Posted on 12/29/2008 7:28:17 PM PST by Clintonfatigued
In her heart, Ellie Nesler loved her children, friends say, even when that love caused her enormous trouble and pain.
Nesler, who died Friday, gained international notoriety in 1993 when she took a .25 caliber pistol into a Tuolumne County courtroom and put five bullets in the head and body of a man accused of molesting her son. She served 3 1/2 years as her case wended through trial and appeal before pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter in 1997, a plea bargain that released her back to her son and daughter.
But her story did not end there. Nesler spent the last 10 years struggling with the complicated power of fame and infamy, battling cancer and drugs, earning money from her tale, losing it all, and seeing her son fall into his own spiral of violence, ending with his imprisonment for murder.
Nesler died at UC Davis Medical Center of complications from cancer -two days too soon to meet her grandson, born to her daughter, Becky, on Sunday afternoon, said family friend Diane Morrow.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
May this long-suffering woman find the peace in the next world she never found in this one.
RIP
God rest her soul. When the law repeatedly protects criminals and fails victims, thank God for people like Nellie to stand up for the victims and create consequences for the criminals.
Sorry, you do not walk into a court of law and shoot someone down like that.
The man was NOT CONVICTED of anything. What is wrong with people? She was no hero.
She became judge, jury, and executioner.
How do you think the observers in the courtroom felt? To be traumatized like that?
I pray for her and her family that they all find peace.
What a tragic life!
May she have the peace she deserves.
You might be interested in the final reply posted on this 2002 thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/713399/posts?page=7#7
"Daniel Driver had a prior child molestation conviction dating back to 1983. When a Santa Clara County judge put him on probation after three months in jail, Driver moved to Tuolumne County, where he got a job as a dishwasher in a Christian camp. In 1989, a warrant was issued for his arrest on suspicion of molesting four boys at the camp-including Ellie Nesler's son."
“During the four years between the molestations and Driver’s arrest, Nesler said after the shooting, she and her son lived in mortal fear that Driver would come and kill them. He had apparently threatened to do so. The boy suffered from nightmares at home and learning and discipline problems at school since being raped by Driver, his aunts said. On the day of the preliminary hearing, he vomited when he woke up and again in the street when he met the accused molester outside the courtroom.
“The man looked at him, and he smirked,” said Ardala Inks, who is Nesler’s cousin and accompanied her to court. “He thought it was a big joke”
Nice touch to accuse the mom of having something "wrong" with her. How about the kid also? Surely he must share the blame as well; we can't blame the perp, after all....
Sounds like we have the definitive FReeper position on murder and drug dealing. Not guilty.
It’s almost strange the way Nellie’s son ended up doing the same thing she did. He is now in prison for murder. We have to fight for justice but we can not take justice into our own hands. God has His own way of taking care of business. The problem here is a much bigger one. We need to get these child predators of the streets. That’s the least we can do. We need to make sure they are never in contact with children again. We have to make sure our states put these predators in places where they are not too comfortable and away from society.
(AP) William Nesler - a fugitive in connection with the beating death of an acquaintance - was once known as a young rape victim whose vigilante mother walked into a courtroom and shot his accused molester five times in the head 11 years ago. Since the acts that led to that day, Nesler's life has never been the same.
Nesler, 23, has been in jail nearly 20 times in the past five years, in cases ranging from complaints about his Rottweiler to robbery and drug charges. And now he is wanted for murder for allegedly beating a disabled neighbor to death, just an hour after completing a jail sentence for attacking the same man in a dispute over tools. Authorities do not know where he is hiding, but they consider him armed and dangerous.
Although they recognize that his upbringing has played a role in his troubles, friends and family members said they were still surprised by the murder allegations. "He was a great kid," said Sacramento bounty hunter Leonard Padilla, a family friend. "I would never have believed it would come to something like this, though a lot of times there's a progression of activity."
Padilla, who got to know the Nesler family more than a decade ago, said he's talked with an FBI agent about helping bring Nesler in safely if he can be persuaded to surrender. When Nesler was young, his parents left the faded gold rush towns of the Sierra Nevada foothills in the hopes of striking it rich by mining in Africa, family members said. The couple eventually split and Ellie Nesler returned with William - known as Willie - and his sister to California.
When Willie was 6 or 7 years old he allegedly was molested by Daniel Driver at a Christian camp. He said he didn't tell anyone for nearly a year because Driver had threatened to kill his family. After two years on the lam, Driver was arrested and brought to court on April 2, 1993, for a hearing on whether he would face trial on charges of molesting Nesler and three other boys. Ellie Nesler said her son couldn't testify. He was vomiting. She feared the twice-convicted molester would walk free.
During a recess, she pulled a Raven .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol from the purse of her other sister, Jan Martinez, and shot Driver in the head. "He deserved to die," she told police. "Maybe I'm not God, but I'll tell you what - I'm the closest damn thing to it for all the other little boys." She later said, "My little boy can hold his head up now. He doesn't have to be afraid of Danny." During Ellie Nesler's trial, Martinez testified that the abuse changed her nephew from "a very beautiful little kid... into a mean little brat." By age 11, he had changed schools three times and was spiteful and angry.
Ellie Nesler, derided by some for taking the law into her own hands and praised by others for exacting her own justice, served only three years of a 10-year manslaughter sentence when a court overturned the conviction due to juror misconduct. She is now in a California prison for charges related to manufacturing methamphetamine. Authorities say William Nesler has been chronically unemployed in recent years. Cory Njirich said his father gave Nesler a little work helping tear down part of a former gravel plant next door to where Nesler lived. Although he stood 6-foot-2, weighed 225 pounds and was covered with tattoos of comic book characters, he was mostly just a shy observer who seemed out of place.
"He acted like a little kid. He'd come up and watch us," Njirich said. "My dad always said he was like a 12-year-old in a 25-year-old body." Recently, Nesler had helped clean up his family's property in this mountainous area of California. David Davis, 45, disabled from a neck injury while working in oil fields in Wyoming, was hired to help clear the property, which had turned into a squatter's camp, according to Davis' mother, Rita Brown.
Trouble came in late June when Davis accused Nesler of stealing his tools. Nesler attacked Davis and started beating him, police said. "He's lucky I didn't kill him," Nesler allegedly told police. Nesler pleaded guilty to assault and was sentenced to two months in jail. He was released at 4 a.m. Sunday, and the alleged beating happened about an hour later. Relatives say they've heard from William Nesler a few times since police put him on the wanted list, and they are urging him to turn himself in to a local bounty hunter.
"We told him he needs to come in, but he said the sheriffs are going to kill him," said one of his aunts, speaking on condition of anonymity, and adding that the family doesn't know where Nesler is. Police have said that Nesler is most likely still in the state and they are focusing their search in his home county and in neighboring counties. Police have been searching former gold rush towns in the Sierra Nevada foothills now better known as tourist stops on Highway 49. "He's out and about," Dittberner said. "He could be anywhere."
Tell me was Mr. Driver convicted of the crime he was accused of?
I did not accuse the child of anything. But the fact remains she was convicted of voluntary manslaughter.
Which was overturned, so she got off scott free, that should make you feel ok.
Did not do much for her kid though did it? Now he is serving 25 to life for murder. Stomping a man to death.
There are many families in this country who are facing or have faced the same thing. I am one of those parents who has had to sit there while thier kid was spilling his soul about rape and molestation. Oh, yes, I have felt the anger too. Only I did not hunt the man down and kill him.
Yes, he is still out there somewhere. The only thing left to do is try to get your child through this the best that you can.
She apparently did not do that. Did you even read the rest of the story? The woman did have something profoundly wrong with her. So yes, I am accusing her of that.
We prefer real justice, but in the complete and total absence of that, we'll settle for vigilante justice.
Do we prefer heroes or law?
I'm just kind of old-fashioned preferential to the rule of law, not the rule of man. YMMV, and welcome to your brave new world.
And this is why committing an act of violence against a child is the second worst thing any human can do.
Rest in Peace Ellie Nesler. You walk with God now.
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