64-year-old neighbor says he loved 14-year-old girl who committed suicide
Patty
By John Woolfolk
San Jose Mercury News
June 19, 2002
A 64-year-old Sunnyvale man charged with molesting a 14-year-old
neighbor who killed herself in January told detectives that he loved
her and that they had passionately kissed, according to police
reports.
Richard Hayes Stone, an engineer at National Semiconductor and
volunteer mentor at Santa Clara High School, appeared in court Tuesday
to hire a new lawyer. He is being held in Santa Clara County Jail on
three counts of child molestation with bail set at $1 million.
``His statement is damaging,'' Santa Clara County Deputy District
Attorney Charles Gillingham said outside the courtroom. ``His
statements were completely inappropriate.''
Stone appeared briefly in court, shackled and wearing a brown jail
jumpsuit and glasses. His new lawyer, Eric Geffon, said Stone will
plead not guilty and described him as ``grief-stricken'' over the
girl's death. Geffon said Stone's statement ``does not mean that a
crime was committed.''
``We are going to be conducting a thorough and full investigation,''
Geffon said after the hearing. ``Once we do that, the truth of what
happened will come out.''
Sunnyvale police were led to Stone by a name in one of three suicide
notes the girl left on a kitchen counter Jan. 18 when she took her
father's gun and shot herself in the head in a bedroom.
``You're probably thinking a normal teenager doesn't do this, well ask
Dick! Please forgive me,'' the note said.
``I hope he regrets what he did,'' she wrote in another note to a
friend.
The girl's family told police that the name Dick referred to Stone. He
and his wife were close friends and neighbors who had taken vacations
with the girl's family.
Police said they later determined Stone had molested the girl, as well
as her 12-year-old friend whose family also was close with him.
According to police reports, Stone told detectives in an interview
before his arrest that he immediately took a liking to the older girl
and that they developed a special bond.
``I was crazy about that girl,'' Stone told police in a taped
interview.
Stone described her as happy and said he had no idea why she would
kill herself.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Missed clues add to suicide agony
SUNNYVALE TEEN'S PARENTS CONFRONT ABUSE QUESTION
By John Woolfolk and Roxanne Stites
San Jose Mercury News
June 18, 2002
The image haunts Ingrid Van Cleemput: Her 60-year-old neighbor, a
trusted family friend, leaning her little Sarah over a sofa at a
family party a few years ago and licking a piece of chocolate out of
her 10-year-old daughter's mouth.
No one else noticed, and she forgot it amid the commotion of serving
coffee to guests.
In January, Sarah left a note that police said blames her suicide on
the actions of that family friend, Richard Hayes Stone. And now, with
Sarah buried in their native Belgium and Stone charged with molesting
her and another girl, the Van Cleemputs are agonizing over little
clues that with hindsight seem painfully clear.
``We never thought he was involved the way he is,'' said Patrick Van
Cleemput, who, along with his wife, invited Mercury News reporters and
a photographer to their home Wednesday for their first interview since
Sarah's death. ``It never entered our minds.''
Stone is being held in Santa Clara County Jail on three counts of
child molestation with bail set at $1 million. He is expected to enter
a plea next month. Stone and his wife, Dawna, declined to comment.
But Stone's lawyer, Eric Geffon, said his client was devastated by
Sarah's death and that authorities misinterpreted his affection for
children.
``The evidence will show what kind of love Richard Stone had for this
child, and it won't show anything inappropriate in this
relationship,'' Geffon said.
The Van Cleemputs think back to the intimate way he hugged girls and
women -- really close to the chest. How he wrestled with Sarah. How
one day several summers ago, he asked to take only her to his Boulder
Creek home to help him clean.
``We were stupid enough to let her go,'' Patrick Van Cleemput said.
Looking at pictures
Now the couple flips through photo albums trying to find forgotten
images of Sarah. There is hardly a picture, they said, where Stone is
not smack in the middle of it.
Many times right by Sarah's side.
Sarah's parents said they never anticipated her tragic end. But they
remember the headaches and sleeplessness in her last couple of weeks.
They also recall several times that she complained about spending time
with Stone. They chalked it up to being bored with an older man, a
``grandfather figure.''
If she had only said ``half a word,'' Patrick Van Cleemput said, he
would have made the alleged abuse stop.
Sunnyvale seemed like a dream town to the Van Cleemputs when they
moved five years ago to a cream-colored house on Flora Vista Avenue, a
quiet, sunny cul-de-sac of single-story homes where everyone knows
everyone. Patrick Van Cleemput came a year ahead for his job with
semiconductor maker Novellus Systems and installed a pool for his two
daughters, both avid swimmers.
At the time, Belgium was rocked by news of a killer who preyed on
children, and their Sunnyvale neighborhood, just blocks from the
police station, seemed so much safer.
``It was the perfect neighborhood to live in and raise kids in,''
Ingrid Van Cleemput recalled.
Stone came into their lives through a chance encounter with Stone's
mother-in-law when Sarah was walking Bolleke, the family's bichon
frise whose name means ``little fur ball'' in Dutch. Still struggling
with English, Sarah introduced herself to the ``sweet old lady'' who
lived three doors down, Ingrid said.
Stone and his wife moved in with the mother-in-law soon after, when
heavy El Niño storms drenched their neighborhood in Boulder Creek.
Patrick Van Cleemput said he quickly bonded with Stone, an engineer at
National Semiconductor. Soon the families were microbrewing beer,
camping and vacationing together.
``They were like our American family,'' Ingrid Van Cleemput said.
She said Stone was ``quiet'' but ``a good listener.'' Patrick Van
Cleemput said ``he kind of reminded me of my father.''
The Van Cleemputs weren't the kind to invite strangers on family
vacations. But when Stone asked if he and his wife could join their
1999 trip to the island of Hawaii, the Van Cleemputs agreed.
``They sort of invited themselves,'' Patrick Van Cleemput said. ``We
said, Hawaii's big enough.''
The Van Cleemputs last saw Sarah when they left for work the morning
of Jan. 18. Sarah was in bed and planned to walk Bolleke that morning.
Nothing seemed amiss.
After they left, she pulled Patrick's Heckler & Koch .45-caliber
pistol from under his bed and inserted a loaded clip. She left three
notes on the kitchen table for her family and friends -- one
apparently penned a week earlier. She wrapped a towel around her head
and spread others on the floor to avoid leaving a mess for her
parents.
After firing a test shot into the wall, she knelt over a mirror and,
clutching a photograph of her and her late grandmother, put the gun to
her temple and pulled the trigger.
At first her parents were stunned. Sarah was a popular, high-achieving
freshman at Fremont High School in Sunnyvale, where principal April
Scott said she was well-liked and showed no signs of distress. She
enjoyed martial arts and playing electric guitar and talked about
attending college at University of California-Berkeley or UC-Davis and
buying a Volkswagen Beetle, painted to look like a cow.
`You just don't do that'
Neighbors on Flora Vista Avenue also are thinking back about the girl
they described as happy and outgoing. Liana Shell, who often called
Sarah to babysit her three young boys, remembers seeing Stone
wrestling or playing basketball with Sarah out front. She thought he
was too touchy with the girl, but she never suspected Sarah could be
an abuse victim.
``The way he played with the kids, wrestled with them and tickled them
was wrong,'' Shell said. ``You just don't do that with girls that
age.''
Sarah's secret unraveled in notes she left for family and friends,
police said.
``You're probably thinking a normal teenager doesn't do this, well ask
Dick!'' said the note she left on the kitchen counter for her family.
``Please forgive me.''
``I hope he regrets what he did,'' said another note to a friend.
At first, the Van Cleemputs didn't make a connection. They thought
maybe she was homesick after a recent trip to Belgium, that maybe she
confided that to Stone.
Ingrid Van Cleemput asked Stone, whom everyone knew as ``Dick,'' when
he came to the house Jan. 18. All he could say was that he'd been at
work, she said.
``When he reacted like that, everyone was just saying, `What's going
on here?' '' she said. ``It made people think, `Is there something we
don't know?' ''
Looking back, the Van Cleemputs feel betrayed and can't help but
second guess themselves. Patrick Van Cleemput agonizes that his
daughter might not have made allegations about Stone because he was
such a close family friend.
``It gave him a position of power,'' he said of Stone. ``It's bothered
me more than anything else. The biggest thing I feel is just the
betrayal. The way he worked his way into our family. He fooled me. He
fooled everybody.''
mothra...@hotmail.com
>
> Neighbor says he loved girl who committed suicide
> By John Woolfolk
> San Jose Mercury News
> June 19, 2002
>
> A 64-year-old Sunnyvale man charged with molesting a 14-year-old
> neighbor who killed herself in January told detectives that he loved
> her and that they had passionately kissed, according to police
> reports.
Oh brother. That poor child.
Martha
Threnody
> Missed clues add to suicide agony
> SUNNYVALE TEEN'S PARENTS CONFRONT ABUSE QUESTION
> By John Woolfolk and Roxanne Stites
> San Jose Mercury News
> June 18, 2002
>
> The image haunts Ingrid Van Cleemput: Her 60-year-old neighbor, a
> trusted family friend, leaning her little Sarah over a sofa at a
> family party a few years ago and licking a piece of chocolate out of
> her 10-year-old daughter's mouth.
>
> No one else noticed, and she forgot it amid the commotion of serving
> coffee to guests.
"FORGOT IT"!!?? "...amid the commotion of serving coffee to guests"!!??
Ingrid is a class-A dipshit. You don't keep serving coffee to the happy
people when you see something like that. You say in a loud voice, loud
enough for the entire room to hear, "What in blue hell do you think you're
doing?" and then get him as far away from your daughter as possible before
calling the authorities.
And then this later bit...
> ``We never thought he was involved the way he is,'' said Patrick Van
> Cleemput, who, along with his wife, invited Mercury News reporters and
> a photographer to their home Wednesday for their first interview since
> Sarah's death. ``It never entered our minds.''
Yeah. Because seeing something like that happen to your 10 year old
daughter is innocent and utterly forgettable.
And this gem...
> Now the couple flips through photo albums trying to find forgotten
> images of Sarah. There is hardly a picture, they said, where Stone is
> not smack in the middle of it.
>
> Many times right by Sarah's side.
>
> Sarah's parents said they never anticipated her tragic end. But they
> remember the headaches and sleeplessness in her last couple of weeks.
> They also recall several times that she complained about spending time
> with Stone. They chalked it up to being bored with an older man, a
> ``grandfather figure.''
Absolutely astounding. How many damn clues did they need? I'm so
dreadfully sorry for that girl -- I bet she died wondering why her parents
watched all of this happening and didn't stop it. I'd have suicided too.
=======================================================================
cr...@austin.TAKETHISOUTrr.com | Please remove the obvious to reply
"Certainly, exposure to opera at an early age did not inspire me to
stab someone and sing about it." Nancy Rudins, alt.true-crime
=======================================================================
Sunny
>The image haunts Ingrid Van Cleemput: Her 60-year-old neighbor, a
>trusted family friend, leaning her little Sarah over a sofa at a
>family party a few years ago and licking a piece of chocolate out of
>her 10-year-old daughter's mouth.
>
>No one else noticed, and she forgot it amid the commotion of serving
>coffee to guests.
She forgot about it??? How could anyone just go about serving coffee
after seeing such a thing? I would have freaked! The hell with the
other guests, get that dirty old man out of there, now!
Bill Schenley
I don't know. It may have been a language/custom
barrier.
> I'm so dreadfully sorry for that girl -- I bet she died wondering
why
> her parents watched all of this happening and didn't stop it. I'd
have
> suicided too.
She had a .45. She should have busted a cap in Stone's head
instead of her own.
Pretty sad story, though.
Brain Death
>The image haunts Ingrid Van Cleemput: Her 60-year-old neighbor, a
>trusted family friend, leaning her little Sarah over a sofa at a
>family party a few years ago and licking a piece of chocolate out of
>her 10-year-old daughter's mouth.
>
>No one else noticed, and she forgot it amid the commotion of serving
>coffee to guests.
Sheesh, these parents sound as alert and on the ball as the ones in
Sixteen Candles.
Moral of the story: Something is wrong when your 60-year-old neighbor
is frenching with your pre-pubescent daughter. Stop serving the
coffee!
BD
d~
>The image haunts Ingrid Van Cleemput: Her 60-year-old neighbor, a
>trusted family friend, leaning her little Sarah over a sofa at a
>family party a few years ago and licking a piece of chocolate out of
>her 10-year-old daughter's mouth.
>
>No one else noticed, and she forgot it amid the commotion of serving
>coffee to guests.
good god!
I don't care WHAT kind of coffee service is going on! HOW COULD A
MOTHER FORGET THAT INCIDENT!?!
d~
Tim Farrow
"Brain Death" <jgl...@letsroll.com> wrote in message
news:12t3huckmfem9gui4...@4ax.com...
Dennis
Tim Farrow <tfa...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:BDqQ8.6375$9s3.32...@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com...
Maybe she was one of thosel little teaases that wanted sex(as debated in
here a few weeks ago), and maybe she was real cute.
Dennis
>
>
Jane Cactus
"Threnody" <cr...@austin.TAKETHISOUTrr.com> wrote in message
news:Xns92335F90BE76Bcr...@216.166.71.233...
I agree with every word of this post.
And while we're at it, why was a gun and ammo lying around the house,
unsecured?
JC
misn...@webtv.net
gramps smelling her drawers on the clothesline? ha