Former Church Secretary Faces New Criminal Charges

by ERIC FRANCIS

HERALD CORRESPONDENT | March 20,2015

 

 http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20150320/THISJUSTIN/150329997

 

WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — A former Springfield church secretary faced new criminal charges this week after she allegedly lied about money problems to get money from church parishoners. 

Holly Aldrich, 48, of Springfield, who has also been known as Holly Jagelski in recent years, pleaded innocent this week to three misdemeanor counts of false pretenses before she was released from the courthouse in White River Junction on pre-trial conditions. She is the former secretary at the rectory of St. Mary’s Catholic church in Springfield, who police say used her personal connections to people she knew through the church - some of whom remembered her from nearly three decades ago - in order to get money from them under false pretenses. 

Aldrich had already been facing two felony counts of forgery, charges to which she entered innocent pleas last June, after a local small business owner and a church acquaintance of Aldrich’s reported to police that she’d gotten into their vehicles on unrelated occasions and stolen blank checks. Springfield Police say that Aldrich forged signatures and wrote in hundred dollar amounts on each of the checks before managing to cash one at a convenience store and being turned away from a credit union with the other.

The latest charges allege that at the beginning of this year Aldrich approached a series of churchgoers with the same story, saying that her husband had just left her, taking all of her money except for a $10,000 certificate of deposit which she could only retrieve from her bank by paying a $140 fee upfront. The victims said Aldrich promised to promptly repay them within hours once she’d supposedly withdrawn the larger sum.

Chester Police Detective Matthew Wilson wrote in an affidavit filed with the court that in January he received two complaints from townspeople who said they’d given Aldrich the $140 she said she needed only to have her disappear on them and stop taking their calls.

Wilson said he soon “found surrounding towns were reporting the same type” of fraud scheme was allegedly being perpetrated by Aldrich.

“Weathersfield Police Chief William Daniels stated he’d had numerous reports (about Aldrich) with the same exact scam,” Wilson wrote in the court paperwork but he also noted, “Chief Daniels said a that a lot of his victims were shy about pressing the issue.”

Wilson noted that his counterparts at the Springfield Police Department have also opened their own parallel investigation into complaints about Aldrich allegedly carrying out “numerous scams of the same nature” in their town as well.

Aldrich, who has no prior criminal record, faces a maximum potential penalty of up to 23 years in prison if she were to be convicted of all of the charges now outstanding against her.