Ruffled Palms

Residents of this far-flung High Desert community hope they can now close the final chapter on a grisly, 6-year-old double murder.

By some reasoning, the conclusion came Friday with the conviction of a former Marine for the first-degree murders of a 15-year-old girl and her 20-year-old friend, each stabbed--because it was the killer’s favorite number--33 times.

The killings should now be a distant memory. The trial was held about 80 miles away, and the apartments where they occurred in 1991 have since been razed. But the legacy of the brutal killings continues to dog this town 130 miles east of Los Angeles.

Long after the initial local newspaper accounts came a controversial magazine article that took the story out of town and held up the community to widespread scorn. The locals bristled like so many cactuses because their town was depicted as a pitiful place of unattended desert urchins targeted as prey by prowling Marines from the Twentynine Palms Air Ground Combat Center, just a couple of miles down the road.

The author of the magazine piece is now expanding upon it for a book. And there are contracts for a big-screen movie, based on that same story.

That kind of notoriety isn’t needed in Twentynine Palms, which would rather be known for its history-inspired murals, the pristine delights of nearby Joshua Tree National Park and a friendly intimacy.

How will tourists react to an old double-murder hyped by Hollywood?

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The author of the article--and the book and screenplay--is Deanne Stillman, who makes no apologies for how she characterized “29,” as the locals call home.

“It wasn’t a Chamber of Commerce piece,” she acknowledged. “But I didn’t expect the reaction to it to be so huge and so prolonged.”

Her story in Los Angeles magazine described the town as “a way station for late 20th century blackguards and exiles, refugees and parolees--high school dropouts between minimum wage jobs, prospectors who subscribe to Lost Treasure magazine, all-night blackjack players, bikers, hikers, people who talk in tongues, retirees, asthmatics, methamphetamine chefs, welfare mothers, runaway kids, people stranded here because their driver’s licenses have been revoked after one too many DUI busts, people running away from other people, people whose intense worship of personal rights is fueled by a variety of nightly specials at the local bars.”

Oh brother. There wasn’t a word about the artists who reside here, about the rich and famous who visit here for quiet getaways, about how the Marines coach the Little League and soccer teams and help swell the local church choirs.

“The article was biased, jaded and shaded,” groused Terry Waite, a local metal sculptor. Brenda Eib, a Marine’s wife, said she is downright livid, noting, “There are bad apples no matter where you go.”

While crime involving Marines from the Twentynine Palms base does occur--one is awaiting trial in the slaying of a taxicab driver--the amount linked to them is disproportionately low for their numbers, said San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Lt. Bob Simendich. “The Marines,” he said, “are very well mannered and are exemplary citizens.”

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In fact, the kind of murder Stillman wrote about can--and does--happen just about anywhere. But Twentynine Palms offered a dramatic storytelling backdrop. Here was a small desert town, population 15,000, with one of its two main drags leading to the largest of U.S. Marine bases.

The focus of the story was Amanda “Mandy” Scott, 15; her friendship with 20-year-old Rosalie Ortega, a single mother of a 5-year-old girl whom Amanda baby-sat; the late-night partying that led up to their deaths Aug. 2, 1991, and the checkered background of the man arrested for their murders--Valentine Underwood, at the time a 29-year-old Marine lance corporal.

Intertwined throughout the story was Debie McMasters, Scott’s mother, who moved here to raise her children because of the solitude she found, only to leave in anger and frustration, waiting six years for the killer to be brought to trial.

No other murder case in San Bernardino County had taken so long to reach a judge and jury, prosecutors say; over the years, the case involved six judges and several defense lawyers.

The 2-month-long trial was conducted in Victorville after a courtroom schedule that could accommodate it was finally found in the high desert. The case against the 6-foot-7, 250-pound Underwood included DNA evidence, bloody hand- and fingerprints, a serious and fresh cut on his hand and his fondness for the number 33.

The prosecutor alleged that Underwood killed the two when they rebuffed his sexual advances.

Underwood, who testified on his own behalf, said he had sex with both victims--acquaintances of his--the night before they were killed. He testified that he discovered their bodies the next day when he returned to visit them, which is when he said he left the bloody prints behind, but that he didn’t report the murders.

Scott, who lived with her mother, had been planning to spend the night at Ortega’s apartment.

Repeating a theme that Stillman would later incorporate into her own story, Underwood testified about how he and others spent their free hours in Twentynine Palms: “Drinking, clubbing, having sex, that was the normal.”

After Stillman wrote her article, she and McMasters partnered in selling the rights to the story to TriStar Pictures.

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Producer Margaret French-Isaac said she has read the script’s first draft and is “very excited about its movie potential.”

“This is Mom’s story, of a woman who’s trying to make a better life for her family, goes to this small town, and what happens to her and her daughter. We’re not saying this is a bad town or that everyone in the Marines is bad,” she said.

But many residents of Twentynine Palms are skeptical.

Kelly O’Sullivan, editor of the local paper, Desert Trail, said she is bracing herself for the movie.

“The fear is: People will not understand that this is a good community filled with good, productive people. We were cast as a town of white trash and Marines-as-predators who run the streets looking for little girls to molest.”

Hardly the kind of place that Huell Howser, genial host and producer of the KCET-TV Channel 28 series “California’s Gold,” would select as his second home. “Of all the places I could have chosen to live in California, I chose Twentynine Palms,” he said. “I like the sign on the outskirts of the city limits that says, ‘Next Services, 125 Miles.’ ”

More than the desert’s elegance and the star-drenched sky, he talks about the people who live here: “It’s a community in the truest sense of the word, where people look out for one another.”

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Not everyone, to be sure, was incensed by the town’s notoriety. Larry Riggs, owner of a local tattoo and gun shop, allows his disdain for City Hall to color his attitude.

“You couldn’t hurt this town--not with a movie, not with a sledgehammer--because it’s already as bad as it can get,” said Riggs, who then slips into criticism about local sign ordinances.

Other business people in town are a bit more ambivalent about Hollywood’s interest in 29.

Mary Jane Binge, president of the Action Council for 29 Palms--which sponsors the growing number of murals--suggests the town is too unknown to be affected.

“People will probably just think the place was made up,” she said.

Jane Smith, whose family has owned the 29 Palms Inn for three generations, said she doesn’t think the publicity has hurt local tourism, but admits concern about a movie. “Movies are made for their sensationalism,” she said.

By some measures, however, this community is unaffected by the sensational. Townsfolk hardly cast a second glance when the likes of Liz Claiborne, Oliver Stone, Michelle Pfeiffer, Nicolas Cage, Brad Pitt and Keanu Reeves visit here, as they all reportedly have.

And although there are a handful of bars in town, and four tattoo parlors, there are no topless joints, as there are in other Marine towns.

Indeed, there is so little for Marines to do here that most make tracks for Palm Springs, Las Vegas, San Diego or Los Angeles in search of extended fun. It’s that kind of solitude, McMasters said, that brought her and her three children to town in 1984.

Since the murders, McMasters has been trying to raise money for a scholarship, in Mandy’s memory, for an “average” student like her daughter to use to attend college. “I want kids to realize “that there’s life after Twentynine Palms,” she said.