Ellie Nesler Apologizes as She Is Released

Ellie Nesler, the vigilante mother who gunned down the man charged with sodomizing her son, implored others Wednesday to learn from her mistake and walked out of prison after serving nearly four years for the notorious courtroom killing.

Nesler, 45, was freed on parole under a plea bargain negotiated after the California Supreme Court overturned a jury finding that she was sane at the time of the shooting.

Reading from a slip of paper, her voice breaking, Nesler told a crowded courtroom here Wednesday that she regretted the shooting.

“I urge anyone who feels compelled to take justice in their own hands to learn from my mistake,” said Nesler, shackled and wearing a mustard-colored prison jumpsuit. “Please seek help. I can tell you, doing what I did will only compound the situation and cause more pain for your loved ones. This is from the bottom of my heart and everything in it. It’s from me.”

Under the plea bargain, Nesler was required to make what Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren called a “statement of remorse.”

In complying with the condition, the once-defiant mother apologized for killing Daniel Driver during his preliminary hearing on charges that he molested her son, then 7, and three other boys at a Christian camp.

“I am especially sorry to Daniel Driver’s family, the judges and the American public for the pain I caused when I [undermined] the sanctity of the courtroom,” said Nesler, who wore her shoulder-length hair tied back from her face. Nesler’s son, Willie, now 16, came to court wearing a yellow ribbon pinned to his shirt and clutching a pink rose for his mother. He held his arm around his sister, Rebecca, 12.

“We’re ready to go on with our lives and put this behind us,” said the teenager, now more than 6 feet tall, with brown spiked hair and a hint of a mustache.

In 1993, Nesler’s son had been waiting in a witness room to testify when his mother pulled a gun from her purse and fired five rounds into Driver’s head and neck. The boy had been vomiting the entire morning, apprehensive about seeing the man accused of molesting him five years earlier.

He said Wednesday he always believed his mother’s promise that she would make it back to him and his sister.

“My mother has never lied to me,” he said. “She is the best mom in the world.”

Nesler pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity during her trial on a first-degree murder charge. Jurors found her guilty of the lesser crime of voluntary manslaughter, and in a separate sanity phase, decided that she was sane during the killing.

But the Supreme Court, citing jury misconduct, struck down the sanity finding in an August ruling.

Rather than retry her on her mental state, Lungren’s office agreed to reduce the sentence if she pleaded guilty to manslaughter and dropped her insanity plea. The agreement made her eligible for immediate parole, more than a year ahead of her scheduled January 1999 parole date.

“I want to make clear that I am not to be lumped in with those who have cheered Ms. Nesler on through these proceedings,” Lungren said in a prepared statement. “I have no sympathy for child molesters, but I have an abiding faith in our criminal justice system and trial by jury, warts and all.”

Before approving the agreement for Nesler’s release, Tuolumne County Superior Court Judge Eric Du Temple lectured Nesler, sternly reminding her that she stands guilty of “the vigilante execution of a human being that was shackled in a courtroom” and will remain on parole for three years.

“You will carry on your conscience the murder of a person,” he said, looking directly at Nesler, “the suffering you have caused to the people that were present at the crime, the suffering you have caused your family, your friends and the damage you have caused this community.”

Paul Coenhoven, Nesler’s lawyer, interrupted: “Your Honor, if I can say, it was not a murder. I think you have to acknowledge . . . “

The judge cut him off: “Counsel, I acknowledge she stands convicted of voluntary manslaughter, and that’s a matter of semantics.”

With a media helicopter hovering overhead, Nesler was released shortly after 2 p.m. through the back door of the state prison facility near Jamestown, an oak-studded town about five miles from here in the Sierra Nevada gold country.

Nesler, the daughter of a coal miner, gained worldwide attention after the killing. She inspired a song by the Doodoo Wah band (“Thanks to Ellie Nesler, God bless ‘er, They’s one less molester around”) and T-shirts emblazoned with “Nice Shooting, Ellie” sold rapidly.

But Nesler’s image darkened after she seemed to relish the limelight, and it became known that she had been taking methamphetamines, also known as crank, before killing Driver. A single mother, she had been supporting her children by chopping wood and collecting welfare.

“The crankster stuff hurt Ellie’s image,” said Sonora resident Robert Moore, as he gazed at the collection of TV camera crews and satellite trucks outside the courthouse here. “Before that, she was a genuine hero.”

After shooting Driver, 35, Nesler told authorities: “Maybe I’m not God, but I’ll tell you what, I’m the closest thing to it. I just felt he should be dead so I played judge and jury.”

Nesler already had advanced breast cancer when she was convicted, and plans to seek more medical attention in the coming weeks. Marie Starr, Nesler’s mother, described her daughter’s health as “touch and go.”

“She has more faith than I do,” said Starr, who carried a small American flag into court Wednesday.

Nesler met with reporters briefly after her release, standing in the shade of trees in a park across the street from the courthouse where she had been tried. She draped one arm around her son and in the other held a 14-month-old niece.

She said her statement in court had not been forced, that she meant it. “It was from my heart,” she reiterated.

She described her son as a victim who had some recent scrapes with the law and criticized the penal system for requiring him to serve six months at a boys’ camp for violating a court-ordered curfew on Mother’s Day. He had returned home an hour and a half late after visiting her in prison, she said.

For herself, she expressed few concerns. Asked about her health, she replied: “God is going to heal me.” She said she will work for a nonprofit group that helps molested children and may earn a living working for an attorney who has become her friend.

As a parolee, Nesler will be required to meet with a parole officer several times a month and will be subject to random tests for alcohol and illegal drugs, said Tipton Kindel, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections. She will live in Calaveras County northwest of Sonora, he said.

Looking spent and tired, Nesler told reporters that life had been difficult for her family.

“It’s been hard on all of us,” she said. “All I want to do is spend some time with my family. I hope you respect that.”

Her prison garb replaced with jeans, tennis shoes and a baseball jersey, Nesler turned away and walked up the street, family members at her side.