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“Could that be what the world needs? Not dirty truths, not romantic paragons, but stubborn bastards who refuse to move?” Pierce Brown, Dark Age (Red Rising)
Analysis by the Herkimer Post’s Linda Kaidan shows a shortage of affordable housing anywhere near Marcy, NY, epicenter of the Cree Semiconductor Project’s growing impact on the region. Herkimer is no exception. Yet somehow the owner of 328 Pleasant Avenue, Joe Handy of Ft. Plain, can only seem to find criminal tenants. We’ve taken to calling it Joe Handy’s Herkimer thug house. The latest occupants moved in a few months ago, following the departure of the last set of drug thugs from Handy’s 328. As the affable Mr. Handy remarked to us while cleaning up after them, “Wait until you see the next tenants.” Indeed!

Meet Herkimer’s Kim Vargas and Family
Our new neighbors are the Kim Vargas family–aka Kimberly Vargas, aka Kimberly Bormann, her husband Joel Vargas Sr., older son Joel Jr. and a younger boy. They seem to move a lot, most recently from 344 E. German Street. Kim Vargas was barely unpacked before she roared into gang thug domination mode, flaring up about our legion of security cameras, in place for years. Guess she didn’t notice them or didn’t read the surveillance warning signs before signing the lease. It’s the same complaint made by Curtis Doolen, aka Curtis Cool, when he trafficked drugs and kids out of 328 Pleasant and harassed his neighbors on the street and with bonfires.

328 Pleasant Avenue – The Doolen Gang House?
Maybe we should just call 328 Pleasant the Doolen Gang house, given the breadcrumbs that lead from its tenants to the Doolens: Original owner Harriett Tangorra was her longtime tenant Curtis Cool’s half-brother Davy Doolen’s aunt, according to Davy’s wife Emily, an RN and a straight-shooter. Davy and Emily were Tangorra’s tenants before Curtis. (BTW, we like Davy and Emily and their son. Nice young family. Pity you don’t get to choose your family.)
Current 328 owner Joe Handy, though now living in Ft. Plain, has public records showing a connection to 328 Pleasant in 2017 and to an Ilion address. Many of the Doolens also have roots in the Village of Ilion:
Joe Handy’s Addresses from Public Records’ Search

Kim Vargas and Curtis Doolen
Current 328 tenant Kim Vargas is also well-acquainted with Curtis Doolen, given what she said to our mutual neighbors, as captured on our audio the evening our light went on. (See below, audio timeline, Blinded by The Light, minute 2:22) Her husband’s family seem to be from New York and Vineland, NJ, according to background checks; any connection Kim Vargas has to the Doolens is probably via the local Bormann side of her family. (Gangs built upon extensive and extended family must be very hard to infiltrate.)
Curtis Doolen, aka Curtis Cool

Let There Be (More) Light
Based on six years of hard won experience in Herkimer, we added more light on that side of our house–both to enhance the night vision of our cameras (and those of the surveillance drones) and to see if the Vargas’ reaction marked them as friend or foe, straight or bent. Nothing to fear, nothing to hide, right? This isn’t Westchester; in Herkimer, honest people welcome lights and cameras.
We bought another gentle LED light, of the sort we use to illuminate the drug and child traffickers’ sanctuary landlord Jay Smith gifted Herkimer. Smith’s Sanctuary’s on the other side of our house from Joe Handy house. It stopped the poison gas spraying of us from Smith’s side of our property. The gang doesn’t much traffic out of Smith’s Sanctuary anymore–they use the gently-lit parking lot for cookouts and an occasional attempt at an illegal fire.
“The officer patiently listened to Kim Vargas and our other neighbors–representing the Joyce Barton Gang, the Stone-Sykes Gang and unaligned drug traffickers–then advised them that they had no legal right to darkness…
Joe Handy’s tenants prefer darkness to light: Kim Vargas began harassing us from her porch as we were installing the new light. Had to ask the police to have her cease. She only shut it when threatened with arrest. When the little light went live the next day, Kim Vargas wailed she was blinded and led a chorus of like-minded neighbors in streaming complaints and insults, all captured on our surveillance audio.
Kim Vargas promptly called the police to protect her family and friends from blinding. The responding officer patiently listened to she and her neighbors–representing the Joyce Barton Gang, the Stone-Sykes Gang and unaligned drug traffickers–then explained to them that they had no legal right to darkness.
Here’s a June video of the Vargases and their friends, still suffering in the blinding glare from out light on Kim Vargas’s porch, a few weeks after it was installed. The audio portion of the video features their wails of anguish from the night the light first went on in April.
Kim Vargas and Her Blinded Neighbors –
Video Timeline
0:01-0:15 328 Pleasant Avenue’s Vargas family on their porch, after six week’s of blinding by our LED security light. (Light – lower right.)
0:16- End Kim and Joel Vargas hosting other sight-impaired neighbors in our light’s blinding glare.
Audio Timeline – 6 Weeks Earlier -The Night the Light Went On
Audio of 4/8/20 – The light goes on! Kim Vargas leads the wails of outrage.
0:01-0:95 Kim Vargas protests the blinding light. Much cursing.
1:00 – 1:44 Kim Vargas: “I’m callin’ the cops!” (NY doesn’t have a light nuisance law.)
1:45 – 1:48 Kim Vargas: “There’s a camera inside of that!” [The light.]
1:58 Neighbor Amanda across the street at 331 Pleasant. “They put my kids on YouTube.” If that’s Amanda West, her drug running 19 year-old daughter is in two of our posts. NY law permits video recording of any public or semi-public place. “Nothing to hide, nothing to fear.”
2:22 Kim Vargas and Amanda: “Curtis…” Curtis Doolen aka Curtis Cool, now of Richfield Springs. Herkimer gang folk hero. A glad-handing drug and child trafficker free with the crack. Curtis is a previous tenant of 328 Pleasant Avenue. He’s known and revered by many of our neighbors. Heartening that our videos and posts of his criminal harassment of us got him jailed. We are grateful he bears us no ill will for helping make him Herkimer’s worldwide poster child of depraved criminality. (Couldn’t have done it without you, Curtis.)
2:37 “Shianne punched her.” Granny-slugging Shianne Hill, Herkimer’s other worldwide poster child of depraved criminality. Joyce Barton gang thug across the street from us at 333 Pleasant Avenue. Shianne, then 18, punched 64 year-old Linda Kaidan for crossing to the gang’s side of the street. The magistrate was unmoved by Shianne’s assertion that she was disabled and on SSI.
2:55 Amanda: “Red carpet…Broadway…” Curtis Doolen’s, aka Curtis Cool’s, zany criminal antics have been viewed on our blog and Herkimer Post’s YouTube channel by about 15,000 appalled people worldwide.
3:55 Kim Vargas: “Fat old-young kid with no teeth who sits on their (our) front porch.” Our 39 year-old daughter sometimes stands on our front porch, when our neighbors haven’t sprayed it with pesticide. She has excellent teeth.
4:00 Amanda: “They (we) ain’t got no front curtains.” (True.) Kim Vargas: “That’s cause they’re takin’ pictures.” No. Thankfully picture taking is mostly automated. Sadly, viewing and editing is not.
5:29-6:45 Herkimer PD Officer Don Richards arrives in response to Kim Vargas’ 911 call about the blinding light.
5:20 Kim Vargas says she wants “…that light taken down! Bottom line!” Richards listens to chorus of complaints from Kim Vargas and members of the drug trafficking Stone-Sykes Gang and the Joyce Barton Gang: “Blinded…blinded…No right…” Yadayada. Officer Richards speaks with me—he has an air of pastoral calm–and then tells Kim Vargas and our other neighbors that it’s a civil matter, i.e., they have no legal right to darkness. He leaves.
6:30 Whiny male neighbor, probably longtime Jay Smith tenant Shawn C. Thompson at 326 1/2 Pleasant Avenue, next to Kim Vargas’s, threatens to put anthrax in our mailbox. We’ve done what we can to highlight Thompson’s and his chums’ various criminal activities. In fact, we originally bought that light to better capture the nighttime faces of the parade of backpackers in and out of Thompson’s.
6:37 Herkimerpost.com writers Kaidan and Berry rendition of Bruce Springsteen’s “Blinded by the Light” dissolves in laughter.
6:43 – End Our neighbor Kim Vargas graciously given the last word.
Poison Gas Attacks from Joe Handy’s Herkimer Thug House Yard

Backyard overgrowth and Vargas’ tent city protect poison gas sprayers of our yard from our surveillance cameras.Ever since our much cursed light went on in April, our backyard been blasted late every night with pesticides. Poison gas attacks are how the murderous band of our drug and child trafficking neighbors try to drive out people they don’t like. We call it The Herkimer Howdy. Our Herkimer Howdy’s been ongoing for several years now, showered on us in volatilized high pressure streams. The poison’s invisible unless the gang screws up a handfogger’s settings. The pesticides are dispensed by handfogger from adjoining yards, like that of the Vargas’s, or from beneath passing vehicles with specialized dispensers tied into the vehicle’s electrical system, here modeled by the Joyce Barton gang across the street from us.

From the residue of the spray pattern, the attacks were and are coming from Joe Handy’s rental property, tenanted by the Vargases. Vegetation and a tent city erected by the Vargases along the fence line make for lots of cover and concealment along that fence. Our cameras are effectively blocked. We texted Joe Handy, asking for his help and permission to trim some of the overgrown near the fence on his side. He replied he’d come by and we’d talk, and to do nothing until then. Next day we heard him talking with Kim Vargas. He didn’t visit us.
Joe Handy’s Thug House Tenants Assault Elderly Vet (Me)
“I was cursed, threatened with punching, having my teeth kicked in and had coffee thrown in my face –this during a pandemic.
A few days later, I started trimming the overgrowth on our side of the ancient fence. Joe Handy’s thuggish tenants were on high alert–Kim Vargas and her brother-in-law immediately assaulted me.I was cursed, threatened with punching and with having my teeth kicked in, and had coffee thrown in my face–this during a pandemic. The Vargas’s pitbull joined in. I called the police. Here’s the video.
Video Timeline – Kim Vargas -Harassment and Assault of 6.7.20
00:1-00:35 Our surveillance cam footage. No audio. Me hand trimming undergrowth in my yard at 330 Pleasant Ave.
00:40- 01:14 My bodycam footage begins. Audio. Kim Vargas, in yard at 328 Pleasant, confronts me, tells me to stop cutting “my tree”. I am not polite to bullies–she has a history of harassing us. I tell her to call the police if she has any issues with me. She was warned previously by police not to harass my wife and I as we worked on our property. (Driveway light installation. 4/5/20, Officers Crippen and Hill responded.)
01:15 – 02:07 Kim Vargas persists in harassing me. I ask her again to leave me alone and advise her she is bordering on criminal harassment. She does not break off. I try to continue working. Acrimonious exchange continues.
02:07 Kim Vargas brother in-law joins her in assaulting me with verbal abuse, physical threats and obscenities.
02:37 Kim Vargas’ pitbull menaces me, poking its snarling snout through a hole in the fence. I tell her to get her dog out of my yard or I’ll spray him. (Pepper spray.) Vargas responds that if I do, “I’ll knock your teeth down your throat.”
02:45 Kim Vargas’ brother-in-law throws coffee at me through hole in fence, spraying me in the face and also getting Vagas who says, “You hit me too.” Excellent view of both Vargases as harassment continues. Acrimonious exchange.
3:33 I call the police. Kim Vargas’ brother-in-law overhears call, scuttles into house, doesn’t come out until after police officer has left. 911 dispatch advises me to go into my house. I tell them I will be in yard asserting my rights, thank you.
5:14 Kim Vargas threatens to punch me in the face.
6:15 Kim Vargas calls her landlord, owner Joe Handy of Ft. Plain. Tells him many obvious lies.
9:48 – Herkimer PD Officer Jason Crippen arrives. Advises Kim Vargas of the law regarding tree trimming and camera and audio surveillance. She reacts angrily. Crippen cautions her. Kim Vargas accuses my wife of being a pedophile. End of bodycam footage.
13:19 – Our front yard surveillance clip: Police gone, brother-in-law Vargas thug comes out of hiding, paces the sidewalk in front of our home, returns to Vargas’ house. After Officer Crippen left, Kim Vargas went into the house and I resumed trimming.
14:44 – End Me trimming. Audio track: surveillance audio of Kim Vargas and her brother-in-law having a family discussion on the street.
Herkimer’s Dark Social Engineering and Joe Handy’s Herkimer Thug House
It’s obvious to us after six years of close observation that Herkimer’s 328 Pleasant Street’s a place of business, an example of dark social engineering which keeps decent, needy tenants from renting it, while staffing it with traffickers and criminal harassers. No matter whose name is on the deed, the pattern is clear and it leads to the illegal gangs that have so long profited from the misery they’ve brought to what was once a happy and prosperous village along the Mohawk.
Happily, the rapidly changing demographics of America are ringing the Herkimer gangs’ death knell. Upstate New York’s become a refuge, short on housing and long on need as folks pour in, driven by disease and climate change and the desire for a better life. Prices are soaring, construction is booming. Prosperity kills gangs and prosperity is at hand.
Joe Handy’s Herkimer Drug House – Kim Vargas Livin’ The Good Life (Videos)