A Wolf Called Romeo

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A Wolf Called Romeo Page 23

by Nick Jans


  Running an errand, I happened to be driving past Alaskan Brewing on the afternoon of May 20. As soon as I saw the enforcement SUVs pulled up, I knew the bust was going down—long-awaited among a handful of us who knew. Inside, Park Myers was being interviewed by Alaska State Wildlife Trooper Aaron Frenzel and Fish and Wildlife Service Special Agent Stan Pruszenski. Search warrants had already been served at the Myers house and at taxidermist Classen’s home. Troopers and agents seized a large, tanned black wolf hide and skull, plus a black bear skin and Peacock’s cell phone. They also discovered Myers’s marijuana-growing operation inside Myers’s garage: in the words of the state trooper report, “approximately twenty-seven” high-grade, expertly tended plants with an estimated street value in the tens of thousands. In addition, Myers was found in possession of a .30/.30 carbine stolen while being shipped by the U.S. Postal Service—a potentially serious federal crime in its own right. Meanwhile, across the continent, Fish and Wildlife Service agents executed a warrant in Pennsylvania and seized Jeff Peacock’s work computer, packed with evidence. Peacock was charged with unsworn falsification, taking big game in a closed area, baiting bears without a permit, plus three counts of unlawful possession of game. Myers’s warrant specified taking big game by unlawful methods, baiting bears without a permit, and three charges of unlawful game possession. Each one of those charges carried a possible maximum fine of $10,000 and three hundred days in jail—times five for Myers, six for Peacock. That total was just Alaska bringing the hammer down. What would upcoming federal charges add to the already-daunting heap? Myers and Peacock, arraigned separately with private representation from defense attorney David Mallet, pled the standard not guilty. Peacock was allowed to leave the state after posting a $10,000 bail bond. The two seemed destined for some serious legal worries, major payouts, and time behind bars.

  The arrests and arraignments, covered by the Empire and local radio, catapulted the case into public view. While many Juneauites had speculated for months about the wolf’s fate, by spring most had sighed and gone on with their lives. No one expected to ever know anything, let alone find the wolf’s killer staring out at them from the morning daily: a slight, unremarkable man with a baggy sweater, blank face, wire-rimmed glasses, and a bad haircut. I was among those who recognized the face: that guy with his sons at my Public Market booth, three years before, who talked loudly about Romeo’s resemblance to a wolf he’d skinned.

  Even though most citizens knew just what little the paper reported, you’d expect some sort of visceral outcry: drive-by rock-throwing at the Myers house, tire-slashing on his gaudy blaze-orange Jeep with its roof-mounted floodlights, public curse-outs, and maybe more. But instead, I, like most involved Juneauites, utterly ignored and avoided him, treated him as a nonperson, even when I glimpsed him at Fred Meyer.

  Meanwhile, there was scattered but steady pushback as well from the crowd who saw Myers and Peacock as ordinary joes and stalwart sportsmen, unjustly crucified by the greenies. Just a damn wolf and a punk bear or two, the rules a little bit bent—what was the big deal? However, aside from a sometimes-bitter spatter of emails, Empire letters, and blog entries both ways, restraint and social decorum echoed in an almost eerie quiet. Maybe we were all in shock, but one truth held sure: we were law-abiding citizens bound by a sense of community, confident that the law would deliver a measure of justice—maybe not perfect, but something we could recognize.

  Overlooked by almost all onlookers were two omissions in District Attorney Gardner’s affidavit of counsel and other court records: no mention anywhere of Myers’s marijuana operation, and Gardner (who had been presented with Myers’s past criminal record when the Fish and Wildlife Service shared their evidence cache with the state) maintained in that affidavit that Myers had no prior record. Neither Myers’s past history with the Pennsylvania babysitter and subsequent probation violations, nor the pot farm was public knowledge; and to those who knew, both seemed swept under the rug by an invisible hand. We’d later discover that Myers had made a plea bargain with the court, getting the drug charges dropped for turning informant; and perhaps there had been other side bargains as well. Somewhere along the way, mention of the .30/.30 stolen from the mail (potentially a federal felony) evaporated, too.

  Meanwhile, the identity of the dead wolf—the heart of the case, as far as most Juneauites were concerned—remained uncertain to the general public. They didn’t have access to Lowman’s affidavit and other particulars that Harry, Joel, I, and others had known for months. A May 26 Empire headline asked the question many wondered: WAS IT ROMEO? The hide in Peacock’s possession had, according to its plastic seal, been duly presented for inspection by Fish and Game as required; but department records labeled the skin as gray, though the skin bearing the recorded seal number was in fact black. The rather startling discrepancy gave birth to the immediate suspicion among some that Fish and Game or even enforcement agencies might be involved in a cover-up. To this day, Fish and Game sealing agent Chris Frary remains perplexed. He doesn’t recall examining a black wolf hide at any time that September, though his handwriting is on a form dated 9-23-09. He was later grilled on the topic by Agent Friburg and Trooper Frenzel, which seems to let enforcement off the conspiracy hook. Having myself interviewed Frary—now retired, and still chagrined by his word being called into question—I buy his story. Quite possibly Peacock’s tag was first affixed on a gray hide of unknown origin and later removed and transferred to Romeo’s. Thus the black wolf’s hide may well have never been inspected, yet the tag validated. It was just the sort of gambit a poacher who studied and poked at regulations might try.

  In a postarraignment interview with the Empire, Myers flailed like a man snared in his own alibi. True to form, he adamantly denied shooting a black wolf, despite having just been caught with its tagged skin: “You’d be a complete moron if you thought it was Romeo. A complete moron. I know a gray wolf from a black one. I know a 70-pound wolf from a 140-pound wolf.” Never mind that just days earlier, under oath, Myers had told District Attorney Gardner that he’d “panicked” when he realized the wolf he’d killed might be Romeo, which indicated the wolf in question was in fact large and black; and some of Peacock’s cell phone images of the wolf had also been titled with “Romeo.” However, no court document, nor any source other than the Fish and Game sealing record, mentioned Myers or Peacock shooting a gray wolf, and there was no matching skin ever offered to anchor the excuse. And where did that specific weight for each animal come from? Myers seemed to have fallen into the standard liars’ club faux pas of introducing details he shouldn’t have known. All added credence to some sort of calculated sleight of hand. The contradictions, questions, and omissions in the case continued to pile up, with the trial still months away.

  Legal constraints further shaped the course of events. As far as the state was concerned, a wolf was a wolf; there was no law or penalty addressing the killing of a specific individual, no matter how well known or regarded. Several citizens had samples of Romeo’s shed hair that could have been used in a DNA match, plus access to at least a half-dozen people—including Harry, John Hyde, and me—who knew Romeo well enough to identify the hide through specific scars and markings. But even if the state had the means to positively identify the skin as Romeo’s, they had zero legal reason, and far less incentive, to do so. Such an ID could only lead to awkward complications, not the least of which might be a public uproar, when the available penalty couldn’t possibly match the public perception of the crime. For perspective, consider the fine Myers would pay in direct compensation for a wolf, if found guilty of illegally depriving Alaska of said resource: $500. Each black bear was worth $600. And though the total potential penalties in the two cases indeed were fairly severe—nearly $20,000 combined and years in jail for Myers and Peacock—the violations they were facing were all misdemeanors.

  This was still a good start, we told each other. Soon enough, the Feds would add their own crushing charges to the legal dog pile. But t
he weeks passed, and the second wave of indictments never came. Behind doors, the decision passed to pursue the cases only at the state level—supposedly, we were later told, because that was the stronger legal route. That rationale seemed questionable at best, given that Lacey Act violations (the illegally taken wolf hide and skull, like the two bear hides, had crossed state lines) and the firearm charges could pin on a felony or two apiece. Surely, state and federal charges could both have been brought; they complemented rather than duplicated each other. Of course, the call wasn’t up to the investigating agents. Years later, Agent Friburg would express to me his own disappointment at the prosecutorial decision. Pursuing a case that spanned thousands of miles and state lines was a huge drain of resources, and there were surely bigger fish to fry. This was, after all, just a two-bit poaching case involving some wolf and a couple of black bears, in a state where their lives came cheap.

  Peacock and the suitcase bear

  Park Myers in court

  14

  The Weight of Dreams

  November 2010

  Spring merged into summer and gave way to autumn. The court dates for both Myers and Peacock were twice set back at the request of defense attorney David Mallet: a solid if cynical strategy, based on the premise that the more time passed, the more public interest would wane. The wolf had already been gone for a year, after all. Court scheduling conflicts resulted in additional postponement. But though judgment was delayed, and Myers (by his own later in-court admission) encountered surprisingly little day-to-day rancor, local justice did, in small ways, assert itself. Myers reportedly got shoved around and roughed up outside a bar for bragging about the wolf; and a grocery checker told me she’d watched mall security summoned at Super Bear to protect Myers from a guy who recognized him from the paper an d started making threats. A woman I didn’t know also approached me, months later, with the story of her own Myers encounter. She’d had a flat tire near the airport, and a man stopped to aid her. As he was setting up her jack, he asked her how she felt about being helped by Romeo’s killer, and she recognized him from the Empire photo. Taken aback, she refused his assistance. Other repercussions were far more direct. Park Myers lost his job at Alaskan Brewing, for reasons undisclosed to the public.

  After that, Park scrounged and found odd jobs, and Pam Myers, no longer working at Southeast Veterinary Hospital, found work as a checker at Super Bear. A handful of Juneauites offered support—everything from food to work opportunities—and Park Myers played the sympathy card to the hilt. He seemed expert at telling a sob story, featuring how he’d been framed, suffered persecution (which in fact, he scarcely encountered), and faced a looming bank eviction that was apparently never imminent. Park was also heard to brag that they were scamming the bank and living rent-free. “He had me fooled,” said neighbor Jon Stetson, who had extended a helping hand that was later bitten. “I learned the hard way.”

  More than five months after his arrest, more than a year after Romeo’s death, Park Myers’s judgment day arrived. About forty spectators, plus another dozen participants, crowded into the chambers of the Juneau District Court on a clear, early-November morning—an unprecedented crowd for a 9 A.M. misdemeanor hearing on a midweek workday. Harry, Joel Bennett, Vic Walker, Sherrie, and I sat within whispering distance, surrounded by many faces the wolf would have recognized. Someone had been concerned enough about order to summon a pair of state troopers to stand at the back, pistols on hip and broad-brimmed hats pulled low over their foreheads; but the crowd proved quiet and well mannered, awed by the unfamiliar setting and the moment. The Myers entourage—Park, Pamela, one of his sons, and several scruffy teens who obviously considered him a great guy—bunched together at front right, profoundly alone. Myers’s defense attorney, David Mallet, appeared via speakerphone from Washington State. Presiding over the State of Alaska v. Park Myers III sat District Judge Keith Levy, by all accounts a fair-minded man, sensitive to the community. On this morning, he bore the quietly exasperated, fatalistic visage of a modern Pontius Pilate, and with good reason.

  This wasn’t a standard trial, roiling with real-time drama: attorneys sparring over evidence and witnesses; the judge ruling on points of procedure and law; the guilt or innocence of the accused hinging on a jury’s verdict, culminating in the final act of sentencing. Such a piece of theater—rife with blow-by-blow detail, laden with catharsis—had never been in the cards. Defense attorney Mallet knew better than to publicly expose his client to the facts and the winds of emotion. This change of plea hearing, planned all along, was the final step in a purposely dull, well-choreographed procedural dance. By originally pleading not guilty, Mallet had given Myers every possible chance to gain from any legal loophole; facing a slam dunk case, he’d also created a bargaining chip out of nothing. A revised plea of guilty would spare the state the impending expense and trouble of a trial and also demonstrate a change of heart by the defendant—one that would position him for the best possible chance at leniency. Immediately following this calculated mea culpa, the imposition of a just and fair sentence would then fall upon a single man. Keith Levy must have known what sort of box he was in.

  The prosecution’s presentation was brief; the change of plea and the specific nature of the charges had rendered most details moot. District Attorney Gardner called just one witness: Wildlife Trooper Aaron Frenzel, who fielded some slow-pitch questions and narrated a brief evidentiary slide show, including images from Peacock’s phone. To those familiar with the case, the state’s version of events seemed closer to a Japanese kabuki show than summation. Neither Harry Robinson nor Michael Lowman would be called to the stand, though Harry was present and Michael Lowman had volunteered to fly across the country at his own expense to testify. No public acknowledgment of their key roles in the investigation (starting with the fact that they had uncovered the crime and then furnished specifics that had made the prosecution possible) would ever be made. Gardner concluded his presentation with a sentencing request for substantial fines and incarceration—sincere, perhaps, but still part of the dance. If the prosecution’s case was brief, the defense’s was all but nonexistent. Attorney Mallet just wanted the hearing to end—the quicker, the better. Without challenge from the prosecution, he reiterated Myers’s lie that the wolf in question was seventy pounds and gray, insisted that his client had no previous criminal record, and concluded by arguing that such small offenses didn’t call for jail time.

  Pared to its legal essence, the case before Judge Levy indeed amounted to this: overlapping wildlife misdemeanors, committed by a contrite perpetrator with a clean Alaska rap sheet. Observers ignorant of procedure, as most sitting in the courtroom surely were, supposed that the judge had the power to sentence Park Myers to the maximum on each and every count, or at least assign some time behind bars, as the district attorney had requested. But District Judge Keith Levy, as arbiter of justice for the Commonwealth of Alaska, was constrained by a funnel of sentencing guidelines. Despite lip service paid to the high value of Alaska’s wildlife, state law and the record of its application tell another story. Court records show that no one serves time for first-time misdemeanor wildlife violations in Alaska, and full fines on all possible charges are seldom, if ever, imposed. If Judge Levy had exceeded those boundaries set by precedent, his sentence would have been appealed and overridden. So it was that the judge meting out justice on our behalf had no choice but to let Park Myers walk free with little more than a hand slap. He explained that much in his sentencing preamble.

  Though some of us had known how it would go, we all sat in numb silence as Judge Levy, stumbling over words and making little eye contact with anyone, worked his way through the various counts, assigning and suspending time and dollar amounts. The end result: Romeo’s killer was sentenced to a total of 330 days in jail, all of them suspended, and $12,500 in fines, all but $5,000 canceled out. Including compensation for one bear and a wolf, plus miscellaneous fees, Myers was ordered to pay a total of $6,250. In addition, he wa
s required to complete one hundred hours of community service and forfeit three firearms (one of them actually Peacock’s .460). He also lost Alaska hunting privileges for two years, in case the legal constraint had ever mattered, and was placed on probation for an equal span. The suspended portions of the sentence were somewhat more than symbolic; if Myers violated the terms of probation, those penalties or portions of them could be reimposed—small consolation at best, and less so if we had known then how little Park Myers would ultimately pay.

  There was one added disappointment beyond the sentence and Myers’s jump-through-the-hoops apology that ended by suggesting everyone should “move on.” If Judge Levy meant to make up for his legally tied hands with at least a public tongue-lashing on behalf of the citizens of Juneau, he fell pathetically short. Here are Levy’s words, quoted verbatim from the court transcript: “I think the main—the other main goal here is community condemnation. I think it is—I think you knew what you were doing. I think you did show a lot of disrespect for the laws. I think it isn’t fair to others, and I think it, you know, certainly affects the conservation efforts.”

 

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