FL- Mom who shot man she thought abused her daughter is ready for prison

10-16-2009 Florida:

Sylvia Neeley believed her Land O'Lakes neighbor was molesting her 12-year-old mentally disabled daughter. She said he even bragged that he could do it again. She told the authorities, but they never charged him with anything — even though one investigator said he may have done it. So, on May 24, 1998, Neeley pumped Arthur Danner full of bullets. Swimming in a haze of beer and Valium, she fired into his chest, then reloaded and took aim at his groin.

Thursday morning, she stood before a judge in Dade City, her last stop on her way to state prison.

"I'm very sorry for the crime I committed," said Neeley, 48, who wore a black suit and heels. "I just felt like no one was helping my daughter."

The price of Neeley's crime is separation from the daughter who still needs her.

Jenny, who is now 23 but still has the mind of a child, will have to live in a group home until her mother gets out in about five years.

• • •

Neeley doesn't offer any excuses for what she did, but her life took a destructive course long before she confronted Danner.

She grew up in Tampa with three siblings and a single mom who struggled to provide. She dropped out of school after eighth grade. As a young teenager, she started using marijuana, then alcohol, then pills. By the time she was 15, Neeley had been everywhere from California to New York to New Orleans, hitching rides in the cars and truck beds of strangers.

"I always ran," she said recently. "It wasn't until years of being sober that I realized you take the same person with you."

Once, she said, a guy in a four-wheel-drive truck picked her up on Florida Avenue in Tampa, gave her beer, drove her to Morris Bridge Road and raped her. Then he dropped her at her boyfriend's house.

She worked as a stripper and a prostitute and has a history of minor arrests from disorderly conduct to DUI.

She had her first daughter at 17, and another 11 months later. The younger is married and raising three kids; the older is addicted to painkillers, her own four children scattered.

When Jenny was born, Neeley could tell she was different from her other girls. At 6 months old, the baby had several seizures and nearly died.

Jenny was diagnosed as high-functioning but developmentally delayed. She likes to fish and play cards and talks about having kids of her own, but she lacks the maturity of an adult and cannot care for herself.

• • •

Arthur Danner was a friend and Land O'Lakes neighbor to Sylvia Neeley, whose last name then was Maraman. Danner became a father figure to a woman who had never had one.

But Neeley gradually grew suspicious of Danner, 73, who she says was obsessed with Jenny, heaping gifts on her and chastising Neeley for disciplining her.

In early 1998, a family friend told Neeley he walked into a troubling scene in Danner's mobile home: Jenny was on the floor. Danner was on a couch naked from the waist up; the rest of his body under a blanket.

Neeley reported the incident to state child welfare authorities and the Pasco County Sheriff's Office. The agencies investigated, but two months passed and no charges were filed.

Marilyn Loper, a counselor with the Department of Children and Families, told Neeley there was some evidence Danner may have abused her daughter, but not enough to press criminal charges.

"I said, 'It's likely. It's not 100 percent, but it's quite likely that he will indeed get away (with) it,' " Loper later testified at Neeley's trial. "So it's your job to make sure that he doesn't bother your child anymore.' "

In the meantime, Neeley said, Danner was harassing her with constant phone calls. One night, she couldn't take it anymore. She confronted him in his trailer, and when he admitted his acts, she said, she walked home and grabbed a .357-caliber gun that belonged to her ex-husband. Danner sat on the couch as Neeley, who had never fired a gun before, squeezed the trigger again and again.

She was drunk and stoned and doesn't remember much else.

Neeley was convicted in 2000 of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years, but won a new trial on appeal. Two weeks ago she pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter, and on Thursday she was sentenced to 10 years in prison. She will probably serve about half that because of time credited from her previous conviction.

• • •

Neeley moved Jenny into a group home in Riverview, near Neeley's mother's house, a few weeks ago. Jenny has her own bedroom with her name on the wall, stuffed animals from home and a metal replica of her Dalmatian, Perdita, who recently died. She can have visitors anytime.

Jenny says she hates her new home, but she understands why she's there and why her mother's going to prison. She remembers what happened.

"He used to touch me down there all the time," she said.

Neeley is as ready as she can be for prison. For the first time in years, she says she's clean. She had a new Bible with her when she went to prison Thursday.

The only part about going to prison that splinters Neeley's tough shell is the thought of her daughter, who can't keep track of days, going weeks without hearing from her mother.

As they visited earlier this week at the group home, Jenny was in a sullen mood. She rolled her eyes and gave her mother attitude as Neeley henpecked.

But when talk turned to prison, Jenny buried her face and clung tightly to Neeley's waist.

"You're a grown woman now, why you going to cry?" Neeley asked.

" 'Cause I know you're leaving," Jenny said.

Neeley stroked her hair and tried to stay composed.

"As long as I know you're okay, I'm okay," she told her daughter, and herself. ..source.. by Molly Moorhead, Times Staff Writer

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Pasco mother heads to prison for shooting daughter's alleged abuser

10-15-2009 Florida:

DADE CITY — Sylvia Neeley, dressed in a black suit and high heels, turned herself in this morning to begin serving her prison sentence for killing a man a decade ago who she believed was molesting her mentally retarded daughter.

Neeley, 48, shot Arthur Danner on May 24, 1998, in his Land O'Lakes mobile home. She told authorities he had boasted about sexually abusing her daughter, then 12, and said he could do it again. Stoned on beer and painkillers, she went to her home next door, grabbed a gun, returned to Danner's trailer and unloaded into his chest.

Then she reloaded and fired at his groin.

Neeley had reported the suspected abuse three months earlier to authorities. The Pasco County Sheriff's Office and child welfare workers investigated, but they had not found enough evidence to charge Danner, 73, with anything.

She told Circuit Judge Pat Siracusa in court this morning that she wished Danner had been arrested.

"I'm very sorry for the crime I committed," she said through tears. "I just felt like no one was helping my daughter."

One Department of Children and Families counselor, Marilyn Loper, had testified at Neely's trial that their investigation found some evidence Danner may have abused her daughter, but there probably wasn't enough to press criminal charges.

"She said, 'You mean he is going to get away with this?' " Loper testified. "I said, 'It's likely. It's not 100 percent, but it's quite likely that he will indeed get away (with) it. So it's your job to make sure that he doesn't bother your child any more.' "

Neeley was convicted of the killing once at trial in 2000, but an appeals court found that the judge had made errors and granted her a new trial. She has been out on bail since December 2002.

With her new trial looming, Neeley instead pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but will be credited for the more than four years she has already spent behind bars.

Siracusa gave her two weeks before today's sentencing to get her affairs in order and move her daughter, now 23, into a group home.

Neeley said before the hearing that she visited her daughter at the home this morning.

As she was led away in handcuffs, she carried a Bible, glasses case and small book of photos. Her family sat a few rows away, crying.

"I'm heartbroken, absolutely heartbroken," said her mother, Frances Hayman. "She was my wild child, but she's still my child." ..Source.. by Molly Moorhead, Times Staff Writer

NY- Suspected molester shot; friend charged

See court appeal also:

4-30-1998 New York:

SHELTER ISLAND (AP) -- A man accused of sexually molesting an 8-year-old girl on this quiet resort island was blasted to death with a shotgun at his home, allegedly by a neighbor who's known him for 20 years.

Kenneth Payne was being held without bail after pleading innocent to a murder charge in the death of neighbor Curtis Cook.

Cook, 42, had been arrested last month on charges he sexually abused an 8-year-old girl, and was free on bail, police said Tuesday.

Payne initially believed Cook was wrongly accused, but changed his mind, police said.

Payne also may have believed Cook attacked his 10-year-old daughter, a playmate of the 8-year-old, although Cook was not charged with molesting Payne's daughter, the Daily News said.

On Monday, apparently bothered by a message on Cook's answering machine boasting that he would beat the charge, Payne got his 12-gauge shotgun and went to Cook's house, police said at a news conference.

Then he went home and called friends to tell them of the shooting. When officers arrived, summoned by calls from the friends, they found five rifles and shotguns lying outside Payne's trailer. It took about an hour to coax Payne out, said Sgt. James Read, chief of the island's small police force.

Police said Payne confessed, telling officers: "I shot him once. I believe I shot him just below the heart."

Payne also allegedly called the mother of the 8-year-old and told her she didn't have to worry about Curtis anymore.

He was "motivated by anger," Suffolk County prosecutor Janet Albertson said. "He has his own children."

It was believed to be the first killing on Shelter Island since the tiny island at the east end of Long Island was settled in 1652, the News said. It has a year-round population of about 3,000 but swells to 20,000 during the summer. ..Source.. by Recordonline.com

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Man Is Held in Killing of His Friend After a Girl's Sex Abuse

4-29-1998 New York:

Kenneth Payne and Curtis Cook had been friends for more than 20 years, sharing the bleak winters when the population here shrinks and the Northeasters' cold rain and mists sweep in for days at a time.

Indeed, two years ago, when Mr. Cook was despondent over the death of his wife, Mr. Payne talked him out of committing suicide.

But Monday night, furious because he believed that Mr. Cook had molested an 8-year-old girl, the police said, Mr. Payne stalked the few dozen yards to his neighbor's house and fired a shotgun into Mr. Cook's chest just below the heart, killing him instantly.

It was the first recorded homicide in the 300-year history of this quaint, peaceful settlement, stunning the year-round population of 3,000, where virtually everybody knows everybody else.

''Everybody's talking about it,'' said Kenneth A. Rose, a captain on the North Ferry that plies Peconic Bay between here and Greenport. ''They mainly agree with the guy who shot him. I don't like child molesters, for one thing, but he took the law upon himself. You can't do that anymore, unfortunately.''

Three weeks ago, Mr. Cook, 44, was arrested on charges of sodomy and sexual abuse of the 8-year-old. Mr. Payne, 42, apparently believed his old friend's protestations of innocence at first, the police said. But when he returned to his battered white trailer home on Monday night there was a recorded message on his answering machine from Mr. Cook that changed Mr. Payne's mind.

''He was despondent and agitated over what he heard,'' Sgt. James J. Read of the Shelter Island Police told a news conference, without divulging any further details, ''and took this action as a result.''

When the police responded to a 911 call, they found Mr. Cook's body, with a single gunshot wound, behind the door of his tiny wood-frame house. They said they found Mr. Payne in his trailer, the shotgun and several other weapons neatly stacked outside, still making a series of phone calls telling people he had killed Mr. Cook.

''He called that little girl's mother and told her: 'You don't have to worry. He won't do this to your little girl again,' '' said a neighbor who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Most of the workers mowing lawns and painting white fences today in preparation for the summer, when the island's population quadruples, knew the two men, who got by on odd jobs and lived alone in scrubby rentals behind a gas station.

It is the slow pace on this 12-square-mile island, which lies midway between the North and South Forks of Long Island and can only be reached by boat, that the summer people treasure, particularly compared with the Hamptons. Quakers settled here in the mid-1600's, fleeing persecution in the Massachusetts Bay colony, where they had been imprisoned and tortured.

The island's gentle tone, amid the Victorian beachfront houses and hotels and the marshes and ponds where once-endangered osprey nest, made the crime seem even more Gothic.

Detective Lieut. John Gierasch, the commander of the Suffolk County police homicide squad, said the first word of the shooting came in a call about 9:45 P.M. Monday from one of the people Mr. Payne had called.

The police said Mr. Payne had given oral, written and videotaped statements to investigators describing the message Mr. Cook left on his answering machine and the shooting.

Lieutenant Gierasch said Mr. Payne got his shotgun, walked the short distance to Mr. Cook's front door and ''after a limited exchange of words, raised the gun and fired one shot.'' Mr. Payne then returned to his trailer and ''made some telephone calls admitting he had just shot Mr. Cook,'' the detective added.

Mr. Cook had been released from jail after putting up $100,000 cash bond, and the sex-abuse charges against him were pending. Sergeant Read said the girl was not related to either man, but declined to discuss the case further, saying, ''We're a small, close-knit community and we have an 8-year-old victim we want to protect.''

Both men had previous police records, Sergeant Read said. Mr. Payne had been involved in a dispute with a summer resident last year, and the man obtained a court order of protection against him. Mr. Cook was charged in the late 1980's with abusing a young boy, but physically, not sexually. It was not clear who the boy was, and Sergeant Read said he did not know the disposition of the case.

Neighbors said the two friends each lived alone and worked at odd jobs. Mr. Payne, who grew up on the island and has relatives here, was separated or divorced from his wife, Sergeant Read said. Mr. Cook had sometimes worked as a handyman at the Pridwin Hotel and the Sunset Beach Hotel.

Vincent P. Geraghty, who rented Mr. Payne the trailer and Mr. Cook the house down a dirt driveway behind the Northville gas station at 35 South Ferry Road, said they sometimes worked together, clearing brush and debris and cutting firewood.

''They were friends, they worked together,'' Mr. Geraghty said.

The gas station operator, Rizzo G. Assoud, 32, said: ''They were nice quiet guys. They lived back there and that's all I know. They came here for gas.''

Mr. Payne was arraigned this afternoon before Shelter Island's judge, Justice Edward J. Hannabury, on a charge of second degree murder. No bail was set. Mr. Payne was sent to the Suffolk County Jail in Riverhead. Janet Albertson, an assistant Suffolk County District attorney, said the state would not seek the death penalty. If convicted, Mr. Payne could be sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

Sharon Kast, a councilwoman on the Shelter Island Town Board, spoke of the stunning impact of the crime among the permanent residents of this quiet place, where nearly a third of the land is a nature preserve, and where many make a hard living as baymen dragging for clams and scallops in surrounding waters.

''The people in the town are in a state of shock because there has never been a homicide on Shelter Island,'' she said. ''This doesn't happen on Shelter Island.'' ..Source.. by JOHN T. MCQUISTON WITH JOHN KIFNER