by Edward Humes
75. Even then, the authorities did not stop investigating the satanism allegations, still hoping to find more witnesses or just one bit of physical evidence, one sign of a ritual, one animal sacrifice. The sheriff’s department, from then-Sheriff Larry Kleier on down, was convinced the stories were true. Kleier—already under fire for allegedly rigging the auction of a stolen gun he wanted for his own collection (despite the real owner being a phone call away) and for the manner in which his daughter’s drunken-driving arrest vanished from the court system—had staked his reputation on the satanic case. He declared that he maintained “absolute faith” in the children’s stories, even as the cases unraveled. “Children don’t lie,” he stated, though he later denied making the remark when it became clear that his child witnesses had, indeed, made false allegations.
76. Kern County’s experience with molestation conspiracies presaged a national phenomenon in the 1980s. After the first Bakersfield ring cases broke, there came the more prominent McMartin Preschool investigation in Los Angeles, destined to become the nation’s most notorious example of discredited molestation ring charges ever. Like the Kniffen-McCuan case, McMartin began with one woman with a history of mental illness who was certain her children had been molested, and with officials who felt the best way to question children was to put words in their mouths. There followed a wave of similar cases in almost every state, many of them involving day-care centers, with particularly notable ones occurring in New York, Nevada, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Illinois, North Carolina, Florida, Oregon and throughout California—as many as a thousand defendants accused of molesting hundreds of children, according to the estimates of Carol Hopkins’s National Justice Committee. (Hopkins was formerly foreperson of the San Diego County Grand Jury, which exposed several unjust molestation prosecutions in its jurisdiction.) All the ring cases were accompanied by massive media coverage, which was often sensationalistic and riddled with errors, and the testimony of “survivors” and self-proclaimed experts. Many of the cases seemed remarkably similar in the suggestive way in which children were interrogated, the types of questionable medical evidence cited, and the manner in which any evidence that undermined the prosecution somehow got lost, forgotten or covered up in the rush to convict. Kern County was by no means unique in this regard—just first.
77. Satan’s Underground (Eugene, Ore.: Harvest House Publishers, 1988) garnered enormous publicity when it was published. The author, whose true name is Lauren Wilson, appeared on the television shows Oprah, Geraldo, and The 700 Club, among others, where she claimed to have been repeatedly raped, to have been forced into satanic rituals and to have given birth to babies which were ritually sacrificed. The Chicago-based Christian magazine Cornerstone published in December 1989 (Cornerstone, Vol. 18, Issue 99, page 24) a detailed refutation of most of the key dates, events, places and facts in the book, locating the author’s mother (said to be dead in the book), her sister (said not to exist in the book), and other friends and relatives, who all refuted most of the book’s claims. Harvest House later withdrew the book.
78. John Soliz, reports dated July 27, 1992, and July 30, 1992, in Kern County Sheriff’s Department Case MO92-00633. The July 27 report documents a July 8, 1992, telephone conversation between Soliz and Nanette Petrillo, stating: “Pat Dunn told her Alexandra Dunn had consumed two glasses of wine that same evening prior to her disappearance . . . Petrillo said she did not know Alexandra to drink alcoholic beverages.”
Three days later, in the July 30 report, Soliz documents his July 27 visit with Petrillo and her husband, stating: “Nanette described Alexandra as being both verbally and physically abusive to her mother when she was alive. She said she recalled of a time when Alexandra slapped her mother on the face. Nanette said Alexandra was also verbally and possibly physically abusive to Pat Paola when Alexandra and Paola were married. Both Nanette and Douglas Petrillo said they also thought that Alexandra was an alcoholic.”
79. Rob Walters, “Woman cites husband of sister for ‘undue influence’ on will,” Bakersfield Californian, October 18, 1992.
80. Rob Walters, “Elderly woman manipulated, family claims: Allegations similar to Patrick Dunn case,” Bakersfield Californian, October 29, 1992. The article, which was published as a companion story to additional accounts detailing Pat’s arrest for murder, began: “The sister of murder suspect Patrick O’Dale Dunn used ‘undue influence’ to get an elderly lady to make her trustee and beneficiary of a living trust worth about $1.2 million, the woman’s family alleges.”
81. The correction was a small paragraph entitled “For the Record,” published in the Bakersfield Californian on October 31, 1992, stating in its entirety: “Dianne Dunn-Gonzalez is not related to murder suspect Patrick O. Dunn. Because of source error, a story in Thursday Local section was incorrect.” Though the source for the erroneous information was not specified in either the initial story or the correction, the author has learned from sources at the Californian that the story tip came from a high-ranking sheriff’s official who was intimately involved in the Dunn homicide investigation.
82. Author’s interviews with Jerry Lee Coble, Marie Gates, Gary Pohlson, Jay Dunn and Pat Dunn.
83. The defense team was concerned that the prosecution would use some version of this incident with Coble as evidence against Pat, but though the district attorney’s office was aware of Coble’s bribery allegations, it took no action and the matter was not brought up during the trial. Coble maintained that Mike Dunn offered him $10,000 to leave the county and not testify; according to the Dunn family, Jerry Coble offered to sell photographs of Pat’s house to Mike Dunn. These photographs were supposed to be ones Coble had taken while casing the house, and that he had developed at the photomat where Rex Martin followed him that day in late July. The Dunns allege that Mike paid several hundred dollars, but never saw the photos in question. Coble denies that they ever existed. Source: Author’s interviews with Gary Pohlson, Deputy District Attorney John Somers, Jerry Lee Coble, Pat Dunn and Jay Dunn.
84. While Teri Bjorn has said that she recalls telling Kate Rosenlieb about Sandy being missing, the timing of the call—a critical matter—is unclear. Further, Bjorn’s partner, Kevin Knutson, specifically recalls Bjorn telling him that she learned about Sandy’s disappearance from Kate, which would mean that Rosenlieb’s first story, about getting the news about Sandy from Pat, would be the correct version. Source: Testimony of Teri Bjorn and Kate Rosenlieb, in People vs. Dunn; and the author’s interviews with Rosenlieb and Kevin Knutson.
85. Rosenlieb, interview with the author.
86. Ibid., and John Somers, interview with the author.
87. In interviews with the author, Deputy DA Somers stated that he turned over all of Rosenlieb’s notes in his possession; if he had the additional entries, the law would have required him to turn them over to Pat Dunn’s lawyers as well.
PART III: TRIAL AND ERROR
1. Somers countered this testimony by calling to the witness stand Ed Wilkerson, a broker, who did recall Sandy wanting her accounts kept confidential, even from Pat. But this broker had stopped working for Sandy in 1988, during her first year of marriage to Pat and while she was still getting over her second marriage and its ugly battles over money (People vs. Dunn, testimony of Ed Wilkerson).
2. The defense neither objected to Somers’ mischaracterization of Montes’ testimony, nor did it return to the matter on cross-examination in an attempt to prove the more favorable time line. Gary Pohlson later conceded this was an error on his part (People vs. Dunn; and Gary Pohlson, interview with the author).
3. From People vs. Jesse Dewayne Jacobs, 31F.3d 1319, 1322, n. 6 (CA5 1994), and People vs. Bobbie Hogan, (Ibid.) two Texas prosecutions discussed in a dissent by Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, in Jacobs vs. Scott, 115.S.ct.711 (1996), Jacobs got death; Hogan was sentenced to ten years in prison. “In my opinion, it is fundamentally unfair for the State of Texas to go forward with the execution of Jesse Dewayne Jacob
s,” Stevens wrote in January 1995. “The principal evidence supporting his conviction was a confession that was expressly and unequivocally disavowed at a subsequent trial, by the same prosecutor who presented the case against Jacobs. . . . The injustice, in my view, is self-evident.” Only one other justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, agreed, however. The majority declined to review the case.
4. John Somers, interview with the author.
5. Rosenlieb, in an interview with the author, said she had not observed memory or mental impairment in Sandy, though she had found her to be “eccentric” and “child-like.”
6. At least four other witnesses could have attested to Sandy’s developing memory problems, but they were not called to testify.
7. Although she was not asked about it on the witness stand, Bjorn and her colleagues at her law firm had combed their files in search of anything that might document this conversation with Pat. Bjorn found a short memo she had written to herself about the conversation that says, in part, “Sandy missing since last nite. filed missing pers report? bills due—check with Rex Martin re amount.” On the top line of the memo are two notations: “tk Pat Dunn” (an abbreviation that indicates she needs to call Pat) and a date, July 1. When Bjorn saw the date, she concluded that it meant that July 1 was the day on which the conversation with Pat took place, rather than an indication of when Sandy disappeared. But other documents in the law office, including the message slips kept by the secretaries at Bjorn’s law firm—indicate that Pat called and left a message for Bjorn on the morning of July 2, not July 1. Meanwhile, Kevin Knutson, who lived with Bjorn, recalled her coming home from work on a Thursday or Friday (July 2 or July 3) and telling him of hearing that day that Sandy was missing—again suggesting that Pat’s call to his real estate attorney came after he reported Sandy missing.
Finally, there is the initial police report by Detective Vernon Kline on Kate Rosenlieb’s statements about her conversation with Pat after Sandy vanished (Kern County Sheriff’s Department Case KC92-14851), in which she puts the day Sandy disappeared at July 2, two days off. Rosenlieb would later recall that Teri Bjorn called her two days after Sandy disappeared, which, by her first statement, would have been July 4. She later revised her account to correct the date, but the confusion over times and dates makes it virtually impossible to know when, precisely, Pat talked to his real estate attorney: It could have been anywhere from twelve hours after Sandy disappeared to seventy hours.
Even so, a point made by Somers and Judge Baca remains valid: Whether it took place on July 1, July 2 or July 3, this conversation still came awfully early in the game, at a time when most people would expect Pat to be more concerned about finding Sandy than dealing with money matters, even if it had been Bjorn who first raised the subject. If innocent, he could not have known Sandy would not return imminently and straighten out the money problems herself. In interviews with the author, Pat has insisted he did not talk to Teri Bjorn until July 7, which is not nearly so unseemly as July 1—but which flies in the face of all the other evidence and testimony. He also says the paying of bills for Morning Star was critical and had to be done immediately—and that Sandy would have wanted him to attend to it.
8. Laura Lawhon, “Investigation Report: Post Verdict Juror Interviews,” April 1, 1993, memorandum to Gary Pohlson.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Detective Eric Banducci, Kern County Sheriff’s Department Supplemental Report, Case No. KC91-06787, April 5, 1991.
12. Ibid.
13. Banducci, interview with the author.
14. Laura Lawhon and Gary Pohlson, interviews with the author. Neither Deputy District Attorney John Somers nor District Attorney Edward Jagels responded to the author’s written request for an explanation of this apparent disclosure violation, though Somers promised a response.
15. Banducci, interview with the author.
16. Certainly, there was no shortage of opinions available on Coble. Several other detectives at the Kern County Sheriff’s Department knew of Coble and considered him an unlikely figure on whom to base a criminal prosecution, including Senior Deputy Jeff Niccoli, who helped Banducci bust Coble. “The Coble family is well known in Kern County law enforcement,” the recently retired, highly regarded Bakersfield chief of police, Bob Patterson, observed in an interview with the author. “There’s no way I would ever allow Jerry Coble to be a witness in any case unless he passed a polygraph test first.” The lie detector is sometimes used by the sheriff’s department—Soliz considered Pat Dunn’s refusal to take one highly suspicious—but no thought was ever given to asking Coble to submit to the same test.
17. Banducci, interview with the author.
18. Ibid.
19. Detective Soliz’s dealings with informants had occasioned at least one controversy in the past. Six years before the Dunn case, when he was working narcotics, Soliz took on another small-time drug offender, Lloyd Mason, as an informant. Mason was supposed to provide information on drug dealers in order to “work off” his own legal problems. But Mason and his wife, Joy, later were arrested by another police agency in Kern County for a host of drug charges, including conspiracy to sell and manufacture methamphetamine. Mason claimed he had been creating a cover to further his work as a snitch. But Soliz denied this, saying that he never gave Mason permission to own the equipment and drug-related chemicals found in his house, and that, in any case, Mason was a lousy informant, having never produced any usable information. When cross-examined on this point during the Masons’ trial, Soliz was confronted with two sworn affidavits for search warrants executed in other drug cases. The search warrants were obtained on the word of a confidential informant—who was none other than Lloyd Mason—and stated that the informant had given information in the past that led to arrests and the seizure of narcotics. Mason, it seemed, may have provided usable information after all. Nevertheless, Mason was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison due to the overwhelming evidence against him, though enough questions had been raised to lead jurors to acquit his wife. Sources: Opinion (unpublished portions) of the California Court of Appeal, Fifth Appellate District, The People vs. Lloyd Mason, Case F008097, May 6, 1988 (Kern County Superior Court Case 31585 [1986]); and Greg Mitts (defense attorney for Joy Mason), interview with the author.
20. This was not the only break dealt Coble by the district attorney’s office. He should have been in prison at the time he allegedly spotted Pat Dunn dumping Sandy’s body. He had been on parole for an earlier theft when Banducci arrested him, and that parole had been revoked. Coble had been sent back to state prison while the new case made its way through the system. But an apparent mistake by the DA’s office produced a written request that prison officials bring him back to Kern County so he could stand trial—months before his case was due in court. He bailed out of the county jail two days after returning to Kern County, and had been free ever since—free to do heroin several times a week while simultaneously receiving methadone treatments, and free to cruise through Pat Dunn’s neighborhood. Source: The People vs. Jerry Lee Coble, Kern County Superior Court Case No. 47620A (1991), including the following documents: “Agreement Regarding Testimony,” November 3, 1992; transcript of hearing before Superior Court Judge Arthur E. Wallace, November 3, 1992; October 18, 1991, minute entry documenting a trial date setting of December 20, 1991; request from the Kern County District Attorney to the state Department of Corrections on October 25, 1991, that Coble be transported forthwith to Kern County for trial; minute entry documenting the November 4, 1991, arrival of Coble at the Kern County Jail; and minute entry showing Coble’s release on bail on November 6, 1991, at 2:15 P.M.
21. The account of the stolen-check case and the ensuing investigation is drawn from Detective J. E. Taylor’s reports, and other Bakersfield Police Department reports, contained in Bakersfield Municipal Court Case BF066673.
22. In an interview with the author, Somers said he and the investigators on the Dunn case had no knowledge of the ne
w case against Coble until the author brought it to his attention.
23. This account of communications between Kate Rosenlieb and John Soliz is based upon the author’s interviews with Rosenlieb, and her journal notes, which she supplied to the author.
Rosenlieb’s journal entry for October 8, 1992, reads:
John Soliz called and said the DA’s office was being unreasonable. John Somers has been fantastic but that Sara Ryals [a deputy district attorney] has been a major obstacle. Both John and Sara report to Dan Sparks [a supervising DA]. He [Soliz] said Dan and Sara were spineless and were afraid that this case will generate lots of publicity and that Patrick could hire the best attorney in the nation. He said Sara was asking for the impossible, like a confession, a witness to the actual murder and a murder weapon. He said not to release any political pressure yet, but to get ready. He said every time they meet with the DA, a new list of items the DA wants comes out of it. He said it had gotten to the point of being ridiculous and they were actually threatening each other. He said the sheriff’s department had threatened to arrest Patrick without indictment but only on probable cause.