D.A. Widens Inquiry Into Fatal Raid at Scott Ranch : Malibu: Preliminary findings call the millionaire’s shooting justified, but prosecutor wants to examine the operation’s purpose.

Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury plans to widen the investigation into last month’s fatal shooting of rancher Donald P. Scott because of concerns over the way a drug task force conducted the raid on Scott’s Malibu-area ranch.

Based on preliminary findings, an investigation by the Ventura County district attorney has concluded that the fatal shooting was justifiable because Scott threatened deputies with a loaded handgun, Bradbury said.

But the release of the prosecutor’s report on the controversial raid will be delayed because Bradbury wants additional time to investigate the purpose and scope of the Oct. 2 morning raid led by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies.

“I have concerns about the entire operation,” Bradbury said. “I have asked for an additional investigation. I will be personally reviewing all of this material.”

Scott, a 61-year-old reclusive millionaire, lived on his 200-acre Trail’s End Ranch in the Malibu area of Ventura County before two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies shot him dead in his living room.

Ventura County law enforcement officials are not publicly discussing the task force operation. But they are angry over what some believe was a heavy-handed execution of the raid on Scott’s house, and upset that the Ventura County sheriff was not notified beforehand, even though it took place in Ventura County.

Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Larry Longo, a Malibu friend of Scott’s, has stirred up the debate by calling the multi-agency drug operation overkill with the aim of forcing Scott to forfeit his property.

“Based upon all the people who were there, it was apparent to me it was not just a normal raid to seize narcotics,” he said in an interview. “It was one which they wanted to have a forfeiture of the land.

“You don’t need all those people to execute a search warrant.”

About two dozen officials joined in the task force raid, which was led by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and included the National Park Service and a special marijuana eradication unit--Campaign Against Marijuana Planting. CAMP consists of federal and state drug agents and the California National Guard.

Law enforcement officials vehemently deny that forfeiture was an objective of the operation.

“To think that we would go in to seize property insults my personal integrity and the integrity of the department,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Capt. Larry Waldie, who is in charge of the agency’s narcotics units. “It’s a slur on us and I’m offended by it.”

David E. Gackenbach, superintendent of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, whose agency has bought parcels adjacent to Scott’s ranch, also expressed outrage at the suggestion there may have been an attempt to manipulate federal forfeiture laws to gain control of Scott’s property.

“It’s slanderous to suggest that the park service would use that method to acquire land,” he said.

Under federal forfeiture laws, police agencies and prosecutors may seize real estate when a judge rules that the property was used to grow marijuana, or that the property was purchased with the proceeds of drug sales. The government does not have to charge the owner with a crime to take the property.

Last year, state and local officials confiscated 785 marijuana plants in the 150,000-acre Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area that surrounds portions of Scott’s ranch.

But authorities found no marijuana in the Oct. 2 raid that left Scott dead inside his ranch house. What’s more, a specially trained dog from the Los Angeles Police Department could not detect any residue from marijuana plants.

When Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies burst into his house, the hard-drinking, cantankerous Scott confronted them with a .38-caliber revolver held in his right hand over his head, according to deputies and his widow, Frances Plante, 38.

Plante said that when the deputies ordered Scott to put the gun down, he was fatally shot as he lowered his arm. Three rounds were fired by the deputies, two hitting Scott, the fatal bullet penetrating his chest and killing him instantly.

Another bullet struck Scott’s right arm. Given the trajectory of this bullet, a law enforcement source said it is possible to show that Scott’s weapon was pointed at the two officers.

“The man was pointing a .38 at them and they were in fear of their lives,” said Waldie, in explaining why his deputies fatally shot Scott.

In a tape recording of a telephone conversation between Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Lt. Richard DeWitt, who was at the shooting scene, and Waldie, DeWitt said:

“I told him to put it down. . . . He had it pointed up in the air originally. . . . As he brought it down, he was kinda pointing toward the deputy and I don’t know which deputy it is right now.”

The Ventura County prosecutor’s preliminary conclusion that the shooting was justified is also based on a firearms analysis that found a mark on a round in the chamber of Scott’s .38-caliber revolver. The mark indicates that Scott squeezed the trigger, but that the weapon misfired.

But the analysis cannot determine whether the weapon misfired at the time of the confrontation or some time before the raid.

The drug raid followed a Sept. 23 reconnaissance flight over Scott’s ranch by a federal Drug Enforcement Administration agent, Sacramento-based Charles A. Stowell, according to a search warrant affidavit.

The agent “saw approximately 50 plants that he recognized to be marijuana plants growing around some large trees that were in a grove near a house on the property,” the affidavit said.

While the DEA agent “was still in the air I was able to verify from the ground that the location the marijuana plants were growing in was the Trail’s End Ranch,” Los Angeles County Sheriff’s narcotics investigator Gary R. Spencer wrote in the affidavit.

Although Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies obtained a search warrant from a Ventura County Municipal Court judge, they did not inform the Ventura County sheriff until after Scott was fatally shot.

“We should have notified them,” Waldie said. “It was just an oversight.”

The Ventura County prosecutor’s analysis of the fatal shooting is based on accounts of the sheriff’s deputies. Plante, who married Scott last July, declined to talk with investigators.

“It’s not that I don’t want to talk to the Ventura sheriff,” she said. “It’s rather that I would like to speak with an impartial body of people rather than anyone in law enforcement.”

Plante has retained Los Angeles attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. to pursue a wrongful death lawsuit.

Meanwhile, Scott’s body has remained with the Ventura County coroner so that a private autopsy can be performed in addition to the one conducted by the county medical examiner.

“This man was shot on his property without justification in our view,” said attorney Eric G. Ferrer, an associate in Cochran’s law firm.

“I think there is a real issue in this case about forfeiture. Going on a large parcel of land where you believe there is marijuana, they all knew forfeiture was the next step. It’s very strange.”

National Park Service official Gackenbach said Scott’s land was never high on his list of priorities among parcels his agency has wished to acquire since he became the region’s superintendent in 1989.

“The biggest problem is money,” he said. Congress has appropriated only a limited amount of money for land acquisition.

National Park Service records show that the agency ran a title search on Scott’s ranch in September, 1983, according to Sondra Humphries, the San Francisco-based chief of the agency’s western region realty branch.

But Humphries said there was no follow-up.

“We did not contact him,” she said. “I never spoke to him.”

Scott had a distrust of government and did not want to sell his ranch, his friends and associates have said.

Gackenbach said when a realtor suggested he might get in touch with Scott three years ago to explore a possible deal, he left a message on Scott’s telephone answering machine.

“Don never returned the call,” he said.

Gackenbach said he and another park service employee visited Scott and his wife last August after Scott complained about hikers trespassing on his property. Gackenbach brought a 12-pack of beer with him in an effort, he said, “to be a good neighbor.” He said the subject of a land deal never came up.

Meanwhile, the probate proceedings into Scott’s estate have begun in Ventura County courts.

Scott, raised on Manhattan’s East Side and educated in Switzerland, was the product of a wealthy family who made a fortune from interests in a European-based chemical concern. At one time, his British-born mother’s relatives owned the Dorchester Hotel in London. His father’s side of the family owned what eventually became a consulate on a large estate in Geneva.

Scott rubbed shoulders with the entertainment community when he owned a home in Trousdale Estates in Los Angeles. He changed his lifestyle in the late 1960s when he bought Trail’s End Ranch and, in the words of Frances Plante, became “a canyon cowboy” who enjoyed wearing denim clothes and eschewed fancy threads.

Family attorney Nick Gutsue said 11 attorneys so far have announced that they are representing about 60 of Scott’s relatives scattered about America and Europe.

According to a will executed in 1988, Scott cut his first two wives and a daughter from his first marriage out of his estate. Three children from his second marriage are included in the will.

Attorneys are still trying to locate all of Scott’s assets, which include his trust fund established by his late mother.

“There’s a lot of money, a lot of personalities and a lot of fear they’re not going to get their fair share,” Gutsue said.