A New York couple is accused of poisoning their blind, elderly neighbor's trees to get a better view from their Maine summer house.

Stephen Antonson, a painter and sculptor, and his wife, Kathleen Hackett, an interior designer and author, bought the $320,000 home in Rockport in 2017. They immediately began asking their neighbor, Ruth Graham, a widow who was pushing 90 at the time, to remove trees in her garden which would have given them a stunning view of Penobscot Bay.

Graham refused but the couple allegedly persisted, at one point sending her a handwritten note ostensibly from their teenage children begging her to sell them the land. She once again declined, but the following year in 2021, she began to note that her trees were dying, according to reporting from The New York Times.

An investigation was launched which revealed the trees were killed by 'herbicidal poison'. The poisoning's impact was, 'limited to a distinct corridor of trees directly in line with the deck of the Antonson residence', according to a report from the Maine Board of Pesticides Control.