THE WAR ON DRUGS, THE MENDO FRONT

Back on the stand, Horstman said one of the masked men put a gun in "a
sexual area" while threatening her. (Her story was remarkably similar to
one she told me in an interview. In that version, it was Dalton's brother,
"Jack," who, wearing a mask and brandishing a gun, kidnapped her and took
her up into the hills above Redwood Valley and raped her. Horstman said he
threatened to "chop off her arms and legs" and stuck a gun between her
thighs. No police report was filed on the spectacular interlude with her
brother-in-law.)

Horstman made a threatening phone call about this same time (October of
1996) to the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office which was taped and reported
on by the Sheriff's Department. The report quotes Horstman as saying "Don't
fuck with Zack. I'll cut off your arms and legs and I don't give a fuck."
Horstman admitted making this call, and said she used the same phrase --
cutting off arms and legs -- because "I learned it from John Dalton." As to
the other phone call expressing her desire to free agent Nelson and fellate
agent Rob "Clark," Horstman said she probably didn't make the call because
"I don't talk like that."

Horstman also related a July 1994 incident in which she claimed Dalton had
hit her in the stomach with a baseball bat. (More on this in Deputy Dennis
Miller's testimony.) Asked by Serra why the cops didn't arrest Dalton,
Horstman said it was because "they were afraid of him."

Last Thursday, day two of the hearing, the prosecution called their first
witness, Marjorie Cusick. Cusick is the director of a Contra Costa
battered women's shelter, who, on the basis of a two hour interview with
Horstman, wrote a report diagnosing her as suffering from Post Traumatic
Stress Syndrome. But, as Tony Serra pointed out as he tried unsuccessfully
to keep Cusick from parlaying her scant training into expert witness
status, Ms. Cusick is not a psychiatrist; she's a self-described
psycho-therapist with a master's in clinical psychology and family
counseling. Although she has two masters degrees, she was never required
to write a thesis, has written no papers for peer review, nor has she
participated in clinical or academic studies of the type separating the
quacks from the professionals. Cusick admitted she was not an expert on
PTSS, and that the few times she has been called as an expert witness by
the government she has always had her qualifications challenged by the
other side.

Serra strongly objected to Cusick testifying as an expert witness, pointing
out she is not an expert, by her own admission, in PTSS, which was Cusick's
diagnosis of Ms. Horstman relayed in her written report of her assessment.
However, Cusick does appear to have expertise in Battered Woman's Syndrome.
"She is going to have to change her diagnosis on the stand," objected
Serra, "to keep in her area of expertise." And that is exactly what Cusick
did.

Both in her written report and on the witness stand, Cusick simply repeated
the claims of her alleged patient, Cusick's credulity far south of
professional skepticism. Cusick said it was her opinion that Horstman
suffers from battered woman's syndrome and John Dalton is the cause of his
ex-wife's malady. Though Cusick conceded one of Horstman's primary coping
mechanisms is lying, Cusick declared, "I believe what she told me."

Cusick admitted she never talked to Horstman about her three previous
marriages, never talked to her children, and never checked out Horstman's
claims of sexual abuse by her father and brother with other relatives who
would have had knowledge of the alleged abuse. "It wasn't necessary,"
Cusick stated flatly. "Talking to other people wasn't significant for my
purpose," which had to be the understatement of the hearing and which
appeared to be based on the simple premise, "Woman good, man bad."

Nothing could shake Ms. Cusick. Not Horstman's reams of inconsistent and
contradictory statements, not physical evidence and certainly not the male
police reports suggesting the sorely put upon Dalton was in fact the victim
of Horstman's alcohol-fueled abuse. Not even the statements of Horstman's
son, who wrote that Dalton was never abusive to his mother, but that room,
a mean drunk, was often abusive to the whole family and "made things up"
when she was under the influence who believed her own lies the next day.

Cusick's response to the young man's compellingly frank testimony was that
Horstman's son was "coming out of an abusive home and already has battered
kid syndrome."

The government got their money's worth from Ms. Cusick but Dr. Freud would
probably have had his doubts about the quality of Ms. Cusick's insights.

Unquestionably, the strongest, most dramatic testimony of the entire
hearing came form Josh Corrigan, Horstman's 20-year-old son from a previous
marriage. Corrigan testified he was 12 or 13 when he first met John Dalton,
and that they lived together with his mom and sister and Dalton's son and
daughter from a previous marriage.

Josh Corrigan loves his mother, as was plainly obvious from their
interactions out in the hall and which added more pathos to proceedings
already soaked in it. Young Mr. Corrigan presently lives with his maternal
grandparents in Modesto, where he has enrolled in a community college.

The obviously pained student testified that he was very close to his
mother, and his relationship with Dalton was "really good. We would ride
dirt bikes and work on motors" he said by way of an illustration of his and
his stepfather's close relationship. He answered questions in a thoughtful
and forthright manner, but was often nearly overwhelmed by emotion. He was
obviously telling the truth.

Corrigan said he had never seen John Dalton physically abuse his mother, or
strike her or threaten her in any way. Never once did his mother complain
that John Dalton abused her, the young man said. He testified his morn
"would get drunk quite a bit. It was pretty bad." His mother's drinking
increased dramatically when she got involved with the DEA, which she told
him about at the time. Corrigan said Horstman's drinking would leave her
"confused. She would sleep a lot. When she drank, she would make up
things. It would be a lie, but the next day when she woke up, she would
believe it even though it was a lie. Sometimes she would get drunk and
stay up all night calling people, swearing at them. That's why I had to
leave."

Serra also asked Corrigan if he had ever seen Dalton hit or abuse his
mother, in any way, or if Dalton had ever told him he had. "No. Never."
Choking back tears, Corrigan described the years with Dalton as "The best
of my life. We were a family. John is like my father, every bit as much as
my blood father." Under cross examination, when asked by the ruthless
prosecutor Ms. Massullo about his statement that "they were the best years
of his Life." Corrigan broke down, crying, "I miss the old days. Can't get
it back. It's all messed up." Even she seemed moved by his testimony.

Corrigan told the judge that his mom showed him the tape recorder in her
and Dalton's bedroom.

"The recorder was under the bed on mom's side. It had wires taped to the
wall leading up behind the headboard. She said the DEA wanted her to get
things on John Dalton

He also said Horstman had told him there were "bugs in the living room,"
but she "didn't know where they were hidden" because the DEA had put them
there.

Asked why his mother was taping his stepfather, Corrigan replied, "She told
me she would get charged with money laundering if she didn't go along with
it."

Tony Serra then asked, "Did your mom ever show you a firearms training
certificate?" "Yes. Definitely," was the young man's answer, again
contradicting the testimony of Nelson and Horstman that she hadn't
functioned as an impromptu DEA agent. "She said the DEA made her go through
firearms training and she showed me the paper."

Corrigan also told about the time his mother came home and excitedly told
him about going on a helicopter ride with agent Nelson. "She said they
were drinking beer and had flown over a pot crop, and that she had gotten
drunk and then sick and they had to bring her down."

Serra asked about Horstman's state of mind when she told her son about her
airborne beer bust.

"Nervous and still buzzing from the booze."

"When she would tell you these things," asked Serra, "did you believe she
was telling the truth?" "Well yes. There's no reason to lie to me," was
Corrigan's simple answer.

Corrigan said his mother would often tell him she was in love with Mark
Nelson and that they kissed. "She saw him quite a bit," Corrigan recalled.

Horstman's emotionally pounded son recounted the first time he met agent
Mark Nelson at the home of Chohni Kellerman-Baird, when the DEA was packing
them up for the move to Washington State. His detailed testimony about
Nelson taking him to COMMET headquarters and putting his gun on the desk in
front of the young man while grilling him about Dalton's activities
directly contradicts Nelson's testimony that he hadn't pressured the
then-high school student. Corrigan said Nelson put his hand on his leg and
told him, "(Your mother and I) have a lot of feelings for each other and
we've gotten to know each other real well."

Asked how agent Nelson's uniquely personal confidences made him feel,
Corrigan answered, "Weird. It made me uncomfortable." Then, starting to
sob, Corrigan said, "I love John like a father," and crying openly, "He's a
good dad to me."

Once the DEA had moved Corrigan, his mother and Kellerman-Baird to Blaine,
Washington, Corrigan said his mother wanted to reconcile with Dalton. "But
she said she had to divorce John or go to jail for money laun-dering,
that's what she said Nelson told her."

But John Dalton traced his missing family through phone records and called
up, wanting to come for a visit. Horstman immediately called agent Nelson,
who flew to Washington and gave her another tape recorder, instruct ing her
to invite Dalton up.

"I saw Mark Nelson the same day John came," related Corrigan. "He said he
wanted me to go to his motel and talk to John. Nelson wanted me to ride my
bike to John's motel and ask him why he was there."

Agent Nelson has denied seeing or talking to Corrigan during Nelson's
Washington visit.

"Mom said she missed John," Corrigan testified, "and wanted to move back
with him. But the DEA said she couldn't be around him." Horstman showed
her son the tape recorder she had been given by Nelson, fitted into the
bottom of her purse.

"Is this the truth?" Serra asked young Corrigan.

"Yes."

"Why did you do it? Why spy on John Dalton for Mark Nelson?" "I didn't tell
John about Mark Nelson because I was scared of them. They said not to tell."

"Have you ever been afraid of John Dalton?"

"No. Never. I wanted to see John on my own."

Corrigan testified he saw Dalton give his mother a new set of wedding rings
at their Washington meeting. "She started crying. I think she wanted to
move back."

But that same day, November 25, 1994, Horstman secretly taped Dalton as the
couple walked along railroad tracks near his motel room.

And the DEA-mugged family never did reunite.

Unbeknownst to Dalton, on November 4, 1994, agent Nelson had flown Horstman
to San Francisco where he had picked her up and had driven her to a Santa
Rosa divorce attorney to sign papers making the couple's divorce final.
The DEA had decided to rip apart what God had said no mortal should tear
asunder.

Chohni Kellerman-Baird is a junior high school teacher who volunteers at a
home where terminally ill children go to die. She now divides her time
between Washington State and British Columbia. She testified she first met
Horstman and Dalton in Ukiah in 1990, and had attended their wedding. "Tori
and I were quite close," Baird says, under the name she has used since
moving north. "I was probably her only friend."

Baird testified she was Horstman's confidant, and that Horstman had told
her all about her involvement with the DEA at the time it was going full
force. "She said she had been approached by the DEA and that they
threatened to implicate her in money laundering if she didn't help them.
She said she had to "frame -- set up -- John, or go to jail."

Horstman told Baird the DEA had initiated the contact. "She was very
scared and would whisper when she talked about them. She said she would go
to jail, lose her children and her job -- Horstman worked at Mendo/Lake
Credit Union at the time-if she didn't cooperate with the DEA." Horstman
told Baird that Mark Nelson was her contact. "She said I was to never
repeat his name," Baird recalled.

Turning toward the judge, Baird described Horstman's relationship with
Nelson, as told to her by Horstman.

"Tori had been there before (the kissing incident.) She pointed it out to
me. She called it the COMMET house, and said it was a place she could go
and kick back with the guys and drink beer. She said she was falling in
love with Mark Nelson and that they were having an affair. She was
confused about it because she said she loved John too. She implied it was
a sexual thing, and would flip flop back and forth."

"Did she ever tell you she had sex with Nelson?" asked Serra. "Yes."

Baird said she first met Mark Nelson in the summer of 1994 at Mendocino
Collage when Horstman took her along to meet the apparently loosely
supervised federal agent.

"He wanted me to become an 'operative,'" Baird testified. "He told me that
an incident many years ago with John Dalton had 'made him look ridiculous'
and that he 'wanted to get him.' Nelson said 'that son of a bitch won't get
away with it. One way or another I'll get him.' He told me if I didn't
cooperate I would lose my children and he would put me in jail."

But Baird didn't cooperate with the DEA, though she lead them to believe
she was, and was allowed to attend subsequent meetings with Nelson and
Horstman. She testified Nelson encouraged them to take a hunter's safety
class ("We went three times"), and that Nelson told Horstman "it was a good
idea to get a gun." Horstman told Baird she "wanted to have a gun so she
could kill John and make it look like self defense." Horstman's plan, Baird
testified, was to "make John angry and then shoot him. She said "Then this
whole mess will be over'."

Baird testified to seeing Horstman and Nelson hug and kiss on several
occasions -- at the collage and at the credit union where Horstman then
worked and where she'd also seen the pair exchange gifts. "They were long
kisses," Baird elaborated.

Chonhi Baird's damning testimony included an account of an incident at her
house where Horstman, drunk, fell repeatedly and then stood in front of her
pressing her fingers into her own arm until they left marks.When Baird
asked why she was doing that, Horstman replied, "It's so I can document
abuse by John and send him to jail."

Asked by Serra if Dalton ever hit Horstman, or if Horstman ever told her he
did, Baird emphatically replied, "Never."

Baird went on to say that "Four or five man wearing blue jackets that said
FBI in yellow letters on the back" packed her and Horstman up for the move
to Washington, and that Nelson took Josh Corrigan away in his car "for
about 45 minutes."

Once established in Blaine on the Canadian border, Baird said Mark Nelson
would call daily. "Nelson would hound her," as Baird remembered the
agent's calls which she listened to over the speakerphone. "He'd tell her,
'You've got to start divorce proceedings. You can't testify against John
until you divorce him.' He told me the same thing, and that if Tori didn't
divorce John she would go to jail. But Tori said she didn't really want a
divorce. Nelson gave her the money to fly back to California for the divorce."

When Dalton came up to Washington to see his wife, Nelson told Horstman, in
front of Baird, that she had to get incriminating info on Dalton "even if
you have to sleep with him."

Baird said she saw the tape recorder Nelson had given Horstman, and
accurately described it. She also saw the rings Dalton gave his wife. "She
was very proud of them. She didn't want to go through with it. She still
loved John but she was playing both sides. She would tell me how much she
liked sleeping with John."

Baird testified Horstman was a hard-core alcoholic who used to hide cases
of wine from her husband. "She is a very mean drunk, very dramatic," said
Baird. "When drinking she would say things she shouldn't, like that John
abused her. I knew that wasn't true."

Asked how she knew Horstman hadn't been mistreated by Dalton, Baird
described the time she picked Horstman up at the Ukiah Hospital.

"The cops were there and she had been drinking. She was on probation for
drunk driving and wasn't supposed to drink. She had me tell the cops it
was wine vinegar from her salad and they released her to my custody. Tori
claimed John had beaten her with a baseball bat. I was really pissed about
it, but when I took her to my house and undressed her and helped her take a
shower, there wasn't a mark on her. Later, I went to John's house to talk
to him about it and he had this big bloody lump on his head."

Prosecutor Massullo started the cross-examination of Baird by asking if she
was on probation. Baird looked puzzled and answered, "No."

"Do you have a bench warrant out for your arrest?" demanded Massullo.

"Certainly not," was Baird's indignant reply. Massullo then whipped out a
bench warrant for Baird's arrest on an outstanding warrant from Mendocino
County, saying the warrant discredited Baird's testimony.

Tony Serra bellowed an objection, demanding, "Let me see that," as he
snatched the paper from Massullo's hand. "This is a traffic ticket, for
Christ sakes," roared Serra. "Only prior felonies and misdemeanor crimes
of moral turpitude can be used to impeach," he told a startled Judge Illston.

After a heated exchange between prosecutor Massullo and Serra, the judge
told Massullo, "I don't see the relevance of this and I'm not going to
allow it."

It turns out the warrant was for a traffic ticket for speeding -- five
miles an hour over the limit -- and that Baird had paid the fine with a
check, which Mendocino County had duly cashed. But the check was signed
Chohni Baird and the ticket was issued to Connie Kellerman. On this basis,
a Mendo judge had signed, at the DEA's insistence no doubt, a bench warrant
for Ms. Baird's arrest. (We are trying to find out which Mendo judge
signed onto this low scheme to undermine Ms. Baird's testimony.)

Outside the courtroom a uniformed San Francisco police officer was waiting
to arrest Ms. Baird on the bogus warrant. But the cop was conveniently
lured to the other end of the hall by an unusually attractive woman and
Baird slipped out of the courtroom and down the stairwell to freedom. The
cop, Cupid's arrow still stuck in his back, went huffing and puffing in
pursuit of the fleet Ms. Baird, but found the stairwell door mysteriously
jammed. Downstairs in the parking lot scores of DEA and uniformed SF
police, frantically yelling into their walkie talkies, also searched for
Ms. Baird, a bogus traffic ticket authenticated by a Mendocino County
judge, magically converted to a federal all points bulletin for a woman who
had committed no crime. But Ms. Baird made her escape, and was last
reported on a plane for Alaska-- or was it Scotland?

It was finally time for the government's last witness. Like Ms. Cusick,
the feds got their money's worth. Sheriff's deputy Dennis Miller, formally
of Mendocino County and now working as a deputy in Eldorado County,
testified to a call he received from Victoria Horstman for an assault with
a deadly weapon. Miller testified he had been called to the house next
door to Dalton's in Redwood Valley, where he found Horstman doubled up,
crying that her husband John had hit her in the stomach with a baseball
bat. Miller called an ambulance for Horstman and went next door to knock
on Dalton's door. John Dalton answered holding a bloody wash cloth to his
face. Miller testified Dalton had a large bump on his head, a cut over his
left eye, and a bloody nose.

Dalton told Miller he had come home to find his wife drunk and blaming him
for his son's arrest earlier that day. Dalton retreated to his bedroom to
escape his rampaging mate, but she followed him into their DEA- bugged
bower, and when he turned around she hit him on the head with the bat.

Miller testified Dalton refused to press charges because he said "she's on
probation for DUI."

Miller further testified Dalton's injuries did not appear to be serious.
Miller stuck by this assessment even after shown pictures of Dalton's
wounds, which obviously warranted at a minimum a trip to the emergency room
for examination. Miller testified that he "was highly suspicious of
(Dalton's) validity. I thought he was lying."

Miller then went to the hospital where he examined Horstman for signs of
injuries. Nether he nor the emergency room physician could find any marks
on Horstman.

In spite of Dalton's head wound, and the complete absence of signs of
injury to Horstman, Miller, at times testifying as confidently about
Dalton's wound as if he were an MD, said it was his considered opinion that
Horstman was the victim and Dalton had assaulted her.

But Miller made no arrests.

Judge Susan Illston had absorbed this startling testimony for two days and
has since had the matter under submission. She will soon decide if the
government's outrageous conduct rises to the level of legally qualified
outrageous conduct. If she decides that it does, and if it doesn't one can
only wonder what does constitute outrageous government conduct, she will
dismiss all charges against John Dalton. If the judge decides the
government conduct was not sufficiently outrageous in their pursuit of John
Dalton, trial is set for August of this year.