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?

Stubborn rumors

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

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

John Harte / The Californian Kern County Judge Marvin Ferguson reacts angrily during The Californian's election forum in 1982 to a question asked about one of his rulings in a child custody case from years earlier. Click here to view The Californian's May 16, 1982, coverage of the incident.

In his first years as DA, much of Jagels' time -- and tough-on-crime public image -- revolved around the child molestation cases of the early 1980s.

The Tarver and Buck trials, which took place during the Leddy-Jagels transition years, involved big headlines and sensational testimony. But as seemingly isolated cases, they did not bear the markings of a trend or conspiracy, as the molestation cases sometimes did.

By the mid-'80s, however, the gay murders were being cited by some as part of a larger conspiracy theory known as the Lords of Bakersfield, in which it was said that a number of prominent Kern County men lived secret lives, using their positions to protect themselves and friends while exploiting younger men.

The last murder linked to the Lords legend occurred nearly 20 years ago, and the conspiracy talk gradually vaporized into distant whispers -- until some began to wonder if the Tauzer murder might represent a new chapter in that saga. If so, how did Jagels fit in, if at all?

It's not the first time Jagels has faced down questions of alleged cronyism and even his own sexual orientation.

Accusations were supposedly leveled at Jagels by his ex-wife in a document attributed to her, but never proved to be written by her. The document came into the hands of ultra-conservative, anti-government crusader Richard Palmquist, who in 1995 faxed it to The Californian, and possibly others, including Bill Manders of KERN-AM, who read portions of it on the air.

Jagels, quoted in The Californian at the time, dismissed the document as a "childish cut and paste" forgery from a "kook" (referring to Palmquist) who had been speaking falsely "about my predilections for years."

Palmquist maintains the document is "quite real" but confessed this month it was delivered to him by a freelance political operative from Kernville named Scott Barnes, widely acknowledged as a prolific and uncannily effective hoaxster.

In his grandest scheme, unrelated to Kern County affairs, Barnes -- a former private investigator and international prisoner of war seeker -- fooled third-party presidential candidate H. Ross Perot into thinking the Republican Party was plotting to embarrass his family. As reported in Time magazine in August 1996, those fears led to Perot's much-criticized withdrawal from the 1992 presidential race.

Palmquist is an ally of Taft's best-known tax protester, Paul Bell -- who, in recent weeks, has occasionally parked his "protest" camper (carrying a homemade sign with an insulting, conspiracy-feeding slogan) across the street from Jagels' Truxtun Avenue office building.

The Jagels rumors run even further back.

In March 1989, Bakersfield attorney Edward C. LeLouis and former Kern County's Sheriff's Sgt. Stan Minor, on trial for embezzlement, tried to have the District Attorney's Office removed from their case. According to a Californian article from 1989, they cited a federal lawsuit filed by Minor and his wife alleging, among other things, that Jagels had engineered searches of the defendants' businesses in an effort to find photographs that might portray Jagels in an unflattering position -- "engaged in homosexual acts," according to their attorney's motion.

Jagels answered the allegation at the time by saying it was a "smear" without any basis in fact, and the motion was denied. Randy W. Keith, the Chatsworth attorney who brought forward the original federal suit (against Jagels and other county officials) was disbarred in August 1992 for an offense unrelated to the LeLouis-Minor case.

Jagels issued a statement at the time saying that the attorneys for LeLouis and the Minors had resorted to "a last desperate effort" involving "outrageous and utterly unethical conduct."

Minor moved to Washington state after his case was settled and committed suicide last summer. Messages to Keith and LeLouis were not returned.