Trailer park feud fuels lawsuit
By Stephen Dyer

Beacon Journal staff writer

RAVENNA TWP. - How does a dispute over a 50-cent newspaper morph into a trailer park lawsuit of more than $250,000?

Put together a trove of colorful characters with an old-fashioned neighborhood feud, and you begin to understand why the Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park is facing such legal tumult.

The lawsuit -- now before Portage County Common Pleas Judge John Enlow -- is being handled by Streetsboro attorney George Cochran, who believes, according to literature he passed out at area trailer parks, that ``God has called (him) to slay the Goliaths facing Ohio's mobile home residents.''

The suit is filed by a woman called Miss Tia -- a Clinton, Iowa, native who changed her name from Tia Marie Kavadas in 2000 because, according to records, she claims her parents tortured her and she didn't want to be reminded of them. She lists her phone, though, under ``Sqeaky Fromme'' -- the misspelled alias of a Charles Manson follower still doing time for trying to kill President Gerald Ford in 1975.

Miss Tia's boyfriend, Lou Duchez -- a co-plaintiff in the suit -- is a former member of the Church of the SubGenius, a tongue-in-cheek cult of sorts that claims to believe, among other things, that the world's savior is a man in a piece of clip art and that on a designated day an alien sex goddess will arrive on Earth and spirit followers to a distant planet, ``servicing'' them the whole way.

The trailer park operator, the Rev. Myrna Apel-Brueggeman -- who helped spirit the lawsuit along by deciding to evict Duchez and Miss Tia as the feud was developing -- has started at least four different churches or religious organizations and is known for marrying couples on Portage Lakes pontoon boats.

Records show one of her groups, Alpha Omega, was set up in the 1970s as ``an Institute for the purpose of understanding of the Universal Truth.''

As for John K. Rogers, the neighbor who has been fighting with Miss Tia, he works at Portage Industries -- the employment arm of Portage County Board of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities -- and lives next door to a former Brady Lake police chief.

Put them all together, add a healthy helping of petty-to-potentially-dangerous hazing, and voila: a $250,000 lawsuit.

Not-so-simple eviction

It seemed to be a simple eviction for Orchard Estates' 62-year-old operator Apel-Brueggeman. Nothing extraordinary.

Indeed since 2000, she and her trailer park business have filed about 40 lawsuits for eviction, court records show -- a function of a flailing economy, she says.

But the would-be eviction of Duchez, 37, and Miss Tia, 35, turned out a little differently when the pair countered the park's lawsuit with their own, alleging, among other items, defamation and breach of contract. Their countersuit is against the park; neither Apel-Brueggeman nor Rogers are named parties.

``I feel they've made it untenable here,'' Miss Tia explained, sitting in her tiny yard stringing Christmas lights around a tree-shaped trellis. She wore a blue bandana, khaki shorts over white long johns and a gray hooded sweat shirt that sported a message not often seen on campus: ``Property of Palestine 1948 Right of Return.''

Palestinian rights is one of Miss Tia's abiding concerns (she has PLO painted in a window of her brown, aging Lincoln Continental) as is the plight of the still-incarcerated Squeaky Fromme. That's why she has her phone listed that way.

``She shot at Ford with blanks,'' Miss Tia claims (although Fromme actually never fired). ``John Hinckley shot Reagan and put Jim Brady in a wheelchair, and he gets out on weekends? That's my little form of protest.''

Run-ins with neighbors

Even before Miss Tia arrived at Orchard Estates, John Rogers, 31, had problems with neighbors.

In June 2002, he was involved in a fistfight with neighbors because he said they were making fun of his wife.

On Dec. 3, 2002, he was found guilty of disorderly conduct for making off with Joyce Tenant's $10.

In March 2003, he was convicted of a less serious charge for pushing another neighbor, Connie Zemelka.

Police records also show he has been banned from Wal-Mart, across state Route 59 from the trailer park, because ``there have been several incidents of John `groping' several associates.'' In December, records show he was dragged out the back door by an electronics department manager who recognized him.

The dispute with Miss Tia, though, isn't a year old yet.

It stems from an incident two days before Christmas when she says she saw Rogers make off with a copy of the Kent-Ravenna Record Courier from the front porch of a neighbor -- the former Brady Lake Police Chief R.A. Dunivan, 75, and his wife, Pat, 71.

Since then, the Sheriff's Office has gathered a voluminous file.

Indeed, when the Dunivans complained last December after Rogers returned their newspaper filled with shaving cream, deputies were thoroughly familiar with the neighborhood.

For messing with the newspaper, Rogers was convicted of criminal trespassing, but that was only the beginning.

Wires clipped

On Christmas Day, Rogers told deputies someone left a note on his door saying if he didn't stop causing problems, ``criminal charges were going to be filed and the process for eviction will begin.'' It was signed by ``Santa.''

The next day, Miss Tia reported, Rogers snipped off her outdoor Christmas lights. Rogers pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct for that caper and was ordered to pay $20 restitution.

But Miss Tia was incensed.

She wrote Portage County Municipal Judge Barbara Watson that she felt ``very cheated'' because $55 was more like the cost of her ruined lights.

Then on Dec. 30, she said she saw Rogers clip the wires of the Dunivans' water meter. Prosecutors dropped the criminal charges that were filed on that.

In March, Miss Tia filed another complaint with deputies, this time alleging her electricity kept going off. Again, no charges were filed, but Rogers checked with deputies a month later to ask if he would get in trouble for it. He didn't.

In June, Miss Tia said she was ``75 percent sure'' it was Rogers she saw peering in her window. No charges were filed.

Then on June 30, Rogers called deputies to tell them that Miss Tia was blaming him for her phone lines getting cut.

A week later, Pat Dunivan reported one of her windows was broken and she suspected Rogers. Meanwhile, Rogers told deputies that Miss Tia warned him she would kill him if he came onto her property again -- an allegation Miss Tia flatly denied.

For her part, Pat Dunivan told deputies at the time that ``she is sick of John's s--- and will handle him if she catches him.''

The deputy urged her to call before ``doing anything stupid.''

By Sept. 9, Miss Tia had put the state on notice by writing Kenneth Ritchey, director of the Ohio Department of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, that she suspected it was Rogers who left burn marks on the Dunivans' trailer.

``This is a matter of life and death,'' she wrote. ``No one is picking on John. We are in fear of our lives now.''

Dunivan -- who has compiled an eight-page letter detailing Rogers' alleged actions directed at her and her trailer -- agreed.

``He's going to hurt somebody,'' she said.

On Sept. 11, Miss Tia told deputies Rogers was ``yelling at her and telling her that he was going to get her.'' Rogers countered that Miss Tia was passing around park watch signs he felt were directed at him.

Again, sheriff's deputies told Rogers to leave Miss Tia alone.

Two days later, she filed for a Civil Stalking Protection Order telling Portage County Common Pleas Judge Joseph Kainrad she felt ``extremely threatened by John K. Rogers.''

Another neighbor -- Sherry Sammons -- got a similar order after she alleged that Rogers had trespassed on her property.

Park code violations

Despite all the trepidations about Rogers, however, it was Miss Tia and Duchez that the Rev. Myrna Apel-Brueggeman tried to evict -- the first, she said, for code violations, not financial problems, since the 1980s.

``She thinks I'm a horrible, evil person,'' Miss Tia said of Apel-Brueggeman. ``But he's been convicted of this stuff.''

The park owner says she's convinced Rogers isn't a danger.

But filings in the case suggest she believes that Miss Tia is.

``Your threats of plotting and shooting (Rogers) with a gun,'' the park claims, ``have caused fear and terrorism in the Orchard Estates Community.''

Furthermore, it says, Miss Tia's muffler ``is extremely loud and needs to be fixed.''

The park says there is no complaint that Rogers is a child molester, as Miss Tia claims.

Yet, according to the park, Miss Tia has warned people not to move there; has made obscene gestures to the staff; and caused ``a number of residents'' to be unable to relax.

As Apel-Brueggeman sees it, Miss Tia's signs supporting the PLO represents an association with what she brands as ``a worldwide known terrorist group.''

And according to the eviction papers, flying the Jolly Roger, a black pirate flag, and posting a sign in her window that says ``what are you looking at?'' are both code violations.

The sign, Miss Tia says, was in response to Apel-Brueggeman snooping around her trailer -- which she also reported.

Apel-Brueggeman told deputies then she had simply wanted to talk with Miss Tia about the problems, but ``she got scared and went back to her van.''

On a crusade

Miss Tia says it is laughable that she, rather than Rogers, is seen as a threat to residents.

``I hate guns,'' she said. ``I don't think anyone should have a gun.''

In their countersuit, the pair claims the park has defamed them and breached the rental contract by not evicting Rogers. The park denied those allegations in a Friday filing.

Their attorney, George Cochran of Streetsboro, claims to have lived in a trailer until he was 21, formed a group called Mobile Justice, and says he is on a crusade to bring class action suits against trailer park owners.

``Your greatest ministry comes out of your greatest pain,'' he explained.

His fliers portray trailer park residents as `` `hidden people' without a voice... a secret counter-culture who are captives in a foreign land.''

Apel-Brueggeman, though, may be on a crusade, too.

According to state records, the several churches or religious organizations she is connected with have addresses either at her home or at an office suite next door to the trailer park. She ran a school for lay ministers of holistic healing there in the 1980s.

``That's my love,'' she says of her ministry.

As for the park, she said Orchard Estates was a quiet place until Miss Tia moved in.

Now it's chaos, she said.

Pat Dunivan -- the neighbor whose stolen paper started the whole thing -- said it is a bad idea to get on the wrong side of either Apel-Brueggeman or Miss Tia.

But if she were to pick a winner in the fight, it would be Tia.

``Definitely Tia,'' she said.

Full circle

Last week, a Beacon Journal reporter and photographer tried to contact Rogers at his trailer. The front door was open and the TV was on, but no one answered, so the reporter left a note asking him to call.

According to Miss Tia, when the reporter left, Rogers bolted from the trailer, shouting about Miss Tia siccing men on him.

The next day, Apel-Brueggeman's attorney -- John Becker of Roetzel & Andress -- called to say Rogers was agitated because he thought the reporter and photographer were there to question him about him stealing newspapers from neighbors -- the accusation that started the whole mess 11 months ago.