A feisty 82-year-old Uptown woman was hauled to court for spray-painting a fence built by her next-door neighbor a high-ranking federal prosecutor as part of a raging dispute over the property line between their brownstones.

Great-granny Sylvia Kordower-Zetlin has been warring with Arlo Devlin-Brown, the newly appointed chief of the Public Corruption Unit in the Manhattan U.S. attorneys office but prosecutors say she crossed the line when she tagged the backyard fence that separates the properties on W. 113th St.

The octogenarian was arrested June 22 and charged with making graffiti.

Its an ongoing dispute, Assistant District Attorney Justin Chung said at the criminal court arraignment Wednesday. The defendant was going onto what the complainant believes to be his property and refuses to stop coming over.

Thats why the fence was put up in the first place, Chung added.

Devlin-Browns wife, Daniela Kempf, says the senior citizen has been harassing her family incessantly, turning their idyllic Morningside Heights yard into a minefield.

We have a beautiful home and we would enjoy it a lot more if she werent making our lives hell, said Kempf, a professor at Barnard College.

She takes pictures of us whenever we come outside, added Kempf, who lives with Devlin-Brown and their children, ages 7 and 5. She gets on a ladder (and) yells, Bastards! Bastards!

Kempf said the fence was erected entirely on her familys lot but Kordower-Zetlins lawyer told the criminal court judge she was simply preserving the boundary lines.

This is an absurd allegation, said the lawyer, who is also her son-in-law, Jonathan Reiter. My client was completely in the right. The fence is actually partially on the defendants property and she marked that fence . . . to prevent the complainant from acquiring prescriptive rights by adverse possession of her property.

See the article here:
EXCLUSIVE: Woman, 82, arrested for spray-painting fence

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