Pilot was ordered to leave his home

Notice was served day before crash

By Mac Daniel, Globe Staff, 8/28/2001

MHERST, N.H. - Less than 12 hours before his corporate plane slammed into his new $750,000 hillside home, Louis W. Joy III had been served with a restraining order, sought by his wife earlier that day, by two

Amherst police officers. The order, which forced Joy to temporarily leave both his palatial home and his volatile marriage, accused him of domestic violence.

He left the house with a few belongings and without protest on Friday, police said. It is unknown where he spent the night.

But by daylight Saturday, after Joy told Nashua airport officials that he was flying south to Atlantic City, the plane buzzed his wooded Amherst neighborhood, banked steeply, then smashed into his empty home, destroying it.

No one on the ground was injured, and federal aviation officials are investigating. Police said they are aware of no suicide note.

The domestic violence petition filed by Joy's wife, Jo, on Friday was sealed early yesterday by a Milford District Court judge at the request of her attorney, David Lauren.

In asking to seal it, Lauren said the affidavit contains information that ''would prove extremely damaging'' to the couple's 8-year-old daughter. Publication, he said, would further traumatize the child, who ''is entitled to retain favorable memories of her father.''

The restraining order, which temporarily banished Louis Joy from the house at 19 High Meadow Lane in which he had lived with his wife and daughter for about four months, also awarded custody of the girl temporarily to his wife.

A hearing was scheduled for Sept. 24, but Louis Joy had not yet hired an attorney, according to Lauren's petition. Lauren did not return calls from the Globe yesterday.

Louis Joy, 43, a published author, business consultant, and motivational speaker, had founded the consulting firm Manufacturing Excellence Inc., to which the plane was registered.

He was remembered as a reclusive eccentric who nailed all the windows shut at his Newark, Del., home and became angry with a prospective buyer of the house when she asked if he would remove a fence.

Joy coauthored a book with his wife in 1993 titled ''Frontline Teamwork: One Company's Story of Success,'' which one synopsis said was ''guaranteed to capture the interest of front-line workers and help them contribute to the success of their organizations.''

Residents in the sprawling Amherst development of million-dollar homes said the plane buzzed the neighborhood around 7:30 Saturday morning before the engine went silent and the plane plowed into the house, avoiding a stand of trees no farther than 75 feet away.

Manchester Superior Court records showed no divorce filings involving the Joys, nor any lawsuits or other legal matters regarding Joy's firm, which he ran out of his home.

The chief medical examiner's office in Concord has not yet positively identified Louis Joy as the man killed in the crash. An official there said yesterday that the office was awaiting out-of-state medical records.

At the crash scene yesterday, the builder of the house, Ron Rees, said the crash and subsequent fire were so severe that the thick concrete foundation of the Colonial structure was cracked beyond repair.

''It's more surreal than anything else,'' Rees said after viewing the wreckage.

He said he had been in contact with Jo Joy, who he said is ''taking it fairly well, and as well as anyone can be expected.''

It took Rees's workers about a year to construct the custom-built dwelling to the couple's specifications. The $750,000 house had about 5,000 square feet of space.

The Joys moved in four months ago from Delaware. The long and winding driveway was paved only days before the crash.

''It was a beautiful home,'' Rees said.

This story ran on page B1 of the Boston Globe on 8/28/2001.