Judge in the Caldor Fire rules there is insufficient evidence to take the defendants to trial for starting the Caldor Fire.

In California, criminal cases include a preliminary hearing in which the government puts on evidence to show that there is reason to go to trial on the charges brought against a defendant or defendants. The great majority of these “Prelim Hearings” find in favor or the prosecution.

This afternoon in a courtroom in Placerville, CA, a Superior Court Judge bucked the odds. David and Shane Travis Smith were charged with recklessly starting the Caldor Fire on August 14, 2021. That fire burned over 200,000 acres, injured at least 20 people and burned a large number of structures and wiped out the town of Grizzly Flats. After four days of testimony, the judge found that the prosecution failed to provide sufficient evidence that the Smiths started the fire and dismissed the charges.

I worked as the investigator for Travis Smith’s attorney, Mark Reichel. David Smith was represented by the irrepressible, Linda Parisi. Along with Reichel’s legal assistant, Doug Stein, we shared a great sense of relief and accomplishment with the Smiths.

David Smith and his son Shane were the first to see the fire and report it to officials. In turn, they were accused of starting the fire by firing some unknown firearm in the area. They theory was that they fired a bullet fired from the an unknown gun. The bullet hit an unspecified rock, sparked and /or splintered and started the blaze.

The theory was initiated by Fire Chief Mark Matthews of the local Pioneer Fire Protection District. If you believe the District Attorney, the US Forest Service and Cal Fire, Matthews was the first to reach the fire at about 10:30 that night (approximately 4 hours after it was first seen by the Smiths.) The general origin area is in a canyon, near a swimming hole, along a river with a northern aspect. The area is also a shooting gallery for anyone with a gun and a six pack of beer or drugs. The ground in the area is always littered with casings from all kinds of weapons.

Matthews would tell fire investigators that when he got to the scene, in the dark, while the fire was growing, he randomly picked up a casing and could smell fresh gunpowder. He therefore surmised it to be the cause of the fire. From that point forward the Smiths were on the hook, despite the fact that Matthews had been the subject of arson investigations in Arizona and Oregon and had been pulled off working the Carr fire in 2018 for possibly starting an unauthorized backfire. (Reports of this came out of Arizona from firefighters assisting CA during the Carr fire and from a Calfire investigator who testified during the Prelim.)

The prosecution’s expert fire causation investigator (I will omit his name as a courtesy.) relied on a 2013 study that concluded that is might be possible for a bullet striking a hard object might cause a fire. The study was conducted in a laboratory setting in which the ambient temperature was 109 degrees, the humidity was 7% and the fuel for any sparks or hot bullet fragments to ignite was Russian Peat Moss preheated to 131 degrees. The peat moss was located inches away from steel plate that bullets were fired against. 

At best, the experiment created smoldering and the results concluded that in the rare case that smoldering might start, it could take anywhere from hours to days to ignite into a flame. 

The USFS fire investigator used data from a weather station located some 2 and 1/2 miles away in a hilltop that has full sun exposure throughout the day. Even so the reading at the time showed an ambient temperature of 87 degrees (31 degrees cooler that the temperature in the laboratory.), a fuel temperature of 85 degrees (46 degrees cooler that the moss used as fuel in the lab setting.) and the relative humidity was 28% (Four times greater that the relative humidity in the lab.

Add to the differences in the conditions at the weather station versus the lab conditions, the fact that the general area of origin of the fire was a northern aspect and near water, the ambient temperature would have been cooler, the fuel temperature would have been cooler and more moist and the relative humidity would have been even higher. Despite knowing this, the USFS felt no need to to conduct tests to see if it was possibly to even create smoldering from a ammunition fired not into a steel plate, but rather rocks that were present at the scene. 

In addition two prospectors camping just over the ridge from the general origin area, said that the Smith’s warned them of the fire as they traveled out of the canyon to get cell coverage. One prospector said that he had only heard gunshots in the area where the fire when our clients were there. The other said he heard shots earlier that morning, the night before and the afternoon before. In a tape recorded interview (one that was withheld by the USFS until last week.) this miner said that he had been working that claim for over 50 years and people shot in the area where the fire started all the time. 

GPS data retrieved from the Smith ATV and tesitimony of the miners put the Smiths in the general area of origin for no more than 20 minutes. Not nearly enough time to shoot, create a spark or fragment, cause smoldering and have the smoldering turn into flames that the Smiths eventually saw and could not extinguish.

As a result, the judge found that the prosecution could not say with certainty that a gun shot could have started a fire under the circumstances that existed at the time, let alone that our clients fired shots that could have cause the fire. 

“Myth of the Zodiac Killer”, floats a valid theory in a very leaky boat.

In January of 2022, I posted about work I was involved in on the Zodiac Killer case, as it related to Gary Poste. When Peacock (a streaming service for NBC) started advertising for a new documentary entitled Myth of the Zodiac Killer, I was intrigued. The trailers teased that the concept of the Zodiac killer as a lone entity never existed and the four attacks were not the work of the same person and were only really tied together by letters written by someone else.

The theory is put forth for the documentarians by Thomas Horan, a former insurance investigator and English teacher. The theory is certainly worth examining, but his support for it is weak.

Let’s get to the letters first. Based on his own less than expert or scientific analysis of all 32 Zodiac letters, Horan claims that the handwriting and linguistic style changes from the first four letters, which he believes come from one person, and the next 28. The filmmaker even had French linguistic experts analyze the letters. The French experts could only say that with use of Artificial Intelligence there appeared to be a change in the style of writing after the first four letters that may be attributable to another author or authors. No one asked them if a person’s changing mental and emotional state could be the cause of these alleged changes.

Also some of the post-Stine killing letters had pieces of the victim’s bloody shirt included in the letters to the Chronicle. (Stine was the cab driver who was murder in San Francisco was is attributed to the Zodiac Killer.) Horan claims that someone gained access to the coroner’s office and helped themselves to Stine’s shirt. He even proffers the claim that San Francisco Chronicle reporter, Paul Avery, was the culprit and a likely author of later letters for the purpose of continuing the life of the story. This purely speculation completely unsupported by any evidence.

Horan also points to the obvious difference in the police artist sketches produced after the Lake Berryessa attack and Stine attack. Neither Horan or the filmmaker take into account the lack of reliability that composite sketches are notorious for having. First of all there is the unreliability of the witness and then the artists tend to skew the final version of the drawing by virtue of their own biases. In addition, the witness in the Berryessa case did not see the man she described at or even near the scene of the crime, let alone see him committing the crime. She and two of her friends were in a nearby area of the lakeshore and there was a guy that creeped them out. There is no certainty that they saw the same man who attacked to the two people at another area along the lake.

Horan also feels that the Park Ranger who came upon the male victim is the likely attacker. ( The Ranger is a person of interest because he was not in radio contact with his base at the time of the attack and then he essentially erased the crime scene by collecting the blanket the victims were using to lay on and any other evidence, putting it all in box and then presenting it to the investigating detectives.) However, this person bears absolutely not resemblance to the man seen by the three women. The female Berryessa woman who died of her stab wounds, described that attacker as wearing a hoodie type of mask, but she could see brown hair that came down his forehead as was visible through the eye holes. That does not match what the women described either. That discrepancy was not addressed by Horan or the filmmaker.

Horan cites the fact that M. O. in the killings changes as proof that the attacks are unrelated. To his credit, the filmmaker did present known cases of serial killers changing up their methods. In the four attacks investigated by Horan, three were at night and one was committed during daylight hours. In the one case during the day, the attacker used the hooded mask to hide his identity. In three cases the attacker used a gun and in one he used a knife. It is just as likely that one killer was mixing things up for his own excitement in terms of the act of killing and running circles around law enforcement.

Horan feels that the person most likely to have been responsible for the second attack in Vallejo was the female victim’s ex partner. His alibi was believed by the police at the time. The filmmaker managed to find this person. At the time of the killing his last name was Phillips and at some point in time he changed it to Crabtree. Crabtree was interviewed on camera and seemed to relish his celebrity. He claimed that at the time of the 4th of July killing in Vallejo, he was out for a nature hike while tripping on LSD. He also claimed a local Judge and his family saw him and corroborated his story. That information did not appear in the police report. The report said that Phillips’/Crabtree’s wife or girlfriend corroborated his alibi.

Crabtree also said that when the police interviewed him at his house, he had books on magic and they knew he was trained in cryptography while serving in the Army. Horan said that Crabtree’ s claim to being a cryptographer was nonsense. Horan claimed that Crabtree served in the Army for two years as a clerk stationed in Germany. However, Horan never showed his proof for his claim.

In addition, no one asked Crabtree when and why he changed his name. If he was asked, it never appeared in the film.

Going back to the Zodiac letters and the coded messages, I have a nagging thought about the codes. The first code was pretty quickly deciphered by a civilian couple in the Bay Area. After that, there as been no certain success. Everyone, including Horan, believes that the coded messages are the key to solving the case. Given the resources that have been thrown at breaking the Zodiac Codes, I wonder if they are gibberish designed to keep law enforcement and the public chasing their tales trying to solve the puzzle. I wonder if the Zodiac was just laughing his butt off watching people trying to find a solution that simply doesn’t exist.

In the end, I believe that Horan has plausible theory that is not supported by usable evidence.

Calaveras Sheriff’s Department makes an arrest for indecent acts against minors going back to at least 2008.

On December 7th, 2022, 54 year old Michael Allen Kasperson was arrested in Napa, California, on charges involving rape, lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 years, sexual penetration with force fear, etc., sodomy and touching a person intimately against their will for sexual arousal. The block below was taken from the Calaveras County Sheriff’s arrest page.

Although arrested in Napa County jail, a quick search for Kasperson, shows a current Valley Springs address on Paloma Road and a prior address on Alder Street. Not Since the George Mulligan case several years ago, have I seen so many charges filed against an individual. In this case are are 68 counts and a large number of enhancements filed against Kasperson for acts going back to 2008. Seven (7) counts are for acts that allegedly took place 3/12/2013, 5/2/2013 11/21/2013. The first two dates framame the April 27, 2013 death of Leila Fowler.

Until the present felony charges filed on 12/8/2022 (Case number 22F8610), Kasperson only had a couple of traffic cases in in Calaveras County.

It is unlikely that DNA or fingerprint samples were entered into any forensic data base as a result of the traffic cases. It will be interesting to see if his finger prints match the as of yet unidentified prints found on the door and door frame leading into the bedroom where Leila Fowler was murdered. It will be at least equally interesting to learn if Kasperson’s DNA matches the unidentified DNA found on Leila Fowler’s body.

As you can see in the booking information provide above, Kasperson is 6’1″, 260 lbs. Isiah Fowler described of the man he said he saw leaving the house on Rippon Road as being big.

If anyone else has additional information about Kasperson you can contact me confidentially through this blog

Caldor Fire Gets National Attention

On Sunday, October 2, 2022, the CBS news program 60 Minutes ran a story highly critical of the way the US Forest Service handled the Caldor Fire in the early hours and days of the conflagration. As far as representing the two men accused of setting the fire goes, I would have liked to have seen additional issues addressed, but the ignition of the fire was not the focus of the piece.

If you missed it on 10/2/22, you can view it by clicking on the following link:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/caldor-fire-california-us-forest-service-60-minutes-transcript-2022-10-02/

The DNA “Bio-Bank” you may have contributed to and didn’t even know it.

Since 1983, every child born in California has had a heel pricked and blood drawn, tested and then stored. The process of blood collection, which exists in one form or another in all 50 States, begins as the Newborn Genetic Screening Test (NGST) for dozens of childhood congenital health issues. If treated early enough the diseases can be cured or at least the impact can be lessened. What also happens is that the blood samples may be sold to outside researchers or used by law enforcement to catch criminals.

According to Julie Watts at CBS station, KPIX (https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/california-biobank-stores-baby-dna-parents-unaware/), the length of time the samples are retained and what may be done with them varies from state to state. In California, the samples are kept indefinitely.

Parents sign a waiver before the blood is drawn and they also have the option to have their child’s samples withdrawn after testing. The fact is that during the flurry of things going on at the time of birth, parents are usually unaware of what they are signing.

When I read about this data base, I thought (hoped) it might be a much broader and more fertile version of the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System (AKA CODIS.) This system has become extremely well known since it was used in conjunction with Genealogical DNA searches to crack the Golden State Killer case.

In the case of CODIS, DNA samples are taken from a criminal (usually violent offenders) and tested. The results are then put into a huge data base and unidentified DNA can be run against samples to see if they match. If the matches are partial they can also be run against other commercial data bases such as 23 and ME or Ancestry.com to search possible relatives as part of genealogical searches that have cracked many cases.

When I read Watts’ article on the CBS Channel 13, Sacramento website, I got very excited. Two cases that I have spent years being involved with have unidentified DNA that does not match anything in CODIS. I immediately contacted Julie and she tried to let me down gently.

It turns out that the NGST doesn’t work like CODIS. The “Bio-Bank” that is the result of the NGST is a collection on cards with dots of blood on them and they are not tested to develop DNA profiles. These cards are of use to law enforcement if there is genuine suspect who had a child from 1983 to the present. Then law enforcement could ask to take a sample from the blood taken from the child of the suspect to see if it is a partial match to the DNA found at a crime scene or scenes. That would give law enforcement a leg up on using NGST samples to solve a case, but it is less likely for defense team to use the data base to exonerate a client. Remember, it is not the job of defense council to find the real criminal, although in Leila Fowler case and the Shanker Patel it seems that despite the overwhelming paucity of forensic evidence to support the convictions, we will have to walk the real killers right into the courthouse in order to exonerate our clients.

The NGST “Bio-Bank” is maintained in California by the Department of Public Health. You can opt out of the program and the Julie Watts’ article has information on how to do that. (See the link provided above.)

The Tale of Two Tapes

As part of the discovery provided to the defense team in the Leila Fowler murder case there was recording of the 911 to Isiah Fowler from the 911 operator on the morning of April 27, 2013. The recording was accompanied by a written transcript.

The 911 operator called Isiah rather than the customary other way around, because Isiah first called his parents and they in turn immediately called 911. Isiah’s parents then provided the home landline number to the 911 operator and the operator called Isiah.

In the recording provided to the defense the 911 operator can be heard to ask Isiah to describe the intruder he claimed entered the house. Isiah can then be heard to say that “he was wearing black.” The accompanying transcript says the same thing. Whoever transcribed the 911 call heard the same thing the defense team did when they received the tape.

When the prosecution made it’s opening statement, it began by simply playing a version of the 911 call that had Isiah saying “he was black.” Not that “he was wearing black.” This caused an immediate controversy.

Both sides retired to the Judge’s chambers and played the copy given to the defense. The judge admitted that he heard Isiah say, “he was wearing black.” The parties then went to the Calaveras County Sheriff’s Dispatch center to listen to what the prosecution was the original copy. That version seemed to omit the word “wearing.”

However, the 911 call was taken by the CHP in Stockton and Calaveras County picked up a copy from the source. The source was not Calaveras County Sheriff’s Dispatch Center.

Someone working for the Calaveras County Sheriff’s Department or the Calaveras County District Attorney’s office heard the same version of the 911 call provided to the defense and transcribed what they heard as “wearing black.”

That person’s identity was never disclosed and I would like to talk with that person about his or her experience.

If anyone has any knowledge of who transcribed the 911 call or has knowledge of whether or not a copy still exists with CHP please contact me.

Odd goings on during the Caldor Fire.

“A person shall not set a backfire, or cause a backfire to be set, except under the direct supervision or permission of a state or federal forest officer, unless it can be established that the setting of such backfire was necessary for the purpose of saving life or valuable property.” (California Public Resources Code Section 4426)

During the first 72 hours of what came to be known as the Caldor Fire, it appears that unauthorized backfires were set on and/or around the Leonie Meadows Campgrounds. These fires may have in fact have allowed the fire to expand at an increased rate and eventually roar through Grizzly Flats.

If anyone was present when a backfire was set between August 14 and August 16, 2021, or if you know someone who witnessed the ignition of such fires, please contact me through this site.

Caldor Fire Criminal Case

I have been retained to work as an investigator for the defense in the criminal case arising from the Caldor Fire that began on or about August 14, 2021, in the El Dorado National Forest in or around the area of Grizzly Flats. If anyone has any information about the case regarding when and where it actually began and people that may have been in the immediate area, you can contact me through this site.

It does not matter if you think the information is pro defense or pro prosecution, please share what you have. Litigation is like a mine field of good news and bad. Mine job is to clear the field of mines regardless of what kind of mines they may be.

The Zodiac Killer is allegedly named and we looked into this suspect nearly 7 years ago.

In late 2014, attorneys Steve Plesser and Mark Reichel received a called from an old media contact saying that he had access to a person who he believed could identify the infamous Zodiac Killer.

Steve and I drove to meet the informant who gave us the name of Tuolomne County Resident Gary Poste. However, the source was someone with drug issues, who appeared to be high during our meeting. Steve and I drove him back to where he was living at the time and as the person stepped out of the backseat of the car a screwdriver fell from his coat pocket. This guy could have flipped out and started stabbing away from the backseat at any moment.

Despite his demeanor, he was obviously scared of Poste and convinced that Poste was Zodiac. We left the meeting feeling it was worth my while to investigate a bit more closely. However, any investigation had to be squeezed around work on the Isiah Fowler defense.

Steve, Mark and I began reading up on the Zodiac case and the amazing letters that were sent to San Francisco area media outlets that included what appeared to be coded messages and a great deal of symbolism. I then tried to see if I could make any connection between Poste and the killings. Most specifically, could I show that he was even in the area of the killings when they took place.

I went back to old school gum shoe work by checking local telephone books from San Francisco and Fairfield, CA areas from the time of the killings. Amazingly, matches for Poste appeared in those areas during the period the Zodiac Killer was active. Also of interest, I found that Poste moved to Calaveras County at the time Zodiac related activity seemed to cease in the mid seventies.

I also learned that Poste was a member of the US Air Force working at a radar installation in 1959. While stationed at the Rockville, Indiana radar station that was part of America’s early warning defense system he would have been exposed to military grade encryption. He was also involved in a traffic accident that resulted in very serious injuries to himself and the death of fellow Airman 2nd Class Robert A. McManus of Brooklyn, NY.

I then found a roster of former servicemen who served at that station and I contacted 10 men whose tours at the station coincided with the time of the accident. One individual, said that he knew both men and visited Poste while he was hospitalized at an Air Force hospital in Illinois. This person told me that he went to visit Poste at least 3 times and that during what would be the last time, Poste was no longer a patient there and no one would tell him where Poste was. The person told me that he never heard from Poste again.

The Airforce did maintain radar stations in the same system in the Los Angeles area and around San Francisco and Fairfield. Therefore it is possible that Poste could have been transferred to stations in the areas of murders associated with the Zodiac killings.

We kept tabs on Poste and followed his arrest in Tuolomne County in 2016 or so spousal abuse and we were intrigued that he was kept in custody for so long. However, we were never able to come into possession of any forensic evidence that might tie Poste to the crimes.

Back in the 1960’s and 1970’s DNA evidence was not even the stuff of fiction, so evidence that might produce viable DNA samples was not preserved. After the Golden State Killer case championed the use of DNA to conduct genealogical searches, reports came out that law enforcement was going to test the envelopes containing the taunting letters, riddles and codes sent by the Zodiac Killer. There has never been a statement by law enforcement saying that a profile was obtained, so we don’t know if Poste can be ruled out as the murderer by the use of DNA.

Plesser, Reichel and I decided to keep a lid on what we knew and didn’t know because we felt it was too circumstantial to subject a person and his family to that kind of public scrutiny without something more concrete.

For a look at interviews Reichel and I did for KOVR 13 here in Sacramento, you can click on the links below.

Sacramento-Based Attorney, Private Investigator Tied Gary Poste to Zodiac Killer Case Years Ago (msn.com)

https://sacramento.ccbslocal.com/2021/10/07/sacramento-attorney-investigator-gary-poste-zodiac-killer/

The Nature of False Confessions

Confessions are often the foundation of convictions in any criminal justice system. Juries find it difficult to accept that people, regardless of age or mental capacity, will admit to engaging in a crime that they did not commit. Nevertheless, history is replete with examples of that being the case. A podcast hosted by Laura Nirider and Steven Drizin, the co-directors of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, explains just how false confessions occur. (You can also see Nirider and Drizin in the Netflix series, Making of a Murderer.)

The podcast, called Wrongful Convictions: False Confessions can be found by clicking on this link: https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/false-confessions.

If you enjoy crime podcasts, you will enjoy this one.