D.A. resigned in corruption scandal

Charles Louis Moore, 80, a former district attorney of Santa Cruz County whose political career was brought to a halt by a bribery scandal in the 1950s, died Dec. 9 in Monterey, according to the Paul Mortuary in Pacific Grove.

In 1954, the 27-year-old Moore became the youngest district attorney in California when he was elected on a platform of cleaning up gambling and corruption.

But even before the end of his term, he was forced to resign after the Watsonville Register-Pajaronian, a 7,000-circulation daily newspaper, reported his shady dealings with the same gamblers he had vowed to prosecute.

Moore was indicted by a grand jury for “willful and corrupt misconduct in office,” but charges were dropped after he resigned. The paper received a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service based on its reporting of the scandal, which grabbed national headlines.

His political path curtailed, Moore eventually turned to religion. He was ordained a priest in the Roman Catholic Church, but in the early 1970s left the priesthood and started his own congregation. He held weekly services at his Pacific Grove house, calling his church the Gathering of the Way.

Moore was born Feb. 15, 1927, in Portland, Ore., and graduated in 1951 from Stanford Law School. He served in the Navy for 18 months.