THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 28, 1994 TAG: 9408280081
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS AND LISE OLSEN, STAFF WRITERS
LENGTH: Long : 159 lines
Many people who know Edwin B. Lindsley Jr. will not talk about him publicly. They fear he will drag them into court.
But three families who have wrangled with Lindsley agreed to talk about their experiences. All are families in suburban neighborhoods who had no idea they had title problems until Lindsley or his associates showed up.
One family is in court now. Two others paid Lindsley to settle his claims.
All three are very angry.
John Smith was a fisherman. He worked around the Lynnhaven Marina, mending nets, helping with odd chores. He never married.
Smith owned little, but he did have a house. It was a modest three-bedroom home with no indoor plumbing. He lived in Gracetown, a mostly black neighborhood near Thoroughgood.
The house was important to Smith. He had built it during the Depression, on his father's land, and lived there more than 50 years. ``He just would not entertain the question of selling the land he had always lived on,'' recalled his great-niece, Mary Gadson.
But there was a secret behind the land: John Smith didn't own it. His father, Henry Smith, the original owner, died in 1926 without a will and without transferring the title.
Technically, that meant all nine of Henry Smith's surviving children owned the land equally, although John Smith was the only one who lived there, maintained the house and paid the taxes.
Somehow, an investor found the secret behind John Smith's land. That investor, Ed Lindsley, hunted down Henry Smith's heirs in 1992 and 1993, including grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and paid them small amounts of money for their shares of the Smith land.
By then, John Smith was sick with Alzheimer's disease. He was living in Bayside Health Care Center. Years earlier, he had given his niece, Bernice Stokes, power of attorney to conduct his business affairs.
Soon, Stokes got wind of Lindsley's work and got upset.
``We always had the impression that eventually John Smith would own the property because he was the last heir of Henry Smith,'' said Stokes' daughter, Gadson, a county planner outside Atlanta. ``We were convinced of this until the inquiries from other family memories.''
The heirs who took Lindsley's money were not close relatives and had no interest in the land, Gadson said.
``The people being contacted didn't even know of John Smith,'' Gadson said. ``They didn't visit. I don't think they could even tell you where the property was.''
One day, John Smith himself signed over to Lindsley his share of the Gracetown property. How and why are open to dispute.
In court papers, Smith's family says he was duped. They say Smith was in the nursing home, was not mentally competent, did not know people around him, including relatives, could not communicate and could not sign his name.
The family, in its legal reply to Lindsley's lawsuit, says Lindsley's agent came to Smith in the nursing home, without informing his niece, and got Smith to sign a deed without telling him what it was. In fact, a nurse had to hold Smith's hand and mark the deed for him, the family claims.
The old man died four months later, in January 1993. He was given $100 for his share of the property. The city assessment at the time was $32,000, the family claims.
Lindsley, in his own court papers, says Smith knew what he was signing and got a price ``fair under the circumstances'' for his small share of a property with big title problems.
Lindsley now claims to own 81 percent of the property. Stokes, however, says her uncle was the sole owner of the property because he had lived there so long, that he was tricked by Lindsley's agent, and that she inherited the land in her uncle's will.
Lindsley sued the family in January. He wants them to sell to him the remaining 19 percent of the property, or sell the property to someone else and give him 81 percent of the proceeds.
The family has filed a cross-bill against Lindsley, accusing him of fraud. Gadson has nothing but contempt for Lindsley.
``It bothers me that this person can take the effort to finagle and ramble through public records and put them to his own use,'' Gadson said. ``It takes a lot of money to prove what you thought was yours for years.''
Dave Harris' trouble started 20 years ago when a stranger posted a for-sale sign in front of his brand new house. It seemed like a weird practical joke.
But when Harris checked his deed, he found trouble. The stranger had acquired from Lindsley the rights to a never-built street that ran through Harris' front yard.
Harris paid the woman $10,000 to reclaim his lawn. It bought him peace, but only for a while.
Lindsley and his associates continued to be a presence in Shadowlawn. By buying an old development company that built Shadowlawn, they have claimed abandoned streets, ditches and part of the shore and bottom of Rudee Inlet. They have collected thousands of dollars from landowners paying for peace of mind and for an end to legal troubles.
Among those whose yards were threatened was City Councilwoman Nancy Parker, a resident of Shadowlawn. Lindsley sued her in 1991, then dropped it a month later. Lindsley also challenged a cable company's right to lay lines in the neighborhood, claiming he owned some streets.
Still, Harris figured his own troubles were over - until 1992, when another Lindsley associate came to claim part of Harris' back yard.
It was a bleak winter for the family. Harris' father-in-law, who lived next door, was dying of leukemia.
One day, Lindsley arrived unannounced at Harris' in-laws' house, Harris said. Lindsley brought a gift: several bottles of a homemade cancer remedy from Brazil. Then Lindsley stayed to chat. He had known Harris' father-in-law since the two worked together as young men loading ice.
The family enjoyed Lindsley's visit, Harris said, although they thought it was unusual. There was no mention of a land dispute.
But a few weeks later, a man who worked for Lindsley showed up. He demanded $20,000 from Harris and his in-laws in exchange for the rights to two strips of land that Lindsley claimed he owned in their back yards.
Over the next few months, the man delivered the same message in person and by letter: You owe Mr. Lindsley money. Harris said he told the man to stay away from his father-in-law, who was terminally ill. Still, the man continued to visit Harris' father-in-law, which upset him, Harris recalled.
The family considered suing Lindsley. They thought they could prove they owned their land because they had openly used it for years. Their lawyer seemed sure they could win, but Harris' father-in-law wanted to get the dispute settled quickly.
Harris paid Lindsley $3,000 in February 1993 to settle his father-in-law's dispute. ``I hated doing it,'' Harris said. His father-in-law died a few weeks later.
Harris himself has refused to pay Lindlsey for what he regards as his own property. He said he would rather fight the claim. There is currently no lawsuit in the case.
For Jay Sigmund in Lynnhaven Colony, the bad news arrived in a plastic-bound folder, the kind used for grade-school book reports.
It was delivered, unexpectedly, to Sigmund's house in March 1992. It was a private appraisal of a narrow grassy strip in front of five houses on Dolphin Road, including Sigmund's.
It was prepared for Ed Lindsley.
The report suggested that Sigmund buy the grassy strip in front of his home - a strip that Sigmund and his neighbors assumed was controlled by the city - for $20,000. Otherwise, the appraiser implied, Sigmund could not get to the canal in front of his house and could not moor his boat there. This would send the value of his $203,000 house plunging, the appraiser wrote.
``We all thought, even for Ed Lindsley, this is preposterous,'' Sigmund said.
It wasn't. Lindsley had bought the sliver of grass from the neighborhood's developer. That sliver separated Dolphin Road from the canal. Without it, the homeowners couldn't get to the water.
In the end, each paid Lindsley several thousand dollars to resolve the claim.
One neighbor, 68-year-old Bill Brase, paid $8,500. He was not surprised by Lindsley's claim because he had recently bought his house. He learned of the canal problem before closing.
``I wasn't too excited about it,'' Brase says, and he felt that Lindsley's asking price of $30,000 for the grassy strip was high. But for $8,500, ``I'm happy I did it. I have no complaint about it. My dealing with Ed Lindsley went fine.''
Sigmund was less happy. He had lived on Dolphin Road for 20 years. He wound up paying $6,000 for a grassy strip 22 feet wide by 110 feet long.
``I really wanted to fight him,'' Sigmund said. ``But I just couldn't develop a confident enough position to go to the mat with him.''
He disdains Lindsley's public image as a hard-working, church-going guy.
``If Ed Lindsley is a churchgoer, I don't know what the lessons are that he takes away every Sunday,'' Sigmund said. ``He's obviously a very smart guy. He just chooses to pursue a line of work no one else has the nerve to pursue.'' ILLUSTRATION: Maps
STAFF
LAND OWNDERSHIP DISPUTES
by CNB