Powerful gay men. Vulnerable teen-age boys. Murder. For years, some prominent local men who led secret lives were rumored to be protected. Whispers surrounding another important man's death prompt the question: Is there really a conspiracy?

The rise of Ed Jagels

By ROBERT PRICE, Californian staff writer
e-mail: rprice@bakersfield.com

Monday January 20, 2003, 03:40:00 PM

John Harte / The Californian Then-Deputy District Attorney Ed Jagels speaks at a forum sponsored by The Californian in his first race for district attorney in 1982. Californian editor and co-publisher Ted Fritts is seated at left. The forum became a watershed event in Jagels' campaign for a first term.

Jagels, who grew up in the wealthy Pasadena-area enclave of San Marino, went to prep school and graduated from Stanford University. He graduated from San Francisco's University of California, Hastings College of Law, and in April 1975, three months after passing the state bar exam, joined the staff of Kern County District Attorney Al Leddy.

Jagels quickly established himself as one of the most vocal and -- in the view of some Kern County judges -- troublesome prosecutors.

Jagels was rumored to have been the deputy D.A. who began calling Superior Court Judge William Stone a "chicken," dubbing his courtroom "Foster Farms" for Stone's alleged timidity on the bench, according to The Californian.

Jagels was also critical of Superior Court Judge Marvin Ferguson, whose courtroom came to be known as "Department 352" -- a reference to the section of the state's evidence code that pertains to the exclusion of prejudicial or misleading evidence.

The D.A.-Superior Court rift prompted Ferguson to make plans for a run against Leddy in the 1982 election.

But Leddy was already leaning toward quitting. His reluctance to indict former Police Commissioner Glen Fitts in the 1979 murder of 14-year-old Dana Charlene Butler -- a month-long controversy that prompted protesters to picket the courthouse and call for Leddy's recall -- damaged the D.A.'s standing in the community.

When Leddy chose not to run, Jagels, 33, stepped into the void.

Ferguson was endorsed by 12 deputy district attorneys, including Clarence Westra, Oliver Rostain, Richard Bradshaw and several of the department's other high-profile prosecutors.

Jagels, who'd served as lead prosecutor in fewer than 10 jury cases, had his share of supporters too, Leddy perhaps most prominent.

But Ferguson, endorsed by The Californian, Sheriff Charlie Dodge and two of the three previous district attorneys, seemed the heir apparent. Then, less than a month before the election, Jill Haddad, who'd led a group of Leddy critics known as Mothers of Bakersfield three years earlier, appeared at a campaign debate clutching a stack of papers. It was a confidential file on a 4-year-old girl whose mother's common-law husband had beaten her severely in September 1975. The girl had been taken into protective custody and the man jailed.

At a hearing in January 1976, Ferguson had allowed the girl's mother to reclaim custody -- against the recommendation of county child-welfare workers. Eight months later, his jail sentence served, the common-law husband beat the young girl to death.

At the crowded debate, Haddad demanded an explanation.

Ferguson stammered unimpressively. He apparently forgot that the D.A.'s office had neglected to attend the girl's fateful custody hearing, or even provide documentation supporting continued protective separation for her.

"If they were serious ... there would have been a prosecutor there," Ferguson said the week following the debate.

It was too late. Jagels whipped Ferguson (who died in 1993) 56 percent to 44 percent, and he has run unopposed in the five elections since.

According to a special Kern County grand jury report, issued in July 1983, then Deputy District Attorney Coleen Ryan gave the file to the Jagels campaign. While on maternity leave, she went to the courthouse one Saturday with three fellow Jagels supporters, including Deputy D.A. Bill Fisher, and read the confidential file. Ryan returned four weeks later and got a copy of the file, after telling the clerk she was on a special assignment for Leddy. Ryan then turned it over to an aide to Stan Harper, Jagels' political consultant.

Haddad said she received the file anonymously in the mail.

Jagels refused to act on the grand jury's subsequent demand that he discipline Ryan.

Ryan, later elevated to the Superior Court bench, died of cancer in 2002.

"It's hard to discipline somebody that helped him get elected," then-Kern County Supervisor Gene Tackett said at the time.