(Ed note: After 22 years in a variety of federal prisons, John Dalton is at home in Laytonville picking up the pieces of his shattered life. His case was the worst example of egregious/outrageous government misconduct we know of. So far as we know, Dalton was held longer on marijuana-related charges than any other Mendocino […]
In 1992, Patsy Burlesci was operating the Mendocino Popcorn Company in Fort Bragg’s Depot mini-mall. Mrs. Burlesci was also a foster parent and daycare operator. Carl Burlesci had worked much of his life as a commercial fisherman but his failing health had forced him to give up the outdoor rigors of fishing for indoor work. […]
Known informally throughout the County as ‘Tom,’ the popular lawman announced Thursday he would retire
Cutler Crowell, 71, has lived in Fort Bragg for many years where he’s raised a family and enjoys an unblemished reputation. Age has taken its inevitable toll, especially on Crowell’s back. Swimming is the only vigorous exercise left to him. He gets that necessary daily workout at the C.V. Starr Community Center, a large swimming […]
Feliz Creek today, where it passes beneath Highway 101 at Hopland is, in the summer, a parched expanse of dry streambed that is barely discernible as a watercourse. Only when it comes alive in the winter as it runs off from its headwaters in the west hill and on into the Russian River can you […]
If there’s an old, old timer in the house who remembers Hannah Piggott nee Hori, we would like to know more about this most intriguing Fort Bragg woman. In broad and often confusing outline, she was Japanese married to a well known and much sought after American jockey named Harry Piggott, who raced at least […]
By the time you read this our resident deputy, Craig Walker, is already policing the sedate streets of Moraga. Deputy Walker’s departure is a big loss for the Anderson Valley where he’d become a crucial member of our wildly diverse community. A ten-year resident of Philo, the popular deputy sheriff had successfully filled the huge […]
Two nights after we’d established our raucous brood in Mendocino County’s serene summer hills, not far from the unsuspecting hamlet of Boonville, we got our first lesson in the psycho-pathology of the pre-pube criminal, the immutable psycho-pathology of the pre-pube criminal. The delinquents occasionally acted like the children they were, and when they did we […]
Arturo Flores might be Boonville’s least known serial killer. In 1987, Flores would tell his friends that “all anglos should be exterminated.” Then he exterminated one. Maybe he’d exterminated others, too, but we knew from the cold, dead fact of Gregory Evans, a 27-year-old softball player from Rohnert Park, that Flores exterminated Evans because two […]
CalFire called it the Peach Fire. Locals, depending on their community seniority, called it either the Tarwater Hill Fire after an old timer family named Tarwater who lived at its foot, or the Octopus Mountain Fire, its more contemporary designation inspired by the landmark’s tentacled topography. When the fire broke out about 3:15 last Thursday […]
Pieter Kruit is a San Francisco painting contractor and a noted documentary filmmaker.* John Kennaugh is a San Francisco furniture maker. One day, Pieter Kruit was painting the building next door to John Kennaugh’s house on Russian Hill. “I looked over,” Kruit remembers, “and there in the basement I was surprised to see a complete […]