Unlikely Roles for Mentor, Protege in Courtroom Confrontation

The way Bob Citron told it, he liked the young accountant’s style right from the start. Barely into his 30s, he was leading the team doing a routine audit of the Orange County treasurer’s office that Citron, 30 years his senior, headed. The young man spent so much time in the treasurer’s office that Citron gave him a desk.

The year was 1987, and Citron’s longtime assistant treasurer, Ray Wells, was looking for help with his expanding duties. By the time the audit ended, Wells, with Citron’s blessing, offered the young man a job in the treasurer’s office.

That’s how Bob Citron and Matt Raabe first met. Citron recounted the story this week, but before you get all weepy with sentimentality, be advised he told it from the witness stand in Superior Court.

Yes, that does dilute a bit of the story’s heartwarming-ness.

How odd it must have seemed to Raabe, coming up on 41 this month and sitting there in the defendant’s chair, to hear his old boss recount their first contact. How odd to hear Citron, now 71, testify: “Mr. Wells was very much impressed with the way Mr. Raabe handled himself. I believed that to be true.”

How odd to go from there to here, with Citron now a prosecution witness testifying that Raabe cooked up the plan to skim profits from the county investment pool. Citron, who said he once hoped Raabe might succeed him as county treasurer, now may help send his former assistant to jail.

Perhaps you have a mental picture of two men scowling at each other in open court. Perhaps you imagine Citron, the mentor, testifying angrily or sorrowfully that his protege went astray. Perhaps you envision a seething Raabe, incensed that his former boss is now trying to blame him for the same crimes to which Citron has already pleaded guilty.

That’s not how it looked in court. When Citron took the stand Monday morning and began reciting his history with Raabe, he sounded like a father recounting his son’s successes. Raabe listened to Citron describe him as an accountant who possessed an “unusual ability” to make complex things sound simple, and, as he listened, he occasionally smiled slightly.

At one point, it appeared that the two made eye contact and exchanged acknowledgments. Even Gary Pohlson, Raabe’s attorney, treated Citron gingerly, except for isolated moments when he tried to demonstrate either Citron’s faulty memory or conflicting versions of events. It’s almost as if Raabe had told his attorney, “Go easy on the old man.”

One of Raabe’s new friends of the last couple years is Bob Rutz, who was in court Monday and, at one point during a recess, asked reporters how things were going in the trial. He said he met Raabe shortly after he was fired, and at a time when he was devastated by the unfolding bankruptcy-related events. Raabe came to a prayer meeting and has been a regular ever since, Rutz said.

After Citron finished his testimony Tuesday, I asked Rutz why Raabe seemed so placid about it. “I just know his current state of mind is that he’s totally at peace,” Rutz said. “He’s said, ‘A thousand years from now, I’ll be in glory, I’ll be with Jesus and this moment won’t have made that much difference.’ No matter what happens to him in life, the trial or anything, he’s got his peace in Jesus.”

No rancor at all? “It’s seen as part of the package when you give your life to Christ,” Rutz said. “This forgiveness with which you’ve been forgiven, you forgive everybody else. Jesus talks a lot about forgiveness. Unless you forgive, you can’t be forgiven.”

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Citron is much harder to read. At the moment in his testimony when he unqualifiedly said the diversion plan was all Raabe’s idea, he sounded neither indignant nor saddened. I caught up with him after his full day of testimony Monday, but he brushed aside a request to talk, saying, “I don’t wish to discuss it, thank you.”

One can only wonder what jurors thought after hearing Citron talk of his reliance on Raabe after Wells retired in 1993. “I became more dependent on Mr. Raabe than before Mr. Wells left, and worked closely with him, and trusted him like I previously trusted Mr. Wells.” So much so, Citron testified, that he told Raabe he’d support him as his political successor if he didn’t run again in 1994.

When asked why he went along with Raabe’s skimming plan, Citron testified, “I trusted Mr. Raabe. He was a certified public accountant. He had been trained by Mr. Wells, who I trusted implicitly.”

Jurors may well wonder why, if someone’s underling cooked up a plan that led to the superior pleading guilty to six felonies, that superior wouldn’t show a bit of anger toward the underling. Instead, Pohlson all but got Citron to say he still doesn’t link the interest diversion to criminal intent.

Maybe that won’t matter to the jury.

On the other hand, maybe that’s why Raabe looked almost sanguine as he sat in the defendant’s chair. Maybe he thinks the jury will have a hard time equating Citron’s low-key depiction of Raabe’s role with that of a criminal mastermind.

Whatever, Rutz says this worldly business is of no never-mind. “I can see the change in him,” he says of Raabe. “He’s going to come through this great, and I believe they don’t have a case. You had some real good guys trying to do a job. These guys aren’t crooks.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.