Maine vacation home owners who poisoned trees obscuring stunning ocean views from their $3.5 million property are threatened with prosecution

A wealthy CEO who improved the ocean view from her $3.5 million Maine vacation home by poisoning her wealthy neighbor’s trees is facing a new criminal investigation after collecting $1.7 million in fines and settlements has paid.

Amelia Bond secretly spread four pounds of the deadly herbicide Tebuthiuron on Lisa Gorman’s trees in 2022, before offering to pay for their removal when they started to die.

Bond, former head of the $500 million St Louis Foundation, has since paid $1.5 million in compensation to Gorman after tests revealed her trick.

But the state’s attorney general is now considering charges after the poison leaked into a nearby park and beach, uniting Camden residents in anger.

“Anyone stupid enough to poison trees near the ocean should be prosecuted as far as I’m concerned,” said neighbor Paul Hodgson.

Gorman, the widow of the late L.L. Bean’s president, Leon Gorman, became suspicious when the trees, along with large areas of vegetation, began dying in her yard overlooking picturesque Laite Beach and Camden Harbor.

Bond’s holiday home is directly behind hers, further up the hill, and the trees had blocked her view but seemed sympathetic as they began to wither.

But Gorman asked landscapers Bartlett Tree Experts to look at the trees, and they took soil samples that showed two oaks had been treated with herbicide, which had spread to other trees, including maple, blueberry and dogwood.

Local authorities also tested the site in November 2022 and spoke to Amelia Bond, who admitted using poison on the land.

She told Maine state investigators that she bought the poison in her home state of Missouri, intending to put it on two oak trees that she claimed she thought were dying.

She and her husband, Arthur Bond III, an architect and the cousin of former U.S. Senator Kit Bond, have so far paid $4,500 to resolve violations with the Maine Board of Pesticides Control Board, and $180,000 to resolve violations with the city to solve.

The couple paid a $30,000 bill for additional environmental testing and paid more than $1.5 million to Gorman in a legal settlement.

But Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey has announced an investigation amid growing anger over spreading damage in the town of 5,000.

“Wealth and power do not always go hand in hand with intelligence, education and morality,” said Select Board Chairman Tom Hedstrom.

“This was horrible and rude and any other word you want to use to describe disgusting behavior.”

Rep. Vicki Doudera, D-Camden, said she plans to address the maximum $4,500 fine the Maine Board of Pesticide Control Board was allowed to set.

“It makes me so mad,” Doudera said. “This situation, as soon as I heard about it, I was like, ‘Wow! These people are going to get a slap on the wrist. That’s just not right.’

Tebuthiuron is the same herbicide used by an angry Alabama football fan to kill the oak trees of Toomer’s Corner at Auburn University in 2010 after a Crimson Tide loss to their archrival.

The incident earned Harvey Updyke jail time, who admitted poisoning the trees.

The poison contaminates the soil and does not break down, so it continues to kill plants.

And at Auburn University, the removal of approximately 1,780 metric tons (1,615 metric tons) of contaminated material was required to achieve negligible levels of the chemical in the soil.

An attorney for the Bonds, members of the city’s Toney Yacht Club, said his clients had no comment but that they “continue to take the allegations against them seriously.”

“They continue to work with the city of Camden, the state of Maine and the Gormans as they have for the past two years,” he added.

And Hodgson said the couple were far from the only people from out of town who had illegally improved their sea views.

“They just pay the fine because they have enough money,” he added. “That’s the city we live in.”