|
Comments:
The Story - 2005-02-19 22:21:11
Neighbors: Dope the cause
If you ask his family, or the people in the neighborhood where Billy Hardesty grew up, why he did it, the answer is simple.
Dope.
Virtually all of the neighbors interviewed Thursday afternoon, and Billy�s brothers, David, 24, and Gary, 22, said Billy�s heavy use of all types of drugs set the stage for the bloody incident.
�I could see it coming,� said Fred Fensch, the Hardestys� next-door neighbor.
Fensch said he�d last seen Billy about 6 Wednesday evening.
At the time Billy seemed to him to be high on some sort of drug and was virtually �incoherent,� Fensch said. �I said, �I can�t talk to you now Billy. I got to eat supper.� I was actually afraid of him.�
At 6 a.m. Thursday, Billy showed up at another neighbor�s house. Dick Frye, 43, who lives at the corner of Hoeft and Martz, about 200 yards east of the Hardesty home, said, �I knew there was something wrong when I saw him driving his mother�s car. That�s a no-no in that family.�
Frye, who said he�s known Billy for nearly 10 years, said Billy had three weapons, two shotguns and a .22 caliber rifle, with him.
Frye said most everyone knew Billy was �burnt out on dope� and had been in and out of mental hospitals. But Frye added that that Billy was friendly and occasionally would drop by, talk and have a beer.
But just after 6 a.m. Thursday, it was different. �I never saw no one as bad as he was last night,� Frye said.
Frye said Billy was agitated, talking about the people he had killed only hours before for, he said, harassing him about his wife and daughter.
Billy also claimed he swallowed most of 120 Valiums a physician had given him the day before.
Frye said he didn�t believe him at first. �Billy was the sort of person who if he told you it was dark outside, you�d better go check and see,� Frye said.
Billy did, however, have the three long guns with him, Frye said. �I asked him if they were loaded and he said they were and he unloaded them.�
Frye said Billy stayed about �a half-hour or 45 minutes� and drank a cup of coffee. As he was leaving, Billy reloaded his guns, Frye said.
About an hour later, while dropping off his daughter at a school bus stop, he saw police closing in on the Hardesty home.
�Any one who knew Billy, knew he was crazy,� said Frye.
Fensch described Billy as �very aggressive� and said he often tried to �bully� people.
It wasn�t uncommon for Billy to quarrel with his parents, Fensch said, and he�d often walk around the yard, swearing and hollering.
�We�ve lived in fear for the last three years,� said Fensch.
Neighbors said it wasn�t uncommon for Billy�s father, Ronald Hardesty, who worked as a heavy equipment operator, to get fed up with things and leave home for weeks at a time.
Fensch said one of the last times he ever talked with Ronald Hardesty, Hardesty told him that he was fed up with everything and was planning to sell the home and go on the road as a truck driver.
Fensch recounted that about a year ago Billy and his father had gotten into a fist fight in the back yard. The fight was finally broken up when Mrs. Hardesty bashed her husband over the head with a brick, Fensch claimed.
Billy�s two older brothers had run-ins with the law themselves, and the oldest had been in prison. Neighbors who didn�t want to be identified said a series of mysterious fires that broke out in the neighborhood, destroying a neighbor�s barn were blamed on the Hardestys, though nothing was ever proven.
Another neighbor was said to have moved out after run-ins with the Hardesty family.
But Fensch said he had no complaints about Billy�s parents. �They were very, very nice people,� he said.
Other neighbors, who describe the Hardestys as friendly and popular with the people living along Martz, said despite all their problems with Billy, his parents�especially his mother Jan, who worked the day shift at the Belleville post office�often favored him because he was her youngest son and tried to help him.
One neighbor, who didn�t want to be identified, said that within the last two weeks, Billy�s family had sent him money for plane fare home from Alabama.
Money apparently was one of Billy�s concerns in the past few months.
Mickey Eichstadt, who owns a small farm on Martz about a half-mile west of the Hardesty home, said Billy had worked with him about two months ago baling hay for the first time in more than seven years because he needed the money.
Billy left his job as an assembler at the Ford Motor Co.�s truck plant in Wayne last June. Neighbors said Billy held a number of different jobs in the last couple of years.
Billy didn�t particularly like the farm work but he worked hard, Eichstadt said. Eichstadt also described Billy as friendly and blamed most of his problems on the drug habit he said he picked up in high school, and on the trouble he�d had with his wife Paula.
�He got in with the wrong bunch of people,� said Eichstadt, who noted that Billy was seeing a psychiatrist.
Billy�s brother David said one of Billy�s problems was that he had too much money. But he too said Billy�s heavy use of drugs led to his troubles.
Billy�s other brother Gary said because of his money, Billy attracted a lot of �leeches� for friends.
Fensch said his gun collection, valued at more than $31,000, was stolen out of his house about two years ago and Wayne County sheriff�s deputies told him they suspected some of Billy�s �friends,� though not Billy himself.
Another acquaintance, Keith Jackson, 18, said that in the last year Billy had gotten �religion� and sometimes would be seen with a Bible in his hand. But Jackson said he didn�t know which church, if any, Billy belonged to. �Billy was just crazy,� he said.* * * * * * * * * * * *
Anna - 2005-02-20 09:40:13
You know, if it were now, the drug would be crack, not valium. The more I hear stories like this, the more I'm convinced that troubled people abuse drugs, not that drugs turn normal people into troubled people. This guy had life-long problems that would have expressed themselves no matter what.* * * * * * * * * * * *
Laura - 2005-02-20 10:29:57
I see your point about drugs vs. troubled people. On the other hand, I just read a story about runaway youth--kids from nice homes with good upbringings who just can't deal any longer with e.g. their parents' divorce, who slip through the cracks and into street culture, and often end up selling drugs to survive, and taking them to fit in. It was a tragic story; I'll see if I can dig it up.* * * * * * * * * * * *
Laura - 2005-02-20 11:04:00
Here's a link to the runaway story, and to the Metafilter discussion it inspired.* * * * * * * * * * * *
add your comment:
back to the entry - Diaryland
|