Remorseful Vandal Atones With $1,500 Cash

PAINESVILLE, Ohio —  A vandal who spray-painted several vehicles and homes as a teen-ager decided to right the wrong 11 years later--anonymously, with $1,500 cash.

“I have been saving this money little by little as I could afford it,” said the unsigned letter received last week by Lake County Prosecutor Charles Coulson. The money was neatly organized, with five $20 bills placed in each of 15 blank envelopes.

Ten to 15 vehicles and homes in Madison Township were vandalized in April, 1984.

“Three friends and myself committed an act of vandalism of which I am very much ashamed. I was 16 at the time,” the writer said. “We got our hands on some beer and proceeded to get real stupid.”

“Why I participated and how much I participated, I don’t remember,” it said.

The writer said one of the other vandals dies in an automobile accident last year, another had become a police officer and the writer had lost touch with the third.

Coulson said the money will be distributed to the victims, whose names were retrieved from police records so old they had to be dug out of storage in a dilapidated barn.