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Harris so it's you, then there's Patrick, then there's Jackie, and then there's Bob, is that right? LATHAM that's correct. HARRIS and Jackie, how much younger than you? LATHAM I guess five years. She tells us the same age, I think for many years somewhere in that area. HARRIS where did you where were you born? LATHAM I was born in San Diego, California. HARRIS At a very early age, was there a tragedy in your family? LATHAM I'd say there was a tragedy in our family. HARRIS what happened? LATHAM Our father, he was martyred in a robbery when I was five. PARIS your father owned his own business? LATHAM he did. HARRIS he was robbed and killed. LATHAM he was robbed of his own business place and I was the oldest of the four of us. HARRIS how old were you when he was murdered? LATHAM I was five. HARRIS how old was Jackie at the time? LATHAM she would have been very young, younger than I by five years, I guess. She was a baby. HARRIS after your father was murdered, your mother well, let me ask you this. Your mother had a medical condition, is that right? LATHAM she developed a medical condition, I think, from the stress of my father's death. HARRIS what was that medical condition? LATHAM it was it's a fairly rare skin disease called sceleoderma, where your skin deteriorates and becomes brittle and it cracks and she just progressively got worse then until she passed away from that disease. HARRIS for most of after your father died, for most of her life, was she bedridden? LATHAM she was. HARRIS at that point, at some point, because of our situation, were you put into an orphanage? LATHAM we were. My mom tried to take care of us initially after my father's death, and she couldn't do that with four of us and work and try to make things happen. As best as I recall, certain things I do remember about that time in my life. But there is other things that you know that I don't. But she eventually put us in this orphanage with the Catholic sisters at Nazareth Nazareth House in San DIEGO at the mission there. HARRIS and you stayed there until you were held? LATHAM well, it was a school that started, I think k I remember young kids there, maybe not kindergarten, but the eighth grade was the highest grade there. From from there you had to go to school, you know, you went to high school. HARRIS now, you have had sort of an interesting life. What did you do after you got out of high school? LATHAM well, when I got out of high school, I started working for the city of San Diego, the aquatics division. We grew up near the beach and we were around the water all the time. So it was it was a good job. I did all kinds of jobs. I think all of our family worked at an early age and developed, you know, good work ethics and habits. And so I worked for the city aquatic division, gradually became a lifeguard there and a full time lifeguard while I was going to City College after I completed high school. HARRIS did you then move on to Colorado? LATHAM I did. HARRIS what did you do there? LATHAM I got a real interest in scheme and so I left the area that I was living in and moved to Colorado. From that point, I got drafted into the military and I spent two years in the military. HARRIS what'd you do in the military? LATHAM I was in a special forces group. That's what I was in. HARRIS after you got out of the military, I know you spent some time at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Lame. I did. When I got out of the military, I had a clearance that allowed me to easily work on the Saturn, the Apollo project, which was the first moonshot thing at at the time. So I was fortunate to work at Cape Canaveral and I spent a year and a half working at Cape Canaveral and downrange in the Bahamas. HARRIS I know at some point after that you migrated to Alaska, is that right? LATHAM After a year and a half of working there, I had the opportunity to go to Alaska and go hunting there. And hunting was always a passion to me. It's something that I developed an interest in pretty much on my own in high school. And so there was an opportunity and I made enough money and I could do something like that, so I did that. HARRIS how old were you at that time? LATHAM well, I was I'd say I was early 20s, 23 or 24. Harris you're there today, is that right? LATHAM that's correct. I live there as we speak. HARRIS Stayed there ever since. LATHAM yes. HARRIS what is it you do in Alaska? LATHAM we have a bed and breakfast guiding business. My wife and I Our family, I say our family, our girls, they have always worked with us and for us. And we got big game hunting, we got fishing in the summertime, and we operated as a BNB in the wintertime. HARRIS what's the name of the town? LATHAM the name of the town is Yakutat, Alaska. HARRIS what part of Alaska is that? LATHAM it's in the southeastern, almost exactly between Juneau and Cordova. Harris, you mentioned children. How many children do you have? LATHAM I had four children. HARRIS and what are their names? LATHAM. Well, I have three now. I lost them. We lost a boy, 23 years old. Harris but what are the names of the three that are living? LATHAM the three that are. Well, one of them is with us here, Rachel, Anna and Jennifer, three girls. Harris, @ some point you made a decision while your children were in junior high to move them back to California, Is that true? LATHAM that's correct. We live in a small village. It's a native, primarily native village. It is a secluded place with no road system to it and the school system as good as it is, it was limited and we wanted our children to have a little more education, hoping to go on to college. So we brought them down and gave them the opportunity, which was an opportunity, indecision on their part, to attend school in San Luis Obispo. HARRIS where exactly did you move them? LATHAM well, we moved to Morro Bay. We rented a place there in the wintertime, but we still had to maintain our business and try to keep that going. So we would come down with them in the wintertime. And eventually we started coming back down, spending several months in the winter, which is our off season. HARRIS when they weren't living with you, where did they Excuse me, Let me start at the beginning. Rachel is the oldest, right? LATHAM Rachel is the youngest. HARRIS oh, youngest. Where did Rachel live while she was in St. Louis? Obispo. Latham she lived with Lee and Jackie part of the time and part of the school years. HARRIS your relationship with Jackie when you were growing up, you have separated for a good part of that time, is that right? LATHAM we had a scattered childhood just because of the timing of ages, you know, were different. I graduated and went on to high school. She was still at the school orphanage there. And so we weren't very, very close. And in some ways we just kind of pursued our own things and we all worked at different jobs and things. And it was later on, as we started having families that were renewed, like, I think it was very common things for many people to do. You, as you get older, you have family and you tend to get back together when you weren't so close, you know, when you were younger. HARRIS Was Jackie instrumental trying to bring family back together? LATHAM she is probably the heartbeat of our family. HARRIS you by the time you had left your daughter Rachel to live with her, you had reconnected, more or less? LATHAM that's correct. Because of Jackie, she contacted everybody. She's always been the mover and the shaker in the family, if you will, to try to get reunions together and get everybody and always extended herself to everything along with Lee. But she's the only one that would do the calling. And you bring this and you bring that. HARRIS I think you told me she never misses a birthday. She always sends a card, that kind of thing. LATHAM she never missed mine or my wife's or my daughters. HARRIS the time she spent with your daughter while she was in Morro Bay, you had the chance to be able to spend some time with Jackie also because you would come down and visit, is that right? HARRIS? LATHAM that's correct. HARRIS and the more you got to sort of reconnect with your sister, what did you find out about her as far as being a person? What kind of person was she? LATHAM well, she's a sweetheart. She's been a sweetheart to her family. I've never she is one of those rare people that rarely says a bad thing about anybody, even if she doesn't like them. She's stoic about things and thinks about things. She is absolutely delightful. She would do anything for anybody. I mean, someone on the street would have a as good a dinner at her house as I would probably. HARRIS when you say she's stoic, is that somewhat of a family trait from your side of the family? LATHAM well, I've seen that in her. I've seen it in myself. Although we do get emotional at times, we've had a lot of things happen in our lives and you move on, you try to sort it out. And I would say she's not a whiner or a whiner or a crier. HARRIS as you reconnected with Jackie, you also came to know her son, Scott, is that right? LATHAM that's true. HARRIS how would you what would be the opportunity that you would have to see? SCOTT I know you weren't I mean, you were in Alaska most of the time. LATHAM that's correct. So my time with Scott, it's not as much as other parts of the family because of where we live, but I would see Scott and I'm naming Scott since he was born and their whole family, as much as we could get together, we would 10, 15 years ago, our biggest time spent together was probably, I mean, they would make or they would try to make annual trips to Alaska with all the family, all the boys, and this would be usually over Thanksgiving where we'd have a chance to catch up on things for the whole year, that kind of thing. And quite frankly, up to that point, not a lot of us had a lot of money and it costs a lot of money to go take the whole family back and forth. We were all working, all their kids were working and would spend a part of their money to get up there, help themselves get up there. And we would have just a really nice week bird shooting generally. And then I would see Scott when I was there and when I was in San Luis Obispo, as I said, one of her daughters, the oldest one, when she starts school in San Luis Obispo, she was a year ahead of the other one. So one was in grade school in Los Osos, which is very near San Luis Obispo. JUDGE go back to question and answer. Harris, you are actually when your daughter Rachel moved to San Luis Obispo, that was a time period that Scott was actually going to school there, is that right? LATHAM that's correct. HARRIS so you had a chance when you were coming to visit a little more chance to interact with Scott at that time as well? LATHAM I did. Harris you told me last night how there was a problem with interacting because he was, well, I mean, whoops. What was he generally doing? He was usually working, usually a couple of jobs and he was we would, we would get together for dinner, we where he worked, we would go there for dinner, we were there. He would come to our house on a regular basis, take the girls places, help out in that capacity when we were here. HARRIS when you watch the relationship between Scott and his mother, what comments come to mind? LATHAM well, it's a very loving family as far as I'm concerned. He loves his mother, loves his father. I think we have close knit families. We didn't have a lot of family when we were young, so I think maybe that's part of it. But they have been very close and he's always been very respectful to me. I've heard this said several times before, but I've never seen any disrespect of any kind or arrogance from Scott. HARRIS he said he would come up they would come up for these trips to Alaska to see you. When he was a young boy, did he did he get teased a lot by his brothers? LATHAM oh, they put it on him. He took it pretty well. He participated and he did his share of loading and unloading all the kind of things you do when you're having fun. A certain, a lot of work that you know that's involved. HARRIS Always going to work. LATHAM he was always in there. HARRIS you mentioned to me as we were coming to court today, something had come to mind about your wife when your wife, I mean, did you have the opportunity to meet Lacey? LATHAM we knew Lacey, yes, we had dinner with Scott and Lacey several occasions. And as always when we were down here, Lacey was never at our home. She never came to Alaska. But we would see her on a pretty regular basis. She was in and out of my sister's house and out of Jackie's house all the time. They were very close.