Flirtation called innocent joke

Marina Kalani says e-mails she sent to Kootenai County Prosecutor Bill Douglas, including one suggesting he leave his wife and run away with her, were simply attempts to make light of “malicious rumors” the two were having an affair.

In messages released Tuesday, Douglas and the former supervisor of the county’s juvenile drug court call each other by nicknames and exchange sexually charged banter.

Douglas, re-elected in 2004 as a Republican after first running as a Democrat, issued a written statement Tuesday describing the e-mails he exchanged with Kalani as “informal communications which contain innocent sarcasm and humor.” He also said the content and number of the e-mails have been “grossly exaggerated.”

“Several of the e-mails are sarcastic exchanges and are only making fun of malicious gossip mongering,” Douglas said. “E-mail sarcasm and humor was a way to poke fun at and deal with cruel rumors and pettiness.”

In numerous exchanges on Jan. 14, 2005, Kalani asked Douglas, “Would it be SO bad if you left your wife & we ran away together?”

Kalani e-mailed Douglas that she was having problems with a laptop computer, and he offered to buy her a new one.

“Are you going to make me sleep with you in order to get it?” she wrote. “If not, then NO, I don’t want it!”

She also wrote Douglas that day to say she had watched him walk through the office lobby: “I was really struck by how truly handsome you are & how well you carry yourself. (I was really turned on). I don’t see you ‘from a distance’ often enough. (I don’t see you close-up nearly enough either). I miss you.”

He replied: “Aw gosh … gollee … I’m blushing pink. U not so bad yoself.”

“Anything taken out of time, context, personality will be misinterpreted,” Kalani said Tuesday in a telephone interview. “You can take those strictly at their face value (and) they sound very scandalous.”

Kalani said humor was a way to cope with the “very intense environment” in the prosecutor’s office.

“Sometimes you just need comic relief,” she said.

Douglas said rumors he and Kalani were having an affair surfaced in fall 2004, months after she was hired as the coordinator for the county’s Juvenile Education and Training Court program. “They were, of course, very hurtful,” he said Tuesday.

Douglas said there were public functions the two needed to attend together to raise money for JET Court. But the rumors were so persistent they “could not be seen together,” he said.

The two discussed everything from Halloween costumes (Douglas as “Puff Daddy Combs”) to the possibility of Kalani producing a CD and Douglas running for Congress.

In one e-mail, Douglas asked Kalani if he should “Dress to kill Thurs?”

“I prefer that you undress,” Kalani wrote.

“Whatever you say,” he responded.

Kalani wrote the prosecutor: “I love you.”

Looking at their relationship as an employee-employer relationship, Kalani said, the e-mails appear inappropriate. Kalani said she’s not only friends with Douglas, but with his wife, too.

On March 9, 2005, Kalani asked Douglas for his wife’s e-mail address. She said, “Okay, I have to tell you, though, I need to be careful not to become too close to her. That might be weird.”

Douglas said his wife of 34 years, Geri, had read the e-mails and “long ago publicly stated she had no concern.”

Kalani said she never worried about how Geri Douglas would perceive the e-mails. “I joked with her that way,” she said.

Kalani also said, “Joking of that nature is just not uncommon in my group of friends.”

In one e-mail, Douglas called Kalani “Lost Lamb” and referred to himself as “Shepherd of Lost Lambs.” Douglas also called her “Uzi” and signed his e-mails “The BOMB” and “Shotgun.”

Kalani referred to him as “Coconut Willy,” “Chief,” “Snoopy” and “Honey-bear.”

As for the nicknames, Kalani said “Coconut Willy” was the prosecutor’s nickname as a child, “Chief” was slang for boss and “The Bomb” is a term to describe someone who’s cool. The Lost Lamb and Shepherd reference comes from a song from the Broadway musical “Oh, Kay!”

Douglas isn’t the only one she calls “Honey-bear,” Kalani said. Her boyfriend and attorney, Greg Horne, and her dog are also “Honey-bear.”

She also said “I love yous” are not uncommon. “I’m a big user of terms of endearment,” Kalani said.

Douglas apologized for using his e-mail “in such an informal way” and said he and his employees will not continue to use county e-mail to “send jokes, express sarcasm, or transmit anything that may be misinterpreted.”

The case involving his e-mails is an “example of how causal communication can be preserved and misinterpreted forever,” he said.

As for public response, Douglas said “a few will believe what they want to believe” about the e-mails and his relationship with Kalani. He said he believes the e-mails will be “judged fairly and in context.”

Douglas was elected prosecutor in 1988 and re-elected four times. He said he has yet to decide whether he will seek re-election in 2008.