Mendocino County Today: Friday, Dec. 8, 2023

Clear Cold | Gull | Flood Watch | Holiday Fair | Secondary BS | Grange Dinner | Japanese Maple | Geiger's Gone | First Responders | Candidate Forum | PV Project | Perjury/Forgery | Flight | Fee Increases | Nadel Retirement | Schooner Gulch | Petit Teton | Velma's Farmstand | Ed Notes | Mendo Derrick | Emergency Care | Look Tin Eli | Immigrant's Tale | Yesterday's Catch | Carnegie/Gates | Gould Retires | Just Mean | Seven Bankruptcies | Antisemitic Charge | Leaf Blowing | Pearl Survivor | Compartment C | War Declaration | Tiny Home | Charlie Starkweather | Native Berries

RAINFALL (past 24 hours): Leggett 1.72" - Laytonville 1.08" - Willits 1.01" - Covelo 0.96" - Boonville 0.90" - Ukiah 0.78" - Yorkville 0.64" - Hopland 0.48"

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A brisk 40F on the coast this Friday morning with another .44" of rainfall recorded. Cold mornings thru the weekend & increasing clouds on Sunday. Otherwise our forecast is dry for most of next week.

LINGERING SHOWERS through late this morning. Dry weather are expected over the region through Saturday as a high pressure build into the West Coast. A frontal system will bring a chance of precipitation for areas north of Cape Mendocino Sunday through early next week, mainly to Del Norte County. (NWS)

128 IS OPEN AT 3:30 PM (December 7)

Highway 128 is close to having minor flooding, but it is still open as I write.

The Navarro River mouth sandbar is still very robust and not about to breach under current conditions. I saw none of the telltale signs of an impending breach. The Navarro Beach parking area is mostly under water, as are portions of the road connecting it to Hwy. 1.

When I checked the estuary flood level about 2 PM, the level was still a scant few inches below the pavement at the crucial 0.18 marker on Hwy 128. But it continues to creep slowly up. The NWS Navarro Gauge chart shows the level at 4.05 ft. as of 7:15 tonight. The chart shows a slow but steady rise and no sign of slowing down.

Here's a link to the USGS Navarro Gauge charts for the past week, 30 days or year. There has been a steady rise since Dec. 2. The chart is interactive and give you a readout of date, time and level as you move the cursor left or right.

The Caltrans road information page shows 128 is open as I write.

In my opinion the possibility of minor flooding continues. Recent high surf has piled up more sand, making the bar taller and wider. The bar shows no signs of weakening.

— Nick Wilson [MCN-Announce]

ADVENTIST ACCEPTS BLUE SHIELD SECONDARY PLANS

All you Medicare people - I called blue shield and they said only Blue Shield PRIMARY insurances are affected. Secondary Blue Shield is still good.

— vzag <vzag@mcn.org>

AV GRANGE POT LUCK DINNER SUNDAY

Get ready for the annual Foodshed and AV Grange Holiday Dinner This Sunday, December 10th!

It's a FREE dinner starting at 5:30 and everyone's invited! Foodshed and Grange supply the turkey, smashed potatoes, gravy and dressing, coffee and tea and you all BRING the rest including your utensils, (they'll have a dishwashing station ready to go). It's the biggest potluck that anybody's ever heard of and every year many masterful "side" dishes, salads, drinks and deserts appear, homemade from mostly local ingredients. There are lots of vegetarian, vegan, gluten free offerings included.

If you’re volunteering to serve the crowd on Sunday consider wearing an elf costume or holiday attire! Let’s help make the evening more fun!

This is a great time to get involved with the Grange! There is a bunch of set up and cleanup for the dinner and there's an on line sign up sheet with different tasks that you can help with.

If digital isn't your thing, call Captain Rainbow 472-9189.

MENDOCINO'S MOST BEAUTIFUL JAPANESE MAPLE

JIM SHIELDS:

Geiger's Long Valley Market officially shuttered it doors Thursday, Nov. 30, coming as a surprise to no one. Geiger's ownership “team” staying true to form, closed its operations without even the common courtesy of a public announcement or notice taped to the entry doors. They're a reprehensible bunch of clueless, classless, pathetic pieces of humanity.

This lamebrain trust came up with the novel idea of operating a grocery store without groceries.

Last Spring, the owners put out a letter-statement to the Laytonville community, essentially laying the blame of the store’s decline on the collapsed weed industry.

While I have certainly spoken and written thousands of words about the failed County Cannabis Ordinance’s adverse impact in our rural areas, most of us business owners are surviving, albeit with reduced revenues.

Local people were and are doing their best to support local businesses. Laytonville area folks would have continued supporting Geiger’s if they had not been driven away by an empty store and owners who seemingly don’t care or give a damn.

People here in Laytonville supported Geiger’s Store for 80 years. They made it an institution. A place where everybody shopped, stopped and talked to neighbors, renewed old acquaintances, and met new folks. It was definitely a happening place.

None of that is happening anymore.

I want everyone to know that for some time I've been working with other community members, and more recently with Supervisor John Haschak, to come up with a plan(s) to solve this problem. We'll be discussing all of these things at our Town Council meetings, and I'll keep you updated.

PHOTOS FROM THE 2023 AVFD FIRST RESPONDER BANQUET

Ordinary people with extraordinary dedication. 

The awardees, nominated by fellow crew members, are:

Fred Ehnow - EMT of the Year

Josh Mathias - Firefighter of the Year

Josh Mathias - Outstanding Leadership

Gideon Burdick - Engineer of the Year

Steve Snyder - Ambulance Operator of the Year

Alejandro Aguirre-Mendoza - Rookie of the Year

We have an outstanding team of people who take time out of their lives on a regular basis to help others when called; it's never convenient, it's often difficult, and it's always profoundly rewarding.

 (AV Fire Chief Andres Avila)

POTTER VALLEY PROJECT: EEL-RUSSIAN PROJECT APPROVED

by Justine Frederiksen 

Both the Mendocino County Inland Water & Power Commission and the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors voted recently to take the next steps in the long process of dismantling the Potter Valley Hydroelectric Project, which was to approve a Joint Exercise of Powers Agreement to form the Eel-Russian Project Authority.

Janet Pauli, chair of the MCIWPC, said the board voted unanimously at a special meeting Nov. 30 to approve the JPA, and then voted to appoint herself and Glenn McGourty to represent the MCIWPC on the JPA board.

The forming of the JPA, Pauli explained, was “at the request of Pacific Gas and Electric,” in order to have a legal entity that will have the power to negotiate with the utility as it moves ahead with plans to surrender operations of the Potter Valley Hydroelectric Project, and to decommission the Scott and Cape Horn dams on the Eel River.

In its draft surrender proposal published on Nov. 17, PG&E notes that “The Regional Entity, a joint power authority, to be governed by a board comprised of the County of Sonoma, Sonoma County Water Agency, Mendocino County

Inland Water and Power Commission, and the Round Valley Indian Tribes, will be responsible for modifications at the former Cape Horn Dam site and Van Arsdale Diversion, as necessary, to construct the New Eel-Russian Facility.”

“The yet-to-be designed facility would allow for ongoing water diversions through the Potter Valley Project’s tunnel between the Eel River and Russian River, while allowing for upstream and downstream fish migration to support larger efforts aimed at achieving naturally reproducing, self-sustaining and harvestable native anadromous fish populations,” was how the new passage was first described by the group, and Pauli said this week that two main options are still being considered: one involving a roughened channel and the other a pumping station.

PG&E is set to release a final draft surrender application in June 2024, with the final application expected to be submitted by Jan. 29, 2025.

Sonoma County Water explained in a press release Tuesday that “the Eel-Russian Project Authority’s five-member board of directors will initially consist of two representatives from the Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission, one from Sonoma Water, one from the county of Sonoma and one from the Round Valley Indian Tribes.”

Pauli said she expected a board representing the Round Valley Indian Tribes to vote on the JPA this week, and that the next steps would be to determine “where and when (the newly formed JPA board) will meet.”

CAR THIEF CONVICTED OF PERJURY & FORGERY

A Mendocino County jury returned from its twenty-minute deliberations a little before noon on Wednesday morning to announce it had found the trial defendant guilty as charged.

Defendant Matthew David Foster, age 51, of Willits, was found guilty of having committed perjury, a felony, in his efforts to unlawfully transfer title to a car that did not belong to him. 

The defendant was also found guilty of submitting a forged document in his effort to unlawfully seize title to the subject vehicle, a felony. 

After the jury was excused, a bifurcated evidentiary hearing was calendared for December 15th for the prosecutor to present evidence showing that the defendant has suffered a prior “Strike” conviction.

If the Strike allegation is found true on the 15th, the voter-modified "Three Strikes" law mandates that the defendant receive an enhanced state prison sentence.

The investigating law enforcement agency was the California Highway Patrol.

The prosecutor who presented the People’s evidence to the jury was Deputy District Attorney Jamie Pearl.

Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Keith Faulder presided over the three-day trial.

(DA Presser)

YOU CAN’T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT

by Jim Shields

A major item under discussion at the Board of Supervisors meeting this past Tuesday was a full-scale hearing on proposed fee increases wished-for by 16 different County departments. 

Historically, the County typically holds these fee adjustment hearings twice a year. By any other standard these so-called fees are just thinly disguised taxes. The fee increases were set out in a 23-page, single-spaced spreadsheet. 

At the very top of the very first page, I found under the heading of “Countywide Internal Fees” an entry that read: “Retrieval of Document/Report over 5 years old — $5.00.” That entry was not an auspicious start for the fee-setting hearing, as it constitutes, unless I’m missing something, a violation of the California Public Records Act (CPRA). Said Act, as well as numerous court rulings on the Act, prohibit such “retrieval” costs.

The CPRA specifies that, “Copies of records may be obtained for the direct cost of duplication, unless the Legislature has established a statutory fee. The courts have ruled that, “The direct cost of duplication is the cost of running the copy machine, and conceivably also the expense of the person operating it. ‘Direct cost’ does not include the ancillary tasks necessarily associated with the retrieval, inspection and handling of the file from which the copy is extracted.”

As most of you know, last Spring I was successful in getting the County to repeal its Public Records Ordinance, that included a provision allowing for the collection of retrieval fees. That issue is settled. So I’m sure this proposed fee is just an oversight that will be rectified shortly. I’ve already given Supervisor Haschak a heads-up on it, so between the two of us, I’m certain we’ll get it resolved.

Back to Tuesday’s meeting. 

In prepared remarks, CEO Darcie Antle told the Board, “The proposed fee changes reflect the ongoing efforts of all departments and offices to meet full cost recovery, per Board direction. The proposed changes are projected to bring an additional $3.2 million ($1.7 million in General Fund Revenue and $1.5 million in Non-General Fund) in revenues to the County.”

Antle stated that the proposed increases are needed to close a deficit which, of course, at this time is an unknown but very fluid number that changes from meeting to meeting because the County has not completed the mandated audits of its books for the past two years. At different times the deficit has been estimated to range anywhere from $7 million to $15 million.

For County bureaucrats to even remotely consider raising fees at this time when people, all across Mendocino County, are being hammered economically on a daily basis, is unconscionable and demonstrates a disconnected reality breathtaking in its magnitude.

Keep in mind, the County has yet to complete final audits on both the 2021-22 and 2022-23 fiscal years. Acting Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector Sarah Pierce said the 2021-22 should be completed by early January. Once that audit is done, they will have an official ending balance for that fiscal year and the beginning balance for FY 2022-23, which would allow the audit for that fiscal year to commence. She estimated it would take several months to complete that audit.

Pierce also stated that the special audit underway by the California State Auditor’s Office, is expected to have a tentative report completed by sometime in January. Several months ago, state Controller Malia M. Cohen authorized an audit of Mendocino County. According to Cohen’s office, the audit was scheduled “after conversations with county officials who expressed concerns as to whether the annual financial reports required to be prepared and delivered to the state are correct and complete. Controller Cohen then acted on a request for an audit from the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors, who voted unanimously to request the State Controller’s Office’s assistance to resolve what some officials have referred to as a ‘fiscal crisis’ within the county.”

Looking at just one area of the proposed fee increases, Scott Ward, a long-time planning and building professional, submitted these comments on the proposed fee increases:

“The proposed increases in Planning and Building fees will negatively impact the cost and feasibility of development, including the affordability of much needed housing in Mendocino County. The proposed fee increases are not based on the actual time spent on processing, issuing, and conducting inspections of the permitted work. 

“Government Code Section 65583(a) requires ‘An analysis of potential and actual governmental constraints upon the maintenance, improvement, or development of housing for all income levels…including…fees and other exactions required of developers, and local processing and permit procedures…’ Based on the Planning and Building memo supporting this agenda item, the required analysis and nexus study have not been done as is required by state law. 

“High planning and building permit fees can impact property owners’ ability to make improvements or repairs, especially for lower-income households. Government Code Section 66020 requires that planning and building permit processing fees do not exceed the reasonable cost of providing the service or impact, unless approved by the voters; agencies collecting fees must provide project applicants with a statement of amounts and purposes of all fees at the time of fee imposition or project approval. 

“During my nearly 30-year professional career working for Planning and Building Departments, I have gained an in-depth knowledge and understanding of how much staff time it takes to intake, process, review and issue planning and building permits. As a former building official, plans examiner and building inspector, I know how long it takes to conduct inspections on work authorized by building permits. For the last 9 years I have owned and operated a small consulting business whose primary focus is planning and building permit acquisition. Most of my clients are in Mendocino County. I have submitted well over 1200 planning and building permits to the Mendocino County Planning and Building Department over the last 9 years. Based on my professional experience and my current experience as a consultant, it is my professional opinion that the current fees and the proposed Planning and Building Department fee increases exceed the reasonable cost of providing service.” 

So while none of these proposed fee increases should have been approved, Supes John Haschak and Dan Gjerde took the lead fashioning a compromise motion that reduced the proposed increases by 75 percent, but the issue could return for another hearing in April of next year. Supervisor Ted Williams, to his credit, opposed any fee increases, categorizing them as anti-business, actions that would retard if not eliminate desperately needed affordable housing, and that most people would just ignore the licensing and permitting processes due to the sky-rocketing fee increases.

Haschak was joined by his colleagues in keeping license fees for Farmers’ Markets at no cost instead of the proposed $625, and maintaining Cottage Food licenses at the current $94 instead of $380.

I wasn’t aware until Williams brought it up that permits are required for replacing faulty electrical switches and outlets. Yikes, I’ve been a permit outlaw for decades. What a load of crap. So proposed electrical permit fees would have increased from $188 to $328, plus an additional $132 for the first 22 switches/outlets installed, plus $104 for additional switches, etc.

On the plumbing side, the proposed fee increase for a permit also went from $188 to $328, and again unbeknownst to me a permit is mandated for repairing/replacing water heaters. That’s two strikes.

Williams also said permits are required “if you replace a rotten board on a deck.” That’s definitely the third strike, I’m prison bound.

(Jim Shields is the Mendocino County Observer’s editor and publisher, observer@pacific.net, the long-time district manager of the Laytonville County Water District, and is also chairman of the Laytonville Area Municipal Advisory Council. Listen to his radio program “This and That” every Saturday at 12 noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: http://www.kpfn.org)

JUDGE NADEL TO RETIRE

In a career spanning more than forty years, Judge Jeanine Nadel has announced her retirement from the Mendocino County Superior Court bench. Her retirement date will be January 1, 2024. 

Judge Nadel was appointed to the bench by Governor Edmund Gerald “Jerry” Brown in June 2012 to fill the seat vacated by Judge Ronald Brown. Judge Nadel was serving as Mendocino County Counsel at the time of her appointment. Prior to this position, Nadel served as deputy county counsel in Mendocino from 1990 to 2000, and assistant county counsel for Alameda County from 2000 to 2005. She was also a deputy public defender in the Mendocino County Public Defender’s Office in 1989 and an associate attorney at two civil litigation firms from 1982 to 1989. Judge Nadel earned a Juris Doctorate degree and a Bachelor of Science in Law degree from Western State University College of Law. 

As County Counsel in Mendocino, Judge Nadel was instrumental in developing a close and effective working relationship with the court on a variety of issues arising from the separation of the court from county government, including facility agreements, transfer of county employees to court employment, retirement issues and myriad other complex administrative issues. Her early efforts to build strong intergovernmental relationships continue to benefit the court and the county today. 

Judge Nadel presided over Adult Drug Court for the last six years and has been serving in a civil and probate assignment for several years. In her final years on the bench, Judge Nadel served as the Assistant Presiding Judge in 2018 through 2021 and as the Presiding Judge in 2022 through 2023. Reflecting on her time in public service, Judge Nadel said, “It has been a pleasure and rewarding experience to have worked in public service for most of my career. I look forward to pursuing new opportunities that will allow me to continue to serve the citizens of this community.” 

Presiding Judge Elect Keith Faulder praised Judge Nadel’s many achievements and contributions to the public and said, “Judge Nadel has been a great colleague and mentor to the Mendocino County Court. Judge Nadel’s breadth of knowledge was not limited to legal matters. Her judicial temperament, collegiality, passion for her work, and her wit and wisdom will be missed. I believe that Judge Nadel, even in retirement, will continue to bring all her energy, talent, and skill to benefit local community organizations.” 

(Mendocino County Superior Court Presser)

IT'S NOT EVERY DAY that you'll spot this many bowling balls on a beach! Or even any, at all. Schooner Gulch Beach (Bowling Ball Beach, Point Arena) is one of the most unique spots on the entire Mendocino Coast. *Make sure you check the tides before visiting as these are only viewable at low tide.

From Visit Mendocino County: The “balls” are actually concretions, which are far more resilient than the mudstone that once surrounded them. Over millions of years, this has eroded away under the constant onslaught of the Pacific Ocean, forming the cliffs that line the shore behind the beach and leaving the tougher “bowling balls” behind.

PETIT TETON FARM

Petit Teton Farm is open daily 9-4:30, except Sunday 12-4:30. Along with the large inventory of jams, pickles, soups and sauces made from everything we grow, we sell USDA beef and pork from our perfectly raised pigs and cows. Right now we also have stewing hens, squab, and a few rabbits for sale 

We'd love to see you. Nikki and Steve

VELMA'S FARM STAND AT FILIGREEN FARM

The farm stand is open Friday from 2-5pm and Saturday 11am-4pm. And find us at the Unity Club Holiday Bazaar on Saturday, December 9th from 10am-4pm. 

For fresh produce we will have: apples, pears, persimmons, winter squash (delicata, acorn, kabocha, butternut), cauliflower, romanesco, cabbage, broccoli, potatoes, chicories (chioggia, castelfranco, puntarelle, treviso, etc.), carrots, beets, onions, leeks, shallots and herbs. We will also have dried fruit, tea blends, olive oil, fresh and dried flower bouquets, evergreen and everlasting wreaths, tomato sauce and fruit compote available. Plus some delicious flavors of Wilder Kombucha!

For folks who are looking to make applesauce, we have #2 quality apples available for purchase in 40lb cases. Please email Annie in advance if you would like to pick up a case at the farm stand this week! (#2 apples are just cosmetically damaged but perfectly delicious!) $50/40 lb case. 

All produce is certified biodynamic and organic. Follow us on Instagram for updates @filigreenfarm or email annie@filigreenfarm.com with any questions. We accept cash, credit card, check, and EBT/SNAP (with Market Match)!

ED NOTES

VAL HANELT: I attended a cemetery board meeting (2018?) where they discussed taking over the Ruddock — the Ruddock family had requested it. Clyde Doggett did a thorough presentation of his findings and reported that there was no place to put new graves in any number that would make sense for the District to take it over. The Ruddock family requested maintenance at no benefit to the district. Also, I believe that they wanted the right to continue to bury family members there, I think for free. It is on a hillside and flattens out on top, but right next to a home. It was overtaken by berries and poison oak five years ago, and, unless someone from that family group cleared it, it is probably a lot worse now. I had to do some trimming (and careful placing of my feet) to get the photos for Findagrave.

ED NOTE: I think our cemetery district should assume responsibility for Ruddock in the same spirit that the Yorkville Cemetery has been adopted. It went untended for years, and while the district is at it, they should also take over the old Ornbaun cemetery. Both are important to Valley history, not to mention respect for the local dead.

AS A DAILY viewer of the BBC News, I happened to see BBC news anchor Maryam Moshiri flip off the BBC's international news audience, which that night included me. Ms. Moshiri's bird flew so subliminally fast, I wasn't sure I'd seen what I thought I'd seen. “Wot the hell?” I gasped. “Hey! I think the BBC news lady just flipped everyone off!” The BBC? No way. That would be like getting flipped off by Queen Elizabeth.

I WASN'T SEEING THINGS, and Ms. Moshiri was soon on the air apologizing for “a silly joke” not intended for a live broadcast. She said she'd been joking around with her production team, pretending to count down using her fingers.

“It was a private joke with the team and I’m so sorry it went out on air! It was not my intention for this to happen and I’m sorry if I offended or upset anyone. I wasn’t ‘flipping the bird’ at viewers or even a person really. It was a silly joke that was meant for a small number of my mates,” she said, adding a “face palm” emoji.

Some people took offense, commenting below Moshiri’s tweet that it was unprofessional and using it to call for the defunding of the BBC. But she was also inundated with support from dozens of people who had found the moment amusing, with one writing: “As a BBC license payer I demand more of this type of behavior.”

Moshiri can perhaps take comfort that her immediate reaction to being caught making a swearing gesture on live camera was not as dramatic as that of the BBC weatherman Tomasz Schafernaker.

In 2010, Schafernaker jokingly flipped the bird at news presenter Simon McCoy, but realizing he was on camera panicked and – utterly unsuccessfully – made a wild attempt to pretend to scratch his chin. With the videos brightening millions of moments in the decade since, it has contributed to the enduring popularity of the weatherman.

The gaffe is also relatively minor compared with other live mistakes made at the news channel over the years. In 2006, Guy Goma went to the BBC for a job interview for an IT position, but ended up being question about his view live on air when he was mistaken for the IT expert Guy Kewney.

In 2016, BBC presenters apologized after the broadcaster’s breakfast program showed footage of a gorilla instead of Scotland’s former first minister Nicola Sturgeon. The BBC Breakfast host Naga Munchetty was telling viewers they would be joined by Sturgeon later in the program when footage of a gorilla that escaped from its enclosure at London Zoo was shown on screen.

There was some intrigue later about how the Maryam Moshiri clip went viral – featuring on the news as far away as Australia.

Robert Coxwell, a photographer and journalist, wrote on X that he was the gallery producer for the show and said it was “regrettable” that someone had “found the need to amplify it,” adding that only two people on X had noticed but it “went largely ignored for 10 hours. Until someone went on to a BBC system, clipped it up and sent it out.”

Coxwell said it had been taken from an internal archive system called Autorot, adding: “Luckily Autorot provides a log of who did what because it triggers an email to say the clip they wanted is ready to be downloaded.”

He then tweeted: “I am so deep into the workings of Autorot I can’t tell you. Christmas could be coming early for someone!”

I THINK American news people should take up the bird toss after their every bogus newscast, which is all of them. “This is David Muir signing off, and this is for all you saps out there who think you're getting the straight skinny.”

* * *

A GREEN-ORIENTED local approached me this morning at the post office and, pointing at the vacant lot where Pic 'N Pay once stood, workmen in lime day-glo were laboring over a pumping apparatus. “I hear they're putting in a gas station over there,” the green said. Doubt it, I replied, but I'll check. JJ Thomasson, former AVHS basketball star, retired fire jumper, and owner of Anderson Valley Market, not all that long ago bought the property where the lime day-glos were working. At the market, Stephanie Marcum, always a delight and altogether charming, was at the register. (The ladies at the register know everything, everything I tell you!) Stephanie explained that the lime guys were water testers. “There used to be a gas station there,” Stephanie said. I groaned. I remember when a station was there maybe 50 years ago, and here the water testers were testing for residue fuel in the well supplying the rentals to the rear of the site. The late Carolyn Short was fending off this water testing scam almost to her dying day where her service station sat down the street for many years. All this testing is costly, of course, and if you know of anybody in Boonville who's ever died from consuming trace amounts of octane I'd like confirmation.

CHUCK ROSS: Mendo Derrick – One was on the south side of Point Arena. The other was "near Willits" and I remember an area there called Oil Well Hill.

ALLEN FRANCIS

There is some feeling locally, particularly among newcomers, that we don't have adequate access to first class medical facilities. The closest hospital is several hours away. Folks that feel this way are, in my humble opinion, unrealistic. Sophisticated medical facilities and the logistic support that goes with them requires a population base, and the associated economy, larger than exists locally. Most of us that live here today, chose to do so because we appreciated the nature of the locality, part of which is the absence of huge numbers of people living together cheek by jowl.

A very long time ago I was driving along a remote dirt road in Northeastern Thailand when a man flagged me down. A lady was lying next to him on the side of the road. He explained that she had been bitten by a poisonous snake. Her leg was badly swollen. I drove them to a nearby American Special Forces position that I knew about, where an American medic put the woman in an American helicopter and moved her to the hospital in Ubol where Thai doctors saved her life and her leg. One of the Thai doctors told me that she would not have lived had I not come along. 

Not very many years ago, I was medivaced out of Gualala to Memorial Hospital in Santa Rosa. The fundamental difference between my experience and the experience of the lady in Thailand is that our medivac system is an existing part of our lives, not dependent on the chance availability of a foreign vehicle and a foreign helicopter. In my humble opinion we are dumb lucky to have the sometimes criticized RCMS in our lives and we should be far more appreciative of the people that staff that facility. Anybody that thinks that it is not doing enough to help us live better lives should put their shoulder to the wheel and help rather than carp about inadequate whatever.

Thank you to every single one of the people that provide excellent emergency care, ambulance and helicopter service to those of us that choose, repeat choose, to live away from the large urban centers. Please know that the vast majority of us appreciate you very, very much!

A HUGE THANK YOU to Jane Ellis from the Kelley House Museum and Linda Pack of the KZYX - Mendocino County Public Broadcasting Mendocino County Remembered Podcast, for sharing the story of Look Tin Eli and Chinese immigration in Mendocino County with the Community Foundation Board of Directors. 

The presentation is part of the Foundation's ongoing commitment to living our values, and understanding the many diverse voices, history, cultures, and lived experiences of Mendocino County.

Dear Anderson Valley Advertiser Readers,

I received this essay last night written by Tania Bucio-Olmedo forwarded by teacher Kira Brennan. As we approach the holidays and the craziness of the season, taking a few minutes to read this powerful story of family sacrifice and student perseverance really puts a perspective on our values in the Valley. Congratulations to Tania and her family for all that she has become. We are proud of her.

— Louise Simson, Superintendent, AV Unified School District

---

FROM MICHOCAN TO BOONVILLE

by Tania Bucio-Olmedo, Anderson Valley High School Senior

I was born and raised in Michoacán, Mexico and went to Elementary School in my hometown until I was 12 years old. Then I started High School and it was an hour's walk away. I remember the first few days I was happy because I was going to a different school. As the days went by it was very difficult for me because during the walk to school, I knew there was potential danger. Even so, I took the risk of continuing to go to school because I have always liked to study. Then the violence increased a lot and when I was 13 years old my parents decided to immigrate to the United States.

I arrived in a small town in Northern California called Boonville. It was very difficult for my family to start over from scratch. But for me, it was always a dream to live in the United States. When I entered Anderson Valley High School in Boonville I felt strange because I didn't know anyone. I remember how I felt not included, and that made me feel sad. There were times when I didn't want to go to school anymore but I felt that I needed to be an example for my younger siblings and I kept going. 

Unfortunately, in 2020 during the COVID pandemic, it was difficult for me to connect to classes on a computer because at that time I didn't know how to use computers and even less English; but I still did my best to keep going. When I went back to classes after the pandemic it was still very difficult for me to understand what I was doing but I tried my best to get good grades. I did my best to make my parents proud of me. 

Now I look back and see all that I went through and the sacrifices I made and I feel proud of myself for how far I have come. I know I still have a long way to go but I am entering a very important step in my life. I am grateful to my parents because they work so hard so that I can continue with my academic studies. 

In Mexico, I would not have achieved all this because life there is very difficult and the opportunities are few. Now that I am here in another country where there are more opportunities, I want to be able to be someone in life. I thank the teachers for understanding me and helping me even though I still don't understand English very well. I am happy that they take the time to help students who are not proficient. No matter what country you come from, what languages you speak, you will always get help here in this Boonville school. Everything is possible. 

CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, December 7, 2023

NATHAN CASADY, Espanola, New Mexico/Ukiah. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, vandalism, resisting.

LEIF CHILSON, Willits. DUI. 

NATHAN MORALES, Covelo. Trespassing.

DARRELL PIKE JR., Hopland. Under influence, county parole violation.

KENNETH RICHARDS, Fort Bragg. Failure to register.

LUIS SANCHEZ II, Ukiah. Controlled substance for sale, firearm possession while under restraining order, assault weapon, suspended license.

ABBY SARGENT, Redwood Valley. Domestic battery.

STANLEY TEAUSANT, Fort Bragg. Domestic abuse, elder abuse without great bodily harm, destruction of communications device.

JACODIE YOUNG-THOMPSON, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Over in the nearby big city there are several beautiful buildings. The library especially. Built by Carnegie. Wiki tells me he built over 3000 libraries in the US and other countries. What has Gates built for the plebes lately?

WOODY GUTHRIE’S ANTHEM MOCKING RIGHT-WING REPUBLICANISM

I’m the meanest man that ever had a brain

I hate everybody don’t think like me.

And I’m readin’ all the books I can

To learn how to hurt.

Keep you without no vote,

Keep you without no union.

Well, if I can get the the fat to hatin’ the lean,

That’d tickle me more than anything I’ve seen,

Then get the colors fightin’ one another,

And friend against friend, and brother and sister against brother.

I love to hate and I hate to love!

I’m mean, I’m just mean.

CRITICISM IS NOT ANTISEMITISM

Editor: It seems that every opinion against the actions of the Israeli government is labeled antisemitic. This oversimplification allows the Israeli government to act free of criticism no matter how oppressive it is. While the atrocities of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack must be universally condemned, it did not happen in a vacuum.

According to the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 10 times as many Palestinians have been injured or killed since 2008, as well as in this present conflict. Approximately 5,500 Palestinian children have died from bombings, diarrhea and hypothermia, 33 in the West Bank and 29 in Israel since this conflict began. There are approximately 2,000 Palestinian being held without charge by the Israeli military.

It is dangerous to label anyone who questions the Israeli government’s military actions as antisemitic. Questioning the actions of a government is the very definition of democracy. A reasonable person might question if this strong response to Hamas may bring more Arab countries into the conflict without being antisemitic.

History teaches us that continual killing is rich fodder for the next generation of militants.

Ron Jenkins

Sebastopol

PEARL HARBOR SURVIVOR

by Bruce Anderson

Count me as one. 

I was two, my brother one, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941.

My brother and I were born in Honolulu, Our paternal grandfather, a Scots immigrant, was a principal in a successful business called the Honolulu Iron Works, with branches in Hilo and the Philippines. My father was a graduate of the Punahou School, same high school alma mater as President Obama three generations later. Pop, pre-War, spent much of his youth surfing and his evenings in white dinner jackets.

And then the world rushed in, along with reality.

By the end of the war Pop was loading submarines at Hunter’s Point in San Francisco. He’d cashed in his Honolulu chips because, like most Islanders, he assumed the Japanese would follow-up their successful aerial blitz of America’s Pacific defenses with a ground invasion, so he loaded my mother and his two heirs on a evacuating troop ship headed for San Francisco while he wrapped up his affairs in his native Hawaii.

The morning of the infamous day, my brother and I had been up before dawn demanding, as family lore has it, ice cream cones. We were in the car as the sun rose and with it came wave after wave of low-flying planes swooping in over us and central Honolulu. We drove obliviously on as the invaders devastated the unawares American fleet where it was conveniently assembled in Pearl Harbor, their crews slumbering, many eternally.

“The planes were flying so low I could see the pilots,” my father remembered. “I thought it was some kind of Army maneuvers. There was smoke coming from Pearl Harbor, but most people simply assumed there had been an explosion and a fire. There were lots of people out in the streets watching these planes coming in.”

My father said quite a few of those spectators were recreationally strafed as the Japanese flew back out to sea. He didn’t know what was happening until we got home. It hadn’t occurred to him that the planes were hostile.

That grim thought hadn’t occurred to much of anyone in Honolulu until they were either shot at or a stray bomb fell on their neighborhood. The Japanese, as always on-task, mostly confined themselves to military targets and, of course, forty years later, held the paper on many American mortgages, including, for a spell, the Mendocino County Courthouse.

Some 20 minutes after the attack had begun, my father stopped to buy us our coveted ice cream cones, which were served up by an unperturbed clerk, and we drove on home. “Nobody had any idea that the Japanese would do such a thing,” my father said whenever he talked about December 7th. “They were too far away and America had no quarrel with them.” 

That he knew of, anyway.

Arriving home, my father famously complained to my mother that “These military maneuvers are getting a little too goddam realistic.” My mother, who’d always regarded her husband as a Magoo-like figure, informed her mate that the Japanese were attacking both Pearl Harbor and, it seemed, Honolulu, where errant bombs aimed at Hickam Field had already destroyed homes and businesses of non-combatants. She’d turned on the radio when she’d heard explosions. One of the first things she learned was that a bomb had obliterated the area where we’d made our ice cream purchase minutes earlier.

Years later, a hippie told me that I’d eluded the random wrath of the Japanese because I had “good karma.” I think it was more a case of God’s high regard for idiots and children.

My father was exempt from military service because he had a wife and children, but he was pressed into service as a member of a sort of impromptu Honolulu home guard called the Business Man’s Training Corps, or BMTC. Honolulu in 1941 was about the size of today’s Santa Rosa. My mother had much ribald enjoyment at the abbreviation, and was even more delighted at the sight of my father togged out as a World War One Doughboy, the only uniforms available.

The BMTC wouldn’t have been much of a match for the Japanese Imperial Army which, fortunately, never appeared on Waikiki. The Japanese had surprised themselves by the unopposed success of their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and had not prepared to land an occupying ground force.

December 7th was a major trauma for America. For our family, too. Pop made plans to head for the Mainland as soon as he could, but he wanted to accomplish both without being derided as a slacker for fleeing Honolulu. It took him another year to make it stateside, an interlude he endured by spending his days surfing and sitting around in the dark at night listening to the radio behind blackout curtains.

My mother was a registered nurse who’d worked at Queen’s Hospital in Honolulu, my birthplace and also the birthplace of President Obama.

While surfer dude lingered in Honolulu, we'd been packed on to a troop ship headed for the Golden Gate. My mother remembers daily submarine alerts all the way across the Pacific during which everyone, including the women and children, trundled over the side by rope nets into lifeboats. Mom recalls that the two of us infants loved being handed off like a couple of footballs up and down the side of the ship, but the daily alarms and exertions terrified her and everyone else on board.

But we made it unscathed, and were soon ensconced in, of all places, the Fairmont Hotel, the evacuation center for people fleeing Hawaii.

JOINT ADDRESS TO CONGRESS LEADING TO A DECLARATION OF WAR AGAINST JAPAN (1941)

by Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Mr. Vice President, and Mr. Speaker, and Members of the Senate and House of Representatives: Yesterday, December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

The United States was at peace with that Nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its Government and its Emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American Island of Oahu, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack.

It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.

The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.

Yesterday the Japanese Government also launched an attack against Malaya. Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong. Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam. Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands. Last night the Japanese attacked Wake Island. And this morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island.

Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our Nation.

As Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense.

But always will our whole Nation remember the character of the onslaught against us.

No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.

With confidence in our armed forces — with the unbounding determination of our people — we will gain the inevitable triumph — so help us God.

I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.

CHARLIE STARKWEATHER, PIONEER

In 1958, America was at the peak of the post-WWII boom. The country had emerged from the war as the strongest economic and military power in the world. Prosperity abounded. Returning soldiers went to college on the G.I. Bill, which also offered longer-term loans to allow the purchase of larger homes in areas that would come to be called suburbs. The middle class was expanding. Wages were increasing. Production was up. Ninety percent of adults had cars. Consumerism was flourishing almost without limit; the acquisition of material goods soared: Frigidaires with freezer compartments to hold four TV dinners, dishwashers, second cars, vegetable slicers, Electrolux vacuum cleaners—anything to increase the comfort of modern living. By the mid-1950s, two-thirds of U.S. households had at least one telephone. The baby boom had hit: 70.2 million people were born between 1946 and 1964, the largest generation in American history. Families were now wealthy enough to have more children and buy bigger houses to hold them. They could afford to travel, and many did so on propeller planes like the DC-3 and DC-4. Passengers could walk right through the airport door onto the tarmac and up the steps to sit wherever they chose. Smoking was allowed after takeoff. (You could also smoke in the waiting room of your doctor’s office. Some doctors even recommended smoking to decrease stress.)

In 1950, 9 percent of households in the United States had televisions. By 1959, the number had risen to 86 percent. The average viewer watched almost three hours of TV a day. TV stations went off the air at midnight to the music of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Most people still got their news from the newspapers, but by 1958, coaxial cables allowed for the transmission of images from the local stations to the networks in New York and the evening news. With the introduction of video, a local story could be shared all over the country on the evening news. The era of mass media had arrived.

In 1950 there were forty million cars on the road in America. By the end of the decade, that number had doubled. Cars signaled the new, space age America; they grew bigger and flashier with long tail fins, shiny strips of chrome, wraparound windshields, and burnished hood ornaments. They ran hard and fast with powerful V-6 and V-8 engines.

There were gross inequities in the postwar boom. The prosperity mainly benefitted the white middle class. Women were expected to stay home and raise kids, and most of them did. Black people in many southern states still lived in poverty and were subject to repressive Jim Crow laws. In 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and set off a boycott. That same year, Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi. In Brown vs. Board of Education, the Supreme Court found “separate but equal” school systems to violate the equal-protection clause of the Constitution. The South resisted school integration with violence. In 1959, President Eisenhower, who had been opposed to the integration of the army while he was a general, sent the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to force the integration of public schools. The great migration of Black people to the northern industrial cities, which had begun in the 1920s and ’30s, grew in force after WWII and maintained into the 1950s.

There were literary and musical stirrings against the conformity of the time. The Beats surfaced in New York and made their way to San Francisco, where Lawrence Ferlinghetti opened City Lights Bookstore. He published “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg, which was seen as an original and powerful protest against the middle-class values and numbing sameness of American culture. Pete Seeger wrote and sang a song entitled “Little Boxes,” which made fun of the cookie-cutter homes of the growing suburbs. Jackson Pollock threw canvases on the floor and splashed paint on them. Dr. Salk developed a vaccine for polio.

There were things to fear: Joe McCarthy launched a fanatical investigation into supposed Communists in the State Department and Hollywood. He was brought down in part by Edward R. Murrow, a newsman who broadcast the war from London and became the first celebrity television journalist. Ike had put the Korean War to bed, but the Cold War was raging. The hydrogen bomb was exploded in the atolls of the Pacific with one thousand times the force of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima. School kids crouched under their desks when the sirens sounded. Rock and roll surfaced in the form of musicians like Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis whitewashing Black gospel and rhythm and blues. Elvis, with his gyrating hips and suggestive lyrics, was seen by many parents as a serious threat to family values. But Elvis was more than music; he was the force behind a lot of the cultural changes forming on the horizon. As John Lennon would say, “Before Elvis, there was nothing.” In high school, there were good girls and bad girls, football players and bookworms. Every boy had a bike, but few were locked up on the school bike rack. Change was on the way, but it wasn’t here yet. If people had heard of Vietnam, it was probably as a French colony in Indochina.

The homicide rate (murder and non-negligent manslaughter) in the country had dropped from 4.6 per 100,000 in 1950 to 4.0 in 1957. (By 1973, the rate had more than doubled to 9.4 per 100,000.) Drugs, even marijuana, were unheard of in middle-class America. Ozzie and Harriet and their two sons, David and Ricky, were the beloved American family. DNA was discovered, drive-in theaters now offered in-car heaters, Golden Arches sprung up like weeds, and the second volume of the Kinsey Report—Sexual Behavior in the Human Female—was published.

That was about it. The major vibrations of the time were peace and prosperity (although, later on, the more astute claimed to have picked up the ominous rumbles down the road). There was a stability and predictability to life that hadn’t been seen in the country since before the Great Depression. Life was good, and the future looked even better.

If the 1950s in the United States was a time of innocence, Lincoln, Nebraska, was the beating heart of it. The population had grown to 128,000 by 1958. It was the home office of thirty-three national insurance companies and had packing plants and wholesale warehouses. Ten thousand students attended the University of Nebraska, on the edge of downtown. The football team was on the verge of national fame. The rains on the prairies had been good the previous few years and crop prices were high, which brought farmers into town to shop retail and invest in new equipment. Lincoln was a hub of railroad activity, with five lines running through town. Although there were still some two-party phone lines, Lincoln had gotten direct dial, and the phone book contained detailed instructions on how to operate the black clicking wheel. Above all, the city was a safe place to raise a family. From 1947 to 1957, seven murders were reported in the city. All seven were eventually solved. In the same time period, six manslaughter incidents were reported, and five of them were solved.

So the stage was set as 1957 came to a close. The country was filled with self-confidence and a bustling optimism. There was no real fear of an evil out there, no real fear of an evil inside. As cruel as war was, it was never random. You knew the face of your enemy. Someone won and someone lost. Play by the rules, be decent and respectful of another, take care of your family and go to church, and life will be good. Yes, terrible things happen, like a car-versus-train accident that kills a family of four, but seldom at the intentional hand of another, seldom at the arbitrary hand of another here, in Nebraska.

The American lexicon did not include the word mass murderer. Or spree killer. Or serial killer. Not that some hadn’t existed in the past, but they were never mythologized or given a categorical title. They hadn’t been brought into your living room through the eye of television or given front-page coverage day after day for weeks.

Enter Charlie Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate.

* * *

I was fifteen in January 1958. Caril was thirteen; Charlie was nineteen. We all lived in Lincoln. My middle-class home was a little over a mile from the house where, at the end of that month, a wealthy couple and their maid would die. I knew their son. My older brother, Mike, was in shop class with Charlie. The only thing I knew of Belmont, where Caril lived, was that it was on the wrong side of the tracks. Both Mike and I were away at prep school when the killings happened, as was the son of the wealthy couple. I went on to college and became a lawyer and writer in Denver. I drove to Lincoln two or three times a year to visit my parents—mother and stepfather—and siblings, never staying more than a day or two. As the years passed, I thought about writing the Starkweather murder story on several occasions, but I always veered off. I sensed something, I guess.

It’s amazing how sometimes life-changing decisions can turn on the smallest point. The sail catches a slight gust of wind, swings one way a little, and there’s your future.

I wrote only about crimes with some hook that I could use to explore larger themes, like vigilante justice or repressed memories or the indelible imprint of past crimes on the present. In 2021, my wife, Julya (Hulya), and I were in Florida for the winter. In the mornings she walked the beach and collected shells. I wrote. I had started a novel; there were two threads, one about a badly busted-up marriage and the other about a young couple somewhat like Charlie and Caril, who were traveling a blood-splattered road of escape through the Sandhills. One day, when I was trying to get a feel for my fictional Caril, I decided to look at the real one. I found her on YouTube, in a 1988 episode of a show called “A Current Affair.” It was startling to see the fourteen-year-old girl as a middle-aged woman. She was dramatic and very convincing in her claim of innocence. Then I took a slap in the chops: Well, was she guilty? Everything I’d ever seen or read about her almost assumed ab initio that she was. She had been tried and convicted, but that was in the justice system of the 1950s. Maybe the issue needed to be reexamined after all these years. I knew how to look objectively at the evidence of a conflict or dispute and construct a story of what happened. I had done it for years as a magistrate in juvenile court and an arbitrator.

I flicked the TV off and flopped in a chair. I closed my eyes, waited for the curtain to drop. I was seventy-nine years old. If I went in, I would be eighty-one when I came out. If I was going to write this story, about the crime but also about the place where I grew up, I should have done so thirty-five years ago. Now, I wasn’t sure I had the heart for it. It would be a rough couple of years. And there was Lincoln. The 1950s had not been a good time in my life. My gut was against it.

My approach to writing a book was complete immersion. I turned over every rock, knocked on every door, drew endless lists of names and questions and went after the answers one by one. For days, weeks, months, years if necessary. I tried to research and absorb everything. This story would be different. I’d be walking through my past. Before, I’d been on the outside looking in. Now, I would be on the inside looking in.

Bruce Springsteen wrote a song about Nebraska. Caril had heard it. She grew disturbed on the TV show as she described the line in the song when Charlie says he and Caril had had “some fun” on the murder rampage. Fun? She cried.

That was the small point, the shift of the sail in a mild gust of wind. If I had picked one of the other videos, or looked away the moment she lowered her head in despair, I might have shrugged off the impulse and gone on with my novel. So in the end, I ignored my gut and went with my head: Was Caril Ann Fugate a murderer? Sort that out, and answer the question, and there’s the story.

Not that that lessened the lingering sense of dread. I wanted out the minute before I agreed to write this book and the minute after. But I was in. I usually wrote from 6:00 a.m. to 1:00 or 2:00 p.m. One afternoon about six months or so into the writing, I exited my office and met Julya in the hallway. She stared at me for a moment, then suggested I go into the bathroom and take a look at myself in the mirror. “Pass,” I said, and made my way outside. Thank God for the Florida sun, I thought. January in Nebraska could freeze your blood.

So, one day in May 2021, I packed up my car and headed out northeast on I-76 and then east on I-80 to Lincoln. By the time I hit the Colorado desert, I was filled with a mixed sense of foreboding and determination. There was another thread: I knew how people looked at Nebraska. Flat. Boring. Endless. I was going to show them beauty. I wanted to take them through the Sandhills; Float them down the wide and deep Niobrara River 9owing east from Valentine and past Bassett, the little ranch town where I lived for a few years after the war, when my father and sister were still alive; and walk them up the mile-and-a-halflong trail to the top of magnificent Scotts Bluff, where they could look down on the countryside and imagine the endless line of immigrant wagons and animals and people trudging their way alongside the North Platte to Oregon.

* * *

In an effort like this one, the author seeks to come up with a coherent narrative of events. One doesn’t—because one can’t—attempt to establish the actual truth of what happened; rather the author sets forth a (hopefully) convincing presentation of the way he sees it and why he sees it that way. One obstacle in this effort was the massive number of documents involved, because of the two trials and many confessions; another was the fact that most of the main participants have passed on. Another stems from the fact that the critical part of the story is the series of ten murders in eight days. There are only two people who know the truth of what happened from January 21, 1958, to January 29, 1958. One of them, Charlie Starkweather, gave at least ten different versions of the murders. Almost every time he spoke or wrote something about the spree, his story changed on key facts. The other, Caril Fugate, gave pretty much the same story in and out of court; some of it jibed with Charlie’s, but many of the critical parts of it—who was where and who did what to whom during the spree—are diametrically opposed. This is why Part II, entitled “The Killings,” sets forth two versions of each killing: one from Charlie’s point of view, the other from Caril’s. The reader will read the versions that came from their mouths, as best as I can stitch them together.

Part I, “The Setup,” introduces Charlie and Caril and their relationship. Part III, “The Trials,” takes the reader in some detail through the trials of both Charlie and Caril. In IV, “Guilt or Innocence,” I lay out my analysis and conclusions as to who killed whom, murder by murder, for the reader to either accept or question, in whole or in part. Part V, “The Consequences,” describes the effect of the killing spree on various characters in the book. In Part VI, “Impact,” I discuss the impact of the murder spree on the culture of America.

 (Excerpted from Starkweather: The Untold Story of the Killing Spree that Changed America, copyright © 2023 by Harry N. Maclean. Reprinted by permission of Counterpoint Press.)