Please direct all comments and inquiries to JRBurton5@hotmail.com
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
NOVEMBER 2005:
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There was a huge shake up during the summer at the Salt Creek, so when I went back to work there I was already the senior waiter! Wow: that was quick! Seven waiters plus my old manager Mike had left during that shake-up. Mike and I had butted heads while he was there, so his absence removed another major problem for me!
My friend Liz Brunner carried on most of the managerial duties after that. She didn’t get paid like a Manager though, which is why I’m not outright calling her the new Manager—nor did she wait tables anymore, which is why I became the senior one.
Those strokes of luck put me in a good position, and got me off to a very good start. So my decision to return to Breck felt validated early on. As senior waiter I got plenty of work. And before long I was being relied upon to train the new hires too.
I did not return to the Vail Ski School to instruct for a second winter, though. I was satisfied with the one season of instruction, and I thought my daylight hours could be better spent. Besides, as a result of my car’s breakdown I hadn’t even brought my snow-board. I was in no hurry to snowboard again anyway. I didn’t even buy a ski-pass in the early season, while they were still cheap.
Days after returning to Breck I bought a wireless laptop computer. On it I loaded all the files I had brought with me on discs. Then I completed the Stegner Fellowship application on it. I did it before the deadline this time, and send it off.
I resumed being a fixture at my favorite coffee house, The Crown. There I read and wrote and did my daily crossword puzzle, and also played an enormous amount of chess. Mannie was my chess buddy there— and she deserves one of my brief mentions!
But I still didn’t have my recommendation— so I had not begun my counseling.
I also resumed my computer journal at that time:
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11-17-05
This morning I got the hostile e-mail from Wally I’ve been expecting. He gave me a ration of shit for not having begun my counseling. So I sent him an e-mail too.
In it I reviewed all the bullshit that has transpired since I got my recommendation: the letter to Dr. Pingitore; the phone-tag follow up to that letter; his assurance that he had changed the damned report; the demurrer about providing me with the details of that modification; my appeal to Wally himself for the terms of that altered recommendation; and the runaround— as reported by Dr. Pingitore— in which he made the improbable claim that Wally didn’t have my proper address. Bullshit!
Then I told him I was in Breckenridge once again— as I’d planned to be all along, and as I’d indicated to Dr. Pingitore. I asserted that I was ready to begin my counseling—but “I STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT MY RECOMMENDATION IS”. I told him I’d even considered contacting the Judge— to ask him what it was. Finally, I asked him to send that recommendation to me, at my Breckenridge address.
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11-18-05
This was Wally’s response:
Dear Royce: you should not write the Judge yourself. Dr. Pingitore’s letter went to the Judge. As I recall, but (sic) gist of the change in recommendations was to give you longer rather than shorter to complete the counseling. Getting in the damn counseling and providing the court with quarterly reports is what needs to happen. If you need longer to complete the counseling because of your expenses, then that’s fine I suppose. Just get in the damn counseling. Your delay in starting counseling is unacceptable and jeopardizes everything that we have done. Stupid stupid stupid. I’m not going to make any request to change one aspect of the order until you are in counseling, in compliance, and have the approval of the counselor. The delay in starting counseling is complete unacceptable crap. Wally
I’ve decided that Wally is kind of a prick— and a bit of a charlatan as well. But his response does at least suggest that a potential alteration has been put forth, somewhere.
Maybe I should just stop communicating with Wally altogether.
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I suspected that Dr. Pingitore had consulted with somebody else, who persuaded him to commit me to one year of counseling. Yeah, some Stuart Nixon sort of zealot had gotten to him, and he had just spinelessly gone along with it. So I decided I had to write him yet another letter! I had to call him on his capitulation to such pressures— and on his “defection” to the law and order camp.
So I called Pingitore’s answering machine. I told him Wally wouldn’t tell me what my recommendation is. I pled with him again to send it to me.
Meanwhile I’d decided to seek out a local counselor, and see him once a month. And why wouldn’t I? My recommendation didn’t tell me I had to do anything else. It didn’t specify a frequency for my visits, I mean.
Hell: I was so bunged with stress that I needed to find a counselor anyway. So I called the Mountain West Mental Health, in Frisco, and spoke with the Program Coordinator there. I explained that I required someone who would be amenable to a sliding scale and who has some experience in dealing with my putative sexual “issues”. She suggested Zack Sturgeon, and assured me that he fit both those bills. So I made an appointment with him, for the following week.
Meanwhile I wrote a trio of important letters: to Mower, Pingitore, and Scarth.
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I’ll start with my second letter to Jim Scarth (who I still thought was Scarff”):
Dear Mr. Scar(th),
I am disconcerted for not having heard back from you, as yet. Perhaps the situation is that you are very busy. Or perhaps the pace of these particular proceedings are so slow that you’ve been lulled onto a slower track. That is understandable. It is a third possibility that concerns me more however, which is that you have written me off… I don’t know why you would have done that, but if you have, I would appreciate the courtesy of a reply, to let me know as much. (If you are concerned that I’m a little paranoid, rest assured that I readily admit it. After going through all I have been through I challenge anybody NOT to be!) Perhaps you suspect some spite and malice— or ulterior motivation—in my reasons for coming forth. Well I do feel spiteful, and I do have malice, and I would be delighted to have certain admissions finally come to light. But aside from those things, my motives are as I have expressed them. I would bet dimes to dollars that Prosecution has worked on Corissa to say all kinds of untrue things— and I believe I could convince a jury that that was extremely likely.
In any event, I alluded to a lot of evidence pertaining to my case. And I attempted to regale you with the possibilities that, as I saw it, it afforded for your case as well. But on one point I was cryptic. And that point comprises the coup de grace, as far as I’m concerned.
I went on and on again. I disclosed that she’d said she loves me, and I painted the circumstances prefiguring our hike upon the hill. Then I shared my new recollection— and asserted the claims that I pledged to attest to. I didn’t express it as a new recollection, however. Instead I told him that since I’d thought until recently that Leon’s case had been resolved, that it hadn’t taken on great significance until I’d learned otherwise.
I went on to reiterate Lind’s threat about the “No no” claim again. About that, I said: “I could convince a jury that such a claim was both incongruous with the circum-stances and suspicious in its manifestation.” Then, expostulating upon her final claim that she had merely heard those words in her head (but not expressed them) I expressed something I hadn’t even thought of before:
Perceiving danger, a person does not hear such a voice, expressing such a fear, even once— let alone “three times”… We do not experience fear as a voice telling us our fear. And that goes for mentally handicapped people as well.
My point was that those words could be most convincingly portrayed as some-thing she was being told to say— but that she couldn’t bring herself to say it. Thus, it would be persuasive to suggest that the words attributed to her through my testimony— about that disclosure made to me before our hike— furnishes another example of what the prosecutor was telling her to say! I was very impressed with my own brilliance, at that!
Then I asked him to respond to me again.
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My letter to Judge Mower was very long, so I’ve put it in the Appendix. That’s Appendix IIIc, where the best of my letters live. I do hope you’ll read them.
Meanwhile, I’ll share a little bit of it here:
I started by apologizing for its length— and saying that if he deemed it inappropriate to read an appeal on my own behalf, that he should read only one particular section instead. In that section, I included my thirteen reasons for why his definition of detain was wrong— but I clarified that that was not appealed only for my sake. It was so that in the future he wouldn’t make the same mistake.
I devoted another section to telling him about all the bullshit I had encountered over my counseling recommendations. You’ve already heard all this too, so I won’t repeat it either.
In another section I criticized the AK law and the way he had overseen it. You’ve heard all those arguments too. In fact, most of what I said to him you’ve already heard— in one form or another. But I particularly liked this paragraph, so I will repeat it here:
(At the prelim) You said that the Unlawful Detention was inconsistent with the Aggravated Kidnapping. and that therefore it had to be “Kidnapping or nothing”. Huh? So it seems you decided that the unlawful detention could be parlayed upward DESPITE its inconsistency, but that it could not then be brought back down from there, BECAUSE OF its “inconsistency”… Hmmm.
In yet another section I analyzed that HB0240 document (kidnapping amend-ments) that I enclosed with his letter, and roundly criticized the circumstances given rise to by it. I told him about my futile efforts to contact Glenn L. Way too.
I went on to say these things, before I wrapped it up:
Not a day goes by when I do not regret this decision. I thought I’d still have some recourse, but it seems that I do not. However, I must tell you, Judge Mower, that if it ever comes out, in any manner, that Corissa has admitted that she pursued me outside of the Library and asked me to drive my car, then I will at least attempt to get my case revisited.
And so Judge Mower, I have nothing left to say at this time. But I sure am in a quandary. Meanwhile I slog along with my counseling, awaiting enlightenment! Wally and I have grown tired of dealing with each other. Please tell me what my recommendation is.
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Lastly, there was my latest letter to Dr. Pingitore. I stared it by saying:
Dear Dr. Pingitore: I find myself upset with you again.
Then I took him to task for a slew of things: for his refusal to communicate; for his apparent change in his perception of his role; for disrespecting my privacy; and for changing his original recommendation. I reminded him that it was I who had employed him— and not the State of Utah; and I suggested that all his misrepresentations could not really be attributed to inattention. I asked whose agenda he had capitulated to, and I severely criticized his contention that I had a “history” of mental problems:
I guess to that I have to say “Congratulations”, and very sarcastically so. For my stints in therapy have been on my own volition, and for issues of the sort that millions of people have. What is more, until this “incident” I have never had that “history” result in violence or threats of any kind, or any danger to the community, or legal entanglement.
You set the cause of Psychotherapy itself back thirty years- to say, Thomas Eagleton*—
when you characterize the person who knows when he needs help and seeks it as having “A history of psychological problems”. It also smacks as yet another capitulation to someone else’s agenda. For now I can be characterized as a person with such a history, if some disease like Eric Lind decides he wants to stick it to me once again. All you have done is promote the machinations of such people. You have become their Enabler.
*Thomas Eagleton was George McGovern’s Vice-Presidential candidate in 1972, who withdrew his nomination after it was made public that he’d been in treatment with a Psychiatrist. At that time, such a thing was still considered taboo.
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Zack Surgeon was a young man of about 25, I guessed. His qualification was as an MSW, which means a Masters of Social Work. I had not asked about his degree qualifications, though, and wouldn’t have known what those letters meant anyway. I only mention that because I imagined the court might balk at such a “meager” qualification. But what was I to do?
I met with him for a little more than an hour. I liked him, and I respected his ready grasp of many aspects of my situation. It even seemed like he’d had some experience with the legal aspect of this. So I believed him competent. For his part, he thought my plea-deal was very sweet— so on that we disagreed. But I told him that I thought he would be fine anyway— subject to the court’s approval. Meanwhile, I told him, even should the court not approve I would still want to see him, because the stress and angry was consuming me.
He offered to call my Attorney and he offered to call Dr. Pingitore too. On both points, however, I demurred. I wasn’t sure I wanted him to contact either one— even though there’s a big temptation to let him talk to Dr. P. to find out why he changed my plan. But at the same time, I figured, if he were to talk to him, he might tell him how infrequently I intended to see him, and the doctor might balk, and try to make some trouble for me there.
In any event, I asked him to hold tight: to wait while I attempted to secure both the terms of my new recommendation on my own, and approval for his participation from the court. I did let him read my letter to Dr. Pingitore, however, in the interim: the angry one, which I have partly recreated above. And after reading it, he said he thought I had made some excellent points. He especially liked the question about characterizing me as having a history of mental problems. And he agreed, of course, that it’s pretty hard to fulfill the terms of my counseling if I don’t know what they are.
If there was to be a problem with my counseling, I had planned to address it by claiming that for living in this remote area— and having no transportation— that Zack was the best that I could do. But if the court was recalcitrant about my counseling options, then I had a mind to go to Europe for a while— to fulfill my counseling requirement there. After all, Dr. Pingitore did not specify where I had to get my counseling either! And Wally did get the court’s permission for me to leave the country…
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I sent the letter to Jim Scarth on Monday morning. I waited on the other two, though— partly just because I needed to research the right addresses. Later I got those two addresses, but before sending them I checked my cell phone messages one last time.
It was a good thing too, because I had a message from Dr. Pingitore there. He said that he was sorry about the problem, and he said he’d ask Wally to send the new recommendation out to me. He told me his proposal was to let me split the counseling between this winter and next— so that I could do both stints during my winters in Breck.
That was not what I had wanted but on the whole it was not a horrible proposal
either. And it was certainly enough to make me pause before I sent that letter off.
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As an afterthought, I decided I’d also send the Judge the first letter I’d written to Dr. Pingitore: the original lengthy plea for him to change my recommendation, that is. So the whole package for Judge Mower had grown to four parts: the letter alluded to above; the HB0240 amendments; the original letter to Dr. Pingitore; and this introductory explanatory piece:
Judge Mower:
I decided to include this letter anyway. You might find their methods interesting, to say the least. Again, other defendants will probably come before you, at some point, making protests about these same things. And having heard it at least once, perhaps when you hear it again it won’t have to sound to you like just so much angry, uneducated blather.
I briefly summarized the issues I’d explored in my later letters to Dr. Pingitore,
making no effort to veil the tone of voice I had used there. Then I said “I showed that letter to my new therapist first, and he thought I’d raised some valid points.”
From that point on, I had decided, each of those people were going to get copies of what I was sending to the others! That way, everyone would know what I was saying to every other.
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I put Judge Mower’s letter in the mail, then I typed this note to Dr. Pingitore:
Enclosed is the letter I wrote for you over the last weekend. I had it sealed and ready to send yesterday, but prudently, I waited an extra day. I’m glad I did because I got your cell-phone message this morning. It’s amazing how such a contact can melt away a lot of anger.
That being said, I am enclosing the letter anyway. After all, I have both told Judge Mower I was going to send it to you, and shown it to my new counselor, who agreed that I had raised some excellent arguments. And besides— you can take some healthy expressions of anger, right?
Thank you for your willingness to agree to a creative solution. Breaking up the counseling certainly speaks to that. But all that being said, you still did say three to six months. I do not think I will want to be here next winter, to go through six more months of something you (and I) originally did not think I need. And all this buncombe has gone on for long enough. I want to be done with my counseling when I leave here in April. I want to get on with my life. Enough’s enough. (Perhaps Eric Lind can do the other six months for me!) And so, once again, I await your response.
Then I mailed it off to him, with the angry weekend’s letter.
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11-2-05?
I got a message on my cell-phone from Jim Scarth: He said he’d gotten my letter (so soon?)— but he had no idea who I am. What?!
How could he possibly not know who I am?…Are there a couple of Jim Scarths, out there— and I wrote to the wrong one?…Or is it all part of the plot, to discredit me and make a lunatic of me?
I called him back right away, and reached him in person. I reminded him of who I am. Then he said “Oh yeah”. He said he’d been looking for me in his “client” files, so he hadn’t realized that I’d been that person who’d called regarding Leon Wilson.
Then, sans segue, he dropped a bomb on me. He said that Eric Lind has resigned.
GOD ALMIGHTY: ERIC LIND HAS RESIGNED! He told me he’d submitted his notice six weeks ago. Apparently he was going to open up some sort of mortgage finance company instead, with some other guy. The 31st would be his last day.
He went on to say that Lind’s replacement is actively being sought. And he said he hoped that the new DA would drop all the charges against Leon. He hoped he would agree that the damned thing has gone on for long enough. Then he invited me to call him in the middle of January. At that, he thanked me, and hung up.
Happy Thanksgiving to me!
I didn’t ask for clarification— of course— but I realized he must have meant December 31st would be his last day— seeing as how November has only thirty days.
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Great God Almighty! The piece-of-shit has quit. I pondered the advantages that fact afforded me. They were several. An immediate benefit might be that for lack of an immovable prick in the D.A.’s office, there would be no one there to quibble with my efforts to amend my counseling.
At the same time, I considered what his resignation told us about Eric Lind— about his level of commitment, I mean…Yes, Mr. Cross-armed “Responsibility” himself— malicious prosecutor and coddler of drug-addicts— was walking away from his position of public trust— only a year after his reelection to that post…
But I wondered what the real reasons were— if there were “real reasons”—for him to have resigned?
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11-2?—05
Shit: if he quit six weeks ago then all my scheming about him has come to naught. It was all a waste. On the other hand, Jim seemed like somebody who is easily confused. Did he mean Lind had given six-weeks notice— two weeks ago— to end on December 31st— or did he mean he’d given notice six weeks “ago”?…and if it was the latter, then how come when I’d spoken to him several weeks before, he hadn’t said anything about that? Well maybe he didn’t know. In any event, the difference was critical to my theo-retical role… Because if he’d given his notice after the first time I spoke with Jim then it might be that it was learning about my threatened testimony from Jim that had driven him to it. I wanted that to be the case! So I had to find out when Lind had given that notice.
Six weeks ago was just about the time I’d called the court Clerk about the Leon Wilson case! Remember? I’d formed the impression Eric Lind was standing right beside her then?… Yes: just as I thought, he was standing there when the call had come in— and my Oakland phone number— displayed on the caller ID—had alerted him that it was me! He’d realized I planned to contact Leon’s Attorney— and he readily grasped how much damage I could do his case…So that was what made him quit…
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Unable to find confirmation that Eric Lind was stepping down, I sent an e-mail to the “Southern Utah News” asking if there was any truth to the rumor. I mused how excel-lent it would be if it had been a secret until then— and that it was I who would expose it!
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In another flight of fancy, I write to Cora, expressing my dismay that Eric Lind has quit— having given her no satisfaction in the prosecution of Leon— and invite her and Corissa to come forward— in the spirit of forgiveness she has preached— to admit the truth about Corissa’s asking to drive my car… that they legally swear this to be true, and help get me a new trial… and that they join me in a lawsuit against the City of Kanab.
Crazy? Maybe. Fruitless? Perhaps. Antagonistic? I really do not care. That’s because I’d gotten this far in this matter by doing exactly what I wanted to do— and by following almost exclusively my own advice. So screw Bugden and Huntsman and Maram and Pingitore and Lind and Fisher and Singer.
From that denunciation I spared only Sammy Cargo, Joey Brewer, Corissa, and Rodney Ross… Oh yes: and Michael Shaw and Ruth Shapiro and my family and my friends. I still believed in Judge Mower, too— but only about 55% worth. Everyone else could go down to hell with me….Yeah: I would annihilate myself in order to annihilate them too! I’d put the whole lot of us in the Glen Canyon Dam and blow us the fuck up!
Screw Stuart Nixon too— if he’s gotten himself involved in this. See, I suspect that Dr. Nixon is the person whose agenda Dr. Pingitore capitulated to: that Dr. Nixon contacted Dr. Pingitore anyway, after I saw him, even though I made it clear I was not going to use him— and persuaded Dr. P. to squeeze my balls like that.
If I find out that that was so, I have a mind to sue him too.
Better yet: put him in the goddam dam too— and blow that pompous bastard up.
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I got an email reply to my inquiry to the Southern Utah news. The news there was better and richer than I could have hoped:
Dear John,
Yes, County Attorney Eric Lind has resigned, effective November 30. Assistant Kane County Attorney Barry Huntington has also resigned…
Dennis Brunner*.
*(One of their Editors, I gathered—and no relation to my friend Liz… I think)
NOVEMBER 30? So never mind to all my hypotheses about my contact of Jim Scarth being the beginning of all this…
No, wait a minute: six weeks before November 30th was the middle of October. I did first talk to Jim Scarth in the middle of October…so it could still be that! It could be because of me either way!
I didn’t know anything about Barry Huntington, by the way, and he is conspic-uous by his absence from these pages. I’d seen his name on some of my paperwork, but that had not meant anything to me. As far as I knew or cared, Eric Lind hadn’t had an assistant since the one who’d killed himself— whatever his name was. Nevertheless, I was pleased to learn that no assistant of his would be taking over….Because any assistant of his could well be an even bigger prick…But that could hardly be possible, huh?
More good news was that since EL was no longer the Prosecutor then he couldn’t manufacture new evidence that said I’ve run afoul of my PIA.
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Why do I say the news was richer than I could have hoped? Well because there was a second half to that news release— with the potential to be delicious. It was this:
John Hummel has been appointed to fill Lind’s term. Both articles are in this week’s SUN
JOHN HUMMEL WILL BE TAKING OVER! Wouldn’t it be awesome if I could secure another trial, I thought at once— and have it land in John Hummel’s lap? Ha! He wouldn’t even be able to prosecute me—right? Because we’ve still got that Attorney-client privilege!
For the same reason, maybe he wouldn’t be able to prosecute Leon Wilson either— if I am there as a witness… And remember that besides that “privilege” complication, there’s the fact that some of my suggestions of impropriety were made against him.
So if John Hummel would have to make any decisions regarding me after that ascension, I believed he would have to recuse himself.
Do you know what else those revelations meant? They meant I had another letter to write: to John Hummel.
I sent another e-mail to the Southern Utah News, asking how I could get a copy of that article, since it didn’t seem to have been posted on-line yet. And I asked why the story was only being reported now— since Lind had announced his resignation in mid- October…
All this was with towards being sarcastic in my next quarterly report to the court. But I quickly realized that I should make darned sure that Mr. Brunner had reported Lind’s actual final date correctly. If it was really to be December 31st then I would be making a mistake by being prematurely sarcastic and defiant!
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I had an explanation for why Eric Lind had quit. But I wondered whether Barry Huntington had quit too— if there was anything to my hypothesis? Why would both of them have quit, I mean?… Unless Barry was going to be Lind’s partner in their private undertaking… Or unless they were both about to be implicated in some corruption scandal (Yeah: I liked that one!) Perhaps Barry had quit first, and Lind was lost without him.
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I considered sending John Hummel a couple chapters of my book and asking him if I got all essentials correct. You know: the parts where he shows up by some strange coincidence, acts all chummy with the Policemen, tells me I’ll probably go to prison, and refuses to call my family after promising that he would… I’d be sure to include the fact that Carlin Myers phoned while we were meeting, and got turned away—along with John’s mockable claim that he had some sort of “trick” (wink, wink), that he could use to snow the Judge. That last part would be just to embarrass him, of course.
Here’s something I’ve forgotten to say through all this turmoil: that in his evil zeal to prosecute this misdemeanor as a felony, the weak, phony, posing mediocrity Lind fatally undermined his ability to prosecute the case that really was a serious felony— three serious felonies, in fact— and that outcome might rightly be painted as an example of the consequences of greed! Ah yes: so we have a moral lesson!
That brought me very little satisfaction, though— because Eric Lind still did not have to face prison, be bankrupted, have his credit destroyed, his health suffer, or lots of other things… and even if he had been driven out of office by an angry judge, or angry townspeople, he still hadn’t been disbarred, or disgraced, or publicly humiliated. I wondered how many people even knew that he was leaving office, since it wasn’t even reported in the newspaper until the very end?
