Home has long been sanctuary in an uncertain world. Especially in Bedford and its neighboring communities, the iconic suburban home seems to promise, realistically or not, a certain insulation against life’s harsher intrusions.

Not in the year just past. In ways large and small, in episodes of unspeakable horror and banal thievery, an ill wind crossed a number of thresholds in 2011. A look back at crime—major, minor or simply interesting—shows a recurring truth: be it ever so humble or exquisitely grand, home, for some, was no place to hide.

Last week we published the stories Patch readers returned to again and again, making those headlines the top ten stories on the site in 2011. Here, we bring you a look at some of the darker headlines of 2011.

1. Home front

Despite a pending divorce, Bedford Hills lawyer Samuel Friedlander still lived with his estranged wife and their two young children in a high-end if heavily mortgaged home in Cross River. But for more than five months, as his family slept quietly apart from him, Friedlander lay his head down each night keeping a deadly secret: in April, shortly after losing custody of the children, he had traveled to Yonkers and quietly purchased a shotgun and shells. His Remington Model 870, a 12-gauge, pump-action shotgun, is popular for self-defense as well as for police and military uses. At the same small shop, All Counties Sporting Supply Inc., Friedlander also bought two boxes of 00 buckshot.

For the rest of the spring, all summer and into early fall, Friedlander kept the brutal weapon and his plans, if any, strictly to himself. Even on Oct. 17, in likely the last daylight of his 50 years, Friedlander seemed his normal self, those who saw him later recalled.

At Lewisboro Elementary School, 10-year-old Molly Friedlander left her fifth-grade class for the last time. She and her brother, Gregory, 8, a third-grader, headed for home, where mother Amy, 46, a onetime Chase Bank vice president, now tutored high school students to help with family finances.

It’s unlikely anyone will ever know with certainty just what happened after the sun set that night on the Friedlander family. The state police, responding the next afternoon to a worried call from Amy’s partner in the tutoring enterprise, found their bodies in separate parts of the house—Amy, beaten to death in her bedroom, and the children shot, in their beds.

With shotgun in hand, Friedlander descended from the third floor to the unfinished basement, There, with the acrid taste of the shotgun’s muzzle in his mouth, Friedlander let the Remington speak for a third and final time that night. While this story has long faded from today's headlines, its repercussions will be felt by locals for years to come.

2. Home alone, with armed intruders

A mile away and two months later, at 51 East Lake Drive, a tony retreat overlooking the Cross River Reservoir in Katonah, a firearm once again shattered the illusory security of a home in the suburbs. This time, however, it was a handgun, and a thug, one of two who confronted a woman in the house on Dec. 10, was wielding it.

The thieves tied up the 42-year-old woman, locked her in a bathroom and burglarized the home, escaping with an undisclosed but what police call a “significant” amount of loot. Police quoted the woman as saying she eventually managed to free herself and call them for help, shortly before 8:30 p.m.

By year’s end, the Bedford police continued to develop leads but offered few details, including just what was stolen, how long the woman had been bound or her reason for being  in the house. The police do not have a description of the robbers, who wore masks, or know for certain how they fled.

“What we are asking,” police Lt. Jeffrey Dickan said at the time, “is for anyone who lives nearby or in the area to report any vehicles they may have seen, any unfamiliar people acting suspiciously in local stores or gas stations, between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. that night.”

The home, which the town calls a $6.5 million property, was built in 2005. It sits on a cul-de-sac at the end of a street that includes other luxury homes overlooking the reservoir.

3. Smoker gets his butt kicked

Crime, of course, travels effortlessly. Like a breeze off the reservoir, it touches homes that sell for millions or rent for a fraction of that. In May, that ill wind surprised a Hillside Avenue resident. Enjoying a midnight smoke outside his home, he fell victim to a group of young men who pounced on their prey, punching and kicking him. The Katonah man, who said he recognized his assailants, was later treated at Northern Westchester Hospital for his injuries.

After an investigation, Bedford police first arrested a 17-year-old North Salem resident and an 18-year-old South Salem resident at the BOCES Tech Center in Yorktown on May 19. They arrested a third suspect, a 19-year-old West Harrison man, on May 27 in White Plains. All were charged with second-degree assault, a B felony. In addition, the two older suspects were hit with charges of first-degree gang assault and first-degree burglary causing physical injury, a B felony.

4. Unlocked cars beckon to thieves

Given the heart-wrenching tragedy in Cross River or the sheer terror of an armed home invasion, reports of thefts from cars come almost as a relief. Still, the losses are real, and when one neighborhood reports more than a dozen in a day, the crimes seem more than random. They also provide a cautionary reminder. On Feb. 17, for example, more than a dozen callers reported car thefts in the Meadow Park area of Katonah. Thieves grabbed everything from iPods to wallets and a pair of prescription sunglasses from unlocked cars on.Whitlockville Road, Elm Street, Meadow Lane and Croton Lake Road.

Bedford police Lt. Jeffrey Dickan delivered the reminder. “We want residents to know about these larcenies, and to be aware that all of the thefts took place in unlocked cars,” he said. “There were no forced entries into the cars, and in many cases, valuables were left in plain view.”

5. A sinner returns

Crime sometimes manifests itself as nothing more than a lengthy shadow, moving unbidden through a neighborhood, recalling a long-ago affront to community sensibilities. While the return of David Ohnmacht, a convicted sex offender, to Katonah was not a criminal act in 2011, the move recalled a dark time in the town's past and caused dozens of families to gather at a town meeting to discuss the conditions of his residency. Ohnmact was living in Katonah with his parents in 2002 when he was arrested for, among other offenses, raping and sodomizing teenaged girls. He had met some of them while working as a 22-year-old birthday party DJ, ice cream truck driver and camp counselor.

Convicted, Ohnmacht went to prison for eight years to pay for his crimes. But any thought that hard time upstate would bring redemption back home was mistaken. Paroled in November as a Level 3 sex offender, he moved into 126 Harris Road in Bedford Hills, accompanied by a slew of restrictions and a large dose of community outrage. Residents packed a sometimes-raucous town hall meeting to discuss Megan's Law, which requires authorities to alert the public to a registered sex offender’s presence.

Ohnmacht, to be sure, has supporters, who attribute the negative reaction largely to a pitchfork-and-torches frenzy inspired by the media, police and politicians.

As for Ohnmacht himself, the now-31-year-old insists he’s no danger to the community, telling a television interviewer that incarceration had been accompanied by extensive work in prison treatment programs.

Nevertheless, Ohnmact’s conditional parole comes with several restrictions. “He cannot have a driver's license, he has a curfew, he is subject to polygraph testing and he cannot own a computer or access the Internet,” Carole Weaver, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, said. “He’s also prohibited from contacting any of his victims or anyone under the age of 18.”

6. A suspect returns

Jose Toapante, 39, returned to New York in September, extradited from North Carolina to face charges that he sexually abused a 15-year-old Bedford Hills girl in February. After learning that Toapante had left the area, Bedford police issued a warrant for his arrest. Brought back and charged with a third-degree criminal sexual act, a felony, has been held in the county jail since Sept. 20. He appeared in Bedford town court this week and is scheduled to return next Thursday.

7. The Polish priest chronicles (cont’d)

Looking back at the 2011 police blotter, allegations of financial misdeeds appear minor among the major reports of personal mayhem. A year after the arrest of Vickram Bedi, accused of bilking Roger Davidson of Katonah out of millions in a pulp-fiction con, a grand jury in November indicted the Chappaqua man on a first-degree grand larceny charge. Only the latest installment in a long-running, zanier-than-the-movies melodrama, the indictment followed a plea deal late last year by Bedi girlfriend Helga Ingvarsdottir and a collapse in Bedi's own negotiations with the prosecutors.

By pleading out, Helga, 40, avoided a trial that could mean as much as 25 years' hard time. Vickram, 37, now faces trial alone—and the potential for the same quarter-century door prize. For his part, Bedi has steadfastly maintained his innocence, insisting that Davidson, the heir to an oilfield fortune, willingly gave him the millions.

In 2004, Davidson—a composer more comfortable at a piano’s keyboard than a computer’s—feared a virus had infected his laptop and took it in for repair. At Datalink, a Mount Kisco computer service shop, proprietor Bedi soon learned of customer Davidson's wealth. To tap into that fortune, police charge, Vickram and Helga spun a tale in which the composer was in personal peril. Their story, featuring Honduran nationals, CIA agents and predatory Polish priests, was apparently credible enough, police say, to fleece at least $6 million from Davidson.

8. Shock probation

The owner of a Bedford Hills physical therapy business, guilty of defrauding the county of more than $850,000, must repay the money and spend time behind bars, a Westchester County Court judge ordered in November.

Lisa Bruno, 38, pleaded guilty in March to felony charges of grand larceny, unlicensed practice of a profession and a scheme to defraud. The Westport, Conn., woman was ordered to pay back the money she stole between July 2005 and February 2009. Bruno paid up-front restitution of $300,000, forfeited $57,000 in outstanding fees and negotiated payments for the balance. Her sentence also includes shock probation, an indeterminate stretch in the county jail that’s shortened after inmates undergo “boot camp.”

Under a contract with the county, Bruno’s business, Care Point Services, was supposed to provide the services of licensed physical and occupational therapists. Instead, Bruno billed the county health department for services by licensed therapists while knowing they were unlicensed.

9. Extra!

In what one victim called “a sign of the times,” Charles Mattiello of Katonah was swiping newspapers from other stores last spring to sell in his South Salem deli.

Alerted by local business owners, police mounted an early-morning video surveillance on April 2. After Mattiello, 62, helped himself to the day’s headlines at the Katonah Service Center on Bedford Road, he was pulled over on Route 35. A search found $12.75 in stolen newspapers, police said. They quoted Mattiello as later admitting to taking copies of The New York Times, the Daily News and Oggi, valued at $155 from the Bedford Hills Deli and Dee's Variety in Bedford Hills.  

Michael Gasperino, owner of the Bedford Hills Deli, while grateful not to be losing any more papers, also sympathized with a fellow small-business owner owner’s plight. “It’s a sign of the times, for sure,” he said. “I’m sure he’s a nice guy and was taking a hit like we all are in this recession.”

But, Gasperino noted, “We’re pinching pennies too.”

10. Taking a byte out of crime

Computer-controlled license plate readers mounted on Bedford’s police cars can read a thousand plates a minute and notify police officers whether a car is stolen, has a suspended registration or, in extreme cases, is being driven by someone who has committed a serious crime.

In July, for example, a police car equipped with the mobile technology sounded an alert that a Putnam Valley woman was driving with both her license and registration suspended. The woman was driving on Harris Road around 8 in the morning when the specially equipped patrol car automatically read her license plate, compared it in milliseconds with a state list of motor-vehicle suspensions and squawked an audible tone to the police officer. The automatic license-plate readers, or LPRs, also respond in real-time to criminal complaints like amber alerts and stolen-car alarms.

The LPR was installed on a patrol car in July 2009 but was out of commission for six months after an accident. The car is now back in service, and has proved a valuable asset, Lt. Jeffrey Dickan said. “In the last year and a half, the LPR led to 578 hits, 14 out-of-state positive hits, one stolen car recovered, and 38 arrests,” he said. “Without it, those arrests would not have been possible.”

Bedford bought the LPR for $22,000 though a state grant. The department is seeking funds to purchase an additional unit.