Attacker Will Walk Free, but Not Victim : Ex-Deputy’s Efforts to Block Parole Fail

As Ira Essoe Jr. sees it, he got a sentence that can’t be shortened when a bullet fired in a gunfight with suspected car thieves 8 years ago pierced his spine and left him permanently disabled.

So it is only fair, the former Orange County sheriff’s deputy reasons, that the three men who were responsible serve every day of the prison sentences they received.

Essoe, 48, had hoped to present that argument at a parole hearing for one of those men. But now he has learned there will be no hearing. Because of sentencing guidelines enacted by the state Legislature since he was shot, Essoe said recently, David Ray Vogel’s impending parole cannot be contested.

Furthermore, Essoe said, the U.S. Parole Commission has refused to give him any information about Vogel. The reason for this, Essoe said he has been told by law enforcement contacts, is that Vogel, now 41, is in the federal Witness Protection Program.

The possibility that Vogel may be released soon from prison and the fact that he is being shielded from inquiry cheapen the losses of Vogel’s victims, Essoe contends.

‘Angry and Frustrated’

“I am not trying to start a crusade,” he said, referring to letters he has sent to federal parole officials and local newspapers complaining about the matter. “I am just angry and frustrated that I was not allowed to influence a decision on his parole when he has permanently affected my career, my life and my family.

“I’ve been given a life sentence, and I accept that because I chose my job,” he said. “What I can’t accept is that he does half a sentence and walks off.”

The shooting occurred the night of Essoe’s 40th birthday, on Nov. 26, 1980. He was shot twice in the side, and one of the bullets almost severed his spine. His injuries, he said, left him without the use of most of his body and in permanent pain. He is paralyzed from the chest down but has the use of his arms and hands.

What occurred that night, Essoe said, ended a law enforcement career he had begun at age 31 after giving up a lucrative job in the computer field. It also deprived him, he said, of the joy of working alongside his two sons and his son-in-law, all of whom are now Orange County sheriff’s deputies, and his only daughter, who is a deputy trainee.

The shooting happened in a parking lot at the Orange Mall after Essoe and his partner surprised Vogel and two other men as they were trying to hot-wire a car. Essoe’s partner, Deputy Greg Brown, was unhurt in the ensuing gunfight.

The two men with Vogel, Robert Duston Strong and David Michael Knick, were arrested an hour later after leading California Highway Patrol officers on a high-speed chase in the undercover police car they had stolen from Essoe and Brown. Vogel, who lived in Corona at the time, was arrested by federal authorities in Las Vegas two days later on a bank robbery charge.

Under a 1982 plea bargain in Orange County Superior Court, Vogel pleaded guilty to attempted murder, assault, car burglary and three unrelated armed robbery charges. Four other charges were dismissed.

Vogel was sentenced to 15 years in prison, but that time was to run concurrently with a federal prison sentence for bank robbery that he was already serving.

Essoe, who asked that the location of his Orange County residence not be disclosed, says he knew nothing of Vogel’s plea bargain when it occurred and would have protested then if he had been given the chance.

The plea bargain was allowed only because a crucial witness against Vogel, a girlfriend, “went sideways on us” and wouldn’t testify, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Brent F. Romney, who handled the case.

Romney confirmed that Vogel would be eligible for parole about now under his plea bargain in Superior Court if he has served all the prison time required under his federal sentence. The exact length of the federal sentence could not be determined because of the secrecy with which federal authorities are treating Vogel’s case.

John Patrick Dolan of Newport Beach, a criminal defense attorney who once represented Vogel, explained that California’s determinate sentencing guidelines require parole to be granted after half a sentence has been served in almost all criminal cases--unless a life sentence or the death penalty is involved--provided the convict has a clean prison record.

The sentences of Strong, now 33, of Corona and Knick, 31, of Riverside also fall under the determinate sentencing guidelines, Dolan said. Strong and Knick are both serving 17-year, 4-month terms, according to the state Department of Corrections. Strong is at Folsom Prison and is Knick at the Correctional Training Facility at Soledad.

Lt. Bill Miller of the Sheriff’s Department considers himself Essoe’s friend. He also is the man who supervised the investigation into Essoe’s shooting.

Essoe, Miller said, is the only deputy in the department in more than 30 years to be permanently disabled by gunfire while on duty.

Exceptional Deputy

Miller and others still in the department said Essoe was an exceptional deputy, noted for his dedication to the job. After he had officially retired, Miller said, his strength and determination not to vegetate led Essoe to work on improving the department’s computer system.

“He was here so often we had to run him out,” he added.

Essoe said it has been at least a year since he was last able to put in any time for the department. His work on the computer system involved writing programs and trouble-shooting from his wheelchair.

“I’m not an invalid,” he said, “but my freedom and wanderings are severely curtailed.”

For Essoe, there is no middle ground when it comes to Vogel’s future. If nothing else, he said in an Oct. 20 letter to the U.S. Parole Commission, someone with Vogel’s criminal history--which includes convictions that date back to his teens--should be kept behind bars “as long as it is possible to keep him.”

The letter argues that, because of his record, Vogel “can be logically expected to continue his criminal behavior upon release.”

Essoe wrote the letter, he said, after he was alerted by his police contacts that Vogel had been granted a Jan. 23 federal parole date. When he got no response to the letter and tried to find out why, he said, he was told by the same police contacts that it was because Vogel was in a witness protection program. He has not been able to substantiate either report through official channels.

Officials of the federal Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Parole Commission told The Times last week that they had no record of Vogel and that his name was not in the computerized prisoner locater for the federal corrections system used nationwide by law enforcement personnel.

Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Cathy Tucker, in a phone interview from Washington, did not deny the existence of bureau files on Vogel but said no information about him could be released. She would not say why.

John Pendleton, another bureau employee, acknowledged that when prisoners are being protected as informants or witnesses, federal agencies are required to withhold any information about them.

Role as Witness

Attorney Dolan said this week that Vogel was being protected as a federal informant 2 years ago when U.S. marshals brought him back to California to testify in Orange County Superior Court.

He was to be a prosecution witness in the second trial of Rodney Alcala for the 1982 murder of a 12-year-old Huntington Beach girl, Dolan said, but switched allegiances at the last moment and testified for the defense. Alcala was convicted and sentenced to death.

Dolan said he was told then that Vogel was under federal protection because he had provided crucial testimony in proceedings against an ex-CIA employee and accused gun-runner who supposedly had discussed an assassination plot within earshot of Vogel in federal prison.

In the Alcala trial, Dolan said, Vogel was an expert witness for the defense and attempted to show how easy it would have been for other informants testifying on behalf of the prosecution to fabricate their testimony.