Police are unsure of motive, but family has ideas
By: Al Wicklund
MONROE There’s plenty of room around the home of Robert and Betty Love. The property is bordered on two sides by Buckelew Avenue and Hoffman Station Road. The neighborhood is quiet with a rural feel to it.
The Hoffman Hill Cemetery, established about 1734, borders the Loves’ property on the west.
At 3:30 a.m. Aug. 9, the centuries-old serenity around the cemetery was disturbed by a cross burning.
The Loves are black and police have to consider the possibility of a racial bias crime.
The case is being investigated by the Middlesex County prosecutor’s office, the state attorney general’s bias crime unit and the Monroe Township Police Department.
Someone, at a point about seven or eight yards from the cemetery line, pushed a wooden cross into the Loves’ yard through vegetation growing on and around the fence. Then, that person, or persons, apparently set fire to the cross as it leaned against the inside of the fence.
Mr. Love, 65, involved in an injury lawsuit and an ethics complaint against his former legal counsel, said he believes it was an attempt at intimidation.
In fact, he said Wednesday, a man called him about 11 p.m. Sunday and said he burned the cross, but there was nothing personal to it.
"He told me he was paid to do it," Mr. Love said.
Mr. Love added if someone is trying to scare him, it won’t work.
Mr. Love said he was injured in an accident in September 1995 while working for Amtrak and hasn’t been able to work since then.
"I’ve had operations on my back and both knees. I now get the same amount of money in a month that I used to earn in a week," he said.
Mr. Love said he has been involved in lengthy legal action concerning a settlement of his injury case. He said he filed charges against the law firm that has been representing him. He said that this spring he and the same law firm traded charges of harassment and terroristic threats.
Betty Love, 57, said she has lived on the property most of her life and she and her family have never had any trouble.
Mr. Love said his wife was born less then a mile from their house.
"Her family moved to this property when she was 6 months old," Mr. Love said.
Mr. Love built the split level home in which they live in 1980. Their sons Andre, 24; Gerrold, 23 and Lemont, 21, grew up in the Buckelew Avenue residence.
Mr. Love said the barking of his two dogs awakened him Friday morning. When he saw the flames, he said, they were about 6 feet high.
"But, they had to be much higher before I saw them. The trees at the point of the fire were burned to a height of about 30 feet," he said.
A policeman in a patrol car and then firemen responded to a call Mr. Love made to police headquarters.
Mr. Love said it wasn’t until after the policeman’s extinguisher put out the fire that he realized there was a cross there.
Ms. Love said, "When we saw what it was, all of our mouths hung open."
Mr. Love said the cross was about 6 feet high and appeared to be made of scrap wood.
He said the lower part of the cross was burnt and vegetation inside and outside the fence appeared to have been burnt.
Deborah Wolfe, chairwoman of the township’s Human Relations Commission, said Wednesday nothing officially has been reported to the commission about the incident.
"We’ve never had any incident like this. I was surprised and sorry to hear about it. Right now, it’s a police matter," she said.
Monroe Township Council President Irwin Nalitt said the cross burning is an unforgivable act.
The council president, who has lived in the township for some two decades, said there has been no such previous incident or anything similar that smacks of racial bias while he has been here.
Mr. Love said he and his family have received a steady flow of sympathetic phone calls from and friends and neighbors.
He said, in the 24 hours after the cross burning, newspaper reporters and TV news crews descended on his home.
"It has been hectic," he said.