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Crimes of the Times
O.C.’s Jailhouse Informant Scandal: Part Two
00:37:33
Orange County’s most prolific mass shooter admits his guilt, but a series of explosive hearings uncovers a longstanding jailhouse snitch operation that taints many other cases. Jailers plead the 5th, the judge makes a startling ruling, and a victim’s husband forms an unlikely friendship with the killer’s crusading defense attorney.
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- [00:01]
A
This is an la times studios podcast. Chris Goffert here at LA Times Studios. Thanks for joining us on Crimes of the Times today, Part two of our dive into the Orange county informant scandal and its impact. Tell us what you think in the comments below. In March 2014, a man in handcuffs was escorted to the witness stand of a Santa Ana courtroom. He was in his early 30s, a small man covered in gang tattoos and wearing mustard colored jail scrubs. A career criminal currently incarcerated and facing a possible life term. For the first time, people were getting a look at the mysterious inmate f an informant whose identity prosecutors had fought to disguise. His real name was Fernando Perez, a former shot caller with the Mexican Mafia. He was the man to whom Orange County's worst mass shooter, Scott Decry, had given a graphic confession of his 2011 murder rampage at a Seal beach salon. De Kry's defense attorney, Scott Sanders, had been waiting for exactly this moment. He wanted to prove that Perez was a professional informant, that Perez had not materialized in a cell next to De Kry by accident, but that jailers had put him there deliberately and that prosecutors had been covering it up. That it was part of a much larger jailhouse informant scheme, illegal under the Sixth Amendment because the snitches were pumping information from defendants who already had lawyers. He wanted to prove that the sheriff's office and the DA had been conspiring for years to keep this hidden from defendants.
- [02:05]
B
Fernando Perez is a very talented informant.
- [02:08]
A
This is Scott Sanders. He'd studied the tapes. He heard a shrewd operator at work.
- [02:15]
B
You don't, as an informant, go in and begin probing. So he is getting Scott to cry, comfortable. He's talking to him about ways that this first timer in the process can manage through a long period of incarceration. He's offering him ways to heat his drinks. He's doing everything before he starts moving in. And that's the most effective informant. You've got to get that person's guard down. As I've said many times about Fernando Perez and other successful informants, they could be great used car salesmen in different lives.
- [02:48]
A
Now, under questioning from Sanders, Perez insisted he'd help the government in its case against a cry because it was the right thing to do. But he also admitted he had decided to take up snitching in other cases in hopes of catching leniency for his crimes. Operation Daylight, he called it. I love this little job, he said. I'll do whatever it takes to go home.
- [03:12]
C
He testified for several days and by the end of his testimony, figuratively speaking, my jaw had dropped.
- [03:20]
A
This is Thomas Goethels, who was the judge presiding over the case, because he
- [03:26]
C
was a very experienced federal and state informant who had been managed by the Special Handling Unit in the jail. And he had been working in the jail to try to work off a life sentence beef of his own, which is what informants do. And he admitted all that.
- [03:45]
A
Now, Sanders announced that he wanted to question the lead prosecutor, Dan Wagner.
- [03:51]
C
He'd been a prosecutor for 20 years. He was the deputy DA in charge of the homicide unit, which historically is kind of the best trial lawyer in the office. And when he was called as a witness, the DA almost put, had an aneurysm. I mean, everybody's eyes, including Wagner's, who were sitting there as one of the litigating attorneys on the case. They all got big. And I kind of smiled to myself and I said, why is anybody surprised by this? After what we just heard from, from Mr. Perez, it was inevitable that he was gonna have to testify. And so he did.
- [04:26]
A
Wagner admitted that he'd met Perez and arranged with jail deputies to wire up Decry's cell. Judge Goethels kept thinking of Wagner's earlier declaration, however, his claim that Perez had expected no leniency and that the DA's office planned to give him none. Experienced prosecutors understood that informants did not work for free. Wagner now admitted he'd made mistakes. His understanding of the law had been flawed, he said, but he insisted he had not intentionally broken any laws. As the hearing wore on, jailers from the so called Special Handling Unit, the unit that handled informers, distanced themselves from the decision to place Perez in a cell next to Decry. No one wanted to take responsibility for it. And no, they insisted they knew of no jailhouse records that might explain why he'd gotten there.
- [05:24]
C
Didn't make sense to most people. And it, it asked us to believe that even though there were records of transfers, the purpose or the reason for the transfer was never recorded. It was just kind of random. But that's what they said under oath. They looked me right in the eye and said that.
- [05:44]
A
One day mid hearing, Sanders unexpectedly announced that his client was no longer going to dispute his guilt. Scott Decry would plead guilty without any promise that, that he could avoid death row.
- [05:57]
C
And this was still when the courtroom was completely packed, every seat was full. And he says, judge, I just want to tell you very quickly, and we're just about to take the afternoon recess, Mr. Decry intends to plead guilty when it's convenient for the court and all of, and everybody else. And I'm like, what? And I say, you mean he's just going to plead without any disposition? And I kind of look at the DA and the DA is shocked. Wagner is shocked. His jaw dropped. And I say, you mean this isn't a negotiated plea? No, not a negotiated plea. He's just going to do an open plea to everything? Yep. An open plea on eight first degree murders, a special circumstance of multiple murders. Had to make sure he understood it was an open plea. The only options I would have after that were he would serve the rest of his life in prison or I'd sentence him to death. People at least knew that he now accepted responsibility and he was the Seal Beach Killer. He wasn't fighting that anymore. The only issue now was what his sentence ought to be.
- [06:57]
A
In conceding his client's guilt, Sanders had a strategy. He decided not to fight what was likely a hopeless battle anyway. This was not remotely a whodunit. Instead, Sanders would devote his energy to something else, persuading the judge to throw out the death penalty on the basis that his client could never get a fair trial. And Sanders thought the emerging details about the mishandling of informants might make that possible. From the Los Angeles Times and LA Times Studios, this is Crimes of the Times. This is the second of two episodes on the snitch scandal that upended the Orange county courthouse. I'm Christopher Goffard.
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D
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- [08:54]
A
the custodians of the law in Orange county did not like Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders, prosecutors would call him an imbecile in open court, describe his tactics as vile, and declare his work unfit for a passing grade in law school. One cop seemed to believe the defense attorney's soul was damned and said he prayed for him. Judge Thomas Goethels had given Sanders a rare chance to make his case about the systematic misuse of jailhouse informants. But in August 2014, after months of contentious hearings, Goethels essentially ruled against him. The judge had harsh words for prosecutors and jail deputies who'd appeared before him. He said some were credibility challenged and had, quote, undoubtedly lied, though he did not name names. He ruled that law enforcement had botched the handling of a professional informant in the case of Orange County's worst mass shooter. But he found the mistakes were negligent rather than malicious, that jailers had not placed the snitch and the shooter together with the plan of eliciting incriminating remarks. It was instead, quote, a confluence of independent events that brought them together. The judge refused to do what defense attorney Scott Sanders had asked for. Throw the DA off the case and throw out the death penalty penalty.
- [10:29]
B
When we came to the end of it, having what we thought won every day, Judge Goethel said, there are absolutely prosecutors in law enforcement who did not tell the truth here. But ultimately, I'm going to deny both your motion to dismiss for outrageous governmental conduct and your motion to recuse the DA's office. So it could have been ended right then and seemingly was ended.
- [10:51]
A
The decision seemed to set the stage for a penalty phase trial. It is a decision Goethels now refers to as naive and maybe only half jokingly, as infamous, because in hindsight, I was wrong. Now retired, Goethels has written a memoir about the case called Inmate F, in which he reflects on that ruling and what motivated it. What was I thinking? He writes, at that critical moment in my judicial career, I failed, as I have heard so many politicians say in recent years, to meet the moment. I've asked myself a thousand times why and how it happened. I still don't have a good answer. Was I afraid of making new enemies or losing old friends? Was it because Goethel's knew the longtime district attorney, Tony Rikakis? He'd been to my house more than once. Was I afraid to hurt his feelings? Did I think a different ruling would upset him? I told Goethels these were confessions you did not often hear from a judge.
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C
I wrote it because a lot of people had told me. Judges and lawyers had said, you know, that was a really extraordinary situation and you should write a book about it. So a lot of people over the years had told me that, but I resisted because as a judge, you don't reflect honestly like that. That's nobody's business. But I thought as I started writing it as sort of a therapeutic release and for. And as a message to my grandkids, I thought, you know what? I think that there might be some value here.
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A
In his memoir, Goethels quotes a particularly stinging rebuke from an Orange County Weekly columnist, R. Scott Mo, who was covering the case and thought the judge had been much too soft on law enforcement. In August 2014. Judge Tommy, he called him and compared him unfavorably to Judge Judy. I asked if I could read it to him.
- [12:56]
C
This is a good one. It hurts me to hear this even now.
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A
Chris, I don't want to traumatize you.
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C
No, no, it's good.
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A
He's got a sharp tongue.
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C
Indeed.
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A
Surely a judge who, who has no greater task than to protect the integrity of the criminal justice system would at least put Judge Judy style fear into law enforcement liars. But incredibly, Goethels wasn't up to even TV judge standards. Judge Judy famously barked, don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining. Judge Tommy might as well amend the declaration to go ahead, Officer, pee on my leg. Assure me under oath it's raining, and watch me let you get away with it.
- [13:39]
C
I'm smiling as you just read that. And I smiled as I read it then. But I. I thought I was right. But it turned out, in hindsight, given subsequent events, that I wasn't right. All I can do is reflect and sort of ask myself, what was that the product of? I still thought at the time it was the right decision. I don't think anybody, judges, lawyers, members of the community, members of the media want to think, especially in the context of a capital case, the biggest capital murder in the history of Orange county, that. That cops and prosecutors are lying and cheating. I don't. I didn't want to think that. And I had been. I. I was a DA for 12 years, and it was a great moment in my life. I loved that office. It treated me well. And I got. I wouldn't be sitting where I am now if I hadn't done that. And I have zero regrets about it. And I still have great respect for the Orange County District Attorney's office in general.
- [14:46]
A
Despite the sting of the judge's unfavorable ruling, defense attorney Scott Sanders was not done. Three months later, he filed another motion. He said jailers had lied in court and he could Prove it. He had something called tread records, a secret database that recorded the movements of jailhouse snitches, which jailers under oath had denied any knowledge of.
- [15:11]
C
The last thing after what we had been through that I wanted to do was resume that evidentiary hearing. That was the very last thing. And I'm not saying I wasn't going to do it, but I didn't want to do it.
- [15:26]
A
The second round of hearings began in February 2015. At this point, more than three years had passed since Decry massacred eight people at the Seal beach salon. The judge's decision to reopen the hearings did not sit well with the law enforcement establishment, nor among some colleagues at the downtown Santa Ana courthouse.
- [15:49]
C
A lot of people sort of avoided me. I would see other judges, and some would just smile and not say anything. Some were a little openly hostile. And I had heard sort of through the judicial grapevine that some of my colleagues thought I was nuts. Like, he's crazy. What's he doing down there? What's he wasting all this time for? This guy was. This guy obviously killed all these people. Why are. Why are we having hearings on this? A few would. When it was just me and that other judge, they would say, hey, you gotta do what you gotta do.
- [16:19]
E
You know, if these guys had the integrity and the due diligence the way Mr. Sanders does, we wouldn't be this far along five, four, five years into this trial now, if they would have just done their job the way Mr. Sanders has done his job.
- [16:40]
A
How much did other judges dislike Sanders? At least one judge, James Stotler, recused himself from Sanders other death penalty case while admitting he was rooting for the prosecutors. And so the decry hearings dragged on. Paul Wilson, who had lost his wife in the shooting, had hated Scott Sanders. He'd been the deputy public defender's most vociferous antagonist for years. Wilson had never missed a chance to insult and degrade him. But Wilson's frustration with the delays and with the DA's role in it had boiled over. Now he went on Al Jazeera America and praised the defense attorney.
- [17:27]
E
My focus now, when I was speaking at events was about the lying and the cheating and the corruption that was existing in this case. Now, why are we still here? And we're here because we have a bad, corrupt district attorney system. And at that point, I really started paying attention to what Scott was saying, because I knew that was where the truth was coming from.
- [17:56]
A
Wilson's change of opinion also put him at odds with other surviving family members.
- [18:01]
E
As I started to side with Scott. I caught a lot of grief from a lot of the other families. Verbal altercations and text messages and emails and events.
- [18:15]
A
Initially, Wilson had favored the death penalty for decry. Now life without parole seemed a better sentence. In California, despite more than 500 people on death row, nobody had been executed for nearly 10 years.
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E
I felt that this became not about the murder case. It became more about the legal snitch case. I'm not saying this guy's not guilty. I'm not saying he doesn't deserve to go to jail for the rest of his life. But I'm saying he doesn't deserve the death penalty because of what these guys did.
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D
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- [20:15]
A
At the second evidentiary hearing, Sanders put special handling jailers back on the stand and asked them about the database of inmate movements called SHRED records.
- [20:25]
B
The answers were horrendous. They were about how deputies didn't think they could share information about the treads. That information wasn't supposed to get out, and that was unacceptable to Judge Goethels.
- [20:36]
A
In court papers, the DA's office had written, quote, no one involved in placing defendant and Perez in adjacent cells had any inkling that Perez had been a government informant. But Sanders produced a Note from the jailhouse log that seemed to show jailers had been in control of Decry's movements all along. While the secret recordings were underway, Decry was, quote, not to be moved regardless of medical or mental health request. Sanders grilled a special handling deputy named Seth Tunstall, who tried to minimize his role in developing jailhouse snitches. Sanders confronted him with an affidavit in which Tunstall previously admitted that was in his job description. I guess I put the wrong word in there, Tunstall now testified. I did not mean develop. I don't think there was any hard evidence ever presented that the DA's office knew about the tread records. But any prosecutor who is faced with that situation should have been absolutely outraged at the sheriff's department for not turning this over, making the DA's office look incompetent, making the sheriff's department look corrupt, and like they were intentionally violating the law. This is Brian Gerwitz, an Orange county criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor who watched the informant scandal closely.
- [22:08]
C
I think good lawyering at that part
- [22:10]
A
by the DA's office would have been to in many ways side with the defense and have some of the outrage that the defense had. Instead of continuing with this pattern that, you know, we're the victims here, we're being wronged by some public defender who's filing frivolous conspiracy theory motions and some left wing radical judge who's giving this murderer everything he wants. That's the approach they took, and it was exactly the wrong approach to take. That round of hearings concluded in March 2015 with a stunning decision by Goethels. He ruled that the entire Orange County District Attorney's office should be removed from the Decry prosecution. The office where he had been a prosecutor himself had violated Decry's rights by repeatedly failing to turn over important evidence. He said the judge wrote, quote, certain aspects of the district attorney's performance in this case might be described as a comedy of errors, but for the fact that it has been so sadly deficient, there is nothing funny about that. End quote. He said prosecutors had shown a, quote, chronic failure to comply with his orders. He said DA Tony Rikakis had a conflict of interest that seemed to stem from his loyalty to the sheriff's department. The judge said someone has to be in charge who would prosecute decry Now? The judge gave the job to the state Attorney General's office under Kamala Harris. Her office, too sought the death penalty, which meant the fighting would go on while humiliated local prosecutors were off the case for Good. Their office was essentially trying to put Goethels out of business as a judge. Prosecutors were taking advantage of a rule that allowed them to disqualify judges from their cases if they considered them prejudiced against their client. They did not have to explain their reasons they were targeting Goethels. It was called papering a judge. From 2011 to 2013, they had papered Goethels just five times. In the two following years, as prosecutors got unfavorable rulings in the decry hearings, they asked for his removal 57 times.
- [24:41]
C
They never put me out of business in the sense that I was sitting around an empty, quiet courtroom because I had my inventory from all my old cases. They were stuck with me on cases I already had, so I was still busy. Yeah, but they really didn't like me for a long time.
- [24:58]
A
Then came a third round of hearings before Goethel's. Still more damaging to the government's case this time. Special handling deputies Seth Tunstall and Ben Garcia invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination.
- [25:15]
C
They both, they came with lawyers they invoked, as did a number of other deputy sheriffs. We had a whole string of deputy sheriffs, and some of them came in with their uniforms on, their guns, their badges. Others were wearing civilian clothes, but some of them came in with their uniforms on. And in uniform, they invoked their Fifth Amendment right.
- [25:35]
A
This freed them from having to endure further grilling from Sanders. His questioning had grown increasingly brutal, and he kept surprising witnesses with documents he was not supposed to have. Sanders believed the deputies feared they might be prosecuted for perjury and hiding evidence. It's hard to encapsulate the scandal more vividly than in the image of multiple cops taking the Fifth. For the sheriff's department, it was a public relations catastrophe.
- [26:05]
C
But I remember when that happened and the deputies had voted. I looked down at the two attorneys general, and I was at least under the impression that there was an investigation in progress in their office. And I looked at them and I waited for them to say something or to do something, and nothing happened. The. The. The deputies came and went with their lawyers, and we just kind of mushed on. And I, I remember thinking to myself, what is going on here? Where is the justice in this?
- [26:42]
A
Judge Goethels threatened to drag Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchins into a contempt hearing in July 2017. When Hutchins took the witness stand, Goethels reminded her that he had issued an order requesting jailhouse records four and a half years earlier. And yet he was just now learning there were 68 boxes of potentially relevant material that had not been examined. The sheriff had no explanation, she said. I apologize that we apparently did not know where those items were being kept critically. Hutchins acknowledged what Sanders had alleged all along, that informants had been placed near targeted inmates for years with the goal of eliciting incriminating statements. But the conduct was committed, she said, by a few jailers who had exceeded their authority. Finally, in August 2017, Goethels did what Sanders had asked all along. He threw out the death penalty, saying the sheriff's department could not or would not comply with his orders and had denied decry a fair trial. Six years after the shooting, and more than three years after he pleaded guilty, Decry was finally sentenced. Judge Goethels gave him eight consecutive life terms, one for each person he had murdered. The judge said, the gates of hell flew open and you emerged as the face of evil. He also told the victims families that they deserved better. The criminal justice system here in Orange county has largely failed you.
- [28:25]
C
If you'd asked me in 2013 whether or not we'd have three years of hearings on this case and I would throw out the death penalty and do all the things that happened, you know, my visceral reaction would have been, are you crazy? That's not going to happen on this case.
- [28:40]
A
What was the upshot of the whole scandal? The sheriff announced she would not seek another term. Longtime district attorney Tony Rikakis lost his bid for a sixth term. In a campaign dogged by the scandal, the man who beat him, Todd Spitzer, launched an internal investigation that found what he called malpractice and misconduct on the part of the decry prosecutors. But since they had left the office and opened their own law firm, they could not be disciplined. I reached out to former prosecutors Scott Simmons and Dan Wagner, but did not hear back.
- [29:17]
B
What's really terrible about this is no one's lost a job in the traditional sense. They haven't lost a pension, they haven't lost a meal. That there's been no impact to the people who are responsible.
- [29:32]
A
In January 2025, both the DA's office and the sheriff's department reached a settlement with the U.S. department of justice over the illegal use of informants in the county jails. The settlement required better oversight, better documentation, and better training. The new sheriff, Don Barnes, said, Since 2016, we have worked diligently to implement comprehensive reforms regarding custodial informants.
- [30:00]
C
The evidence showed this had been going on for a long time. The same deputies had done the same thing in a whole bunch of other cases, and that's Why? I understand something like 50 other cases in Orange county, many of them murder cases and attempted murder cases, have since unraveled as a result of the same systemic illegal activity by the prosecutor and by the sheriff. I mean, we had hearings regularly for five years and I got sick of seeing my picture in the newspaper. It was sort of a soul searching experience.
- [30:35]
A
What did you learn about yourself?
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C
I learned to be. I'm a skeptic. That's, that's the nature of who I am a little bit. And I learned not to, even from people that you want to trust and necessarily trust them. I learned that my job requires me to ask questions and be skeptical and be convinced before I say anything.
- [31:00]
A
Soon after Decry's sentencing, Paul Wilson felt the strong compulsion to reach out to the man who had spent the previous six years defending his wife's murderer.
- [31:12]
E
And I'm driving home and I'm just thinking to myself, God, I really, I really hate those bastards in that Orange county district attorney's office. And the fact that these guys can just walk away is despicable. But what do I do about it? And then it was like, I don't know, like a light switch went off in my head. I thought, Scott Sanders. I didn't even have Scott's number. I called the public defender's office
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C
and
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E
it's just the weirdest thing it to, to this day. I mean, it gives me goosebumps. Scott answers the phone and he says, hello, Paul. And I just said to him, hey, Scott, I'm having a hard time with this and these guys need to be held accountable. I can't let them walk away from this and I need your help. And his answer was, he didn't even pause. He said, absolutely, Paul. And he said, you know, can I call you back in a couple days? And called me back. And we had to. I never forget that we didn't really talk on the phone too much because Scott was, you know, we were both kind of nervous about who's into our phones or who's watching us. I mean, these, these guys are shady guys. Like, so we have to do these very private secret, like, you park over here, I'll park over there, we'll meet here. And we'd have these discussions about, what does this look like? Do you know what you're doing, Paul? Do you know the backlash you're going to, you're going to take for befriending and working with the guy that defended your wife's killer? I mean, people are gonna ask some really weird questions because that is not normal. And I said, yes, I understand, and I'm ready for it.
- [33:20]
A
Scott Sanders and Paul Wilson began to work together on informant related reform. They appeared at public events. They told their story to journalists.
- [33:31]
C
Paul Wilson and Scott Sanders are, if not just friendly. I think they're friends. I mean, I think they have really developed a friendship that arose out of the ashes of the murder of Paul Wilson's wife. It's amazing. I've never seen or heard of anything like it.
- [33:47]
E
We've gone to law schools together and talked to students about what we went through and how. How unique it is that a victim gets together with a defense attorney. But I really say, more importantly, you know, Scott is. Scott's become one of my closest friends. I know I could talk to Scott about anything. Scott's given me a lot of great advice. All of our kids know each other. So, you know, we've developed this really close friendship that's not about what we're doing. And we don't talk about what we're. We don't really talk about that stuff when we're together. We do talk about, you know, what happened and stuff we still plan on doing and stuff we still want to do. Because I still don't believe, and I don't think Scott does, that we have got accountability from these guys.
- [34:56]
A
One reason the Orange county snitch scandal is not universally known might be that many people find it hard to care except in the abstract. In some ways, the whole saga has an inside baseball feel to it. If there were constitutional outrages, the logic goes, they were more or less perpetrated on terrible people who were guilty anyway. But it's worth remembering that reliance on jailhouse snitches is a great way to convict the wrong person. The Innocence Project says it has exonerated 255 people who are serving time for serious crimes like murder, most of them proven innocent by DNA. Informants played a role in 19% of those wrongful convictions. Nobody's going to sympathize with Scott Decry. Right, or some of your other clients who did these horrible things. But these same informants might be enlisted in cases where the evidence is much thinner.
- [35:57]
C
Well, absolutely.
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B
I mean, you're relying upon informants and informants. Traditionally, the group you're pulling from is, in all other contexts would be unreliable people. But in a courtroom, suddenly they tell these stories about how their life has changed and they're a different person. And although it sounds strange to believe jurors would adopt that they do, these folks are great storytellers so if you don't have the true context, what's going on? It's the most ripe context you could imagine for wrongful conviction. There is no way that the folks who were doing what they were doing in Orange county weren't cheating in other ways. And whether we'll ever get to the bottom of that is, of course, very doubtful and very sad.
- [36:41]
E
Watching the cry go away for the rest of his life isn't closure to me. It's satisfaction, because I know he's not sitting on death row in a very privy lifestyle. And for him to have to sleep with one eye open, that gives me a small amount of closure. But complete closure would be seeing accountability.
- [37:34]
A
The Black Dahlia murder of 1947 is arguably California's most notorious unsolved case. Its only rival might be the Zodiac murders a generation later. Now an amateur sleuth is attracting attention with the claim that the same killer is responsible for both cases. I'm Christopher Goffard, host of Crimes of the Times. Check out our new season on YouTube and listen to it on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.