PROBE FOCUSES ON SLAIN PROSECUTOR'S RELATIONSHIP WITH A DRUG ABUSER

Murder: Intervention by Stephen Tauzer in the Young Man's Court Case,
Allowing Him to Live at His Residence, and Other Actions Lead Authorities
to Refocus Investigation.

Adding to the mystery surrounding the death of Kern County's No. 2
prosecutor, high-ranking legal authorities said Friday they were
perplexed and troubled by the relationship between the veteran
prosecutor and a young drug abuser.

According to Deputy Atty. Gen. Leah Ann Alcazar, Assistant Dist. Atty.
Stephen M. Tauzer inserted himself into the drug case against Lance
Hillis and refused to withdraw even after the case was turned over to
the attorney general's office. The state prosecutor said Tauzer even
helped the younger man violate probation by taking him out of the
county without first obtaining permission from the probation department.

The relationship between the avuncular, white-haired Tauzer, 57, and
Hillis, 22, has not only raised issues of favoritism and cronyism in
Kern County's tightly knit law enforcement community, it has become a
focus of the investigation into the prosecutor's murder.

Tauzer was found in a pool of blood in his garage last Sunday. The
coroner's office has released scant details, saying only that Tauzer
was stabbed at least once in the head and suffered other head trauma.

Initially, speculation about who might have a motive in this oil patch
town centered on the cases Tauzer had tried over his 30-year career,
including high-profile murders and political corruption cases in
surrounding communities.

But Tauzer's relationship with the deeply troubled Hillis, who himself
was killed in a traffic accident last month, has come under increasing
scrutiny.

Hillis had drifted from an all-American childhood as the son and
grandson of Bakersfield law enforcement officers into drugs and crime.
He was taken in by Tauzer, who allowed the young man to live in his
northwest Bakersfield home, providing him money and a car to drive.

Tauzer told court officials he'd known the boy since he was 5, and was
determined to help him kick his drug habit.

This brought him into conflict with Hillis' father, Chris, a former
district attorney's investigator who believed in a tough-love
approach. Chris Hillis felt Lance needed to hit bottom to get better;
and hitting bottom meant going to jail.

The elder Hillis and the prosecutor had once been friends, but came to
blows in the months before Tauzer's death over Tauzer's continuing
interference.

Chris Hillis denies having anything to do with the murder, saying in
an interview he turned all his anger toward Tauzer "over to God."

But investigators have reportedly continued to look at Tauzer's
involvement with the younger Hillis. They flew to Northern California
this week to question the operators of a drug treatment center in
Placerville, where Lance Hillis had been a resident.

One source close to the investigation said detectives are considering
the possibility that the younger Hillis might have bragged about his
relationship with the powerful and financially well-off Tauzer. They
wonder whether someone who heard such stories could have been
motivated to attack the prosecutor. A spokesman for the center,
Progress House, declined to comment Friday.

Kern County Dist. Atty. Ed Jagels, a friend of Tauzer's for 27 years,
has said his colleague's relationship with Hillis was open and above
board. But Alcazar, the state prosecutor who took the young man's
case, said Friday that she was bothered by it. "I'm on record saying
[Tauzer's] involvement was inappropriate," she said.

According to Alcazar, Hillis had flunked out of so many treatment
programs that she was in agreement with Hillis' family that he would
benefit from jail time on a recent arrest for methamphetamine possession.

The county probation department also urged jail time. Yet, according
to Alcazar, Tauzer wrote letters and appeared in court on behalf of
Hillis.

Alcazar also said Superior Court Judge Lee Felice, who handled the
case, directed questions to Tauzer instead of her, even though she was
prosecuting the case.

Although Hillis was out of treatment options under state law that
governs drug offenders, Judge Felice gave him another opportunity,
Alcazar said. Efforts to reach Felice on Friday were
unsuccessful.

As to the charge that Tauzer helped Hillis violate probation by taking
him out of the county, Chief Probation Officer Larry Rhoades called it
"a technical violation."

"Any violation of probation is serious," he said. "But once we
verified [Hillis] was being placed in a licensed program, we saw
nothing to be gained" by adding new charges for the probation violation.

Even though he took no action against Tauzer or Hillis, Rhoades said
people in his department were bothered by Tauzer's actions.

"This department did have concerns about Mr. Tauzer's involvement in
the case," Rhoades said.