How the California Justice System Covers up Crimes Against the Elderly

A Method to the Madness

By Janet C. Phelan

Note: The following report does not constitute what we have come to call “journalism” or “reportage.” Rather, it constitutes witnessing. As defined in our culture, journalism mandates the creation of a fiction, the “objective” reporter. In this paradigm, the reporter would be a camera, devoid of involvement or input in what she reports. As we know from physics, however, the very act of witnessing changes that which is witnessed. To the best of my ability, the following constitutes my witness—that justice in the United States of America is, with calculated and savage indifference, being dismantled by the very parties pledged to protect it.

I first became aware of how the California justice agencies were finessing crime reports against “protected parties,” including the C.A.R.E. conservatorship cabal, a few years back. This group is plundering the life savings of its elderly and disabled clients, as well as delivering a great number of them into a premature grave, through the denial of appropriate medical care. In 2006, Russell East and I had joined our separate reports, alleging criminal misconduct by Melodie Z. Scott (President of C.A.R.E.), her attorney J. David Horspool and others in the cabal, and sent the reports to the California Department of Justice.

The report was received by that agency on March 6, 2006 and put back into the mail to us the very same day. The letter by Senior Assistant Attorney General Mark Geiger (Special Crimes Unit) is attached below. While the Senior Assistant Attorney General of the Great State of California confessed to inadequate “criminal expertise” (didn’t he mean “legal expertise?”) to respond to the reports, he actually violated the procedures of his public office by failing to supply a complaint number.

Complaint numbers are always assigned to incoming reports, for purposes of tracking. If there is no record of the complaint being in the system, the complaint can be considered “disappeared” or put into a shadow file, or into the garbage.

When Geiger was informed of his omission, he stuck to his guns and simply refused to supply one. Presto Chango!! A carefully documented report , which implicated scores of public officials and officers of the court in colluding with the Melodie Scott cabal, was thus rendered non-existent.

I then reported Mark Geiger to his boss, Dane Gillette. Gillette failed to respond to the complaint. One can only assume that the complaint about Geiger went similarly untracked, and was thus removed from the system.

A Public Records Act request was then tendered to the California Attorney General’s office, requesting a copy of the part of the policies and procedures manual which specifies the procedures for recording incoming complaints from the public. This request was responded to by Dane Gillette, who stated that no such manual exists.

Reaction to the Gillette letter by several members of the legal profession revealed that Gillette lied.

Parenthetically, a similar PRA request, for the policies and procedures manual for the Riverside D.A.’s office, produced a similar response—that no such manual existed. The office of the Grand Jury in Riverside, however, has assured me that this manual is on file in that office.

The initial response by Mark Geiger had also stated that other members of the AG’s office had evaluated the situation surrounding my mother, Dr. Amalie Phelan, who had been a conservatee of Melodie Scott, and had found no issue. Paula Seiberlich of the San Diego AG’s office had, in fact, conducted that investigation. However, the AG’s office also had refused to supply a tracking or complaint number to that investigation, as well.

Local police agencies have also apparently adopted the “no number, no report” method of disappearing complaints about the Melodie Scott and her gang, while maintaining the illusion of impartial pursuit of justice. In the Spring of 2008 I contacted the Redlands Police Department and the San Bernardino District Attorney’s office, for the purpose of reporting theft of the William Burke estate by conservator Lawrence Dean, who works out of the C.A.R.E. offices, and by his attorney, Sheri Kastilahn.

Briefly, Dean and Kastilahn had reported to the San Bernardino Probate Court that they had been unable to locate the sole heir to the Burke estate, one Lester Lorge. In fact, two years passed before Kastilahn was able to locate him. In the intervening years, Kastilahn petitioned the court to put a big chunk of the Burke estate into her own bank account. The court approved her request. I was unable to find any documentation in the court file that this money ever left Kastilahn’s account. Lorge then signed for his “full distributive share” of his inheritance. There was, peculiarly, no record in the court file of how much that might be.

I found Lorge within forty-eight hours. He disclosed to me that his “full distributive share” was around $26,000. This constituted a mere fraction of what Dean and Kastilahn had reported to the court as the remainders of the Burke estate.

Lorge, who is elderly, could thus be considered a victim of fiduciary elder abuse. When I contacted the Redlands Police department and the D.A. on his behalf, to report the theft, I was promptly informed that no crime had been committed against Lorge. Amazingly, the police officer assigned to this report reached this conclusion within two hours. When I asked Assistant District Attorney Lynne Poncin for the file number of the complaint I had made, she refused to supply it to me. Another member of that office revealed to me that neither Dean’s, Kastilahn’s or Lorge’s names could be found anywhere in the electronic file system. Once again, we see the method at work: no complaint number, no report.

More police misconduct concerning record keeping occurred when I contacted the Temecula Police Department, back in 2002, surrounding first the attempted murder of my mother at the hands of the Melodie Scott gang, and then concerning check forgery/fraud by my sister, Judith Phelan, now living in Northern California.

Strangely, the two criminal complaints, naming different perpetrators and different crimes, were assigned the same report number. The police report concerning the attempted murder, listing this as a “suspicious circumstance,” states that it has been sent over to the Riverside District Attorney’s office.

But no such complaint was ever received by that office, according to the clerks.

The Riverside D.A.’s office, Special Investigations Unit, also received a complaint from me, in November of 2002. That report alleged misconduct by the Temecula Police in failing to pursue the above mentioned crimes. That report, which has disappeared from the office files in that agency, was also never assigned a number.

The United States Constitution promises equal protection under the law. By removing complaints alleging or documenting crimes by “protected parties,” the justice agencies can maintain the illusion of defending justice, while ensuring that only certain people will ever get investigated or prosecuted for violations of law.

Download Attorney's General Ltr here=>>Ltr.pdf