Sex-Threats Case a Nightmare for Wrongly Accused Youth : Justice: Christopher Reichardt lost his freedom, his parents lost their home over what police now concede were false allegations.

Sometimes, late at night, Christopher Reichardt wakes up in a cold sweat and stares wildly about his darkened cell. Then he realizes he’s been dreaming again.

“I have these nightmares. I think I’m back in jail,” says the husky young man, the son of a purchasing agent for a large aircraft manufacturing firm.

He runs a hand through his dark, close-cropped hair and drags deeply from his cigarette.

“Usually, when that happens, I get up and take a shower,” he said. “I know I won’t be going back to sleep. I’ve even left the house at 6 a.m. and gone to work at my landscaping business, just so I’ll have something to occupy my mind.”

George and Elizabeth Reichardt nod knowingly as they listen to their 25-year-old son talk. They know all about his dreams, and about the lingering effects of the two-year nightmare back in the Hartford suburb of Manchester, in an upscale neighborhood of designer homes.

It began in the fall of 1988 when a woman across the street accused Christopher--then a brash, immature 19-year-old--of calling her on the telephone and making obscene sexual threats.

Within weeks there were more complaints, and police cruisers were rolling past the house on a regular basis. Sometimes, the cruisers would stop and the neighbors would gather and watch as a handcuffed Christopher was led away on yet another charge.

Soon, a petition was circulated in the neighborhood. Its aim was to drive the Reichardts from their home.

Although the family has since moved to this small town, “my heart still stops every time I look out the window and see a police car coming down the street,” Elizabeth Reichardt said recently, placing her hands over her heart for emphasis.

Father, mother and son were seated around their kitchen table, recalling what it was like to be treated as social outcasts by former friends.

“The neighbors were convinced I was a monster,” Christopher said in an interview after he recently won a settlement from his accuser.

Christopher’s story began on the morning of Oct. 18, 1988, six days after his 19th birthday. It started with a telephone call from Manchester Police Lt. Paul Lombardo. The policeman wanted Christopher to come down to the station that afternoon, but wouldn’t say why.

Christopher was something of a problem kid back then. He drove too fast in his souped-up yellow Dodge, a cause for concern in a fancy neighborhood full of children. On top of that, he’d become involved with a married woman down the block. There had been an ugly scene with the woman’s husband.

He called his attorney, who advised him not to go to the police station.

But what Christopher didn’t know was that a third person was listening in on his conversation with Lombardo: Nancy Kelley, a slender, 35-year-old woman who was a partner in a local insurance company and was politically connected in Manchester.

Kelley, a reclusive woman with prematurely white hair and pale blue eyes, lived across the street from the Reichardts. She was at the police station that morning to discuss a series of obscene calls she had begun reporting a month earlier.

Lombardo immediately thought of the troubled youth who lived across the street from Kelley.

As the detective spoke with Christopher, the eavesdropping Kelley confirmed his suspicions: “That’s him,” she said.

A few days later, Lombardo and another detective showed up at the Reichardts’ front door.

“They said, ‘You’re under arrest and you’re coming with us.’ That’s all they said,” Christopher recalled.

He was charged with making a harassing telephone call, a misdemeanor. The next day Christopher met with his attorney.

“My lawyer told me I had been accused of making obscene calls to Nancy Kelley. My reaction was, ‘Who’s Nancy Kelley?’ ”

But he got to know that name all too well in the coming months.

Kelley called police repeatedly to complain about Christopher’s behavior. She accused him of coming into her yard and waving a chain saw at her. She also said he tried to run her down with his car.

But the telephone calls to Kelley’s home had stopped. They ceased after police offered to put a tap on her phone line, a suggestion she did not act on.

In April, 1989, six months after he was first arrested, Christopher pleaded no contest to one count of harassment and criminal trespass. He did so on the advice of his attorney and parents, who now say they just wanted to put the mess behind them and avoid the expense of a trial.

Christopher got three years’ probation and was ordered to have no contact with Nancy Kelley.

“We thought that would be the end of it. But we weren’t even close to the end,” said George Reichardt, a Pratt & Whitney executive in Southington.

Three weeks after Christopher’s sentencing, the elder Reichardt, a large, red-faced man, was in jail himself, accused of cursing at Kelley.

“The case never went anywhere, but I still remember what it was like going to jail,” he said. “I’d never been arrested before.”

A few days later, Kelley reported that Christopher was violating his probation and she was afraid he might hurt her. She said he had squealed his tires as he drove past her house, spat at her and tried to talk to her.

A police officer pulled him over as he nosed his yellow Dodge through traffic in downtown Manchester.

“I thought it was just some traffic thing, but the next thing I knew the officer had put a 9-mm. pistol to the side of my head and told me to get out of the car,” Christopher said.

He was being charged with violation of probation.

Christopher’s probation hearing began June 21. The very next day, Kelley reported she had begun receiving threatening notes in her mailbox. She said their content was similar to the earlier telephone threats.

Christopher was charged with six counts of tampering with a witness. Then came the worst part.

He was ordered held on $500,000 bond and sent to a maximum-security jail in Hartford.

“During my hearing I kept telling the prosecutor that I had never made any phone calls to Nancy Kelley and had never written her any notes,” he said. “Until that hearing, I had never even actually seen her, face to face.

“To make a long story short, the judge didn’t believe me.”

Christopher was returned to jail on a reduced bond of $50,000.

He was locked in a windowless cell for all but 10 minutes of each day. He was let out only to take a quick shower and make a telephone call.

“I sat and wondered why everybody thought I was a liar,” he said. “Here I was, a 19-year-old kid up against a 35-year-old woman who owned a business and knew all the politicians in town. I have to admit it, I thought about killing myself.”

Christopher’s mother, who works as a visiting nurse in the Manchester area, became frantic when her son was placed on a 24-hour suicide watch.

In early July, a prison psychologist called Elizabeth Reichardt and told her he was worried about Christopher, who had lost more than 20 pounds and was distraught.

The Reichardts went back to court and the judge agreed to let the family send their son to a private psychiatric hospital.

After two months of treatment, Christopher was released and placed on probation. The judge ordered him not to go within three miles of his old neighborhood for the next three years.

Christopher went to live with an aunt in a nearby town and his parents put their house up for sale. They started looking for a new home where their son could live with them.

But Nancy Kelley was not done. She said she had begun to receive yet another series of threatening, handwritten notes.

This time, though, the Manchester police started watching her movements.

Lombardo, the police lieutenant, finally began to get suspicious. He decided the notes contained information Christopher had no way of knowing and also didn’t match his handwriting, although the police earlier had said that the samples did match.

But the Manchester police decided to make one more effort to connect Christopher with the notes. They got a search warrant and paid the Reichardts a visit.

“The raid came in early November,” Christopher said. “My parents had only been in the house a couple of days when they showed up.”

Christopher was on pins and needles during the next three weeks. “I was sure that, at any minute, a cruiser would pull up and I’d be hauled off to jail again.”

The dreaded cruiser never appeared. Instead, Christopher received a telephone call from police, who wanted to see him.

“When I got to the police station, Detective Lombardo took me into a private room and told me that the police knew for certain that I had not written those notes,” he said. “I just looked at him. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.”

In January, 1990, Nancy Kelley admitted that she had written the second batch of notes. She said she did it because Christopher had been released from the hospital and she was terrified. But she denied writing the first batch.

She was arrested and charged with 16 counts of fabricating evidence and 16 counts of falsely reporting an incident, one count for each note.

In August, 1991, a Manchester Superior Court judge found her innocent by reason of insanity on nine of the counts and ordered her sent to the state mental hospital for treatment. The seven other counts were dropped.

She was released after three months and was placed under court supervision for 15 months.

The charges of witness tampering against Christopher were dropped, and the record of probation violation was stricken.

When Christopher demanded an apology from the police, the department spokesman issued this statement:

“We didn’t do anything wrong to apologize for. We regret that he was put in an unfortunate situation for a crime committed by another person, the accused, Nancy Kelley.”

In May, 1990, the Reichardts sued Kelley for damages.

A few weeks ago, Kelley’s insurance company agreed to pay Christopher Reichardt $500,000 for the trauma he experienced. The agreement includes establishment of a $50,000 trust fund to pay for any further psychiatric treatment he may require.

Christopher remains bitter. He says he thinks Kelley was given preferential treatment by the police.

Kelley, who still lives in Manchester, won’t discuss the case.

But her attorney, Michael Whelton, continues to maintain that his client was a victim.

“I’m still convinced that Christopher Reichardt made those threatening telephone calls,” he said.