Founder of Area Arts Center Kills Wife, Then Wounds Self

Chalies Farmer, head of an industrial designing firm, shot and kilind his wife yesterday and then shot himself in the chest in what was described as a dispute over continued financing of the Berkshire Cultural Center in Middlefield.

The strange, cursed estate built by the Johnson & Johnson bankroll pictured in New Jersey. In 1924, J. Seward Johnson, the second son of J&J co-founder Robert Wood Johnson, married Ruth Dill, sister of Diana Dill (an actress and mother of actor Michael Douglas). As a wedding present for Ruth, Seward built a castle on a magnificent plot above the Raritan River in Highland Park. The idyllic setting was named Merriewold, meaning “merry wilderness.”

The home, boasting 150 leaded-glass windows, 11 fireplaces, arched passageways, ramparts and two turrets, was finished in 1926. Spiral staircases are hidden in the walls and a swinging bookshelf conceals a liquor cabinet, a convenient feature for a Prohibition-era home. Unusual details like plaster reliefs of sea creatures, including whales and lobsters, decorate the exterior.

The castle’s residents proved to be doomed: Over the years, the Farmers grew to despise one another. Charles accused Barbara of having an affair with art-deco sculptor Waylande Gregory. He claimed the two were building an occult center for practicing black magic in Massachusetts; in reality, it was to be an artist colony called the Berkshire Cultural Center. Charles secured a court order restraining Barbara from entering the home by August 1963. On September 18, Barbara made a pre-arranged visit to the home in the company of her attorney to collect her belongings. Charles confronted the pair in the master bedroom and shot Barbara three times with a .32 caliber pistol, then turned the gun on himself. Charles lived through his attempted murder-suicide; his estranged wife was not so lucky. After his recovery, the Superior Court deemed Charles unfit for trial and sent him to a state hospital for the criminally insane.

The center, had three buildings on a 100 acre wooded lot, and was almost complete, according to Waylande C. Gregory, a well-known New Jersey sculptor.  The Farmers had a married daughter, who was in the house at the time of the killing, and two . young adopted sons. They had sent of the sons to summer camp at Cranwell and that’s the Berkshire connection.

According to Mr. Gregory, between $150,000 and $200,000 was spent on building the center.  “We were ready to operate and would have started this year already if this hadn’t happened,” Mr. Gregory said. Courtesy Berkshire Eagle

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