Witch Hunt

The images of your life,

picture them.

On your refrigerator, in albums,

frames, they capture every stage, change, celebration.

Without them, how much do you remember.

How much do you rely on these photos to remind you

of the journey you've taken in life?

Now imaging them gone.

This is the first photo John Stoll has of his life.

The rest were either confiscated by police,

destroyed after the death of his mother,

or lost to the passing of time.

This grainy black and white photo,

taken when he was 41 years old,

the day he was convicted of 17 counts of child molestation

in Bakersfield, California.

- The primary industries are oil

and agriculture.

- Bakersfield, Kern County, has historically,

since I've worked here, had a history of,

I've heard the term, cowboy law enforcement for years.

We kinda like that.

- I think a lot about what Bakersfield is is there's

a lot of conservative people here and they all

wanna feel that they're safe.

- In 1982, Ed Jagels arrived in Bakersfield.

He ran for district attorney on a tough on crime

law and order agenda.

- We simply got to jail a lot more criminals for

a lot longer.

This means first, we need to establish a set of minimal

acceptable sentences below which judges simply won't go.

Prosecutors have to demand that the court start

sentencing severely.

The culture was established at the top

that we are going to enforce crime and it doesn't

matter who you are, we're gonna do that.

- There's kind of a running joke in Kern County,

especially during that time, it was,

come to Kern County on vacation and leave on probation.

- One day they started appearing in

the headlines of the local paper.

Groups of child molesters.

Sheriff's investigators said there were eight rings in all.

Deputies arrested more than 30 people, most of them like

John Stoll, white lower class working moms and dads

with no criminal record.

- You don't think about that stuff, you just,

what kind of, who sits around thinking, boy I hope

I don't get blamed, I hope nobody calls me a child molester.

Who the hell would think something like that?

- John Stoll was working long days in

the hot Bakersfield sun in the summer of 1984.

His nights weren't any easier.

He and his ex-wife, Anne, had been arguing over custody

of their son, Jed.

I went to bed, 11:30,

the lights are on in my bedroom and there's two guys

standing there.

Two guys, one in a suit and one dressed in a sport coat.

Jacket but no tie or anything, the other guy

was dressed in a suit.

They're telling me to get up and get dressed,

and I went, what the hell are you doing in my,

what's going on?

And they start, they got right away, they got

their badges out.

And the search warrant's laying there and I look at

the search warrant and I think, they're looking

for pornography material.

Tapes and pictures.

They got this whole list of horrible crap, you know,

some pedophile had, and that's what they were lookin'

for in my home.

So I'm thinkin', they ain't got none of that shit here.

Your son said that he was molested by you,

and I said, that's impossible.

I don't believe you.

I really got, they said, you better settle down here,

because I was cursing, you son of a bitch, you say that.

- John Stoll cherished the weekends he had

with his son.

After his divorce two years earlier, he couldn't wait

for the days Jed came to his house to stay.

John says they had a great time together at the beach

just a week before,

and what the investigators were saying now had to

be an awful mistake.

Jed said that I molested him twice.

My original arrest was three counts,

three counts of child molestation.

So they take me down to the police station

and they play this good cop, bad cop rap.

You know, they come in, and one guy would come in

and say, "How could you do this shit?"

And yell at me and holler at me.

Then the other one comes in and says, "Look man, sometimes

"I can understand where you might wanna."

And I'm goin', and I'm just reeling because they

keep saying that I molested my child.

Somewhere along the line this, if you ever get arrested,

keep your mouth shut, came into view, so I just

stopped talking to them because I could see they

were just feeding on me, they were just loving, you know,

they had me freaking.

That first 24 hours, I just can't explain it.

I cannot explain the fear, the rage, the anger,

you're just so scared, you're terrified.

So I sit in this bed and this guy comes in and sits

down on the bed, it's his bed.

And I look over and I realize that it's Ricky Pitts.

Ricky Pitts had seven adults in his big ring,

and we had seen him in the paper, but I never read

what he did because I didn't wanna hear all that,

so I just, you know, I just looked and I thought,

oh look at this no good son of a bitch, you know.

Here I'm sitting in the bed next to him.

- Rick Pitts and his wife Marcella

were notorious in town.

Their faces were plastered all over the newspapers.

Today the couple is still reeling.

They've moved far away from Bakersfield and have chosen

not to have their faces shown for this film.

- Well, it's just, we've set up here in this

little community and people think where there's smoke

there's fire.

Even though there wasn't, but how do you sit down

and explain to a whole town, you know,

and that's why we don't want our faces shown.

It's not that I'm not ashamed, or you know,

and I'd do anything to help, but we don't wanna destroy

the rest of our lives, we're just gettin' it back together

after all these years.

- It's the worst thing you can ever be accused of

in your life.

They was accusing everybody of it back then,

we had friends that were scared to even, you know,

I told them just stay away and don't even come,

don't associate with us because we were scared

they'd get drug in to it.

- And he tells me exactly what's gonna happen to me now

for, through the whole thing.

I get angry with him right away.

Because he's tellin' me I'm gonna get all kinds of counts

and they're gonna be all kinds of kids.

Well they're gonna go canvass the neighborhood,

they're gonna talk to every kid that was ever

at your house, they're gonna (mumbles).

And I'm thinkin', you're crazy man, I don't even

wanna hear this shit.

And he said, "Man, prepare yourself."

Two days later they call me, Stoll step out.

That's what they'd say, they mean step out of the cell.

I stepped out of the cell and I walked down the hall

and he said, "You're going to court."

They put me in waist chains again and I went to court.

And then all of a sudden there was two other kids

and then another kid and another kid and another kid.

Now it's a whole big passle, there was this whole

giant molest ring.

- Just what Rick predicted came true.

Investigators canvassed the neighborhood and questioned

kids who knew John.

- I was arraigned on 12 more counts against one child

and eight, 10, 12 counts against another child.

Then I went back to jail and a couple days later

they called me back again and arraigned me on another child.

And I went back again and they arraigned me on another child

and then took me back again and arraigned me

on sixth child.

- When you get one of those cases and you start conversing

with a five year old child or a six year old child,

and they're able to say things that your

five year old child at home would absolutely never know,

there are bells that go off.

And because that's a learned behavior.

- Today those children are adults

and they remember John Stoll, their neighborhood

and the sheriff's investigators.

- It was life like normal kids it seemed like for a while.

- Everybody hung outside, you know, out front,

kinda talked and did whatever.

- I was little, you know, six years old, seven years old.

All the kids played in the neighborhood together.

- And we were rowdy, we were rough kids in Bakersfield.

- John Stoll rented a modest three bedroom house

in this rough and tumble neighborhood.

He did have a rare commodity though, a pool.

The perfect anecdote for the stifling Bakersfield heat.

We started opening the pool.

When the pool was there, then that's how those two

boys came over to play in it with Jed in the pool.

I went to his house a couple times.

I went swimming there maybe twice that I remember.

- I think I only swam maybe four or five times over there.

Not very much.

- I remember there was a pool, but I don't remember

a lot of swimming, I mean, I'm sure we did,

but, you know, it was a hot summer in Bakersfield.

- After a while, the sheriffs came knocking on the door