Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 92668 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92668 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
His sister dying twenty years ago didn’t matter.
He was never going to be able to look objectively at it.
All things considered; Guy had one hell of a motive to get rid of Declan Tierney.
I put the link to that article in a Word document so I didn’t lose it and moved to the next on my list.
Finding information on Michael Swann was a bit harder. A lot of what was online was about Swann Farm—PR bullshit about how wonderful it was, how it was a top ten attraction in Norfolk, all that kind of stuff.
No information actually on him, though, which was a bummer. I guessed most of that would probably have to come through hearsay, but maybe my search criteria wasn’t quite tight enough. Betty had been the one to offer his name, and she’d said the police were called out to the farm, so surely there was a record of that.
I did a bit more snooping and found what I was looking for. Again, the Fox Point Post had reported on the incident.
How hard would it be to make friends with someone there? They seemed to know everything, and they were coming through for me today.
POLICE CALLED TO SWANN FARM; NO ARRESTS MADE
Aw, bummer.
Police were dramatically called to Swann Farm on Wednesday evening around 7.30pm. Michael Swann, owner, and Declan Tierney of Tierney Construction Ltd were held by police and released in the early hours of yesterday morning.
The Post understands that Mr Tierney recently purchased a small block of land adjacent to the Swann’s property and the two men have been involved in a dispute over the boundary.
Mrs Antonia Thomas, who passed away in 2019, sold the property to Mr Tierney in 2016 and stayed on as a tenant until her death. Mr Tierney argues that the boundary is wrong due to an adverse possession claim on the Swann’s land.
The field in question was rented by Mrs Thomas for a year in 2003 to exercise her granddaughter’s horse when Pinewood Stables closed down. Mrs Thomas’ property consisted of old farm buildings suitable to house the horse, but she no longer owned enough land to provide her granddaughter with the showjumping apparatus she needed, resulting in the Swann family coming to an arrangement with Mrs Thomas. The fence that previously separated their properties had been irreparably damaged in a storm a few months prior, according to someone who knows the families.
When Pinewood Stables reopened under new management three years later, the horse was returned to the stables as the Swanns had expressed interest in recovering the land for their own equestrian interest. However, they never rebuilt the fence along the boundary, and their own riding school was ultimately opened elsewhere on their farm.
Mrs Thomas continued to care for the land, keeping the hedges trimmed and the grass cut, including paying her gardener to do the maintenance when she was no longer physically able. Mr Tierney claims that care continued until three weeks before her death when she was admitted to hospital.
The field in question is reported to be a little over two acres. Mr Tierney told the Post he was unaware of the potential adverse possession claim until Mrs Thomas’ affairs had been settled as he’d given the family time to grieve.
“She was a good woman, and I didn’t want to force her family to rush their way through sorting her belongings,” Mr Tierney told us when we reached out for a comment on the matter yesterday afternoon. “They’d just lost the matriarch of their family. They needed to grieve.”
Ha!
What a fucking snake.
If only he really felt that way.
“It was only after we did the end-of-tenancy handover that her granddaughter made me aware of the situation regarding the field behind the house. She had copies of all the legal documents, and she’d discovered all the receipts in her grandmother’s files. I contacted the gardener to ask him if he’d also maintained the land, and he was able to confirm to me in writing that he had.”
This led Mr Tierney to seek legal advice about an adverse possession claim. He argues that Mrs Thomas’ maintenance of the land past the expiry of the contract means she was in possession of the land for over ten years, therefore she had a claim to it prior to selling the property—a claim that ultimately passed to him on completion of the purchase.
The construction giant thinks she didn’t know about it.
“She might not have been aware of the laws surrounding adverse possession,” he told us. “Many people aren’t, but it’s my job to know. It’s always best to settle these things amicably, which was why I went to visit Mr Swann to see if we could discuss it between us. When it became clear that a conclusion could not be reached, I informed him I would be seeking legal advice to make an official claim for the land, and he became aggressive. His wife called the police to report me for trespassing, and regrettably, Mr Swann and I were involved in an altercation outside their house.”