Feud between neighbors ends in death

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Feb 6, 2007 | by Sean WebbySTAFF

About the size of a tombstone and scarred with sledgehammer blows, the rock squats to one side of a fork that divides a steep driveway in a Carmel Valley canyon.

The fork to the right climbs to a sprawling artistic home with piles of'60s psychedelic albums and broken antique clocks, collected by a popular lawyer and his wife. The fork left leads to the more austere wooden-framed, book-filled home of an oil geophysicist.

The rock stands as a monument to the final moment of their long and bitter feud. It began when the affluent neighbors began arguing over dog poop, a septic tank, a solarium and legal access to a strip of ground no bigger than a surfboard.

Deadly arguement

It ended Jan. 29, when they argued over the rock and geophysicist John "Jack" Franklin Kenney allegedly shot to death Mel, 58, and Elizabeth Grimes, 55.

Law enforcement officials believe the 72-year-old Kenney had the rock placed in the disputed plot, partially blocking the Grimes' carport and a sunshine yellow VW bus.

"This is not something in Iraq," said Tom Gardiner, a friend of the Grimeses. "Two human lives are sacrificed for an easement."

Kenney's defense attorney, Santa Clara County's Dennis Alan Lempert, is planting the seeds of a self-defense argument -- alleging Mel Grimes was holding a sledgehammer when he was shot and that the couple had assaulted Kenney in the past.

The attack was reportedly caught on a raspy audio recording of a frantic 9-1-1 call filled with screams and at least one gunshot.

But the lush cul-de-sac was filled with birdsong three days later as Tom Ellington-Wills, the 32-year-old son of Elizabeth and stepson of Mel Grimes Jr., stood next to the mottled granite where the bodies had lain, trying to make sense of it all.

He had woken that morning in his parents' house, his head filled with the morbid things he had to do. When he showered, steam on the mirror outlined a message one of his parents had left for the other once upon a time: "I love you more."

"They were all fighting over this. And it added up and it added up and ended with this, this nightmare," he said. "It makes no sense."

Mel and Elizabeth made perfect sense. The pretty, petite nurse and the handsome surfer-dude lawyer married in 1995.

Grimes was an understated local legend. At Carmel High he presided over the Inter-Peninsula Surfing Club, an eclectic group of guys who plied the waves off of 11th Street on Carmel Beach. Despite heart problems, he still surfed regularly -- and ran marathons on the side.

He was a criminal defense lawyer as well-known for his meticulous legal work as his garish ties. He worked out of a small Salinas office decorated with antique clocks and bright rock concert posters from a time when Moby Grape and Dick Dale ruled.

Elizabeth was an Army brat who ended up doing legal work in Pacific Grove, where Mel then had an office. She was also a nurse with a calming hand and an affinity for the elderly.

He asked her out on a date to a Carlos Santana concert, and the soulmates almost never parted after that.

Casa di Grimes was their work-in-progress dream, filled with exotic gardens, beaded curtains, seashells placed in the ground. They built an art studio. There was room after room choked -- to Elizabeth's growing consternation, Ellington-Wills said -- with Mel's collection of more than 100,000 albums. And they squeezed a cement carport into the side of the hill and parked one of Mel's hippie Volkswagens and his Channel Island longboards there.

Maverick genius

Those who like Kenney describe him as a plain-spoken, no- nonsense man of deep spiritual faith.

Others say he is a maverick genius with a controversial professional theory that suggested there are almost limitless stores of petroleum in the Earth.

His friends and acquaintances say his personal philosophy is to stubbornly defy his critics: Right is right.

"He is a man of great honor, blunt, a Calvinist," said former neighbor Stefan Youngs. "He would say, 'You are absolutely wrong, and I'm astounded you could make such a stupid statement.' I admired the guy a lot."

Kenney was a paratrooper in the Korean War, his lawyer said. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In recent years, he split his time between the home he shared with his wife in France, his gas resource company in Houston and his own Carmel Valley ranch house.

He moved there about eight years ago. Sometimes his two children - - adopted from Sri Lanka -- would visit and play with the Grimeses' two dogs, Norman and Carlos, named after the guitarist who was playing on their first date.

Wanted things done correctly

Aurice Bain, a longtime Texas business partner who handled mainly administrative work, admitted Kenney could be eccentric. But she said it came from his passionate desire to see things done properly.

"He is not a goofball by any means," Bain said. "He wasn't patient for people who didn't do things correctly."

Like most feuds, this one began in murk and misunderstanding. The Grimeses increasingly felt they were faced with an unreasonable and sometimes crazy neighbor. Kenney came to see the Grimeses as well- connected bullies intent on not doing things properly.