Barracuda at the Bar : Law: The prosecutor who obtained convictions for the Elys has a well-earned reputation for toughness.

Murderers, crooks and shysters. Carol J. Nelson has seen them all in her heated jousts for justice.

After nearly 12 years with the Ventura County district attorney’s office, Nelson is an old hand at sending criminals packing for prison. In the courtroom, her colleagues say, she is tough to beat.

Last week, she won one of her biggest battles yet--the case against community college district Trustee James T. (Tom) Ely and his wife, Ingrid. Nelson successfully prosecuted the Elys on all 32 counts of fraud, conspiracy and embezzlement.

At times during the trial, Nelson appeared as mean as a bulldog. For three days, she sparred with Tom Ely while he was on the witness stand.

“Where do you get these figures anyway?” Nelson sarcastically asked Ely, belittling him for charging extra meals on his expense forms.

“I said I made a mistake, Miss Nelson,” Ely snapped back. “People make mistakes.”

The acrimony sometimes spilled outside the courtroom.

When told that Ingrid Ely called her a barracuda, Nelson laughed. “A barracuda is a sleek fish, isn’t it?” she said.

But deep down, Nelson confides, she’s not as tough as her courtroom persona. Sometimes making dinner reservations intimidates her, she said. Her feelings are easily hurt. And at the end of one frustrating day of testimony in the Ely trial, tears welled up in Nelson’s eyes. But she waited until jurors and spectators had cleared the courtroom.

Much of her emotion, and her drive, comes from the fear of failure, Nelson said.

“I was just quaking at the Ely jury verdict,” Nelson said. “I just get sick at the thought that I could lose a case.

“It’s like how other people are at their weddings. This is permanent. People are not going to be unguilty later on. So I think to myself that I better have done it right.”

Tom Ely could now face a six-year prison sentence. Ingrid Ely could face a three-year term. The couple were found guilty of bilking the Ventura County Community College District of $15,000 by padding expense accounts and inflating mileage.

Ironically, Nelson said, she had known and admired Ingrid Ely for many years. The two are the same age, 47, and attended a summer workshop for musically gifted teen-agers when they were in high school.

“I was a singer, and Ingrid played the bass,” Nelson said. “She was beautiful and tall and kind of mysterious.”

Despite her tough prosecution of Ingrid Ely, Nelson privately expressed sorrow for the trustee’s wife. Nelson said she remembers Ingrid Ely as being kind and polite.

Nelson said Ingrid Ely was one of the reasons she was intrigued by the case, coupled with the fact that both of Nelson’s parents were educators.

“Our dinner conversation when I was growing up was how the dollars that are spent on education never get to the classroom,” Nelson said. “I thought it was outrageous what the Elys were doing. It really struck me as immoral.”

Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury said he handpicked Nelson to prosecute the Elys.

“Not only did we recognize that it was a very involved case,” Bradbury said, “it was a case where we knew the defendant would allege that the charges were political. We wanted someone who was very astute in dealing with that issue. We wanted someone very well-rounded.”

So Nelson, who usually prosecutes murder cases, went to work with district attorney’s investigator Larry Fryar. For a year, they combed through college district documents to prepare for trial. Slowly, they pieced together the case.

During the investigation, Ely accused the district attorney’s office of having a personnel vendetta against him. Nelson found herself exchanging accusations with Ely in the press. At one point during the trial, Nelson’s words came back to haunt her.

Ely’s attorney, James M. Farley, requested that Superior Court Judge Lawrence Storch remove Nelson from the case. Farley said Nelson had been so publicly hostile toward Ely that his client could not get a fair trial.

Storch refused to remove Nelson, but he told her to be more careful of her comments outside the courtroom.

Over the years, Farley has been one of Nelson’s greatest courtroom foes.

He has accused her of being vindictive and vicious. He says she is single-minded.

“I think she gets a scenario in her mind as to what the facts are, irrespective of what they say,” Farley once said.

The two attorneys have gone head to head in the courtroom many times, usually over high-profile murder cases.

In 1989, Farley and Nelson faced each other in the murder case involving Linda Axel, who fatally stabbed George White, an elderly worker at the Top Hat Burger Palace in Ventura. Axel was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison after pleading guilty.

The guilty plea came after Farley and a second defense attorney, Willard P. Wiksell, unsuccessfully tried to prevent Nelson from introducing DNA evidence that linked Axel to the murder. It was the first case in Ventura County to introduce DNA testing as evidence.

Nelson is often asked by police and other attorneys statewide to give speeches and advice on the use of DNA genetic signatures to identify suspects.

Nelson is noted for many accomplishments. She was the first woman in the district attorney’s office to hold a senior attorney position.

“She is in her element when she is in front of the jury,” said Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Matthew Hardy, who helped train Nelson when she first joined the department in 1979. He said he recognized her natural talent as a trial lawyer.

“I would imagine that being an opponent of hers is difficult,” Hardy said. “She bruises feelings, and she fights hard.”

Nelson, who is married to lawyer Steve Nelson, graduated in 1977 from Western State University College of Law in San Diego. She has two children and three grandchildren.

In her tenure as a prosecutor, Nelson has only lost one case, a misdemeanor theft of bananas and ice cream at a Baskin-Robbins store.

Now that the Ely case is over, Nelson is helping investigate a recent incident in which an Oxnard man fatally shot two men when he fired blindly through the drapes of his bedroom window at neighboring party-goers.

“This is not just a job for me,” Nelson said. “I really believe in the work. You just keep doing it. And you don’t stop until you’ve won.”