April 20, 2026
Chief of Police Gregory Bardwell
Shelburne Police Department
623 Mohawk Trail
Shelburne, MA 01370
CC: First Assistant District Attorney Steven Gagne
Northwestern District Attorney's Office
RE: Your April 9, 2026 Response Regarding the Instagram Post
"Part of a Musical Performance" — A Six-Year Record of a Family That
Says What It Will Do and Then Does It, and a Department That Looks Away
Chief,
Thank you for your April 9 response. You wrote that the content in question
"appears to be part of a musical performance" and that it "does not clearly
establish that the statements are directed toward you specifically."
I want to engage with that reasoning directly, because you have now put your
analytical framework in writing and copied the District Attorney's office.
That framework deserves a response — and it deserves to be read against a
six-year documented record of this family stating intentions and delivering
on them, and a department that has consistently ensured the objective evidence
of each delivery reached its expiration date before it could be processed.
An analytical summary of the six-phase pattern of institutional inaction is
attached as Exhibit A. The letter below provides the full argument. Exhibit A
is provided as a briefing reference.
WHAT THIS FAMILY SAYS AND WHAT THEY DO
In June 2020, during the confrontation that initiated six years of documented
escalation, Alouette Batteau posted publicly that it was "a challenge not to
deck him." Her mother engaged with and endorsed that post. The violence was
ideated publicly in June 2020. It was executed on November 30, 2025. Five
years and five months elapsed between statement and delivery.
In that same June 2020 comment thread — reviewed by your department without
action — another participant wrote: "I would throw his camera in the water."
Katherine Hennessey walked that specific act seventy-five feet to the Deerfield
River on November 30, 2025, with the phone still lit and recording, and threw
it in. The mob imagined it in 2020. She delivered it in 2025. Five years and
five months. Same delivery.
On June 28, 2020, when I identified a physical approach as threatening, Alouette
Batteau told me directly and on audio: "You'll know when I'm threatening you."
She told me explicitly that a threat from this family would be recognizable
when it arrived.
On September 6, 2024, Katherine Hennessey wrote to my landlord: "it's really
only a matter of time before someone gets hurt." That letter is in your
department's possession. Detective Jenkins received it. He read it twelve days
late and took no action. Fourteen months after that sentence was written, she
hurt me. On a public sidewalk. In front of witnesses. Thirty-plus blows. Phone
in the river.
On March 23, 2026, with her parents on bail for that assault, Alouette Batteau
posted a lyric expressing the wish to kill a man with bare hands, captioned it
"this one goes out to my stalker! teehee wish i was joking," and a named
collaborator commented "hope they d!e!!!!!" The comment received three likes
and was not removed.
I recognize it. She said I would.
This family does not speak carelessly. They have a documented record of stating
what they intend to do and then doing it. That record is the context your
April 9 letter did not engage with. When the March 23 post identifies the
target as "my stalker" — the exclusive label applied to me in every sworn
proceeding for six years — I am not reading it in isolation. I am reading it
against a pattern in which statements like this have previously been followed
by the described conduct. That pattern is the reason the post requires
contextual analysis rather than genre classification.
ON THE QUESTION OF WHETHER A SONG CAN BE A THREAT
You are correct that the post is framed as musical content. The question is
whether that framing insulates it from scrutiny. It does not.
Massachusetts courts do not apply a genre exemption to threatening
communications. The test under M.G.L. c.275 §2, and under the federal standard
established in Counterman v. Colorado (2023), is whether a reasonable person
in the recipient's position would interpret the communication as threatening,
taking into account all available context. Musical packaging is one data point.
It is not a determinative one.
A reasonable person in the recipient's position here is not a person reading
an anonymous post in a vacuum. It is a person who has watched this family
state an intention to throw his camera in the water in 2020 and watched them
throw his phone in the river in 2025. It is a person who has been told he
would know when the threat arrived and who has watched every prior statement
of this type materialize into conduct. For that person, reading "I never wished
so much to kill a man with my bare hands" during active criminal proceedings is
not an academic exercise in genre theory. It is pattern recognition backed by
a five-year documented record.
ON THE QUESTION OF WHETHER IT IS "CLEARLY DIRECTED" AT A SPECIFIC PERSON
You wrote that the post "does not clearly establish that the statements are
directed toward you specifically."
The word "stalker" is not generic in this situation. It is the specific and
exclusive label applied to me in every sworn affidavit, HPO petition, police
report, and live court testimony filed by this family across six years of
proceedings. It appeared in the most recent sworn affidavit in this case. It
was used in open court at the December 15, 2025 hearing.
To illustrate why context answers the clarity question: if a man had called his
neighbor "the gardener" in every argument, every letter to their landlord, every
court filing, and every conversation for six years, and then posted a lyric
about wanting to kill "the gardener" during active criminal proceedings — after
previously predicting in writing that someone would get hurt, and after having
a documented history of delivering on exactly those predictions — a reasonable
officer would not conclude that the target was unclear. The target is the person
called "the gardener" in every documented proceeding for six years. The word
"stalker" in this record is not a common noun. It is a proper noun.
Clarity, for this family, is something they have already directly addressed.
In June 2020, Alouette Batteau told me I would know when the threat arrived.
I know.
ON THE QUESTION OF TIMING AND YOUR OCTOBER 16 DISMISSAL
Your letter does not address timing. The post was published eleven days after
a court hearing involving the poster's family members as parties. It was
published fifteen days before the criminal arraignment at which those same
family members were the defendants. The recipient of the post is the
complaining witness in that proceeding.
This pattern of timing-blind dismissal is not new. On October 16, 2025, I stood
in front of you at the Neighbors gas station in active atrial fibrillation with
a heart rate near 180 bpm. I told you the ongoing inaction against this family
was producing documented cardiac harm. I asked you to feel my pulse. You replied:
"I don't want to." You stated on video that you cannot charge false police
reports — a statement that is factually incorrect under M.G.L. c.269 §13A.
You directed me to the Attorney General and walked away for coffee.
At that moment, the Walker letters were already in your department's possession.
The September 6, 2024 letter stating "it is really only a matter of time before
someone gets hurt" had been received by Detective Jenkins six weeks earlier.
He had read it twelve days late. He had taken no action. I was telling you,
on October 16, 2025, that the prediction in that letter was becoming
physiologically real. You did not want to feel the evidence.
Six weeks later: the assault. Your department had my November 29 warning email
in every inbox and Sergeant Gilmore's bodycam from the morning trespass.
Between 9 AM and 5:32 PM on November 30, you took no action. The prediction
in the Walker letter was fulfilled on a public sidewalk, in front of witnesses,
by the same person who wrote it.
The March 23 post is the next entry in this sequence.
That sequence — my documented warning on October 16, your dismissal, and the
November 30 attack — is the direct consequence of the same pattern of inaction
your April 9 response continues.
ON INVESTIGATIVE MANAGEMENT: THE NOVEMBER 30 RECORD
Your April 9 letter relies on the idea that context is "unclear." The context
is unclear only because your department managed the investigation to ensure the
most objective data points were lost.
The Omission of the Initial Aggressor: On the evening of November 30, I pointed
through the brewery window at the individual who had initiated the physical
confrontation at the door — Tom Del Negro, a known musical collaborator of the
Hennessey-Batteau family. Sergeant Gilmore's summons report (25SHL-47-AR)
notes that I "pointed at a male" but never identifies him, never interviews him,
and never includes him in the narrative. By omitting the known family
collaborator who initiated the physical sequence, the report decapitated the
timeline of the assault. The violence was framed as a reaction to my presence
rather than a continuation of a coordinated response by the family and its
associates.
The Strategic Abandonment of Evidence: Sergeant Gilmore knew within hours that
the morning trespass at Neighbors Gas Station was the documented context for
the evening assault. He knew that Hennessey's December 1 affidavit — claiming
she had "pulled into the parking lot to get a newspaper but chose to drive away
upon seeing him" — hinged entirely on whether the morning footage confirmed her
account. He never pulled the gas station cameras. He never checked Crystal
Visions, the ground-floor business whose camera has a direct line of sight to
the phone-toss location. He never checked the law office camera directly across
the street. He waited nine days to attempt to pull the brewery footage, by which
point the system had overwritten the data. Each tape was allowed to reach its
own expiration date without intervention.
I sent Gilmore the Hennessey affidavit within eighteen hours of the assault. He
knew within a day that her gas station account was provably false by the
geography of the property alone — the newspaper rack was around the corner, not
visible from where she would have parked to access it. He had the morning
bodycam. He had the timeline. He had her sworn statement. He chose to let the
footage that would have proven her perjury disappear.
The "Dual HPO" Coaching: Sergeant Gilmore's report explicitly states he
"suggested" the defendants seek Harassment Prevention Orders against me.
By coaching an aggressor to file a civil restraining order immediately after
committing a criminal battery, the department provided the legal instrument
used in court to frame a violent assault as a mutual harassment dispute. Three
courts then denied me protection — each starting fresh, none referencing the
prior not-credible findings against the same respondent — while the criminal
assault charges that should have invalidated the framing were processed
separately. The dual HPO strategy, coached by your officer the night of the
assault, is the architecture that allowed the "terrified victim" narrative to
survive long enough to matter.
This is not a series of oversights. It is an investigative profile: identify
the initial aggressor and omit him, allow the objective footage to expire, and
coach the aggressor on how to neutralize the criminal complaint with a civil
counter-filing. The March 23 Instagram post arrived after this profile had
already produced its results. Your "musical performance" classification is the
same profile applied to the next statement.
WHAT THIS HAS COST A HUMAN BODY
I want to place on the record what six years of this pattern has produced in
physical terms, because it is documented, measurable, and unlike sworn
affidavits, cannot be cross-examined.
When the June 6, 2020 video went viral — edited to remove the two minutes of
physical confrontation that preceded my visible agitation, distributed to
twenty thousand viewers, amplified by two front-page articles that never
contacted me — I lost thirty pounds in ten days. Not by choice. Through the
acute physiological crash of watching a fabricated identity attach to my name
while institutions processed complaints from my accusers without ever speaking
to me. My body recorded what happened before I had the legal language for it.
The weight has tracked with the escalations since — dropping when new incidents
occur, slowly returning between them.
The atrial fibrillation was formally diagnosed in 2021 and attributed by my
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 irregular pattern as its default. Each episode lowers the
threshold for the next.
I have documented episodes tied to specific actions at specific times: the
September 2024 Mill incident, the August 2025 ribbon-cutting confrontation, the
October 2025 gas station meeting — the one you walked away from for coffee —
the November 2025 assault, the March 2026 HPO hearing. Each dated. Each
traceable. The October 19, 2025 episode was documented at the Massachusetts
State Police barracks by Officer Sheerer on a Stryker LIFEPAK 15 monitor at
130–230 bpm. That equipment has no opinion about this case, no motive, and no
capacity for exaggeration.
Every escalation in this six-year record has been preceded by a statement of
intent and followed by a physiological consequence. The Walker letter predicted
the assault; the assault produced a cardiac emergency. The June 2020 mob
imagined throwing my camera in the water; Hennessey threw my phone in the
river; the episode that followed lasted weeks. The pattern is not coincidence.
It is causation with a documented paper trail.
When I saw the March 23 post, a new episode began. As of the date of this
letter, it has not resolved. This is consistent with what medical literature
describes as the heart having learned the irregular pattern as a persistent
default. With a six-year documented cardiac history tied directly to this
family's conduct and your department's pattern of inaction, I am telling you
that the body is running out of room to absorb entries in this sequence.
This is what the permission structure costs. Not in legal theory. In bpm.
The body kept the score your department refused to keep. I am asking you to
look at the score before another statement becomes another delivery.
ON THE JUDICIAL RECORD AND THE CONTRADICTION THE STAY-AWAY ORDER CREATES
Between March 17 and March 20, 2025, I appeared before two Franklin County
judges seeking harassment prevention orders. I presented five years of
documented incidents. Both courts denied protection — characterizing the
conduct as petitioning activity or as harm in the vernacular sense but not
the statutory sense. Neither court referenced Judge Mazanec's prior findings
of not-credible against the same respondent.
Seven months later, exactly what I warned those courts would happen, happened:
the assault, the phone in the river, the cardiac emergency, the probable cause
finding. The Walker letter's prediction was fulfilled.
On March 12, 2026, I appeared before Judge Powers. He denied the petition.
During the hearing, Hennessey performed obscene gestures at me from behind
her attorney's back while I was under oath. I reported it in real time. Judge
Powers told me that calling it out was not helping my case. The six-day AFib
episode that followed was the most sustained of the series.
On April 7, 2026, the Commonwealth requested and the court imposed a stay-away
and no-contact order as a condition of bail. That order is the judicial system
acknowledging, in binding legal terms, that I require protection from these
defendants — the same protection three courts had previously denied against the
same defendants with substantially the same factual record.
The stay-away order does not undo the assault, the phone in the river, the
cardiac emergency, or the Instagram post that triggered the episode still
running as I write this. But it establishes retroactively that the three prior
denials were inconsistent with what the system would ultimately conclude. One
court said protection was warranted. Three courts before it said it was not.
The facts before all four were substantially the same.
The pattern your April 9 letter continues — classify below threshold, refer
elsewhere, decline to analyze the documented context — is the same pattern
that produced three HPO denials followed by a criminal assault followed by a
stay-away order. Your "musical performance" classification is the April 2026
entry in that sequence. I am asking whether the next entry needs to occur
before the threshold classification is reconsidered.
ON CONSISTENCY OF ANALYSIS
The analytical framework applied in your April 9 letter necessarily carries
broader implications. If a statement expressing violent intent, framed as a
musical performance and using language historically applied to a specific
individual, is classified as "not clearly directed" without reference to
context, then that same framework would apply to any similarly constructed
communication regardless of speaker.
To test this, here is a short musical performance written to the exact same
standard. This is offered purely as an illustrative example of the analytical
point about context, framing, and direction — not as an actual threat or
expression of intent.
blue thug leader on the take, badge heavy, soul light
hiding in the station while the record screams at night
you walk away from a pulse at one-eighty, coffee in your hand
say you can't charge false reports, then hide behind the man
i never wished so much to choke a blue thug leader with these hands
limp in your fist while the body keeps the score across the land
Tee-hee.
Just a song.
Applied consistently, your framework would render this non-actionable as well.
If it does not, then the distinction is not being drawn from the structure of
the communication but from the context surrounding it. That is precisely the
point. Context cannot be excluded. In this case, the six-year documented record
of stated intent followed by physical delivery resolves what isolation obscures.
Note the further asymmetry: unlike Alouette Batteau's post, there is no
documented history of me waging false allegations, committing aggression, or
destroying the lives of police officers. The opposite is true. The
Hennessey/Batteau family has spent six years fabricating claims against me,
with your department's consistent assistance — including taking me to a
show-cause hearing, in violation of collateral estoppel, on charges that
collapsed the moment evidence was reviewed. Even without any such prior context
from me, the example above still reads as directed under the framework you
applied. This only makes the implications of Batteau's post clearer in light
of the actual documented six-year pattern of stated intent followed by physical
delivery — a pattern your department's investigative management has consistently
protected.
ON YOUR LEADERSHIP AND THE OFFICERS IT PRODUCED
Your April 9 letter reflects a departmental culture, not an isolated judgment.
That culture runs through the decisions you made about the officers under your
command.
In June 2023, after the show-cause hearing in which a clerk magistrate found No
Probable Cause — having reviewed approximately one hour of evidence that
demolished every complaint assembled by your officers — I brought that record
directly to you. You told me: "I trust the judgment of my officers." You ended
the meeting.
The officer whose judgment you trusted had co-signed a criminal harassment
charge against a man he had never interviewed, assembled eight unverified
complaints from a single accuser into a criminal referral, sat through the
entire show-cause presentation without taking any corrective action, and
received the Walker letters predicting violence without acting on them. No
perjury referral. No internal review. Nothing.
That same officer was subsequently found to have made 25 phone calls totaling
67 minutes to an 18-year-old student over a 30-day period, deleted the related
text messages, and refused to be interviewed by DA investigators. Your public
response characterized community concern as "reckless spreading of
reputation-wrecking rumors." You retained him.
On March 12, 2026, a federal judge denied qualified immunity to that detective
in a surviving false arrest claim, finding it plausible that he provided
"misleading information" and ignored exculpatory facts to manufacture probable
cause. Thirteen days later, you submitted a merit raise request — "fantastic
crew" — and it was approved as "well worth it."
This is the leadership record. The April 9 response is consistent with it.
ON THE BROADER QUESTION YOUR LETTER RAISES
You wrote that the DA's office "is best positioned to evaluate the context and
determine whether any further action or consideration is warranted."
I agree the DA's office has a critical role here. I also note that you have
been in possession of the full contextual record across the period during which
the following events occurred: a criminal assault, malicious destruction of
property, a stay-away order, a merit raise request for the officers involved,
a surviving federal civil rights claim against one of your detectives, and now
a post expressing violent ideation directed at the complaining witness in an
active case — posted by a member of the same family whose prior statements have
been followed by physical delivery, without exception, for six years.
The DA's office is best positioned to evaluate context that has been provided
to them. The context that makes this post legible as a potential threat is the
same context that has been provided to your department across multiple
interactions over multiple years. The referral is appropriate. The
characterization of the content as unclear, absent engagement with the
documented pattern of stated intent and physical delivery, is the part I am
asking you to reconsider.
"Does not clearly establish" is a post-analysis conclusion. Your letter presents
it as a pre-analysis classification. The analysis that would make that conclusion
meaningful requires examining whether this family has a documented record of
saying what they intend to do and doing it.
They do.
I am not asking you to reach a conclusion. I am asking you to perform the
analysis.
Respectfully,
John F. Sendelbach
Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts
April 20, 2026
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
EXHIBIT A
Analytical Summary: Six-Phase Pattern of Institutional Inaction (2020–2026)
Re: Commonwealth v. Hennessey (2641CR000158) and Commonwealth v. Batteau
(2641CR000159)
Prepared by: John F. Sendelbach
Date: April 20, 2026
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
This exhibit compresses the six-year documented record into its operational
phases for reference by investigators, prosecutors, and counsel. All events
are sourced from police reports, sworn statements, court records, and
contemporaneous documentation in the full archive.
The compression below is intended as a briefing reference. The letter to which
it is attached provides the full evidentiary argument.
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
PHASE I: 2020 — THE PERMISSION STRUCTURE
(Signals received → no boundary set)
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Public Ideation of Violence: In the June 2020 Facebook thread generated by
Alouette Batteau's Iron Bridge video (20,000+ viewers), participants wrote
"deck him" and "I would throw his camera in the water." The Shelburne Police
Department reviewed these materials without action.
Direct Warning: Alouette Batteau stated on audio on June 28, 2020:
"You'll know when I'm threatening you." No follow-up.
July 2021 Gilmore Email (Ref: 21BUC-54-OF): "I told Hennessey that I was not
going to call Sendelbach because it hasn't worked in the past." Written policy
of one-sided processing formalized in official departmental record.
Outcome: No enforcement → no boundary → behavior normalized across the
department and communicated implicitly to the Hennessey-Batteau family.
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
PHASE II: 2024 — THE PREDICTION
(Explicit warning → no response)
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Walker Letter (September 6, 2024): Explicit written prediction from Katherine
Hennessey to landlord Brad Walker: "It's really only a matter of time before
someone gets hurt." Letter forwarded to and received by Detective Tucker Jenkins.
Jenkins Handling: Letter read approximately 12 days late. No interview of
sender. No warning issued. No report generated. No action taken.
October 16, 2025 — Bardwell Gas Station (on video): Sendelbach presented
himself in active atrial fibrillation (~180 bpm), requested pulse check, and
warned that documented inaction was producing cardiac harm. Chief Bardwell
declined ("I don't want to"), stated on camera that he "can't charge false
police reports" (factually incorrect under M.G.L. c.269 §13A), directed
Sendelbach to the Attorney General, and walked away.
Outcome: Prediction received and in department's possession → no intervention
→ escalation continues toward assault.
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
PHASE III: NOVEMBER 30, 2025 — THE MISSED INTERVENTION
(Same-day escalation → no containment)
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Morning Incident (Neighbors Gas Station): Hennessey trespassed onto
Sendelbach's rented property, performed double middle-finger gesture with
verbal provocation, and departed. Sergeant Gilmore responded, reviewed bodycam,
walked property line. No trespass charge filed. No gas station cameras checked.
Note: Containment at this stage — a trespass charge and evidence preservation —
would have created a formal record of Hennessey's morning conduct and directly
contradicted her December 1 affidavit before it was written. The morning and
the evening are causally connected: Hennessey returned in the afternoon because
no consequence followed the morning.
Evening Incident: Tom Del Negro (known musical collaborator of the
Hennessey-Batteau family) exited the brewery and initiated the physical
confrontation at the door. Brook Batteau then charged, shoved Sendelbach off
the curb, and assaulted him. Katherine Hennessey followed and delivered a
second assault. Hennessey seized the still-recording iPhone, walked 75 feet
to the Deerfield River, and threw it in. Zachary Livingston (neutral witness,
brewery co-owner) confirmed: "It was clear that Hennessey and Batteau did not
go outside to confront Sendelbach's filming — they went outside to confront
Sendelbach."
Outcome: Morning warning ignored → no containment → evening assault proceeds.
The prediction in the Walker letter (September 6, 2024) was delivered on
November 30, 2025, by the same person who wrote it.
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
PHASE IV: POST-INCIDENT — EVIDENCE LOSS
(Critical evidence → not secured within overwrite window)
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Tom Del Negro: Identified by Sendelbach through the brewery window as the
initial aggressor. Sergeant Gilmore's summons report notes the identification
("pointed at a male") but never names him, never interviews him, and never
includes him in the narrative. Report 25SHL-47-AR.
Gas Station Footage (Neighbors): Never requested. Would have documented
Hennessey's morning trespass and directly contradicted her December 1 affidavit
claim that she "chose to drive away upon seeing him." The affidavit claim is
geographically impossible — the newspaper rack is around the corner from where
Sendelbach's vehicle was parked and not visible from a standard parking approach.
Footage was not retrieved and is presumed lost.
Crystal Visions (ground-floor business, 40 State Street): Camera with direct
line of sight to the phone-toss location. Never canvassed. Not mentioned in
report.
Law Office Camera (across the street): Exterior camera with documented view
of the trespass site. Never contacted. Not mentioned in report.
Brewery Interior Footage: Requested approximately nine days after the assault.
System had already overwritten the data.
Sendelbach emailed Gilmore the Hennessey affidavit within 18 hours of the
assault. Gilmore had documentary proof of perjury within one day. No footage
was subsequently retrieved to confirm or deny the perjured account.
"Dual HPO" Coaching: Sergeant Gilmore's report explicitly states he "suggested"
the defendants seek Harassment Prevention Orders against Sendelbach immediately
following the assault. This coaching provided the civil counter-filing instrument
used in subsequent proceedings to frame a criminal battery as a mutual harassment
dispute. It is the documented origin of the "terrified victim" narrative.
Outcome: Known evidence sources → not canvassed within the overwrite window
→ objective record of perjury lost → cover story survives to court.
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
PHASE V: STRUCTURAL RESPONSE
(Post-event framing → system behavior)
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Characterization in Official Record: Gilmore's summons report (25SHL-47-AR)
documents Sendelbach's demeanor as "agitated" without noting that the agitation
followed a violent assault, the destruction of his phone, a wait outside a
locked police station while the officer was inside on the phone, and being told
his attackers would not be arrested that night.
HPO Proceedings: Three separate courts (Judge Tolan, March 17, 2025; Judge
McLeod, March 20, 2025; Judge Powers, March 12, 2026) denied Sendelbach's
protection petitions, each starting fresh without reference to Judge Mazanec's
three prior findings of not-credible against the same respondent. All three
denials occurred while probable cause for the November 30 assault had already
been found. The "dual HPO" coaching by Gilmore on November 30 produced the
counter-filing architecture that allowed each court to treat the matter as a
mutual dispute.
Administrative Silence: No internal review of the November 30 investigative
decisions. No review of the Walker letter handling. No perjury referral across
three judicial findings of not-credible.
Outcome: Response shapes narrative rather than record → objective evidence
gone → "terrified victim" framing survives → protection denied three times.
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
PHASE VI: ADMINISTRATIVE ENDORSEMENT (2026)
(Outcomes reinforce prior conduct)
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Merit Raise Request (March 25, 2026): Chief Bardwell submitted a merit raise
request for the department — "fantastic crew" — thirteen days after a federal
judge denied qualified immunity to Detective Jenkins personally in Mlynick v.
Town of Erving et al (3:24-cv-30108), finding it plausible that Jenkins provided
"misleading information" and ignored exculpatory facts to manufacture probable
cause. Raise approved. LaPierre: "well worth it."
April 9 Classification: A violent lyric captioned "this one goes out to my
stalker!" — using the exclusive label applied to Sendelbach in every sworn
proceeding for six years, posted while the sender's parents were on bail for
assault — was classified as a "musical performance" without contextual analysis.
Stay-Away Order (April 7, 2026): The Commonwealth requested and the court
imposed a stay-away and no-contact order protecting Sendelbach from the
defendants as a condition of bail — retroactively confirming the protection
three civil courts had denied against the same defendants with substantially
the same factual record.
Outcome: Prior investigative and administrative decisions are institutionally
validated at the same time the judicial system finally acknowledges the risk
the SPD declined to assess.
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
PATTERN COMPRESSION
Permission → Prediction → No Prevention → Evidence Lost →
Narrative Managed → Behavior Rewarded
Each phase enabled the next. The March 23, 2026 Instagram post is Phase VII
— the next statement in a sequence where every prior statement has been
followed by delivery.
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
END OF EXHIBIT A
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
April 20, 2026
Chief of Police Gregory Bardwell
Shelburne Police Department
623 Mohawk Trail
Shelburne, MA 01370
CC: First Assistant District Attorney Steven Gagne
Northwestern District Attorney's Office
RE: Your April 9, 2026 Response Regarding the Instagram Post
"Part of a Musical Performance" — A Six-Year Record of a Family That
Says What It Will Do and Then Does It, and a Department That Looks Away
