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?

Death of a school girl

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

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

Butler

Like Steve Tauzer, Glen Fitts was a private, soft-spoken, widely respected law-and-order advocate.

Like Steve Tauzer, he had a close personal relationship with at least one troubled young man.

And, like Steve Tauzer, almost every cop in town knew Glen Fitts' name.

Fitts had taught a good number of them how to be police officers during the 1960s and '70s, either at Bakersfield College, where he'd been a police science instructor, or at the Bakersfield Police Academy, where he served as training coordinator. Many others knew him through his work as Bakersfield's police commissioner.

The few who didn't recognize his name became familiar with it in 1979.

On April 9, during Easter break from Highland High School, 14-year-old Dana Charlene Butler disappeared. Her body turned up three days later, with 30 or 40 shallow knife wounds and two deep, lethal wounds. She'd been dumped near the Old Corral Cafe just west of Hart Park.

Investigators concluded she'd been at Fitts' house on or about April 10, along with other teens. It seemed Fitts -- 56, recently widowed and terribly lonely -- had started hanging out in Siemon Park, near his home, talking to kids. He invited them to his house in northeast Bakersfield, where marijuana, beer and cocktails were free for the asking.

All he asked in return, according to reports in The Californian, was sex -- with some of the boys, at least. A 17-year-old named Richie Fralick was one of his favorites.

Fitts threw a birthday party for one of his teen-age friends one night during spring break, and he invited about 20 teens between the ages of 14 and 18. Butler, who'd been among a group of girls that met him one day at a pizza parlor, is thought to have attended. No one saw her alive again.

Investigators found Fitts' pubic hair on Butler's body, as well as dog hairs matching both of his dogs. (Even in those pre-DNA days, microscopic matching of that sort was considered sufficiently reliable.)

They found blood matching her blood type in Fitts' house, and neighbors told investigators Fitts had replaced bathroom carpeting and plumbing fixtures the day after Butler disappeared.

Friends who'd met him for dinner at the Rancho Bakersfield coffee shop on April 11 said he'd seemed jumpy, and he adamantly refused to let anyone near his car in the parking lot, according to newspaper reports.