Badges, Bears, and Eagles

by Steven T. Callan

  Having taken time off for the holidays, Warden Hatcher had not responded to the first report. He received a second tip on January 7, 1985 from a different informant, providing license plate information for the two suspect vehicles. Hatcher ran the plates through Shasta County Sheriff’s dispatch and learned that the blue Jeep belonged to a well-known violator named Jake William Stillwell. The Ford pickup was registered to an unfamiliar name—Mitchell Wayne Davis. Hatcher had once pinched Stillwell for a minor fishing violation but the longtime outlaw always seemed to be just out of reach when it came to the more serious crimes. Now that he suspected Stillwell was involved, the veteran warden set out to investigate the following day.

  Heavy rains had fallen the night before, making the steep dirt roads inside Cottonwood Wilds Subdivision muddy and too slippery to drive on. Warden Hatcher parked his patrol vehicle near the entrance and hiked two miles into the area where the violations were occurring. He was an experienced trapping investigator so it didn’t take him long to find the illegal trap line. There were seventeen traps, all illegally baited with exposed rabbit parts.

  By the time Hatcher located the last trap, it was almost dark, so he decided to return early the following morning. Although California trapping regulations required that traps be checked once a day, Stillwell or Davis would probably not return any time soon. After all, they were already committing at least three violations—trespass, sight bait and unnumbered traps. That night, Warden Hatcher lost sleep thinking about the illegal trap line. Could this be my chance, Hatcher wondered, to finally bust Stillwell for something more serious than taking a couple extra trout?

  Up the next morning before daylight, the sleepy warden reached Platina sometime around 6:00 a.m. He hid his patrol vehicle and again hiked to the violation site. Accustomed to stakeouts, Hatcher found a dry log to sit on and waited for the trappers to return. For the first two hours he occupied his time by watching a hungry scrub jay. This intelligent, close relative of the common crow had discovered a chunk of rabbit meat hanging above one of the illegal traps. Gliding in from a nearby perch, the large, bluish-gray bird would land on the ground, hop in the air and attempt to rip bits of flesh from the dangling piece of tissue. With every attempt, it landed closer to the deadly trigger plate and ultimate doom. Hatcher tried to discourage the determined corvid by tossing debris in its direction. Undeterred, the bird would fly back to its perch, turn around and immediately return.

  By noon, Warden Hatcher’s own hunger began to affect his decision-making process. He wanted to wait another hour or two, but his stomach convinced him that the two outlaws were probably not going to show up.

  One by one, Hatcher collected the seventeen illegally-set traps. Each time he removed a trap he replaced it with one of his business cards, writing the same message on the back: Contact me if you want your traps back. Knowing what a cagey adversary Jake Stillwell was, Warden Hatcher did not expect to hear from the illegal trappers.

  On February 12, 1985, Jake Stillwell and Mitch Davis pulled into a private trout hatchery on Lanes Valley Road, near the foothill community of Manton. Stillwell was at the wheel of his blue jeep. He had worked at the hatchery a few years earlier and befriended the manager, Al Hollis. Stillwell and Davis were apparently out plinking that particular day and dropped by to talk with Hollis. Al Hollis was adjusting the boards on one of his fish ponds when Stillwell and Davis walked up beside him.

  “What are you guys up to?” asked Hollis, as he came to an upright position.

  “That game warden, Merton Hatcher, took seventeen of our traps,” Stillwell groused.

  “How did that happen?”

  “We were trapping up by the Ditch Grade. He must have heard that we were in there because he walked all the way in, took our traps and left his business cards. His cards said if we wanted our traps back, we had to contact him. Can he do that?”

  Having once worked trappers as a Fish and Game warden, Hollis could think of several possible violations. “Were your traps numbered?”

  Stillwell and Davis looked at each other for a second. Most of the traps belonged to Davis’s dad. Davis answered, “No, not really.”

  Appearing embarrassed by Hollis’s response to their question, Stillwell changed the subject. “What if we kill a mountain lion?”

  Knowing that mountain lions were protected in California, Hollis was taken aback by the question. “Why, did you get one?”

  “Yeah, we killed one off Ponderosa Way. It’s all skinned out if ya know anybody who wants to buy it. Ya know, everyone is pissed off at Hatcher. Whaddaya think would happen if we put a bullet through his windshield?”

  Hollis was not eager to continue this discussion, which involved the killing of a protected mountain lion and a threat of violence against a peace officer. He pretended to lose interest and walked toward the next pond.

  “What’s the big deal about sight bait?” shouted Davis.

  “Sight bait could attract a soaring bird, like a hawk or an eagle.” said Hollis.

  Stillwell and Davis thought that was hilarious. “Maybe we ought to kill a couple eagles!” said Stillwell, with his typical bravado. Stillwell and Davis looked at each other, snickering. They mentioned doing something with an eagle, but by then Hollis had reached the next pond and couldn’t quite hear what was said.

  Before the men left, Hollis clearly overheard Stillwell say, “We should kill a deer for every one of the traps Hatcher took and dump them at the Fish and Game office.”

  On February 15, 1985, at 7:55 a.m., Inspector Dave Nelson, enforcement chief for the California Department of Fish and Game’s Redding Regional Office, was arriving for work. Nelson was a lean, six-foot-three-inch, former World War II army officer, rapidly approaching retirement. A nice enough guy, he always seemed distant and impersonal when dealing with subordinates. I figured that had something to do with his military background. Although Inspector Nelson never let on that he knew me any better than the fifty other people he supervised, he had actually been my father’s boss back in the sixties. Young and spry then, Nelson sometimes played catch with my brother and me when he came by the house to see my dad. Now his hair was almost gone and his hands were so shaky he couldn’t write anything without using the old Underwood typewriter that sat on his desk, but the veteran inspector still showed up every morning, bright and early.

  As he pulled into the office parking lot, Nelson noticed a black garbage bag lying at the base of the locked west entrance gate. Thinking that someone had thoughtlessly discarded his garbage, Inspector Nelson walked over and picked up the bag. His first inclination was to drop it into a dumpster at the back of the office, but something told him to look inside. The bag contained a magnificent raptor, which the veteran wildlife protection officer immediately identified as a bald eagle.

  Fresh blood dripped from the bird’s nostrils and breast area, indicating that it had recently been shot. “I’ll be damned!” mumbled Nelson. “Somebody shot an eagle.” As he was about to close the bag, Inspector Nelson noticed something attached to the eagle’s leg. It was a message. “What the hell?” exclaimed the surprised inspector.

  Like most fifty-eight-year-olds, Dave Nelson couldn’t read much of anything without his glasses. He fetched them from his car and quickly returned. The note—hand-printed on a piece of white, six-by-eight-inch paper—was littered with expletives, a mixture of upper and lower case letters and a lot of misspelled words. More importantly, it threatened the life of Fish and Game Warden Merton Hatcher.

  Inspector Nelson brought the bag inside the regional office. A few minutes later, Jack Weaver, the Redding area patrol captain, arrived for work. Weaver, a two-hundred-sixty-pound chain-smoker, always wore a zipped-up uniform jacket to hide his enormous belly. Seldom was the captain seen without a cigarette in one hand and a thirty-two ounce fountain drink in the other.

  Captain Jack, as he was often called, supervised the warden force in four Northern California counties—including Shasta, where the office was located.
His relatively small army of wildlife protection officers consisted of three field lieutenants and sixteen wardens. Inspector Nelson intended to turn the matter over to Weaver and his crew as soon as possible.

  With long, slow strides, the soon-to-be retired inspector carried the bag up the hallway toward Captain Weaver’s office. Nelson supervised Weaver, but I always had the impression that he preferred to deal with him as little as possible. Weaver had pretty much run the enforcement branch of the office for several years before Nelson arrived and there seemed to be an underlying tension between them. Their antipathy had reached a boiling point during the previous summer, when all the enforcement personnel attended an annual training campout in the nearby mountains and Nelson and Weaver got into a heated argument over how to cook corn. That was the first time I had ever seen Dave Nelson drop his guard and become one of the guys. We all found it hilarious, but since that time, the two strong-willed supervisors seemed to keep their distance from each other whenever possible.

  “Jack, you’ll want to look into this,” said Nelson, as he entered Weaver’s office. “It involves Warden Hatcher.” As was his custom before the state smoking ban went into effect, Weaver was sitting behind his desk, leaning back in his chair, smoking an unfiltered Camel cigarette. The captain regularly polluted the north wing of the building and pretty much dared anyone to complain about it.

  “What has Hatcher gotten into now?” grumbled Weaver, as he took a long drag on his cigarette.

  “See for yourself,” replied Nelson. “I found this lying in front of the gate this morning.”

  Nelson placed the bag on Weaver’s desk and stepped away. Weaver opened the bag and looked inside. After reading the note attached to the eagle’s leg, the perplexed captain said, “I’ll take care of it,” and Nelson walked back down the hallway toward his own office.

  That’s where I came in. I had just gone 10-8 (on duty and subject to radio call) when I received a radio report that Captain Weaver wanted to see me. I worked out of my residence and tried to avoid the regional office as much as possible. I was a former athlete and admitted health nut, so the thought of being trapped in the captain’s office with the door closed made me want to head for the hills; I could count on the usual nicotine headache and the overwhelming urge to go back home and change my uniform. As I entered the front door of the building, the receptionist advised me that Jack was waiting to see me in the office adjacent to hers.

  “Come in and close the door,” instructed Weaver. “I need to talk to you about Warden Hatcher and something that’s happened.” Captain Weaver snuffed out his cigarette in an ash tray already brimming with cigarette butts and lit up a fresh one. After we had stayed in the captain’s office long enough for me to get a splitting headache, he led me down the hallway to the evidence freezer. Inside the freezer was the black garbage bag Inspector Nelson had found, along with the dead bald eagle and the threatening note. “I don’t know what you’re going to be able to do with this,” said Weaver, “but do what you can.”

  I opened the garbage bag and examined the eagle. It was obvious that the bird had been shot through the chest, probably with a .22 rifle. Captain Weaver watched as I read the note for the first time. I was careful not to touch the paper and avoided placing my fingers on the bag. The first thing I noticed was the unusual spelling of Hatcher’s name—“Hather.” The curious mixture of upper and lower case letters appeared to have been written with a black felt-tip pen. Although the captain seemed fairly pessimistic about making a case, I enjoyed a good investigation and was confident about eventually finding the culprit.

  This time I wasn’t just confident, but I was also determined to find the miserable bastards who had killed that eagle. For me this would be not just another investigation, but a mission. I loved all wildlife, but eagles—golden eagles as well as bald eagles—were at the top of the list. Having been fortunate enough to handle and even rehabilitate these majestic birds while working in Southern California, I couldn’t imagine anyone stooping so low as to kill one. It was downright sacrilegious!

  II

  Merton Hatcher was one of the strangest Fish and Game wardens who ever pinned on a badge. For a number of years, during the 1970s, he was just about the only Fish and Game representative that Redding area hunters, fishermen and trappers ever encountered. From the time Warden Hatcher got up in the morning until the time he went to bed at night, he wore his uniform and packed a sidearm. Whether he was out patrolling for deer poachers or shopping at Sears with his wife, Hatcher would be in uniform and packing a .357 Magnum revolver on his gun belt.

  Merton fancied himself an amateur preacher and self-proclaimed ambassador from whatever church he happened to be attending at the time. Much to the chagrin of his supervisors, he was not shy about expressing his strong religious opinions, on duty or off. At the same time, Hatcher had the reputation of being a “hard-assed” game warden who would not hesitate to arrest his own mother if he caught her doing something wrong.

  Warden Hatcher believed that a person couldn’t possibly be a real game warden without also being an experienced hunter and fisherman. He often bragged about the time he killed his first bear. According to Merton, he killed the bear way down in the bottom of a canyon and was unable to carry it out before dark. As the temperature dropped, his only source of warmth was the gutted bear carcass, which he climbed inside to spend the night. If anyone else had told me that story, I would have accused him of pulling my leg. Well aware of Hatcher and his eccentricities, I figured it had to be true. He probably pretended to be Grizzly Adams so he would have that story to tell.

  I began the investigation by discussing the eagle and the note with Warden Hatcher, asking if he knew of anyone who might want to threaten or discredit him. Hatcher thought for a few minutes and mentioned the trapping investigation from a month earlier. When Warden Hatcher had confiscated the seventeen traps, he had failed to tell any of his supervisors. Time passed, no one claimed the traps and he had gone on to other business. Therefore Hatcher’s supervisors were unaware of anyone out there with an ax to grind.

  “The trappers never came back, so I picked up all their traps and left my business cards in their place,” explained Hatcher.

  “How many traps did you take?” I asked.

  “Seventeen.”

  “Anything else you can tell me?”

  “I have their names and vehicle information if you want it.”

  Warden Hatcher provided me with the vehicle information he had been given and the names Mitch Davis and Jake Stillwell. With very little to go on, I contacted Paul Wertz, the regional public information officer, and asked him to write a press release about the eagle incident. Wertz was an effective, professional writer, who could create a compelling story for the local newspaper. Soon everyone in town was wondering who had shot the bald eagle and left the threatening note. The actual content of the note and the name of the officer involved were not published, for obvious reasons.

  I transported the infamous contents of the plastic garbage bag to the Shasta County Sheriff’s Evidence Laboratory. The evidence officer, Sergeant Art Wooden, used all the most sophisticated techniques available at the time to pull up some kind of usable fingerprint. Much to our disappointment, nothing was found. Stillwell and Davis were prime suspects, but for the time being I had no tangible evidence to use against them.

  No sooner had the newspaper article appeared in Redding’s Record Searchlight than it began to pay off. On February 19th, I received a telephone call from a man who said he wanted to keep his identity confidential. At the time of the initial call, I did not know the caller or recognize his voice.

  “Yeah, I read the story in the paper about the eagle being killed and the threat to one of your wardens. I might have some information about that,” said the caller.

  “We appreciate any information we can get,” I replied.

  “Last Tuesday these two guys came into the hatchery where I work. One of them used to work here. Their names are
Jake Stillwell—that’s the one that used to work here—and Mitch Davis. They were driving a dark blue Jeep. That belongs to Stillwell. Anyway, we started talking and Stillwell said that Merton Hatcher had picked up seventeen of their traps.”

  “Are you sure he said seventeen traps?” I asked.

  “I’m positive,” said the caller. “I read the article in the paper and figured it had to be them.”

  During the remainder of our conversation, the caller provided a detailed account of the February 12th conversation with Stillwell and Davis at the private fish hatchery. He described how the two outlaws had talked about putting a bullet through Warden Hatcher’s windshield and killing a mountain lion. He went on to say that Stillwell and Davis had joked about killing a couple eagles and dumping deer carcasses at the Fish and Game office. As excited as I was about receiving this invaluable information, the caller’s next statement was troubling: “I can’t testify in court,” he said in an apologetic tone. “The two guys I work for would be mad if they knew I was even talking to you.”

  My new informant’s reluctance to testify would make things more complicated, but he had given me the information I needed to prepare two detailed search warrants. For the time being, it would be necessary to convince the judge to seal the affidavits. Having dealt with similar dilemmas, I knew some tough decisions might have to be made if and when we went to trial.

  I carefully documented what my informant had said, along with facts provided by Warden Hatcher and physical evidence found at the Fish and Game office. The remainder of my work day was spent preparing search warrants and affidavits for the district attorney’s approval. Once approved by the district attorney and signed by the judge, the search warrants would cover the persons, residences and vehicles of Jake William Stillwell and Mitchell Wayne Davis. More specifically, Fish and Game officers would be authorized to search: