A Brooklyn man accused of poisoning his elderly neighbor’s trees to improve the view at his Rockport vacation home will pay a fine of $3,000, under an agreement that state regulators approved Friday morning.
With the agreement, Stephen Antonson has acknowledged “that a court could find that he committed the violations,” according to the consent agreement. But he did not admit guilt.
Curtis Bohlen was one of several members of the Board of Pesticides Control to express resignation that the board could not do more.
“It may be all we’re going to get,” he said. “I’m not thrilled with the outcome, but I’m not sure there’s a better outcome available to us right now.”
The agreement brings some partial closure to a case that has sparked furor and outrage in the idyllic harborside village for more than four years. This case and similar ones in Maine have also riveted attention to the spectacle of wealthy, privileged seasonal residents behaving badly.
That $3,000 fine is “inadequate,” Eric Grubman, the son of the homeowner whose trees were poisoned, told the Bangor Daily News.
“Our mother was deeply upset and felt like she was being taken advantage of,” Grubman said about his mother, Ruth Graham, who died at age 95 two years ago. “It was doubly upsetting because she did everything to be a good neighbor to everyone, including those living next door.”
Antonson and his wife, Kathleen Hackett, who is not named in the settlement, own a vacation home on Mechanic Street in downtown Rockport. Their view of the harbor was blocked by trees on property owned by Graham, a legally blind woman in her 90s
Starting in 2017 when the Antonson-Hackett family bought their property, they began asking Graham to remove trees or sell them some of her land that bordered the harbor, the board alleges. Graham declined.
In 2021 and 2023, her trees began looking sick, and state investigators found drilled holes and the presence of pesticides on the trees that stood in the way of the Antonson-Hackett family’s view. Hackett’s name is not named in the pesticide control board’s investigation or consent agreement.
The Rockport case was only the most recent instance of wealthy seasonal residents killing neighbors’ trees to upgrade their vistas. In neighboring Camden, a Missouri couple paid more than $1.8 million in fines, settlements, and cleanup costs after they poisoned a neighbor’s trees and contaminated the town’s only public beach in the process. And in Kittery in 2023, state regulators investigated businessman Peter Melendy for allegedly poisoning neighbors’ trees because they blocked his view.
These cases of rich people behaving badly have sparked outrage among locals and garnered national news coverage. And they’ve also stiffened the resolve of lawmakers to increase fines for improper pesticide use.
The case of the Camden tree poisoning caught the attention of Bates College sociology professor Michael Rocque who studies criminology. “It was a bit of a stunning example of somebody who’s just like, ‘The rules don’t apply to me,’” he told the BDN.
Neighborliness and sharing natural resources are values widely shared in Maine, Rocque said. Seeing people act in ways that violate those norms is “a shock to the senses,” he said.
In a letter to state regulators from last year, one of Graham’s sons, Steven Graham, also referenced the notorious Camden case.
“This act is similarly obnoxious. And the fact that it is on the property of a different owner and the fact that it was perpetrated in a manner that took advantage of an elderly, frail and legally blind person is egregious,” he wrote.
“We are disturbed that an individual or individuals would trespass onto her property and apply toxic material to her land and our environment with the express selfish purpose of their own personal wants,” neighbor Stephanie Lash wrote in a letter to regulators last year.
Graham had allowed Antonson, Hackett and their two sons to use her dock for swimming and to tie up boats, Grubman said.
Antonson is an artisan whose light fixtures and furniture are installed in high-end homes, such as fashion designer Tory Burch’s Hamptons mansion. He also designs luxurious kitchen cabinet fixtures, such as a cabinet handle that retails for $550. His wife, Hackett, is a writer whose most recent book, “The Maine House II,” “highlight[s] the beauty and importance of preservation, restoration, thoughtful renovation, and low-impact living in the place they love the most,” according to the book’s jacket cover.
In 2021, a state entomologist examined Graham’s dying trees and found holes drilled into their bases that were “directly within a narrow corridor that would allow a view of the harbor” from Antonson’s deck, according to a case summary provided by the state. Later, members of the state board of pesticide control collected liquid from some of the bore holes. Lab analysis identified it as containing two herbicides: Imazapic and triclopyr.
In 2023, after a friend noticed that more of Graham’s trees seemed to be sick, state inspectors returned to the property and found that more herbicides had been applied to the trees.
Last year, the board unanimously rejected a settlement that was nearly identical to the one approved Friday, partly because it included language stating that Antonson did not admit to the violations and disputed the board’s facts and conclusions.
Antonson has already submitted a check for the $3,000 fine, the board said.
In response to the Camden case, lawmakers stiffened penalties for cases like these. In 2025, the Legislature passed a law increasing the penalties for improper pesticide use. Under the current law, violations can carry fines up to $50,000 if “the preponderance of the evidence demonstrates that the person who violated this paragraph benefited substantially from the violation.” A repeat violation carries a fine of up to $75,000.
These fines do not apply to Antonson since the poisoning occurred before the new laws with higher fines were passed.
“The state of Maine has recognized that it should be a real deterrent,” Grubman said. “It should have teeth.”
The settlement with Antonson does not preclude criminal charges and does not stop the family from suing in civil court. But what the family really wants is an apology, Grubman said.
“If anyone had contacted our mother or us with regret, we would have forgiven them and moved on,” he wrote in a letter submitted to the board.
Grubman said the family would not sue in civil court if the Antonson-Hackett family would make a donation in his mother’s name to the local charity of their choice and contact a local newspaper to “[express] their thoughts in their own words.”
“An apology is acknowledgement of wrong,” Grubman said. “Giving that apology is hard. The person who receives the apology then has a choice. The right choice is to let bygones be bygones. If the apology is genuine, everyone ends up with some dignity.”
