Con a former cult member
Jeffrey Brown’s trail of deceit extends beyond a Taunton home to Middleboro and Lakeville where he had ties to the New England Institute of religious Research.
The Enterprise Newspaper
Terence J. Downing
Sept. 2ooo
Air Force veteran Jeffrey F. Brown is charming, witty, intelligent, a super chess player, can fix just about anything and is a great cook.
But police say he skillfully used those traits to prey upon the kindness of others and has allegedly left a trail of deceit, deception and theft in Taunton, Middleboro and Lakeville.
“He’s a con man,” said Taunton Patrolman Jayson J. LaPlante.
Taunton physician Philip Stebbins and his family found out the hard way about the real Jeffrey Brown, who befriended them last spring.
Brown, of 115 East Grove St., Middleboro, is wanted by police for stealing thousands of dollars in goods and checks from the Stebbins’ who opened their home to Brown and tried to help him turn his life around.
“He violated our trust,” said Stebbins. “I feel like an idiot. At first I felt sorry for him, but not after I found out that he also stole some very personal family heirlooms.”
Stebbins and his wife met Brown in May through a mutual acquaintance in Middleboro. Brown had been staying as a guest with a woman and her son, helping the woman maintain her bed and breakfast.
The Stebbins’ were married in May and some wedding guests who came in from out of state stayed at the Middleboro home.
Brown, 50, had become somewhat well-known over the past year in Middleboro and Lakeville through his ties to the New England Institute of Religious Research, a new group that rehabilitates former religious cult members.
The director of the organization is Rev. Robert T. Pardon, former pastor of the First Congregational Church in Middleboro and Philips Congregational Church in Watertown.
The organization is planning to set up a 25-bed halfway house in Lakeville, where they are remodeling the former Meadow View Nursing Home on Crooked Lane, a quiet residential area off Main Street in Lakeville.
Pardon said the facility, the first of its kind in the country, plans to offer short-term counseling and treatment for cult refugees to help them get back on solid ground and start new lives as productive citizens.
Pardon said he was trying to help Brown, who had broken away from a cult called the Twelve tribes in Buffalo, N.Y.
Pardon described the Twelve Tribes as a “high control” religious group.
“Our greatest desire is to help people who have come out of these high control religious groups,” said Pardon. We were trying to help Jeffrey. But he apparently didn’t want to be a part of it and didn’t want our help anymore and has taken off, hurting a lot of people. Jeffrey is a big talker.”
Pardon said he came to know Brown through some people he knows in New York.
Stebbins said Brown needed a place to stay during the summer while the group home was undergoing renovation.
Being Christians, Stebbins and his wife offered to take Brown into their home as a live-in caretaker.
“He came with a good recommendation and I thought they had done a background check,” said Stebbins.
Brown moved in with the Stebbins family in June at their spacious Colonial home in the upscale Nichols Mills subdivision in Taunton’s west end.
Brown was an instant hit with the family, the Stebbins children and neighbors during June, July and August. He also got along well with Ulrich Hanselka, a foreign exchange student who was staying with the Stebbins family.
“He was a great house guest. He cleaned, he cooked, cut the grass, painted the decks. He could fix just about anything,” said Stebbins, a family practitioner. “One of my neighbors offered him a job.”
Brown was also a marvelous chess player, who turned many neighbors onto the game of chess.
“There was talk of starting a neighborhood chess club,” said Stebbins.
Brown showed them pictures of his Air Force days and time spent in Vietnam. He said he had a son and was from the New York area.
Brown was the center of attention at the Fourth of July neighborhood block party and cookout.
“I looked over and there were 20 kids gathered around him. They loved him. He was teaching how to play chess,” said Stebbins.
Brown celebrated his 50th birthday with the family and Stebbins let him drive his car.
Brown is also a severe diabetic and Stebbins was helping him with the condition. Stebbins said Brown is a “brittle” diabetic, which means his blood sugar fluctuates wildly.
Stebbins said Brown was polite, outgoing, charming, very intelligent and seemed to be working hard to get his life back together.
“He was too outgoing and too smooth for you to ever think that he had been in a cult,” said Stebbins. “He seemed like anyone else.”
Stebbins even spoke on Brown’s behalf as a “character witness” at a meeting in Lakeville where some neighbors voiced opposition to the proposed halfway house.
“Some of the neighbors said they don’t want those kind of people here, and I said what do you mean those kind of people,” said Stebbins.
Stebbins said someone from a television network had contacted him about how to reach Brown and doing a story about the group home.
Stebbins said Brown never showed the slightest signs of being sinister or having any drug or alcohol problems. He went to church with them in Easton.
In early September Brown moved into a trailer at the 2.5 acre Lakeville site of the group home where renovations were under way. He had also found a job at Ocean Spray in Middleboro.
Stebbins and his wife were planning to leave Sept. 13 for a 6-day vacation and they asked Brown if he wanted to housesit for them.
“It’s better than living in a trailer,” said Stebbins.
Brown agreed and the Stebbins’ left for their vacation, feeling assured their home was in good hands.
Six days later, as they were preparing to board the plane to come home, they got a call that their home had been robbed.
The foreign exchange student discovered the theft who then called them immediately.
Brown allegedly made off with stereo equipment, cameras, jewelry, hospital credit union checks and other items, including Philip Stebbins coat.
Stebbins said that as the days have gone by, he is still discovering things missing.
“Every time I do I feel like I’ve been robbed all over again,” said Stebbins.
Brown allegedly forged one of the checks and cashed it for $400 at the Morton Hospital Credit Union and tried to cash checks at his bank in Middleboro before a stop payment order was put on them.
Brown allegedly bounced many checks during the past few months in the Middleboro and Lakeville area and people may have loaned him money.
Patrolman LaPlante, who is working with Detective David Charboneau on the case, said he tried to intercept Brown at Ocean Spray in Middleboro on Sept. 20, but a security guard said he had picked up his check and left.
Police believe Brown has left the state. Taunton Police have two warrants out for his arrest on multiple charges of larceny over $250, forgery. He may face additional charges in Middleboro and Lakeville.
Stebbins said he feels badly for Rev. Pardon, who is working hard to get the program off the ground.
Pardon said Brown should not be any reflection of the program. He said Brown was not going to be a resident of the program and would not have qualified based on his attitude.
He said prospective residents will undergo psychological testing and background checks.
Pardon said group support and counseling will be the focus for its attendees, who come from all over the country. Fees to attend will be on a sliding scale basis depending on the person and their circumstance.
Pardon said the program is about a year from getting under way. Lakeville town officials are cautious and Selectmen chairman Chawner Hurd said the board is awaiting word from town counsel on whether such a facility needs a license.
Stebbins said he wants to see Brown to ask him why he threw his life away and why he turned on them.
“I just want to ask him why,” said Stebbins.
Stebbins said he now recalls something odd that Brown said as Stebbins’ son was leaving for college.
“He told my son to watch out for the chess players in Washington Square. He said they can be con artists and hustlers.”
Stebbins said the entire ordeal has shocked the quiet Nichols Mills neighborhood, where the only prior crime reported was theft of someone’s tulips.
“I got burned,” said Stebbins.
However, Stebbins said that if he had another opportunity to take someone into his home to help them, he would. He said it would be under more stringent conditions, including a background check and not leaving the person home alone.
“I’m a Christian and it is the right thing to do. That is why we participated and that is why we’d do it again,” said Stebbins.
