THE DEAD MAN in the Yorkville pot patch has been identified as 43-year-old Marcos Bautista of Cloverdale. The forensic autopsy determined Bautista had died as the result of multiple gunshot wounds.
THE MAN found in that same pot patch who didn't die of multiple gunshot wounds, Edgar Fidel Contreras, 25, of Windsor, has been booked into the Mendocino County Jail on charges of murder and robbery. Contreras is the third man being held in connection with Bautista's murder. Contreras was the wounded man it took several hours to locate deep in the Yorkville hills because he didn't know exactly where he was and his vague, cell phone-relayed directions had to be translated from Spanish to English. He had been hospitalized in Santa Rosa for treatment of the gunshot wounds that nearly finished him prior to his arrest. Who shot whom, and who shot first isn't going to be easy to sort out, but it seems that one of the three surviving suspects has said enough to implicate all three in Bautista's demise.
AND RIGHT HERE in the Anderson Valley, persistent rumors say an apparently experienced crew of armed pot thieves has been at work ripping off local producers of the love drug.
WE'VE RECEIVED an unsigned letter highly critical of a member of the Boonville faculty, but the author is going to have to identify him or herself to us before we print it, Name Withheld.
OUR UNDEFEATED PANTHERS went over to Upper Lake Saturday afternoon and drove back to Boonville with their first defeat on the short end of the 34-22 final score, our win streak stopped at 16. Boonville's rolling Panthers were 5-0 before Saturday's loss to Upper Lake. And we were the defending NCL III champion with an average 49-point margin of victory this season. We hadn't lost a game since our 46-28 defeat in Point Arena on October 25, 2013. The only loss for 3-1 Upper Lake this year was against the only undefeated team left in the NCL III — Calistoga. Calistoga beat Upper Lake 54-16, and we play Calistoga this Friday night in our homecoming game at the Boonville Fairgrounds. Can our boys bounce back? Bet on it.
COACH KUNY was without three crucial players for Saturday's loss to Upper Lake. Where were they? Apparently, the absent trio decided to visit friends in Sacramento rather than play football, a choice that we're sure has not been well received either by Coach Kuny or their teammates. The week before, the coach had had to deal with a small group of whining athletes with vague complaints that practices were too strenuous. This kind of thing is what comes from years of parental and educational indulgence, but it's now the child-centered, child-like world we live in.
GETTIN' 'ER DONE. Aaron Peterson and crew take down unwanted trees fast and neat, and we can't say enough good about All-In-1 Tree Service. And it’s a Valley company into the bargain. These guys don't mess around. We're doing some site prep on the central Boonville lot we just bought. Four 100-foot dead pines had to go, as did some smaller trees, the whole show a job for people who know what they're doing. Mr. Peterson and three other guys were in and outta there in two days, and the only evidence that they were there at all is a neat pile of brush and another neat pile of useful wood chips. To say that we're impressed with their work doesn't begin to express our admiration. Aaron and Monica Peterson, long time residents of Greenwood Road, are the owners of All-In-1. They can be reached at 707-877 3340. Mrs. Peterson, by the way, coaches our girl's softball team.
SPEAKING OF HOLIDAY SHOPPING in The Valley, as we were last week, add Petit Teton to your list. The busy little farm south of Boonville ships a wide variety of preserved edibles all over the USofA. If you've never visited, double rubber band your socks because you won't want them blown off.
WE ALL HOPE Postmistress Collette at the Boonville Post Office is fully recovered from the seizure she suffered last week while on the job, serious enough to get Collette a chopper ride over the hill to Ukiah.
IF TOM STIENSTRA says we can expect a monster El Nino, we're almost certain to get one. The Chron's ace outdoors writer is almost always correct about this stuff, and he cites a raft of other people who know their ocean temps and other sure signs that we're coming up on some big rains. Stienstra himself said Sunday that he noticed at Yosemite's higher elevations the marmots have already headed for their winter burrows; in an ordinary weather year they grub around outside for at least most of October.
THE NEW GREENWOOD BRIDGE. "A Philo Reader Writes: There was a big drilling rig working at the Greenwood Road bridge this morning. I stopped and asked one of the guys what they were working on and he said they were drilling for soil samples. I assume it was for the engineering firm that's designing a replacement bridge. Regarding that, I haven't heard or read anything about what stage they are at since that meeting at the Apple Farm. Have you?"
COUNTY Transportation Director Howard Dashiell promptly responded to our Bridge inquiry: "We will have another public meeting when the final report is done (that report will have the from the rest of the design studies like the Geotechnical borings) - But the good news is that as discussed at the public meeting year or two back - we needed FHWA to agree to "retrofit" option as the preferred alternative— which they did! However, because NEPA requires we do analysis of alternatives we must discuss the "new box bridge" in our studies BUT, we are only spending design resources on the "retrofit" option as the preferred alternative... so that drill rig is sampling for new footings for the approach slab bridge an to add the new "arch" along with the two existing.
PS. Rough schedule dependent on funding allocations: CEQA/NEPA 2017; Right-of-Way 2018; Construction over two years (traffic is maintained with possible limited closures with notice) 2019 & 2020."
FROM A RECENT STORY on the famous actress, Winona Ryder. The commune referred to in the pufferoo below, Rainbow, was located off Greenwood Road, Philo. The old communards who contributed to Miss Ryder's fraught formative years still refer to Ms. Ryder as “Noni.”
"FROM THE AGES of 7 to 10, Ryder grew up on a remote commune—sans electricity—in Northern California with seven other families. At 10, her family moved to Petaluma, California, and in her first week of junior high, Ryder, who back then was a punk rock kid that sported a short haircut in tribute, she says, to Bugsy Malone, was jumped by a group of fellow students. ‘I wasn’t just bullied—I was straight-up beat up,’ she says. ‘It was my third day of school in seventh grade in a brand new town, and I had the short hair. I had a hall pass, and there was this gang of kids behind me, both guys and girls, and they were yelling “faggot” at me. I didn’t think they were talking to me, and also, having come from the Bay Area and being around the gay community there, I thought that word was really fucked up. But I really didn’t think they were yelling it at me, and then all of a sudden they came at me. I had six stitches and a fractured rib, and then I got put on home study that year and went to a different school in eighth grade.’" And so on.
KZYX BARS THE DOOR. COPS WARN SAKO. Public radio dissident, John Sakowicz, had written to KZYX's acting director, Stuart Campbell: "I'm a board director, and I have the absolute right of inspection of station records per California Corporations Code and MCPB's corporate bylaws. I will be scheduling to inspect all the documents that station members McKenty, Collins, and Tracy were prevented from seeing today. You have that list for the production of said documents."
CAMPBELL, natch, said No, nicely raising suspicions even higher that the books have been slo-basted for some time. If the numbers were clean Coate/Campbell would surely have the Welcome mat out. On the other hand, everyone at management levels tends to, ah, unreason on all matters, so...
WHEN the dissidents showed up anyway for a look at the books, they were met by the cops who told them to go away. Sako was not present. He wrote: "I just returned from my conference at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco on bankruptcy law as it applies to public pension systems. I'm concerned — troubled — that you, members of KZYX, were denied a full inspection.
"I'M A KZYX board director, and I need to inspect the records that you (the members) were denied from inspecting this afternoon. I'll do this with all of you, or I'll do it with attorney Peter Kafin.
"IT MIGHT INTEREST you to know that when I returned home in Ukiah, I had a message from MCSO Lieutenant Jason Caudillo warning me that no violence would be tolerated at today's inspection. No doubt KZYX station manager, Stuart Campbell, initiated the call.
"IT WAS INSULTING — deeply insulting — for Campbell to imply that the station need a police presence. Campbell clearly wants to escalate a civil matter. Why call the MCSO? I'm a former member of the MCSO, having worked at the jail from 2000-2004, and I'm both of public trustee of our county's $455 million pension system MCERA, and a sworn fiduciary of the same. I was vetted by the county's CEO for this position. Furthermore, I'm a member of the 2015-2016 grand jury where I was vetted by the courts. I'm law abiding in every respect.
I'm copying both Lieutenant Caudillo and Sheriff Allman on this email."
DOUG McKENTY wrote to Boonville's beloved community newspaper: "You will no doubt be proud to note that your piece this week referencing Judy Bari prompted the KZYX staff to call the police and have them meet us in the parking lot during our attempt to review documents that their bylaws specifically state any member can see. They were so frightened that we were mounting a Bari-like demonstration they felt compelled to call for police protection. Sakowicz even got a call warning him that violence would not be acceptable. The best part of the day for me was, once I explained to the police why we were there, a policeman took me aside to explain what to do if we found evidence of embezzling…"
I'VE BEEN a participant in many demonstrations all the way back to 1962, and have racked up a respectable number of arrests over the years, but of all those demos, all of which had their comic moments, none, for pure hilarity, match the Bari-led takeover of the KZYX studios that day. The diva of dissent had mustered all of the County's politically active outpatients, reinforcing them with a few objectively sane witnesses including, ahem, yours truly, for her assault on Mendocino County Public Radio's sanctum sanctorum. Except for the inimitable Gordy Black shoving another Senior Citizen, the late Rusty Norvell, off the front steps as Gordy gallantly attempted to block the onrushing mob, there was no violence, and even Gordy's futile shove of Norvell was more like a feather duster passing slowly over a bowl of oatmeal. Station manager Nicole Sawaya, the only intelligent boss the station has ever had, coolly turned the mike over to the mob for an hour or so mid-afternoon incoherence and that was that. The upshot of the demo? Bari had called it in support of Beth Bosk who'd been sacked from her talk show. Guess who wound up with Bosk's slot? Bari, of course who, also of course, simply hung up on anyone who called in to express skepticism about her version of the famous bomb attack. Conclusion? Mendolib, then and now, only stands for free speech when they don't have it. When they have it, you don't.
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