U.S. Marshals Seize Estate Over Bank Loan

U.S. marshals on Saturday seized a 14-acre estate where a couple had been holed up in a fight over an unpaid $1.6 million bank loan, ending a nine-month standoff.

Marshals removed John Sweeney from the main house of the estate - where he had been barricaded since June - and took control of a 300-year-old cottage and a barn.

The estate once belonged to Sweeney’s great-grandfather, who was a secretary of the Navy, postmaster general and an ambassador. Sweeney and his wife, Rhetta, contend that they were misled by the bank that granted the original loan, and that the federal government does not have jurisdiction to foreclose on or seize the estate.

At one point, anti-government militia members allied themselves with the Sweeneys and patrolled the estate, 20 miles outside Boston and a few miles up the road from the fox-hunting and polo grounds of the Myopia Hunt Club.

Last week, Rhetta Sweeney slipped off the property and went to Washington where she lobbied lawmakers for help in the dispute. Instead, she was served with a court order barring her from returning to the estate.

That left her husband to defend the house alone.

“I’m unarmed, but I won’t leave,” he said by telephone Saturday.

Six or seven people who had been helping the Sweeneys left willingly on Saturday morning, according to Dunne.

Federal officials say the couple’s defaulted 1987 bank loan eventually was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and that the government has owned the property since 1994. The government also said the Sweeneys owe $1.4 million in taxes.