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'He's left a big hole in the office'
One year later, colleagues and friends still thinking about slain assistant D.A.
| Thursday, Oct 19 2006 2:32 PM
Last Updated: Friday, Oct 20 2006 10:33 AM
This item was originally published on Sept. 14, 2003.
One year after Assistant District Attorney Stephen M. Tauzer was found slain in his home, his loved ones still miss him, his office has learned to operate without him and his one-time friend waits to be tried for his murder.
Monday marks the first anniversary of the day Kern County's No. 2 prosecutor was discovered in a pool of blood in his garage, stabbed and bludgeoned to death.
Known as a workaholic, several people at the Kern County District Attorney's office are now doing the work Tauzer did himself, says new Assistant D.A. Dan Sparks.
Deputy District Attorney Mike Yraceburn advises the county grand jury. The trial staff prosecutes cases Tauzer liked to try.
And Sparks, formerly one of two chief deputy D.A.s, supervises the staff. He loves the job but wishes the promotion hadn't been necessary.
"I would still rather Steve be here," Sparks said.
Yraceburn said things are back to normal in the office after initial emotional shock but Tauzer is still on a lot of people's minds a lot of the time.
"I miss Steve very much. He's left a big hole in the office," Yraceburn said. "But Ed (Jagels, Kern's district attorney) and the administration have done a great job of leadership and gotten us through our grief."
Bob Brandon, director of the D.A.'s Checkbusters program and a Tauzer friend of 23 years, said he and a lot of people in the office miss Tauzer's wise counsel.
He was always around to give it, often working 18 hours a day, sometimes seven days a week, Brandon said.
"I could call him on the phone or walk into his office whenever I needed help," Brandon said. "He was the guy you went to when you had a problem."
And one of Tauzer's few non-work friends, Paul Van Metre, still mourns the man he knew "would always be there for my family." The two men were fellow scout leaders.
"I have a wife and two adult sons and if anything happened to me, I know Steve would be the one to help," said Metre, an IBM retiree.
Tauzer's family declined to be interviewed for this story.
Meanwhile, the expected blockbuster trial of the former D.A. investigator and Bakersfield police officer accused of killing Tauzer in an act of retribution is still scheduled to begin Nov. 10 -- the defendant's 49th birthday.
Chris Hillis, Don Hillis' son, has been held in jail isolation in lieu of $2.5 million bail since his arrest Oct. 22. He's accused of stabbing Tauzer 16 times in the head for interfering in the parenting of his late son, Lance Hillis.
Lance was a drug addict who Hillis believed needed to hit rock bottom, including going to jail, before sobering up. Tauzer lobbied judges to send Lance to rehabilitation centers instead of jail and gave him money, cars and places to stay.
Lance, 22, died in a one-car crash last August in El Dorado County, where he'd been in drug treatment.
One month later, Tauzer was murdered.
DNA evidence on a bloody knife found next to Tauzer's body has been linked to Hillis, analysts have testified in a pretrial hearing.
Hillis has pleaded innocent. His attorney, Kyle Humphrey, has said his client was no longer upset with Tauzer at the time of his killing and questioned the quality of the handling and testing of physical evidence in the case.
Some physical evidence is still undergoing lab analysis. There's a chance the timing and nature of the results could necessitate a trial postponement, Humphrey said.
At Hillis' preliminary hearing in May, Humphrey took whacks at Tauzer's reputation, portraying him as destructively obsessed with Lance and accusing him of abusing his legal power to keep the young man out of trouble.
Under Humphrey's questioning, Don Hillis said he believed it's possible Tauzer took sexual advantage of Lance.
Tauzer's image may take a beating at trial, too, although Kern County Superior Court Judge Roger Randall has already ruled Humphrey will have to show proof of his accusations in order to introduce them.
Tauzer's friends vehemently deny he was capable of manipulating Lance that way. Brandon said he stopped watching local news and reading The Californian because he "got tired of yelling at the TV and throwing the paper away" after mention of the allegations.
"I always believed (Tauzer) felt Lance was his project," Brandon said.
Deputy Attorney General Mike Farrell, a co-prosecutor in the case, has already said his office has uncovered no evidence of a physical relationship between Lance and Tauzer.
"At trial, the relationship between Chris Hillis and Steve Tauzer and Lance Hillis -- and whatever activities the parties engaged in -- will be highly relevant," Humphrey said. "What the A.G.'s office produces as motive, we will have to counter."
Humphrey, a former Kern County prosecutor, said the folks portraying Tauzer as hardworking "will get no disagreement from me" and that he's well aware "many people in this community knew and loved him."
But not all perceptions of him are based in fact, he said.
Sparks said it sounds like a cliche but he's hoping the trial will bring "closure," first to Tauzer's family, then to his friends. He and others in the office won't discuss the case beyond generalities to avoid the perception of interference.
The A.G.'s office is prosecuting because of the D.A.'s office's conflict of interest.
"We want justice done," Sparks said. "We're looking forward to it being concluded."
Humphrey emphasized the Hillis family is suffering through a sad one-year anniversary, too -- of Lance's death. And they're missing Hillis, he said.
"This past year for the Hillis family has been terrible," Humphrey said.
That's not lost on Brandon.
"It's a tragedy for both families," he said of Tauzer's killing. "It's just a crying shame it had to happen."