A Sarcastic, Documented, Thoroughly Unsympathetic Analysis of Six Years of Projection in Western Massachusetts
By John F. Sendelbach · Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts · May 2026
I hear they want to give me a mental evaluation.
I want to go on record as fully supportive of this initiative. Mental health screenings are valuable. Early intervention saves lives. The therapeutic community of western Massachusetts deserves our respect and our business.
I would simply like to suggest, with the utmost professional courtesy, that they may have identified the wrong patient.
Allow me to make the case.
Exhibit A: The Affidavit That Accidentally Diagnosed Its Author
On March 3, 2023, Katherine Hennessey submitted a sworn affidavit to the Greenfield District Court. In it, she stated — under penalty of perjury, before a judge, as a formal legal document — that she believed I would "try to hurt or even kill me or members of my family."
She then added the dog!!!
I am not making this up. The affidavit includes the family dog as a potential victim of my alleged murderous rampage. The dog is in the affidavit. She swore to it.
Here is my annotation of that claim, written at the time and preserved in the record:
"This accusation is obviously so beyond my character that I have no words. It saddens me the anguish they feel, but I never did or said anything to elicit that type of response. I haven't even seen her in almost two years. I have been planning on suing them going on three years, and mass murder doesn't fit the plan! If they did get hurt or killed, I'd be the first suspect right? Why would I throw my life away for that? It's outrageous and defamatory to even say it, and to suggest I would kill an innocent dog is shockingly heartless."
Let's pause on the strategic logic here. The man they are accusing of planning homicide has been, for three years, methodically assembling a defamation lawsuit. He has been documenting dates, preserving audio recordings, maintaining a public archive, and filing formal civil demand letters with settlement offers. This is not the behavioral profile of someone planning to murder a family and their dog. This is the behavioral profile of someone planning to sue them into the ground in civil court, which is both legal and, in this case, richly deserved.
Mass murder is not compatible with a three-year litigation preparation strategy. These are different life paths. A competent mental health professional would recognize this distinction immediately.
The dog, though. I want to stay on the dog for one more moment, because it is genuinely the most revealing sentence in the entire six-year record. Not because of what it says about me. Because of what it says about the person who wrote it under oath and apparently thought it would be believed.
Anyone with knowledge of my actual relationship with animals — anyone who has spent ten minutes with me, anyone who has watched me interact with the dogs of my friends and clients over thirty-five years of working in people's landscapes and homes — would find this claim so preposterous that it functions as an inadvertent confession. Not of what I am. Of the depth of the fantasy being constructed. When your sworn affidavit accuses a man of being a threat to the family dog, you have left the territory of legal strategy and entered the territory of psychological revelation.
The judge vacated the order. Immediately. After hearing the audio. She was laughing on it.
Exhibit B: The June 29, 2020 Transcript, or: What "Homicidal" Sounds Like on Tape
The June 29, 2020 audio recording — made on the family's own devices, preserved in their own archive — documents the following exchange. Not my characterization of it. The verbatim transcript.
Katherine Hennessey, timestamp 4:55: "Yeah, I hate you. Really do. But, you know, there's nothing wrong with that. That's not against the law. I can hate you all I want."
Katherine Hennessey, timestamp 5:00: "I really don't give a flying fuck."
Katherine Hennessey, timestamp 8:01: "I really don't care about your life."
Brook Batteau, timestamp 4:40: "Quit your white whining."
Alouette Batteau, timestamp 3:37–3:44: rushes from approximately ten feet away, closing to within twenty-four inches of John, who remains planted and motionless throughout. Brook and Katherine stand watching without reacting — as if this is normal behavior.
Alouette Batteau, timestamp 3:44: "Fuck you. Get out of here right now. Get the hell out of here."
Alouette Batteau, timestamp 3:57: "You'll know when I'm threatening you."
Now. In the clinical literature on violence risk assessment, evaluators look for specific behavioral indicators: expressed hatred of a target, dismissal of the target's life as worthless, physical rushing behavior, explicit statements of threatening intent, and family members who normalize and observe these behaviors without intervention.
All of these are documented, timestamped, and preserved on the family's own recording from a single day in June 2020.
The man who remained "planted and motionless throughout" — that notation is in the transcript — while being rushed, screamed at, and told his life doesn't matter is the one they wanted to evaluate for violence risk.
I'll let that breathe.
Exhibit C: The Report That Proves the Case — Against Itself
Report 23SHL-8-AR, filed March 3, 2023 by Officer Christopher Pettengill and co-signed by Detective Tucker Jenkins. Two officers. Neither had ever met me. The report opens by noting that both officers "were aware of prior incidents between Mr. Sendelbach and Mrs. Hennessey" before they spoke to a single witness or reviewed a single piece of evidence.
They drove directly to her house. They took her account. They charged me with criminal harassment based on eight incidents — none of which they had investigated, none of which they had corroborated, and none of which they had presented to the accused for response.
The charge collapsed at the first evidentiary hearing. No probable cause. June 6, 2023. First time anyone looked at the evidence.
Detective Jenkins, who co-signed the charge, sat in that hearing room and watched it fall apart exhibit by exhibit. He took no corrective action. He filed no perjury referral despite three subsequent judicial findings of not-credible testimony against the same complainant before the same judge.
This same Detective Jenkins would later be denied qualified immunity by a federal judge for manufacturing probable cause in an unrelated case — the court finding it plausible he "provided misleading information" and ignored exculpatory facts.
The department that couldn't find cause to charge the people who were documented rushing, blocking, screaming, and eventually beating me found cause to charge me — twice — based on unverified accounts from the people doing all of those things.
This is not a mental health finding. But it rhymes with one.
Exhibit D: November 30, 2025 — The Definitive Behavioral Assessment
On November 30, 2025, I was beaten on a public sidewalk. More than thirty combined blows. Arms pinned from behind. My phone seized and thrown into the Deerfield River while the screen was lit.
I did not throw a single punch.
I screamed for help. Approximately ten bystanders stood on the sidewalk. I screamed for help. None of them moved.
I still did not throw a punch.
Now. I want to invite the mental health professionals currently apparently discussing my psychological fitness to sit with that for a moment.
A man who has spent six years being called a murderer, a KKK member, a child predator, an antisemite, and an unhinged conspiracy theorist — falsely, without evidence, in public, to twenty-two thousand people, in sworn affidavits, in police reports, in newspaper articles — was beaten on a public sidewalk by the people who had been doing all of that. And he did not throw a punch.
He screamed for help.
He then filed a police report. He then documented the assault in a public archive with case numbers, timestamps, and a neutral witness's sworn statement. He then sent formal notice to the District Attorney's office. He then submitted a comprehensive petition to the Massachusetts Attorney General.
This is the behavioral profile of a man who — despite being called homicidal in a sworn affidavit for two years — managed to absorb a sidewalk beating without retaliating and then proceeded through every legitimate institutional channel available to him.
The people who want a mental evaluation of this man should ask themselves: what does it say about them that they find this threatening?
Exhibit E: The Olive Branch, Eight Months Before the Assault
March 19, 2025. Voice memo to Chief Bardwell, preserved in the record:
"Hi Chief, I had an interesting experience just now. I'm up by the gallery where I come to eat my lunch and look at across the river and Henry and Katherine came into the parking lot and pulled in two slots next to me. No cars in between and Henry waved to me. I don't believe Katherine said anything, and I looked over, and I just kind of nodded my head and said afternoon and then they pulled out and drove away. I just sat there and I think when I glanced over and they were 100 feet away that Katherine was leaning out the window giving me the thumbs up so I don't know if word trickled through them but I feel like that was actually an olive branch, so I'm gonna take it as is and hopefully it wasn't another provocation that they're going to report. I don't think they are. I think there's a shift that happened. Best, John Sendelbach."
Eight months later: thirty-plus blows on a public sidewalk. Phone in the river. Cardiac emergency. Criminal arraignment.
The man who received what he thought was a thumbs-up and filed a measured, hopeful voice memo to the police chief about it is the man they wanted to evaluate for homicidal ideation.
The person who gave the thumbs-up and eight months later participated in a sidewalk battery is the person currently on bail who continues to bad-mouth the Commonwealth's star witness at parties.
I am genuinely asking: which behavioral pattern concerns you more?
Exhibit F: The Projection Loop, Documented
The annotated markup of the Hennessey affidavit — preserved in the public record — contains this observation, written by me at the time:
"She really seems to pay attention to my driving. I wonder if she even knows the color of my car during the different incidents."
This is the observation of a man who, upon reviewing a sworn affidavit that describes him as a vehicular homicidal maniac, notices that the details about his driving don't match his car. He doesn't rage. He wonders, with a kind of mild forensic curiosity, whether she knows what color his car is.
Compare this to: "he will never let it go as long as my family is alive" — a death threat attributed to me in a sworn document, directly contradicting the audio recording of what I actually said, which was reviewed by a judge who vacated the order immediately.
In the annotated markup I wrote: "I never said anything close to 'as long as they are alive' or whatever she is inferring. It is a vicious lie. Obviously that is a death threat, and I do not make threats at all, let alone death threats. She has presented zero evidence for a single threat."
Six years of this. Six years of being accused of the behavior being performed by the accusers, on the accusers' own recordings, in their own voices, at their own timestamps.
The clinical term for accusing others of what you are doing is projection. It does not require a diagnosis to observe. It requires a transcript and a timestamp.
Conclusion: Schedule the Evaluation. I Have One Request.
Go ahead and schedule it. I'll show up. I'll take every test they want to give me. I'll answer every question.
I would simply like to request that the evaluation include a review of the following materials, which I will supply at no charge from the public archive at johnsendelbach.com:
The June 29, 2020 audio recording — made on their devices — in which the family expressed hatred for my life, dismissed its value, and rushed me while I stood motionless.
Report 21BUC-54-OF, in which a sergeant wrote in an official document that he had decided not to contact me because it "hasn't worked in the past."
The three judicial findings of not-credible testimony against the same complainant before the same judge.
The federal court order denying qualified immunity to the detective who co-signed the charge against me.
The March 19, 2025 voice memo in which I filed a measured, hopeful report about what I thought was an olive branch — eight months before the assault.
The November 30, 2025 assault record — thirty-plus blows, arms pinned, phone in the river — during which I threw zero punches and screamed for help.
The dog. The affidavit includes the dog. I want that in the evaluation.
If, after reviewing all of this, the evaluating clinician determines that the man who absorbed six years of documented false accusations without violence, who found a parking lot wave hopeful enough to report professionally to his police chief, who screamed for help instead of swinging during a sidewalk beating, and who has spent every year of this ordeal filing documents and building a public archive rather than harming anyone — if that man is the one they want to evaluate for mental fitness, I will be genuinely curious to read the report.
I will publish it on the site.
No login. No fee.
John F. Sendelbach is a metalworker, sculptor, and landscape designer based in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. The complete documented archive is at johnsendelbach.com.