Normal Heights Man on Trial : Black Couple Tell Jury of Flight From Racist Threats

Speaking calmly and showing little emotion, a former Normal Heights couple told a federal jury Tuesday how they and their young son were driven from their home in fear of their lives, victims of a racial hate campaign.

Testifying in the first day of the trial of Michael Eugene Maas, who is accused of violating the couple’s civil rights, George Shelton and his wife, Michelle, told the jury how they were threatened, had a burning cross placed on their lawn and their truck was burned. The black couple said they were so terrorized that they eventually sold their new home at a loss and moved to another neighborhood.

“I was totally scared,” Michelle Brown-Shelton told the jury when asked by Assistant U.S Atty. Lynne Lasry about the time her husband’s pickup was set on fire in their driveway. “Scared, angry. I felt really bad that someone would try to hurt us. . . . How do you feel if someone tries to hurt or kill you like that?”

“I stayed up (all night), I couldn’t sleep” after the truck fire, George Shelton told jurors. “I didn’t know what they were going to do next or who was going to do something next.”

In a 10-count federal indictment, Maas is charged with violating the Sheltons’ civil rights by launching a series of racially motivated acts against them that began in October, 1984. According to the indictment, the first incident occurred when Maas placed a burning cross on the couple’s front lawn several weeks after they had moved into their home.

Two weeks later, the government alleges, Maas sent the couple a racist hate letter and, in April, 1985, he set the couple’s pickup on fire in the driveway of their home.

The 28-year-old Maas is also charged with beating and threatening to kill his ex-girlfriend, Deana Tolentino, if she told the truth before a federal grand jury investigating the racial attacks, and encouraging her to lie before the grand jury.

Maas is serving a three-year state prison term for breaking Tolentino’s arms with a spiked baseball bat. He also is charged in San Diego County Superior Court with an April, 1985, assault on two black men outside a Normal Heights convenience store.

Maas’ father, Earl Matthew Maas, had faced charges of witness intimidation and conspiracy centering on his son’s case, but federal prosecutors last month dropped the charges after he agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of federal tax violations.

During his opening statement Tuesday, defense attorney Mario Conte told jurors that he would prove that Maas was not responsible for the racial attacks.

“Other people, racist young men, committed those crimes,” he said.

Conte also attacked the credibility of the government’s witnesses, including Tolentino, who initially lied before the grand jury and had a relationship with Maas that “evolved into a nightmare for both of them,” he said.

“Was she beaten because Mr. Maas was attempting to cover up civil rights violations, or as part of a bizarre sexual relationship that wasn’t normal?” Conte asked. “Michael Maas might as well be sitting here with a T-shirt on saying ‘I Did It’ if Deana Tolentino is to be believed,” the attorney added later.

George and Michelle Shelton were the first witnesses called by Lasry to testify in the trial before U.S. District Judge Earl Gilliam. The couple, who were engaged when the racial attacks occurred and have since married, have shunned publicity since the racial incidents, and have not disclosed where they now live.

Michelle Brown-Shelton, a former nurse, told jurors that she and her husband purchased the Spanish-style Normal Heights home in early October, 1984. She said she had wanted such a house to refurbish, and they immediately went about re-landscaping the home on 35th Street and installing new carpeting.

About two weeks after they moved in, she said, her husband, a truck driver for a construction company, was leaving for work when he noticed a crudely made wooden cross on their front lawn and went back inside to tell her about it.

Asked by Lasry how she felt after learning that the cross had been placed on the lawn, Shelton, her voice cracking with emotion, replied: “Very frightened.”

Shelton said her son, who was 10 at the time, was curious about what had happened. “He couldn’t understand why someone would do that,” she said. “He kept asking me, why? I told him there are some people in the world . . . who dislike us for the color of our skin.”

About two weeks later, her husband, again on his way to work, discovered an unsigned letter in their mailbox that appeared to have been splattered with blood. The letter, introduced as evidence Tuesday, read: “OK Nigger Stick around We will go to War Make no matter to us ‘I like it’.”

“I didn’t know why or how come we were receiving this,” George Shelton recalled thinking at the time. “I just didn’t understand it.”

Shelton said that, after his pickup was set on fire in April, 1985, he and his wife began staying up 24 hours a day, in fear that another attack would take place. He said he began missing one day a week from his job for lack of sleep, and began, as a matter of routine, checking his wife’s car before leaving for work to make sure no bomb had been placed in or near the vehicle.

“We stayed there because we didn’t want to give up . . . “ he testified. “I just refused to leave. I just wanted to know why.”

The couple, however, eventually decided to move, selling their house in June, 1985. “We had to move for our safety,” Michelle Brown-Shelton told jurors.

Conte did not cross-examine the couple.