1984 inquiry issue in sheriff’s race

A 1984 investigation into sexual abuse at a pair of Pend Oreille County boys’ ranches has resurfaced in this summer’s Spokane County sheriff’s race, with one candidate’s former boss contending he botched a key assignment some 22 years ago.

Former Pend Oreille County Sheriff Tony Bamonte insists Cal Walker walked out on the investigation of the J-Bar-D and Reynolds Creek boys’ ranches when he quit as a deputy for that county’s law enforcement agency in September 1984.

“He disappeared for a month, didn’t return my calls and didn’t generate one thing,” Bamonte said.

Walker, who is currently Spokane Valley police chief and a Republican candidate for Spokane County sheriff against incumbent Ozzie Knezovich, is equally insistent that Bamonte has much of the information about his role in the investigation wrong.

Walker says he was a relatively green deputy in the summer of 1984 when he was ordered to compile records about the boys’ ranches and do some interviews. He says he did that for a month or two, until he left the force and turned over what he had.

Bamonte first leveled his criticisms of Walker in a letter to Spokane County commissioners when they were considering replacements for Sheriff Mark Sterk. They’ve been repeated on Spokane’s main talk radio program, The Mark Fuhrman Show, which is openly supporting Knezovich.

With 22 years passed, many records missing or sealed from public view, and memories as hazy as the Eastern Washington horizons in early September, nailing down some of the details is difficult. But interviews with people involved in law enforcement in the state’s northeastern-most county at the time call into question some of Bamonte’s criticisms.

Everyone seems to agree on some basic points.

In 1984, Pend Oreille County was seeing a major spike in crime being spawned by residents of the two boys’ ranches, which housed juvenile delinquents placed by the state Department of Social and Health Services. Allegations ranged from burglary and car theft to fights to some residents sexually assaulting other residents.

“We were having problems with a juvenile crime wave,” said Tom Metzger, now the county prosecutor and in 1984 the chief deputy prosecutor. “People were wondering ‘What the hell is going on?’ It’s just sucking our resources dry.”

Bamonte had tried for at least three years to get a formal investigation of the boys’ ranches. He was also critical of DSHS, saying it “wouldn’t do anything” about problems at the facilities, which were receiving state funds. In late July 1984, he and then-County Prosecutor Jim McNally convinced then-Superior Court Judge Sidney Buckley to convene a special inquiry, a rarely used process similar to a grand jury but overseen by a judge rather than a prosecutor. Neither the prosecutor’s office nor the Sheriff’s Department had ever been involved in such an inquiry.

Like a grand jury, its proceedings take place behind closed doors, and unless there are criminal prosecutions, its records are sealed. Testimony was to be taken in the coming months.

Although he had limited law enforcement experience, Walker was given a role in the investigation. He had none at all when Bamonte used one of his political appointments in 1983 to hire Walker, an acquaintance with a distant family tie: Walker was married to the foster daughter of Bamonte’s wife’s parents.

Walker had told Bamonte he’d always been interested in law enforcement, and did go through the police academy after he was hired. He was assigned as resident deputy in the north end of the county, where the boys’ ranches were located. He worked on the case for between one and two months.

At this point, the disagreements begin. Bamonte said he made clear the special inquiry was coming, “the investigation was important” and sexual abuse was involved.

Walker recalls the assignment as “compiling all the reports we had about J-Bar-D and Reynolds Creek ranches.” He did interview some current staff members and alleged victims of physical assaults, but “nobody wanted to talk or said they couldn’t identify offenders.” Sexual abuse came up occasionally, but “I don’t remember any charges.”

That could be because many of the complaints of sexual abuse were being investigated by DSHS. A 1987 lawsuit filed by boys’ ranch employees against DSHS details how ranch workers had received allegations of some residents sexually abusing other residents and failed to report them to law enforcement authorities, as required by state law. Because of this, the state took punitive action against the ranch employees which led to the lawsuit unrelated to the special inquiry.

Larry Mason, the deputy who helped train Walker in 1983 and is still with the department, said he recalls that most of the department’s complaints about the ranches involved thefts, assaults and runaways.

“I can’t remember ever working a sex-abuse case at either ranch,” he said. Mason has remained friends with Walker since he left. He said he had a “good working relationship” with Bamonte while his former boss was sheriff, but wondered: “If this case was such a big case, why give it to a rookie?”

The department was small – about eight officers including the sheriff – Bamonte replied. He considered Walker among his smartest and sharpest deputies – with good potential until he called and said he was leaving, walking out on the boys’ ranch investigation.

“I remember Walker didn’t do one thing, and left,” Bamonte said. With the inquiry coming up, Bamonte recalls that he had to dive into the investigation himself. “I slept on the couch in my office four nights to get ready” for the inquest.

Walker contends he didn’t walk out. Instead, he says he told Bamonte he planned to quit the force when the assignment was over to return to Spokane; the sheriff told him “if you’re going to leave, go now.”

Bamonte suggested that Walker spent the months before he left moonlighting, doing construction work in his off hours for a Metaline dentist with ties to the boys’ ranches. Bamonte had also done work for the dentist, and said the man once told him it would “be worth your while to back off on the boys’ ranches.”

Walker acknowledged that he and Bamonte had both done construction work for the dentist – moonlighting was common among the staff because pay was so low – but he knew of no connection between the dentist and the ranches, other than he probably had the contract to treat the residents. He heard no suggestion he back off the investigation.

Walker said he did turn over his work when he left that September, the boxes he had gone through of investigative reports from years of complaints at the ranches.

Any record that became part of the special inquiry was sealed when it concluded. Metzger, now the county prosecutor, said lawyers representing some potential victims of the ranches recently asked for copies of any available sheriff’s records that haven’t been sealed. When county officials looked, they discovered “they just aren’t there.”

But one person is sure the Sheriff’s Department had boxes of reports on the boys’ ranches in September 1984. Jim Keightley, another deputy with about a year at the department, recalls he was assigned to the boys’ ranches investigation in mid-September. He didn’t know the circumstances under which Walker left the department, but can place the date he got the assignment with some certainty. It happened after he broke his wrist while roller skating with his fiancée, and was pulled from patrol duty for desk work.

“Bamonte had given me boxes upon boxes related the boys’ ranches. I was to try to put something together,” Keightley said. He recalls there was a wide range of allegations, including some internal DSHS reports about sexual abuse, but he quickly discovered that many of the documents were multiple copies of the same reports. When he separated the reports of distinct cases, he wound up with about one box and began to put together a synopsis.

And then, he said, “I got myself in my own hot water.”

Keightley said he didn’t have a clear idea of when his report was due to Bamonte for the special inquiry, and went on vacation expecting to finish it when he returned. When he got back, the special inquiry had been held and was over, and Bamonte had left him a memo that said “you failed me.”

He apologized to Bamonte, kept his job, and when he applied to the Washington State Patrol the next year, his boss “gave me a glowing recommendation.” Some 21 years later, Keightley is a WSP lieutenant in Yakima and is running for a state House of Representatives position.

He says he has no ax to grind with either Bamonte or Walker. “I’m indebted to (Bamonte) because he gave me my first job. Cal’s a good man, a man of integrity.”

Keightley added that he hadn’t talked to Walker or anyone else about the investigation until recently, but is aware it has come up in the Spokane sheriff’s race.

Because the main testimony of the inquiry was in late October and early November – a Spokesman-Review story from Nov. 3, 1984 said testimony ended the day before, after 13 witnesses took the stand and four refused to testify – Keightley’s recollections suggest it was his departure for vacation, not Walker’s leaving the department in mid-September, that caused Bamonte to work through the nights to prepare for the inquiry.

In a recent interview, Bamonte said initially he didn’t remember assigning Keightley to the boys’ ranches investigation. But when more of the state trooper’s recollections were mentioned, such as his broken wrist and being assigned to desk duty, the former sheriff agreed that some of it “kind of rings a bell.”

But he didn’t remember Keightley being reprimanded for the investigation and continued to insist that Walker failed to deliver on his assignment.

Metzger and McNally, the former Pend Oreille County prosecutor, said they knew of no problems with the Sheriff’s Department’s investigation during the special inquiry. State law restricts them from talking about the details of the inquiry, but McNally said he was satisfied with the work Bamonte and his department did.

No criminal charges were filed as a result of the inquiry, they said, but the boys’ ranches were put out of business and some DSHS supervisors were reassigned.

The state revoked contracts it had to place boys at the facilities and eventually suspended their licenses.

Almost everyone involved gave Bamonte the lion’s share of the credit. As Keightley put it, “the sheriff took the information, went in and got the boys’ ranches closed.”