An island man has been named as one of two alleged perpetrators in the March 2018 hate crime against the African Meeting House in a civil lawsuit filed in Nantucket Superior Court by attorneys representing island residents James Barros and Rose Marie Samuels.
The man has not been charged criminally in the case by the Cape and Islands District Attorney’s Office, which is the lead law enforcement agency investigating the hate crime.
Given the fact that this is a civil case with unnamed accusers and no one has been criminally charged, Nantucket Current is not naming the person accused of the hate crime at this time.
The explosive accusations in the new civil complaint include an allegation that island resident Jeffrey Sayle told the Nantucket Police Department the identity of the perpetrator all the way back on June 17, 2019, just two days before the case was turned over to the District Attorney. Sayle was previously indicted by a grand jury and pleaded guilty in March to reporting a false crime in relation to the African Meeting House investigation.
The amended complaint also claims Sayle was in possession of the spray paint can used by the perpetrator during the hate crime, and that it had subsequently been turned over to State Police working with the District Attorney’s office. If true, it would be the only known physical evidence from the crime obtained by investigators.
The latest development in the case stems from a new deposition in the civil court proceedings of an unknown individual who provided information that led the attorneys for Barros and Samuels to identify the alleged perpetrator. It’s not clear if it was Sayle or another person who was deposed by attorneys for the plaintiffs, and the new accusations in the complaint are based on “information and belief.”
The civil rights lawsuit, originally filed back in January, was amended on Friday based on the new deposition to accuse the Nantucket man, along with another “John Doe” of the hate crime in March 2018 in which the African American Meeting house was defaced with racist graffiti, as the words “N***** Leave” were written in spray paint across the front door and a phallic symbol drawn on the wall.
Sayle employed the alleged perpetrator of the hate crime, according to the complaint, and that person confessed their role to Sayle the very morning the racist graffiti was discovered, on March 11, 2018.
A few days later, the alleged perpetrator told Sayle where he had hidden the black spray paint can used during the crime, and Sayle later retrieved it from the person’s basement, the complaint states.
More than a year later, Sayle allegedly told Nantucket Police Department Deputy Chief Charles Gibson the identity of the perpetrator on June 17, 2019. Within two days, Nantucket Police Chief Bill Pittman announced at a Select Board meeting that the case was being turned over to the District Attorney on June 19, 2019, as he acknowledged that there had been accusations in the community of a cover-up.
The original civil rights lawsuit filed back in January by Barros and Samuels alleged that members of the Nantucket Select Board, along with Town Manager Libby Gibson and Police Chief Bill Pittman, violated their civil rights during a Select Board meeting on March 11, 2020. The lawsuit claims Barros and Samuels had their right to free speech abridged during the meeting in which both attempted to express their frustration with the lack of progress in the investigation into the defacing of the African Meeting House two years earlier. Barros and Samuels allege in the lawsuit they were unable to exercise their free speech rights due to “threats, intimidation, and coercion.” That part of the lawsuit has been separated from the complaint directly related to the crime at the African Meeting House in a ruling by Judge Douglas Wilkins last month. Wilkins also allowed one count against Select Board member Dawn Hill Holdgate to be dismissed.
