Law and Disorder 10-29

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Actor Randy Quaid and wife Evi — both charged with fraud for allegedly skipping out on a $10,000 bill at the San Ysidro Ranch this summer — failed to appear in court on 10/26, which was their second straight no-show in the case. Prosecutor Lee Carter said he was getting paperwork started to extradite the couple from Texas but is still hopeful the two will appear at a 10/29 hearing.

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Garren Musser will stand trial in the murder of Lisa Zazueta after admitting to the killing in interviews with police. Despite arguments from his attorney, Jeff Chambliss, Musser will have to face enhancements that allege he killed her while lying in wait and for financial gain. Musser told police that Zazueta, with whom Musser had a brief relationship, wouldn’t leave him alone and that he didn’t want to pay child support after learning Zazueta was pregnant.

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Former Santa Barbara County employee Shawn Terris, also a longtime member of the county retirement board, filed a lawsuit on 10/27 against the county alleging she was wrongfully terminated and retaliated against for her work on the retirement board, as well as her efforts to organize county managers into a union. County officials contend a suspension she received was for insubordination, not for attempting to organize a union, and that her position was eventually eliminated because of budget cuts. Terris claims this is the first case in the state in which a retirement board trustee’s rights have been violated.

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An unidentified man reportedly jumped from Cold Spring Bridge on the afternoon of 10/27, marking the seventh suicide from the structure this year. According to emergency dispatch reports, multiple witnesses reported to the California Highway Patrol that they saw a man walking along the bridge and that, when confronted, the man told a witness he was okay. It is believed that more people have committed suicide from the bridge this year than any other year since the bridge’s construction.

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The 57 families victimized by Orson Mozes in an adoption scam are entitled to the more than $300,000 in assets that Mozes — who is now serving a prison sentence — possessed when he was arrested last year, Judge George Eskin said in a written decision on 10/27. Mozes’s ex-wife, Christen Brown, said she was entitled to the money for child support, but the judge said that not only did she not have a “legitimately acquired interest” in the money, as required by law, but that she was not an innocent spouse as she claimed and was “probably complicit in the criminal activities.”

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Robert Eringer, known around Santa Barbara by his blog moniker, The Investigator, is filing suit against Prince Albert, ruler of Monaco, in Santa Barbara Superior Court for failure to pay for his services as the Prince’s security advisor. Eringer is demanding more than $500,000 in unpaid wages, and the suit has caused considerable embarrassment to a country that is trying to clean up its image as a tax haven for money-laundering criminals.

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A former Santa Barbara Superior Court judge, who served 20 years on the bench, was cited for reckless driving near the Santa Barbara Bowl on 10/26, when he allegedly came close to hitting several adults and children and drove on a curb while a concert was being let out. Judge James Slater, who retired as a judge in 1997 after years of hearing both criminal and civil proceedings, drove onto the curb at Milpas Street and Garcia Road to avoid a barricade preventing him from turning right onto Milpas from Garcia, where he lives, according to the S.B. Police Department’s Lt. Paul McCaffrey.

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