Thursday, April 20, 2000 | Print this story

District Attorney Reports on Gates Murder, Seals Evidence

By COLLIN OWENS, Times Staff Writer

    LOS ANGELES-- Seeking to end months of rumors and rumblings about conspiracy and cover-ups, a report commissioned by Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti concludes that Alek Hidell acted alone when he killed Microsoft Corp. co-founder William H. Gates III on Dec. 2, 1999. The report, released yesterday, also concludes that Hidell killed LAPD officer Tom Baker while attempting to flee and that the shooting of Hidell by LAPD trainee Jacob Powell was "within LAPD policy and justified."
    "This investigation was thorough and exhaustive," Garcetti said at a news conference yesterday. "The people of Los Angeles and the world can be assured that all avenues have been explored, and the facts have been determined beyond reasonable doubt."
    The report is the culmination of over 2 months of investigation and hearings by a Board of Inquiry, which was headed by Garcetti and included members of the District Attorney's office, the LAPD, private attorneys and technical specialists. It specifically rejects several conspiracy theories and other speculations that have received media coverage in the months since the Gates murder.


     Evidence 'Indefinitely Sealed'
    Garcetti released only a brief summary report to the public while "indefinitely" sealing the remainder of the report--including crime-scene and autopsy photographs and other evidence--out of "respect for the families of the victims." The sealing of evidence has fueled crticism from watchdog and civil-liberties organizations.
    "There's no reason to seal all of these documents," said Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. "The autopsy pictures I can understand--but all the witness statements? Hidell's journals? Ballistic evidence? That doesn't make sense."
    "The assassination of Bill Gates can now be called officially unsolved," said Debra Meagher, co-president of Citizens for Truth. "It's obvious from the opening pages of this tiny report that it is interested in doing nothing except clearing the LAPD of misconduct charges and villifying the alleged assassin. The D.A.'s report is a whitewash, pure and simple."
    In a formal statement released minutes after the official release of the board's report, Citizens for Truth is called for an immediate public release of all sealed files related to the report.


     Report Provides Glimpse Into Hidell
    The brief public report does provide a fascinating glimpse into the life of Alek Hidell and includes specific information from police and prison records previously unavailable to the public.
    Raised in Seattle after the death of his mother at age 2, Hidell endured a childhood that included a father with an extensive criminal past (including narcotics dealing, forgery, theft and pandering) who was often incarcerated when Hidell was young. In trouble with the law himself as a youth, Hidell spent 2 years in El Paso de Robles Youth Correctional Facility in Paso Robles, California.
    After his release from the correctional facility in 1994, Hidell drifted from job to job up and down the West Coast. Involved for a number of years in the King County Worker's Socialist Party, in 1998 Hidell publicly broke from the organization in a violent outburst. Worker's Socialist Party leader Roaul Perry describes Hidell's behavior at the time as "extreme" and that he advocated such ideas as "hanging dummies of twelve CEOs in effigy off of the Space Needle" and "kidnapping a prominent business person the way the guerrillas do it in Colombia."
    Excerpts from Hidell's journal reprinted in the report offer a chilling glimpse into his planning for a "class war," such as the October 1999 entry that reads, "It only takes one big thing to get cw [sic] started, but someone has to step up and do it. What when who where how???? [sic]--I know why already."

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