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A street watches bizarre changes

They call the Sheriff's Office, the DCF, the School Board. Nothing could be done until his arrests.

By NICOLE JOHNSON
Published January 31, 2005

OLDSMAR - On Cypress View Drive, Aida Severini shows up with a covered dish of spaghetti when someone needs comforting. Diane Clark's PartyLite get-togethers are a time for the girls to unwind. And Derrick Cain has the best deck for Friday night cocktails.

Ask anyone in this Oldsmar neighborhood of 136 pastel stucco homes why they live here, and they'll tell you the same thing.

"Everyone sticks together and it makes you feel extremely safe," Cain said.

Then, one night a few years ago, the floodlights flickered on at 520 Cypress View Drive after midnight.

A camouflage-painted Hummer appeared in the driveway.

The kids living there were playing outside during school hours.

With each odd occurrence, neighbors say a layer of the security they thought they had found in the sleepy suburb peeled way, until all that was left was fear.

It ended last week when police arrested neighbor David Vice on charges of knowingly manufacturing a hoax weapon of mass destruction. They say he terrorized Oldsmar by leaving letters with white powder in neighbors' mailboxes and at a rental car company, putting a fake hand grenade at a post office, and placing a suspicious object at a Holiday Inn Express. He remains in Pinellas County Jail on $75,000 bail.

For 32 hours, sheriff deputies patrolled the entrance to the subdivision.

"We bought into the the idea that this was a place we didn't have to worry," said Ken LaCroix, who moved here from a tough neighborhood in Boston.

Instead, he and others faced every homeowner's nightmare: What do you do when a David Vice lives next door?

* * *

In a neighborhood of transplants from New York to Texas, David and Lisa Vice fit in when they moved here in 1998.

"All the girls would do girls nights out and Lisa would come," said Clark. "For the most part, they seemed normal in the beginning."

Lisa was a stay-at-home mom. The couple's four boys, now ages 9 through 15, went to public school.

"He used to come over and drink beers," Cain said. "We would sit around and talk about different things like any guy in the neighborhood would do."

In 1999, after Vice quit his job, the neighbors said, his behavior changed. The family's financial picture took a turn for the worse, too.

Vice had purchased a black Corvette and a military-issue Hummer, and he spent late nights working on it.

"He got flaky, sitting out front all day, smoking, drinking Pepsi, telling his kids about Muslim beliefs," LaCroix said.

Vice, who was involved in a Christian student group in college, started touting the tenets of Islam, neighbors said.

In September 2002, the family packed up and left for Utah. They stayed in Moab at a free campsite off the interstate.

Back at home, neighbors grew concerned. Mail was spilling out of the mailbox, and the children hadn't been seen at school. An attendance specialist with the school system left her business card on the family's door, according to police reports.

"You don't see them the next day, and the next day, and the next thing, you're like, "What is going on?"' said Cain.

The family had kept the trip secret, even from some of their own family. Lisa Vice's sister, Lori Ewing, reported her missing on Nov. 5, 2002.

Ewing could not be reached for comment.

After neighbors called, deputies visited the empty house and then returned seven times to check on the house. Clark said neighbors also called the School Board and Department of Children and Families.

"They'd say we'd look into it," LaCroix said.

Andy Ritter, spokesperson for Florida's Department of Children and Families, declined to comment, citing confidentiality.

When deputies checked on the home on Thanksgiving Day 2002, the family had returned. Lisa Vice said it had gotten too cold in Utah.

Their return with a homeless man they met in Arizona and his dog did little to squelch worries in the neighborhood.

"I thought to myself, this is how everything starts," Cain said. "It starts out very small, like someone throwing rocks through people's windows, taunting them, and then they do something big."

* * *

A few months after returning, Cain said, David Vice walked up to him in his yard and told him that he should ask forgiveness of the Lord for his service in the U.S. Marines.

"I told him if I need to ask for forgiveness I could get on my knees, that I didn't need a middleman," Cain said.

In December 2002, neighbors called the Sheriff's Office about Vice's barking dogs. When deputies arrived, Vice had set up a tripod and videocamera in the middle of his driveway. He instructed his wife to tape the deputies as they approached his home. When Vice refused to stop taping, he was handcuffed. But he was not given a citation.

News of the incident spread throughout the community and increased the sense that all was not well.

Months later, Cain said, Vice began walking around the neighborhood in a long white robe.

"We were sort of becoming numb to the things he did," Cain said. "It was like we really couldn't do anything about it. We had called and called."

Though Vice's behaviors were odd, they were not criminal, said Tim Goodman, spokesman for the Pinellas Sheriff's Office. If they were, deputies would have arrested him.

Then in May 2004, Cain and others received hoax neighborhood association newsletters that stated that if speeding did not stop, "you know what will happen." It described Cain and other neighbors in categories such as "Best Dressed" and "Biggest Loser."

Cain suspected Vice and called the Sheriff's Office. Deputies recorded the incident in a "hot file" about Vice, which had been created because visits to his home were frequent and contentious.

That file was the reason deputies grew concerned on Sept. 11, 2004, when Vice was seen speeding on Tampa Road. When a deputy ran the plate, Vice's name came back as a person with anti-law enforcement ideology.

That day, Vice would crash his car into MacDill Air Force Base. When arrested, he was wearing a green flight suit and the sides of his head were shaved. Authorities found a laptop computer, ammunition and anti-government leaflets in his car.

During questioning at MacDill, a shackled Vice talked about "serving his God called Yah."

Vice was charged with fleeing and eluding the police and served about 30 days in jail. He pleaded no contest and was given two years' probation. It was Vice's first felony offense.

The punishment is considered common for a first-time offender, said Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe.

Lisa Vice had taken the children and left Oldsmar before the MacDill incident.

When Vice was released in October 2004, Lisa returned with their children.

Neighbors who had hoped their problems were over were alarmed. "They thought he was gone," said Oldsmar Mayor Jerry Beverland. "I know I didn't want anyone back in this town that would do something like that."

Parents in the neighborhood told their children not to play with the Vice children anymore. Going inside the Vice house was off-limits too.

What neighbors didn't know was that Vice's finances were crumbling. After filing for protection from creditors in January 2003, he stopped making payments on a bankruptcy plan. His case was dismissed on Jan. 11, just days before authorities say he went on a rampage.

Lisa Vice could not be reached for this story. She continues to live in the house.

Looking back, residents said they did everything they could do to protect themselves from David Vice. They've stopped asking what more they could have done.

Instead, at last Thursday's homeowners association meeting, the conversations focused on regaining the type of security that makes it okay for their kids to play outside on Cypress View Drive past sundown.

--Nicole Johnson can be reached at 727 771-4303 or njohnson@sptimes.com

[Last modified January 31, 2005, 08:01:38]