Scars and Bars : Teen’s Slaying Shatters Lives of His Parents and Parents of Imprisoned Killers

In a country-style home in Agoura Hills set off from the street by a wrought-iron gate, Judie Farris stands in her youngest son’s bedroom, haunted by the boy’s memory.

She points out the leather quivers Jimmy sewed by hand to hold his arrows. Her voice trails off. She has forgotten what she was going to say--again.

“Four years ago I lost my mind,” she explains. “I can’t remember anything since.”

Just down the street is where it all happened, in the wooden backyard fort of Jimmy’s childhood friend. A fight broke out when a group of teenagers descended on the hangout looking for drugs--prosecutors said later they were planning to steal the dope. One teen pulled out a pocketknife and started swinging. Jimmy, 16, son of a doting stay-at-home mom and a Los Angeles Police Department officer, jumped in to help his friend. He was stabbed twice in the chest and died at a hospital a couple hours later.

In a flash, in that dark fort, not only the Farrises’ lives, but the lives of the attackers and their families were ruined.

The crime became known as the Gumbys case, because one boy reportedly shouted “What are you starting . . . with Gumbys?” Prosecutors were never able to prove a link to the San Fernando Valley gang. Still, parents in this quiet, suburb on the Los Angeles-Ventura County border were rocked by revelations of how vulnerable their own children were to drugs and their consequences.

In a prosecution that stirred debate on the criminal justice system, three of five perpetrators--all white, middle-class teens--were sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, although only one did the stabbing.

The fourth and youngest, 15 at the time, got 25 years to life. A fifth boy, who had driven the others to the fort but stayed in his truck, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and got 11 years. He could be released from the California Youth Authority in January 2001.

Over the past four years, parents of one of the inmates have coped by immersing themselves in a well-publicized Internet campaign to release their son.

But most of the parents are beaten and hollow, even as they hang on to some hope their children will have a future. One parent is celibate. Another suffers from depression and can no longer work. Another describes a mistrust of police and prosecutors so pervasive it borders on paranoia.

The inmates’ parents say the sentences were cruel, unusual and driven by a political desire to show that whites who commit serious crimes will be dealt with just as harshly as minorities.

Lawyers for four of the five boys are appealing the convictions and sentences. In briefs they expect to file next month, they will argue prosecutorial misconduct and cruel and unusual sentencing, saying the crime did not merit the extreme punishment. They will also contend there is no real proof that a robbery was ever intended.

Through angry tears, Judie Farris says there is no appeal that can bring her son back.

Fight at Fort Turns Deadly

Monday, May 22, 1995, was already shaping up to be the kind of afternoon that makes a parent feel sick. Five buddies, Jason Holland, 18, his brother Micah, 15, Brandon Hein, 18, Tony Miliotti, 17, and Chris Velardo, 17, had started drinking alcohol in the afternoon.

All had academic problems and had been shipped off to area continuation schools. Two had dropped out. Another was a special education student. They were immature, partied too much and were living without purpose, most of their parents agree. Several had brushes with the law, but only Micah had a documented history of aggression.

As evening fell, the boys drove around in Velardo’s pickup. They stole a wallet and threatened the owner when she chased them.

They drove to Mike McLoren’s house. He was a childhood friend and neighbor of Jimmy Farris and a local source for high school kids who wanted to score marijuana. Mike kept his stash locked in the wooden fort he had built in his grandfather’s yard years earlier, where he often retreated with friends.

Velardo waited in the truck. The other boys hopped the fence and walked toward Mike, who was exercising outside the fort on a punching bag with Jimmy, as the two often did.

Jason Holland’s story was that his brother and Mike headed into the fort and a fight broke out. Jason stabbed Mike and Jimmy trying to protect his brother. Prosecutor Jeffrey Semow says the boys went there to steal from, hurt and humiliate Mike. He says Jason Holland wasn’t stabbing to protect his brother but because he was not doing as well with his bare hands as he had hoped.

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After the stabbing, the five boys drove off, without the marijuana, not knowing for hours what had happened. Mike survived his injuries and was not criminally charged for drug possession. Jimmy died that night.

Under a provision of law known as the felony murder rule, prosecutors argued that all five of the boys--not just Jason Holland--were responsible for Jimmy Farris’ death because the killing occurred during an attempted robbery and burglary.

This meant life sentences for the teens. Micah Holland got a lesser sentence because he was only 15. Chris Velardo pleaded guilty to manslaughter to avoid the murder trial.

The felony murder rule has been “aggressively applied” in California and throughout most of the country, but has for years been a controversial element of law, said Loyola University law professor Laurie Levenson. Its use began in England several centuries ago, when nearly all felonies were punishable by death, Levenson said.

In the modern American justice system, a murder conviction usually requires a prosecutor to prove intent. But if death occurs because of a felony, it doesn’t matter whether the felon wanted anyone to die. “It’s sort of a bad-luck doctrine,” Levenson said. “The reason it’s so controversial is because the marginal players are still responsible.”

Just about the only way to overturn a felony murder conviction is to raise enough doubt as to whether a felony was committed.

Meanwhile, jurors agreed Jason Holland, Miliotti and Hein had displayed reckless indifference to Jimmy’s life during the fight. That element, known legally as a “special circumstance” eliminated their chances for parole--a reality their families are still trying to grasp.

Lost Jobs, Lost Faith

“It’s been a rough four years for me and my wife,” says Jeff Ladin, who raised his nephew, Miliotti, like a son. “She’s got depression. I have depression on and off,” Ladin says. “I haven’t worked for a year, because I’m the one who handles everything.”

Before the stabbing, Ladin drove gasoline tankers. His wife raised the couple’s three children, and helped raise Tony. After the stabbing, she learned she had cancer.

Last year, between his wife’s and nephew’s problems, Jeff Ladin crumbled. He drove his tanker off the side of the road in Buellton and realized he could no longer handle his job.

Once churchgoers, the Ladins lost faith in God. Ladin said he no longer trusts systems beyond his control. He says his children, ages 14, 20 and 22, distrust police because they were harassed by sheriff’s deputies after their cousin’s incarceration.

Miliotti, through his uncle, declined to be interviewed. Ladin says his nephew seems to be surviving in prison and is studying for a GED. While Ladin describes himself as “bitter” and “defensive,” he remains optimistic that Miliotti’s sentence will be reduced or commuted. He says he has a statement signed by a former student who says Mike McLoren told him before the trial that Miliotti did not take part in the fight.

Pat Kraetsch, Brandon Hein’s mother, was working for a judge when the stabbing occurred. After awhile, she had to quit. She had lost faith in the legal system, and the daily sound of justice ate away at her.

“Where I worked I could actually hear them bringing in the people to be arraigned, dragging the leg irons,” she recalls. “I just thought, ‘Why am I doing this to myself?’ ”

Her job had not prepared her for her son’s trial. The prosecutors’ method was to “grind our kids down to nothing. . . . You would have thought they didn’t do anything right from the time they came out of the womb.”

She is convinced prosecutors are out to get people, and convinced if her son had been killed, rather than a police officer’s son, the sentences would have been lighter.

Couple Push for Son’s Release

Kraetsch and her husband have drawn strength from a good relationship with Brandon Hein’s father and stepmother, Gene and Janice Hein, and supporters who are following the case. Still, Kraetsch feels she leads a double life, always trying to keep the pain and drama of her private life from co-workers and strangers.

If Gene and Janice Hein have the same fears and doubts as Kraetsch they bury them. They show only a positive face to the media and have been leading an active Internet campaign on their son’s behalf. “He’s got hope,” says Gene Hein. “With all the support he sees outside from friends and relatives, that really helps him. We work as a team.”

Along the way, they have attracted the attention of schoolchildren and teachers and strangers. The case has been featured in national talk shows and magazine and newspaper articles. A documentary film is in progress. The Heins believe the more people hear about the case, the better their son’s chances of one day being released.

The Heins turn questions about themselves into answers about their son’s progress in prison. They say he has matured. He got his GED and a job in the prison library. He is taking privately-funded college courses through a correspondence program.

Last year, the couple enlisted the help of state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles), who visited Brandon Hein in prison. Hayden sponsored legislation that might have improved Hein’s chances of eventual release. The measure was voted down by the Senate.

Parent Seeks Forgiveness

Sharry Holland lights a cigarette in the Westlake Village condo where she is raising her youngest child, 9-year-old Kylie.

The condo’s decor is soft, with pink hues, green plants, brightly colored artwork done by Jason and Micah. A cheeriness survives, in muted tones.

A single mother, Sharry Holland has been celibate since the stabbing. “There’s not men that are strong enough to deal with this, that I’ve found.”

Money is always tight and she doesn’t know how she’ll pay the lawyers, she said. She has not been able to see either son for several weeks. Jason is in isolation. His mother hasn’t been able to find out why. Neither son could be reached for an interview.

Sharry Holland says she is convinced there is a cosmic reason for all this, one she has yet to understand. But she admits her New Age faith sometimes falls short and she teeters on the brink of despair. She writes poetry, often about her distrust of government and the justice system. She cherishes things her sons send her. In a self-portrait, Micah, now 19, depicts himself as a middle-age man.

Holland said she and her older son, now 22, have come to terms with what he did but still can’t understand why the others are being punished so severely, or why Jason will never be eligible for parole.

She acknowledges her sons had discipline problems growing up and she knows they used drugs and alcohol. Jason was caught stealing and Micah had a history of fighting. She tried sending them to boarding school, but that made things worse. Still, she maintains, their problems were temporary, not permanent.

Holland says what she wants most in the short term is to be able to meet with Judie Farris and ask for forgiveness. “I just think if she knew me she wouldn’t think about me the way she does,” Holland said. “And she might see our sons weren’t that different.”

Parents Protect Son’s Reputation

Judie Farris certainly doesn’t see it that way.

She decries news coverage she says has unfairly lumped Jimmy in with a group of pot-smoking delinquents, failing to recognize him as a clean-cut hero who sacrificed his own life to save his friend’s.

She is unyielding on the point that her son, a popular athlete who had an extremely close relationship with his parents, was not a marijuana smoker as some teens suggested at the time.

“He was at Mike’s house that day exercising,” she said. “He was trying to encourage Mike to be healthy.”

Her husband, Jim Farris, who speaks in measured tones, calmly notes that his son’s autopsy showed no traces of marijuana.

The Farrises go over and over this point, wanting to be sure, four years later, that nobody has any reason to feel their departed son, even in the most tangential way, contributed to his own death.

Judie Farris spends days at home with the family’s two dogs, three cats and two horses, surrounded by Jimmy’s pictures and things, immersed in memories. Her three surviving children are grown. She leaves projects half finished, she says, and her memory goes out on her in the middle of a thought.

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Still in shock over the loss of her son, she resents the parents whose children survived. She resents the allegation many of them have made, that their sons got stiff sentences because Jim Farris is a cop. She feels trapped in a reversal of blame.

“I have a hard time leaving the house because I know so many people are in sympathy for the criminals,” she says. “I feel like they’re looking at me like, ‘You’re responsible for people being in jail that shouldn’t be there.’

“I wouldn’t even have any upsetness toward the criminals if they would have hurt him,” she said. “But they killed him . . . we can never be happy again.”

The Farrises haven’t talked to Mike McLoren in years and assume he feels too guilty to stay in touch. Mike McLoren could not be reached. His mother declined to be interviewed.

The Farrises say their strong marriage has saved them. They are tender with each another, but perpetually sad.

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Jim Farris has always worked two jobs, police officer by night and swimming pool serviceman by day. These days, all that work is a kind of blessing. It temporarily dulls his pain. Judie Farris says the only time she can rest her mind is when she is caring for her horses.

The Farrises say they don’t like to give interviews and do so only to protect their son’s reputation and memory.

“You talk about closure but there really is no such thing,” says Jim Farris. “I feel just as awful now as I did the day it happened.”

There is a chair Judie Farris won’t sit in anymore, photographs she can’t bear to look at, a certain time of day, the entire month of May, a grocery store she still can’t walk back into because she was buying food there for Jimmy the night he was killed.

News that the inmates’ appeals will soon begin raises a certain amount of dread for the couple.

“They’re where they belong,” says Jim Farris. Judie Farris thinks so too, even though in the last few months thoughts of the other young men’s parents have occasionally crept into her mind. She quickly shuts them out.

“We’re not the ones who caused this to happen,” she says. “I don’t want them included in my pain. I don’t want to have pain about five other people. I already have too much pain over Jimmy.”

Times researcher Penny Love contributed to this report.