HAGERSTOWN - In the blink of a neighborhood called Huyetts Crossroads, the man's house seems alive. A garden hose seems ready to water. A double-bowled cat dish appears ready to feed. The lawn looks recently mowed in customized lines. The Sunbeam thermometer - with a deer's likeness on the big dial - displays a temperature of 100 degrees. By the back door, a sticker says, "Active Supporter of Maryland Fraternal Order of Police."

John Roy Ward lived on this dead-end street until June 30. On July 1, he was found dead on his kitchen floor with multiple wounds to his back and the back of his head. "A search of the property revealed a 22-ounce Coors Light beer bottle behind one of the four outbuildings," the police report said. The beer bottle helped police quickly make a case against two local men arrested for the slaying and robbery of Ward.

This was not the work of master criminals. Neighbors took to calling the two suspects "Dumb and Dumber" for the highway trail of evidence they allegedly left behind. Dumb, greedy and evil, neighbors say.

Ward was an easy target. He was 87. He was legally blind. He walked with a cane. He was a thin man with thin hair who lived alone. Ward was widowed in 1997 when his wife of 53 years, Catherine, died. Since her death, Catherine was all he talked about - when he talked, neighbors say. She was the outgoing one, a woman who loved her flower garden. He was a keep-to-himself man, a machinist by trade.

For five years, he lived in the only house on South Huyetts Lane, the house where Catherine died in her sleep. He had only a cat for company.

"The cat was so traumatized it wouldn't come out of the attic, and it was over 100 degrees in there," says Cpl. Otis Whitaker, the Maryland State Police officer heading the homicide investigation.

For Ward's survivors, mainly a daughter in Hagerstown and a sister in Florida, his death was a personal loss, and not something to discuss with a reporter. For others in the community, it was a reason to be scared. A neighbor of Ward's, 85-year-old William Byers, now keeps a loaded shotgun by his bed.

Byers, who owns a farm across Route 63 from Ward's property, has been married 56 years.

"I told Ruby this makes our decision easier," Byers says. "When one of us dies, the other is not going to live here by themselves. You'd be very stupid to try to do that."

In the middle of nowhere, rotten, dimwitted crimes happen. But this one crossed the line with a community. A widowed, nearly blind man was bludgeoned to death for his lawn mower, a pair of Timex watches, cash and deer meat. People who wouldn't ordinarily talk to the police came forward to help with information. Others started locking doors and loading guns and eyeballing any strangers walking along the street. Huyetts Crossroads started talking to itself: The old man couldn't see well enough to have identified his killers. Why not just tie him up? Why beat him to death?

The old man on the lawn mower is gone. And his neighbors came to learn once again that nowhere is safe and nothing stays the same.

Sunday, June 30

It's becoming rare for grown children to live near their parents. But what a source of comfort, familiarity and convenience. John Ward's daughter, Sharon Blickenstaff, and her husband, Danny, live up Route 63 from her father's home. She called her father twice a day and would drive him to the grocery store. Other days, her father would drive his mower to the Cross Roads Liquor store on U.S. 40 to pick up a bag of chips or some other things. His poor eyesight prevented him from driving a car, so the red riding mower was his only wheels.

At the liquor store, he'd pass along to the store owner the women's catalogs that still came addressed to his wife. Then he'd drive his mower back home. On any given day, anyone who frequented the store might have seen Ward there, and maybe noticed the direction he took home.

In 1950, John and Catherine Ward had moved to Huyetts Crossroads, four miles west of Hagerstown. Route 63 wasn't where it is today. Ward, a Hancock native, worked as a machinist for an ironworks company and was a weekend cattle rancher; he had six acres, where he kept maybe four head of steer in the summer months. His young daughter would play with William Byers' daughter. The two men became friends - not hunting or fishing pals but more the kind of neighborly friends who exchange favors. In all their years as neighbors, they never shared a meal.

"I'd have to call him a friend," Byers says. "But he was not a guy you go over to see. Not much excitement in his life."

Ward didn't swear or drink. Very conservative fellow, Byers says. His friend didn't hunt, fish or travel. But he was always there if you needed something - even if he kept to himself for the most part. A man has a right to be that way.

At 6 p.m., Sharon Blickenstaff called her father. He said he was just taking a pot pie out of the oven and was going to sit down and watch television. Sunday was a good TV night. At 8 p.m., Ward made a point of watching Touched By An Angel, a drama featuring religious, inspirational stories. Before bed, Ward would lock up, making sure to lock the home's storm door.

Earlier that day, a man went into Cross Roads Liquor on two occasions. He was described as short, muscular and bald. According to police records, the store's cash register tape would show the customer bought three 22-ounce bottles of Coors Light. At 6:44 p.m., the store's surveillance camera recorded a Chevrolet Chevette traveling on Huyetts Lane in the direction of Ward's house. That was odd, since cars rarely went that direction.

Around 7:30 p.m., two men entered the 40 West Lounge on Route 40. The shorter of the two men, "the bald one," was a regular, says bartender Stephanie Yentsch. He always drank Coors Light and told tales of women or some story about driving his car into a grocery store. The bartender would pay his nonsense no mind. The man was described as being "a little slow" mentally.

That evening, the bald man gave another regular at the bar a package of deer meat. A name was written on the butcher's wrapping: Danny Blickenstaff - Ward's son-in-law. The bald man left, then returned around 11 p.m. with other items, Yentsch says. He offered to sell her a push lawn mower and trimmer. She bought both for just $20.

That night at 40 West Lounge, the bald man, identified later as Robert Steven Robinson, drank a Coors Light and had a snack. "What blew my mind was that he had the nerve to come into the bar that night and eat," Yentsch said a week after the killing. "I made him french fries."

Monday, July 1

New week, same old chores. John Ward might have been due his usual $5 haircut up the road at Betty's Beauty Salon. The owners there always mowed a path between their adjoining properties so Ward could more easily walk to get his haircut. They had cut Catherine Ward's hair for years. She cut them fresh flowers from her garden.

John Ward had a dentist appointment at 8 a.m., so at 6 a.m. his daughter called the house to remind him. No answer. She tried again. No answer. Blickenstaff and her husband drove to the house, discovered the storm door unlocked, and entered the home. She noticed cabinet and desk drawers thrown about.

In the kitchen, on the floor, she saw her father. She must have seen the blood. Danny Blickenstaff called 911. At 8:35 a.m., a forensic investigator pronounced John Ward dead.

In the attic, Ward's cat was still hiding. Eventually, detectives were able to give it water, and Ward's daughter took the cat home.

Two men's Timex watches had been stolen, along with a woman's gold wedding ring, a woman's watch, some tie clips, one ruby ring, a push lawn mower, a Homelite trimmer, an undisclosed amount of cash, and wrapped deer meat. The police report noted the Timex watches had large faces with big black numbers. Easier to see. The value of the stolen property was assessed at more than $500.

The deceased might have been struck more than 20 times, police said. A tire iron had been used.

Later that day at Cross Roads Liquor, "the bald guy" from the day before reportedly came back and bought more beer. Something felt creepy about him, store owner Debra Wyant said. The man asked Wyant if she would go in the back and get a Coors for him. She balked, telling him to get it himself. In her parking lot, she noticed his car. Wyant told her son to go out in the parking lot and take down the tag number of the Chevette. She was shaking, she remembers.

On Route 40, Dave Sprankle works at Richard Wilbert's Vault Co., which for years employed Ward as a cement mixer for the burial vaults the company manufactures. The younger Sprankle looked out for Ward. "Every year," Sprankle says, "he'd call me up and ask me to come out and put up his awnings." The old man, Sprankle remembers, knew his yard so well he could probably mow it in his sleep. He loved taking care of his yard.

That's Sprankle's lasting memory - that and the fact that some bald man and a bigger guy with a beard tried on Monday, the day after Ward's death, to sell him some farm tools out of the back of a pickup truck at the nearby Sheetz gas station.

From the liquor store, Wyant saw all the police cars at Ward's house on Monday morning. "I assumed he passed away," she remembers thinking. "I never dreamed anyone would kill him."

Seeing the official cars, William Byers - a foot soldier in World War II - walked from his farmhouse to the liquor store, where a deputy broke the news: Somebody had killed Mr. Ward, and it was "real ugly" down there.

"I imagine it was," Byers said.

Wednesday, July 3

The trail never got cold. Less than four days after the killing, detectives arrested two local men: Cousins Robert Steven Robinson, 42, nicknamed "Magoo" for his bald head, and 47-year-old Otho Wayne Robinson, nicknamed "Grizzly" for his unkempt appearance. Before his arrest, Robert Steven Robinson had been interviewed by police in the parking lot of Cross Roads Liquor. He had returned there several times since the slaying.

The men were charged with first-degree murder, first-degree assault, first-degree burglary, robbery and theft of more than $500 - namely the jewelry, farm equipment and deer meat.

The cousins are longtime criminals in the area. Both have been arrested and jailed numerous times for theft, assault, battery, burglary, breaking and entering, forgery and obstruction of justice. Wayne Robinson had been charged nine times with theft alone.

People around town knew them. An informant told police that on the night of Ward's killing, Robert and Wayne Robinson were at the Sheetz gas station. Robert said he was "going to rob a man," but Wayne allegedly stayed at the gas station alone. An hour later, Robert returned and told Wayne he "had a guy come at him with a knife and he hit him over the head with a tire iron and stabbed him," the police report said.

Police added up the evidence: the informant's information, the deer meat and the mower and trimmer changing hands at the 40 West Lounge, the cash register receipts for Coors beer and the discovery of a Coors bottle on Ward's property, the liquor store's video surveillance of the Chevette traveling toward Ward's home on June 30. To the relief of Huyetts Crossroads, the arrests were made.

Catherine Ward's wedding ring was not among the stolen property recovered.

Friday, July 5

At 6 p.m., services began for John Ward at the Gerald N. Minnich Funeral Home in Hagerstown. The Rev. William Wyland of the Broadfording Bible Brethren Church officiated. Fifty years younger than the deceased, he had never met Ward. That wasn't so unusual. But this was the first time the young pastor had officiated for a homicide victim. "Hopefully, I won't have to do it too many more times."

How does someone in his position deal with such a circumstance? One focuses, Wyland says, on the long life of a married couple, John and Catherine Ward. "They really had a great life."

Whether someone is 2, 25 or 87, any death symbolizes a life cut short, Wyland says. Indeed, 87 years suddenly feels short-lived. There's another point Wyland makes on the occasion of any passing: "Are we ready to face death?"

The Wilbert Vault Co. donated a vault for Ward's service. Employees are entitled to the "Monticello" vault, says vice president James Farley. From the company catalog, the "Monticello" style is described as an entry-level, single-reinforced burial vault. In his time, Ward probably mixed the cement for a hundred such vaults.

"He always told me to take care of things when he died. I'd always say, 'John, you ain't going nowhere for a long time,' " Dave Sprankle says. He personally affixed a name plate and military emblem on the vault of John R. Ward, World War II veteran.

"I took care of the old man."

The Days After

Behind the only house on South Huyetts Lane, a sickly green Plymouth Valiant is parked. Coins are pooled in the ashtray. A dented pack of Marlboro Lights is on the back seat. But the man who owned the house couldn't see well enough to drive anymore. Also, the black mailbox by the road reads "A.J. Newcomer." But that's not the name of the man who lived here.

Can you blame people for trying to keep the curious away? Can you blame family members for trying to stop people from looking through a window and seeing, what? A figurine of praying hands on a dresser, its bulb still burning?

There in the yard, a shed. Ward's wife and daughter ran a Christmas crafts shop from there years ago, back when they had their other cat, Ebony. Catherine always gave the kids in the neighborhood holidays toys, such as nutcrackers. While Ward could be cranky, he didn't mind if kids rode their bikes down his street and made a little noise. Some neighbors make a fuss over that.

Now, a final look around John Ward's yard. No cat. The summer cattle are long gone. This is the first year he didn't have a garden - perhaps it had become too much work. Not enough rain anyway. The grass looks brittle. Nobody here to do it now, but sooner or later the man's yard will need to be mowed. Maybe that much can stay the same.