A Stalker’s Sentence May End Before Rehabilitation Does

Every day behind California prison walls, the race to beat the clock goes on. Most of us are oblivious to it, but the stakes can be immense. In its simplest form, it’s the race between rehabilitation efforts and the end of the prisoner’s sentence.

Huntington Beach Police Detective Robert Christie has a bulging file that, as of this moment, has him worried on just that score. It’s the case history of Jon Van Demark, sentenced a year ago for stalking his former girlfriend, Kendra Brown. Demark was given the maximum four-year sentence, based on testimony from Brown and acquaintances that Demark made hundreds of contacts with Brown, many of them threatening. In addition, the trial judge slapped a 10-year restraining order on Demark, who is now in the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, which specializes in housing prisoners requiring psychiatric or medical care.

Christie, who investigated the case against Demark, says the 26-year-old prisoner shows no signs of dropping his obsession with Brown or some others involved in the case. Christie now includes himself in that group, citing Demark’s allegations to Christie’s superiors that the detective roughed him up during interrogation and that he knowingly withheld information at the trial.

“Detective Christie is the central issue,” Demark wrote in July to the police administration. “His conduct was absolutely ludicrous and totally unbecoming for a 19-year veteran police officer.”

But most of Demark’s attention, Christie says, still is focused on Brown, with whom Demark had a sporadic relationship for eight years.

In a letter from prison earlier this year to Brown, Demark wrote: “It’s me. The one you don’t love anymore. . . . If they let me out today, I’d be at your door tomorrow. All I’m doing is getting angry in here. It’s so violent in here.”

In another letter from early this year, Demark suggests he’s forgiven Brown for her role in sending him to prison and adds: “You’ll come back when you’re ready. That’s how I look at it. . . . I love you a little more than yesterday.”

Those and other correspondences prompted Jane Shade, the deputy district attorney who prosecuted Demark, to write in May to the warden. “I am concerned for the safety of the victim, the witnesses, the detective and even the public defender who represented [Demark],” she wrote. “His anger appears to be escalating and spreading.”

Christie says Brown doesn’t want to relocate. “She’s pissed off and she’s scared,” Christie says. “I think she’s scared of what’s going to happen, but she says, ‘Why should I have to run away?’ I don’t know exactly what she’s going to do. I kind of admire her, but at the same time that I admire her, she could really be foolish too.”

The conundrum in all this goes to the heart of stalking laws and obsessive behavior. No one can accurately predict an inmate’s behavior upon release, which is exactly what has Christie worried. Demark’s earliest parole date now is set for October, 1996.

“Sooner or later, he’s going to walk out of there. He’s either going to walk out scot-free or be paroled. My guess is, he’s going to do what he says he’s going to do. In his letters, he says, ‘I’m going to show up at your [Brown’s] door and I want answers.’ ”

For the first time in his long career, Christie says, he’s unnerved by a case. “I’ve had people threaten me before. They were either furious or drunk when it happens, but within a certain period of time you blow it off. This is a recurring nightmare. It just doesn’t go away. Obviously, I’d be relieved if it did go away, but if you read his letters, he’s escalated. He’s not slowing down, he’s speeding up.”

It would seem, then, that the outcome may rest with prison doctors. California Medical Facility spokesman Scott Kernan couldn’t discuss Demark’s specific treatment program but said inmates serve out their full sentences, unless they convince doctors “that they’re OK.”

Inmates with psychiatric problems are given therapy, Kernan says, adding that there are more successes than failures involving prison therapy.

Christie’s optimism is guarded. “It’s a situation where you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink. I’ve called and found out he is getting treatment. The opportunities are there, but the decision whether anything is going to happen and he is, for lack of a better term, rehabilitated and comes out and we don’t have anything to worry about depends totally on him. There’s really nothing we can do.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.