It is early here at the farm, the light is not yet up and the stars wink down impassively on our little world. People are flooding into the city for the inauguration, and I am happy to be away from it.
They say the crowds will not be as big as they were last time, but I am taking no chances.
Things are different down here than they are Up North- so few miles under the wheels and such profound variance in the news. I swerved across the farm road to put the driver’s side window close enough to the mail box to snag the little haul of a week’s country mail as I pulled up to the farm yesterday.
The Culpeper Clarion Bugle is not the Post or the NY Times. There is no magisterial coverage on What Must Be Done, or How We Must Do It.
I glanced at the front page as I disemboweled the paper of its advertising supplement- the only reason people read the thing past the “student athlete of the week” feature. I tossed the mostly junk mail to the floor on the passenger side of the Panzer. The front page announced that the director of communications for the County abruptly stepped down. The implication is some sort of scandal, well covered up, of course, and a change to the means of collecting the hated Personal Property Tax.
Those were the above-the-fold news- below and to the right was a late-breaking story, and a sensational one. The headline to the story was dramatic: a 32-year-old murder case had been hauled out of cold storage and solved.
Amazing. We don’t even pay attention to murders back up in The District, though Blue Arlington and bustling Purple Fairfax can barely get through the daily dose of awfulness and get ready for what is to come tomorrow, much less worry about what happened decades ago.
That is normally reserved for the obituary pages- American politics burying its dead in the morgue of the Washington Post. I read the paragraphs on the front page and then followed the story that was scattered through pages six and seven- the whole front section.
This was a driveway moment indeed, and I did not get around to unloading the car or shouting “Natasha!” across the scrub trees and fields to let the Russians know I had turned up.
As I unloaded dry food and supplies from the Panzer I marveled at the story.
This story was more sensational than the last big murder case here, the one where Culpeper Deputy Daniel Harmon-Wright shot to death an unarmed woman who was sitting alone in her car. Fauquier Commonwealth’s Attorney James Fisher, a bluff balding man with a burly physique and a direct manner was appointed to handle the case. He also is presiding over the case of the ancient killing of Brad Baker in The Plains.
A prisoner at the Mt. Olive Correctional Facility confessed after being confronted by a grand jury and admitting he had been the triggerman on“a slaying that had gone unsolved for more than three decades.”
Cold case city! And the more I read there in the driveway the more intrigued I got. The story had everything: passion, big money, big property and the microcosm of life in the outer reaches of the Northern Virginia horse country.
There is a lot of money in Loudoun and Fauquier Counties. The Mellons bought the acreage to have a place to ride deep into the fall and early in the spring. I remember when I was exploring there to see if I could find the right property in which to invest. My search took me further south to the more bucolic fields and pastures of Culpeper- but along the way and on little-traveled farm roads, I saw the outlines of what that money could do.
Like the private jet landing strip that appeared at the end of a lane outside Upperville.
The Plains is the exit you would take to get there from the great concrete swath of I-66 after passing through Thoroughfare Gap and arriving in a place as different from the District as you can imagine.
There is a back road that takes you meandering into the prosperous horse town of Middleburg. The Plains is a gateway to horse country, but it was also the exit for Brad Baker from this vale of tears.
Baker had just taken over management of one of the Mellon and Ives properties (Mellon of bank fame, and Ives of Currier and Ives prints). This one was Kinloch Farm, currently a property specializing in the breeding and training of sheepdogs.
(Kinloch Farm’s rolling hills. Photo Kinloch Farms.)
It was not, 32 years ago. It was an equine property with absentee owners who needed strict management, since the place had issues. One of the first of these was a problem employee who was not on the same sheet of music as management and owners. That would be Mr. Cloud’s stepfather.
Baker canned him ten days into his tenure, on New Years Eve of 1980. That night he intended to go to a party with a pal, Dr. Linda Davies. She arrived at the farm that evening to find the door open to the snowy night, the windows broken out of the two-story farmhouse and Baker inside on the floor, mortally wounded. He had taken a bullet to the head and one right in what the reporting euphemistically called “the groin.”
The first subject was the fired employee, but he had a solid alibi. The case grew cold. There was a spate of interest over publication in The Washingtonian a few years later of a theory that the killing was the result of a romantic triangle with one of the Mellon heiresses. The shot to the groin was thought to be a lead, but it too petered out, so to speak.
Since then, the case stood as the coldest one in county history. It did have sex, money and violence, so people continued to pick at it- Detectives, sheriffs and even a couple psychics.
Things changed back in 2005. Newly-elected Sherrif Charlie Ray Fox, Jr. directed hs CID to comb through the old files and see what they could come up with.
Commonwealth Attorney Fisher was willing to empanel a special Grand Jury in 2011 to follow up, and that unprecedented allocation of resources for such an old crime produced results as the subpoenas went out and citizens were hauled in front of the judge.
Approached by the long arm of the court was the fired employee’s stepson, Ron Cloud. He is serving time for kidnap, sexual assault and false imprisonment, and he was going nowhere for a very long time. Maybe he figured that a trial would at least give him a chance to travel.
According to Fisher’s criminal complaint against him, Cloud “went to Baker’s home and acknowledged having “exchanged words” with him at the front door.” When Baker ran into the back bedroom to get his shotgun, Cloud broke in the front door. Baker fired at Cloud, but the pellets went wide. Cloud then administered the groin and headshot and departed with Baker expiring on the floor.
There is more physical evidence from that night long ago that suggests there was another shooter, so this drama is going to play out for a while.
Who says that nothing happens in the country?
Heck, I even know what the feature story is going to be in next week’s paper. The Russians bought a new loveseat and couch. Of significance, they are both blue.
(Ronald R. Cloud, confessed murderer, kidnapper and violent felon. Photo Mugshots.com)
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com