Mean Justice (21 page)

Then, an attorney named Stan Simrin picked up the phone and dialed another lawyer, a young and idealistic fellow who had been appointed to represent the interests of two young children who were among the first to reveal that child molesters and devil worshipers had joined forces in Bakersfield. Nothing about these cases, or this town’s view of them, would be the same after that one simple phone call.

•   •   •

“I want you to come over and listen to something,” Simrin told the other attorney, in his mild, understated
way. “It will give you a . . .”—he paused as if searching for words—“ . . . A new perspective on this case.”

The man on the other end of that call, Jay Smith, was reluctant to accept Simrin’s invitation. A stout, curly-haired lawyer with an infectious smile and a calm, easy way with kids, Smith had been appointed by the juvenile court to represent nine-year-old Kevin Nokes and his seven-year-old sister, Tanya,
⁹
two of seven children allegedly molested by various members of the Nokes family and their friends. The Nokes name in 1984 became synonymous in Kern County with child abuse, child pornography and unspeakable rituals. Simrin represented Brad and Mary Nokes, parents of Kevin and Tanya, who were star witnesses in Kern County’s terrifying and still-expanding satanic conspiracy case. The parents denied harming their children, but, from Jay Smith’s point of view as the kids’ court-appointed protector, Simrin’s clients were as dangerous as rabid dogs.

Now Smith pondered the request. He wasn’t personally acquainted with Simrin, but he had, of course, heard of Bakersfield’s most prominent criminal defense attorney. Simrin had a stellar reputation, not only for his work in the courtroom, but for his tireless volunteer work at his synagogue, for the mock trial classes he taught every year in the local public schools, for his long-standing leadership in the county bar association. But this reputation counted for little with the people who believed Kern County was besieged by devil worshipers—a group that included many of the deputies, social workers, prosecutors and judges in charge of the Nokes case. These officials expected Jay Smith’s backing; it was seen as a tacit part of his duties as legal representative of the Nokes children. And though no one had stated it aloud, Smith knew
he was expected to have nothing to do with Stan Simrin. The defense attorney was, as one social worker put it, voice dripping with contempt, “the enemy,” someone who was thought not to care a whit for a child’s welfare.

Nevertheless, Smith felt he had an obligation to listen to all sides: Despite the unspoken politics of his appointment, officially, he was charged with being an advocate for the children, not a mindless ally of the state. Though the interests of the police and prosecutors did seem to match his own in this case, he still had a duty to make certain, to listen to all sides. And, so far, he had heard only one side.

He didn’t have any real doubts that his two young charges had been terribly abused. All you had to do was meet them, listen to them. He had seen from the moment he met them that these kids were destroyed. Their glassy stares, their flat monotone speech when describing horrendous scenes of brutal rape and abuse, their intimate knowledge of sexual practices no child should imagine, much less experience—all of it showed just what monsters these poor kids had for parents. Clearly, the Nokeses were guilty of unimaginably cruel and heinous child abuse, and Smith felt nothing Simrin could say would change his mind. He knew what he knew: Those kids had to be protected from their parents. They broke his heart every time he saw them. And he wanted those responsible to pay for it. Big-time.

Still, he finally told Simrin, yes, I’ll come over. He walked down the street, then rode up to Simrin’s office in one of the mahogany-lined elevators inside the glass and steel of the Bank of America building. It was Bakersfield’s tallest, just across the street from the courthouse, and home to many of the area’s largest and best-known law
firms. Inside one of the more modest offices on a lower floor, Smith found the two-lawyer firm of Simrin and Moloughney.

“Come on in, come on in,” Simrin greeted him, steering him toward one of the client chairs in front of his utilitarian steel-and-wood desk. It was a no frills law office, just books and plaques lining the walls, papers strewn everywhere. Smith regarded Simrin warily, his eyes moving between the lawyer and the small, clear spot on Simrin’s desk, where a tape recorder sat, turned toward the client chairs. He wondered what he was in for.

A former pharmacist, Simrin, at age forty, had decided to earn his law degree from a correspondence school, and then quickly built his reputation in Bakersfield and throughout the state. He was a short, sallow man with a crooked smile, a closetful of bad ties and a habit of putting his leg up on the edge of his desk when lost in conversation, so that one scrawny shin stuck out, a shiny, pale beacon. In the courtroom, his ability to take apart witnesses—and prosecutors—was admired and feared, and he earned the ultimate compliment the justice business has to offer: The cops all hate him. Except when they’re in trouble—then they hire him.

Now he propped his foot up on the desk and, without further explanation, turned on the tape player.

On the tape, Smith heard the calm, reassuring voice of Susan Penninger, a former probation officer who had become a private investigator. Smith knew her, liked her, trusted her. He glanced up at Simrin, whose face was inscrutable, giving nothing away. Penninger’s voice stated the time and date, and announced that this tape would be an interview with one of Jay Smith’s young clients, Kevin Nokes.

He listened as Penninger began to ask simple, open-ended questions. Smith heard no pressure, no coercion, no attempt to suggest an answer with a leading question. Just good, solid, kind interviewing. In response, the boy began to speak. His name was Kevin Nokes, he said. He was nine years old. He named his school, his parents, his sister, the aunt he was staying with after the arrest of his parents. And, in question after question, calmly and clearly, he denied being molested, denied that his parents ever hurt him, denied knowing anything about the terrible things the police kept asking about and insisted had occurred.

But it wasn’t the denials that got to Jay Smith. It was the tone of voice, the way Kevin sounded: He sounded like a normal kid. A kid who showed no signs of being traumatized. Smith recognized the voice—there was no doubt it was Kevin on the tape. But Smith had never seen or heard the boy sound so normal. He had always known the children, both Kevin and his younger sister, Tanya, as basket cases, more like concentration camp survivors than children.

The tape had been made less than a month after the Nokes children were removed from their parents and placed with an aunt. When the DA’s office learned that Kevin’s aunt had allowed a defense investigator to talk to the boy, the county swooped in and took both children away—though the aunt had every legal right to allow Susan Penninger to speak with Kevin, and the DA had no legal authority to remove the children. Nevertheless, the Nokes children were taken to foster care and group therapy and separated from all family members from that day on. The official reaction to what Kevin Nokes told Susan Penninger was not to question the validity of the case
against his parents but to encircle the children with an impenetrable barrier. From that day on, the Kern County District Attorney barred defense lawyers and investigators from talking to other suspected victims of molestation rings—not only in the Nokes case, but in
all
molestation-ring cases. Only sheriff’s deputies, prosecutors, social workers and their allies in the investigation could get access. Any foster parent or relative of a victim who defied this directive would lose custody, no questions asked. The stated motive was to protect the children from further abuse, but there was a secondary effect: One side—the prosecution—held all the cards.

Jay Smith had met the Nokes children for the first time two months after Susan Penninger made her tape. At that time, he decided they were the most traumatized, dysfunctional abuse victims he had ever encountered. Yet now, as Simrin’s tape recorder played on, Smith sat in the attorney’s small office stricken, his face pale. He felt dizzy. He had always assumed the Nokes family was responsible for the kids’ thousand-yard stares, their robot-like answers to questions, their numbed, emotionless manner. But this tape . . . This tape was of a normal boy, a happy boy, a boy totally confused and upset about what was happening to his family—but who had not been traumatized in any noticeable way. Jay Smith had never met the boy on the tape. He only knew the child whose life had been taken over by Kern County, and who, after two months of the county’s ministrations, appeared profoundly damaged and would never be the same. Smith had walked into Simrin’s office believing certain things, things the social workers and detectives had told him: that children couldn’t lie about being molested, that there was no way these kids could be induced to make false
allegations against their own parents. Now the ground had shifted beneath his feet. He realized everything he had believed to be bedrock truth was wrong. Kern County’s sheriff and district attorney were on a crusade, Smith saw. It wasn’t about justice or truth. They wanted monsters to hang. And if they couldn’t find any monsters, Smith decided, then they’d create some.

Jay Smith wanted to cry out,
My God, what have they done? What have
we
done?
But he had no voice, no words. All he could do, as the tape spun to an end, was place his face in his hands and weep. As Stan Simrin searched through the clutter of his office for a box of tissues, Smith sat and cried for the families, for the children, for his town, for himself. Something had happened. The impulse that had started it all had been good and decent—a desire to protect children, to make the community safe for everyone, to hold wrongdoers accountable. But something had happened to this impulse, something twisted and dark, and no one had thought to question it, not even a good and decent man like Jay Smith. Which is how witch hunts are born, Smith realized in one searing instant—not through the designs of evil people, but within the hearts of the good.

There were indeed monsters in the world, Smith now realized with a terrible certainty. And, without knowing it, he had been one of them.
¹⁰

3

A
DECADE LATER, AT THE BEGINNING OF HIS OWN
ordeal, Pat Dunn would also turn to Stan Simrin for help. At first, Pat hadn’t thought he’d need a lawyer, but once it became clear the police considered him more suspect than grieving husband, Jim Wiens, one of the Dunns’ real estate attorneys, had passed on Simrin’s name and number. “Call him,” Wiens advised. “Listen to him. He’s the best.”

Pat did talk to Simrin, but opted not to retain him at the outset, certain that the authorities sooner or later would accept his protestations of innocence and look to other explanations for Sandy’s disappearance. Simrin cautioned Pat to be as cooperative as he could in helping the police find his missing wife. “Of course I’ll cooperate,” Pat had started to answer, but Simrin interrupted him with the second half of his warning: When it came to questions that pertained not to Sandy but to Pat—questions about his movements and motives, alibis and feelings—it would best if he declined to answer. When viewed through the prism of a suspicious mind, Simrin explained, anything a person says about such matters can sound like the words of a guilty man.

“Thank you very much,” Pat had said heartily. He may have intended to take Simrin’s advice, but in the end, he
did not. Out of arrogance, ignorance or a combination of both, Pat Dunn felt certain the authorities would come around to his way of seeing things, and he kept talking to them and trying to answer all of their questions, sometimes sober, sometimes not. He even gave an interview to the
Bakersfield Californian,
which covered the case extensively and quoted Pat as saying that he was the prime suspect, though an innocent one.

And then the addict-turned-star-witness Jerry Lee Coble came along. He, too, spoke to police many times, refining his story, adding new details. Unlike Pat Dunn, who police never tape recorded, one of Coble’s statements was taped—but only after he had told his story several other times and Detective Soliz drove him out to view the Dunn house and neighborhood to “refresh” his memory. Still, even with Coble as a star witness, two more months elapsed before the district attorney’s office—lobbied by Kate Rosenlieb and other prominent citizens, including various members of the Bakersfield City Council—finally charged Pat with the murder of Alexandra Paola Dunn.

Held without bail, Pat was cut off from the estate by the accusations of murder and by objections to Sandy’s will filed by her sister, Nanette Petrillo, who appeared far less estranged from Sandy in death than she had been in life. Pat had spent most of his personal savings, about one hundred thousand dollars, to prop up the real estate ventures, leaving him with no money for a legal defense once he realized he needed one. So he had turned to his brother Mike to finance Stan Simrin’s hefty retainer.