Well Now something totally different. Time to move into someone elses home. What a moron!

Odd ploy lands in Hepburn’s back yard
Peggy Schenk, Register Staff
03/21/2006


OLD SAYBROOK — The new owner of the late Katharine Hepburn’s home in Fenwick couldn’t have guessed who might be coming to dinner on Sunday.

Frank Sciame, who purchased the house from the Hepburn estate about a year ago, wasn’t home when a man and woman in a pickup truck pulling a trailer full of furniture drove up and apparently attempted to move into the waterfront mansion, according to police.

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Sciame was not the only one in for a surprise. Police said the whole thing was an elaborate plot to break a girlfriend’s heart, the old show-her-your-new-mansion-then-break-up-with-her ploy.

A neighbor in the exclusive neighborhood of posh seasonal and year-round homes thought something was amiss when she saw the truck and two other suspicious vehicles near the Hepburn house. She called 911, police said.

Responding to the scene, Lt. Michael Spera said he saw the truck driving in a circle and pulled it over. The driver, Jose M. Raposo, 38, of the northeastern town of Chaplin, "said he was moving into his new house," said Spera.

"When I asked him which house he was moving into, he pointed to Katharine Hepburn’s house," he said.

"I really was having difficulty believing their story," said Spera, a lifelong resident of Old Saybrook, where the Hepburn family had spent summers since 1913, and the late actress lived during her last years.

Raposo, whose unidentified girlfriend sat beside him, told Spera he had lived in the house with his wife for the last two years and was awarded the mansion when they split. But he couldn’t produce any proof of ownership. He said he had keys, Spera said.

In another car was the 19-year-old daughter of Raposo’s girlfriend and the daughter’s boyfriend. The daughter told Spera that they were there to help her mother and Raposo move into the house.

A third car already had gone down the narrow winding drive to the house. In it were two family friends, also in their teens, who said they came to help with the move, Spera said.

"They had boxes marked ‘kitchen,’ ‘dining room,’ ‘kid’s room.’ The car at the house had sofa cushions," Spera said.

"These people were utterly devastated that they weren’t going to move in," Spera said. "He (Raposo) had this lady convinced to perhaps drop her lease and pack up her belongings. When I asked why, he said he wanted to show her the house, tell her he owned it and then break up with her."

The girlfriend told Spera she had moved everything out of her apartment in Danielson and thought she was moving into the mansion. She said Raposo showed her the house a week ago and said they were going to move in this week. She said Raposo told her the workers at the house were landscapers and to leave them alone, Spera said.

None of them were aware that the home had belonged to Hepburn, said Spera. Raposo told Spera he was simply looking for a large home in a nice town with a three-car garage and picked this one.

"The kids (who were in their late teens) didn’t even know who Katharine Hepburn was. They didn’t have a clue," Spera said. "I told them to Google her on the Internet when they got home."

Spera said the keys Raposo had did not open the house, and that the folks had not entered the residence.

"He had no connection with the home. He was just looking for a house with a three-car garage," Spera said.

Spera arrested Raposo on a charge of simple trespass, since no other law had been broken. He was brought to the Police Department and released.

When contacted at his New York residence, Sciame, whose business is building and development, said he often spends weekends at the house, but wasn’t there this weekend. He said he couldn’t comment on the incident, which he learned about from police.

"I don’t know what to say," he said.

But he chuckled at the story, and the thought of having houseguests when he wasn’t there.

Katharine Hepburn, who from time to time was pestered by unwanted sightseers hoping for a glimpse of her at her home, had a wooden sign placed at the end of the driveway that said, "Go away."

"I guess I’ll have to resurrect the Katharine Hepburn sign," he said.


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New Haven Register - News - 03/21/2006 - Odd ploy lands in Hepburn’s back yard