One Man Crime Wave

Baseness has its armor and the weapons of Justice sometimes brake against it. — George Eliot

A preliminary hearing for Caleb Silver’s crime wave ended last Friday afternoon with holding orders for three counts of first-degree burglary and one count of car theft.

The crime wave started in Boonville at the home of Silvia Carsey, 14361 Highway 128 (behind the Frosted Owl), where Caleb had been mooching until a few days before Christmas, 2015. As soon Ms. Carsey left for the airport in San Francisco, Caleb stole her truck by driving it through the locked gate. A witness said Caleb then bashed into a car — hit and run — and roared off on Highway 128, then hooked a left turn up the Philo-Greenwood Road where he again crashed Ms. Carsey’s red GMC pickup, this time into a tree and, from there, he went on foot to make himself at home in three separate houses in Elk, helping himself to dinner, sleeping in the beds like a tweaker Goldilocks, leaving the toilets unflushed, using the bath and shower, leaving them filthy, dropping his old clothes, pawing through the drawers and closets, looting them for whatever he took a liking to — a laptop computer, an iPhone, assorted jewelry and keepsakes, new boots, the latest Carhart coat, helping himself to a bicycle.

And then it was off to Fort Bragg to, ahem, allegedly murder Dennis Boardman, steal Boardman’s distinctive truck with its handmade camper shell with Dennis’s dog and flee south to Carpenteria, outside of Santa Barbara, where he committed some crime we have yet to be appraised of, and was finally arrested in Santa Barbara.

It is the reporter’s duty to insert the qualifier “allegedly” in reference to the murdered Dennis Boardman, and the second stolen truck and Boardman’s dog, but in point of fact he has already been to trial twice for the Boardman murder and in April will go back for a third trial (the first two ending in mistrials) and this reporter has become so well acquainted with the evidence that there is no question Silver committed  the murder, and since he readily confessed to the theft of Boardman’s truck and dog, that point is what the lawyers call “moot.” So, for the sake of brevity, let’s skip the polite qualifier and cut to the cold black heart of the matter.

“You know me, I’m really sweet,” Caleb Silver wrote in a letter to his mother — who has said she’s terrified of him — but Eric Rennert of the Office of the Public Defender, a man who seems stuck in Blue Meanie-think (all cops are bad people) has come up with a defense for Silver that has so far been surprisingly effective, a blend of dilly-dally, shilly-shally, dither and stall — reminding the jury as often as possible that cops are not only bad, they aren’t telling the truth about his client, Caleb Silver.

That was actually how the last trial ended with a hung jury, one of whom wrote in to say that while they all thought Silver guilty, his guilt hadn’t been sufficiently proven. The judge told them that the standard in our courts here in California (not the envy of the world, perhaps, but still, all we have) was “proven beyond any reasonable doubt. Not any possible or imaginary doubt.” And more of the same kind of lawyering went down during the prelim last week.

But it’s not as effective against a judge as it is against a jury, so Mr. Rennert ended up arguing with the judge several times, trying to assert his own interpretations of what the law should be, instead of what it is.

For instance, when the Highway Patrol officer, Ole Marin, who found the truck crashed into a tree near Elk, spoke to Ms. Carsey’s brother, James Cardin in Boonville, Mr. Cardin told Officer Marin that he’d told Caleb to clear off the property before he left to take sister Silvia to the airport on December 20th, and that no way was Caleb given permission to take Silvia’s truck. Cardin also told Officer Marin that when he came back the gate was broken and the truck was gone.

Rennert objected that this was double hearsay. Judge John Behnke overruled the objection, noting that in a 115 prelim, any trained-certified peace officer was exempted from the rule and hearsay was allowed, “and at risk of repeating myself, let me just read you the statute… ‘and a trained peace officer may be allowed to repeat what a witness or declarent,’ as we have in this case, Mr. Rennert, the declarant, Wilburn James Cardin, who gave the statement to the officer, Mr. Rennert, and your objection is overruled.”

Rennert continued to quarrel with the judge. Finally, Judge Behnke got the book out and read the statute to him, and Rennert still kept up the quarrel until the judge said he’d brook no more discussion on the subject, and ordered Rennert to sit down.

Rennert really let loose on Deputy Jonathon Martin, the South Coast resident deputy who investigated the Elk burglaries.

“Now then Officer Martin — it is Officer isn’t it? Or is it Deputy Martin? — I can never… Uh, well, let me just ask you this Officer um, uh Martin: See this photo — oops, um, uh, wrong one, here it, uh, is I think, this one here. In this, um, photograph of what you said on direct was the place of entry, see this window? Was this where the, uh, um, alleged break in was supposed to have taken place? Is that what you said on direct?”

The photo showed a window sash with four vertical windowpanes, each about 8x24 inches. Rennert wanted to know how the window had been forced. From the picture it looked like an intact window. Deputy Martin pointed out that one of the windowpanes was missing, all but a corner in the top left of the frame. Rennert finally saw the difference between the remnant of glass and the glare of the other four panels. Mr. Rennert lit up like a man jolted by an Aha! Moment. He shushed his initial outburst with a forefinger like a librarian shushes a hooligan, paced a turn or two, then spoke.

“And how far is this um, uh, distance here, Officer Martin? See where I’m pointing with my pen, here, between the, um, uh, thing here and what I’m, uh, asking is how, um, uh, far is it —see where I’m pointing here? the one side to the other, over here?”

It was about eight inches wide. Not big enough for a man, or even a weasel like the Coy Smiler, to crawl through. Deputy Martin saw clearly where Rennert was going and hastened to add that if counsel cared to look at the bottom left of the sill a few inches he’d see the latch that opened the entire sash, and that would let in even a big fat man.

Well, this is not how the Socratic method works. It only works when the witness is forced to answer only the questions asked, in order, yes or no, and thus allow the questioner to close on his own terms, and Eric Rennert was furious that Jon Martin wasn’t going to let him do it!

“OBJECTION,” Rennert howled. “NON-Responsive! Move to strike!”

Martin was still speaking — Rennert had cut him off in mid-sentence and whisked the picture off the screen with an angry swipe and stood between the projector and his desk, dithering furiously, with the page rattling in his trembling hand, first on the screen, then off again.

“What’s the question you are even answering? Do you even remember? What did I ask you? Move to strike!” Rennert reiterated, shoving the picture back under the projector and jabbing the broken windowpane with his finger. “I asked you how wide is this!”

The prosecutor, Deputy DA Timothy Stoen, spry as spring, eventually got to his feet. He may have been going to object. The judge looked around for his gavel. It wasn’t under the bench.

“Mr. Rennert,” Behnke finally said, “ask your next question.”

Mr. Stoen sat back down.

Rennert puffed and fumed, he backed and filled, dallied out some line, a few hundred ums & ahs, and soon he got into another argument with the judge, this time over an email from Deputy Martin to Mr. Stoen, asking if the homicide case was connected to the string of burglaries. After insulting Martin a couple of times over “the true meaning of this, um, uh, email,” Rennert concluded that going after Caleb Silver was “a vindictive prosecution, your honor,” arising, Eric Rennert felt, from the fact that Rennert had hung the jury on the last murder trial.

On redirect, Stoen asked what, if anything, Deputy Martin had found in his investigation that tied the burglaries to the murder?”

Martin said, “It was an Arizona driver’s license in the name of Eliot Pinhey.” It was found less than 100 feet from the site of the stolen red GMC’s collision with a tree near Elk.

Eliot Pinhey, incidentally, was the faux name Silver gave when he was arrested in Santa Barbara on December 29th. It was the name he used to send his mother a thinly veiled confession to Boardman’s murder and wonder what Mom knew about the case in care of, incidentally, Eliot Pinhey, Santa Barbara County Jail, where Silver was this Pinhey’s celly and trusted confidant.

When Mom got the letter she locked her doors and called the police.

Fort Bragg Police Officer Angelica Wilder took the case from there, and you can read my earlier reports in these spots, which I tend to presume my editors will supply to the curious on request. I promise to keep the readership updated on this and several other murders, including perhaps, even my own…