SLAYING VICTIM FEARED FOR HIS LIFE, FRIENDS SAY

Former Investigator Is Arrested In The Stabbing Death Of Prosecutor Stephen
Tauzer, Who Tried To Help His Troubled Son.

BAKERSFIELD -- In the days before his murder gripped this oil and farm
town, Stephen M. Tauzer walked in fear for his life. But Tauzer, the No. 2
man in the Kern County district attorney's office, didn't request police
protection or even share his concerns with colleagues.

Instead, the 58-year-old prosecutor told a friend that he had received a
phone call warning him that Chris Hillis, a former Bakersfield cop and
district attorney investigator, was going to kill him. Tauzer and Hillis
had been arguing over Hillis' son.

"If you find me drowned in my pool or something," the overweight prosecutor
confided to Hillis' former wife on Sept. 12, "you'll know who did it."

Three days later, Tauzer was found face down in a puddle of blood in the
garage of his well-tended house in northwest Bakersfield. He had been dead
for at least a day from stab wounds. One of the knives recovered from the
scene was still protruding from his head.

On Tuesday, Hillis, 47, was arrested in the slaying after his DNA was found
on one of the knives, sheriff's officials said.

The rift between the prosecutor and the former D.A. investigator is a story
of two men struggling over the fate of a 22-year-old drug addict, a young
man who happened to be Hillis' oldest son and Tauzer's roommate.

Tauzer, who friends say was gay but kept it hidden, had risked his
reputation as a prominent prosecutor to save Lance C. Hillis, a kid he had
watched grow up in his neighborhood. Tauzer opened his pocketbook and home
to the young drug addict. He even gave him a job as a clerk in the D.A.'s
office.

But Tauzer's involvement did not sit well with Hillis' father. The two men
had argued violently over Lance, officials said. Chris Hillis, a hard-nosed
law and order type, thought the only way his son would get clean was by
going to jail.

Tauzer, though, believed otherwise. After Lance was arrested in a second
bust, Tauzer convinced the Kern County courts that Lance belonged not in
jail but in a drug treatment center 300 miles north in El Dorado County.

Then in August, five weeks before Tauzer's slaying, Lance Hillis was killed
in a car crash on a lonely stretch of Highway 49, an addict on the run from
rehab.

After Lance's death, Tauzer feared Chris Hillis would hold him accountable.

As he drove to El Dorado County last month to survey the road where Lance
had died in a head-on collision, Tauzer seemed troubled. He confided his
fears in the presence of his three passengers: Lance Hillis' mother, Connie
Clagg, and Lance's two sisters, Ricci and Kaycee Clagg.

Tauzer told Connie that if anything should happen to him, she should
suspect her former husband, according to Ricci. Then Tauzer confided
something else:

He said he had received a phone call from Donald Hillis, Lance's
grandfather who was also a former Bakersfield cop. According to Ricci,
Tauzer said the grandfather had warned him that Chris Hillis, his son, had
a plan to murder him.

"Promise me you won't let him get away with it," Tauzer said.

Connie Clagg confirmed that Tauzer discussed his fears "three to four
times" during their trip, but she refused to go into details. Ricci Clagg
said her mother has provided those details to sheriff's investigators.

In a news conference announcing Hillis' arrest Tuesday, Sheriff's Cmdr.
Martin Williamson said the motive appeared to be Chris Hillis' continuing
rage over Tauzer's dealings with his son.

Hillis, who pleaded not guilty to one count of murder and is being held
without bail, has denied any role in Tauzer's death. His attorney questions
the reliability of the DNA evidence and the alleged motive.

"Chris has given his life to the Lord," said his attorney, Kyle J.
Humphrey. "He doesn't blame Steve [Tauzer] for Lance's death."

Beyond the murder, the case has raised questions of favoritism in the
office of Kern County Dist. Atty. Ed Jagels. Despite Jagels' reputation for
aggressive, unyielding prosecutions, the way his office dealt with the drug
crimes of Lance Hillis was anything but tough.

Because the case involves such public figures, each with ties to the
prosecutor's office, the murder has uncorked all sorts of serpentine
conspiracy theories in this land of Pentecostal churches, country music
parables and parades that celebrate private property rights.

Because Tauzer was a veteran who spent 30 years locking up violent
criminals, his murder would seem to be a whodunit of infinite possibilities.

Some thought it could be tied to his decades-old handling of an alleged
satanic molestation ring whose defendants have been freed from prison
because of prosecutorial misconduct.

Others suggested it might be linked to his more recent investigation of
civic corruption in the small town of Arvin, where he had indicted the
police chief and a city councilman.

Or was it like the murders of other prominent men, who were forced by
Bakersfield convention to lead double lives and meet younger men in parks
along the Kern River?

"Tauzer's murder reminds me of so many others in Bakersfield," said Norm
Prigge, a retired Cal State Bakersfield professor who is gay. "This is a
place like a lot of places where gay or bisexual men in public office have
to express themselves in the most clandestine ways.

"They do stupid things like go to parks or pick up male prostitutes, and
they're vulnerable to the worst kind of hustling and blackmail."

For example, there was the 1998 stabbing death of 63-year-old Sid
Sheffield, a well-known hospital administrator who hid his gay lifestyle
from his wife, children and colleagues. Police believe the murder, which
remains unsolved, was linked to one of Sheffield's gay liaisons.

There was the 1984 stabbing death of 49-year-old Marshall Jacobson, a
prominent attorney who, like Tauzer, was found dead in his garage. Jacobson
concealed from family and friends his sexual relations with young males.
Two youths, 14 and 19 years old, who told police that Jacobson was like a
father to them, were convicted of the murder.

And there was the 1981 murder of Edwin Buck, a government administrator who
did all the hiring and firing in Kern County. Buck, 55, was having an
affair with a teenage male hustler he met at Beach Park, along the river.
This was the same delinquent teen who had been sleeping with the
then-publisher of the Bakersfield Californian, who later died of AIDS, and
a well-known political consultant.

The illicit relationships with a minor, documented in court testimony, were
known to authorities, but they took no legal action. Buck was later beaten
to death with a hammer and his body cremated in the back of his car. The
young hustler was convicted of murder.

It is Tauzer's relationship with Hillis, the timing of the car crash and
the murder that Tauzer's family now focuses on. But they say Tauzer, who
never married and worked long hours, took only a fatherly interest in young
Hillis.

"After Lance became addicted to drugs, Steve thought he could help turn his
life around," said Tauzer's sister, Patt Pavao. "It had nothing to do with
him being gay or not."

Pavao said she feared that Hillis' father was still nursing a grudge after
striking her brother two years earlier in an argument over Lance.

"We questioned Steve about it. We were concerned. But even if Steve saw the
dangers, he wouldn't necessarily change if he thought what he was doing was
right."

Among some in the tightknit legal community here, Tauzer was viewed as a
tireless prosecutor and a private man who concealed his homosexuality.

"Everyone here is skirting the issue, using euphemisms to describe the
relationship between Tauzer and [Lance] Hillis," said Tim Lemucchi, a
defense attorney who considered Tauzer a fine public servant.

"No one wants to come out and say that Tauzer was gay and involved in a
'sugar daddy' relationship with Hillis."

Connie Clagg, Lance's mother, said her son told her that Tauzer was gay.
But she said Lance had plenty of girlfriends and doubted that he and Tauzer
were involved in a sexual relationship. "Steve Tauzer was the most
unselfish man I ever met," she said. "There were no strings attached" to
Tauzer's generosity.

To know Lance Hillis as a boy, family members said, was to both love and
fear for him. He could not squash a bug without mourning it.

"I knew from when he was young he would go all good or all to the bad,"
said his grandmother Betty Clagg, sitting in her ranch house at the edge of
the Mojave Desert. "He was too sensitive. He couldn't cope with reality."

Growing up, Lance split time between his divorced parents. His mother and
stepfather, Connie and Rick Clagg, lived in Tehachapi. His father, a
veteran cop, lived in an upscale section of northwest Bakersfield, just
down the block from Tauzer.

Lance's freshman picture at Centennial High shows a handsome boy with a
broad smile and tousled brown hair. He joined the debate team and, with his
gangly frame filling out, played football.

"Debate was difficult for him, but he got better," said forensics teacher
Bud Davis. "He was just a sweet kid, very considerate. And I never saw the
earmarks of any alcohol or drug abuse."

Lance found himself whipsawed at home. Connie and Rick Clagg were anything
but disciplinarians, said Betty Clagg. Then Lance would stay with his
father, a taskmaster, and find himself plunged into a world of rigid order.
It is unclear just when drugs entered Lance's life, but methamphetamine
became his high of choice. He was arrested for grand theft in August 2000,
court records show, and that same month, his father's fears about his
addiction were confirmed.

Chris Hillis had gone to his son's apartment in east Bakersfield and
pounded on the door. Inside, he found a small amount of meth and some
syringes. He cuffed his son and called police. Lance enrolled in a drug
treatment program, stayed clean for a while, then went on a binge and got
kicked out.

Family members say Chris Hillis, despite his sometimes strict child
rearing, loved his son. To better understand Lance's addiction, Hillis went
back to school and became a drug treatment counselor. He believed Lance
needed to "hit bottom" before he could change. And hitting bottom meant
going to jail for a long enough time to scare him sober.

But Hillis watched in frustration as his son flunked one drug program only
to be enrolled in another, thanks to the intervention of Tauzer. If Hillis
was a proponent of tough love, Tauzer believed in a more indulgent approach.

Tauzer went to extraordinary lengths to help the younger Hillis. He kept
track of Lance's movements through the court system. He wasn't shy about
addressing judges on Lance's behalf.

"Lance had a difficult and, I believe, abusive childhood," Tauzer wrote in
one letter to the court.

Tauzer's interest raised ethical questions inside the prosecutor's office.
Through five terms in office, Jagels had taken a firm stance against drug
abuse. Prison, not treatment, was his policy.

In an interview shortly after Tauzer's death, Jagels said he thought the
younger Hillis should have gone to jail, but he failed to get his top
prosecutor to back off.

Jagels and Tauzer had been friends for 27 years and lived together for a
time after Jagels divorced his first wife, according to former co-workers.
Tauzer was known inside the office as Jagels' "loyalty cop," coming down
hard on any employee who criticized the boss.

Tauzer's ties to Lance forced Jagels to declare a conflict of interest and
hand over the prosecution of Lance's drug case to the California attorney
general's office.

But Tauzer continued to intervene to the point that the deputy attorney
general handling the matter described his participation as "inappropriate"
in a court document.

Tauzer took in Lance as a house guest and gave him his 1993 Ford Explorer.
He let him use his $1,200 Ibanez guitar with inlaid mother-of-pearl, which
Lance tried to pawn for $25.

More than once, Betty Clagg said, she expressed concern about her
grandson's involvement with Tauzer because of his sexual orientation. "He's
gay, and I don't like him helping Lance," she recalled telling family
members. But every time she raised the matter, she said, she got nowhere.

Her daughter-in-law, Lance's mother, Connie, remained in Tauzer's corner.
It didn't matter to her if Tauzer was gay. He cared enough to shelter her
son. Tauzer also was generous to her. Whenever Connie needed financial
help, Lance went straight to Tauzer for the money, relatives said.

Court records show that Tauzer was concerned that Lance would never get
well in his hometown. So he took him to Placerville, to a treatment
facility called Progress House.

But Tauzer didn't get permission from Lance's probation officer to take him
out of Kern County. Still, at Tauzer's behest, Judge Lee Felice allowed
Lance to seek treatment up north.

Eager to show how well Lance was doing, Tauzer wrote a June 29 letter to
Felice after visiting Lance at Progress House. "I am happy to report that
Lance looked healthy, happy and, more importantly, drug-free."

If so, he wasn't clean for long.

In mid-July, while driving under the influence in El Dorado County, Lance
lost control and hit a telephone pole, barely escaping injury and totaling
Tauzer's car, according to a California Highway Patrol report.

Three weeks later, Lance stole a car from outside a Kentucky Fried Chicken
restaurant in Placerville and sped off down Highway 49. As he crossed the
American River, he swerved into oncoming traffic and struck another car
head-on. The occupant of the other car escaped serious injury, but Lance
was killed on impact.

A few weeks later, on Sept. 12, Tauzer drove to the crash site to figure
out what happened. He was accompanied by Lance's mother and his two
half-sisters, Ricci and Kaycee. Together, they visited Lance's friends at
Progress House, and Tauzer offered to contribute money for a plaque to
remember Lance.

It was during this trip that Tauzer confided his fears about Chris Hillis,
Ricci recalled. He told Connie that he had received a phone call from
Donald Hillis, Lance's grandfather, warning him that Chris planned to kill him.

Donald Hillis, who declined to be interviewed, found Tauzer's battered body
in his garage the following Sunday.

Chris Hillis, in a brief interview with The Times last month, denied any
role in the killing and insisted he had put aside any bad feelings toward
Tauzer after his son's death.

Still, family members recalled, Hillis put the word out that Tauzer was not
to be allowed to attend his son's funeral.

Tauzer's funeral was as close to a state occasion as you will find in
Bakersfield. St. Phillip's Catholic Church was packed. Friends and family
spoke about Tauzer's fairness as a prosecutor and his decency as a man.

Until his arrest, Chris Hillis continued to help addicts try to beat drugs.
In honor of Lance, he had renamed his drug rehabilitation center in east
Bakersfield "Lance's Haven."

Hillis said he never gave up hope for his son and once made a promise to
him. "[I'm] going to be here when you return from your horrific journey,"
he said. "He never returned."