Hearing Set in Boy’s Death : Driver in Court After 2-Year Detective Saga Across 3 Continents

Kent Andrew States was 15 when he died, a La Canada High School sophomore who liked baseball and video games. He was hit by a car in the early hours of May 27, 1984, as he and a friend walked along California 111 near Palm Springs.

Witnesses said the car hit Kent at 50 m.p.h. Then, with a whoosh of acceleration, it was gone into the night.

The youth’s death began an international saga involving police from three continents, a U.S. representative’s help and persistent sleuthing by a young prosecutor whose mother had been killed by a drunk driver.

Today, more than two years after Kent’s death, the man accused in the case, Thomas Anthony Williamson, is scheduled to appear in Palm Springs Municipal Court for a hearing on whether he must stand trial.

Williamson, 35, a British citizen who lived near Palm Springs at the time of Kent’s death, was extradited from Kenya in June.

Williamson has pleaded innocent to felony hit-and-run manslaughter and drunk driving and is being held at the Indio County Jail on $150,000 bail. Attempts to interview him were unsuccessful.

His former attorney, Riverside County Deputy Public Defender John Wells, said Williamson fled the country in 1984, because he believed “political pressure” by anti-drunk driving groups made it impossible for him to receive a fair trial. Another deputy public defender, Paul Sukhram, is now handling the case.

Those familiar with the case say the prosecution may have a tough time in court. Crucial evidence--including a blood sample that showed that Williamson was legally drunk at the time of the incident--has been lost. Chris Evans, the deputy district attorney in Riverside who spent more than a year researching the case, is now an Orange County prosecutor.

Last week, Indio Superior Court Judge James Herrin refused to accept a plea bargain in which Williamson had agreed to plead guilty to vehicular manslaughter and felony hit-and-run in exchange for a 16-month prison term.

Herrin ordered Williamson back to court for a preliminary hearing, saying he did not feel the proposed prison term was sufficient for the crime.

In an interview, the dead boy’s father said he was pleased with the prospect of a full trial but frustrated with the workings of the justice system.

“My wife and I don’t drink, and we’ve never allowed booze in the house. And now a drunken man has destroyed our life, and I’m extremely bitter,” Randall States said.

A 54-year-old employee of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, States has spent the last 2 1/2 years discussing the case with state officials and investigators.

Requested Updates

For more than a year, States said, he called Rep. Carlos J. Moorehead (R-Glendale) in Washington each week to get updates from the U.S. Department of Justice about the extradition.

States praised Evans, who taught himself extradition procedures, tracked down key witnesses and prepared a 60-page document that officials used to locate Williamson.

Without Evans and the help of Bob A. Neely, a senior investigator in the Riverside County district attorney’s office, States believes, the case might have lain forgotten in some filing cabinet. Neely worked with Interpol, the international police agency, to find Williamson and last month traveled to Kenya to bring him back.

Sheriff’s deputies investigating the death in 1984 thought that they had a strong case against Williamson. They had a witness who had chased the car, a white Lincoln Continental, and scrawled its license number on her purse in lipstick.

Deputy Carl Amato traced the car to a house in Cathedral City, where he arrested Williamson. In court papers, Amato stated that Williamson appeared “obviously intoxicated” three hours after the accident and that he found a “dried, red substance along the right side, hood, roof and trunk” of a white Lincoln Continental parked in the garage.

Dined With Friends

Williamson told Amato that he had eaten dinner with friends that night and had drunk two small glasses of red wine, court records state. On the way home, Williamson said he met a group of drunks crossing the highway and thought that one of them had hit his car with a six pack of beer.

According to a deposition by Kent’s friend, Eric Thor Jacobson, who witnessed the incident, the two youths missed their ride home from a video arcade that night and decided to walk along the highway in Rancho Mirage, near Palm Springs, in search of a pay phone.

It was Memorial Day weekend, and the teen-agers were vacationing at the States family’s condominium. Toxicological tests showed that neither youth had been drinking.

Similar tests revealed that Williamson had a blood-alcohol level of .16 shortly after his arrest, court records state. California law says that a driver with a blood-alcohol level of .10 or above is considered under the influence of alcohol.

However, the case was dismissed Sept. 20, 1984, after a preliminary hearing, because several key witnesses could not be located, including the officer who arrested Williamson. Randall States said the dismissal stunned him. As he wandered around the courthouse corridors that day, he met Evans and told him what had happened to his son.

Mother Killed

Evans said he was moved by States’ story. His own mother had been killed by a drunk driver when he was 10, and he agreed to pursue the case.

Neely recalled that he and Evans “drove around to five counties . . . dragging witnesses before magistrates to get depositions.” They also found Amato, who was attending college.

Charges were refiled, but Williamson failed to appear at a second preliminary hearing in December, 1984, and it was learned that he had fled to Great Britain. In 1985, Interpol agents reported that Williamson had turned up in Kampala, Uganda, where he was in prison for selling minerals without a license, Neely said. Officials there agreed to hold him until a U.S. marshal and Neely arrived.

In the meantime, a coup toppled the government, and some prisoners, including Williamson, were released. He resurfaced in Nairobi, Kenya, where Interpol reported that he was being held for entering the country without a passport.

Two Years Passed

Almost two years had elapsed since the case had first been dismissed. Evans had gone to work for Orange County and Riverside County Deputy Dist. Atty. Lawrence P. Best was assigned the case.

However, Best would have to prosecute without some important evidence--the blood sample was missing. Laboratory workers could not say whether it had been misplaced or routinely destroyed as some samples are after one year. Also missing was the purse bearing the scrawled license number.

As to whether he can obtain a conviction for drunk driving without the blood sample, Best said, “That hurts the case; there’s no question about that.”

Williamson’s attorney, Wells, said the defense has the right to retest the blood sample and need not rely on paper records from two years ago. The public defender said he will ask that the drunk-driving charge be dropped for lack of evidence.

If the judge declines to order him brought to trial, Williamson may go free, the prosecutor said. If convicted on all counts, he could face as much as nine years in prison.

As States family members brace themselves for the hearing, they say they are emotionally spent.

With another son, 34-year-old Gary, Randall States has put together a 15-minute documentary about Kent’s life that he wants to show to attorneys, judges, court officials--anyone willing to watch it.

“Our lives are so wrapped up in Kent. That boy . . . was the focal point of our lives, “ he said.