John F. Sendelbach: Six Years of Institutional Failure

Six Years of Institutional Failure, Community Harassment, Physical Assault

John F. Sendelbach · Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts · 2020–2026

The Deerfield River Archive

Every player. Every incident. Every documented statement.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: WHY THIS DOCUMENT EXISTS

This is not a complaint. It is not a memoir. It is a public archive organized as a narrative — the documented record of a six-year campaign of constructed defamation, institutional enabling, and culminating physical assault, laid out in the sequence in which it occurred, with specific citations to police reports, court dockets, sworn statements, medical records, video evidence, newspaper articles, and the public comment threads in which the damage was done.

Every fact stated below is on the record. The archive is open. Anyone can read it.

The document is organized chronologically within thematic sections. Each player receives a dossier entry at the point of their first significant documented action. The comment thread is reproduced as a complete record. The legal proceedings are cited by docket number. The medical record is documented by date, device, and neutral third-party witness. Nothing in this document is a legal conclusion. All conclusions of law referenced are those of sitting judges in active proceedings.

The river did not get the record. The record survived. The phone is still screaming.

PART ONE: WHO HE WAS BEFORE JUNE 6, 2020

The Thirty-Year Record the Two-Minute Video Erased

Chapter 1: The Artist and the Valley — A Documented Credential

1.1 The Public Work — Installed Before the Campaign Began

Sojourner Truth Memorial bronze plaque alignment and anchoring, Northampton, 2002. Not peripheral involvement — Sendelbach aligned each plaque, marked and drilled the anchor holes in slanted granite, and cemented them permanently into place. This is hands-in-the-ground anti-racist public art, eighteen years before anyone called him a racist.

Pothole Fountain and River Bench, Bridge of Flowers, Shelburne Falls — fourteen-year professional relationship with the bridge; the Black Stones of Africa: polished stones in the shape of the continent, permanently embedded in the stone inlay as tribute to mason Paul Forth's biracial daughters and his partner Julie Petty's design vision. These stones were in the ground nine years before the 2020 petition. The committee that responded to the petition by installing an anti-racism plaque placed it three feet from this permanently embedded anti-racist installation they had always known about.

The Trolley Gate, Bridge of Flowers, 2010 — welded steel winter gate recalling the original 1908 trolley trestle origins of the structure.

River Bench, Bridge of Flowers, 2014 — collaborative installation with committee co-chair Lynda Leitner; Leitner and Sendelbach were professional partners before the split.

Brookie the Trout, River Works Park, Greenfield — ten-foot fish in stainless steel cutlery donated by Franklin County residents; installed approximately one mile from the Franklin County District Courthouse where the defendants were arraigned April 7, 2026.

Old Diamondsides (Cutlery Atlantic Sturgeon), Culinary Institute of America, Hyde Park, New York, 2015 — twelve feet, 1,700+ salvaged utensils, hand-blown glass eyes; active institutional commission relationship severed by the 2020 campaign.

Minuteman Crossing Stone Plaza, UMass Amherst — Ashfield schist, hand-laid; 2014 AIA Honor Award, Western Massachusetts chapter; commission came through a woman who recognized the work and made the call.

Crossroads Salamander, Cushman Common, North Amherst, 1998 — first place, Public Arts Commission; first public sculpture.

Mill Canal Newt, Mill River Recreation Area, North Amherst, 2003.

Collaboration with Muhammad Yaseen, Palestinian refugee (family from Gaza) — multiple documented pieces; a bench on Bridge Street is seventy-five feet from where Katherine Hennessey first screamed in Sendelbach's face in June 2020. They never walked those seventy-five feet.

1.2 The Fourteen-Year Bridge Relationship

First commission from the Bridge of Flowers Committee: documented professional relationship spanning 2003–2020. Assessment on record from committee co-chair Carol Angus: “He's always been a great supporter of the bridge and very responsive to us when we've had particular needs” — Greenfield Recorder, June 2020. This was the characterization the committee buried at the bottom of the first article while it endorsed the petition narrative in the headline.

The Black Stones of Africa installed permanently in the Pothole Fountain at the bridge entrance. Permanent anti-racist structural element in place years before the petition. When the committee installed an anti-racism plaque in June 2020, they placed it three feet from an anti-racist fountain they had asked this artist to build, making their “anti-racism response” a statement about work that was already anti-racist — a fact they never acknowledged publicly.

The BOFC's own committee member Mariana Luz told Alouette Batteau directly that she did not agree with calling for Sendelbach's work to be removed. She is one of the few BOFC-connected voices on record pushing back.

1.3 The State Street Studio — Nine Years Before the Eviction

44 State Street, Shelburne Falls — nine-year tenancy at the studio adjacent to the bridge. The gallery as a community hub. Active commission pipeline through the Culinary Institute of America. The CIA commission: $14,000, documented provenance, active relationship. All of it severed by the summer 2020 campaign.

Anonymous Landlord One asked Sendelbach to leave in August 2020 due to the community pressure generated by the petition and the Recorder articles. Sendelbach left voluntarily to protect the landlord relationship from further collateral damage. He would be displaced from two more studios by the same documented playbook before the campaign reached its criminal endpoint.

1.4 The Personal Anti-Racism Record

Sendelbach confronted his father's period-shaped racial prejudices as a teenager in Orchard Park, NY, telling him directly not to use racial slurs. His father admitted on the day of his mother's death, at age 96, that he had used such language in his youth due to the specific conditions of 1930s Buffalo. Sendelbach had opposed this since his teens.

His career was built largely on the trust and recommendations of women — the UMass Minuteman commission came through a woman's recommendation; the CIA sturgeon commission came through a woman's call; the Deerfield Academy work came through a woman who saw the quality of the work. The Pothole Fountain commission came through a women's committee that called him “a great supporter, responsive to our needs.”

This is who he was before June 6, 2020.

PART TWO: THE FOUNDING EVENT AND ITS DISTORTION

June 6 – June 30, 2020

Chapter 2: The Iron Bridge — What Actually Happened

2.1 The Street Closure — The Trigger No One Reported

June 6, 2020: Black Lives Matter demonstration organized on the Iron Bridge in Shelburne Falls. The street was closed without notification to adjacent business owners. It was co-organized by Julie Petty, then Sendelbach’s closest friend of forty years, and Reverend Kate Stevens — a fact Petty denied for three years before finally admitting her organizing role and stating “protests are meant to disrupt.” Petty had never told Sendelbach the event was happening. He found out when his road was closed.

The studio at 44 State Street was approximately 400 feet from the bridge. Sendelbach walked to the bridge to document the unauthorized closure of his road during the COVID-era economic shutdown, as was his legal right. This is the origin. A man stood on a public road near his business and asked questions about a road closure.

2.2 The Two Minutes Before the Camera — The Part No One Saw

Before any recording began: Sendelbach was surrounded by six to eight people against the east railing of the bridge. Sonny Walters approached and persisted past three to four explicit requests to leave. Katherine Hennessey closed to within twelve inches of his face, fists visibly clenched, and screamed: “We’re doing this because we love you.” The crowd pinned him against the east railing for more than two minutes — documented as false imprisonment by definition. There was a uniformed police officer present approximately fifteen feet away throughout. The officer did not intervene.

At 10:41:01 AM — the exact moment the initial assault ended, the exact moment the crowd went quiet — Alouette Batteau raised her phone and hit Facebook Live. Everything prior to that moment was omitted. What viewers saw was Sendelbach’s visible agitation, captured mid-confrontation and stripped of every provocation that produced it.

2.3 The Alouette Batteau Facebook Live — The Edit That Built the Mob

Distribution: approximately 22,000 viewers. Comment threads: activated within hours. The petition launched same day or within hours, by Bianca Cavanaugh-Green, who was not present at the event.

The edit did not fabricate anything. It removed everything that would have told the truth. The two minutes of physical encirclement, the three ignored requests to leave, the fists and the screaming, the crowd blocking his exit, the police standing fifteen feet away not intervening — all of it preceding the recording by design, omitted by design.

Alouette’s own statement in the thread: “believe me, it was a challenge not to deck him”
Alouette’s response to Jeanna Byrd who expressed the same sentiment: “same”
Alouette’s statement recorded separately: “I am around far too many white people”
Alouette to Reba Rasbury who defended Sendelbach’s constitutional rights: “shut the fuck up”

2.4 The June 29, 2020 Full Transcript — The Hatred Declaration

The following is drawn from the full cleaned transcript of the June 29, 2020 recorded encounter between Sendelbach and the Batteau-Hennessey family. Every line below is directly documented:

“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

“I really don’t give a flying fuck.” — Katherine Hennessey

“I really don’t care about your life.” — Katherine Hennessey

“Quit your white whining.” — Brook Batteau [racial slur, on tape]

Alouette Batteau bum-rushed from approximately ten feet away, closing to within twenty-four inches of Sendelbach, who remained planted and motionless throughout. Brook and Katherine stood watching without intervening, without verbal comment, without apparent concern — as if this behavior was unremarkable. Her exact words:

“Fuck you. Get out of here right now. Get the hell out of here. I don’t want to hear anything.”

“I don’t know. Maybe call my lawyer cuz I already talked to them. I actually talked to three already and I know that I can get a restraining order against you if I want to. And I will. So get the fuck out of here.” — Alouette Batteau, June 29, 2020. This threat was executed five years later.

“You’ll know when I’m threatening you.” — Alouette Batteau [4:00 in transcript]. This is the family’s explicit acknowledgment that threats from them are recognizable when they arrive.

This transcript is the Rosetta Stone for the entire five-year pattern. Every tactic previewed here: HPO threats, racial framework, the hatred declared openly as a legal right. All of it on their own recording because they did not believe anyone would ever listen carefully.

2.5 The June 28, 2020 KKK Audio — The Inversion That Became Perjury

On the audio recording dated June 28, 2020, at timestamp 3:09, Katherine Hennessey states directly to Sendelbach: “I don’t talk to KKK members either, but here we are.” She applied the KKK label to him, on her own audio, in her own voice. This recording directly contradicts sworn statements she would make across multiple proceedings from 2023 through December 2025, in which she attributed this language to Sendelbach. This single audio timestamp constitutes documented perjury recurring across four and a half years of proceedings — every time she made the inverted claim in sworn testimony, the audio that refuted it had existed the entire time.

PART THREE: THE PLAYERS — COMPLETE DOSSIERS

Every principal actor: role, documented actions, notable statements, cross-references

Chapter 3: Primary Defendants and Direct Aggressors

3.1 Katherine Hennessey — PRIMARY CRIMINAL DEFENDANT

Criminal Case: 2641CR000158 — A&B x2 (M.G.L. c.265 §13A) + Malicious Destruction (M.G.L. c.266 §126A) — Arraigned April 7, 2026.

June 6, 2020: Iron Bridge confrontation — physical encirclement, face within twelve inches, fists clenched, screaming “We’re doing this because we love you”
June 28, 2020: KKK attribution on her own audio, timestamp 3:09 — “I don’t talk to KKK members either, but here we are” — later inverted in sworn testimony
June 29, 2020: Hatred declaration on tape — “Yeah, I hate you. Really do. That’s not against the law. I can hate you all I want.”
2020–2023: Approximately eight false police reports filed against Sendelbach — police never interviewed Sendelbach before processing any of them
March 2023: Sworn affidavit claiming Sendelbach had “homicidal tendencies” and would “try to hurt or even kill” her family — audio of same encounter documents Sendelbach’s actual words, documents her laughter throughout
September 6, 2024: First defamatory eviction letter to landlord Brad Walker — “He’s a menace to the community and it’s really only a matter of time before someone gets hurt.” Written fourteen months before she hurt him.
September 9, 2024: Second defamatory eviction letter — escalated YouTube enforcement characterization from “community violations” to “Hate Speech” — the escalation itself proves fabrication, as an actual platform enforcement finding is a fixed designation not subject to revision three days later
May 21, 2025: Keystone Market sequence — followed Sendelbach into store, positioned directly behind him, emitted loud mocking laugh, screamed “I FEEL UNSAFE” at the top of her lungs, persuaded store owner to walk her to car, gave Sendelbach a large smile with the owner’s back turned, then gave him the middle finger through the car window while driving away laughing
November 22, 2025: Frog mask stalking — attended a public event in a paper-maché frog mask; her own December 1 affidavit confirms she wore the mask because she anticipated Sendelbach’s presence and did not want to be recognized; approached him directly and said “John, I hope you get the help you need”; called police immediately after
November 28, 2025: Six days after filing a police report claiming she was afraid to be in public — walked past Sendelbach’s workspace window, made direct eye contact, and laughed
November 30, 2025 morning: Drove onto Sendelbach’s rented property at 1 Ashfield Street without invitation; drove past the store entrance to the far end of the lot where his van was parked, screened from the street; peace sign, then double middle finger, mouthed profanity, repeated, sped away
November 30, 2025 evening: The assault — exited Floodwater Brewing approximately ten seconds after Brook shoved Sendelbach off the curb; struck Sendelbach repeatedly in head and face with his arms pinned; seized his still-recording iPhone from the road, walked approximately 75 feet to the Deerfield River bank, and threw it in while the screen was lit; walked back and resumed striking and kicking from behind — a second separate battery after a deliberate pause that included the destruction of evidence
December 1, 2025: Filed third HPO petition the morning after the assault, while Sendelbach was without a working phone — sworn affidavit contained eleven material false statements including “hands in pockets the whole time,” “no idea how he ended up in street,” “no idea what happened to phone”
December 15, 2025: HPO hearing before Judge Mazanec — petition DENIED WITH PREJUDICE; Mazanec reviewed Keystone video, observed live testimony; three separate judicial findings of not-credible testimony against the same person, same judge; zero perjury referrals

BEHAVIORAL PROFILE: Katherine functions as the campaign architect using motivated reinterpretation of events to maintain victim positioning. The eleven material contradictions in her December 1 affidavit are not oversights — they are the same mechanism of reality-reshaping that characterized every prior proceeding. Three judicial rebukes from the same judge produced not correction but escalation. The perjury architecture around the KKK inversion — applying her own statement to him in sworn documents for four-plus years while the audio existed the entire time — reflects the specific structure of a person who has concluded there are no consequences for her conduct regardless of forum.

3.2 Brook Batteau — CRIMINAL DEFENDANT

Criminal Case: 2641CR000159 — A&B (M.G.L. c.265 §13A) — Arraigned April 7, 2026.

“Quit your white whining” — June 29, 2020, on tape. Racial slur delivered on the family’s own recording.
Circa 2022: stomach punch outside Keystone Market — prior physical assault not charged; pattern evidence
November 30, 2025: Charged out of Floodwater Brewing; shoved Sendelbach hard with both hands; Sendelbach fell backward off the curb to the pavement; jumped on Sendelbach from behind and began punching
Admission to neutral witness Zachary Livingston immediately after: “You don’t understand, John has been after my family for five years.” — Livingston’s response: “But you still shouldn’t have pushed him.” This admission establishes premeditation explicitly. He came outside carrying five years of accumulated grievance and acted on it in front of eight to ten witnesses.
Was present throughout the December 15, 2025 HPO hearing — chose not to testify. The man who told a neutral witness with conviction that Sendelbach had “been after his family for five years” declined to say it under oath. That silence is its own form of evidence.

BEHAVIORAL PROFILE: Brook functions as the family’s physical executor. The assault was not random rage — it was contextually justified action within the family’s closed narrative. His admission to Livingston establishes the link between the narrative and the physical act. What he calls “being after his family for five years” is six years of Sendelbach attempting to get a defamatory video removed from the internet.

3.3 Alouette Batteau — EVIDENCE SPOLIATOR / DIGITAL CAMPAIGN ARCHITECT

Hit Facebook Live at 10:41:01 AM on June 6, 2020 — the exact moment the initial assault ended and the crowd went quiet. The omitted two minutes are the argument.
“Believe me, it was a challenge not to deck him” — in the thread, her own words; Jeanna Byrd said the same, Alouette responded “same”
“I am around far too many white people” — documented Twitter statement
June 29, 2020 — bum-rushed Sendelbach from ten feet to within twenty-four inches; parents watching without reaction; restraining order threat delivered: “I can get a restraining order against you if I want to. And I will.” — executed five years later
“You’ll know when I’m threatening you.” — June 29, 2020, timestamp 3:57. She told him explicitly that a threat from this family would be recognizable when it arrived.
March 18, 2025: Removed the June 6, 2020 Facebook video — one day after Sendelbach’s HPO filings, five years after he first demanded its removal. The timing is not coincidental. This is spoliation of evidence and consciousness of guilt documented by the calendar.
March 23, 2026: While parents on bail for the assault, posted Instagram lyric expressing wish to kill a man with bare hands, captioned “this one goes out to my stalker! teehee wish i was joking.” The word “stalker” is not generic — it is the specific and exclusive label this family applied to Sendelbach in every sworn proceeding for six years. “Wish i was joking” removes the artistic defense from inside the same sentence. Named collaborator commented “hope they d!e!!!!!” with three likes; not removed.

BEHAVIORAL PROFILE: Alouette is the digital arm of the machine. She derives identity from the conflict. The archive exists partly because she cannot stop creating evidence of her own preoccupation. She filmed the June 6 assault. She posted the video. She is the person who started this, and she is the person who posted the death threat lyric while her parents were on bail for the assault she helped architect.

3.4 Sonny Walters — Direct Aggressor / False Accuser

June 6, 2020: First person to approach Sendelbach on the bridge; approached and persisted past three to four explicit requests to leave; minor daughter approximately three feet behind her throughout
Followed Sendelbach across the Iron Bridge from approximately 500 feet
Summer 2020 bicycle encounter: Sendelbach had donated bicycles to Walters household as a charitable gesture to correct the false public narrative about an HPO (judge had explicitly stated on audio that Sendelbach could still approach and speak to Walters, restriction was verbal-only about the child). Walters stated “I have COVID” approximately ten to fifteen times, then rushed from ten feet, ended up twelve inches from his face. His hands were visible. He did not advance. She backed off when confronted, then taunted: “Oh, did you get hurt? Do you want a Band-Aid?” — in front of her child.
On-camera acknowledgment: “You’re right, I shouldn’t have gotten in your face like that” — admission on record
Later told camera that Alouette Batteau was “right” in claiming the undersigned “goes after kids” — false and defamatory; told by one of her own supporters on camera that she was wrong for getting that close
June 27, 2020 nightly protest: filmed license plates of passing vehicles, captured reactions, organized ongoing protest presence (“we need more people out on every random night”)
Researched Sendelbach’s father’s history in Buffalo specifically to deploy it as a weapon against him

The Walters template — invade, ignore leave requests, perform for camera, claim vulnerability then attack, taunt afterward, repeat in front of children — is the exact sequence Katherine Hennessey would refine over the next five years. The Keystone 2025 incident is a direct reprise.

3.5 Joey Kotright — Direct Aggressor / Housing Interferer

June 6, 2020: Bullhorn organizer at the bridge; led the group chanting “Say his name / George Floyd”
June 27, 2020: Was in a consensual conversation with Sendelbach when Alouette Batteau drove through. When she appeared, Kotright escalated from civil conversation to screaming “Fuck you, John Sendelbach, and everyone who’s with you” while delivering double middle fingers — from the double yellow lines in the center of the road, in front of forty to fifty witnesses including Sergeant Gilmore who was present and watching
Prior restraining order violation on record
Interfered with Sendelbach’s second-floor apartment arrangement — housing displacement prior to the studio displacement
Left minor children home alone on documented occasion
June 6: referred to children standing near him as “my brown project” — racially charged language
On video using a racial slur (“cracker”) directed at Sendelbach — footage in the possession of witness Jasper Forest, not yet used publicly

3.6 Janice Sorenson — Direct Aggressor / False Accuser

Comment thread, June 2020: “I unfriended him years ago when Jewish people were his target of choice and yet something does not feel completely right about planning his full demise.” She was aware his full demise was underway. The Jewish people accusation: fabricated, with zero supporting evidence, and potentially the most damaging single comment in the archive given its effect on Sendelbach’s relationships within the Jewish community where he had long-standing ties.
June 14, 2023 Conway Street confrontation: Sendelbach was in his car, waiting for bicycle traffic on Conway Street. Saw Sorenson on her bike. Asked her to come back and talk about her comment. She obliged. When he got out of his car to stand on equal ground (his neck was bent sideways talking through the car window), she apparently interpreted this as aggression. She dropped her bike and rushed him from ten feet away, ending up twelve inches from his face with fists clenched, making a threatening statement.
Sorenson’s companion Michael Hoberman intervened — grabbed Sorenson from behind by the arms to pull her away from Sendelbach. In the process, turned his head to Sendelbach and screamed “you are an antisemite.” Sendelbach said “you just assaulted me.” Sorenson said “I didn’t touch you.”
Sendelbach attempted to record, had switched phone to video, missed the play button while shaking from the encounter — no video of this specific confrontation
Hoberman had never spoken to Sendelbach before this moment. The “antisemite” accusation was shouted in the street at a man he had never met, which implies the label was circulating in their social network as established fact before any direct encounter

3.7 Tom Del Negro — Assault Participant / Instigator

November 30, 2025: Exited Floodwater Brewing before Brook Batteau — screaming profanities at Sendelbach on the sidewalk without prior provocation. Witness accounts describe him as “primed inside,” indicating the confrontation was organized within the brewery before the door opened.
Known musical collaborator of Alouette Batteau; played on the “Confession Cruise” EP with her in 2023
Identified through the brewery window by Sendelbach to Sergeant Gilmore immediately after the assault as the initial aggressor. Gilmore’s summons report notes that Sendelbach “pointed at a male” but never identifies him, never interviews him, never includes him in the narrative. The initial aggressor was erased from the official record of a violent assault.

3.8 Laura Iveson — Direct Aggressor / Probable HPO Leak

June 28, 2020: COVID violation — approached Sendelbach face-to-face during declared pandemic without mask, at a time when Sendelbach was being targeted specifically for not wearing a mask (he had documented medical exemptions: atrial fibrillation, nasal polyps, sleep apnea)
Assumed Sendelbach was aggressing toward her daughter; the opposite was the documented reality
Mill neighbor: The Mill’s open-top stall walls made all conversations audible between spaces. Iveson was frequently present near Sendelbach’s space without apparent reason. In late February and early March 2025, Sendelbach spent approximately three weeks at the Mill preparing his HPO filings, discussing them with friends. If Iveson overheard and reported the content to the Hennessey-Batteau family, the family’s preemptive March 15 filing of simultaneous HPOs would have been a coordinated counter-strike based on advance knowledge — not coincidence.

3.9 Rhonda Anderson — State Commissioner / Thread Amplifier

Role: Western Massachusetts Commissioner of Native American Affairs — an appointed state government position
In the June 2020 comment thread with 22,000 viewers, called Sendelbach “unhinged conspiracy theorist” and “toxic person for over a decade”
Modified her defamatory posts three times — but never retracted them
Prior personal relationship: had been a potential shop partner at Sendelbach’s 44 State Street studio nine years prior — meaning she had direct personal access to his thirty-year public art record and the quality of the work, chose not to consult it before posting
The institutional weight of a state commissioner’s characterization amplified the mob narrative with official-seeming authority — lending government credibility to an unverified online attack

PART FOUR: THE COMMENT THREAD — COMPLETE RECORD

The documented record of what was said, in whose name, and with what consequences

Chapter 8: Overview and Forensic Significance

Platform: Alouette Batteau’s Facebook post / the public BLM activism page. Viewership: approximately 22,000. Total hostile commenters documented: 91. Total defenders / neutral voices documented: 21. This ratio — four to one against — reflects not the community’s actual views but the social dynamics of a thread in which defending Sendelbach carried reputational cost and attacking him carried social reward.

The thread is not merely a record of what was said. It is the mechanism of the harm. The petition launched within this thread. The institutional responses (BOFC Zoom meetings, Recorder articles) were reactions to the thread. The economic harm (studio closure, commission pipeline severed) followed from the boycott coordination in this thread. It is the primary document of how the campaign was constructed.

Chapter 9: The Most Forensically Significant Comments

9.1 The Victoria Rolon Prophecy — Five Years Before Execution

“I would throw his camera in the water.” — Victoria Rolon, June 2020 comment thread.

This is the single most forensically significant comment in the archive. The mob imagined this specific act in 2020. Katherine Hennessey executed this specific act — with a phone rather than a camera — on November 30, 2025. Five years and five months elapsed between the ideation in the public thread and the physical delivery. This comment documents community-level incitement to the specific act that was eventually committed.

9.2 The Death Threats

“Throw him off the bridge” — Johnson Fontainebleau [direct death threat on public record].

“I would of thrown him over the bridge / you deserve zero sympathy” — Mark Buck [multiple threatening comments].

“Toss em over Lmao” — Lora Dobbins.

“I’d love to punch him. He’s a piece of shit.” — Gabe Rioux [two direct violent threats on record].

9.3 The Alouette Batteau / Jeanna Byrd Exchange

Jeanna Byrd: “believe me, it was a challenge not to deck him.” Alouette Batteau’s response: “same.” This exchange documents the daughter of the primary defendants co-signing a statement of barely-restrained violent intent toward the victim. It is in the same thread as the video that reached 22,000 people.

9.4 The KKK and White Supremacist Attributions

“This man is merely channelling them [KKK]!!!!!” — Matthew Norris [direct KKK attribution, no evidence].

“Yeah, maybe the closest grand wizard will appreciate a fellow believers work” — Sarah Chase.

“he absolutely does not have a right to be a White supremacist” — Susan Shauger.

“he just outted himself as a straight up FASCIST + RACIST” — Victoria Ferreira Sardinha.

“Remove the racist pigs art!!!” — Rhi Wolfram.

“he is wrong. All over the place wrong. Proudly Antifa here.” — Kate Hunter, who also offered to stand in front of his shop with a BLM sign and called him “the fuck face”.

9.5 The Dehumanizing Attacks

“human garbage,” “racist miserable devil,” “FASCIST” — Ami-Thystle Braverman (Aidan Braverman) [multiple paragraphs; asked for next rally date to confront him].

“Stop being polite to that heartless bag of flesh” — Zara Bodē.

“He’s trash!!” — Bre King.

“What a piece of shit” — Kathleen King.

“fuck u John sendelbach” — Renna Earp.

9.6 The Economic Targeting Campaign

“I hope my tax dollars didn’t pay for his shitty sculptures” — Maylea Rodriguez Spence [institutional defunding campaign].

“Maybe we should cancel that hideous fish sculpture too” — Sionan Kinney [called for removal of multiple public installations; called Sendelbach “a creep” repeatedly].

“Bye bye bench!” — Rachel Davis Sautter [celebrating anticipated removal].

“This racist prick need to know there are repercussions for racist actions/words” —

Nicholas VanAken.

“This guy has received so much tax payer money for his many public sculptures. Don’t forget this next time grants are divvied out.” — Evan H. Gregg [targeted economic harm through institutional channels].

Called for removal of Brookie fish sculpture in Greenfield; coordinated with Kate Hunter — Jacinta Catherine.

Proposed creating a list of businesses that support anti-racist policy for boycott coordination; emailed Shelburne Falls Business Association — Amanda Kingsley.

Identified Sendelbach’s business publicly, declared boycott, two-comment escalation — Jacob Hunter.

Demanded business name be posted publicly — Lydia Donahue, Tino De Sousa (who also tagged a nearby business’s family to spread warning).

9.7 The Most Prolific Hostile Commenters

Steve William Lindsey: Estimated 15–20% of anti-Sendelbach word count across both Facebook and Recorder comment threads. Called for bench removal, campaigned for apology, signed petition, framed himself as reasonable while consistently amplifying the removal campaign.

Ami-Thystle Braverman: Multiple paragraphs of historical argument deployed to justify hatred; one of the most aggressive voices in the thread.

Sonseniora Walters: Coordinated protest attendance (“we need more people out on every random night”); researched Sendelbach’s father’s history in Buffalo specifically to deploy it as a weapon; active organizer throughout the thread.

Kate Hunter: Multiple inflammatory comments; offered to stand in front of Sendelbach’s shop with BLM sign; “fuck face”; “Proudly Antifa here”.

Chapter 10: The Defenders — The Record of Principle Under Fire

10.1 The Most Significant Defenders

Richard Adams: Most active defender in the thread. Multiple long comments challenging mob logic, book-burning analogy, and lack of due process. Called the removal campaign what it was. Estimated 20–25% of pro-Sendelbach word count. Did not know Sendelbach personally — defended on principle. Was in hostile exchanges with Sionan Kinney, Bianca Rose, and others throughout.

Reba R. Rasbury: “Destroying a man because you don’t like what he says is not the American way.” Immediately told by Alouette Batteau to “shut the fuck up.” Held her position: “What you RESIST, PERSISTS.”

Kevin Kennedy: “I vehemently disagree with this type of retaliation.” Called it “draconian, mob-like bullying.” Defended rights without condoning the behavior in question.

Daniel A. Brown (artist): “Political purity, even in noble pursuits, is the natural enemy of creativity.” Compared the removal campaign to Soviet-era censorship.

Frank Gregory (artist): “I find any kind of censorship abhorrent, but especially when it has nothing to do with the artwork.”

Emmy Sheldon: “The bench didn’t do anything. The proposed punishment does not fit the offense.”

Mariana Luz: BOFC committee member who directly told Alouette she did not agree with calling for Sendelbach’s work to be removed.

Mikele Deziell: “When exactly did the culture shift from I strongly disagree to you should not be able to work?”

10.2 The Jasper Forest Conversation — Katherine Hennessey’s Contempt

Jasper Forest, a Black community member, had a documented three-hour civil conversation with Sendelbach in June 2020 in which he reported that Sendelbach “was able to hear and acknowledge some BLM perspectives” — directly contradicting the “impossible to reason with” mob narrative. When Jasper reported this conversation in the thread, Katherine Hennessey dismissed him with: “you’re kind of boring us now too.” Her contemptuous dismissal of a Black community member who was sharing his actual experience with the target of the campaign is itself a documented statement about who this campaign was actually for.

10.3 Bianca Cavanaugh-Green’s Partial Retraction

“he was actually very kind and understanding. I just wanted to say this so that people knew.” — Bianca Cavanaugh-Green, in the same thread as her petition.

This statement appears in the same thread as the petition calling for his destruction. She was eighteen years old and not present at the incident she was organizing around. She continued to maintain the petition was correct in subsequent comments — but the partial retraction is in the record.

PART FIVE: THE PERMISSION STRUCTURE

How the Police Department Made Everything Possible

Chapter 11: The Eight Reports — Filed Without Interviewing the Subject

Between 2020 and 2023: approximately eight police reports filed by Katherine Hennessey against Sendelbach. Sendelbach was not interviewed before any of them. The first official contact the Shelburne-Buckland Police Department had initiated with him regarding any of the eight reports was March 3, 2023, when a process server handed him an emergency Harassment Prevention Order. Every single report collapsed upon evidence review. Every single one.

The June 29, 2020 Gilmore email — “I’ve talked to John. It doesn’t work.” — is the administrative authorization for this pattern. Once that email was sent, Hennessey knew she could file reports without consequence to herself and without any review of her claims. The department had put its operational policy in writing and delivered it to the person who would use it.

Chapter 12: The November 30, 2025 — The Day the Department Watched

The warning email was in every inbox at the department by 7 PM on November 29. The department had five years of documented prior complaints. Between the morning trespass and the evening assault, they did nothing. Between 7 PM on November 29 and 5:32 PM on November 30, there is no documented preventive action.

The morning trespass — Hennessey driving onto Sendelbach’s rented property, past the store entrance, directly to where his van was screened from the street — was responded to by Sergeant Gilmore. He took the statement. He walked the property line. He reviewed the bodycam footage of the prior responding officer. He filed no charges. He checked no cameras. The morning incident and the evening assault are causally connected: no consequence in the morning, no deterrent by the afternoon.

A note on the Neighbors Gas Station footage: Sendelbach attempted to retrieve this footage himself several days after the assault. He was without his phone (which was at the bottom of the Deerfield River) and therefore without the precise timestamp he would need to locate the relevant window. He spent approximately thirty minutes reviewing footage with his new landlord — Brad Walker — which was an inherently awkward situation given that this was the third tenancy at which Hennessey had now appeared and affected a landlord relationship. He was unable to locate the relevant footage without the timestamp. Gilmore never requested it. The footage, which would have proven Hennessey’s December 1 affidavit geographically impossible, is presumed gone.

PART SIX: THE LEGAL PROCEEDINGS — COMPLETE DOCKET RECORD

Chapter 13: The HPO Cycle — Three Proceedings, Three Findings, Zero Perjury Referrals

13.1 The March 2023 Emergency HPO — Obtained by False Affidavit

Katherine Hennessey’s sworn statement: claimed Sendelbach had “homicidal tendencies” and would “try to hurt or even kill” her family. Officer Pettengill wrote the criminal harassment charge based entirely on her account without ever meeting Sendelbach. Detective Jenkins co-signed. Emergency HPO issued ex parte March 3, 2023.

If the police genuinely believed the homicidal allegation, they would have gone to his door immediately. They went to her door instead and processed it as paperwork. This institutional response establishes that the homicidal framing was not taken seriously as a factual matter by the officers who filed the charge — but was used anyway.

March 22, 2023: Judge Mazanec vacated the emergency HPO immediately after the undersigned presented the audio recording of the encounter Hennessey had characterized as containing a homicidal threat. The audio documented Sendelbach’s actual words (“I will never get along with the likes of you”). Hennessey was laughing throughout.

June 6, 2023: Show cause hearing (Docket 2341AC000088) — clerk-magistrate reviewed approximately one hour of evidence; No Probable Cause found. SECOND judicial finding of not-credible testimony against Hennessey. Zero perjury referrals.

13.2 The December 2025 HPO — Filed the Morning After the Assault

December 1, 2025 — the morning after the assault, while Sendelbach was without a working phone: Katherine Hennessey filed her third HPO petition (Docket 2541RO000063). Key false statements in the sworn affidavit:

“Hands in pockets the whole time” — physically incompatible with the two-count A&B probable cause Gilmore issued ten days later
Keystone Market characterization: “froze, puffed himself up, started yelling and gesticulating wildly, ran to store, took spot in front of car, lay in wait visibly furious” — directly contradicted by the Keystone exterior video reviewed by Judge Mazanec
November 22 frog mask: claimed she “stayed quiet” — fourteen-minute video and full transcript document she directly approached Sendelbach, addressed him by name, and delivered a taunt
Morning of Nov 30: “chose to drive away upon seeing him” — she drove past the store entrance to the far end of the lot where his van was parked screened from the building. The newspaper rack is near the entrance, not visible from a standard parking approach to her alleged destination.
“No idea how he ended up in the street / guess he slipped on leaves” — Livingston: Brook admitted the push
“No idea what happened to the phone” — Livingston confirmed she took it; Sendelbach watched the throw
KKK inversion — claiming Sendelbach had “accused community members of being KKK” — June 28, 2020 audio proves she applied that label to him four and a half years earlier. This is the same documented perjury appearing again.
The Shoe Tell: “I noticed one of his shoes was still in the street so I headed out to pick it up.” Livingston confirmed he picked up the shoe. She picked up the phone. The shoe is the tell — she lied about a shoe because she needed cover for being at the location where the phone was.
The Smoking Gun She Wrote Herself: “He said ‘you’re going to jail. I have you on video assaulting me earlier at Neighbors. It’s on the cameras.’” — She is documenting in her own sworn affidavit that Sendelbach told her immediately after the assault that the morning incident was on camera. This is why she filed the affidavit the next morning — before he could find the footage.

December 15, 2025: Judge Mazanec DENIED WITH PREJUDICE. A denial with prejudice in HPO proceedings is a rare outcome — it reflects a judicial finding of bad faith. Three proceedings. Three not-credible or bad-faith findings by the same judge. Zero perjury referrals generated by the department or the court.

13.3 The Criminal Arraignment — April 7, 2026

Commonwealth v. Hennessey, Docket 2641CR000158: Assault and Battery x2 (M.G.L. c.265 §13A), Malicious Destruction of Property (M.G.L. c.266 §126A). Commonwealth v. Batteau, Docket 2641CR000159: Assault and Battery (M.G.L. c.265 §13A). Arraignment: April 7, 2026, Franklin County District Court.

On April 7, 2026, the Commonwealth requested and the court imposed a stay-away and no-contact order as a condition of bail. The judicial system formally acknowledged, in binding legal terms, the protection three civil courts had denied against the same defendants with substantially the same factual record. The stay-away order is the retroactive confirmation that every prior denial was inconsistent with what the system would ultimately find necessary.

At the arraignment itself, Hennessey performed obscene gestures at Sendelbach from behind her attorney four to six times in rapid succession, then repeated with two fingers as she was being led out. Court video almost certainly captured this. No action was taken.

13.4 The Federal Civil Rights Case — Mlynick v. Town of Erving et al.

Case 3:24-cv-30108, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts, Judge Mark G. Mastroianni. Involves a 2021 civil dog dispute in Erving in which Detective Jenkins overrode a civil categorization, conducted a five-day investigation using incomplete information, and sent his report to Erving Sergeant Adam Paicos who arrested John Mlynick. All charges dismissed July 11, 2022.

March 12, 2026: Judge Mastroianni denied the motion to dismiss Count 1 (False Arrest) against Jenkins personally. Qualified immunity: DENIED. The court found it plausible that Jenkins “provided misleading information” and cannot escape §1983 liability. The mechanism the court found plausible maps directly onto Report 23SHL-8-AR: an officer assembling one-sided information into a criminal charge without interviewing the accused. Federal discovery is now proceeding.

Thirteen days after this order: Chief Bardwell submitted the merit raise request. The raise was approved. Select Board Chair Rick LaPierre described it as “well worth it.”

PART SEVEN: THE ESCALATION — 2021 THROUGH NOVEMBER 2025

Chapter 14: Year by Year

14.1 2021 — The Permission Structure Holds

AFib formally diagnosed; physician attributes to documented harassment stress beginning June 2020.

First HPO proceedings; judicial finding of not-credible testimony against Hennessey.

July 13, 2021 incident report 21-133-OF: Gilmore confirms the non-contact policy in his own official record for the second time.

14.2 2022 — Physical Contact Begins

Brook Batteau stomach punch outside Keystone Market — circa 2022; prior assault not charged; pattern evidence.

14.3 2023 — The False Criminal Charge

March 3: emergency HPO and criminal harassment charge — obtained by false affidavit, never interviewed.

March 22: HPO vacated by Mazanec after audio presented.

June 6: show-cause hearing; No Probable Cause; second judicial not-credible finding.

June 14: Janice Sorenson Conway Street confrontation — fists clenched, rushing approach, antisemite accusation from her companion Hoberman who had never spoken to Sendelbach.

October 6: Sonny Walters bicycle confrontation — donated bicycles, rushed within twelve inches, acknowledged on camera “I shouldn’t have gotten in your face like that”.

14.4 2024 — The Walker Letters and the Third Studio at Risk

September 6, 2024: First Hennessey eviction letter to Brad Walker — “He’s a menace to the community and it’s really only a matter of time before someone gets hurt.” Written fourteen months before she hurt him.

September 9, 2024: Second eviction letter — escalated YouTube enforcement claim from “community violations” to “Hate Speech” (fixed platform categories; the escalation between the two proves fabrication).

Walker’s initial response: declined eviction, offered paid mediation, stated evicting would “place every other Tenant here at The Mill on notice that their workspaces are not safe from the whims of management or community grievances”.

Hennessey’s response: declined mediation.

Detective Jenkins received the letters twelve days after submission; read them; took no action.

14.5 2025 — The Full Escalation Year

January 2025: Jenkins Mohawk Trail student scandal begins.

Late February/early March 2025: Sendelbach prepares HPOs at the Mill for approximately three weeks; open-top stall walls make conversations audible; Ann Loftquist (a Mill neighbor with inexplicable frequency near Sendelbach’s space) suspected of eavesdropping; if this occurred and was reported, the family’s preemptive March 15 filing was a coordinated counter-strike.

March 15, 2025: Katherine Hennessey, Brook Batteau, and Alouette Batteau file three simultaneous HPO petitions before Judge Tolan — two days before Sendelbach’s scheduled filings. Court scheduling information is not public; advance knowledge implies insider access. Purpose: establish family as victims before Sendelbach could file, poison the court’s perception from the opening moment.

March 17, 2025: Sendelbach’s HPO filings — three petitions. Tolan had already heard the family’s Friday filings. All six HPOs (both sides) denied.

March 18, 2025: Alouette removes the June 6, 2020 Facebook video — one day after Sendelbach’s HPO filings, five years after he first demanded its removal.

April 10, 2025: Mohawk Trail School District conducts district-wide trainings in response to Jenkins’ conduct.

April/May 2025: Hennessey drives to private residential address where Sendelbach is present; middle finger through car window; laughs; drives away; AFib triggered.

May 21, 2025: Keystone Market sequence — detailed above in Hennessey dossier; affidavit description directly contradicted by video; Mazanec reviewed the video at December 15 hearing.

July 21, 2025: Sendelbach’s rowboat listed for sale on Craigslist anonymously — photograph appears consistent with Floodwater Brewing deck as vantage point; Alouette Batteau had an art show at Floodwater on July 5, sixteen days before listing appeared; Bardwell sent a brief note to the anonymous poster; no investigation, no subpoena; the matter was closed.

August 18, 2025: Bridge of Flowers $3.2M renovation ribbon-cutting — no PA system for speeches (organizational failure at a once-in-a-generation event); Szpila denied to Sendelbach’s face that she had ever endorsed the petition; the Recorder archive quote contradicts her directly; AFib triggered by the confrontation.

August 25, 2025: Sendelbach formal reform letter to BOFC, carbon-copied broadly.

August 29, 2025: Mill confrontation with Walker — $2,000 “joke”; Szpila meeting at which she denied emails, refused evidence, departed quickly.

October 16, 2025: Gas station encounter with Bardwell — active AFib, “I don’t want to,” walked away for coffee; on video.

October 19, 2025: State Police barracks; Officer Sheerer witnesses cardiac episode; EMS; LIFEPAK 15 documents 130–230 BPM.

November 22, 2025: Frog mask surveillance at the Iron Bridge light show — fourteen-minute video and transcript; “John, I hope you get the help you need”; police called immediately after; affidavit claims she “stayed quiet”.

November 28, 2025: Six days after the police report claiming fear of Sendelbach’s presence — walked past his workspace window, direct eye contact, laughed.

November 29, 2025 at 6:45 PM: Warning email, approximately seventy recipients, full Shelburne Police Department, both Select Boards, Greenfield Recorder; lawsuit announcement; first defendant named.

PART EIGHT: THE ASSAULT — NOVEMBER 30, 2025

The Complete Documented Record

Chapter 15: The Complete Sequence

15.1 The Morning Trespass

Katherine Hennessey drove onto Sendelbach’s rented property at 1 Ashfield Street without invitation or legitimate purpose. The store entrance is near the street end of the building. She drove past it directly to the far end of the lot where his van was parked and screened from the street. Peace sign. Then double middle finger. Mouthed profanity. Drove forward. Repeated. Sped away. Sendelbach called police within fifteen minutes and made a reconstruction video within five.

Sergeant Gilmore arrived, took the statement, walked the property line, reviewed bodycam from the responding officer. No trespass charge filed. No cameras checked. No action taken.

Had Gilmore filed a trespass charge and checked the gas station cameras at this stage, he would have had direct video proof that Hennessey drove to Sendelbach’s van — proving her December 1 affidavit claim that she had “chosen to drive away” was geographically impossible before she even wrote it. The morning incident and the evening assault are causally connected. No consequence in the morning meant no deterrent by the afternoon.

15.2 The Evening Assault — Second by Second

Approximately 5:32 PM: Tom Del Negro exited Floodwater Brewing screaming profanities at Sendelbach — “primed inside” as described by witness accounts; this was not a spontaneous confrontation.

Brook Batteau charged out behind Del Negro; shoved Sendelbach hard with both hands; Sendelbach fell backward off the curb to the pavement.

Brook jumped on Sendelbach from behind and began punching.

Sendelbach resisted and managed to get up, losing a Croc shoe in the process.

His iPhone had fallen to the road during the initial shove — screen lit, still recording.

Katherine Hennessey exited the brewery approximately ten seconds later.

A second individual grabbed both of Sendelbach’s elbows from behind and pinned his arms — Tom Del Negro is believed to be this person based on Sendelbach’s identification through the brewery window immediately after.

With his arms pinned, Hennessey struck Sendelbach repeatedly in the head and face — 30+ blows.

Sendelbach did not retaliate. He screamed for help throughout.

Approximately eight to ten bystanders present. None intervened.

Zachary Livingston (co-owner, Floodwater) handed Sendelbach his shoe — neutral act documenting that the assault had knocked Sendelbach off his feet hard enough to lose a shoe.

Katherine Hennessey bent down, picked up the still-recording iPhone from the road, walked approximately 75 feet to the Deerfield River bank, and threw it in.

Sendelbach watched the lit screen arc into the water approximately 30 feet from the bank.

Victoria Rolon had predicted this specific act in the 2020 comment thread: “I would throw his camera in the water.” The mob imagined it in 2020. She delivered it in 2025.

Hennessey then walked back toward Sendelbach and resumed striking and kicking him from behind — a second, separate act of battery occurring after a deliberate pause that included the destruction of evidence. This is not incidental to the assault. She knew the phone was recording. She walked 75 feet in a specific direction to a specific body of water to dispose of it. That is not flight. That is disposal. She then committed a second battery.

15.3 The Livingston Sworn Statement — The Neutral Witness

“Brook Batteau pushed [Sendelbach]. I asked Batteau why he did it. He admitted it and said ‘You don’t understand, John has been after my family for five years.’ I told Batteau ‘But you still shouldn’t have pushed him.’ [Sendelbach] was not on his phone following anyone. It was clear that Hennessey and Batteau did not go outside to confront Sendelbach’s filming — they went outside to confront Sendelbach.” — Zachary Livingston, sworn statement to Sergeant Gilmore, December 9, 2025.

Livingston is the co-owner of Floodwater Brewing. He had no prior relationship with Sendelbach. His mother, Joan Livingston, was an editor at the Greenfield Recorder — the same institution that published the 2020 articles without contact and never corrected them. The son of the institution that helped construct the founding myth is the key neutral witness for the prosecution. The irony is structural, not incidental.

Brook Batteau’s admission — “You don’t understand, John has been after my family for five years” — is a confession. What he calls “being after his family for five years” is six years of Sendelbach attempting to get a defamatory video removed from the internet. He was present at the December 15 hearing and chose not to testify — the man who told a neutral witness with conviction that he had been acting on a five-year grievance declined to say it under oath.

15.4 The Post-Assault Evidence Decisions

Same night: Sergeant Gilmore “suggested” the defendants seek HPOs against Sendelbach. His own summons report documents this. He did this the night of a battery, before his own criminal investigation was complete. This is the origin of the dual-HPO architecture that three courts would subsequently fail to see through.

December 1, 2025: Hennessey filed her third HPO petition the morning after the assault, while Sendelbach was without a phone. The sworn affidavit reversed every material fact of November 30.

Neighbors Gas Station: never requested; would have disproven Hennessey’s December 1 affidavit.

Crystal Visions (ground floor, 40 State Street): camera with direct sightline to assault location and phone-throw point; never contacted.

Law office across State Street: exterior camera covering the same sidewalk; never contacted.

Floodwater Brewing interior: requested approximately nine days after the assault; overwrite window had passed.

Tom Del Negro: Gilmore’s report notes Sendelbach “pointed at a male” through the brewery window but never identifies him, never interviews him, never includes him in the narrative. The initial aggressor was erased from the official record.

PART NINE: THE SOMATIC RECORD

The Body as a Documented Witness

Chapter 16: The Medical Archive

16.1 AFib Onset — June 2020

Atrial fibrillation onset is concurrent with the harassment campaign beginning in June 2020. Formally diagnosed 2021; attributed by physician to documented harassment stress. The American Heart Association notes that untreated atrial fibrillation reduces life expectancy by five to ten years. Repeated episodes are self-reinforcing: the more episodes occur, the more the heart learns that pattern as its default. Each episode lowers the threshold for the next.

16.2 The LIFEPAK 15 Reading — October 19, 2025

Location: Massachusetts State Police barracks, Shelburne. Sendelbach presented to file a complaint. Officer Sheerer witnessed the episode and called EMS. Stryker LIFEPAK 15 cardiac monitor: documented heart rate at 130–230 beats per minute. The reading is photographed and documented. Officer Sheerer is a neutral third-party witness.

Three days prior: Chief Bardwell had refused to feel the pulse of the same man in documented AFib and walked away for coffee. The contrast between the state trooper’s response (calling EMS) and the police chief’s response (coffee) is documented across both events.

16.3 The Documented Cardiac Timeline

June 2020: AFib onset concurrent with harassment campaign
2021: AFib formally diagnosed
September 4, 2024: Alouette Batteau entered The Mill workspace — her family’s campaign had driven Sendelbach to The Mill after costing him his nine-year State Street tenancy. Within twenty seconds of visual contact, before any conscious processing, AFib triggered. Episode lasted one month.
October 16, 2025: Bardwell confrontation. AFib begins. Does not resolve for three days.
October 19, 2025: State Police barracks. LIFEPAK 15 records 130–230 BPM. Officer Sheerer neutral third-party witness.
November 30, 2025: Assault triggers cardiac emergency. EMS called.
March 11–12, 2026: HPO hearing before Judge Powers — bailiff shouted directly into Sendelbach’s disclosed hearing-impaired ear; Powers watched without intervening; when disorientation appeared as communication difficulty, Powers editorialized: “that doesn’t help your case”; Sendelbach declared active AFib in open court; no response from court. Six-day episode began. Did not resolve until March 17.

Three documented episodes tied to specific events at specific times: one month, two weeks, six days — all directly traceable to specific actions by specific people at specific documented moments. The equipment has no opinion about this case. It reads the electrical activity of a human heart and reports the number. These people have been shortening a life, measurably, for six years.

PART TEN: THE CIVIC SYMPTOM ANALYSIS

The Plastic Pavilion, the $60K Soil Disaster, and the Pattern They Document

Chapter 17: The Plastic Pavilion

In the center of Shelburne Falls’ National Historic District stands a plastic pavilion. Erected on private property with public funds, approximately one hundred feet from the ancient treaty fishing grounds at Salmon Falls where the Pocumtuck Confederacy maintained shared rights to the salmon runs, it functions less as civic infrastructure than as a diagnostic object. Its lightweight, imported, impermanent material contrasts with the stone, timber, and iron fabric that defines the village.

Documented violation of the 1999 Shelburne Falls Design Guidelines — still live on the town’s official website — which define the “Anatomy of a Building” through cornices, lintels, sills, and massing built from stone, brick, timber, or metal.
Structural inadequacy: 18-inch angle bracing on eight-foot posts mounted to compressive-only footings — inadequate for lateral loads; already wiggles under hand pressure; building inspector has privately acknowledged bracing likely insufficient.
In a 50 mph gust under three feet of wet snow, the risk of collapse is real — and people routinely seek shelter under it.
This is not a design failure. It is a documented public-safety failure.

The same institution (town governance + BOFC adjacency) that produced the plastic pavilion produced the $60K soil disaster. The pattern is the same: insular decision-making, absence of external accountability, ignoring adopted standards, no professional consultation of the most qualified people available.

Chapter 18: The Pocumtuck Ecological Argument

Where the Deerfield River once delivered marine-derived nitrogen — forty to eighty tons annually at full restoration — to sustain the Three Sisters agricultural system that fed the Pocumtuck for millennia, the contemporary civic gesture delivers imported plastic on rented ground. This contrast is not aesthetic. It is metabolic.

The first dam at Peskeompskut went in 1798. The nitrogen cycle broke. Eight dams followed. The salmon stopped coming. The Three Sisters mounds lost their fertility. The valley continued to regard itself as picturesque. The Pocumtuck State Park proposal is the reparative landscape architecture that addresses what was actually taken — not as a grievance, but as a verifiable ecological repair: forty to eighty tons of marine-derived nitrogen returned to the watershed annually at full fish passage restoration.

PART ELEVEN: WHAT EACH INSTITUTION OWES THE PUBLIC RECORD

Chapter 19: The Greenfield Recorder

What it did: published two front-page articles without contacting the subject; did not report the petition’s removal for defamation violations; republished articles in 2025 without correction; published Hennessey’s social photograph while her arraignment was active without mentioning it.

What it owes: a front-page correction that reaches the same audience as the original reporting; an explanation of why the petition’s removal was not reported; a retraction of the “disruptor” characterization without the full context of the two minutes preceding the recording; a disclosure of Kay Berenson’s dual role as co-founder and BOFC Zoom meeting organizer.

Chapter 20: The Bridge of Flowers Committee

What it did: acted on the petition narrative without contacting the artist who had served the bridge for fourteen years; installed an anti-racism plaque three feet from his permanent anti-racist installation; Szpila endorsed the “anti-racism spirit of the petition” in print, then denied it five years later; secret Zoom meetings; Soroka threat letter nine months before the campaign, recusal without disclosure.

What it owes: a formal acknowledgment of the fourteen-year professional relationship; an explanation of the secret Zoom meetings; a public acknowledgment that the Pothole Fountain’s Black Stones of Africa are and have always been the anti-racist installation the committee was claiming to add; accountability for the $60K soil decision they made without consulting the most credentialed horticulturist in the community with active installations on their bridge.

Chapter 21: The Shelburne-Buckland Police Department

What it did: established a written permission structure for one-sided reporting; processed eight reports without interviewing the subject; watched a warned assault come down the track and took no preventive action; coached assault defendants to file HPOs the night of the battery; failed to canvass five available camera sources; requested merit raises while defending a federal civil rights lawsuit.

What it owes: a formal review of the June 29, 2020 email and its legal implications; a formal review of the eight-report pattern; a formal accounting of the November 30 investigative decisions; an explanation of why the warning email produced no preventive action; an explanation of the merit raise request thirteen days after a federal qualified immunity denial.

Chapter 22: The Select Boards

Permitted the department’s permission structure to operate for six years without oversight; retained Jenkins over a 218-signature removal petition; approved a 22% police salary line increase while defending an active federal civil rights case; endorsed a merit raise request thirteen days after a federal qualified immunity denial.

Every email Sendelbach sent to Select Board Chair Rick LaPierre and the full Board went unanswered. Approximately 99% of all correspondence to town officials went unacknowledged. The Board already knew about Jenkins from the June 2023 show cause hearing Sendelbach had explicitly warned them about. Their silence after that warning directly enabled Jenkins to remain in his position through the Mohawk Trail student situation and into the federal lawsuit.

A yes vote on the merit raise is a formal, documented, public endorsement of every failure described in this document. It says: we knew, we were warned, and we voted yes anyway.

PART TWELVE: THE GENERATIVE REBOUND

What the Machine’s Deepest Miscalculation Produced

Chapter 23: The Three Axes of Record

The machine failed because the target had built a record across three independent axes simultaneously — and physical sabotage cannot erase what is distributed across too many mediums to destroy.

The material axis: The polished Black Stones of Africa at the Bridge of Flowers. Still there. The Sojourner Truth plaques in granite in Northampton. Still there. The bench seventy-five feet from where it all began, built with a Palestinian man whose family shelters in Gaza. Still there. The sturgeon at the CIA. The trout in Greenfield. The salamander in Amherst. The stone plaza at UMass. These objects exist in physical space. They predate the founding myth. They cannot be edited, deleted, or memory-holed.
The textual axis: Archived social media threads with timestamps and word counts. Police reports cross-referenced against judicial findings. Perjured affidavit text annotated against audio and video. Court transcripts. Medical records. Defamatory landlord letters preserved and dissected. The complete comment thread with every name. The counter-strategy — document everything, archive in multiple locations, cross-reference obsessively — is psychologically exhausting but forensically decisive.
The somatic axis: The LIFEPAK 15 reading of 130–230 BPM. The one-month episode from September 2024. The two-week episode from November 2025. The six-day episode from March 2026. All dated. All documented. All traceable to specific actions by specific people. The body is a data source. The body recorded what the institutions refused to record.

She threw the phone in the river. She didn’t throw the record. The record was already everywhere else.

Chapter 24: The Machine’s Deepest Miscalculation

The machine’s deepest investment was the belief that the target would eventually exhaust, accept the verdict, and depart quietly. The archive is the answer to that investment. The Pocumtuck State Park proposal — the reparative landscape architecture that would restore salmon cycles, Black displacement history, Indigenous sovereignty, and seven layers of ecological and cultural harm — did not exist before Katherine Hennessey’s campaign generated the clarity that comes from standing on a gallows and seeing the whole valley from the top.

The destruction catalyzed the proposal that would do what Alice Hennessey (Katherine’s mother, a genuine community builder who spent her career building belonging from waste) had done — build something from what was thrown away. The destruction midwifed the archive. The archive midwifed the analysis. The analysis midwifed the park.

The scapegoat walks back in from the wilderness. The pattern that sent him out is named, analyzed, built around. The Walkaway has nowhere left to go, because every place it might go has been marked. The salmon remember upstream. Given passage, they return. The river didn’t get the record. It just got the phone. And the phone is still screaming.

APPENDICES

Appendix A — Master Entities List

Primary Criminal Defendants

Katherine Hennessey — Case 2641CR000158 — A&B x2, Malicious Destruction

Brook Batteau — Case 2641CR000159 — A&B

Direct Aggressors (Non-Charged)

Alouette Batteau — digital architect, evidence spoliator, March 23, 2026 Instagram post

Sonny Walters — Iron Bridge, bicycle incident; admitted assault on camera

Joey Kotright — double middle fingers public assault; housing interference

Tom Del Negro — assault instigator, erased from police report

Laura Iveson — COVID violation confrontation; probable HPO leak

Janice Sorenson — June 2023 fist-clenched confrontation; defamatory thread comment

Institutional Actors

Sergeant Kurt Gilmore — permission structure email; evidence non-preservation

Chief Gregory Bardwell — coffee-first; merit raise while defending federal suit

Detective Tucker Jenkins — false charge co-signer; federal qualified immunity denied

Officer Christopher Pettengill — false charge writer; never met accused

Former Chief James Hicks — resigned in disgrace, sexual misconduct

Former Officer Jacob Wrisley — convicted, child exploitation material on department devices

Former Officer PJ Herbert — $344K VA fraud, federal guilty plea 2025

Annette Szpila (BOFC) — endorsed petition in print; denied it to Sendelbach’s face

Carol Angus (BOFC) — positive relationship buried; removal campaign endorsed

Lynda Leitner (BOFC) — collaborative partner who went silent

Joanne Soroka (BOFC) — threat letter nine months before campaign; recused without disclosure

Kay Berenson — Recorder co-founder + BOFC Zoom organizer, dual-role operator

Mary Byrne — staff writer, no-contact journalism

Brad Walker (The Mill) — landlord weaponized by campaign; illegal filming

Rhonda Anderson — state commissioner, thread amplifier, prior personal relationship

Rev. Kate Stevens — co-organizer, selective chronicler

Julie Petty — forty-year friendship; co-organized without disclosure; three-year gaslight

Anonymous Landlord One — 44 State Street, nine-year tenancy ended under pressure

Bianca Cavanaugh-Green — petition creator, partial retraction, not present at event

Appendix B — Complete Legal Docket

2021 HPO proceedings — first not-credible finding against Hennessey by Mazanec

2341AC000088 — Show Cause, No Probable Cause, June 6, 2023

2541RO000063 — Hennessey HPO, DENIED WITH PREJUDICE, December 15, 2025 (Mazanec)

2641CR000158 — Commonwealth v. Hennessey — arraignment April 7, 2026

2641CR000159 — Commonwealth v. Batteau — arraignment April 7, 2026

3:24-cv-30108 — Mlynick v. Town of Erving et al. — Jenkins personal federal liability, qualified immunity DENIED March 12, 2026

SPR25/2545 — Public records request to Shelburne Police Department; Supervisor of Records determination issued; zero records produced; eight months and counting

Appendix C — Video and Audio Evidence Inventory

June 6, 2020 — Iron Bridge full footage (Sendelbach camera) — two minutes of pre-recording confrontation

June 6, 2020 — Alouette Batteau Facebook Live — the edited 13-minute recording (starts 10:41:01 AM)

June 28, 2020 — KKK audio — Katherine Hennessey, timestamp 3:09: “I don’t talk to KKK members either, but here we are”

June 29, 2020 — Full family transcript — hatred declaration, Brook racial slur, Alouette bum-rush and restraining order threat

June 29, 2020 — Kotright street scene — double middle fingers, public racial slur (“cracker”) — in possession of witness Jasper Forest

Summer 2020 — Sonny Walters bicycle confrontation — “I shouldn’t have gotten in your face like that” on camera

March 2023 — Parking lot audio — Sendelbach’s actual words vs. Hennessey’s sworn homicidal threat characterization; Hennessey laughing throughout

May 21, 2025 — Keystone Market exterior sequence — smile, middle finger, laughing departure; reviewed by Mazanec at December 15, 2025 hearing

October 16, 2025 — Gas station video — Bardwell: “I don’t want to.” Walks to coffee.

October 19, 2025 — LIFEPAK 15 monitor documentation — 130–230 BPM photograph, Officer Sheerer neutral witness

November 22, 2025 — Light show / frog mask — fourteen-minute video and full transcript; Hennessey’s approach, name-use, taunt

November 30, 2025 morning — trespass reconstruction video — made within five minutes of calling police

August 18, 2025 — Ribbon-cutting — Szpila denial on video; Leitner scowl documented

August 29, 2025 — Mill Walker confrontation video

Summer 2023 — Jenkins race transcript — Jenkins on camera confirming he had never met Sendelbach before the show cause

Appendix D — The Police Reports: Complete Inventory

Eight Hennessey reports (2020–2023) — all collapsed on evidence review; all processed without interviewing Sendelbach

21-133-OF (July 13, 2021) — Gilmore confirms non-contact policy in official record

23SHL-8-AR (March 3, 2023) — Pettengill/Jenkins criminal harassment charge; No Probable Cause at show cause June 2023

25SHL-46-AR — Hennessey summons, December 10, 2025, probable cause A&B x2 + Malicious Destruction

25SHL-47-AR — Batteau summons, December 10, 2025, probable cause A&B

25SHL-114-OF — November 30, 2025 incident report

Morning trespass response documentation, November 30, 2025 (Gilmore bodycam review)

Appendix E — The Walker / Hennessey Eviction Letters

September 6, 2024 — Hennessey to Walker (Letter 1) — Key False Statements:

“John Sendelbach verbally accosted and harassed my adult child”

“Mr. Sendelbach has been harassing our family for 4 years now”

“He narrated over the videos, as he does, spewing hateful racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-LGBTQ rhetoric”

“We have screen recordings of the videos, which depict a years-long campaign of stalking and harassment”

“He’s a menace to the community and it’s really only a matter of time before someone gets hurt” — written fourteen months before she hurt him.

September 9, 2024 — Hennessey to Walker (Letter 2):

Escalated “community violations” to “Hate Speech” in the YouTube enforcement claim — fixed platform categories; the escalation between them proves fabrication, since an actual enforcement finding is fixed and does not change three days after first described.

“His narration makes it very clear that the LGBTQ+ community is not welcome in ‘his’ space”

Walker’s September 7, 2024 Response (the commendable one):

“Evicting John due to personal conflict — none of which to my knowledge has resulted in criminal or civil judgements against him — would place every other Tenant here at The Mill on notice that their workspaces are not safe from the whims of management or community grievances.” — Brad Walker, September 7, 2024

Walker offered $100 toward professional mediation. Hennessey declined. She had been offered an exit that would have resolved the dispute without violence. She chose the endpoint she had already written down: “only a matter of time before someone gets hurt.”

Appendix F — Medical Documentation

AFib onset: June 2020, concurrent with campaign beginning

Formal diagnosis: 2021; physician attribution to documented harassment stress

September 4, 2024: one-month episode triggered by visual contact with Alouette Batteau entering workspace

October 16, 2025: episode triggered by Bardwell confrontation; three days

October 19, 2025: LIFEPAK 15 reading of 130–230 BPM; photographed and documented; Officer Sheerer neutral witness

November 30, 2025: assault-triggered cardiac emergency; EMS called; LIFEPAK 15 attached

March 11–12, 2026: hearing-triggered six-day episode; resolved March 17

Each episode increases cumulative risk per American Heart Association guidance; repeated episodes lower threshold for subsequent episodes.

Appendix G — The Recorder Archive

June 12, 2020: “Artist’s work in question following petition” — Mary Byrne

June 18, 2020: “Bridge of Flowers Committee installs anti-racism memorial” — Mary Byrne

June 20, 2020: “My Turn” — Rev. Kate Stevens (Sendelbach not mentioned)

August 11, 2020: Follow-up coverage

August 17, 2025: Website redesign — 2020 articles republished as “newly-added archival stories”

March 1, 2026: Front-page Hennessey photograph at Winter HooPla — no mention of pending arraignment

Appendix H — The Records Request File

August 25, 2025: SPR25/2545 submitted — records request to Shelburne Police Department

Response: $3,375 fee estimate; 30-business-day extension petition; hardship claim from same department requesting merit raises for its “fantastic crew”

Supervisor of Records determination: formal finding of non-compliance issued

Zero records produced as of the date of this document — eight months and counting

The archive is open. The river did not get the record. The record survived.

Every police report, court docket, cardiac reading, federal filing, and video referenced in this document is documented and available at the Deerfield River Archive at johnsendelbach.com. No login. No fee.

The phone is still screaming.

John F. Sendelbach

Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts · 2026