Posted on 03/27/2003 5:36:56 AM PST by Illbay
For years, legend had it that there was a group of powerful men in Bakersfield secretly living gay lives, sometimes with deadly consequences.
When the county's No. 2 prosecutor was stabbed to death in his home last year, the "Lords of Bakersfield" legend broke out into the open and the city's daily newspaper decided to confront it head-on.
In a series of stories that ran in January, The Bakersfield Californian found evidence of a ring of closeted gay men who had sex with teenage boys and used their influence to keep from being prosecuted. Four of the men ended up slain between 1978 and 1984; in most of these cases, young men were charged with killing their suitors.
The story further questioned whether the Kern County district attorney's office, led for the past two decades by tough-on-crime Ed Jagels, played favorites.
The newspaper also ended up turning the spotlight on itself: It implicated its late publisher as a member of the ring.
In the weeks since then, the report has been hailed as gutsy and denounced as innuendo. Some protesters have called on Jagels to resign, and scores of letters to the editor have poured in to the paper in this conservative city of about 250,000, in the heart of California's Bible Belt.
"That particular day the newspaper belonged behind the counter with Penthouse," said Karen Perry, as she inflated balloons in her floral shop. "It makes Bakersfield look like a terrible place. This is a great place of family values."
Katie Kier, a union representative, said she had heard the rumors several years ago and praised the paper for having "the guts" to bring it out in the open. "It should have come out sooner," she said.
Newcomers to Kern County, where subdivisions have sprouted among oil derricks, cotton fields and vineyards 110 miles north of Los Angeles, had occasionally heard of the Lords of Bakersfield, a name coined in the 1980s by a local newspaper editor for a loosely connected group that was said to extend back to at least the 1950s. But it had been nearly two decades since a killing had fit the pattern.
Then prosecutor Stephen Tauzer was found dead in his garage in September with a knife in his head.
"There was a lot of talk could Tauzer be one of the Lords of Bakersfield?" Executive Editor Mike Jenner said. "All that came bubbling back."
Columnist Robert Price was drafted to look into Tauzer's killing, but the story quickly grew into something much larger. Research quickly led him to former Publisher Alfred Fritts, who died in 1997 from AIDS. A teenager accused of one of the murders identified Fritts in court in 1983 as a man with whom he lived and had sex.
Jenner went to Publisher Ginger Moorhouse, Fritts' sister, and she told him to do whatever was needed to pursue the story.
The resulting articles, based on court files, scores of interviews and old news stories, cited evidence suggesting a police commissioner, a well-known hairdresser, a millionaire businessmen, a lawyer and the county's personnel director were all part of the ring of gay men.
The story questioned why Fritts and others were never charged with unlawful sex with a minor, and suggested the Lords of Bakersfield looked out for each other.
It also drew parallels between the Lords legend and Tauzer's slaying, examining inconclusively whether his relationship with a young drug addict fit the pattern.
Charles Davis, a journalism professor at the University of Missouri, has used the story as an example of a community newspaper tackling difficult subjects and provoking discussion.
"It takes a certain amount of chutzpah, doing that kind of journalism," Davis said. "How many other stories are out there like this, that aren't being told? They're kind of in the water. Everybody hears them but nobody writes them up. It's great to see someone follow up on a local legend."
Tauzer, a 57-year-old bachelor, had befriended 22-year-old addict Lance Hillis. Tauzer gave Hillis a car, let him live at his home, found him a job at the district attorney's office, and kept him out of jail.
In August, Hillis was killed in a car accident. Not long after that, Tauzer was slain. Hillis' father, drug counselor Chris Hillis was arrested in the slaying. According to investigators, the elder Hillis believed only jail would help his son get clean, and he was angry at Tauzer for protecting the young man.
The elder Hillis has denied any involvement in the slaying. His lawyer has indicated he may invoke the Lords of Bakersfield cases to suggest Tauzer was killed by a gay lover.
For his part, Jagels, the district attorney, said he tried to persuade Tauzer to stay out of Lance Hillis' legal cases.
After the stories were published, Jagels declared that he is not gay, lashed out at the newspaper for focusing on just a few of hundreds of slayings and branded Price a "gossip columnist."
"They took a few that involved homosexuals and weaved a conspiracy around them," Jagels said. "It's crazy, it's lunacy."
That's probably why they stayed in the closet, as opposed to prancing in parades.
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