Roswell officials concerned by Chicken Man-related bomb, death threats

Roswell officials increase security at City Hall

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  • Joeff Davis
  • The front of Andrew Wordes former home in Roswell



In this week’s cover story about Andrew Wordes, the 53-year-old Roswell man who blew up his home and himself on March 26, we quoted a friend who said, “If there are ghosts, Andrew will haunt Roswell.”

That friend is among many who believe the City of Roswell is complicit in the death of Roswell’s Chicken Man - that police and code enforcement officials bullied Wordes until he finally took dramatic action and ended his life. The evidence suggesting that Roswell paid special attention to Wordes isn’t unconvincing, but in the piece we allowed you to make your own judgement. Other news sources (mostly blogs and websites) have been more eager to pass judgement, running stories with headlines like, “City of Roswell, GA, bullies Andrew Wordes to death over his backyard chickens.”

And Roswell is certainly being haunted.

According to the AJC, the city has increased security at City Hall in response to threatening emails and phone calls - “threatening to kill people, threatening to blow the building up,” according to a city spokeswoman - that have been received since Wordes’ death ...
Starting Wednesday, visitors to the municipal offices and courts no longer can use the front entrance. They must come through a special door and pass through a metal detector. A police officer mans the security post, and video surveillance records all visitors.

Apparently, plans to ramp up security had been in place for a while, but threats related to Wordes’ case expedited the process.

Another development: Blogger Maggie West Bean of the Fulton County Buzz Examiner discovered that a man named Arnold Wall is behind the mysterious IRA that purchased Wordes’ mortgage and later evicted him. As we reported in our piece, Wordes and his attorney planned to file an improper foreclosure suit based on the fact that the foreclosure notice he received didn’t provide the mortgage holder’s contact as required by Georgia law, and only listed an IRA account and the investment company that set up the account. The former mortgage holder, an elderly woman named Dora Hardeman, has said she was pressured by Wall to sell the mortgage.