Slain Man’s Mother to Press Mexico to Extradite Suspect

A woman who has been waiting two years for the man accused of killing her son, a Laguna Beach athlete, to face trial in Mexico said this week she plans to continue her crusade for that country to seek the suspect’s extradition.

The suspect--John Russell Ward, 30, of Burlingame, Calif.--will be sentenced Friday for another crime: assaulting a Santa Cruz County sheriff’s deputy in Northern California. After that, Diane Crow hopes, Ward may finally be brought to trial in the stabbing of her son in Baja California in January, 1985.

Mitchell James Kessler, 21, a popular football player and 1981 graduate of Laguna Beach High School, had rented a bungalow near Cabo San Lucas with his sister and friends for the New Year’s holidays. According to witnesses, two strangers tried to intrude on their party and a fight began. Kessler was stabbed five times.

Crow, Kessler’s mother by a former marriage, said Ward was not charged with first-degree murder but with “homicide during a fight--I guess something like a manslaughter count in this country.”

Ward was taken to La Paz, Mexico, where he posted bail. But by the time his trial was set to start, Ward had disappeared.

Several months ago, Interpol agents found Ward in Mexico City and, with the help of the FBI, had him brought back to the United States on a warrant issued in the Santa Cruz case.

It was not Ward’s first encounter with authorities--or his first escape. On April 4, 1983, Ward was arrested in Santa Cruz County on suspicion of assaulting the deputy. A few weeks into his trial on that charge, Ward, who had been free on $25,000 bail, “jumped bail, and we didn’t hear of his whereabouts again until the killing in Baja,” said Gary Frey, Santa Cruz County district attorney.

After Ward was returned to Santa Cruz, he was tried and found guilty of attacking the deputy. On Friday, he will be sentenced in Superior Court.

“After that, I want Mexico to extradite him, to take him back for what he did to my son,” Crow said. “I have been in touch with the California Department of Justice and with the American consul’s office in Tijuana. They have told me to write a very strong letter to Atty. Gen. Mathias Amador Moyron in Baja Sur and to make sure that I let him know I am sending copies of the letter to the president of Mexico (Miguel de la Madrid) and to President Reagan.

“I just want to be able to force the Mexicans to take him back. They let him out on some kind of bail, something they call amparo, and I just couldn’t believe that. My son was killed.”

But Frey said he isn’t optimistic that Crow will succeed, even though “she is capable of rattling some sabers.”

He said Ward must first finish his sentence in Santa Cruz, which could be up to four years, with about half of that time actually served, before Crow can begin to hope for extradition.

“And it has been my experience that Mexican authorities rarely extradite a prisoner unless it is some internationally known case,” he said. “But I’m going to try to help by writing to the Baja Sur attorney general, too.”

But Sergio Torres, chief of judicial police in La Paz, who seemed surprised and a little excited to learn of Ward’s whereabouts in Santa Cruz, said: “We might even try to extradite him ourselves.”