One of the more perplexing property crimes in recent Charlottesville-area history has been resolved after a prominent Shenandoah Valley couple agreed to plead guilty to lesser misdemeanor theft charges after they were caught last fall taking a fur coat that didn’t belong to them from a local country club.
Susan and Geoffrey Rieser of Waynesboro accepted a plea agreement Thursday that found them guilty of stealing a woman’s mink coat from a late November wedding at the Farmington Country Club just west of Charlottesville city limits. But not without a dose of defiance.
"The Riesers decided to move past this case receiving exaggerated, harmful, and unfair media attention, sooner rather than later, in the best interests of their children and family," their lawyers wrote in a joint statement to The Daily Progress.
Inside Albemarle County General District Court, the pair seemed more contrite, or at least more nervous. They sat together at the end of the first row of the gallery facing the benches reserved for courtroom lawyers and exchanged whispers and exasperated expressions. Susan Rieser rested a hand on her husband’s leg, intermittently tilting her head back, eyes closed, as they waited to be called.
Once summoned to the front, things moved quickly as prosecutor Tyler Sande revealed that a plea deal had been reached calling for each to accept a petty larceny conviction and 12 months of jail time, with all of it suspended.
"I’m going to accept those pleas and find you both guilty on your stipulations," said Judge Robert Downer, who was hearing Thursday’s case in place of the court’s usual judge.
The lawyers and the prosecutor agreed that it was an Alford plea, one that accepts that the commonwealth possesses facts sufficient to convict, but allows the defendants to maintain their innocence.
"Not guilty with stipulation of facts sufficient pleas are safety valves in highly contested cases," wrote the lawyers, David Heilberg and Thomas Weidner IV. "These spouses assert their innocence."
That’s not what the investigator asserted.
On Nov. 16 of last year, a wedding was underway at Farmington when a surveillance camera captured a guest taking an interest in a coat stowed under a table.
In a written report, Albemarle County detective Cody Young contends that a man moved the coat to a chair and later handed it to his wife, who allegedly tried it on and then left the event after folding it over an arm.
Susan Rieser, 40, was charged with grand larceny. Her husband, 42-year-old Geoffrey Rieser, was charged with conspiracy to commit larceny. Both are felonies that can bring substantial jail time.
The wife is the veterinarian in charge at the Augusta Regional SPCA. The husband is an orthopedic surgeon with Shenandoah Valley Orthopedics and Sports Medicine in Harrisonburg.
After the judge accepted their pleas, the first-time offenders and their counsel quickly exited the courtroom and beelined to the clerk’s window to pay the court costs: $91 each. The deal calls for a year of good behavior and 20 hours of community service.
The two lingered inside until, looking pained, they emerged from the courthouse, with Susan Rieser tightly crossing her arms while her husband kept his hands in his pockets.
The couple declined a Daily Progress interview request, as did their victim.
The closure of the case means that the surveillance video, which might have played a key role at trial, is not part of any court file. The general manager of Farmington, Joe Krenn, declined to discuss the case with The Daily Progress.
The case caught the attention of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, PETA, whose officials have suggested that if the cruelty behind the mink trade were better known, then mink would fall so far from favor that nobody would want to steal it.
"The rightful owners of this fur are the animals whose backs it was torn from," PETA spokeswoman Ashley Byrne told The Daily Progress. "Those are the only victims in this situation."
Byrne said it can take as many as 100 minks to make a full-length fur coat like the one taken from Farmington. She added that before the animals are killed, they’re deprived of aquatic features that constitute their natural habitat and are instead trapped in small cages that can literally make them go crazy.
"The real victim in this case," Byrne said, "regardless of what took place in the court, is the mink who should be alive and well."
Daily Progress reporter Caroline King contributed to this story.
Source: www.dailyprogress.com
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