The Advocate and the Defender

By Sara Ganim

Part I

October 12, 2011, is one of those warm fall mornings that only Southern California seems to master — bright sun, crisp air, and a burst of energetic optimism palpitating through a light breeze.

Paul Wilson rises with the sun. Just before 7 a.m., he meanders to his kitchen to brew coffee for himself and his wife, Christy. They sit down across from each other in the cozy front room of the Orange County home that he bought from Christy’s father shortly after they married. Paul had asked for permission to marry his bride in this very room. Here, their three children stood on tiptoes peering out the window at their provincial street. Now, Paul and Christy sit in matching chairs by the large three-panel bay window, on the cusp of being empty nesters, with the luxury of stretching time to suit their whims.

Christy — a beautiful California blond, who gets out of bed each morning with a radiant, unforced glow — is telling Paul about the moon. 

The night before, he had playfully declined when she invited him to go out to their courtyard and meditate underneath it. Now, with his hand wrapped around a warm mug, Paul smiles and asks her how it went. 

“Well, sweetie,” he starts, both lovingly and with some sarcastic amusement, “How was your forgiving moon?”

Maybe Christy misunderstands his tone. Maybe she doesn’t care. But she doesn’t banter back. She doesn’t joke. In a most serious tone, she goes deeply reflective. 

 “You know, Paul, I went out there and I lit my incense and I just started thinking, I just don't have anybody to forgive or anything to ask forgiveness for.” 

This catches Paul by surprise. Sure, they have a portrait-perfect life — a happy marriage, well-adjusted kids, careers successful enough to support a modestly comfortable life in the upper middle class of a sought-after zip code and a short commute to one of the most alluring coastlines in America. But it is rare for them to articulate that to each other in the way that Christy is this morning. 

“Our life is just so perfect right now,” she says. “And I'm just so happy. We’re so blessed.” 

Photos of Christy Wilson. Credit: Paul Wilson.

Christy isn’t the only one who feels this way. They are an enviable couple in an idyllic place. Their romance is statistically unlikely. They met at a mutual friend’s home when they were just 21. Paul was dating someone else at the time. 

“I come walking down the stairs and the minute I see her, I am…” All these years later, Paul still struggles to find the words to adequately describe it. 

The courtship speeds forward. If it had been anything other than fate, it would have been alarmingly fast. After two dates, Paul kicks out his roommate and moves Christy in. Within eight months, they marry in the Presbyterian church where her father had gone to school. More than 200 people from their tight-knit Orange County community come to celebrate.  

Paul and Christy want kids, and they want to grow up with them, so they quickly have two boys and a girl, growing their family just as fast as the place around them. The next 25 years are explosive for Orange County. By the late aughts, it will triple in size, multiplying in diversity of people, jobs, and opportunity. But Seal Beach — the county’s northernmost coastal community — remains a charismatic small town, holding tightly to its sense of community, even as everything around it evolves. Still today, the archetypal American Main Street is lined with family-owned cafes, bars, and boutique stores, each with its own sense of character. Main Street deposits into a small green space that connects a seafoam green shopping plaza wedged up against the Pacific Coast Highway. 

There’s nothing flashy or lavish about this town. It’s a quiet, authentic and uniquely Southern Californian. 

It’s a Wednesday morning. Republican presidential hopefuls debated on TV last night. A lot of people are talking about Mitt Romney, but more people are gossiping about how Rob Kardashian and Nancy Grace escaped ouster from Dancing With The Stars. 

Gordon Gallego puts his key into the lock at Salon Meritage and twists. It’s about 9 a.m. His first client is supposed to bring him coffee, but she’s late and he’s rolling his eyes at her text messages. “She’s late because she’s having a glamour fit,” he says out loud, laughing. 

Victoria Buzzo has a penchant for vintage outfits, but matching them isn’t always easy. Gordon is used to this. Victoria is not just a client, she’s one of his closest friends. She’s also a stylist here. And that’s how it is at Salon Meritage. Clients are more than clients, haircuts are more than haircuts. 

It’s not long before the door swings open. In sweeps Victoria. She’s in black, high-waisted sailor shorts and a white top. 

“Of course, after all that, you come in with the best freaking outfit. So cute,” Gordon says. Victoria laughs. It’s a deep, bellowing laugh from the gut. Gordon lovingly calls it the most obnoxious laugh on Earth.

“Sit. You’re late,” he demands in his signature crusty demeanor, which everyone knows is mostly — mostly — a long-running gag. 

“Let me say hello to everyone first!” 

Victoria makes a habit of personally greeting every single person each day. 

One by one, the rest of the cast assembles.

Stylists Lisa Powers, Jeffrey Segall and Laura Webb Elody arrive. Laura has brought her mom, Hattie Straetz, as her client this morning. Still glowing from her recent Vegas wedding, Laura’s ring is catching the overhead lights and most of the room’s attention.

“The only thing more radiant than her ring is her smile,” Gordon says. And then follows it up with some signature sarcasm. “Oh my God, you’re so nice, I don’t even want to sit with you.” Actually, everyone always wants to sit with her.

Karen Cropper is setting up her station for the day. Karen is an outlier — a newbie. Almost everyone else has been here for a decade or more. She throws a small nod to Laura, easing into her place, watching the others and absorbing the vibes around her.

Through the back door enter the salon’s owners, Randy and Sandy Fannin, balancing boxes of fresh supplies. Randy and Sandy are the soul of this place and everyone knows it. Everything that makes this salon a family, everything that makes it work, comes from Randy and Sandy. Every summer, they throw a barbecue at their home in Laguna, and every winter, a holiday weekend getaway. They don’t run the business like bosses, they run it like parents — with just enough warmth and just enough structure to keep everyone in line.

And just like a family, everyone here supports each other unquestionably. Gordon, who is unexpectedly getting a divorce, is benefiting from that this morning. 

“Let’s talk about where you can stash away some cash,” Victoria says, only half jokingly. “I hate the money part of this,” he says, putting the finishing touches on her trim. 

“I know you don’t have time for a blow dry,” Victoria tells Gordon.

“I do, actually. Paul is my next client and he’s late. He’s having coffee with Christy.”

This is the rhythm of Salon Meritage. Chaotic, loud, but joyful. The chatter of gossip is as natural as the hum of the hairdryers.  

Christy loves the stories. She comes home eager to pour a glass of wine, sit with Paul in those matching bay window chairs and download everyone else’s business. The makeups, breakups, the salon competition — although mostly friendly. Randy and Sandy make a point to resolve any budding conflicts. 

Paul is proud, although too modest to admit it, that he and Christy have a relationship that others covet. Christy’s nail counter is in a room at the salon with a big window that lets the bright California sun shine through. Paul runs his own textile business. He makes clothing for major U.S. retailers. So when he can, he drives down during the lunch hour.  He brings her flowers and they sit and share coffee and chat during her break. 

For several years, there is one drama that has dominated salon chair chatter: The relationship of stylist Michelle Fornier and her husband, Scott Dekraai. Like Christy and Paul, Michelle and Scott also had a fast courtship. Michelle, who has grown children from a previous marriage, longs for the kind of companionship — the steady, unwavering relationship — that Paul and Christy have. But Scott and Michelle are a relationship of intensity. And not always in a good way. 

Michelle is a well-loved, warm and vibrant presence. She always brings leftovers from her home-cooked family dinners into the salon in the mornings. Scott is a tugboat captain. He is a tall, burly guy with a crass sense of humor and blunt tongue that quickly sours the jovial nature of the salon family gatherings. He always seems out of sync with the rest of the crew.

“He is just one of those guys who can make everyone uncomfortable,” Paul says. “Loud, obnoxious, inappropriate.”

During one holiday gathering in Palm Springs, the group is dining at a restaurant. Scott gets so loud and so drunk that the manager comes and asks them all to leave. 

“He just gets intoxicated and is just loud,” Paul says. “One of those guys that makes a really stupid wisecrack and thinks it’s funny and you just kind of look at him like ‘Really?’ It’s just off.” 

“He has crazy in his eyes,” Gordon’s partner says.

Michelle tries to calm Scott in these moments, but that usually only makes him angrier. Then he starts screaming at her, and everyone grows even more uneasy. Things eventually cool down, and Michelle often ends up at the Wilson home, talking it through with Christy. They sit in the backyard with a bottle of Chardonnay and a box of cigarettes. Michelle confides in Christy that Scott is abusive — verbally and physically.

“He calls me a horrible mother,” Michelle tells Christy. “That I am fat and ugly.”

Michelle wants to leave, but it’s complicated. She and Scott share a son. Michelle tells Christy that he was unplanned — conceived accidentally when they were still dating. 

“I brought him pizza at the docks,” she says. “We had sex in the car. Dominic was born 9 months later.”

Scott is the one to move out. He files for divorce in early 2007. Things become exponentially more toxic later that year when he is badly injured at work in a tugboat accident. One of his co-workers is killed, and Scott badly hurts his leg trying to save her. The injury brings him so much physical pain that he writes in 2008 that he is planning to have doctors amputate it. The physical injury gives him a distinct limp. But it’s the mental injury that people around him really noticed. His already short temper explodes. He is diagnosed with post-traumatic stress and bipolar disorders and takes a cocktail of medications for them. That same year, he physically attacks his stepfather, is arrested and sent to court-ordered anger management courses. 

But the toxicity between them is mutual — immortalized later in the permanent ink of court documents. In May 2011, Scott petitions to reopen their custody agreement and what follows is an exchange of stomach-turning insults. He accuses her of drinking too much and spewing racist insults at his new wife. She accuses him of harassing their son, using him as leverage to hurt her.

Everyone at the salon is on Michelle’s side and they vow to support her any way they can. Part of that is by being blunt with Michelle, especially after an incident where Scott holds a gun to his own head in her driveway. 

“We’re concerned,” Gordon tells her. “Everyone sees him escalating.” Gordon even tells Michelle she should change her station position at the salon. “He’s going to hurt you,” he tells her. 

As the custody battle drags on, Christy writes a letter to the judge on Michelle’s behalf and, in the Fall of 2011, it seems like things might finally be wrapping up. Michelle comes back to the salon with what seems like good news: The judge has threatened Scott, telling him he could lose custody entirely.

A few mornings later, while Paul and Christy are sharing coffee at their bay window and talking about the moon, Scott Dekraai picks up the phone to pressure Michelle to meet him in person.

As Paul sinks into Gordon’s chair, Michelle comes through the salon door. Her hands are full of leftovers — as usual. 

“My god,” she starts, almost immediately, “can you guys believe that Scott keeps calling me?”

The levity is sucked out of the room. Gordon’s scissors release from Paul’s hair, dangling in his fingers as he turns to respond. 

“Michelle, you don’t ever, ever go meet that guy by yourself. Ever.”

“I won't,” Michelle replies. “I promise.”

When Paul’s haircut is over, he says goodbye to his friends and walks out. The rest of the day’s clients are beginning to trickle in. Gordon is trying to curb his cussing, knowing that the very eloquent Lucia Kondas is in Victoria’s chair.

“Clean up your mouth,” Victoria warns him. “Talk about nice things.”

t’s probably for the best, since a brand new client, Seal Beach mom Michelle Fast is about to take a seat at Karen’s station. 

Randy is talking to his client, Cindy. Sandy is mixing colors. Victoria is at Laura’s station talking to Hattie. Laura is in the bathroom.

And Christy has just made her way to Michelle’s chair. 

“Same as usual?” Michelle asks, as she runs her fingers through Christy’s shoulder-length blond waves. 

Meanwhile, Scott is back home, fuming at Michelle’s rejection of his offer to meet. He is alone. Dominic is at school. His rage is burning and he can’t control it. He is mad about everything — about the $100,000 he’s spent on the custody case, about the judge’s threat, about all the times Michelle has been mean to him, all the people who he feels enabled her. He walks to his garage, where he keeps his guns. He surveys them. He decides on three: a Smith and Wesson 44 Magnum, a Heckler & Koch 44 mm, and a Springfield 9 mm. He stuffs his pockets with ammunition, grabs his body armour and gets into his car. The crisp fall morning air is quickly heating up to over 100 degrees, turning into a day that would break records.  Scott Dekraai goes to Bolsa Chica State Beach. And there, he sits for about a half hour, staring at the crashing waves, thinking about what it would mean to get revenge. 

Paul is in his car by now too, driving first to see a textile client nearby in Orange County and then to his office in Los Angeles. He sits down at his desk, which is decorated equally by family photos and spec books for clients. 

His phone rings and it’s a number he doesn’t recognize, but he picks it up anyway. He recognizes that it’s Gordon’s voice, but what really strikes him is the tone.  

Gordon sounds terrified, trembling and whispering. Paul doesn’t know it, but Gordon is squatting on top of the back of a toilet in the salon bathroom. 

“Paul, you gotta get down here.”

“Gordon, tell me what's going on.”

“Paul, you gotta get down here.”

“Gordon, tell me Christy's okay.”

“I can't do that, Paul.”

The phone goes dead. The concentration of police, fire and emergency services descending on the area, along with a half dozen frantic 911 calls, Gordon’s included, is jamming the lines.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

“We’re in a salon — we were just working,” one caller says. 

“Some guy came in and just shot a bunch of people,” says another. “They’re all lying down on the floor.”

From a restaurant next door, another call comes in.

“And how many shots have you heard?”

“Ten.”

“Do you know who the shooter is?

“We think we do — it’s one of the hairstylist’s husbands.”

At about 1:19 p.m., Scott Dekraai walks in through the side door at Salon Meritage. Gordon first notices a silhouette in light clothing who isn’t supposed to be there. He is limping, but determined, headed toward the shampoo bowls. Christy is lying in a chair with her head back, eyes closed. Michelle is behind her, washing her hair. 

Dekraai looks right at Michelle. 

“This is what you wanted,” he says. 

He raises his gun and begins shooting. 

Gordon grabs his work phone from his station and the arm of another stylist, Lisa Powers, and they run to the bathroom.

Dekraai fires the first two bullets into Michelle and then two more into Christy.

Christy doesn’t even have a chance to sit up from the hair washing bowl.  

Randy Fannin runs up to Dekraai, scissors in hand, and starts to plead with him. Dekraai pulls the trigger anyway, hitting Randy in the chest.

By then, people are running. But Dekraai isn’t done shooting. 

Everyone here supported Michelle, he thinks. 

The scene feels surreal, but the feelings are not. 

They all hate me for no reason. 

He shoots Lucia Kondas, who falls next to a hair dryer. He shoots Michelle Fast in the back of the head as she flees. He shoots Victoria Buzzo, who falls to the ground just as he makes eye contact with Laura’s mom, 73-year-old Hattie Stretz. 

“I looked right in his eyes, and then I turned around,” Stretz tells ABC7 a few years later. “I had this searing pain in my heart. I looked down at my arm and it was just, like, hanging in shreds.” 

Stretz falls to the floor next, landing up against a woman she thinks is her daughter. She grabs her hand and squeezes it, closes her eyes and pretends to be dead. The hand in her grip loosens. It feels like Laura is slipping away in her hand. Dying, next to her.

It’s actually Victoria. 

Instead, Laura has run toward the facial room to hide, but three people are already inside with the door locked behind them. Laura begins frantically banging, so loudly that Gordon and Lisa can hear it from where they are hiding in the bathroom.

Scott follows her.

“You don’t have to do this,” she begs. “Please don’t kill me.”

Two more shots. 

They reverberate through the bathroom. Gordon hears Laura fall. He hears her take her last breath on the other side of the door.

At the restaurant next door — a longtime anchor of the plaza called Patty’s Place — Kenneth Caleb is sitting at his regular table with his regular group of buddies. They are finishing lunch when the door swings open and Karen Cropper comes running inside in her Salon Meritage smock. She is hysterical, sobbing, her arms are flying around her like she has completely lost control of them. Karen goes right to Kenneth’s table, her words muted and jumbled by fear, repeating the same line over and over again in a low, panicked mumble.

“Call the police, he’s shooting everybody.”

“Call the police, he’s shooting everybody.”

Patrons at the bar notice. Everyone comes over to try to help calm her. 

“Call the police, he’s shooting everybody.”

Rose, the bartender, grabs the phone and calls 911. 

“A hairstylist came in and said that someone is shooting with a gun,” Rose tells the dispatcher. 

“Can you lock the doors?” she shouts toward her staff. “We need keys to lock the door?”

She turns her attention back to the dispatcher. “We need somebody here, right now.”

From the booth, Kenneth can see out the open front door. Someone finally closes it, but the large glass pane window is unobstructed. Kenneth makes his way over. 

“I see just a mirage of people running everywhere,” he tells the grand jury later. He can see the gas station at the corner of Pacific Coast Highway, and the workers in yellow vest smocks. “I see those guys running around. … There is people running up the stairs, down the stairs, just a bunch of chaos of people running.”

But in all of that chaos, Kenneth sees one man coming from the direction of the salon, and he is not running. He is calmly walking by.

“From my view, he is probably five, six feet away,” Kenneth says. “Everybody is running but this one gentleman, and at first when I looked at him, I thought he was a derelict and he just didn’t understand what was going on.”

“He had zero expression on his face. His head was slightly tilted down as if he was looking at the ground. He had, it looked like, a semi-limp as he walked. His shoulders were erect and square.”

“Casual, calm stroll,” Kenneth described. “As if you were just enjoying the park.”

Kenneth stands there at the window, as havoc wreaks behind him in the restaurant and in front of him in the parking lot, he stays fixated on this man — the only other person in the scene who isn’t panicking. He watches him walk one, two, three rows of parked cars and arrive at a white truck. 

Next to the truck, David Caouette is parked, sitting in the driver’s seat of his Land Rover, waiting for his regular lunch crew to meet him. Kenneth watches as the strange man he is tracking lifts his arms, revealing a gun.

Behind Kenneth, Rose and the 911 dispatcher are still trying to get a solid description from the traumatized stylist who ran into the restaurant for help. Now Kenneth realizes he has eyes on him.

“He’s the shooter!” Kenneth begins shouting. “He’s the shooter, he’s driving a white truck, it has a black rack on the top.”

Someone shouts back: “Get the license plate!”

But Kenneth can see that this truck doesn’t have the required front California license plate. With his gaze on the driver — who is still disturbingly calm, and now slowly backing out — Kenneth makes a decision. He opens the front door and starts running.

He bolts for the middle of the parking lot, with eyes locked on the truck. He sees the shooter look back at the salon as he turns.

But now, Kenneth is standing right in his path. 

Their eyes meet.

Kenneth panics. Is he going to fire another shot?

Kenneth decides, once again, to run. This time, he goes toward some parked cars, takes cover, and watches as the truck slowly turns and exits the parking lot. Kenneth then stands up and walks to the spot where Dekraai had been parked. The window of the vehicle in the adjacent spot is shattered and inside, Kenneth recognizes the driver as a fellow Patty’s Place regular. Dave Cauoette is slumped over the steering wheel and struggling to breathe. He has been shot twice in the neck and head. 

Todd DeVoe is sitting in his office at Seal Beach emergency services, bullshitting with Chief Mike Henderson and Captain Tim Olsen, when the first call of shots fired comes in from dispatch. 

“Fireworks,” Todd responds confidently. 

“Ah, it's October,” Tim pushes back. “There's no way it's fireworks. It's pots and pans.”

Pots and pans?

“Happens all the time. People drop ‘em, and then people hear it. It goes, pop, pop, pop. Makes a lot of noise. Right?”

Then a third call comes in. And a fourth. 

“Okay,” Todd says. “This is the real deal.”

Todd runs downstairs to a command vehicle and sees a colleague screaming for medics. He can tell by the tone of voice that this situation is unlike anything he’s seen before in Seal Beach.

He jumps in his vehicle and presses the gas pedal, speeding onto the scene just as Dekraai is getting away.

Todd runs into the salon, and the first thing he sees is Sandy Fannin on the floor, holding her husband Randy in her arms, pleading with him in between breaths of CPR. 

“Get up,” she says, grasping his face. “Wake up, Randy.” 

Todd lifts her up off her feet. He can see the scene is dire and complicated and the space is very small.

He starts yelling: “Get out of the room!”

Gordon is still standing on the toilet in the bathroom, but he can hear men in the distance shouting for someone to get towels. He realizes the shooter is gone and he turns on the bathroom light. His feet hit the ground and he looks down. 

We are standing in Laura’s blood.

He tries to open the door, but he can’t. Laura is slouched down against it. He climbs up onto a sink, pries the door open enough to squeeze through and steps over her body. He knows she is dead. 

In this moment, he has a singular focus: to find his best friend, Victoria. As he stood on that toilet listening to Laura die, he’d clung to hope that Victoria had been outside smoking a cigarette when Dekraai walked in. He hadn’t seen her when he started running.

Gordon rushes to the main area of the salon. A first responder stops him.

“Are you OK? Were you hit?”

“No.”

Gordon keeps going until he spots her. She’s there, face down, in a pool of blood. And Hattie is still next to her, holding her hand, in shock, but alive. 

“Help me,” Hattie says softly, reaching up toward Gordon. But he cannot look away from Victoria.

Todd takes over. He is fully in triage mode. He now has three patients being loaded into ambulances: Michelle Fast, David Caouette and Hattie Stretz. He gets Michelle into an ambulance first, with Hattie close behind. The only sense of relief comes through the speaker of his radio. Seal Beach Police Officer Joe Garcia is calling for backup because he has a suspect in custody. 

Officer Garcia is working an overtime shift. His assignment is to help secure a perimeter for a crime scene — Southern California style. CSI: Miami is shooting in Seal Beach today. 

Garcia is stationed about four blocks away at a bridge to the marina, watching fake police solve a crime while he — the real thing — works security. The irony is not lost on him. The scorching heat that has descended on the day is overwhelming and so even though it’s protocol to wear the bulletproof vest at all times, Garcia takes his off. 

All the bad guys here are pretend, he tells himself. 

Well, not exactly. 

His radio hisses. The dispatcher relays a call for “shots heard at a local business.”  Garcia sits up. This is a rare call for Seal Beach. He pops the cruiser into park and hits the lights and sirens. 

The radio buzzes again. The dispatcher has an update: “Confirmed shooting. Salon Meritage.”

Garcia hits the gas. As he pulls into the plaza, it’s as if the television show is playing right in front of him. People are running, screaming, pouring from the building into the parking lot. 

Kenneth Caleb runs right up to his cruiser, pointing vigorously at a white truck. 

Garcia makes a split-second decision to go after him. Mentally, he’s preparing for a chase or a struggle of some kind. 

The truck is headed toward a residential street. Garcia follows. 

But now Garcia is a bit panicked. He knows this is probably the guy everyone’s looking for — that’s great news. But he also knows from the radio chatter that the shooter is likely still armed. Plus, he’s wearing a vest and Garcia is not. 

The van turns. Garcia follows. 

The van slows. Garcia slows. 

The van stops. Garcia watches. 

Oh man, he thinks. It’s going down.

Garcia’s mind is racing. I could shoot through the window. Why the hell did I take off that vest today of all days? He grabs his firearm. 

The driver’s side door opens. 

The first thing Garcia sees is a pair of hands in the air — the universal sign of surrender. 

Garcia jumps from the car.

“Get on your knees!”

The shooter turns and drops. Knees to the pavement, hands toward the sky, fingers locked. His shirt is unbuttoned, his jeans baggy. 

Garcia cannot believe it, but he is happy to seize the moment, jumping out to cuff him quickly.

“I know what I did,” Dekraai blurts out as Garcia carefully places paper bags over Dekraai’s hands to preserve any evidence or gunshot residue that might be on them. 

Garcia’s chin and shoulder scrunch as he grabs his radio. 

“10-13, 10-13” 

It’s the code for backup. 

“I’ve got him.”

Right before Gordon called Paul from his hiding spot in the salon’s back bathroom, Paul and Christy’s daughter, Kielynn, is driving down Pacific Coast Highway, noticing the descent of emergency responders from the ground and sky. She calls Paul. 

“There are all of these police and helicopters, dad.”

“It’s PCH,” he reassures her. “There are always accidents there.”

But she isn’t quite comforted. So Paul tells her that he’ll call Christy and check in. Two tries in, when there is no answer, he, too, begins to worry. 

“That’s not like her,” he says to himself. “She picks up even if she’s busy.”

He sets his phone down on his desk and looked around in reflection, staring at the garment racks that lined the walls, wondering if he should be worried. Something seems strange, but he can’t put his finger on it. 

Then the call comes in from Gordon’s work phone — the number he doesn’t recognize. A gut-wrenching feeling clenches in his core. His subconscious takes over. He stands up from his desk and a scream erupts from the depths of his lungs.

“Holy shit! Something has happened to Christy!”

He sprints to his car and speeds to the notoriously congested California 5 freeway. His hands are cramping around the steering wheel. He’s hyperventilating. There is no way in hell he is going to sit in traffic. He hits the flashers, lays on the horn and swerves onto the shoulder. 

“Pull me over!!” 

He’s shouting into the vacuum of his car, hoping his message will manifest and a police officer will find him. 

“I need to know!! What's going on in Seal Beach?!”

He zig-zags down the 5 and then the 605, but no one is around to stop him. They’re preoccupied. 

Paul gets as far as he can to the perimeter that police have set up around downtown Seal Beach. Then he ditches his car and starts to run. Jack Ponce, a Long Beach officer who had heard about the shooting on his radio and decided to drive down to help, sees Paul running and pulls up. 

“Get in,” he shouts. 

He drives Paul behind the barriers, where another police officer directs him to a staging area for families at the church across the street. But to get there, they have to walk past the salon. Paul looks over into the parking lot. 

“Christy’s Escalade,” he points out. “It’s still there.”

He holds himself together long enough to get to the threshold of the church. And then he collapses to the ground. 

“I feel it,” he cries. “I just feel it in my stomach. I feel it in my bones. Something bad has happened to her.” 

It isn’t until after midnight that official confirmation comes from the county medical examiner. By then, Paul has left the church. Reporters and their satellite media trucks have already swarmed Paul and Christy’s home, so his brother offers his place for the night. Paul and his three grown kids are sitting on the stairs, clinging to the smallest bit of hope that still exists in the silence before the official identification is made.

“The phone call comes and that's the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life,” he says, years later. “Look my kids in the eye and tell them that they’re never going to see mom again. Just watching my kids just lose it. It’s horrible.”

Looking back, that moment feels like it’s the beginning of the breakdown in communication with Orange County authorities. That moment on the stairs, realizing that he was left hanging for hours, planted a doubt in Paul’s gut.

Police Look Inside the Salon Meritage Credit: iStock

Scott Dekraai wastes no time confessing. 

“I know what I did,” he tells officers. 

And even if he’d said nothing, the evidence is all right there — the guns, the ammo, the vest in his car, the residue on his hands. Police take him to headquarters and he immediately starts talking. He tells them everything — mapping out one of the easiest cases a prosecutor could hope for. He tells them why he did it. He outlines his premeditations — sitting by the surf at Bolsa Chica state beach, deciding that he wanted revenge badly enough to exchange it for never seeing those waves crashing again. Enough to possibly never see his son again.

At this point, authorities know the consequence of his unbridled rage. Stylists Michelle Fournier, Christy Wilson, Randy Fannin, Laura Elody, Victoria Buzzo, and clients Lucia Kondas and Michelle Fast, are all pronounced dead, along with David Cauoette. Hattie Stretz will survive her gunshot wounds. Gordon, Sandy, Lisa, Karen and others were spared physical injuries but endured psychological ones — although those won’t translate into crimes on the docket.

Note thanking the Seal Beach community for support is taped to the door of Salon Meritage 5 months after a gunman killed 8 people. It was the largest mass murder in Orange County history. The salon is undergoing a complete interior renovation. (Photo by Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Dekraai looks at the detective, cold and unemotional. He calls those people “collateral.” He says he shot David Caouette in the parking lot because he thought he looked like an undercover cop.

By the time it hits the evening news, Scott Dekraai is Southern California’s most despised man. 

The evidence is straightforward, airtight. It should have been a case of swift, uncomplicated justice. Instead, Scott Dekraai’s unfathomable crimes are going to tear down a curtain that has been stitched shut for more than three decades. 

The cold-blooded murder of innocent friends will not just shatter a community. It will expose a system where some of the very people sworn to uphold the law had long since abandoned it. The worst mass murder in Seal Beach in decades is about to become one of the largest law enforcement scandals in U.S. history. 

For 30 years, Orange County kept a heavy thumb on the scales of justice. And now, criminals as loathed as Dekraai — and even worse — are about to discover they have a second shot at freedom. 

Part II

The next several weeks are a blur for Paul Wilson. He remembers them only in scenes of great intensity, like the evening he opened up his front door to see hundreds of community members, holding what looked like a giant wave of cascading candles rippling down the street.

A memorial to Christy Wilson, left outside the family home. Credit: Paul Wilson.

Or the dozens of donated meals that lined his driveway.

Or Christy’s 1,500-person funeral that needed an overflow speaker in the parking lot. 

Or the morning of the viewing, when he ran back inside to change his shirt and found a notebook in a bedside shopping bag that serendipitously opened to a page of Chrisy’s intentions. Beside it was a letter she’d penned to her husband exactly one month before she was murdered. She hadn’t mentioned it to anyone.

“I went into work late today, so I sat outside thinking about how lucky I am, how lucky we are to have our house, our kids and each other. I love you every day, good, bad and ugly. We are each other’s worlds. We have to keep our love strong and have the lifetime together we promised each other, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer until death do us part.”

Paul also remembers the press conferences that district attorney Tony Rackaukas held. The snippets that made the evening news didn’t capture the tender emotion of the speech. At one point, his commanding presence fades and his prominent forehead crinkles as he struggles to compose himself. Rackaukas’s otherwise stern, intense eyes tear up as he talks about Dominic — how he’d waited at school for hours, wondering why his parents never came to pick him up. 

Three days after the shooting at Salon Meritage in Seal Beach, Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas is visibly shaken and emotional, holding back tears while detailing the murder charges against shooting suspect Scott Dekraai October 14, 2011 (Photo by Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Rackaukas himself had a troubled youth. This feels personal. He vows, on behalf of the community he represents, to seek what he feels is the ultimate form of justice. 

Complete retribution: The death penalty.

This is met with praise from almost all of the victims’ families. And in a red county, it is overwhelmingly popular with the community. While crime is not uncommon here, few cases have struck the town with so much weight — or touched so many lives — as this one.

Everybody here hates Scott Dekraai. There is no mercy to be found. The outpouring starts the night of the shooting, as the Southern California sky turns orange and pink. A Facebook group promises hundreds will show up to the still-active crime scene. In reality, more than 2,000 show up.

Then, they shift their presence to the courthouse in Santa Ana, as Dekraai shuffles in chains for his first appearance. And the momentum doesn’t stop. The courtroom is just as packed nearly seven weeks later, after a grand jury meets to indict him for eight counts of murder. Dekraai stands in a mustard yellow jumpsuit in a caged area, his salt and pepper facial hair grown out. 

“Yes, your honor,” is the only thing Dekraai says. It’s in response to the judge setting his next hearing date. The routineness of the procedure dulls the weight of the moment.

Standing on the other side of the cage is Dekraai’s newly-appointed public defender, in a white shirt, black suit and black tie, with small oval-shaped eyeglasses resting on his clean-shaven face.

The cameras are focused on the crowd in the gallery and on the defendant they’ve come to jeer. But amidst the chaos, attorney Scott Sanders steps quietly into the story. 

Scott Dekraai’s first court hearing is on video captured by the Orange County Register. From Youtube.com

Sanders has a youthful look and a soft-spoken voice — especially among this crowd — but he isn’t a novice. He’s in his mid-40s and he’s been handling capital cases for a decade. He’s familiar with the intensity of a high-profile client. He’s had a slate of them.

“We enter a plea of not guilty,” Sanders says plainly to the judge. His Midwest accent gives him away as an area transplant. The Chicago native followed his brother to Southern California several years ago.

The son of a father in advertising and a mother who taught special education, Scott Sanders’s childhood home was progressive and politically active. His parents instilled in him a strong sense of right and wrong. He’d often tag along with his mom to her classroom, learning firsthand what it meant to advocate for people who had been pushed to the margins. He carried that ethos to college in Wisconsin, where he led protests, and then to Emory Law School, where, at an internship with the Fulton County Public Defender’s Office, everything clicked into place. 

To a lot of attorneys, the public defender’s office is a Sisyphean place. It’s the most tangibly thankless job — reflected both in lousy monetary compensation and pitiful public gratitude. The caseload can get impossibly large. The cases, and therefore morale, unbelievably dim. But there’s a rare and very specific breed of lawyer who has no ambition beyond this place. In courthouse corridors, you’ll hear them called the true believers. They’re the ones who you’ll never see pivoting to private practice, or worse — to the prosecution. For a true believer, it does not matter how unredeemable the defendant, how heinous the alleged crime. Everyone deserves a vigorous fight, for without that, true justice is elusive. 

Scott Sanders is a true believer. And so when his boss walks over to him at a party shortly after the massacre and hands him Dekraai’s case, Sanders has no hesitation. Still, he understands the stakes. His kids take violin lessons just blocks from Salon Meritage. Every Saturday, he drives past the crime scene. He knows that he and his family will become targets of the palpable grief. 

Scott comes home and tells his wife, Priscilla, about his new assignment. She’s usually down for a cause. She, too, works in the PD’s office and has been a huge part of some major cases. She answers his announcement without hesitation. 

“No.”

“No?”

“Someone else can do it. You live here. Everyone is hysterical over this.”

“I can’t just say no,” Scott pushes back. “I have never turned down a case.”

“You can say no.” 

Priscilla isn’t backing down.

“Bullshit.” Neither is Scott. 

Scott, in this moment, knows that he does somewhat agree with his wife. But a combination of duty and ego are winning out. 

“This is what people work their whole careers for — to be asked to take the toughest case when it comes.”

“No. That’s not how everyone thinks. That’s how you think.”

Scott scoffs.

“It doesn’t have to be this one,” she tells him. “There will be others.”

“I don’t think I can do what you’re asking me to do.” 

A photo of the memorial. Credit: Paul Wilson.

The replays of that conversation weigh on him as he shuffles into court the day of Dekraai’s latest appearance.

Tall and lean, Scott Sanders bends forward on the defense table with his hands bent upward like he’s using them to prop himself up. He doesn’t project polish so much as doggedness, as if all his brainpower is poured directly into his work with little room for anything else. His shirt is tucked in, but it’s rushed and uneven. At least his shoes match. He’s been known to rush into ones that aren’t identical. 

Next to him stands his investigator, Cathy Ware. For years, Cathy had done everything she could to dodge working with Scott. In the office — even among like-minded folks — Scott has a reputation for being intense. He stands in colleagues' doorways for hours, talking through details of cases, running scenarios and strategies.

“Don’t ever assign me to work with Scott,” she tells their boss. “He’s so wired.  I just can't handle that high maintenance.”

But eventually she does get assigned to him, and pretty quickly, Cathy realizes she likes his energy. Yes, it’s a lot of work, but he respects her opinion. And his severe attention to detail makes their work more rewarding.

So, Cathy ends up working exclusively with Scott on the two biggest cases in Orange County: Scott Dekraai and Daniel Wozniak. Both are death penalty cases with a huge public spotlight. Dekraai is the worst mass-shooter in Orange County in decades, and Wozniak is a community theatre actor accused of a grisly double-murder that was meant to help pay for his wedding.

Together, the Dekraai and Wozniak cases are massive, with thousands of pages of documents. Scott’s docket is cleared, and he and Cathy will end up commandeering a conference room just to keep up with all the files. But other people in the public defender’s office — a place where work is notoriously underappreciated — grumble. 

Why does that guy get to have only two cases?

“All rise,” the bailiff’s booming voice echoes through the courtroom. “The Honorable Thomas M. Goethals presiding.”

It’s been nearly four months since the shooting, but Dekraai’s case is just settling into the court system. It’s late January 2012 when he is brought before the judge who will preside over his death penalty case. 

Goethals is a formidable jurist. He has the frame of a distance runner, and the face of a man who has seen the world. He’s square-jawed, clean-shaven with light eyes. Born and raised in Orange County, he went to law school here, raised his family here, and built an admirably stable career. He’s the only member of the bar in Southern California who is known to have hit a certain trifecta: He has prosecuted, defended and presided as a judge over death penalty cases.

From the bench, he looks down toward the gallery, once again packed with community members in custom memorial t-shirts and pins. He sees Paul Wilson, who has vowed never to miss a court date. If Christy can’t be here to stand up for herself, then Paul feels he must.

Goethals looks toward the defense. Dekraai appears pale, overweight, balding, disoriented. Scott Sanders seems a bit nervous. How could he not? He’s standing next to the most-hated man in his world. 

Then Goethals turns toward the prosecution. Two senior deputies, Dan Wagner and Scott Simmons, with solid reputations, are standing confidently, shoulder to shoulder.

Goethals, speaking with the authority that comes when you are perched above everyone else in the room, declares that this case is straightforward. He all but demands that the two sides wrap up their litigating by the end of the calendar year so that a trial can promptly begin at the start of 2013. 

In court, it’s Scott Sanders who opposes this idea, but in practice, it’s the prosecutors — Wagner and Simmons — who will quickly undermine the timeline. In many ways, the burden is on the district attorney’s office to keep a case moving forward. That’s because they are required to turn over something called discovery — the evidence that comprises the case — to the other side so that the defense has a fair shot at trial. Prosecutors can’t pick and choose. In 1963, a landmark Supreme Court case, Brady vs. Maryland, cemented this principle. It held that prosecutors must share anything that could potentially exonerate the defendant or undermine the credibility of a prosecution witness. Failing to do that is a violation of a defendant’s right to due process. 

But Wagner and Simmons keep saying they need more time. Nothing about that is particularly surprising. The legal system is a slog. For people like Paul, who have never encountered it before, it’s shocking how unjust it can feel. Paul sits in the gallery, a giant knot in his throat, wondering how anyone in their right mind could want anything other than a quick conviction followed by a sentence of death for the man who slaughtered his wife and her friends. 

The elected district attorney, Tony Rackauckus, has promised nothing less. But Scott Sanders stands next to Dekraai ready to vigorously fight against it. As subsequent hearings come and go, with little progress made, Paul’s anger shifts toward Sanders. He sits in the gallery, glaring at the defense table, emotion overflowing. He doesn’t understand why someone like Scott Sanders would devote his energy to someone as despicable as Scott Dekraai.

Cathy makes note. So do the guards and the bailiff. They keep an eye on Paul. Cathy makes sure Scott’s route into court and back to the office remains secret and elusive. 

Paul is forced to vent about it to Wagner and Simmons in meetings set aside for families of the victims. 

As they all pile into a conference room, Wagner takes a position slightly ahead of Simmons, even though he stands several inches shorter. Wagner’s stocky build, broad face and sharp, pale eyes convey intensity more than warmth. Simmons, the amiable right-hand man, makes the room feel less heavy. But Paul likes that Wagner is hard-core. He likes the way his nostrils flare up, and how the lines around his mouth give him a perpetual frown. Paul wants a warrior: A win-at-all-costs guy. 

Wagner promises to wear the white hat, to deliver justice. 

He talks about his deep belief in the righteousness of his position and how his motivation comes from his devotion to his faith. Paul has heard that Wagner often steps onto pulpits to deliver guest sermons with the same moral clarity that he projects in the courtroom. Paul likes that. He likes that Wagner is a servant of a higher power. 

To Paul, there are good guys and there are bad guys.

“You are one of the good guys,” he says to Wagner, shaking his hand as the meeting wraps up. 

As incremental hearings continue through the Spring, Goethals continues pushing for the case to keep moving. 

But it stays stagnant.

Because the good guys and the bad guys keep clashing in court over a key piece of evidence: 

Scott Dekraai has been talking in jail.

This story draws on first-person interviews with those directly involved whenever possible, and relies on official records where interviews were not available. In a few instances, scenes were created based on reporting with people who were knowledgeable about interactions with people who could not be interviewed. 

Sara Ganim is an award-winning multi-platform reporter. She started her career in local news, won a Pulitzer Prize, and is now a reformed cable news gal who works mostly in long-form audio and print. Her latest podcast, Believable: The Coco Berthmann Story was named one of the best podcasts of 2023 by The Atlantic. She lives in New York with her TV-lawyer husband and two young daughters.