Get The Snitch, Butt Boy!

If you’re going down for Murder One, why not take out the thug who told you to do it? Do you think anybody will risk his own life to get you back? Hell, no, boy. They’ll treat you like the new king.” — Grandpa McEwen

The jury trial for Adam Michael Kendall, a New Jersey resident, for the attempted murder of another New Jersey man, Michael Monahan, will be in its second week by the time the AVA goes to press on Wednesday.

Why is Mendocino County spending tax dollars by the bucketful and tying up the Ukiah courthouse to bring justice to New Jersey’s thugs?

Well, it’s all about marijuana. Of course.

Mr. Monahan moved to Covelo to buy and ship weed back to Kendall who was reselling the “product” to live large in New Jersey. Then one day a Covelo broker named “Bear” pulled a fast one on the Jersey boys. “Bear” took $5,000 from Monahan in Covelo, and told Kendall in New Jersey, “No-no, I didn’t get the money – ask your butt-boy, Monahan.”

When Kendall couldn’t pay the rent on his upscale apartment, he flew out to San Francisco, had somebody pick him up at the airport and drive him up to Covelo, where he ambushed Monahan and beat him in the head with a hammer – but despite the multiple skull fractures, bashed in teeth and broken bones from defensively putting his arms up to block the hammer blows – Monahan somehow lived.

Now, of course the whole jail wants to kill Monahan, because he’s  a “snitch.”

By the convoluted reasoning of the thug, you must let the guy bigger than you, or more devious than you, or better armed than you, you must let him kill you if he wants to, you must let him beat, coerce, blackmail and butt-fuck you, or whatever, but you must never rat the fucker out and have him sent to prison: To be fair to the thugs (They don’t have to be fair, but their vics must be ‘fair’ to them, or else!) you must surrender your only deterrent, your only means of retaliation – and so those of us who have been there and had to think it through always come to the only reasonable conclusion: Snitch the thugs out and make your stand, or you’ll be everybody’s butt-boy for the rest of your days.

The Code of Honor For Thugs says there’s only two kinds of people in the world, a thug or a thug’s butt-boy – anybody who disagrees is a Snitch, a dying breed. It’s bad enough that the brain-dead “Incarcerated Community” believes this convoluted stupidity, learned on the playground, and taught by juvenile bullies, but what’s incredible is that so many lawyers subscribe to it as well.

Truth is, very few of these chumps are actually that stupid. They are not going to kill or assault someone labeled “snitch” and go down big-time for a complete stranger from New Jersey. But to keep the hated label from sticking to themselves, they make a lot of noise and threats, which scares the lawyers more than the perps, and so it happened that Monahan – himself an ex-felon who was in the Low Gap jail for assaulting a Fish & Game Warden – had to be jailed in Lake County for his own safety.

Mike Monahan’s lawyer is Public Defender Linda Thompson. After Adam Kendall was arrested for the attempted murder of Monahan, and awaiting trial, he wrote a note to another jailhouse thug named Joseph “Griz” Hoagland. In the note, Kendall refers to himself in the third person, saying “…My Man will go down for 40 years if this snitch rats him out…”

Kendall is referring to himself as “my Man…”

Griz Hoagland appears to be some kind of Head Honcho in the Office of Snitch Intimidation, and he saw to it that the note was delivered to Monahan and everyone else in the pod (cell block). Monahan gave the note to his lawyer, Linda Thompson, who gave it to the DA’s Investigator, who took it to a Correctional Officer, who compared the handwriting to other written requests for things at the jail, and determined that it was written by Kendall himself.

Kendall would have killed Monahan if some anonymous neighbor – everybody in Covelo must be so afraid of being labeled a snitch that they would watch their own mother murdered before they would call a cop — hadn’t called the tribal police. Officer Roger Kinney got to the bloody scene just in time, making brief eye-contact with Kendall before he fled, first into the house, then out the back and over the fence. Officer Kinney could not pursue the thug because if he left the vic, Monahan, Monahan would surely have died, choking on his own blood. Instead the officer stayed until the paramedics arrived.

Then, just as Officer Kinney was leaving, here comes Kendall, riding in the passenger seat of a pickup, returning to the scene of the crime. Kinney tried to pull them over, but the pickup fled into Little Valley – a valley over a ridge on the outskirts of Covelo, and an area where tribal police don’t go, especially when they are alone. So Kinney went to the other end, a place called Pink Gate, and sure enough, there he found Kendall, holed-up in a trailer. By then the Sheriff’s deputies were on scene and Kendall was arrested.

Kendall had a New Jersey state ID card, a plane ticket from Detroit to San Francisco – dated that same day – and a letter from his New Jersey probation officer in his pockets. Also a cell phone with lots of text message threats directed at Monahan. One of the threats was directed at Monahan’s sweet old mother, that he, Kendall, would “send somebody to beat the smoke out of your mother.”

This all happened on May 16th, 2017, at a little blue house on 110 Yuki Boulevard in Covelo.

Mike Monahan took the stand to tell his story. DA David Eyster was prosecuting.

Eyster: “When did you come to California?”

Monahan: “Three years ago.”

Eyster: “What did you come for?”

Monahan: “To help my friend Adam out.”

Eyster: “Oh? How’s that?”

Monahan: “He was having trouble, money problems, and I thought I could help.”

Eyster: “How so?”

Monahan: “As a buyer.”

Eyster: “You mean a marijuana buyer?”

Monahan: “That’s correct.”

Eyster: “How did it work?”

Monahan: “I would buy marijuana for a $1,000 here and send it to Adam in New Jersey and he would sell it for three times as much.”

Eyster: “In New Jersey?”

Monahan: “That’s correct.”

Eyster: “Were you convicted of assault on a game warden?”

Monahan: “That’s correct.”

Eyster: “And possession of a firearm and methamphetamine?”

Monahan: “Yes. That too.”

Eyster: “Did you have a problem with Mr. Kendall?”

Monahan: “Yes. He accused me of stealing $5,000.”

Eyster: “Did you?”

Monahan: “No. One of his business partners got the money from me — Adam told me to give it to him…”

Eyster: “Who?”

Monahan: “I don’t know his legal name, but they call him “Bear.” *

Eyster: “What happened to him?”

Monahan: “He went missing.”

Eyster: “With the $5,000?”

Monahan: “That’s correct.”

Eyster: “Did you explain this to Mr. Kendall?”

Monahan: “I tried, but he wasn’t listening to me.”

Eyster: “Did the situation get worse?”

Monahan: “Yes. There was no speaking to him whatsoever.”

Eyster: “Did he threaten you?”

Monahan: “He said he was gonna send somebody to my mom’s house and beat the smoke out of her.”

Eyster: “Were you using drugs?”

Monahan: “Yes.”

Eyster: “What kind?”

Monahan: “Heroin.”

Eyster: “What were you doing on May 16th of this year?”

Monahan: “I was kicking.”

Eyster: “Can you explain to the jury what that means?”

Monahan: “I was trying to keep from getting high on heroin. Some guys from next door came over and asked if I wanted to get high, and I said no, I was kicking.”

Eyster: “Then what happened?”

Monahan: “Somebody had taken my keys, so I pushed my car into the garage and took the battery out and hid it so they couldn’t come back and steal my car. Then I was just sittin’ in my car, trying to get myself together, when I heard Adam’s voice say, ‘Hey Mike,’ then he hit me in the head.”

Eyster: “What did he hit you with?’

Monahan: “That first time, I think he used his fist. But when I looked up, he had a hammer and he hit me in the forehead with it. I had blood in my eyes and running down my face and I ran out. I was going down the driveway when he hit me again from behind – I don’t know how many times, but the back of my head was split open on both sides. Next thing I knew I was on the ground getting stomped out.”

Kendall then picked Monahan up and dragged and pushed him towards a hole in the fence to finish him off on the neighboring property, but the people who lived there made it clear he wasn’t going to bring his handiwork into their yard and he turned back, shoved Monahan down on a bench outside the blue house and – had Officer Kinney not arrived — would have finished him off.

On Thursday the Kendall trial was interrupted to finish a prelim for the Laytonville homicide of Jeffrey Settler, a classic for the records on how snitches really operate, showing how the guy who masterminded the murder played the lawyers for fools, and along with two others, snitched out the four guys who believed in the Snitch Code of Stupidity, and kept their mouths shut, and are now saddled with the crime, while the three most culpable perps have made a “snitch deal” to save their own asses and send the other four boys down the river for life – or maybe even a trip to the Green Room (lethal injection chamber).

The preliminary hearing for the four remaining defendants in the murder of Jeffrey Settler ended Thursday morning with holding orders handed down for Gary Blank, Michael Kane, Frederick Gaestel and Jesse Wells. Among the counts they were held on were murder in the commission of a robbery and burglary of an inhabited dwelling, with several special allegations that add severity to the punishment of the crimes if the defendants are found guilty at trial.

Mr. Blank was the simplest case, as he had confessed to stabbing the victim when he was interviewed by homicide detectives early on. Mr. Kane was also held to answer on all charges even though his lawyer made it plain that most of the evidence against Kane came from Zachary Wuester, the main agitator to get the others to go to the site of Mr. Settler’s grow and “take what we had coming.”

Kane’s lawyer, Mr. Balogh said that Wuester pointed the finger at everyone but himself and then took a plea deal for nine years in prison, in exchange for his testimony against the others.

Jesse Wells was also held on the charges although his lawyer, Jan Cole-Wilson, seconded Mr. Balogh’s opinion that Wuester was a liar and snitch, and shouldn’t be believed.

As for Fredrick Gaestel, although he’d only lent his car to the others, he confessed to a bartender that he knew what the others were going up there for, and he was worried because they were angry enough to kill Settler.

The four remaining Settler defendants were ordered back in two seeks for arraignment on the information, at which time the prosecutor, Deputy DA Joshua Rosenfeld will announce whether or not he will be asking for the death penalty.

So then, to all the AVA readers in jail and prison, let this be a lesson to you all: The more you play this butt-boy game of Get The Snitch, the stupider you are. You may snort and think that’s easy for me to say, but I have the fuckers threatening me all the time. And I tell ‘em this: “Better make sure you kill me the first time – you won’t get a second chance, I’ll snitch you out in a heartbeat!”

(*“Iron Bear,” not Bear Lincoln)