Ex-Priest’s Yard Dug Up for Clues in Case

Investigators dug up the yard of a former priest’s vacation home Thursday, searching for clues in the 1988 disappearance of a 7-year-old girl. By late afternoon, however, they had found no evidence and called off the effort for now.

Using backhoes and shovels, teams of forensics experts sifted through dirt around an upscale home belonging to 55-year-old Stephen Kiesle, who is being questioned about Amber Swartz-Garcia, who disappeared while skipping rope outside her East Bay Area home.

Kiesle was arrested in May on three counts of child molestation, and police on Tuesday obtained a warrant to dig in the yard of his 1,600-square-foot second home after getting several “hits” there from cadaver-sniffing dogs.

Truckee Police Cmdr. Scott Berry called the effort “a shot in the dark.” He said investigators had dug holes up to 4 feet deep in three locations throughout the wooded backyard and moved on to two additional sites in a 15-by-8-foot area of the frontyard.

When asked why any suspect would bury a body there, he responded: “When you’re dealing with people such as this, they’re not rational.”

Police did not rule out returning to this small Sierra town of 13,000 near the Nevada state line to excavate the concrete floor of Kiesle’s detached garage. They might opt to use sonar equipment to plumb beneath the floor.

Investigators in the San Francisco suburb of Pinole were led to Kiesle after three women came forward to accuse the former priest of molesting them 30 years ago while he was assigned to the Santa Paula church in Pinole in the late 1970s.

Kiesle lived 14 houses away from Swartz-Garcia, who they say was the same age and looked similar to the women who have spoken out. The ex-priest was released on $180,000 bond and is due back in court next Friday for a bail hearing.

Truckee police are investigating an additional allegation that Kiesle molested three girls, ages 8 to 9, on a family outing at the Tahoe Donner Golf Course. Police believe one of the alleged victims may be a distant relative of Kiesle.

Bill Gagen, Kiesle’s attorney, believes police violated his client’s privacy without evidence and says his only connection to Amber Swartz-Garcia is having once lived “in the same city.”

Amid accusations against Catholic priests nationwide, Kiesle makes an easy target, his lawyer said. “This case has developed a life of its own, solely through implication,” Gagen said. Although Kiesle has a record of misdemeanor molestation, “he has no record of any violence,” he said.

Gagen said the scents recognized by police dogs were “probably dead rodents.”

“We’re talking about the mountains here,” he said. He added that he has given the consent for police to remove the garage floor of Kiesle’s home if necessary.

On Thursday, Kiesle remained in the Pinole home where he has lived for 20 years, refusing to offer comment to an army of news crews outside his door. Said Gagen: “He and his wife are just seeking peace.”

Kim Swartz, who heads a missing-children foundation named after her daughter, did not visit the search site Thursday and said she does not consider Kiesle to be a suspect. “You don’t know until you check it out,” she said. “But I’m not surprised they haven’t found anything.”

For 14 years, Swartz has used the image of her daughter as the little blond girl with purple pants and sneakers, jumping rope in the family frontyard, to draw help in searching for other missing children. She has successfully campaigned for a new state law to create a DNA database specifically to solve missing persons cases.

As police dug in the Sierra 100 miles away looking for the remains of her daughter, Swartz tried to keep her emotions in check.

“You have to stay even-keeled about these things,” she said. “If you get excited, you fall real low and you don’t want to get out of bed and talk to anyone.”

One woman who came forward told police she was molested in Pinole, where Kiesle worked at St. Joseph’s Church from 1972 to 1976 and again in 1985. Before that, he worked at the now-closed Santa Paula Catholic Church in Fremont from 1968 to 1971.

Gagen said Kiesle voluntarily resigned from the priesthood in 1981. He married the next year and worked for Chevron, from which he recently retired after 20 years.

Kiesle pleaded no contest in 1978 to lewd conduct for tying up and sexually molesting two boys, 11 and 12 years old, in the rectory of Our Lady of the Rosary Church in Union City. He was sentenced to three years’ probation, and left the ministry. Because it was a misdemeanor conviction, the case was later expunged from Kiesle’s record and he was not questioned when Swartz-Garcia disappeared.

Swartz said Thursday that she remembers Kiesle only “as a man who lived in the neighborhood,” but said that his criminal record should be investigated.

“We need to look at the fact that at the point of my daughter’s disappearance, he was a registered sex offender who ended up getting his slate wiped clean,” she said. “That information wasn’t made privy to Pinole police when Amber went missing. Had police known, he would have been a top priority.”

Residents in Kiesle’s Truckee neighborhood, which features homes ranging from $400,000 to $1 million nestled near the Tahoe Donner golf course, said they rarely saw the ex-priest.

On Thursday, teams from the FBI and several California police departments set up a command post in the garage of Kiesle’s blue-roofed home. Outside, investigators slowly sifted dirt onto tarps and searched for bone fragments.

In the late afternoon, officers brought in a search dog. All they found was an old rifle shell casing, which they did not characterize as evidence.

“At this time we have no evidence of a connection” between Kiesle and Swartz-Garcia’s disappearance, said Berry.

Swartz said that police dogs years ago picked up the scent of her daughter in the van of a Bay Area man who was then a suspect in several disappearances. But no case was ever made.

“Bloodhounds can’t testify in court,” she said. “The findings were a tool for police. But they couldn’t make the case stick.”

Watching police dig through the dirt, software engineer Chuck Anderson called the scene “surreal.”

“I just feel for the family,” said Anderson, who has two daughters, “and hope they get some closure.”

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Bailey reported from Truckee and Glionna reported from San Francisco. Times staff researcher Norma Kaufman contributed to this report.