The Sinking of the Shooting Star: the amazing FBI files

     I became interested in the "Shooting Star" story because of Tom Fuentes, a legendarily wily and nasty operator in OC Republican politics—at least until 2005, when he was forced to step down as OC GOP chair, a position he held for about twenty years, owing to pressure from the Rich Guys contingent of the OC Party, who sought to shed the county of its knuckle-dragging image. In their view, Fuentes wasn't helping.
     And, of course, during the last dozen years of his life, starting in the summer of 2000, he was a trustee of the SOCCCD board here in South County. I knew a little about him before that. But, starting that summer, he brought a deep dark realpolitik to the good ol' SOCCCD. It was like Satan decided to come live in the neighborhood.
     He was pretty complicated. In his youth in the late 50s and early 60s, he worshipped Richard Nixon, and not because of Dick's love of puppies. Fuentes especially admired Nixon's no-holds-barred approach to the opposition, which was already evident in his run against Helen Gahagan Douglas in 1950.

     While Fuentes led the OC GOP to ever greater heights of staunchitude, he proudly served as the head PR flak for the OC Catholic Diocese—during the years when pedophile priests, and not their victims, were routinely protected by the church hierarchy.
     What's up with that? asks Gustavo Arellano.
     Despite his right-wing politics, Tom remained in good standing with Catholic officials—until 1988, when his political tactics became too visibly Nixonian: he hired uniformed "guards" to stand outside of polling places to intimidate Latino voters. Catholic officials took a dim view of that. It smacked of racism. Tom lost his Diocese gig. There was litigation; the party paid a huge settlement.
     Once in a while, Tom would get outed like that for the bastard he was.
     Fuentes was a self-loathing Chicano—and a self-loathing gay man to boot. Self-hatred plus the other-directed kind seemed to be at his core.
     He hated women. With Fuentes in charge, only seriously old school gals could find a place on Team GOP,  baking cookies or something.
     Essentially, he made his living as a lobbyist for a series of firms. He'd wine and dine local politicians to make them agreeable to doing business with his GOP business cronies. He made a fortune doing that. But that kind of work is a kind of sausage-making. It's best kept buried in the incessant OC noise.
     One time, the spotlight caught him providing perks for members of a water board. It was all very embarrassing. He even had to quit the company he worked for. But, generally speaking, Fuentes made his expensive sausages quietly, behind the scenes, connecting his pals with thick veins of public money.
     Sorry about the mixed metaphors.
     Despite his notorious piety, he plainly loved being wealthy and spent every spare hour at his beloved Balboa Bay Club, drinking, smoking cigars, ordering around the help, and doing who-knows-what with promising young Republican man-boys.

     The "Shooting Star" tragedy occurred in 1974, when Fuentes was about twenty-five years old. It  took the lives of Fuentes' bosses: OC Supervisor Ron Caspers, who had just won reelection and for whom Fuentes served as chief aide, and Fred Harber, the old timer of the bunch, and the apparent brain behind a kind or OC "shadow government" that controlled OC politics, starting around 1970 or so or maybe earlier. Caspers wanted to celebrate his victory by flying some of his pals down to La Paz (just north of the tip of Baja, Cabo), and then via charter to Cabo San Lucas, where they boarded Harber's power yacht, the Shooting Star. From there, they would sail up the coast toward California, fishing and enjoying the scenery.
     Fuentes was among the gang that flew down to La Paz and then Cabo, but, oddly, he did not join the cruise, owing to some alleged complaint or illness. He left a large icebox filled, he said, with decadent goodies for his boss, Caspers. Who knows what was in that box.
     It is not entirely clear just who was on the boat as it sailed from Cabo. Some among this group bailed at ports along the way back to California.
     Eventually, the yacht got pretty far up the Baja coast to Turtle Bay, where Harber decided to stop for fuel, provisions, etc. For some reason, at that point, the group seemed to be in a big hurry to get back to California. Their apparent route took them through some rough waters, which, later, puzzled investigators. Rough seas did develop there; the boat was forced to issue a Mayday. The Shooting Star and all hands were never heard from again. No bodies were every recovered, despite a massive search. Only small fragments of the boat were found.

     The story, once filled out, is pretty odd and hinky. Many of you already know most of it. Caspers and Harber were then involved in shaking down contractors and developers—laying' down the old "pay to play," something that Harber had been caught (or nearly caught) doing years earlier as city manager of Cypress. Back then (1966), Harber had agreed to testify in exchange for immunity, but the case had to be abandoned when Harber's apparent co-conspirator, City Councilman Job Denni, died in a plane crash. Harber and Denni's scheme involved receipt of $2,000 a month from a developer—the same arrangement that, according to Jordan, Harber and Caspers offered to him eight years later. (See Harber and Caspers attempt to bribe a developer, but then they die instead.)
     Back to 1974: One such "mark," Richard Jordan, decided to fight back, contacting the OC DA, Cecil Hicks, a Republican enemy of Caspers and his unsavory (mostly Democratic) crowd, including Harber and the infamous "Dick and Doc," i.e., land developer Dick O'Neil and mysterious political operator (and medical doctor) Louis Cella. Not long after the Shooting Star disaster, Dick and Doc's run as Big Political Donors ran afoul of the law—Cella, it turns out, was engaging in massive fraud at hospitals—which eventually landed Cella in prison. Within a few years, several other major OC politicians joined him there. The corruption was pretty thick.
     Fuentes managed to sail through it all, unscathed, though he was widely reputed to have been "Caspers' bagman." When Caspers died, Tom hoped to be appointed as his replacement, but when that fell through he decided to quit politics and become a priest. His seminary time lasted about a year. Soon, he was back wining and dining rich people for the good ol' OC GOP. And he became rich.
     Naturally, the Shooting Star disaster was a terrible tragedy for the 10 people on board and their families. This group included three young men from the Klein family of Utah. (One of the Klein boys was an administrative assistant for a member of the OC Board of Supes.) Clearly, this peculiar tragedy devastated the Klein family and left lots of unanswered questions. Too few in OC seemed interested in finding the answers.
     There was a huge effort to recover survivors, find bodies, and so on, funded by Cella. For a while, it was run by—you guessed it—the dark souled Mr. Fuentes. These efforts produced virtually nothing. The tragedy was mostly blamed on bad weather and poor decisions. But many observers clearly saw the whole episode as very strange. Perhaps suspicious. But, it seemed, all the evidence had sunk to the bottom of the ocean. People moved on.

     NOT LONG AGO, a Ms. S*****—a younger and internet-savvy member of the family that lost the Klein brothers in the tragedy—requested information concerning the "Sinking of the Shooting Star" from the FBI via the Freedom of Information Act. On November 14, 2017, she received the information with a cover page that explained needed "exemptions" (i.e., deletions), and the relevant FOIA "statute headings." The relevant part of that cover page is here:

The relevant sections (of FOIA) are here:

     I received the documents from Ms. S, but they were in files that included pages that sometimes did not seem to match. I made an effort to put them in some kind of order. I fill in some of the blanks where I can. Here they are: pages 4, 5, and 6 are especially interesting.

This page doesn't make much sense to me, given what follows.

I think that the redacted name is Frank Vessels, Jr.,
owner of the Los Alamitos Racetrack. Vessels shot himself in the
head with a shot gun six months later (probably unrelated).
Nobody's quite sure why he did that. His wife was standing just
a few feet away.

Again, I think the redacted name is Frank Vessels, Jr.
This was Caspers' second boating tragedy. Back in the mid-50s a boating
 accident involving his yacht killed his then-wife. See 1954: 
"Shooting Star" was Caspers' second boating tragedy. The first was also a doozy

The "land developer" was Richard Jordan. His tale was finally reported in 
May of 1978 (See). The telephone call was likely from Caspers' assistant, Tom Fuentes, 
who was (in 1978) reported to have spoken with Jordan, eventually informing him that Shirley
Grindle, an "honest government" advocate and planning commissioner, was asking questions 
about Jordan's project. Fuentes then arranged for Jordan's meeting with Spendlove, Caspers' hand-picked
 planning commissioner. 
Spendlove died in a plane crash (taking his whole family, including four kids) in Utah in September
 of 1975, a year after having been fired by Caspers' successor, Tom Riley.

More of the Jordan story. The planning commissioner mentioned above ("her") is Shirley Grindle,
widely known for her crusades for clean and open government. She was appointed by
OC Supervisor Ralph Clark in 1973 and she remained on the Commission until 1977. (See OAC.)
The meeting taken on May 6th or 
7th is taken by developer Jordan. The amount of cash Harber and Caspers demanded from Jordan
—$2K a month—was the same amount demanded in the scheme Harber and Denni pursued back in 1966.
 (See note above.) 
The person declining the Mexican trip was the developer, Jordan.
WHO was interviewed on May 9th of 1978? Golly!
And who did the interviewing?
I have found a reference to an officer/agent ("special agent"?) of the FBI named Stanley J. Fullerton
 (here; p. II-109). And so Fullerton represents the FBI in the interview. What's SA? I suspect it abbreviates
Special Agent.
The OC DA who went after Cella was the celebrated Cecil Hicks.
I have no idea who this Marine Major is. I'll do some digging.

Curious investors: Camelot card club, Anaheim (c. 1977)

I have found news reports concerning the Camelot "card club" in Anaheim c. 1976-7. The owner, Joseph G. London,
ran afoul of city regulations. Some local officials seemed to feel that the club was detrimental to citizens' welfare. A "James Grover" (aka "Jimmy 'Bad Boy' Williams") of Las Vegas had ties to the club; evidently, he was an ex-convict with underworld connections, which worried Anaheim officials when London attempted to expand the business in the city. (The
Register's 9-12-77 article about Camelot is amazing.)

Someone overheard a conversation by ? in which "covering...tracks" was discussed—in connection
with the sinking of the Shooting Star. Relative to tracks-covering, this Marine, is (?) a local gambler in debt to this "card club."
The next bit of verbiage (on page 5) refers to participants of the conversation "wanting CASPERS 'taken out'"

CELLA wants Caspers taken out? Over knowledge of a hinky funding source?
Who is the BAGMAN? I know that Larry Clark worked for Schmitt (OC Board of Supers 1975-78)—
but it seems unlikely that he would be a bagman for anyone.
I'm gonna have to work on this, see if I can identify the names.
Two hookers on the Shooting Star! WTF!

OCDAO — that's likely the OC District Attorney's Office.
Could the redacted mystery man be Lyle Overby? Overby served as
a Supervisor's executive aide at the time, I believe. He was on the Shooting Star on
that fateful (not fatalistic) trip—but bailed at some point at Cabo San Lucas. (See My correspondence 
with passenger Lyle Overby.) 
Overby later became a successful OC lobbyist. (He is a Republican.)
LARRY SCHMITT was an OC Supervisor from 75-78 or so. He was a part of
Harber's "shadow government." Larry Clark, who wrote a fine piece about the 
Shooting Star tragedy, told me that he was Schmitt's executive aide—and he was told
that his job was to "keep him [Larry] out of jail." Clark was the one who told me that Overby
was the passenger who bailed on the trip perhaps at Cabo.

Let me know what you make of all this. 

I've got more documents that I haven't sifted through yet.

I'll get back atcha. —RB 

Caspers was an "able public servant" and "a human being." Anything else? Tom Fuentes counted heads at the service.

From the "Trustee Tom Fuentes files" [Fuentes got his start working for corrupt OC supervisor Caspers; Caspers' chief crony was the corrupt Fred Harber]:

     I unearthed an old Times article (“Caspers Eulogized as Uncommon Man in Political Arena,” Jul 16, 1974) that describes a memorial service for the “missing” supervisor Ronald W. Caspers and his two sons. It was held at “St. Michaels and All Angels Episcopal Church” “in the hills above Corona del Mar.”
     According to the article, the eulogy was performed by personal friend Rev. G. William Grady, who described Caspers as “an uncommon man”:

     “He was not an average man,” Mr. Grady said, “but in his election to the Board of Supervisors, he found the true love of his life. His reelection in June placed him totally in public service.”
     Mr. Grady also reminder [sic] those attending that Caspers’ battle to obtain the 5,500-acre Starr-Viejo Ranch as a county regional park was typical of his love for the outdoors.
     “He wanted to share the bounties of life with everyone,” he said. “He was an outstanding student, a successful businessman, a loving son, husband and father, an able public servant and, above all, a human being.
     Tom Fuentes, Caspers’ chief executive assistant, estimated that 500 persons crowded the chapel, stood along the walls or listened outside to the memorial service.

     Oddly, “None of Caspers’ fellow supervisors was on hand” – though “all sent aides to the service….”

* * *

     I also dug up a Times piece (“Services Scheduled for Fred D. Harber,” Jul 19, 1974) announcing memorial services for Fred Harber, the political consultant upon whom “Dick and Doc” (Richard O’Neill and Dr. Louis Cella)—the crafty duo who, with campaign contributions, virtually controlled OC government at the time—relied.
     He too was missing after the apparent sinking of his yacht the “Shooting Star” in mid-June. None of the bodies of the ten passengers was ever found.
     The article mentions that, beyond serving as mayor of Buena Park and City Manager of Cypress, “Harber also developed the first shopping center in Buena Park as well as apartment complexes.” He served as consultant or manager of campaigns for Ralph Clark, Jerry Patterson, Jess Unruh, and various others.
     He was, of course, a close associate of Ron Caspers.
     He hailed from Seminole, Oklahoma.

What a guy from Oklahoma sounds like

1954: "Shooting Star" was Caspers' second boating tragedy. The first was also a doozy

The entire “Fuentes/Shooting Star” saga can be found here.

     As you know, I have occasionally noted the high incidence of violent death in the unfolding Caspers/Cella/Harber saga—a lurid fabric into which the young Tom Fuentes was thoroughly woven. The “Shooting Star” disaster and the murder of Arlene Hoffman are but two extraordinary examples. There are several others.
     Here’s one that I haven't mentioned.
     We know that Ronald Caspers perished when the “Shooting Star” went down off the coast of Baja in 1974. But, as it turns out, that was not the first odd boating disaster that involved Caspers. The first occurred nearly twenty years earlier, when Caspers was a 23 years old rich kid.

     ALOHA MEANS GOODBYE. According to former OC GOP chairman (1969-72) Thomas C. Rogers in his Agents’ Orange (2000),

     Caspers had made headlines prior to ... [1970]. He and his wife Beatrice had been cruising in coastal waters south of Port Hueneme in the ketch Aloha on the night of October 1, 1954. With Caspers at the helm, the Aloha veered in front of an oncoming Coast Guard cutter. The Aloha sank and the remains of Beatrice Caspers were never found, despite an intensive search by Coast Guard vessels and aircraft. An investigation by the U.S. Coast Guard of this tragedy at sea never resulted in any criminal proceedings.

     Why did Rogers choose to mention a 1954 Ventura County boating accident in a book about Orange County politics?
     Perhaps Rogers had his doubts about Ron Caspers, a man who, according to him, later had a great impact on OC politics.

* * *

     In a Nov. 8, 1970 LA Times article (“Freshmen supervisors: a study in contrasts”), Caspers described himself as a “Reagan conservative." Guess so. He seemed to like Richard Nixon, too.
     And he was rich: according to the Times, he spent $81,695 winning his supervisor seat—an astounding sum at the time—including $46,984 of his own money.
     The Supe gig made him $15K per year.
     The Times described Caspers’ education:

     The son of the late R.W. Caspers, founder and head of Mutual Savings and Loan in Pasadena, Caspers managed to enter Menlo College at the age of 16, attended UCLA, was graduated from San Jose State College as a business administration major and did graduate work in marketing and financing at USC.

Ron Caspers, c. 1973

     —OK, I’ll say it: how does a guy start his education at a fancy private college, transfer to a UC school, and then end up getting his Bachelors at a state college? What's that about?
     The article goes on to explain that Caspers did indeed make a big success of Keystone Savings—which he founded in 1957, in Anaheim, when he was about 26 years old. 

     THE CASPERS TENENBAUMS. I did a little looking, and it turns out that Caspers came from a rich and perhaps peculiar family. As indicated above, his father, Rudolph, an avid yachtsman, ran Mutual Savings and Loan. By the mid-50s, he seemed to spend much of his time traveling about the world with his photographer wife. He died in 1958 at age 64.
     I do believe that Ron Caspers’ mother had some sort of TV show—perhaps a travelogue.
     I've found references to the “residuary trust under the will of Rudolph W. Caspers.” Not sure what that's about. Ron Caspers' father was named Rudolph, but so was his grandfather.
     There was a Rudolph Caspers in show biz in the thirties and forties. Same guy? Not sure.

* * *

     MOWED BY A CUTTER. I did find some old articles about the “Aloha” tragedy, which, to authorities back then, warranted investigation.
     The ramming and sinking of the Aloha by the Coast Guard cutter Morris occurred on October 2, 1954. The Aloha had five passengers, two of whom perished, including Caspers' wife. Within a few days, there was an official inquiry. In the end, the Coast Guard investigation concluded that the actions of those piloting the two ships—Ron Caspers (age 23) and an Ensign James Frost (age 25)—were responsible for the tragedy:

     …Out of the Coast Guard’s board of investigation and military inquiry yesterday came the tragic knowledge that the Morris and the Aloha both altered direction a few minutes before they collided.
     Ensign James A. Frost, 24, on the Coast Guard cutter Morris, ordered a change to port [left]. Ronald Caspers, 23, at the wheel of his father’s $55,000 racing ketch Aloha, adjusted to starboard [right].
     And the two alterations, each made to avoid a possible collision, accomplished just the opposite. They made for a near perfect collision course. (“Double shift of course blamed for sinking of yacht Aloha by cutter,” LA Times, Oct. 9, 1954)

     The details, however, are worth reviewing.
     On it's face, the incident was strange. On that dark but calm and clear night, the Coast Guard cutter Morris spotted the Aloha when it was still three miles away. The officer on deck of the Morris, Frost, kept an eye on it, for it kept coming at the Morris. He sought to avoid a collision, but the Aloha seemed to change direction to maintain a course directed at the Morris.
     It’s clear that Caspers was to some degree negligent in the incident:

The CG cutter Morris

     …[Attorney] Keith Ferguson … seized on Caspers’ horn testimony during cross-examination.
     “Are you aware that two blasts of a horn is a signal to denote that the ship is to change course to port [i.e., to their left]?” asked Ferguson.
     “No, I did not know that,” Caspers answered.
     “Do you know the rules of the road?” the attorney asked.
     “Not all of them,” Caspers admitted.
     Caspers, far from shifting course to port, altered gradually to starboard [to the right, from his perspective] for approximately five minutes before the crash, according to his testimony.
. . .
     “I thought the craft was stationary,” he said, “and I wanted to give it plenty of room.”
     “Didn’t it mean anything to you that your bearing on the other boat remained the same even though you had changed your course?” Ferguson, an admiralty lawyer, asked.
     “It would now,” Caspers replied, “But my mind wasn’t working that way then.”
     Caspers pointed out that he would not have acted differently even had he known the Morris was moving.
     “The other boat, being on my port [left] side, would have to change course,” he explained.

     Later in the article, testimony provides a dramatic account of the Aloha's actual sinking, an account that seems designed to make Caspers appear heroic:

A ketch

     [Survivors] Caspers, Boisot and Miss Kurz all testified to their almost miraculous escape from going down with the Aloha.
     Caspers said he stood up [when collision became imminent? occurred?] in the cockpit and moved to go below.
     “I kept thinking that I had to get the people out,” he said. “But by the time I got there, the cabin was almost full of water.
     “Then I saw some hands rise up through the debris. I reached down and grasped them and pulled up on them. It was Miss Kurz. I finally managed to pull her out and then we were in the water.
     “The ship went down immediately—almost instantaneously. The Dinghy was floating free and we swam to that. We didn’t see anybody and then we heard Boisot calling out. He swam over and hung on with us.”
     Miss Kurz testified that she was asleep on the starboard side of the cabin, aft. She said Mrs. Caspers was asleep in the port bunk of the same cabin.
     “I was either thrown or I vaulted from the bed,” Miss Kurz recalled. “Then I was standing in the middle of the room. I yelled and yelled for Bea. I felt in her bunk but I couldn’t locate her.
     “I had no time to spare. I started up the ladder and somehow got myself caught in the hatch. Then Ronald reached down and pulled me out.”

     Obviously, there are at least two possible hinky Caspers scenarios. First, Caspers was simply grossly negligent—scandalously ignorant and careless. Second, Caspers deliberately collided with the Morris.
     Why would he do that? Well, you can use your imagination. One possibility would involve collusion with the two other survivors (Boisot, a 32-year-old "manufacturer" and Kurz, a 25-year-old secretary). There's no evidence of anything like that. (But it's hard to find any information at all about so distant and obscure an event.)

* * *

     AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN. The best account of the Coast Guard hearing that I could find appeared in an article in the Oct. 8 Long Beach Press-Telegram (“Cutter officer tells of crash”). According to that article, the crash occurred just before 5:00 a.m. Ensign James Frost was in charge of the cutter while the captain was sleeping. He testified that he spotted the Aloha when it was 2 or 3 miles away:

     “The young officer said that as the two craft approached one another visual bearing indicated the other vessel steadily moved from 20 to 30 degrees to his starboard.
     “At that time I considered the vessel to be passing me well to his starboard [i.e., to my right],” Ensign Frost declared.
     He said he went into the wheelhouse contemplating making a navigation “fix” but had been in only a few seconds when he looked out toward the other vessel and saw both running lights, indicating that it had turned toward him.
     “I took the binoculars and stepped out on the wing of the bridge,” he said. “I saw the green light only again. Then both lights again.
     “At this time I gave an order to the helmsman “left five.’” He explained he meant left five degrees rudder. He said the command was acknowledged and carried out.
     For a period of 10 seconds, Ensign Frost said, he could see alternately one navigation light and then both as the other vessel appeared to waver back and forth. [Presumably, Frost's seeing both lights suggested Aloha's course directly toward the Morris.]
     “Approximately 20 seconds before the collision,” he said, “I saw the port running light. I realized the other vessel was trying to cut across my bow. I gave the command “all back full.”
     “We hit the vessel approximately with our prow. We hit amidships on the port side” [the side where Mrs. Caspers was sleeping, aft].
     Ensign Frost said he did not sound any whistle signals prior to the impact and heard nothing from the Aloha at any time. At the time of the impact he sounded a series of four or more three-second whistle blasts. He said the Morris backed off about 50 yards and he gave orders to stop all engines.
     The whistles, general alarm signals, and shouting awakened the captain…. Ensign Frost said the skipper was on the bridge between 30 seconds to one minute of the collision.
     Ensign Frost said the Morris put searchlights into operation to seek survivors, but that he had seen no one on the deck of the Aloha at time of impact.
     The skipper of the Aloha, 23-year-old Ronald W. Caspers of Pasadena, told the board Thursday his version of events leading up to the collision.

     The victims of the tragedy included his 25-year-old wife, Barbara [she went by “Bea”], and Harold Kelly, Jr., 61 of New York and San Bernardino. Caspers and two other passengers were rescued.
     Caspers’ testimony brought out that the sounding of an electric horn may have contributed to the accident.
     Caspers testified that [Aloha passenger] Emile K. (Kelly) Boisot, 32, of Arcadia waked him by sounding the boat’s electric horn “two or three times” about 13 minutes before the Morris rammed the Aloha.
     The witness was asked by Atty. Keith Ferguson, San Francisco, special assistant to the U.S. Attorney General, if he was aware “that two blasts of a horn is a signal to denote that a ship is to change course to port?”
     “No, I did not know that,” said Caspers, son of Altadena sportsman Rudolph W. Caspers, owner of the Aloha.
     Caspers said he altered course gradually to starboard for about five minutes before the crash.
     Earlier, the young skipper said he had seen the Morris and thought it to be one of other fishing boats he had noticed.
     “I thought the craft was stationary,” he continued, “and I wanted to give it plenty of room.”

     It’s all very odd, if you ask me. I mean, the collision could have gone down because of a perfect storm of incompetent maneuverings by the two skippers. Speaking as a non-sailor, and given the testimony above, that seems implausible. Maybe experienced seamen see it otherwise. Dunno.
     Why was Bea Caspers' body never found? You'll recall that none of the bodies of the ten passengers of the Shooting Star were ever found either. 
     What's it all mean? Maybe nothing. Bodies get eaten, lost.

* * *

     THE HAWAIIAN YARN. Earlier, I said that we "know" that  Ron Caspers perished with the "Shooting Star" in 1974.

     Do we? There's a reason, perhaps a very slim one, to wonder.
     In his excellent 1984 article "The Sinking of a Political Machine," published (in Orange Coast Magazine) exactly ten years after the "Shooting Star" sinking, journalist Larry Peterson considered the possibility that the yacht was deliberately sunk. One theory that had been proposed at the time, by a private detective and ex-cop named Neal Graney, involved the idea that one of the ten passengers of the "Shooting Star" helped sink it and survived:

     There is some support, however slender, for Graney’s belief that someone got off the boat alive. One former west Orange County elected official told me he thinks he saw a member of the ill-fated party about three years ago in Hawaii.
     At the time, the former official says he was on the beach near the Pacific Beach Hotel in Waikiki, and the supposedly deceased man crossed the street nearby.
     “It looked so much like him that I just yelled his name without thinking that he was supposed to be dead,” said the vacationer, who was well-acquainted with the Shooting Star passenger he thinks he saw. “He took off and disappeared into the crowd….I’m sure that, when I yelled out, he would have recognized me….It seemed deliberate.”
     Scenarios just as bizarre as Graney’s based more on conjecture than provable fact, have been widely circulated and are passed on by Cella, Battin and others to anyone who asks.
     Details vary, but the essentials are this: Somebody hired either organized crime-related figures or a right-wing paramilitary group to blow the Shooting Star out of the water.
     Implausible as that may seem, there is some evidence that the boat would not normally have sunk, even with the pounding it took from heavy seas.

     Peterson was referring to the repair history of the boat and evidence that it had undergone modifications that would make it virtually unsinkable.

     Peterson raised the question of why anyone would want to sink the ship. He turns to Richard Jordan's allegations, in a sworn declaration, that Caspers and his pal Harber (who was also on the boat) were attempting to shake him down—a highly plausible suggestion, given the histories of those two men, as explained recently here on DtB. Perhaps, suggests Peterson, Jordan wasn't the only target of shakedowns? Perhaps some of these others were violent people?

     And maybe Caspers believed that the DA was closing in on him (Jordan's declaration indicates that) and he couldn't face the fall that would result.

     Admittedly, there's a huge problem with the "Caspers did it" theory: two of Caspers' sons were lost with the ship (apparently). Of course, they might have been "in on it" and survived, along with dad, but that makes the whole yarn ridiculously complex and unlikely.

     Would a guy kill his own sons? Don't think so.

     Of course, we don't know who that former elected official thought he saw that day in Hawaii. Maybe it was Fred Harber.

     We'll never know.

Fred Harber

Shooting Star, part 11: mob connections, an unexplained murder

The entire “Fuentes/Shooting Star” saga can be found here.

      For those of you with the patience, I have more background on the “Shooting Star” story. You’ll recall that the yacht, Shooting Star, disappeared off the coast of Baja California in June of 1974, taking ten men with her, including Orange County Supervisor (5th District) Ron Caspers and political consultant Fred Harber. Harber was a key strategist for Dr. Louis Cella and his “shadow government” (to use OC DA Cecil Hicks’ phrase), which included in its stable four Supes, including Caspers. Caspers’ “executive aide” at the time of the Shooting Star incident was Tom Fuentes, who, it is often reported, decided to pass on the trip at the last minute, but not before he packed an extra ice chest for his boss filled with hors d’oeuvres and drinks.

      In my last post, we learned (based on the account of one-time OC GOP chair Tom Rogers) that Caspers, a Republican banker, engaged in foul deceptions to tarnish the reputation of 5th District Supervisor Alton Allen, whose office he evidently coveted.

      Below are excerpts from two articles from the January, 1976, edition of The California Journal. The first, by Dan Walters and his partner, describes Dr. Cella’s relationship to former Buena Park Mayor Fred Harber. Here, Harber emerges as a more interesting, and perhaps important, figure (at the time of the Shooting Star disappearance, he was 55 to Caspers’ 43 years of age).

      We also learn that Cella, (OC land baron) Richard O’Neill, and Harber partnered with a man tied to the mob.

      The next article, written by Nancy Boyarsky, briefly discusses Dr. Cella’s background. These details are pretty interesting.

      The last pair of articles, from the LA Times, have no very clear relationship to the Shooting Star/Cella saga. They concern the mysterious 1994 murder of a much-beloved woman who had worked as an assistant to many of the characters who have cropped up on these pages. Arlene Hoffman was slain, evidently, with an arrow from a cross-bow, in her Laguna Niguel home. The murderer took the arrow with him.
      Her murder has never been solved.

      She was once Fred Harber’s secretary at one of Louis Cella's hospitals. She had also worked for "Big Daddy" Jess Unruh and Norton Simon. At the time of her death in 1995, she had just been hired by new OC Supervisor Jim Silva.

The Tangled Web: Two

Unscrambling Dick and Doc’s financial and political empire

By Al Downer and Dan Walters

. . .

Mysterious figure [Dr. Louis Cella]

      Cella, whose business interests range from ranching to real estate but are concentrated in the medical field, is the mystery man of Orange County politics. Rumors about him and his political and business deals abound, but most of them evaporate under scrutiny.

      Cella operated behind-the-scenes until 1974, when he lost his front man, Fred Harber, who had been Cella’s chief political aide and sometimes business associate until his disappearance in June 1974. He and nine other persons, including Orange County Supervisor Ronald Caspers, vanished when Harber’s boat apparently sank off the coast of Baja California. Caspers was a member of the Cella-ONeill stable and his family savings-and-loan company had provided at least some of the financing for Cella’s chain of hospitals. “Harber was smooth, and as long as he was around things operated quietly with no fuss and muss,” says a knowledgeable Orange County observer. Harber operated out of one wing of the Cella clinic across the street from the county courthouse and once was on the payroll as an assistant to Supervisor Robert Battin, another organization politician who is now under indictment for using his staff in a political campaign.

      [State Controller Ken] Cory has described Harber as “a very good friend of mine, perhaps the best friend I have had.” And with good reason. Harber not only was the tactician for Cory’s early political successes, but he loaned Cory’s small insurance agency, Cornet Insurance Counselors, $95,250 in 1967 when the agency appeared to be having difficulty making payments on a note.

      Harber and Carl D’Agostino, now Cory’s deputy controller, were the co-founders of Demographic Communications Consultants, a campaign-management firm that has handled many campaigns for the Cella-ONeill organization. With Harber’s passing, Cella was forced to move into the open, and investigators began taking an interest in his complex of business affairs. Orange County District Attorney Cecil Hicks, perhaps the only major Orange County official openly hostile to Cella and O’Neill, has called Cella the man behind “a shadow government”. Cella hired a private investigator, through one of the hospitals, to investigate arch-enemy Hicks.

. . .

More ties 

      The influence of Cella and O’Neill in county government is apparent in many ways. A prime example is the El Toro case.

      El Toro Land Company was formed as a partnership in 1970 to develop a 39-acre parcel along the San Diego Freeway in Orange County. One of the original partners, with a $25,000 investment, was Albert Parvin, one-time Las Vegas casino-owner and head of the Parvin-Dohrmann Company and the Parvin Foundation. Meyer Lansky, reputed Mafia financial brain, was one of Parvin’s partners in the Flamingo Hotel and the Parvin Foundation had former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas on its payroll for $12,000 per year – a revelation that sparked an impeachment effort against Douglas several years ago.

      Cella, O’Neill and Harber bought into El Toro Land in 1971 and remain as major partners, along with Parvin, according to corporate records. Shortly after they bought in, the Orange County Board of Supervisors took emergency action to establish a freeway interchange adjacent to that property and the land increased in value by 600 percent, county records show.

      As Cella and O’Neill were expanding their business and political empires, Cory was experiencing a growth of personal wealth and political influence. Cory, who attended four colleges and graduated from none, became involved in politics while still a teen-ager. He went to Sacramento in the early1960s as an aide to then-Assemblyman Richard Hanna, the first Democrat to achieve major office in Orange County in recent years, and Cory served on the staff of the Assembly Education Committee, which was chaired by Hanna.

. . .

The Tangled Web: Three

Richard O’Neill—last of the big spenders?

By Nancy Boyarsky

. . .

An enigma 

      The 51-year-old physician [Lou Cella] is something of an enigma. Two popular exercises in Orange County political circles are estimating the size of his wealth and speculating on its source. The estimates on size range from $50 million to $500 million, although he generally is regarded as being less wealthy than O’Neill. Even his closest business associates, including O’Neill, don’t know the extent of Cella’s business interests. And Cella’s own explanations elude verification. It is known that he came to Orange County about 20 years ago from Providence, Rhode Island, where his father was also a physician and political figure. But the elder Cella left an estate of less than a quarter-million dollars. Cella came to Orange County after losing a position as senior resident surgeon at Rhode Island Hospital. The hospital’s staff had given him a vote of “no confidence”. Cella had been expelled from one medical school for cheating and eventually graduated from another. Although he has maintained a small private practice in Santa Ana, Cella’s chief occupation in California has been that of businessman and political operative. He is involved in at least seven Orange County hospitals and has wide real-estate and other investments. The Internal Revenue Service says, however, that Cella hasn’t filed an income tax return for the past three years.

Arlene Hoffman

Who Killed Arlene Hoffman?

January 27, 1995 - NANCY WRIDE

. . .

      …From 1972 to 1974, she worked as a secretary for a political consulting firm called Fred Harber and Associates.

. . .

      "She spent everything they had trying to prolong his life," said Lyle Overby [you'll recall that he was on the Shooting Star but disembarked at Cabo], a political consultant and friend of 20 years whose admiration for Arlene Hoffman led him to recommend her to Silva….

One Year Later, Strange Slaying Still Unsolved : Inquiry: Whoever killed Arlene Hoffman with a hunting-type arrow left few clues. The Laguna Niguel widow was a longtime political aide and moved in high-profile circles.

December 30, 1995

NANCY WRIDE - TIMES STAFF WRITER

LAGUNA NIGUEL — Portions of drywall were hacked away from her condo in a futile hunt for clues. Detectives asked childhood friends and family to undergo fingerprinting and lie detector tests to narrow the field of suspects. Her son even offered a $25,000 reward from his inheritance for details leading to the conviction of the killer.

      But, one year later, the mystery remains unsolved as to who fired a hunting-type arrow through the chest of Arlene Hoffman, leaving her to bleed to death on the marble floor of her Laguna Niguel foyer.

      Hoffman, 57, widowed nine months earlier, was long active in the backfield of Southern California political campaigns. Shortly before she was found slain Dec. 30, 1994, she had been hired as personal secretary to Jim Silva, newly elected to the Orange County Board of Supervisors.

. . .

      Simply put, there was little if any physical evidence at the scene to trace back to Hoffman's killer—no shell casings or fingerprints, no permits or licensing required to buy or use an arrow, no weapon left behind….

*

      In her lifetime, Hoffman moved in some high-profile circles. In the 1970s, she was connected to some of the major stories and players of the day.

      She worked for the late millionaire industrialist and world-class art collector Norton Simon, up to and including his failed campaign for U.S. Senate in 1970. She was involved in other political campaigns, including former Assembly Speaker Jesse M. Unruh's unsuccessful 1973 bid to become mayor of Los Angeles. She was secretary to Fred Harber, a political consultant who vanished at sea off the coast of Baja California in June 1974.

      In 1976, she was called to testify as a witness before the Orange County Grand Jury investigating political corruption.

      Hoffman told the grand jury she was an employee of the hospital run by Dr. Louis Cella, a political kingmaker and largest campaign contributor in California at the time. Now dead [sic], Cella was accused of billing Medi-Cal for nonexistent patients, then funneling the money into the campaigns of numerous candidates who went on to hold major office. He ultimately was convicted of income-tax evasion, Medicare and Medi-Cal fraud, embezzlement and conspiracy. He spent 31 months in federal prison.

      Investigators believed Hoffman was on the payroll of a state-funded hospital but was actually working on political projects at Cella's behest—such as mimeographing campaign hit mailers out of the hospital's print shop. District attorney investigators say now that they believe she lied to protect her employers. Cella ran the first campaign of former Orange County Treasurer-Tax Collector Robert L. Citron, who has pleaded guilty for his role in the county's bankruptcy.

      Because Hoffman's slaying occurred in the high-anxiety days after the nation's largest municipal bankruptcy, the case has seemed ripe for speculation about a political connection. But beyond smoky rumor, investigators say, no such link between Hoffman's death and the bankruptcy has crystallized.

*

      By nightfall on Dec. 30, 1994, there was no call from Hoffman's cellular phone, no sign of her Mercedes-Benz in the county government parking lot. Supervisor Silva, whose entire family had become quite fond of Hoffman, grew worried and personally called Sheriff Brad Gates to have deputies check his secretary's condo. They found her dead in her hallway, the victim of an arrow possibly fired from a crossbow. An autopsy placed her death sometime during a 12-hour period between 7:30 p.m. Dec. 29 and 7:30 the following morning.

      Detectives have not recovered the arrow—which might have passed through her body or been removed from it by the killer. Her dog was skittering around the entryway, its bark surgically squelched by a previous owner. The front door was unlocked and there was no sign of a break-in.

      Inside her garage was her Mercedes and her cellular phone. Nothing of any value appeared missing from the house. Partial fingerprints taken from a stairway from which investigators suspect the killer fired the arrow down on Hoffman didn't lead to an arrest.

      Archery shops and sporting good stores in the region were questioned for leads.

      "They've interviewed everyone who ever had contact with her or might have had contact with her," Wilkerson said, "and any place she might have frequented, employees."

      Her relatives declined to discuss the case, requesting privacy in their grief. Her son, Charles Anthony Hoffman, 26, who was talkative July 12, 1994, when he announced the reward for information leading to the conviction of his mother's killer, did not return phone calls….

      No creditors emerged, court records show. There were not even any claims stemming from the personal bankruptcy she and her late husband, Joel, filed and had resolved two weeks before his death in March 1994 after battling cancer.

      Hoffman leased her condo from her sister and brother-in-law, Joanne and John Dougherty, who friends say wanted her close to them in Dana Point.

      The condo was sealed off for several months during evidence gathering. Then came cleanup and repairs totaling $12,000 from damage caused by the slaying and police investigation.

      Wilkerson said Hoffman's son eventually made the condo his home—at least for several months after that.

      At the time he offered the $25,000 reward, Charles Hoffman said he hoped it would lead to an arrest and some "closure" for his family, which had suffered two deaths within a year.

      In the year since her death, though, there has been no closure.

      The Sheriff's Department has not received any calls responding to the reward, Wilkerson said, and they have no fresh clues.

      The family still grieves.

      And everyone still wonders why someone would kill Arlene Hoffman.

SEE That wasn't Caspers' first sinking

Shooting Star, part 10: the "grand scheme of patronage"

The entire “Fuentes/Shooting Star” saga can be found here.

El Toro Road, 1970

Ronald Caspers

            This series of posts has focused on the 1974 disappearance of the Shooting Star and the political corruption and misdeeds that served as that tragedy's backdrop. Recently, I acquired a copy of Agents’ Orange, a history of recent Orange County politics by former OC GOP chair Tom Rogers, who, starting in the 80s, emerged as a leader in the fight against developers and the Supervisors they “owned.”

            Here’s Rogers' discussion of Ronald Caspers, who perished in the 1974 disaster and who, it seems, was a pretty nasty piece of work:

            [TAKING OUT ALTON ALLEN.] The incumbent in the 5^th district was [Republican] Alton Allen [born: 1897], a retired banker, who lived in the charming village of Laguna Beach….

            Allen was widely respected for his representation of the 5^th District, which included the beach communities of Newport, Balboa, Laguna, and San Clemente, plus the vast inland areas held by the Irvine Ranch and the Rancho Mission Viejo, with thousands of acres devoted to agricultural production.

Alton Allen

            It came as a rude shock when, in 1969, a tabloid-type mailer was received by residents of the 5th District alleging wrongdoing on the part of Allen and his staff. Allen’s reputation for honesty and integrity had been undoubted, never a whisper against his character had ever been heard. Campaign finance reporting requirements were almost nonexistent in those days, so it was impossible to determine who was behind this puzzling attack, which was to develop into a recall movement. Anthony Tarantino, one of the nominal sponsors of the mailer, … was a man of modest means and it was obvious that there was someone else, unidentified, who was engaged in the expensive campaign to destroy Alton Allen’s character.

            Allen contacted Republican leadership for help against this scurrilous attack. At a meeting at the Balboa Bay Club, GOP leaders met with Allen and those in attendance were at a loss for any explanation of the anti-Allen campaign. The retired banker was obviously distraught at having unfounded insinuations directed at himself and his staff. There was some speculation tentatively expressed. Organized crime? Democrats taking over a neglected facet of Orange County politics? ….

            [NEXT: RECALL.] The mysterious anti-Allen forces opened a headquarters in Laguna Hills from which to launch a formal recall campaign. The mailers kept arriving with insinuations of Allen’s “wrongdoing.” Staff at the recall headquarters refused any information to the press that had become interested in the plot. The Alton Allen recall petition failed to obtain sufficient signatures and it is doubtful that the exercise was anything other than to prepare the way for the upcoming supervisorial election in the 5th District. Alton Allen’s campaign for reelection was close at hand.

Paul Carpenter

            [CELLA AND HARBER.] It would be revealed later that Tarantino had ties to [corruption kingpin] Lou Cella, [Shooting Star owner] Fred Harber, and others identified by [corrupt Supervisor] Robert Battin as “the Coalition.” Battin, in an attempt to depict his own conviction as discriminatory, revealed the existence of the group, which also included [OC land baron] R.J. O’Neill.

            Tarantino’s connection was that as a cabinet-maker he had worked for Cella and become friends with both him and Fred Harber. It was at their request that he agreed to lend his name to the Allen recall. Tarantino was also on the payroll of the Mission Viejo Hospital at $800 per month, until the law caught up with Cella.

            The original plan to recall Allen was scrubbed when it was decided that if Allen were recalled, Governor Reagan would probably appoint his assistant John Killifer, who was in no way connected to the scheme….

            [THE "SHADOW GOVERNMENT"* VS. ALLEN.] Robert Battin was to use his position on the Board of Supervisors to make Allen look inept in dealing with certain issues. [Local politician and (ultimately) convicted felon] Paul Carpenter also admitted to being part of the recall effort much later, but denied knowledge of the other Coalition members being involved. Carpenter claimed that the clandestine effort was confined to himself and a Republican who aspired to be a supervisor.

            [RON CASPERS EMERGES.] Emerging out of the shadows was Ron Caspers, a Republican who was the owner of Keystone Savings and Loan in Westminster. In the beginning there were suspicions expressed that he was the moving force behind Allen’s recall, a charge he denied but which was later confirmed in the course of several unrelated criminal prosecutions.

Robert Battin

            [AN EARLIER BOATING DISASTER.] Caspers had made headlines prior to the Allen affair. He and his wife Beatrice had been cruising in coastal waters south of Port Hueneme in the ketch Aloha on the night of October 1, 1954. With Caspers at the helm, the Aloha veered in front of an oncoming Coast Guard cutter. The Aloha sank and the remains of Beatrice Caspers were never found, despite an intensive search by Coast Guard vessels and aircraft. An investigation by the U.S. Coast Guard of this tragedy at sea never resulted in any criminal proceedings.

            Allen’s reelection campaign received no help from the GOP, and his campaign staff were amateurs, at best. Alton never recovered from the personal attacks and he went down to defeat.

            Casper had made his conservative Republican credentials a key part of the contest, although investigation turned up the fact that he had been a sponsor of and signatory to a “Republican for Alan Cranston” newspaper political advertisement. [Cranston’s political career was later destroyed by his involvement in the Keating Five scandal.]

. . .

            [CASPERS, THE COALITION, AND “SHAKEDOWN” RUMORS.] With Caspers’ election, Orange County politics were turned upside down. It was the dawning of a new era, and whether Caspers was a Republican or a Democrat, the special interests flocked to his office confident that they had a supervisor with whom they could do “business.”

            The fact he claimed to be a Republican had little to do with the support he received from the Coalition. That group supported other Republicans including Larry Schmit for supervisor.

            Caspers is rumored to have indicated that important county appointments, such as the Planning Commission, would cost an applicant $15,000.

            [ENTER YOUNG TOM FUENTES.] Caspers hired a young graduate of Chapman College who had helped in his campaign to serve on this staff. As Casper’s assistant, Tom Fuentes [born: 1949] (who would become prominent in Republican circles later on) worked diligently to convince Republicans that Caspers was not what many party regulars feared, an unscrupulous opportunist who had no permanent loyalty to any political party. Fuentes was aided in his duties by the ubiquitous Frank Michelena. Michelena, a lobbyist with a checkered career, was notorious in the field of political influence. [“Checkered” is an understatement.]

            If there were ever any doubts regarding Casper’s ties to the Democratic Party, they were soon dispelled. It was discovered later that Caspers had a business arrangement with [Democrat] Ken Cory through a company called Anaheim Insurance Agency. It was out of the office of this company that Democrats operated their registration efforts in Orange County. Assemblyman Cory was to be the subject of a criminal investigation concerning the no bid purchase of insurance by the City of Carson in Los Angles County. Although several Carson City Councilmen were involved, Cory was never indicted.

Ken Cory

            In this election, it appears that the candidate preceded the special interests, and it was after his election that Caspers made the contacts and set the ground rules for developer participation in the grand scheme of patronage carried to an exponential degree.

            [ORGANIZED CRIME?] In a later criminal case, a paid informant with reputed ties to organized crime would allege that Caspers had received a $600,000 loan from two banks, Coast and U.S. National. The informant, Gene Conrad, had been working with the district attorney’s office in an attempt to connect the Board of Supervisors to the syndicate. Conrad’s testimony did not bear out the suspicion of the D.A. that supervisors had been provided with interest-free loans from gambling interests. Conrad stated that his research had determined that the loan in question did carry interest. Whether it was ever paid back remains a mystery.

. . .

Leisure World, 1974

            Casper’s career was cut short on June 14, 1974, when he disappeared at sea aboard the Shooting Star owned by Fred Harber. Caspers and his two sons were returning from a trip to Cabo San Lucas in Baja California when Harber’s converted … rescue craft was overtaken by a violent storm. After sending out a mayday signal on January 13, the vessel was never heard from again, and all of the occupants were presumed dead, lost at sea.            

            [FUENTES AND OVERBY DODGE A BULLET.] Tom Fuentes, who was scheduled to go on the trip, backed out at the last minute, and was saved from a similar fate. Another county luminary who backed out of the ill-fated trip at the last minute was Lyle Overby.

            Despite a full-scale search operation directed by Fuentes that included the use of commercial swordfishing “spotter planes,” no trace of the craft of its passengers was ever found.

SEE Part 11

*OC DA Cecil Hicks' phrase (referring to Louis Cella, et al.)