PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • February 23, 2026
Stephen Antonson is one of the most scorned men to summer in Maine. The Brooklyn artist came to the public’s attention after he was credibly accused of poisoning a half dozen of his elderly neighbor’s trees in 2022 so he could get a better view of Rockland harbor from his own home. Although Antonson has never admitted responsibility for boring holes in the trees and injecting a deadly herbicide, the state’s Board of Pesticides Control is prepared on Feb. 27 to accept a settlement in which he acknowledges that “a court could find that he committed the violations.” His penalty? A $3,000 fine. Antonson’s neighbor, Ruth Graham, died two years ago. According to her son Steven, the incident caused her “a great deal of distress” in her final years. A $3,000 fine amounts to “pocket change found under the sofa cushions,” in the words of Douglas Cole, chair of Rockport Parks and Beautification, who noted that to charge so little for trespassing and destroying a neighbor’s land sends a message “that crime does pay.”