Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 3, 1993 TAG: 9310030035
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MILLBORO LENGTH: Medium
She spoke to reporters, new neighbors, lawyers, auctioneers. After the crowd had thinned out a bit, one last woman quietly walked up.
"I'm Pat Pettigrew," she said. "I used to live in the last house up the road" that runs into the farm.
"Oh, honey," Wooding said as she wrapped her arms around Pettigrew and hugged her. "I'm so sorry you lost your place."
Pettigrew is one of the four former members of the Temple of Light Universalist Church who had built homes on the farm. She and other former church members now have to wait to see what, if anything, they'll receive from the sale.
Wooding outlasted 13 other registered bidders by offering $276,000 for the site Saturday morning.
Michael Collins, attorney for Michael J. Smith, the first former church member to file suit against its spiritual leaders, said the auction brought about what he expected.
He and two other lawyers - all representing former church members who've gone to court to assert their claims to the church property - are serving as court-appointed special commissioners overseeing the farm sale.
They go back to court - probably late this week - to get approval for the sale, expected to be a formality.
The sale price was about $125,000 less than the appraisal set by the county this year for tax purposes, but that was expected, Collins said, in a county where appraisals generally are considered higher than market value.
At closing, the commissioners will have to pay off a remaining mortgage of more than $100,000, Collins said. There also will be expenses related to the auction sale, he said, leaving something in the neighborhood of $150,000 to be divided among the claimants.
"It's pretty clear the money should be divvied up," Collins said, though there has been no agreement yet on the percentages due individual claimants. Either the attorneys will come to some agreement and seek court approval, or the whole matter could be laid in the lap of a judge to decide.
The profits from the farm sale are just a fraction of the actual and punitive damages being sought by former church members from Cyle and Eursula Van Alstine, who led the communal religious group.
"Most of the money [former members contributed to the church] went to support the Van Alstines' lifestyle and business interests," including a Hot Springs art gallery, Collins said. That money "is just gone."
Collins' client, Smith, won a judgment for $250,000 from the Van Alstines for compensatory and punitive damages, but since the Van Alstines have not been seen since the first suits were filed this year, it's not clear that Smith will ever collect.
Smith, who was not present for the sale, "is interested in getting all this behind him," Collins said.
Smith and other former church members have accused the Van Alstines of using cult-like tactics to destroy their free will. They say they were forced to participate in degrading group-sex acts and turn over most of the money they earned from outside jobs to the Van Alstines.
Wooding, the woman who bought the farm, said she had heard about the religious group, but added, "I don't pay attention to hearsay.
"I'm not a judge of people," she said in the hearing of former resident Pettigrew. "Everyone has their own life to live."
Neither Pettigrew nor Pam Brodeur, another former resident who came to the auction, was willing to comment on it.
Wooding got a warm welcome from several of her new neighbors, who pledged to drop in and see how she was doing.
She and her husband, who run a household goods moving and storage business in Norfolk, are not strangers to the area. They own other property in the county and "have had a campsite on [Virginia] 42 for 27 years."
The mother of three and grandmother of five said she had been planning to retire, but now "may have to go back to work" to pay for her new farm.
"I'm serious," she insisted with a laugh.
Wooding said she was "sort of surprised I got it," and that she'll have to "talk over with my husband" what to do with the property.
She said she thought maybe she could talk her children and their families into moving onto the site, and maybe even her Norfolk doctor. "Wouldn't that be great? Having a live-in doctor?"
by CNB