by Edward Humes
“Customers,” the boy answers without hesitation.
“Customers,” the district attorney repeats, emphasizing a word that the boy hadn’t used or even seemed to know during the long-ago taped interrogation. “Did I tell you that word?” the prosecutor asks for the benefit of the jury. “Or did you tell me?”
“I told you that word.” The boy then describes how the “customers” in the motel would molest him and the other kids, then give money to his parents. As he speaks, he rarely looks at his mother or father. He has somehow come to believe they hate him and wish he would die.
When the defense attorney’s turn comes, he asks if the prosecutor had helped the boy “remember” that customers had given his parents money.
Again, the boy answers without hesitation. “Yes.”7
It doesn’t matter, though. The jurors are certain—just as the detectives and the prosecutors are certain—that no child could ever be convinced to lie about such horrendous things, especially when it involves the kid’s own parents. They might lie to cover up a molestation, to protect their parents from arrest or themselves from embarrassment, but they would never lie the other way. Couldn’t happen. You couldn’t make it happen if you wanted to. That’s why they know subjecting the kids to high-pressure interrogations is okay. That’s how you get the truth, the tortuous, slow, unpleasant work of breaking down a child’s insistence that nothing happened. You had to lead kids, explain that you already knew the truth, ignore the denials until they start agreeing with you. Then, all they have to do is answer “yes.” It’s easier for them that way. That’s how you save a kid—and a community—from monsters.
The boy’s young parents, a machinist and a Sunday-school teacher, are convicted of many counts of child molestation. Together with the other couple on trial with them, they receive sentences of over one thousand years in prison. Putting them away is, Kern County District Attorney Ed Jagels proclaims, one of Bakersfield’s finest moments.
It was also just the beginning.
• • •
What would later be called the Bakersfield Witch Hunt began one sunless April morning in 1982, when a detachment of sheriff’s deputies led Brenda Kniffen from her home, pale and blinking, hands manacled behind her, neighbors dropping their garden hoses and newspapers to stare open-mouthed at the spectacle as her young son wailed in grief, “Mommieeeeeeeeee.” Brenda’s husband, Scott, was picked up at work a short time later. The local shock wave only deepened when word spread that the previously law-abiding Kniffen couple had been accused of accepting $150 to allow their two young sons to be molested in a roadside motel. Seven accomplices were also arrested. The teams of sheriff’s deputies, prosecutors and social workers who fanned out across the county to pick up the malefactors took the extraordinary step of inviting news crews along to document the amazing roundup of nine monsters—and the rescue of their children.
In the close-knit community of Bakersfield, where wholesome family values were considered a birthright along with fishing holes, shotgun racks and country music on both ends of the radio dial, there could be few more horrifying notions than the idea of two seemingly normal parents selling their children for sex. Except for one thing: The dawning realization that the Kniffens and their partners were not alone.
The Kniffens’ capture was followed by a procession of similar arrests in the coming months and years. As the cases generated ever more headlines and the story spread beyond the city limits, it became clear that the original case was not the aberration the citizens of Bakersfield wanted it to be. It seemed that, on the contrary, the first arrests were part of something much bigger, a long-invisible iceberg that had been bearing down on the town from some dark place for years, unseen and evil, and now threatening to destroy the entire community. Bakersfield suddenly found itself preparing for war—a war for the soul of its children.
The hunt had begun.
Over the next three years, local authorities came to believe they had discovered eight large child-molestation rings, each part of an interlocking underground of abuse, child pornography and exploitation of the young. More than seventy people were arrested. Hundreds more were implicated and put under investigation. Dozens of children were taken from their parents after social workers, sheriff’s deputies and investigators from the district attorney’s office decided that they had been used and abused in the most hideous ways imaginable for years, virtually in the open. In time, a task force was formed to investigate even more terrifying testimonials from the child victims: allegations of murder, Satanism, cannibalism and ritual human sacrifice. It was said there were women in this city who allowed themselves to be impregnated for the sole purpose of producing infants to be killed on Satan’s altar. The same awful story was told by victim after victim: Children were drugged, hung from hooks, violated and sometimes beheaded. Blood was guzzled like sacramental wine. Photographs and movies were taken of the molestations. The children didn’t want to tell any of this at first—during initial interviews, virtually every one of them denied much, if anything, had happened to them. But in the end, after many question-and-answer sessions as well as group therapy with other victimized children, it all came out.
The horrendous allegations soon placed the community under a national media spotlight that it would have preferred to avoid but, once turned on, could not be so easily doused. In those days, barely a week went by without some seemingly outstanding and caring parent being torn from his or her family in handcuffs, their children deposited in a special clinic set up to help heal the victims of abuse. Empty lots and backyards all over Kern County were dug up by sheriff’s deputies hunting for the tiny bones of sacrificed babies. Everywhere, there was a feeling that anyone could be involved, that no one could be trusted—and that no one was above suspicion. Aunts and uncles stopped cuddling their nieces and nephews, afraid of how it might look. Lifelong friends stopped talking because one or the other knew someone who had been implicated. Parents grew afraid of disciplining their children for fear they’d be reported for abuse. Some even hired video crews to film them as, one by one, each child and adult in the family spoke to the camera and attested to the fact that there had never been any molestation in the home—just a precaution to ward off a false accusation down the road. The tapes were then hidden in attorneys’ safes and bank deposit boxes. One gardener hid his high up in a palm tree. It’s not that these folks thought innocent people were being arrested. Quite the contrary: There was no chink in the community’s armored certainty of the suspects’ guilt. This was a more self-centered concern, a matter of self-preservation. The city had to be purged, everyone knew that. You just had to be careful.
It is difficult now, with the clarity of hindsight, to fully understand the devastating fear that gripped this city in the 1980s—and continues to plague other communities to this day. The stories of atrocities have a familiar, well-worn ring to them now, but back then the horror was fresh and the belief in the infallibility of law enforcement in such matters was complete. At the time, the sheer unbelievability of the allegations had the perverse effect of making them seem more credible: Who could—or would—make up such things? It helped that the pump had been primed by a wildly popular book, Michelle Remembers, which purported to be the recovered memories of an adult who, through counseling, recalled a childhood filled with human sacrifices and ritual abuse by satan worshipers in Canada. The patient and her therapist, who left their respective spouses to marry one another after coauthoring the 1980 bestseller, began appearing on nationally televised talk-shows, lecturing police and social workers, and consulting on criminal cases around the country regarding ritual abuse and recovered memory. Suddenly, other victims began making similar claims of abuse, usually after reading the book or being in contact with a therapist or investigator who agreed with the authors’ premise: that there exists throughout the world a large-scale and powerful underground of devil worshipers who use and abuse children in their rituals, and that memories of this ritual abuse can be su
ppressed for many years, then recovered through therapy. Years later, many of the “facts” in the book were revealed to be fictitious,8 but the fever had already spread. And in Kern County, for the first time, the allegations were not the hazy, recovered recollections of distant childhood abuse. They were immediate, in real time, with real offenders named and thrown in irons. Seldom since the Salem Witch Hunt three hundred years ago—or Bakersfield’s embrace of the Ku Klux Klan as savior rather than hatemonger in the 1920s—have police, prosecutors, press and public engaged in such a mass suspension of disbelief and critical thinking. The most incredible allegations were accepted and promoted as fact, while any contradictory evidence was disregarded. Naysayers faced the distinct possibility of being accused themselves. Bakersfield dreaded the evil in its midst, and yet embraced without question belief in its existence.
Gripped by a form of hysteria that robbed the community of its tradition of neighborly trust, the people of Bakersfield and surrounding Kern County soon found themselves at the forefront of a national phenomenon. Throughout the 1980s, cities across the country, following Bakersfield’s lead, suddenly found in their dark corners case after case of organized, large-scale child-molestation rings, many of them linked to devil worship, murder and human sacrifice where nothing had been suspected before. Overnight, a virtual industry was born to deal with these cases. A new lexicon found its way into the public consciousness, words like McMartin, Amirault, Little Rascals. Repressed memories, ritual abuse, satanic conspiracy. And there appeared investigators who specialized in such matters, social workers who could help reluctant children recall their chilling experiences, group therapists who could bring victims together to heal—and to help them withstand the witness stand once the molesters were brought to trial. All of this began in Bakersfield. With the Witch Hunt.
And no place did it better. The McMartin Preschool prosecutions in Los Angeles got more press—similarly vile and spectacular (but ultimately unproved) allegations that ended in the stunning acquittal of all accused. But the suspects in the big Bakersfield cases would not be so lucky. They were almost all convicted, the most egregious among them receiving prison terms as long as four hundred years—virtual life sentences, longest in California history, and exactly the stern sort of message the community demanded.
No, there would be no McMartins here, even as that benighted case became a cautionary emblem of the nation’s flirtation with satanic hysteria. This wasn’t Los Angeles. Here, the authorities were trusted, not suspected, their reputation now legendary, proven by fire. They had exorcised an unspeakable evil no one had even suspected existed. When the last of the molesters was put away and the hysteria had passed, the sheriff’s deputies and the prosecutors found they were heroes. Investigators at the sheriff’s department embraced the aggressive, proactive posture adopted in battling the molestation rings and began employing it in all their big cases—Pat Dunn’s included. District Attorney Ed Jagels, meanwhile, had become the most popular man in Kern County, and the most powerful—his influence reaching as far as the state Capitol in Sacramento, his name dropped as a future candidate for California Attorney General, perhaps even governor. As for the rest of Bakersfield, it slowly returned to its old, familiar rhythms, the demons gone, the city once again safe for its children.
Then, an attorney named Stan Simrin picked up the phone and dialed another lawyer, a young and idealistic fellow who had been appointed to represent the interests of two young children who were among the first to reveal that child molesters and devil worshipers had joined forces in Bakersfield. Nothing about these cases, or this town’s view of them, would be the same after that one simple phone call.
• • •
“I want you to come over and listen to something,” Simrin told the other attorney, in his mild, understated way. “It will give you a . . .”—he paused as if searching for words—“ . . . A new perspective on this case.”
The man on the other end of that call, Jay Smith, was reluctant to accept Simrin’s invitation. A stout, curly-haired lawyer with an infectious smile and a calm, easy way with kids, Smith had been appointed by the juvenile court to represent nine-year-old Kevin Nokes and his seven-year-old sister, Tanya,9 two of seven children allegedly molested by various members of the Nokes family and their friends. The Nokes name in 1984 became synonymous in Kern County with child abuse, child pornography and unspeakable rituals. Simrin represented Brad and Mary Nokes, parents of Kevin and Tanya, who were star witnesses in Kern County’s terrifying and still-expanding satanic conspiracy case. The parents denied harming their children, but, from Jay Smith’s point of view as the kids’ court-appointed protector, Simrin’s clients were as dangerous as rabid dogs.
Now Smith pondered the request. He wasn’t personally acquainted with Simrin, but he had, of course, heard of Bakersfield’s most prominent criminal defense attorney. Simrin had a stellar reputation, not only for his work in the courtroom, but for his tireless volunteer work at his synagogue, for the mock trial classes he taught every year in the local public schools, for his long-standing leadership in the county bar association. But this reputation counted for little with the people who believed Kern County was besieged by devil worshipers—a group that included many of the deputies, social workers, prosecutors and judges in charge of the Nokes case. These officials expected Jay Smith’s backing; it was seen as a tacit part of his duties as legal representative of the Nokes children. And though no one had stated it aloud, Smith knew he was expected to have nothing to do with Stan Simrin. The defense attorney was, as one social worker put it, voice dripping with contempt, “the enemy,” someone who was thought not to care a whit for a child’s welfare.
Nevertheless, Smith felt he had an obligation to listen to all sides: Despite the unspoken politics of his appointment, officially, he was charged with being an advocate for the children, not a mindless ally of the state. Though the interests of the police and prosecutors did seem to match his own in this case, he still had a duty to make certain, to listen to all sides. And, so far, he had heard only one side.
He didn’t have any real doubts that his two young charges had been terribly abused. All you had to do was meet them, listen to them. He had seen from the moment he met them that these kids were destroyed. Their glassy stares, their flat monotone speech when describing horrendous scenes of brutal rape and abuse, their intimate knowledge of sexual practices no child should imagine, much less experience—all of it showed just what monsters these poor kids had for parents. Clearly, the Nokeses were guilty of unimaginably cruel and heinous child abuse, and Smith felt nothing Simrin could say would change his mind. He knew what he knew: Those kids had to be protected from their parents. They broke his heart every time he saw them. And he wanted those responsible to pay for it. Big-time.
Still, he finally told Simrin, yes, I’ll come over. He walked down the street, then rode up to Simrin’s office in one of the mahogany-lined elevators inside the glass and steel of the Bank of America building. It was Bakersfield’s tallest, just across the street from the courthouse, and home to many of the area’s largest and best-known law firms. Inside one of the more modest offices on a lower floor, Smith found the two-lawyer firm of Simrin and Moloughney.
“Come on in, come on in,” Simrin greeted him, steering him toward one of the client chairs in front of his utilitarian steel-and-wood desk. It was a no frills law office, just books and plaques lining the walls, papers strewn everywhere. Smith regarded Simrin warily, his eyes moving between the lawyer and the small, clear spot on Simrin’s desk, where a tape recorder sat, turned toward the client chairs. He wondered what he was in for.
A former pharmacist, Simrin, at age forty, had decided to earn his law degree from a correspondence school, and then quickly built his reputation in Bakersfield and throughout the state. He was a short, sallow man with a crooked smile, a closetful of bad ties and a habit of putting his leg up on the edge of his desk when lost in conversation, so that one scrawny shin stuck out, a shiny,
pale beacon. In the courtroom, his ability to take apart witnesses—and prosecutors—was admired and feared, and he earned the ultimate compliment the justice business has to offer: The cops all hate him. Except when they’re in trouble—then they hire him.
Now he propped his foot up on the desk and, without further explanation, turned on the tape player.
On the tape, Smith heard the calm, reassuring voice of Susan Penninger, a former probation officer who had become a private investigator. Smith knew her, liked her, trusted her. He glanced up at Simrin, whose face was inscrutable, giving nothing away. Penninger’s voice stated the time and date, and announced that this tape would be an interview with one of Jay Smith’s young clients, Kevin Nokes.
He listened as Penninger began to ask simple, open-ended questions. Smith heard no pressure, no coercion, no attempt to suggest an answer with a leading question. Just good, solid, kind interviewing. In response, the boy began to speak. His name was Kevin Nokes, he said. He was nine years old. He named his school, his parents, his sister, the aunt he was staying with after the arrest of his parents. And, in question after question, calmly and clearly, he denied being molested, denied that his parents ever hurt him, denied knowing anything about the terrible things the police kept asking about and insisted had occurred.
But it wasn’t the denials that got to Jay Smith. It was the tone of voice, the way Kevin sounded: He sounded like a normal kid. A kid who showed no signs of being traumatized. Smith recognized the voice—there was no doubt it was Kevin on the tape. But Smith had never seen or heard the boy sound so normal. He had always known the children, both Kevin and his younger sister, Tanya, as basket cases, more like concentration camp survivors than children.