Badges, Bears, and Eagles Page 3

  … any and all freezers, refrigerators, kitchen drawers, cabinets, drawers, closets, gun and ammunition storage areas, tool storage areas, garages, outbuildings, surrounding property, sumps, pits, garbage containers, barrels and boxes.

  Also included were:

  … the persons and vehicles of Jake Stillwell and Mitch Davis.

  The warrant continued:

  Items to search for include indices of ownership or occupancy; tablets or pieces of plain white paper of the size 6 and 1/8 by eight inches; black felt-tip pen; handwriting examples; small caliber firearms, live rounds or cartridges; steel traps, stakes, steel drags, wire attached to traps; wire in bulk; wire cutters or wire cutting pliers; Warden Hatcher’s business cards, containing notes left at the trap site; raw furs or carcasses; knives; fur stretching frames; mountain lion hides; eagle feathers or blood; mud and snow tires; black plastic bags; dead rabbits or parts thereof; and clothing or footwear that may contain fragments of blood, hair or feathers.

  As required by law, I concluded the search warrant with legal justification for the search:

  Your affiant, Lieutenant Steven Callan, had reasonable cause to believe that the subjects were in possession of property constituting a means of committing a felony (evidence of threatening a public officer) and property or things with the intent of using them to commit a public offense (misdemeanor take and/or possession of an endangered species [bald eagle] and/or take and possession of a protected mountain lion).

  A coordinated, simultaneous search was conducted at both residences on February 20, 1985. Warden Dave Szody, Warden Don Jacobs and I went to Mitch Davis’s residence. Davis lived out in the country on a small piece of fenced acreage owned by his parents. Two mobile homes were on the property: One belonged to Davis and his wife; the other belonged to Davis’s parents. I expected that most of the illegal items would be found on Davis’s property, since Stillwell lived in town, with limited space.

  Mitch Davis, his wife and both parents were home when we arrived. I handed copies of the search warrant to Mitch Davis and his father. If a picture is worth a thousand words, Mitch looked like his fun-and-games world of shooting anything that moved had just come crashing down around him. His face turned red, partially out of fear, but mostly from embarrassment. Davis’s wife and parents obviously had no idea what their fair-haired boy had been up to.

  The first place Szody and I searched was the freezer in Mitch Davis’s kitchen.

  “I’m guessing this is the kitty they killed on Ponderosa Way,” I said, as I opened a large plastic bag containing a complete mountain lion hide.

  “What’s in that little bag?” asked Szody, holding a clipboard and recording the items I seized into evidence.

  “I’ll be darned. I believe we have a ring-tailed cat!”

  “You know, I’ve never seen one in the wild.”

  “Don’t feel like the Lone Ranger,” I said. “Very few people have. These little guys only come out at night and even then you never see ’em.”

  “Have you ever seen one?” asked Szody

  “Only once. I was working Shasta Lake one night, about three years ago, when I saw one running through the rocks on the shoreline.”

  California law classifies the ring-tailed cat as a “fully protected mammal” and the mountain lion as a “specially protected species.” The take or possession of either one of these animals was considered to be a serious offense. I carefully bagged both items and sealed the bags with evidence tags.

  While Szody and I continued our search of Davis’s mobile home, Warden Jacobs was looking around outside. It didn’t take him long to find three plastic garbage bags in a field next to the residences. One of them contained the decomposing carcass of a fisher. Fishers are rare furbearing mammals, seldom seen in California. As was the case with the mountain lion and the ring-tailed cat, fishers are protected by California law.

  “What do we have here?” muttered Jacobs, as he opened the second bag and peered inside. “Wow! This one’s ripe.” Jacobs had discovered what was left of a bobcat that had been thrown into the field to rot. Examining the contents of the last bag, he said, “A little gray fox,” and held the bag at arm’s length. “Looks like he might have been trying to chew his paw off to escape.”

  “None o’ them carcasses is mine,” announced Mitch Davis’s father, who was standing nearby and watching Jacobs. “I ain’t trapped in years. Mitch is responsible for anything you find out there.”

  Szody and I concluded our search of Mitch Davis’s trailer with the discovery of a blood-spattered knife. The blood was later identified as rabbit. Before leaving, I handed Mitch Davis a receipt for the items that were being seized into evidence. I also pulled a card out of my wallet and read Davis his Miranda rights. He had cooperated up until that point, but claimed to know nothing about a dead bald eagle or a threatening note. There was no question in my mind that Davis was not being truthful, but I also knew that we would have to prove it.

  Meanwhile, Wardens Hatcher and Martens were busy searching the residence of Davis’s partner, Jake Stillwell. Stillwell lived in a small house in town. Sitting on the north side of Stillwell’s residence were two plastic milk carton boxes—the kind with the printed notice on the side telling people it’s against the law to take them. Both boxes were filled with steel-jawed leg-hold traps and trapping tools.

  “There’s another trap, a bloody towel and fur of some kind here in the Jeep,” said Martens, as Hatcher recorded the seized items.

  “Yeah,” said Hatcher. “That’s probably rabbit fur. I found four jackrabbits in his kitchen freezer.”

  Warden Martens, who had been on the job a year or two longer than Hatcher, pulled a card out of his pocket and read Stillwell his Miranda rights. Believing that he could outsmart what he viewed as a couple country-bumpkin game wardens, Stillwell waived his rights and agreed to answer questions.

  “Who do all these traps belong to?” asked Martens.

  “They all belong to Mitch,” said Stillwell. “The other day we pulled a trap line up by Whitmore. That’s where all these came from.”

  “Have you guys been trapping near Platina?”

  “Yeah, we were trapping somewhere up there, but I’m not sure of the exact location.”

  “May I see your trapping license?”

  “I don’t have one, but I think Mitch does.”

  Martens and Hatcher didn’t believe anything that Stillwell had told them. They ran a records check through Sacramento headquarters and learned that neither Davis nor Stillwell had a California Trapping License.

  While searching Jake Stillwell’s residence, Hatcher and Martens documented Stillwell’s possession of several rifles, including a .22-.250 Winchester, with scope; a .22 Winchester, with scope; and a Ruger .220. Empty casings from the .22-.250, along with live ammunition for the same rifle, were found in Stillwell’s Jeep. One of the most interesting items found inside Stillwell’s residence was a black felt-tip pen, with virtually the same-sized tip as the one used to write the note threatening Warden Hatcher. A few samples of Stillwell’s handwriting were also taken into evidence; the best were found in a book of recorded firearm sales.

  “I would like to ask you one more question before we leave,” said Martens.

  Stillwell stopped what he was doing and waited for the veteran warden’s question.

  “What can you tell us about a dead bald eagle that was dumped at the Fish and Game office?”

  “I don’t know anything about any eagle.”

  The next day I began working my way through the pile of evidence that Martens and Hatcher had seized from Stillwell’s residence. All those traps were the first items that caught my eye. One by one, I examined each trap, looking for blood, feathers or anything else that might provide a clue as to what Stillwell and Davis had been up to. The jaws of one trap were closed around a group of large, tan-colored, down-type feathers. Could these feathers have come from a bald eagle? I wondered. It was clear that they had come from a larg
e bird, but an expert would have to confirm the species. Some white feathers and a few partial feathers were scattered in one of the boxes, along with the traps.

  I personally carried the feathers from the trap, along with the scattered feathers and the dead bald eagle, to the California Department of Fish and Game Forensics Laboratory in Sacramento. Unable to make a definitive identification, Pathologist Jim Banks sent the feathers on to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. While at the Smithsonian, the feathers were examined by Roxy Laybourne, one of the foremost ornithologists and feather experts in the world; Ms. Laybourne specialized in the microscopic structure of bird feathers. With the aid of an electron microscope, she identified the feathers as having come from the lower leg (tarsus) of an eagle—not a bald eagle, however, but a golden eagle. Unlike bald eagles, golden eagles’ legs are feathered to the feet.

  I was a little disappointed that the feathers had not come from a bald eagle. Such a finding might have tied Stillwell and Davis to the dead bald eagle at the Fish and Game office and the threatening note. On the other hand, golden eagles were also fully protected: taking one or possessing any parts thereof would constitute a serious crime. Although irrelevant to the case, Ms. Laybourne identified the white feathers as having come from the underwing of a mallard duck. The scattered partial feathers belonged to a ring-necked pheasant.

  Charges were piling up against Stillwell and Davis, but I was determined to convict one or both of them for killing the bald eagle and leaving the threatening note. Without the testimony of the original informant or additional evidence, that might not be possible.

  Returning to square one, I began examining the limited handwriting samples from Stillwell’s firearms sales record book. I was disturbed by the thought that someone as unstable as Stillwell could be authorized to sell firearms; after all, this habitual wildlife poacher had recently threatened to put a bullet through a state peace officer’s windshield.

  I was no handwriting expert, but it was fairly obvious to me that Stillwell had authored the threatening note. Before submitting anything to state or federal handwriting experts, I aimed to find additional examples of Stillwell’s writings. With that in mind, I contacted Fred Hoffman, one of Stillwell’s former employers. Hoffman owned a business in the Redding area. I introduced myself and asked Hoffman if he had once employed a man named Jake Stillwell.

  Hoffman’s face lit up immediately. “I figured what you were here for when I saw you walk in the door,” exclaimed Hoffman. “Yeah, I fired Jake about three years ago.”

  “I was hoping you might have a few samples of Stillwell’s handwriting lying around here somewhere,” I said.

  “I read the article in the newspaper,” said Hoffman. “It sounds just like something Jake Stillwell would do.”

  “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  “He was always bragging about poaching,” said Hoffman.

  “If you can find any samples of his handwriting, it would be a big help.”

  “Give me a little time. I’ll see what I can come up with.” My instincts told me that this man knew a lot more than he was telling me, but I decided not to press him too hard until he came up with the handwriting samples I needed.

  That evening, about 8:00 p.m., I received a phone call from Fred Hoffman. Just as I figured, Hoffman was much better informed about Jake Stillwell than he originally let on.

  “You know,” he began, “Stillwell did seem to have it in for one particular game warden.”

  “Was it Merton Hatcher, by any chance?” I asked.

  “That’s it!” replied Hoffman. “Me and Jake used to go squirrel hunting in Tehama County. Several times I had to stop him from shooting deer. He never paid attention to whether or not deer season was open. The further away he could shoot something, the better he liked it.” Hoffman went on to say that Stillwell was a very good shot and had scopes on all of his rifles.

  “What kind of rifles does he use?” I asked. Hoffman said Stillwell’s favorite rifle was a .22-.250. I remembered that Hatcher and Martens had documented a .22-.250 rifle during the search of Stillwell’s residence and found scattered .22-250 casings inside his Jeep. It seemed unlikely that Stillwell was picking up spent casings off the ground. More likely, he was shooting from the window of his Jeep.

  Hoffman began rambling about his experiences with Stillwell. “I was with him once, when he shot a hawk at two or three hundred yards. Hatcher once stopped Jake near Black Butte Lake. Jake had a bunch of illegal ducks, but Hatcher never found them. Jake was always bragging about killing deer. Several times, he would say this would be a good place for Hatcher to catch us. One time Jake got a citation for taking some illegal trout. He said that makes up for the twenty-five other times that he didn’t get caught. He can’t hunt legitimately. Jake used to talk about Merton Hatcher like he was on a personal basis with him.”

  I thanked Hoffman for the information and carefully documented everything he had said. We agreed that I would come by his business the next day.

  The next morning I dropped by Fred Hoffman’s business to pick up a couple of Jake Stillwell’s handwriting samples and ask a few more questions. Hoffman’s statement about Stillwell shooting hawks bothered me. If Stillwell would shoot a hawk, I reasoned that he would have no qualms about shooting an eagle. I questioned Hoffman about this.

  “I saw Jake shoot hawks at least ten times,” replied Hoffman.

  “Are you sure that you’re not exaggerating a little?”

  “At least ten times,” Hoffman insisted.

  I left Hoffman’s business and drove to the Fish and Game office. More than ever, I was convinced that Jake Stillwell was our man. I also knew that without more evidence or the testimony of our original informant, we would not be able to pin the crime—threatening a public officer (a felony) and take or possession of an endangered species (a misdemeanor)—on either Stillwell or Davis. The trapping and protected species violations would hold up, but these guys, particularly Stillwell, were as bad as poachers get. They deserved to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

  With no other viable options, I decided to give our original informant another try. He managed a private trout hatchery out in the Manton area, so I telephoned him and asked if Warden Szody and I could drop by to talk. Dressed in civilian clothing and driving an unmarked car, we arrived early the next morning.

  I spotted a man walking across the hatchery grounds wearing rubber hip boots and a yellow rain parka. “Be right with ya,” he shouted.

  “I recognize that bow-legged walk from somewhere,” I said, as the man approached.

  “I’m Al Hollis, the one who called you.”

  “Thanks for meeting with us, Al. I’m Steve Callan and this is Dave Szody.”

  “Just a minute while I take this stuff off. I was moving some fish around.”

  We waited while Hollis removed his parka and changed his boots. There was nothing remarkable about his appearance—average height and weight—short graying hair, but something about him rang a bell.

  “I don’t remember if I told you this over the phone, but I used to be a warden, said Hollis, coming to his feet. “I had a drinking problem and they let me go.”

  “I must have met you at one of the training conferences,” I said. “You look familiar.”

  “The Department wouldn’t give me a break,” Hollis went on, his voice gruff and cracking. “I was pretty bitter about it for a couple years.”

  I suspected there was another side to that story, but we needed Hollis’s help so I didn’t ask for details.

  “Jake Stillwell worked here at the hatchery a few years ago. He used to hear me complaining about Fish and Game all the time. I guess he felt safe telling me things. Jake still comes by the hatchery, every once in a while, to ask questions or brag about something he’s shot. I listen, but I don’t approve of what these guys are doing. When I read the newspaper article, I knew that had to be them.”

  “We want to prosecute these guys for killing t
he eagle and writing the threatening note,” I explained. “Without your testimony we may not be able to do that.”

  “My bosses think these guys will poison the fish or do something to harm the hatchery,” said Hollis. “I told them about this and they don’t want me to get involved any further.”

  “Maybe we can talk to them,” I offered. “Who are these guys?”

  “I’m sure you guys know one of them,” replied Hollis. “He’s Dennis Woodhall. The other one is Dick Marshall.”

  Szody and I immediately recognized one of the names—Dennis Woodhall. He was a retired Fish and Game officer who had worked in the area for many years.

  “You mean to tell me that Woodhall won’t allow you to testify,” I asked, incredulous, “in a case like this, where a warden’s life has been threatened and a bald eagle has been shot?”

  “Yeah, he feels pretty strongly about it,” replied Hollis, sounding apologetic.

  “How about letting us talk to Woodhall and Marshall? Maybe we can convince them how important this is.”

  “You guys do whatever you can, but they were pretty adamant.”

  I thanked Hollis for meeting with us and advised him that we would be in touch. Driving away, Dave and I shook our heads in disbelief. Both of us were thoroughly disgusted by what we had just heard.

  It was a week or so later, in early March, when I was finally able to arrange a meeting with retired Fish and Game Officer Dennis Woodhall and his business partner, Dick Marshall. Dressed in civilian clothing, Dave Szody and I met the two private fish hatchery owners at a Red Bluff coffee shop. Woodhall had put on a ton of weight since retiring, but still had a shiny bald head and a jaw that never stopped flapping.

  After initial greetings, Woodhall came right to the point. “Dick and I don’t want Michaels to testify.”