For someone accused of shooting a 63-year-old former neighbor in front of the man's stunned wife and then standing by for half an hour to watch him die, Aaron Vargas has an awful lot of supporters in this damp little coastal town.
The reason?
Vargas says the dead man, Darrell McNeill, started raping him at the age of 11.
The abuse continued into his 20s, Vargas' relatives say. And even when the now-32-year-old handyman finally broke away, McNeill kept badgering and pursuing him - until finally, Vargas snapped and confronted him.
Nobody disputes that Vargas brought a gun with him when he went to McNeill's home last February. Whether the gun went off by accident or on purpose may be an issue when Vargas goes to trial March 22 - but to his defenders, it's almost immaterial.
That's because just about everyone in this former logging town, now a tourist satellite of Mendocino, believes the molestation story Vargas has told relatives from his jail cell. The only people who want him to do hard time, it seems, are the detectives working the case and the district attorney. Even the victim's widow is calling for leniency.
Popular sympathy only grew as 12 other men came forward over the past year to say they, too, were molested as youngsters by McNeill, a onetime Boy Scout leader and Big Brother. Relatives of another man who committed suicide say McNeill molested him as well.
Vargas, defense lawyers, prosecutors and police are barred from speaking about the case by a gag order that a county judge imposed last summer. But their legal intentions are clear.
Seeking murder conviction
The Mendocino County district attorney is seeking a first-degree murder conviction with a possible sentence of 50 years to life.
Vargas' defense team has entered a not guilty plea. His family says he was suffering from post-traumatic stress after years of abuse and was packing a gun because he was afraid of McNeill. They contend he should get a short stretch behind bars at most.
The T-shirts, mugs and bumper stickers sprouting up around this community of 7,000 carry the slogan that seems to embody the attitude of nearly everyone outside law enforcement: "Save Aaron."
"Should that guy go to prison for standing up for himself? No way," 18-year-old Katie Taylor said one recent afternoon as she hung out downtown with her friends. "The old guy was a creep and deserved what he got."
Her pals nodded their heads in agreement. None was close to either McNeill or Vargas. But everyone knows at least a little about everyone here, they said, and they'd heard enough.
"They shouldn't even take Aaron to trial," 50-year-old Deb Evans said. "We don't like pedophiles in this town."
Making case for counseling
There's not much precedent for the Vargas case.
About half the approximately 20,000 boys sexually abused each year are molested by acquaintances instead of relatives or strangers, according to the Crimes Against Children Research Center - but there are no numbers parsing how many of those boys grow up to kill their abusers. Media accounts are few.
"My guess is it's pretty rare, at the very least," said researcher Lisa Jones of the center in Durham, N.H.
The Vargas and McNeill families say precedent or not, the only course for justice that makes sense is to brand McNeill as a molester and to provide Vargas with more counseling than punishment.
"I know the man I was married to, but this other man who abused kids, I didn't know," said McNeill's 52-year-old widow and wife of 25 years, Liz McNeill. "I call them Darrell One and Darrell Two - but I have no reason not to believe Aaron.
"I do think Aaron needs to spend some time in jail, but not a lot," McNeill said, lips pursed tightly. "I can understand being driven to the edge, but I do not condone what he did. He just needs help. I've known him most of his life, and I still love the kid."
Vargas' 51-year-old mother, Robin Vargas, has known the McNeills since the time her children were small and Darrell McNeill was the kindly neighbor next door.
"I thought we lived in a safe community, and my children never went more than a block away from home by themselves before they were 12," she said. "I didn't know the real danger was really just 25 feet away."
Some words, then gunfire
Robin Vargas and Liz McNeill said they knew nothing of the alleged abuse until the chilly night of Feb. 8, 2009, when Aaron Vargas drove his fiancee's pickup to Darrell McNeill's trailer, had a few quiet words with him at the door, and then - prosecutors say - fired a .44-caliber round from a Civil War-style cap-and-ball revolver into his chest.
Before the gun went off, Vargas told McNeill "he was lucky" his wife was there, Liz McNeill said - a statement that Vargas' family says it will use to show that he may have intended to scare Darrell McNeill, not kill him. They note that cap-and-ball revolvers have hair triggers and say he may not have meant to shoot.
At any rate, McNeill died slowly, moaning, while Vargas stood by for a half hour and disassembled the pistol, Liz McNeill recalled.
"After he shot Darrell, he told him something to the effect of, 'You're not going to hurt anyone again,' and then he told me all about how Darrell abused him as a child," McNeill said. "I was shocked at all of this. He told me he wasn't going to hurt me, but I was never scared. I knew he wouldn't."
Vargas was arrested that night at his parents' house.
"He came over and told me he'd shot Darrell, and I knew something traumatic had happened," Robin Vargas said. "And he told me Darrell had molested him and was still on the prowl to molest others.
"My world went upside down in a few seconds. I sat down and held him in my arms, and my heart has ached ever since."
Fateful Oregon fishing trip
Vargas soon told his family that McNeill began molesting him on a fishing trip the two took to Oregon when he was 11.
Before that trip, his family says, Vargas was a fun-loving boy who enjoyed fishing, hunting and baseball. Afterward, he was withdrawn and his grades plummeted. He graduated from Fort Bragg High School, then began drinking too much, was convicted three times of drunken driving, and never seemed to get his life on track.
His main jobs were doing construction and other odd work around town - which included stints at McNeill's American Homes furnishing store, hanging window blinds and fixing plumbing.
McNeill, meanwhile, was considered "a nice guy who gave good service in his business," said City Councilman Jere Melo. He mentored boys in the local Scouts and Big Brother programs in the 1970s and '80s, had a stable marriage for decades, and "seemed like a good citizen," Melo said.
"I was totally surprised at the incident."
Vargas' relatives say they agonize now at not having figured out what was going on.
"We knew something wasn't right all those years, but we never put things together," said Vargas' 30-year-old sister, Mindy Galliani. "Now it all makes sense."
Breaking off relationship
Vargas finally stood up to McNeill and stopped the sex at least four years ago, but McNeill refused to leave him alone, Galliani said. Even after Vargas became engaged a couple of years ago, McNeill would drive by his house and call him, asking him to visit, she said.
When Vargas' fiancee gave birth to their daughter a year ago, McNeill turned up the pressure, Vargas' family says. Sometimes he would call 10 times a day to ask to visit and to babysit the girl.
"It was like a sick obsession," Galliani said. "He knew his control over Aaron was slipping away, and he just didn't want to let go."
According to court records, three days before the shooting, McNeill's 46-year-old stepson, John Clemons, told Vargas that McNeill had molested him, too, as a boy. The two were visiting with McNeill's biological son, 34-year-old Michael McNeill, who said in court filings that he'd become convinced his father had molested his friends when they were all children.
The pent-up frustration Vargas had been nursing overflowed, Galliani said.
"I don't think Aaron went over to Darrell's that night to actually kill him, but I'm sure he wanted to scare him," she said. "He wanted to be left alone, and for him not to hurt other kids."
Killing seen as deliberate
To prosecutors and investigators, whatever molestation McNeill might have carried out means very little.
Given that Vargas had to pack a percussion cap, powder and a bullet into the replica antique pistol and drive to McNeill's house before he shot him, the killing was clearly deliberate and thus first-degree murder, they have argued.
And Vargas was not a boy when he shot McNeill - he was a man who, even if he was molested as a child, had had sex with the older man while he was an adult.
The community, however, doesn't appear to buy it.
In the past year, 1,267 people signed an online petition asking for leniency for Vargas. Hundreds, including Fort Bragg Fire Chief Steve Orsi and reportedly several police officers, have attended fundraisers for Vargas' defense that raised $10,000.
"Nobody I've talked to says throw the book at Aaron," said Orsi, who added that he didn't attend the fundraiser in his capacity as chief. "You just can't go shoot somebody ... but I think there's something to the story of the abuse.
"It's all just shocking. And very sad."
Vargas' sister says that "everybody thought Darrell was such a nice guy, an upstanding member of the community, but when he was around my brother, Aaron became that scared 11-year-old again. Nobody knew how twisted Darrell was."
Some say they sought help
Some say they did, however - and two say they filed police reports about McNeill a decade and more ago that weren't followed up.
"Darrell was very smart about what he did, very persuasive, real friendly," said Todd Rowan, a 46-year-old carpenter who says McNeill molested him from the ages of 15 to 19. "He'd pick out guys like me who were loners or vulnerable, and have us over to drink beer and smoke pot. Then when you were stoned, he'd go at you."
Rowan said he finally told McNeill to lay off when he got big enough to resist, but the trauma drove him to substance abuse and suicide attempts. In 2001, he took his accusations to Fort Bragg police - but nothing happened, he said.
'I went through hell'
Vargas' defense team has a copy of the report. Fort Bragg officials, bound by the gag order, aren't commenting on it - or on the report that McNeill's ex-wife, Jenny Cotilla, says she made to the department about 20 years ago alleging her ex-husband had molested his stepson John Clemons. Nothing happened with that report either, she said.
"I went through hell because of that man," Rowan said. "I'm now with a great woman and I'm clean and sober, but it's still hard to talk about this. Look, up here this is a redneck town. Nobody would believe you about this stuff.
"But enough is enough after what happened with Aaron, so I'm talking now. Maybe if we'd all talked more back then, it would have never to come to all this."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/21/MNDU1C2M7E.DTL
The reason?
Vargas says the dead man, Darrell McNeill, started raping him at the age of 11.
The abuse continued into his 20s, Vargas' relatives say. And even when the now-32-year-old handyman finally broke away, McNeill kept badgering and pursuing him - until finally, Vargas snapped and confronted him.
Nobody disputes that Vargas brought a gun with him when he went to McNeill's home last February. Whether the gun went off by accident or on purpose may be an issue when Vargas goes to trial March 22 - but to his defenders, it's almost immaterial.
That's because just about everyone in this former logging town, now a tourist satellite of Mendocino, believes the molestation story Vargas has told relatives from his jail cell. The only people who want him to do hard time, it seems, are the detectives working the case and the district attorney. Even the victim's widow is calling for leniency.
Popular sympathy only grew as 12 other men came forward over the past year to say they, too, were molested as youngsters by McNeill, a onetime Boy Scout leader and Big Brother. Relatives of another man who committed suicide say McNeill molested him as well.
Vargas, defense lawyers, prosecutors and police are barred from speaking about the case by a gag order that a county judge imposed last summer. But their legal intentions are clear.
Seeking murder conviction
The Mendocino County district attorney is seeking a first-degree murder conviction with a possible sentence of 50 years to life.
Vargas' defense team has entered a not guilty plea. His family says he was suffering from post-traumatic stress after years of abuse and was packing a gun because he was afraid of McNeill. They contend he should get a short stretch behind bars at most.
The T-shirts, mugs and bumper stickers sprouting up around this community of 7,000 carry the slogan that seems to embody the attitude of nearly everyone outside law enforcement: "Save Aaron."
"Should that guy go to prison for standing up for himself? No way," 18-year-old Katie Taylor said one recent afternoon as she hung out downtown with her friends. "The old guy was a creep and deserved what he got."
Her pals nodded their heads in agreement. None was close to either McNeill or Vargas. But everyone knows at least a little about everyone here, they said, and they'd heard enough.
"They shouldn't even take Aaron to trial," 50-year-old Deb Evans said. "We don't like pedophiles in this town."
Making case for counseling
There's not much precedent for the Vargas case.
About half the approximately 20,000 boys sexually abused each year are molested by acquaintances instead of relatives or strangers, according to the Crimes Against Children Research Center - but there are no numbers parsing how many of those boys grow up to kill their abusers. Media accounts are few.
"My guess is it's pretty rare, at the very least," said researcher Lisa Jones of the center in Durham, N.H.
The Vargas and McNeill families say precedent or not, the only course for justice that makes sense is to brand McNeill as a molester and to provide Vargas with more counseling than punishment.
"I know the man I was married to, but this other man who abused kids, I didn't know," said McNeill's 52-year-old widow and wife of 25 years, Liz McNeill. "I call them Darrell One and Darrell Two - but I have no reason not to believe Aaron.
"I do think Aaron needs to spend some time in jail, but not a lot," McNeill said, lips pursed tightly. "I can understand being driven to the edge, but I do not condone what he did. He just needs help. I've known him most of his life, and I still love the kid."
Vargas' 51-year-old mother, Robin Vargas, has known the McNeills since the time her children were small and Darrell McNeill was the kindly neighbor next door.
"I thought we lived in a safe community, and my children never went more than a block away from home by themselves before they were 12," she said. "I didn't know the real danger was really just 25 feet away."
Some words, then gunfire
Robin Vargas and Liz McNeill said they knew nothing of the alleged abuse until the chilly night of Feb. 8, 2009, when Aaron Vargas drove his fiancee's pickup to Darrell McNeill's trailer, had a few quiet words with him at the door, and then - prosecutors say - fired a .44-caliber round from a Civil War-style cap-and-ball revolver into his chest.
Before the gun went off, Vargas told McNeill "he was lucky" his wife was there, Liz McNeill said - a statement that Vargas' family says it will use to show that he may have intended to scare Darrell McNeill, not kill him. They note that cap-and-ball revolvers have hair triggers and say he may not have meant to shoot.
At any rate, McNeill died slowly, moaning, while Vargas stood by for a half hour and disassembled the pistol, Liz McNeill recalled.
"After he shot Darrell, he told him something to the effect of, 'You're not going to hurt anyone again,' and then he told me all about how Darrell abused him as a child," McNeill said. "I was shocked at all of this. He told me he wasn't going to hurt me, but I was never scared. I knew he wouldn't."
Vargas was arrested that night at his parents' house.
"He came over and told me he'd shot Darrell, and I knew something traumatic had happened," Robin Vargas said. "And he told me Darrell had molested him and was still on the prowl to molest others.
"My world went upside down in a few seconds. I sat down and held him in my arms, and my heart has ached ever since."
Fateful Oregon fishing trip
Vargas soon told his family that McNeill began molesting him on a fishing trip the two took to Oregon when he was 11.
Before that trip, his family says, Vargas was a fun-loving boy who enjoyed fishing, hunting and baseball. Afterward, he was withdrawn and his grades plummeted. He graduated from Fort Bragg High School, then began drinking too much, was convicted three times of drunken driving, and never seemed to get his life on track.
His main jobs were doing construction and other odd work around town - which included stints at McNeill's American Homes furnishing store, hanging window blinds and fixing plumbing.
McNeill, meanwhile, was considered "a nice guy who gave good service in his business," said City Councilman Jere Melo. He mentored boys in the local Scouts and Big Brother programs in the 1970s and '80s, had a stable marriage for decades, and "seemed like a good citizen," Melo said.
"I was totally surprised at the incident."
Vargas' relatives say they agonize now at not having figured out what was going on.
"We knew something wasn't right all those years, but we never put things together," said Vargas' 30-year-old sister, Mindy Galliani. "Now it all makes sense."
Breaking off relationship
Vargas finally stood up to McNeill and stopped the sex at least four years ago, but McNeill refused to leave him alone, Galliani said. Even after Vargas became engaged a couple of years ago, McNeill would drive by his house and call him, asking him to visit, she said.
When Vargas' fiancee gave birth to their daughter a year ago, McNeill turned up the pressure, Vargas' family says. Sometimes he would call 10 times a day to ask to visit and to babysit the girl.
"It was like a sick obsession," Galliani said. "He knew his control over Aaron was slipping away, and he just didn't want to let go."
According to court records, three days before the shooting, McNeill's 46-year-old stepson, John Clemons, told Vargas that McNeill had molested him, too, as a boy. The two were visiting with McNeill's biological son, 34-year-old Michael McNeill, who said in court filings that he'd become convinced his father had molested his friends when they were all children.
The pent-up frustration Vargas had been nursing overflowed, Galliani said.
"I don't think Aaron went over to Darrell's that night to actually kill him, but I'm sure he wanted to scare him," she said. "He wanted to be left alone, and for him not to hurt other kids."
Killing seen as deliberate
To prosecutors and investigators, whatever molestation McNeill might have carried out means very little.
Given that Vargas had to pack a percussion cap, powder and a bullet into the replica antique pistol and drive to McNeill's house before he shot him, the killing was clearly deliberate and thus first-degree murder, they have argued.
And Vargas was not a boy when he shot McNeill - he was a man who, even if he was molested as a child, had had sex with the older man while he was an adult.
The community, however, doesn't appear to buy it.
In the past year, 1,267 people signed an online petition asking for leniency for Vargas. Hundreds, including Fort Bragg Fire Chief Steve Orsi and reportedly several police officers, have attended fundraisers for Vargas' defense that raised $10,000.
"Nobody I've talked to says throw the book at Aaron," said Orsi, who added that he didn't attend the fundraiser in his capacity as chief. "You just can't go shoot somebody ... but I think there's something to the story of the abuse.
"It's all just shocking. And very sad."
Vargas' sister says that "everybody thought Darrell was such a nice guy, an upstanding member of the community, but when he was around my brother, Aaron became that scared 11-year-old again. Nobody knew how twisted Darrell was."
Some say they sought help
Some say they did, however - and two say they filed police reports about McNeill a decade and more ago that weren't followed up.
"Darrell was very smart about what he did, very persuasive, real friendly," said Todd Rowan, a 46-year-old carpenter who says McNeill molested him from the ages of 15 to 19. "He'd pick out guys like me who were loners or vulnerable, and have us over to drink beer and smoke pot. Then when you were stoned, he'd go at you."
Rowan said he finally told McNeill to lay off when he got big enough to resist, but the trauma drove him to substance abuse and suicide attempts. In 2001, he took his accusations to Fort Bragg police - but nothing happened, he said.
'I went through hell'
Vargas' defense team has a copy of the report. Fort Bragg officials, bound by the gag order, aren't commenting on it - or on the report that McNeill's ex-wife, Jenny Cotilla, says she made to the department about 20 years ago alleging her ex-husband had molested his stepson John Clemons. Nothing happened with that report either, she said.
"I went through hell because of that man," Rowan said. "I'm now with a great woman and I'm clean and sober, but it's still hard to talk about this. Look, up here this is a redneck town. Nobody would believe you about this stuff.
"But enough is enough after what happened with Aaron, so I'm talking now. Maybe if we'd all talked more back then, it would have never to come to all this."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/21/MNDU1C2M7E.DTL
tard needed a bullet in his head.
