Bakersfield Torn by Horror Stories of Child Molesting : Cult Killings, Cannibalism Reported; Lack of Evidence Hints at Witch Hunt

On one side you have people like Roy Nokes--lanky, down-home, tanned by years of laboring under the blistering San Joaquin Valley sun; a man accused by his own grandson.

On the other side you have people like Carolyn Heim--articulate, committed, highly schooled in the darker side of human behavior; counselor for the children who, one by one, eventually blurted out the stunning accusations.

“The community has gradually been polarized,” said Glenn Cole, foreman of the 1984-85 Kern County Grand Jury.

There are those, including Kern County Sheriff Larry Kleier, who tend to believe the children’s stories that Nokes, and as many as 76 other adults, were members of satanic child-molestation rings that engaged in cannibalistic murders of infants.

Witch Hunt Feared

And there are those who, citing an admitted shortage of substantial corroborating evidence and obvious errors in the children’s stories, tend to believe that Nokes and the others are victims of a massive witch hunt.

Even Kleier, whose 10-man task force has yet to produce the remains of a single body or even the report of a missing child, admits it will be hard--if not impossible--to prove the stories are true.

Although molestation charges have been filed against at least 17 people--with five of them convicted--no one has been arrested or charged in connection with the purported murders. While charges against six have been dismissed, some of those dismissals are being appealed, six others are awaiting trial, and dozens more named in the investigation await uncertain futures.

Bad for Everyone

In the meantime, it seems, everyone is suffering: the children, said to be victims of the basest forms of abuse, isolated from the families and friends they have come to accuse; the accused, fearful of prosecution, deprived of their children, stripped of community presumptions of innocence; even law enforcement officials, smarting under criticism that they are destroying families and hounding innocent people in pursuit of allegations too fantastic to be believed.

Cory Taylor got it from two directions. As a county child-care worker assisting sheriff’s deputies, she investigated allegations that children were savagely abused, only to have Roy Nokes’ grandson accuse her of the same thing. “People are asking, ‘My God, what has happened to our community?’ ” Cole said. “Have we got sexual abuse that has turned into a horrible cancer--murders, satanic cults? Or do we have brainwashed children accusing innocent persons of nonexistent crimes?”

There are critics who contend that Kleier is refusing to admit that he doesn’t have a case. But the sheriff said that “when you hear things like we heard from those kids, you just can’t ignore them. . . .

Hard to Believe

“Emotionally, I have a hard time dealing with what those kids said, Kleier admitted. “But from the standpoint of my job, I can believe it. Over the years (Kleier has been with the department since 1958) I’ve seen just about everything that one person can do to another. . . .

“What made those kids really credible was when, independently, they began telling the same stories. I believe them.”

Stanley Simrin, a Bakersfield attorney representing some of the accused, doesn’t believe the stories.

“Some of the statements the children have made are provably false,” he said. “Some of them have named victims who could not possibly been killed. And there’s absolutely no evidence to support them. . . .

“I’m amazed that (law enforcement officials) have continued to pursue and harass. There’s a presumption of guilt, and they’re closing their eyes to facts which tend to prove them wrong.”

Not only have no bodies been found, but at least two of the infants reported slain in the satanic rites are known to be alive, and a third actually died the day after her birth on May 20, 1972.

Focus on 10-Year-Old

If there is a focal point to the whole controversy, it is a bright, personable, handsome 10-year-old named Mike Nokes.

Mike’s parents, Brad Nokes, 28, and Mary Nokes, 31, were long-time friends of another couple in the neighborhood, Gerardo (Johnny) and Cheryl Gonzales. The boy and his sister used to play frequently with the Gonzales children, frequently visiting the Gonzales’ home.

On June 14, 1984, according to Kern County Sheriff’s Department reports released to attorneys under evidentiary rights of discovery, a neighborhood girl told her mother that Gerardo Gonzales and another man had molested her after feeding her some “little green pills” that made her “feel funny.”

Other children reportedly told investigators that Gonzales and the other man had molested them, too. Gerardo Gonzales, 29, and the other man were arrested. Both currently await trial.

Children Added Names

As the weeks passed, the children who said they had been molested added the names of additional juvenile victims to the list--among them those of Mike and his sister. The children implicated additional adults too, among them “a man with a ponytail.” On Nov. 1, a little girl testifying in the Gonzales case pointed to the spectators’ gallery, where Mary Nokes was sitting, and identified her as “the wife of the man with the ponytail.”

“A woman deputy called me outside and got my name, Brad’s name and the kids’ names,” Mary Nokes recalled. “By the time I got to the school, they’d already grabbed the kids. Mike started crying. I told him just to tell the truth.”

Mike and his sister were placed in protective custody.

According to the reports, Mike was asked repeatedly by a sheriff’s deputy, Carol Muse, if he had ever been molested. The boy “said flatly, no,” Muse wrote in her report.

Gave Another Version

But six days later, Muse reported, Mike changed his story, saying he, his sister and other children had been molested by Gerardo Gonzales, Cheryl Gonzales and his father, Brad Nokes, while his mother, Mary Nokes, watched.

Three weeks after that, Mike reversed his field again, denying he had ever been molested. “I asked why he had told me those things if they were not true, and he said it was because Cory Taylor (the county child-care investigator) had told him to,” Muse reported.

During this period, Mike was placed in the custody of relatives. His parents, denied visitation rights, sent a private investigator, Susan Peninger, to talk to him.

In a conversation with Mike recorded by Peninger last November, the boy again denied that he had been abused.

Difference of Opinion

“Does your social worker (Taylor) think you’ve been molested?” Peninger asked.

“Yes,” Mike replied.

“Does she think you’re lying to her?”

“Yes,” he said. “When I tell the truth she says, ‘C’mon. Better start telling me the truth, or I’ll keep you in this room all day.’ ”

“How’d that make you feel?” Peninger asked.

“Rotten,” the little boy said.

On Nov. 26, Muse told a judge that Brad and Mary Nokes might try to flee, taking their children with them. Mike and his sister were remanded to custody at Jamison Center, a Kern County facility for juveniles. Two days later, their parents were arrested on suspicion of molesting them and six other children.

About that time, Carolyn Heim began counseling Mike under a contract her employer, the Henrietta Weill Child Guidance Clinic, had with Kern County. Heim, 41, a trained therapist who had spent five years working with a child-abuse program in the Bay Area, had been hired by the clinic in September to set up a similar program in Bakersfield.

‘In a State of Denial’

“Michael was in a state of denial, very typical in molestation cases,” Heim said. “I start talking to him about what happened.

“I say, ‘I understand you were molested.’ He says, ‘No.’

“I tell him, ‘I’m confused. I’m getting an indication it did happen, you say it didn’t.’ He reacts all out of proportion, screaming and yelling that it didn’t happen.

“I say, ‘Either way it’s OK. Sometimes it’s true that it didn’t happen.’ I say, ‘You’re safe, it’s OK.’ We begin to build a trust and security.”

As weeks passed, sheriff’s deputies received more and more reports of child molestations.

Mike, his sister and other purported victims of abuse--all of whom were housed separately except Mike and his sister--began seeing Heim regularly.

The counselor said there were individual counseling sessions and group therapy meetings--at which, she insists, the children never revealed any details of how they or others had been mistreated, or by whom.

Chilling Details Told

“They’re all separately telling me things, bits and pieces,” Heim said. “Swords. Knives. Candles. Threats. Robes. Rituals. Blood. Feces. Urine. . . . Animals being dismembered. . . .

“I’m getting real similarities--descriptions of people, the adults all in a circle. It becomes clearer and clearer that we’re talking about large groups of people.”

As the counseling continued, Mike again implicated his parents, Brad and Mary Nokes, adding his aunt and uncle, Jack Cummings and Jackie Nokes, and both sets of grandparents.

Then, on March 28, a little girl--one of those being counseled by Heim--became the first to mention human murder victims. The next day, Mike followed suit with a horror story of children being forced to witness and participate in the satanic murder of infants.

Reeling off the names of a total of more than 50 purported witnesses, victims and participants who included all the aforementioned members of his family, Mike said that the bloody rituals occurred repeatedly at at least two local churches and his home and the Gonzales home between Christmas, 1983, and Halloween, 1984, according to sheriff’s reports.

Adults Disrobed

“Michael said that once everybody got there, all of the adults would take their clothes off and stand in a square around the children, who were in a circle,” the reports said. “Michael said that all during this time the adults were chanting prayers to Satan. Michael said that he (and a little girl) were handed knives.”

Michael said he and the girl were forced to throw their knives at one of the infants, after which “all of the adults started throwing knives that they had,” inflicting mortal wounds.

After the infant was dead, the adults were said to have dismembered it and drained its blood into a container. The children standing in the circle around the sacrificial victim were warned that if they ever told what had happened, they would meet the same fate as the baby.

About a month later, a 14-year-old victim of an alleged rape--a girl with no knowledge of the others’ tales of satanic mass murders--became hysterical during a counseling session, Heim said.

“She started talking about babies’ wrists being cut,” Heim said. “I thought, ‘Oh no, not you, too.’ ”

Stories Were Similar

The 14-year-old told a story that was remarkably similar to those of the little girl and Mike, according to sheriff’s reports.

Adding to Mike’s version, the 14-year-old said the children were forced to drink the blood drained from the dead. She said the satanists would then “cut the arms or legs off,” roast them over a fire, “and pass the parts around and everyone would have to take a bite.” Afterwards, the children said, the remainder of the bodies were cremated, buried or dumped in a lake.

At least six other children counseled by Carolyn Heim told versions of the same tale, each adding a few details here, subtracting a few there--all mentioning accompanying sexual abuse. By the time they were done, the children had provided a list of sacrificial victims that could total 27 or more.

Confounding this figure are the facts that no bodies have been found, at least two identified as slain are known to be alive and a third died after surgery in 1972.

Search Proves Futile

A search of the Gonzales home turned up nothing more ominous than “40 various-sized firecrackers” and a small booklet entitled, “Swedish Erotica Review,” according to the sheriff’s reports.

A search of Brad and Mary Nokes’ home revealed nothing more substantial than “the possibility of the presence of blood” on a swatch of living room carpet and a slab of dining room wall.

A search of two lakes--Isabella and Buena Vista--where the 14-year-old girl said the bones of victims may have been dumped--turned up one small bone fragment, but the fragment was not identified as of human origin.

Even so, people like Kleier and Heim still say they believe that what the children have told them about the satanic rituals is substantially true.

“It’s true because of the pace, the patterning in which they told me about it,” Heim said. “Many of the details--so clear, so specific--are the same, over and over. . . . There is no way these children could have gotten together to concoct these stories. . . .

‘No Malice in These Kids’

“There is no malice in these kids. . . . They talked about things children couldn’t know about unless they experienced them.”

Attorney Simrin revealed that Mike and his sister have recently been given medical examinations to determine if they had been molested, “and the doctor found something, although I don’t know what it was.”

Earlier examinations of other children claiming molestation and involvement in the satanic rites had also turned up some positive test results, Simrin said.

But Jackie Nokes, Mike’s aunt, believes that the stories the children are telling were put in their heads by Carolyn Heim during the months she was counseling them, first as an employee of an agency hired by the county, and now--since the agency has released her--operating on her own, without pay.

Too Much for Coincidence

Roy Nokes, 49, patriarch of the Nokes clan, shares his daughter’s view.

“Isn’t it amazing that all those kids come out with the same story at the same time after being in custody for months and months?” he asked.

Heim denied that she suggested the stories to her charges--either intentionally or otherwise.

“What they told me went way beyond what I could imagine, even in my nightmares,” she said.

Again and again, Heim expressed her sympathy for the children. But she said she also is concerned that in the course of the investigation--possibly because some of what the children said was misunderstood--some adults have been falsely accused and some children have been unnecessarily removed from the custody of their parents.

Members of the Nokes family say that’s what happened to them, and it probably happened to a lot of others, too.

‘Like Nazi Germany’

Jackie Nokes said that last fall, after the little girl implicated “the man with the ponytail”--Jackie’s brother-in-law--”we could see that she was going to name everybody she knew.

“It was like Nazi Germany. We were just waiting for the knock on the door.”

Cummings said that in the months that followed, he, Jackie Nokes and their three sons kept on the move, “trying to keep our kids out of their clutches. . . .”

The knock on the door finally came on the night of April 28 at a motel near Mt. Shasta, when local police came and took the children away.

“Since then, we’ve been allowed to see Jonathan twice, because he’s too young to testify,” Cummings said. “We haven’t seen the other boys.”

Brad and Mary Nokes--released on bail on December, with all charges finally dropped by a judge in May--haven’t seen their children, either. The other members of the clan are similarly denied visitation rights.

“The kids aren’t supposed to know we love them, that we still care about them,” Jackie Nokes said.

Boy Feels Abandoned

“Mike feels deserted because we don’t show up any more,” Roy Nokes added. “It was after they wouldn’t let us see him any more that he accused me and Rita (Roy Nokes’ 53-year-old wife and Mike’s grandmother). . . . And it was after Cory Taylor went on leave that he accused her.”

Taylor, who refused to discuss any details about the case, said she left her job as a a county investigator in January. Four months later, Mike reportedly told Kern County Sheriff’s Deputy Dennis Sterk that Taylor had molested him and at least 15 other children, long before any of them were taken into protective custody.

“I asked Michael if he was telling me the truth,” Sterk wrote in his report. “Michael looked me in the eyes and said, ‘I’m telling you the truth about Cory Taylor.’ ”

Taylor said she found Mike’s allegation “simply incredible. . . .”

“I’ve never touched a child lewdly in my life,” she said. “What he’s said has caused me embarrassment and grief . . . I don’t know why he said that. I guess he’s confused.”

Too Much Pressure

The Nokes family, attorney Simrin and Jay Smith, a lawyer assigned by the county to represent the boy in the early months of 1985, say that if the boy is confused, it may be because of the continuing pressures on him since he was taken into protective custody.

“His foster mother (who has not been identified) told him he’s been molested, despite his repeated denials,” Smith said. “Investigators talked to him again and again. Carolyn Heim was seeing him twice a week. . . .”

Smith said the youngster who talked on the tape in November--”a normal 9-year-old kid”--had changed by February into “a very stressed, very upset little boy. . . .

“He was so alone and frightened he’d grab at anything,” Smith said. “To get a response from them, he had to tell them more and more--keep upping the ante. . . .

“I think they created a little boy who is telling stories that just aren’t true. I’m terrified that the system--the people who are supposed to be protecting him--have done more damage than anything that might have happened to him before.”

Glenn Cole, the former grand jury foreman, said he is “very pessimistic” about the future, regardless of the outcome of the investigation and the pending court cases.

“There has been irreparable harm,” he said. “The children, whether molested or not, have suffered greatly. Some innocent persons’ lives have been traumatized. In the community, there’s a lot of people who say they never again will be a Big Brother, or the manager of a baseball team, or a Boy Scout leader.

“It’s all a terrible loss.”