealing, troubling insight into abuse of power, alleged corruption, malfeasance and squandering of taxpayer money.

   Members of the sheriff’s department intimidated my advertisers to stop them from advertising, the newsstand dealers were told not to distribute the newspaper by Lamy himself according to informed sources. During one telephone campaign to my advertisers, an individual threatened them that if they continued to do business with me and support The North Country Gazette that their business would be torched, that they would be burned out. There was strong evidence that the person making the threats was the son-in-law of the court clerk.

  The sheriff’s department led by Lamy and Cleveland had undertaken an all out effort to shut down the newspaper.

   When Ross had left office, a former environmental conservation officer was elected to replace him, Ronald Robert.  But four months into his term, Robert tried to have Dudley fired when she arrested the son of one of his friends and his improper involvement continued, including adjudicating cases of his good friend, Charles Redmond, the trooper.  Once again I became involved in a judicial commission investigation and Robert and the cops came at me all the harder.  Redmond had also been part of the Ross misconduct investigation.

   By 1994, the group had effectively shut down the newspaper by cutting off my revenues and they then enlisted the aid of a congressman to insure that my second class postal permit be revoked, sounding the death knell for the paper.  In the spring of 1994, Dudley and I filed a filed a federal civil rights suit against Warren County, the sheriff’s department, Lamy, Cleveland, Ross, Robert and several police officers.  Supported by financial donations, The Gazette was published sporadically as it is now, four to six times a year depending on the support of benefactors.

    Of course the officers filed a motion for summary judgment and the motion languished for over a year in federal court, before a judge who was nearly totally disabled by a neurological disease.  Confined to a wheelchair, he was unable to speak.  The case dragged on without decision until approximately two weeks before his retirement when he dismissed it without ruling on the points of law. Virtually every attorney who had reviewed our case told us there was no way we could lose, the documentation was solid. We were told it was the largest papered case ever submitted in the Northern District. The judge died about two months after dismissing our case and it was revealed that he had been almost totally incapacitated while serving his last days on the bench but was allowed to continue in the position because he needed to serve 10 years in order to earn vested rights so his heirs could collect financially upon his death. The judge should never have been allowed to continue in office, as it was obvious he was incapable of doing so.

    Although the attorney filed an appeal with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, mysteriously he “forgot” to file two required pieces of paper and the appeal was dismissed late in 1996 without being reviewed.  The merits of the case were never reviewed.

    In September 1996, following a five-year investigation of Ronald Robert, the NYS Commission on Judicial Conduct issued a determination that Robert was to be removed from office.  Again, I was attacked and the issue was not about judicial misconduct, but that I had filed the complaint.  I had documented my complaint with many photographs showing the improper meetings and other associations of Robert and the police.  Efforts were begun to stop me from taking photos.  Robert, Ross and Redmond called a televised “news” conference, to which I wasn’t invited or apprised, and I was the one chastised, not the judge for having engaged in misconduct, but because I had dared to complain.  From this spawned an all out effort to stop me from filing complaints against anyone because if I filed a complaint, usually one of them was exposed for wrongdoing. 

    Robert challenged his removal before the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals which unanimously upheld the state’s ruling and in May 1997, Robert was officially removed from the bench, having been found to be “unfit for judicial office”.  Robert had been suspended from the bench in September, 1996 but taxpayers had to continue to pay him full pay for doing nothing from September, 1996 until the court ruling in May, 1997.

    Virtually as soon as the final ruling came down, local residents Donald and Eleanor Lambert began a personal campaign of harassment towards myself and my family with Eleanor walking past my residence virtually every morning, carrying a camera, taking pictures of me and my house for no apparent reason.  They began following me about town. Lamberts had long teamed with Ross and my opponents apparently aggrieved by my reporting on a zoning issue involving them.  When Eleanor Lambert had complained about an editorial viewpoint I had expressed and demanded that I print a retraction, I had refused telling her no retraction was due, it was an opinion and there was nothing to retract.  She and her husband then began an all out campaign against me, along with Ross, Redmond and Robert with the assistance of Ross’s tenant, the New York State Police, and the Warren County Sheriff’s Department.

   By June 1997, the harassing presence of Eleanor Lambert reached a peak when she stood in front of my parent’s residence, taking photos of my mother sitting on the porch.  My mother is afflicted with Parkinson’s disease and was very self-conscious. There was no legitimate reason for Lambert to be taking my mothers picture and it escalated to the point where my mother cried and wouldn’t sit on the porch anymore because of Lambert’s harassment.  I went to the state police barracks and filed a complaint against Lambert with a new trooper with whom I had become acquainted.  He was well aware of the harassment that Ross and others were inflicting on myself and my family and said so, in a conversation I taped.  After taking my complaint, he went to the Lambert residence and told Eleanor Lambert to stop the picture taking, stop the harassment or she would be arrested.  Interestingly, when I subpoenaed him to be a witness for me at a later trial, the state refused to let him testify, saying that he was unavailable and on military leave.

    From that erupted a situation that entails police corruption, prosecutorial misconduct and outright judicial prejudice and misconduct, a total abuse of process and power, to sustain malicious prosecutions to silence their critics, an overwhelming assault on constitutional rights especially Equal Protection and Due Process.

    Eleanor Lambert