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The ghost of an old fight among Fair Haven politicians reappeared Monday in the latest bevy of arson accusations by the government against jailed Fair Haven developer Angelo Reyes.
The tale of that fight — complete with absentee ballot fraud and Halloween night mischief ranging from a barn fire to a car-slammed garage door — begins on page 6 of a new 42-page potboiler released by U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The document is officially entitled “Notice of Intention To Use Evidence.”
The title could just as easily be: “The Dirty Details Of A Whole Bunch Of Other Fires Angelo Reyes Allegedly Had People Set In Fair Haven Stretching Back 15 Years.”
State police last week arrested Reyes (pictured in court Friday) for allegedly ordering the setting of two of those fires; he remains in jail on $1.5 million bond. The federal government has previously arrested the politically connected developer and accused him of setting myriad fires in order to advance plans to buy and redevelop property in the Fair Haven neighborhood.
The new document introduces a host of new alleged arson allegations dating back to 1997 and coins a term for the practice of which the government accuses Reyes: “urban development by arson.”
Click here to read the document.
The Halloween tale adds a new twist to the ever-building government case against Reyes: politics.
Reyes came onto the scene in the mid-1990s after serving a jail sentence for drug dealing. He was credited with turning around his life and mastering the art of rescuing distressed properties, then finding working-class people to buy them. The government accuses of him of accumulating that empire in part by paying people to light more than a dozen fires to reduce values of properties he wanted to acquire or to settle scores.
Reyes has consistently denied the allegations. “They have their head up their ass,” he said of the investigators in an Independent interview last month. (Read about that and some of his charges here and here.) Reyes claims someone else has been burning buildings and pinning the crimes on him.
As Reyes became a major business figure in Fair Haven, he also became an active volunteer in the political campaigns of Mayor John DeStefano and DeStefano-allied candidates, including Reyes’s sister, former Alderwoman Maria Reyes.
The Halloween episode, if the government’s new accusations are true, stemmed from one such campaign, for Fair Haven Democratic Town Committee seats in 2002.
It was a messy campaign. The pro-DeStefano and anti-DeStefano forces clashed on the street, sometimes physically, and accused each other of stealing each other’s signs; one such episode was caught on video and publicized.
Reyes worked on the campaigns of two pro-DeStefano candidates. Police arrested him for allegedly stealing absentee ballots to help them win. Reyes eventually pleaded guilty to three felony counts of illegal possession of absentee ballots. After a parade of politically connected people testified on his behalf, a judge spared Reyes jail time, handing down a suspended five-year sentence.
Reyes was arrested the night before Halloween.
Halloween night, violence visited the properties of two prominent politicians on the anti-DeStefano side of those campaigns — then-Fair Haven Aldermen Raul Avila and Kevin Diaz.
The new federal document refers to them as “city councilors.” (New Haven doesn’t have a City Council. It has a Board of Aldermen instead.)
The federal document attributes what happened that night to two unnamed “accomplice witnesses” (“AWs”).
“AW2” is quoted saying Reyes asked him to drive a car into the garage door of Diaz’s home at 371 Lombard St.; and setting fire to a “‘barn’ or storage shed” on Avila’s house at 137 Wolcott St.
Here’s how the document describes what happened:
“According to AW2, Reyes wanted this done because of ‘politics’ and because Reyes believed that the two politicians were responsible for having Reyes arrested for ballot or fraud related crimes. According to AW2, Reyes wanted to get back at them for having Reyes arrested. …
“On the night the garage door was damaged and the barn set on fire, AW2 recruited what AW2 referred to as a ‘crack head’ as a partner to assist him in carrying out Reyes’ plan. According to AW2, he recruited the ‘crack head,’ who had been hanging out in front of Lou’s Lounge in Fair Haven, by offering him money to participate.
“According to AW2, AW2 was in his own vehicle while the ‘crack head’ drove an old Oldsmobile or Buick provided by AW2, which AW2 had picked up for approximately $150.00. AW2 and the ‘crack head’ first went to the area of 391 Lombard Street. AW2 parked his vehicle and watched as the ‘crack head’ backed the Oldsmobile or Buick directly into the garage door at 391 Lombard.
“Afterwards, AW2 and the ‘crack head’ went to a gas station located on Chapel and Ferry Streets in Fair Haven. AW2 purchased about $1.50 worth of gasoline and pumped it into a one-gallon container that AW2 had brought with him.
“AW2 recalled it was dark out and that it was late at night. According to AW2, as AW2 waited in his vehicle, the ‘crack head’ walked into the barn, poured the gasoline in the barn and started the fire. The ‘crack head’ then walked out, got into the car, and left. AW2 couldn’t recall how much he paid the ‘crack head’ for his assistance, but he believed it was somewhere in the vicinity of $50.00 to $60.00.”
Reyes’ attorney in the federal case, Richard S. Cramer, is out of the office for the first part of the week and thus unavailable for comment, according to his office.
Click the play arrow to see Reyes react after the burning of his laundromat in 2009, a fire which he is charged with having ordered to be set.