Identity Crisis : Judge Me Not to Be <i> That</i> Ex-Husband, Sills Says

He’s not sure why, but Orange County Superior Court Judge David G. Sills seems to have a habit of falling prey to mistaken identity.

A former Irvine mayor, Sills said that even today he is sometimes confused with a mayoral successor who shot his wife a few years back. When introduced as a one-time mayor of Irvine, Sills makes a point of stressing to inquisitive strangers that he is not “that mayor.”

Now, Sills finds himself immersed in another mini-controversy of confusion, this one carrying the potential for national notoriety and centering on his marriage two decades ago to Maureen Reagan, the ex-President’s daughter.

In the current issue of People magazine, Reagan reveals how she was frequently battered by an unidentified former husband in 1961.

The first-person article makes passing reference to Sills as her second husband, a reference that the judge said has sparked several calls around the country from confused friends who heard he had been accused of being a wife-beater.

“I’m trying to laugh about it,” Sills said in an interview. But the judge is so distressed about the potential for confusion that on Tuesday he sent a memo to his colleagues making clear that he was not in fact the battering husband.

Officials with People magazine, told of Sills’ concerns, stood by the reference to Sills.

“We think there’s no possibility for confusion,” magazine spokeswoman Betsy Wagner said. “It never entered our minds that he could be confused” with Maureen Reagan’s earlier husband, who she said beat her.

The preface to Reagan’s article--which is an excerpt from her new book, “First Father, First Daughter”--refers to the beatings taking place during “a traumatic early marriage” at the hands of a man “she prefers not to refer to by name.” That marriage ended in 1962.

On the second page of the article, a caption below a photo of Reagan reads: “Shortly before her divorce from her second husband David Sills in 1968, Reagan posed for a New York fashion spread.”

Directly below that, in large print, is a quotation taken out of the article that says: “His voice kept getting louder and uglier. . . . All of a sudden he started punching me and slapping me across the face.”

Sills argued that, in the context of an article on Reagan’s early-marriage troubles, the article can and has left some casual readers with the impression that he is the man who beat her up repeatedly.

“Given the high profile of the judiciary, I am particularly sensitive to this confusion,” Sills wrote in his memo to fellow Superior Court judges.

He added in the interview: “Maybe I’m being oversensitive, but I just think that People took an awful cheap shot. I thought what they did was really unfair.”

Sills questioned why an article on wife-beating had to refer to him at all.

Since the issue hit the stands earlier this week, Sills, who is now single, said he has received about a dozen calls from friends who had seen or heard about the article, with many mentioning possible confusion. “Look what she’s saying about you,” one friend told the judge.

Nonetheless, Sills said he will try to forget about the incident and plans no legal action against People. He tried to write it off with a touch of humor, shaking his head in bewilderment at the events that have caused him to be mistaken first with Art Anthony, who resigned as mayor of Irvine in 1981 after shooting his wife, and now with the man who beat Reagan.

In his note to fellow judges, Sills lamented: “Alas . . . nobody seems to confuse my play on the links with golf pro Tony Sills.”