The Quigleys dispute that, charging that the Aronsons planned to set them up by instigating unneighborly confrontations and then attempting to document them on film or tape.
That has never been proved. Yet the Aronsons appear to have had a working knowledge of recording equipment and a history of eavesdropping on their neighbors that at least raises doubts about their claims as to how they happened to tune in to the Quigleys.
Candice Aronson's father is Sherwood Ross, a member of the family that founded Ross Bicycles. Although the company was enormously successful for a time, it declared bankruptcy several years ago and has since been sold.
In 1993, after a 43-year marriage, Sherwood Ross's wife, Barbara--Candice's mother--died of cancer. A week later Candice and her father opened a joint account with Barbara's estate. In June 1994, according to a lawsuit filed in Florida, Candice ordered the account frozen.
Sherwood Ross's name did not surface in Colorado until early this year. That's when the Quigleys listed him as a witness prepared to testify against Candice Aronson's character in her criminal case against the Quigleys.
Because of the contentious family lawsuit filed in Florida, Sherwood Ross's willingness to question his daughter's credibility in a Colorado court should be viewed skeptically. But he also was prepared to testify that Mitchell Aronson had told him the couple liked to listen in on their neighbors' conversations when they lived on New York City's upper East Side.
Unfortunately for the Quigleys and Joy Mudd, Thomas learned all of this late. On January 20, six weeks after he'd accused the three of ten separate hate crimes, Thomas announced he was dropping the charges. "Our office had no business to continue to pursue the charges," Deputy DA Jensen explained to reporters later that day.
"It turns out that [the Quigleys'] intent was not racially and ethnically motivated," Thomas says now. "This was a neighborhood dispute, and some of the comments were made in a humorous vein. When that kind of doubt exists, we have an obligation, ethically, to drop the charges. Listening to the tapes, you got nuances, emotional stuff that doesn't come across in the transcripts.
"Obviously, in hindsight, you could call this a mistake in the way we handled the evidence," he says, adding that it might have been a "better practice" to listen to the tapes rather than rely on the transcripts prepared by the Aronsons. "But it was a matter of `Why duplicate something that's already been done?'"
The DA's action left only one of the original charges remaining. That was the felony-menacing count that William Quigley faced for allegedly threatening Candice Aronson with his car, the initial incident that set off the entire sequence of events. If convicted, Quigley faced three years in prison and a $100,000 fine.
On July 14, however, the Jefferson County District Attorney's office announced that it had struck a deal. Instead of being tried for the relatively serious crime of menacing Candice Aronson, William Quigley, while admitting no guilt, agreed to accept a charge of reckless driving. On July 17 he paid a $330 fine to settle the misdemeanor traffic violation.
