Link Buyers show interest in confiscated home
By Joan Stroer jstroer@onlineathens.com
One widow's tragedy is another person's treasure, it seems.
Police phones rang Friday with prospective home-buyers expressing interest in a $20,00 Athens house drug officers confiscated Thursday from Fannie Gresham, an 82-year-old widow accused of allowing illegal drug sales there.
Barring court reversals, the state now owns ''Ma's House,'' a tiny home on Julius Drive with a well-tended patch of collard greens in the backyard. Proceeds from a sale will be shared by police and the Western Circuit District Attorney, but Athens-Clarke Police Chief Jack Lumpkin said the rare step of home forfeiture was not taken for money.
A neighborhood watch group pushed for the government seizure after Gresham, known to neighbors as ''Ma,'' turned a deaf ear to warnings from friends, neighbors and police, Lumpkin said. Police predict more such seizures as they go after the drug trade in some of Athens' troubled neighborhoods.
''Miss Gresham has been warned numerous times,'' Lumpkin said Friday. ''The issue is for the neighbors to have some peace of mind, and a crime and drug-free neighborhood, where they're not threatened by drugs.''
Some 29 incidents of drug activity were noted by police at her property since 1992, and authorities say drug dealers were caught numerous times fetching drugs from the house for street sales.
Based on that, and police claims that the elder Gresham was helping her son's alleged operation, visiting Superior Court Judge Stephen Boswell issued a court order in December allowing the seizure. Gresham's son, 50-year-old Tommie Gresham, was arrested Thursday during the raid on a charge of possession of cocaine with intent to distribute.
Boswell gave Fannie Gresham 14 days to move her belongings out of the small house, which she and her husband, Tom, built in the 1950s. Tom Gresham died in June. A hearing to delve into the facts of the case is scheduled for February in Clarke Superior Court.
Jim Smith, an attorney for both Greshams, said he plans to appeal the forfeiture of Gresham's home to the Georgia Court of Appeals, and he claims her son is innocent of Thursday's drug charge. The elder Gresham was away during the seizure, and is now staying with relatives. Smith described her as ''frail,'' and ''upset'' over the loss of her home.
''They're taking property without any factual basis whatsoever,'' he said. ''That's all she owned.''
How dare those neighbors want a drug free neighborhood. Those Nazi's. /sarcasm
BTW would you like to have this lady and her crack dealing son as your next door neighbor?