Posted on 12/11/2003 1:45:04 PM PST by Holly_P
ABBEVILLE — Even as the 14-hour armed standoff with authorities was beginning early Monday morning at her barricaded home a mile or so away, a helpless Rita Bixby was turning to her own decades-old weapon of choice: The law.
Holed up inside her son’s Abbeville Arms Apartment with her adult disabled son, the 71-year-old decided to fire off a call to the state Attorney General’s Office. She left a voice mail message — strident, but calmly worded — still asserting the family’s legal right to land the state department of transportation had bought in the mid-1960s to widen S.C. 72 outside their Union Church Road home.
She already knew that just moments before, Abbeville County Sheriff’s Deputy Danny Wilson had been shot in the chest with a high powered rifle. He had gone to the home to speak to her son, Steven Bixby and her husband, Arthur Bixby, about a threat to made to construction workers staking out the property last week that they would defend their land to the death.
By the end of the night, 63-year-old constable Donnie Outz would be dead from a shot in the back, her son and husband would be captured after an intense firefight, and all three were facing murder charges for what authorities say was "a planned attack."
"No one has approached us and asked us if they could negotiate or anything. They just simply came onto our land and started taking it," she said, according to a voice mail transcript released Wednesday. "It’s urgent you get back to me or do something about this because there has been a shootout?I won’t answer until you come on the answering service?Thank you very much."
That belief that her knowledge of the law could set her family free from any entanglement — however dire — was typical of the Haverhill, N.H.-native, say family members, acquaintances and public officials who spoke to the Anderson Independent-Mail about the family’s anti-government leanings.
Time and again, those who knew the family in the timber and logging area near the Vermont border pointed to Mrs. Bixby as inspiration and dominant force in the family’s involvement in anti-government politics.
That’s despite Steven Bixby’s anti-government speech to media inside the Greenwood courtroom Tuesday in which he invoked both the common law as well as notorious showdowns with authorities in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas.
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Years before she and her husband moved to Abbeville at the end of 2000 to be with her fugitive son, the Bixby matriarch had terrorized neighbors and public figures with sham lawsuits and fanciful legal arguments based on "Common Law" rights, according to court documents, government officials and those familiar with the family.
That ultra-conservative creed, with its central belief that the laws of the United States are illegitimate, has been at the core of anti-government sentiment for generations — both before and after armed militia activity in the 1990s brought the world out of the shadows.
The State Law Enforcement Division is investigating whether the family had militia connections in the area known as a hotbed for that kind of activity, but there’s limited evidence that the family’s political feelings went beyond their so-called "Constitutionalist" beliefs.
Capt. Paul Leavitt, a 15-year veteran of the Grafton County Sheriff’s Office, had a personal run-in with the Bixbys after Steven Bixby had fled the state in 1994 after he was convicted of driving on a revoked license following a driving under the influence conviction.
Capt. Leavitt remembers reading letters from Rita Bixby in a local newspaper — about one a month as he recalls — that critiqued various aspects of government.
"The tone of the letters as I recall them were critical of government, not anti-government. They were not threatening," he said. "I do know they were Constitutionalists, but does than mean they were members of a militia? Not necessarily."
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A legal eagle
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Gaunt and bespectacled, Mrs. Bixby had an entire set of the New Hampshire Revised Statutes annotated in her home in Warren, recalled a relative, who did not want to be identified.
The relative said he and his father were among the few members of his extended family who were still friendly with Arthur after he divorced his first wife for the woman he called "evil Rita."
Whenever the Rita and Arthur would come to visit, she was always sure to leave behind three or four copies of an anti-government publication called "Spotlight," which specializes in writing about government conspiracies. She also handed it out to people she knew whenever she could.
He remembers that property the family always had No Trespassing signs and warnings to town officials not to step on their land.
"The impression I got is that (Arthur) followed her around like a puppy. She’s the boss," the relative said. Steven, too, "would follow anything his mother said. "That’s the impression I got."
Few other family members returned phone calls seeking comment on the family’s involvement in the Abbeville standoff.
Back in the early 1970s, When Rita and Arthur Bixby lived on Dartmouth College Road in Haverhill, next door neighbor Pat Ingerson vividly remembers just how attached to land the family was.
The Bixbys had been slowly encroaching upon the Ingerson’s property by doing such things as tearing down a henhouse and moving the fence line. The couple young sons at the time helped their parents in their cause by throwing snowballs and empty bottles at them whenever the Ingerson’s confronted them about the land issue.
They finally got the police involved when her husband, Richard was threatened with a gun. Another time, she saw Arthur sitting on a porch with a rifle waiting for her husband to come out.
Pat Ingerson said she Arthur Bixby was a radically changed man after he had an affair with Rita that led to the breakup of both their marriages. Arthur had three sons and a daughter. Rita had four sons and two daughters.
Mrs. Ingerson knew him from high school and during his previous marriage and she couldn’t have imagined him doing anything "dramatic."
"I never knew Arthur to be that way," said Mrs. Ingerson, who still is friendly with Rita’s sister as well a niece and a nephew. "I think she had him do it or else."
She remembers the young sons being scared of her mother: Once, Steven had approached her husband to help him fix a bicycle chain that had come off so his mother wouldn’t find out.
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A legal terrorist
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Lin Hight, 65, said he is one of those who has suffered at the hand of her unusual legal arguments.
He said he has been sued five times in six years by Mrs. Bixby, always her own counsel, in connection with a trailer and two acres of land she sold him in Haverhill. He ended up spending $10,000 in legal fees in addition to the $25,000 he paid for the property.
In pleadings in one of those cases, Rita Bixby asserted that "a court of common law superceded and nullifies a court of equity," according to documents in Grafton County Superior Court.
"In her mind, she’s never wrong. Never. No matter what it is, she’s right. She knows just enough the law to be dangerous," he said. "She’s been crazy since she was born."
Mr. Hight counted off the school district, a local judge, three property owners and even Arthur Bixby’s brother among the people Rita had sued over the years, although evidence of those suits could not be independently be confirmed in court records because of the age of the cases.
However, A top Haverhill elected official who declined to be identified confirmed that in the 1970s and 1980s, she had sued several public figures, including two attorneys, a chief of police, for perceived wrongs that amounted to trying to settle political scores, but those lawsuits, too, could not be independently confirmed because of their age.
"She thinks she knows the law better than anyone else," the elected official said. "She was always involved in some kind of legal battle. It didn’t matter what it was."
Gail Shipman, the administrator of tiny Warren, N.H, said the Bixby’s property file contained documents in 1988, 1991 and 1992 showing "they didn’t like paying property taxes."
When the Bixby’s lived in a three-bedroom, one story house on a small plot of land on route 25 in the town, Mr. and Mrs. Bixby typed up a "Notice and Demand" to the town’s selectmen, similar to a city council, claiming "our God given inalienable Right/Duty to defend our own Life, Liberty and Property at whatever peril to the thief or robber who assaults those rights."
She attached a "notice by affidavit" asking for a deduction on taxes for money spent by the "securalist" school district and the planning and zoning board that she didn’t recognize as legitimate.
Before the Bixbys left Warren for Abbeville, they sold the home and land for $20,000 — a fraction of the $60,000 it was worth — just hours before the deadline for its seizure by the town for non-payment of taxes.
Even when Mr. Bixby’s father, Vernon, died in Nov. 1997, it took three years to execute the estate because it was contested with multiple pleadings from Arthur Bixby, one of the family’s three brothers and one sister.
"They gave me a hard time," said Reginald W. Bixby, the co-executor, indicating that the difficulties were based on spurious legal issues. "We haven’t had anything to do with them. We distanced ourselves tremendously. It’s been for a lot of years."
Steven Bixby himself had tried to use similar "Common Law" arguments in trying to duck punishment on the original 1991 DUI charge.
One pleading from Steven Bixby, a "Notice of Particular Averment," demands a court, judge and jury of 12 at common law. The case was eventually appealed to the New Hampshire Supreme Court, where it was dismissed, court records show.
By all accounts, the Bixbys were always financially unstable, with Arthur unable to hold down regular jobs, at least in part because of Rita’s reputation in town, Mr. Hight said. Mrs. Bixby was a homemaker and homeschool both her sons, Steven and Daniel, those who knew the family said.
When they entered adulthood, Steven and his brother Daniel, who still lives in Bath, N.H., took work as carpenters and construction workers, following in the footsteps of their father, but they too went from job to job.
Warren resident Jim Bardsley said the Bixby’s had helped remodel his home, and counted himself and his partner, Lorraine, as one of the family’s few friends in the 10 years or so they lived close by. Even so, he’s bitter that the family still owes about $300, $200 of that for a loan they used to buy back a gun from a pawn shop.
Mr. Bardsley echoed the view that Rita was the source for the family’s strong political views.
"She was a radical person, his mother. She was anti-everything," he said. Steven "believed everything she said."
In 1988, newly married and with two young daughters at the time, the 21-year-old Steven was helped financially by a successful worker’s compensation claim after he suffered frost bite during a brief stint at a Vermont construction company, netting about $20,000, documents show.
When Steven abandoned his family and moved to Abbeville in 1994 to escape the fugitive warrant, he again benefited from an injury claim, with a 1998 out of court settlement from Flexible Technologies Inc, where he was believed to have hurt his back during a 6-month stint there, documents show. (A worker’s compensation claim the previous year against Spires Construction was thrown out.)
Steven apparently used the money to buy a vending van to sell food at fairgrounds, which neighbors and acquaintances said was his main means of support.
Those sentiments would be echoed later by other neighbors and acquaintances in New Hampshire and South Carolina, who said they thought Rita was quietly in charge.
(Independent-Mail staff reporter Charmaine Smith contributed to this story.)
Nicholas Charalambous can be reached at (864) 260-1256 or by e-mail at charalambousnc@IndependentMail.com
The "real story" is two innocent men are dead because of a couple of inbreds.
With any justice, they'll be dead too, very soon.
Thanks for the bump, Cultural Jihad. Hi Poobah! I'm still here. :^)
CJ, I was a supporter of Matsuidon. He was my friend; I loved the man dearly, and couldn't understand how such a situation could come to pass. Having read all the sworn officers' statements and the autopsy report, all I can really say here (I don't want to open old wounds, which are still very painful to me) is that the newspaper accounts of this horrible incident of August 9, 2002 were complete fabrications of what actually happened.
The recent beating of the 300-lb. man by Ohio police officers that resulted in his death put me in mind of what happened to Don. If Don had been a black man, I imagine his death would have inspired the same public reaction, and even outrage in certain quarters.
Don was no angel. But he didn't deserve to die. May God rest his soul.
I'll start,
She isn't me.
Unfortunatley, he died too quickly and these two are still alive.
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