Mild-Mannered Man’s Run-In With Law Puzzles Friends

He always seemed harmless enough as a fixture at Moorpark City Council meetings. The eccentric pack rat regularly approached the podium with wild salt-and-pepper hair and an unkempt beard saying pleasantly in a deep voice, “Hello, friends and neighbors, my name is Gerald Goldstein,” while he held up a small, plastic gold stein.

That’s why city residents find it so puzzling that the 65-year-old man, who considered himself Moorpark’s version of satirist Mort Sahl, is now sitting in Ventura County Jail awaiting trial on charges that he tried to run over a Moorpark code enforcement officer with his truck--twice.

“In all the conversations I had with him I never saw any hint of hostility in the man,” said Jerry Straughan, a former city councilman who was also a friend of Goldstein’s. “Sometimes he could be hard to follow and just maddening in meetings, but I never saw him as a violent man.”

Yet, Goldstein stands accused of speeding his truck at a city code enforcement officer and two sheriff’s deputies in September--narrowly missing them as they dove out of harm’s way.

As if to reinforce the point, Goldstein then allegedly spun the truck around and headed back at the group a second time, requiring the two deputies to draw their weapons to force the truck to a stop, Sheriff’s Lt. Marty Rouse said.

The code enforcement officer and the deputies were on Goldstein’s property to enforce a city order to clean up piles of newspapers, magazines and assorted clutter inside his mobile home. The junk was piled so high, authorities said, that Goldstein had been living out of his truck for several months.

After Goldstein was arrested, two workers who entered his mobile home were so overcome by the smell of rotting food and mildew that they became ill, city officials said.

Apart from some furniture and recyclables, everything was piled into a huge dumpster and carted off to the Simi Valley Landfill.

“There were hundreds of books, library books, Bibles, pictures, my father’s writings . . .,” Goldstein said recently in an interview at the County Jail. “They just dumped it all as rubbish.”

In custody since September, Goldstein said he was doing well. A preliminary hearing to decide whether the case will go forward is set for Tuesday. His bail was reduced from $250,000 to $25,000, but his lawyer and friends have encouraged him to stay in jail at least until a specialist could conduct a mental evaluation.

“He really wouldn’t have any place to go right now,” said Libby Rosenauer, a friend since their teen-age years. “And I think he’s doing very well in the structured environment. . . . He even has some color in his cheeks.”

Although Goldstein seemed quite cheery during his first few weeks in jail, Rosenauer said she did not believe he understood how serious the charges against him were.

“I think at first he was confused,” she said. “He thought it was nothing--he couldn’t hurt anybody, and he thought of the whole thing as a big nothing.”

But Goldstein had made it known for several years that he felt the city was violating his rights by sending code enforcement officers onto his property and periodically ordering cleanups.

Goldstein, a former photographer and reporter for a free newspaper in Venice, has been living off a trust fund set up by his mother just before she died a decade ago.

Until recently, the fund was administered by his uncle, who tried to keep the property clean, sending workers in to periodically pick up trash and make repairs, Rosenauer said.

That job was taken over by Westlake-based psychologist Pearl Buckland, who declined to comment on the case. Buckland turned the job of conservator of the trust over to another man after Goldstein’s arrest.

Goldstein spent his days busily doing nothing, Rosenauer said. He would wake up late from sleeping in his truck, head to the Moorpark Senior Center for a hot lunch, and then drop by the One More Time Around Senior Thrift Shop to pick up odds and ends that he was collecting.

“When you would ask him it was always, ‘I might have a use for that,’ ” Rosenauer said.

After the earthquake scattered Rosenauer’s glassware and dishes, Goldstein asked if he could have the pieces. He said he might find a use for them. He saved newspapers too, with the intent of reading them someday.

Although Goldstein belonged to the high-IQ society called Mensa, he was rarely able to hold down a steady job. His passions included radio broadcasting, writing and photography. At the Senior Center he participated in the senior chorale group and was part of the weekly “Life Writing” class, friends said.

“He’s a very well-educated and well-spoken man,” said Pete Peters, who met Goldstein through the senior center.

“He was worried about the city all the time,” Peters said. “And some of his suggestions made an awful lot of sense.”

Goldstein moved to Moorpark more than a decade ago, urged by his mother to get a fresh start and leave behind the clutter he accumulated at a house in Venice, Rosenauer said.

His mother had hoped that the 1.2-acre site on Beltramo Ranch Road, which she called “The Farm,” would give Goldstein more room for his eccentricities.

Setting up a trust fund for her son, Goldstein’s mother had hoped that the new home would give him the space he needed. It was her last act before she died, Rosenauer said.

His mother had been a physician in Los Angeles and earned a degree in psychiatry later in life to better understand her son’s problems, she said.

“The last thing she said to me was, ‘Take care of Gerry,’ ” Rosenauer said.