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Cambridge Journal: Revisiting the 'House of Spies'

E-mail|Link|Comments () July 8, 2010 03:02 PM

(Yoon S. Byun of Globe staff)

Cambridge's latest attraction: 35 Trowbridge St.

By Alex Katz, Globe Correspondent

CAMBRIDGE – Gone are the FBI agents and television camera crews that turned 35 Trowbridge St. into the centerpiece of the Russian spy scandal last week.

All that remains is the unassuming gray-shingled townhouse that has melted back into the realm of normalcy so successfully created by alleged spies Donald Howard Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley.

They were no Boris and Natasha. He had a start-up consulting firm, wore Lacoste shirts, and went out drinking with buddies from Harvard’s Kennedy School after class. She was an agent—real estate, that is. Their two sons attended private school and played hockey and soccer.

Defense attorney Peter Krupp said the complaint affidavit more or less “suggests that they successfully infiltrated neighborhoods, cocktail parties, and the PTA.” If it was a ruse, it seemed to work, and nowhere is this more evident than at their home on Trowbridge Street, where they had moved in weeks before their arrest after living down the block at 111.

Neatly groomed shrubbery surrounds the front of the house, while bright pink flowers hug the staircase railing. Two small ceramic frogs hold a welcome sign as they smile at visitors who walk across the grassy pathway. “Report Suspicious Activity,” a sign outside the house urges residents.

But for 11 years, no one reported anything.

There was nothing to report: The house, along with its residents, blended in so perfectly. There are no trap doors, surveillance equipment, or .25-caliber Berettas. They did not live in a safe house, but rather a townhouse.

“This whole thing is like a made-for-TV movie,” one giddy passerby said as he tried to catch a glimpse inside the seemingly empty house. He said he found the address in the newspaper.

Thanks in part to extensive media coverage, 35 Trowbridge St. has become Cambridge’s latest attraction: the House of Spies. People from around the city venture over to see where the alleged spies lived their undercover lives, admiring the house as they stroll by.

Michael Noland, who lives in an apartment building across the street, was on vacation in St. Louis when Heathfield and Foley were arrested.

“When I got back to Boston and went to the post office to collect my mail, I told the guy my address and he joked, ‘You’re not one of those Russian spies, are you?’ ” Noland said.

Still, some uninformed pedestrians wander by without so much as a glance. Kate Collins and Aoife Forde were visiting Cambridge from Cork, Ireland, as they unknowingly moseyed past the Heathfield/Foley residence. Upon hearing who had lived there, the two suddenly recognized that perhaps there might be something devious about the humble abode.

Collins walked around the side of the house, examining it in disbelief: “We didn’t take any notice of it. Now that we know what it is, I guess it does look a little odd.”

Conceivably, they read too much into it. What those like Collins and Forde identify as a clandestine spy lair is just another element in the city’s residential landscape.

The only way to find it is if you know it’s there.

Chris Nepple, who lives a block away from Trowbridge Street, leisurely passed by the house with Starbucks coffee and a cigarette in hand.

“Shut up!” he exclaimed upon learning who lived there. “I’m shocked. I would’ve never known it.”