I don’t know Fort Bragg carpenter Todd Rowan, but I admire him. In a few short remarks quoted Sunday in the San Francisco Chronicle, Rowan got to the core of the creepy case involving Aaron Vargas, who’s facing a first-degree murder charge for killing his sexual abuser. “Maybe if we’d all talked more back then, [...]
BLEEPS DEFENDING BLEEPS Dear Editor, The word niggardly, whether it’s an a or an e, or ending with dly, who gives a bleep? We knew what that guy was thinking when he used it to describe a black woman. The racist bleep! Michael Connelly Little River Ed note: Mr. Boaz did not use the word [...]
by Freda Moon
Last week, I sat down with Mindy Galliani, Aaron Vargas’s sister, at the Vargas family home in Fort Bragg. Mindy has been working virtually full-time on her brother’s case. Here, she talks about what Vargas might have been thinking when he shot Darrell McNeill, what she’s learned about McNeill since her brother’s arrest, who she [...]
by Freda Moon
It’s official. The Aaron Vargas murder trial has entered the realm of theabsurd. Facing a tough trial in a county known for its independent, anti-authoritarian impulse, the District Attorney’s office, lead by ADA Beth Norman, has brought in the big guns. Norman has solicited Emily Keram to bolster the case against Aaron Vargas. Keram is [...]
by Freda Moon
Mindy Galliani, sister of accused murderer Aaron Vargas, talks about vigilantism, the rights of sex offenders and much more.
by Bruce McEwen
On a cold dark night last winter in Fort Bragg as a chill wind whistled ashore over the chop, the cops swept into the living rooms of some of the Coast’s most conspicuous personalities, including business proprietors, jazz musicians, political activists, accomplished artists, and even a poet or two received noisy visits. Whole tribes of [...]
by Bruce McEwen
Aaron Vargas is the young man who shot and killed Darrell McNeil in Fort Bragg last year for what Vargas said was McNeil’s predatory child molestation of not only Vargas but other Fort Bragg-area children. Vargas’s trial for murder will begin the last week of September. Attorneys on both sides seemed to anxious to get [...]
by Freda Moon
In its July 9 issue, the Fort Bragg Advocate-News ran an editorial that bravely confirmed what any thinking person already knew: Our local advertorial broadsheet—which is no more a newspaper than Bill O’Reilly is a journalist—has decided that the act of contacting and cultivating sources in the community (i.e. reporting) is a pesky and unnecessary [...]
by Freda Moon
At the end of June, Aaron Vargas will stand trial for a crime that would normally be seen as inexcusable: He is accused of driving to Darrell McNeill’s trailer home on Fort Bragg’s Farrer Lane, shooting his former neighbor with a .44 caliber black powder revolver and then waiting nearly a half-hour for the man [...]
by Freda Moon
There’s not much dispute about what happened on Fort Bragg’s Farrer Lane the night of February 8—the night Aaron Vargas killed Darrell McNeill with a cap and ball .44 caliber black powder revolver. In this case, almost nobody bothers with the obligatory “alleged” when describing how Vargas knocked on the door of McNeill’s Coachmen Somerset [...]
