Before his daughter was abducted last October, Marc Klaas was just another face in the crowd. Now the anti-crime crusader rubs elbows with the president. But is that power all it's cracked up to be?
By Greg Cahill
"It's almost too difficult to talk about, all of this," says Marc Klaas, picking through a plate of Belgian waffles and blueberries at a noisy Petaluma cafe across the street from the storefront that served last fall as the first Polly Klaas Volunteer Search Center. "We miss her more than ever," he adds, his voice cracking with emotion and barely audible above the din of clattering dishes and Baroque music booming from the sound system. "It doesn't get any easier--not at all. She's just this little memory that's always going to be 12 years old now.
"God almighty--it's so fuckedup!"
It's been nearly a year since a knife-wielding, bearded stranger carried Klaas' daughter barefoot and sobbing from the bedroom of her quiet westside Petaluma home into the moonlit night last Oct. 1. Confessed killer Richard Allen Davis, the burly state parolee, is being held without bail at Sonoma County Jail on charges that he kidnapped and strangled the petite seventh-grader. His trial is set to begin Valentine's Day.
Davis' brazen act has helped fuel what is now generally acknowledged as a national preoccupation with crimes against children. Caught in a wave of hysteria over apparently rampant crime, Polly was beatified by the news media, her father accorded Messiah-like status. It didn't take long for avaricious politicians to latch onto Klaas as their meal-ticket for re-election. In the wake of the Polly's disappearance, Klaas--who used to run a car rental franchise at a posh San Francisco hotel and paid little attention to politics--has been championed repeatedly as a crime fighter by politicos bent on pushing a tough-on-crime agenda.
Many of those same elected officials--particularly Gov. Pete Wilson, who delivered a self-serving eulogy Dec. 9 at Polly's televised memorial service--have staked their political fortunes on defending the newly passed Three Strikes, You're Out law. Klaas advocated vehemently for the legislation in the weeks after Polly's body was discovered Dec. 4 under a pile of debris at an old sawmill just south of Cloverdale. Now he is one of its most outspoken critics, having suddenly switched his position last April.
While he is proud to have taken steps to toughen the state's sentencing laws, he freely admits that he made a big mistake endorsing Three Strikes. "There was no way to know that at the beginning because they lied to us," he says flatly. "Certainly, we got used by a lot of people. But that's what politics is, used and being used. At least that's the case as far as I can determine.
"But it was more than just [Three Strikes author Mike] Reynolds. It was Gov. Wilson and the whole right wing of the Republican Party."
His slow conversion from raging ideologue to neophyte progressive has even won the respect of some of Klaas' earliest critics.
"No one should have to suffer what this guy had to suffer, and there's nothing wrong with him exercising his First Amendment rights to speak about that to anyone--in fact, there's everything wrong with him not doing it," says Vincent Schiraldi, executive director of the San Francisco-based Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. He faults elected officials for manipulating Klaas after he was exalted by the news media.
"He's done exactly what in many ways he should do: go out and talk and rant and rave and be a victim. He's not responsible for the elected officials of the United States of America elevating him to hero status. They are responsible for that."
Still, Schiraldi worries about the long-term societal cost of giving someone like Marc Klaas such an influential a bully pulpit.
"In this kind of mass-media world we live in, where news and information is beamed to you instantaneously, we've witnessed some very dangerous stuff in California," he laments. "Our elected officials are relying more on Marc Klaas and Mike Reynolds--two guys to whom nothing bad should have happened--to advise them on criminal justice policy than they are on people who have spent their lives working in the field.
"There is no question that's wrong."
But few have taken notice of Klaas' efforts as a novice civil libertarian. In fact, even members of the Polly Klaas Foundation board of directors have branded Klaas as a "puppet" and a "shill" for allowing politicians to use him in return for his harping on the need for tougher sentencing laws and controls over sex offenders and violent felons.
Indeed, Klaas has continued to glean political currency from his more highly visible role as a crime fighter. Last week, he stood by President Bill Clinton's side in the White House Rose Garden for the signing of the $30 billion federal Crime Bill, receiving the first pen used for the signing The new law also contains a Three Strikes provision. It was included at the behest of Klaas, who had first met Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno in January at an Oval Office encounter some observers say was designed merely to counter the image that the president is soft on crime.
But while Klaas' presence at the bill signing should suggest satisfaction over a successful lobbying effort, his slight smile that day belied a man who is racked with disillusionment over the legislative process and increasingly ambivalent about his future in the political arena. Just five weeks ago, Klaas had resolved at a Lake Tahoe retreat with his wife and close friends to quit lobbying altogether in order to devote more time to sorting out a personal life he says is in "turmoil." No sooner had he declared his intentions than the White House summoned him to help bail out the then-stalled Crime Bill. Klaas put his personal woes on hold and jetted to Washington, D.C., that same weekend.
But Klaas clearly has mixed emotions about the results of his endeavors.
"We were just talking about this," he says, gesturing toward his wife, Violet, whom he met 10 years ago, "and the fact that I had quite a bit to do with some of the laws that have been changed up in Sacramento and on Capitol Hill. That's something that one should be able to take pride in. But there's no joy in it. There's no satisfaction.
"It's just a lot of shit that has to be done."
From the beginning, the news media loved Marc Klaas. He was a constant fixture at the search center, where he often held vigil for 14 to 16 hours at a stretch. He was photogenic, handsome, articulate, and camera-ready. During a tediously slow news month, his daughter's plight held the spotlight while TV networks and press from around the world flocked to rustic Petaluma. Amid the brick Victorians along Kentucky Street, in the heart of the downtown business district, satellite dishes sprouted up as TV news teams parked mobile studio vans on sidewalks and hordes of reporters scoured the riverfront city in search of a fresh angle to the mysterious disappearance of the girl People magazine dubbed "America's child."
In a small army of tireless community volunteers the media discovered a veritable mother lode of human-interest stories and a distraught father eager to talk about his missing daughter. It was compelling stuff and especially attractive to ratings-conscious producers who seized upon the public's seemingly limitless appetite for news on the girl as a way to compete with the sensational tabloid TV shows encroaching on the marketplace.
In the process, the media elevated Klaas to a celebrity status usually reserved for rock stars. He later vowed that his daughter had not died in vain. Klaas became a symbol for those victims and their families who were fighting back at whatever people perceived was wrong with America's violent society.
What most people didn't know was that Klaas and a small group of key volunteers--including former Marin Independent Journal executive editor Jay Silverberg of Petaluma and music video producer Joanne Gardner of Kenwood--had strategized ways to keep the story splashed on the front pages and at the top of the 6 o'clock news. The ultimate goal was simple: get Polly back home. The idea was to keep Klaas in front of the camera and provide a steady stream of news fodder, including well-timed personal appearances by Hollywood star Winona Ryder--a Petaluma resident who had taken an interest in the case--and Ryder's subsequent $200,000 reward offer, a variety of carefully orchestrated community events, and a continuing facade of family unity, even though there was deep rift between Klaas' side of the family and Polly's mother, Eve Nichol, and stepfather, Alan Nichol. The stories about family unity, Klaas once confided, were the "one big lie" he took part in during the search.
Klaas grieved in public for 65 days. The accompanying media blitz helped maintain a high degree of public interest and, most importantly, ensured that baffled police investigators would remain doggedly committed to the case.
The downside of that strategy was that Klaas became seen as publicity-hungry and self-serving, a notion reinforced by his frequent appearances on TV talk shows, high-profile meetings with politicians, and continued exploitation of the media even after the discovery of Polly's body . Meanwhile, Polly's distraught mother--who never developed a taste for the spotlight--had turned reclusive. She has since slipped into seclusion and is refusing all requests for interviews.
Klaas defends his decision to remain a public figure. "Time is your worst enemy--time to reflect and time to go over the case," he explains, adding that he instead chose to vent his rage against what he considers to be a criminal justice system that favors felons over victims. "It's been really beneficial for me to just jump right into things because I think it's helped in my own healing process. I think that I'm taking it as well as I can take it. I don't get maniacal. I don't howl at the moon. I save my anger for the politicians.
"And it really helps to be able to get up every morning knowing that we can do something that can help move things forward a little bit, increasing awareness on the issues and working towards getting some kind of laws to put the bad boys away."
Of course, the best known of those measures is Three Strikes. It was written by Assemblyman Bill Jones, R-Fresno, and became one of five competing legislative bills that raced through the Assembly in record time at a special crime session. Gov. Wilson signed it into law at a press conference earlier this year, and a nearly identical version is on the ballot in November. For criminal-justice advocates, a significant segment of the law enforcement community, and even Marc Klaas, Three Strikes is a draconian nightmare. It was first proposed by Mike Reynolds, a Fresno father whose own young daughter had been slain last year. For months, the proposed sentencing measure languished and nearly slipped into obscurity.
That all changed within 48 hours after Petaluma police announced on a bitterly cold starry Saturday night that an FBI forensics team had identified Polly's body earlier that day. On the following Monday morning, Klaas made his first public appearance since then in front of a mob of news media representatives. The cavernous meeting room at the search center on Payran Avenue was cramped with television cameras and lighting stands, coils of cable, banks of radio microphones, and a horde of jostling reporters. Sitting at a desk near the entrance was Mike Reynolds--a squat man with thinning red hair and a cheap suit. While a grief-stricken Marc Klaas huddled in a windowless storeroom adjacent to the meeting room gathered enough strength to face the press, Reynolds sat uninvited at the center's media desk giving press interviews and promoting Three Strikes to anyone willing to listen.
And plenty of people were willing.
By noon, Reynolds had hitched his bandwagon to the media circus surrounding Polly's story. Meanwhile, Klaas was completely unaware of Reynolds' manipulative workings.
Ironically, the political machine that Klaas helped fuel with his own rage now threatens to run over even his good intentions. Still, he believes that the various pieces of legislation Wilson is expected to sign into law this week will fit into a fairly comprehensive anti-crime package. Yet, it's a mixed blessing. "In the middle of this marvelous puzzle that's being put together is a big, ugly splotch which is Three Strikes and which does more harm than good," Klaas laments. "And that's a shame. But who bats a thousand?"
He is now one of the few outspoken opponents of the Three Strikes ballot initiative on the November ballot. Last month, he joined a lawsuit against supporters of the measure in an effort to force them to change what Klaas calls misleading statements on the ballot argument. He lost that bid after a group of conservatives led by Republican senatorial candidate and multimillionaire Michael Huffington countersued. Now Klaas is a lone wolf crying out on the speaker's circuit against the foolishness of the initiative, since no politician wants to look soft on crime and sympathetic law-enforcement officials fear that organized opposition to the initiative could help topple Gov. Wilson.
On Oct. 11, Klaas will debate Reynolds and Assemblyman Jones at Stanford University. Two weeks later, he faces state Attorney General Dan Lundgren on the campus of San Diego State University in a pair of debates on the ballot initiative.
"I don't blame Mike Reynolds for what he did," Klaas says. "Mike Reynolds is a driven person. I understand him in a lot of ways. We both come from the same place in that we're both driven by this intense need to get things done. I've often said that we're on the same road driving in opposite directions. And you have to understand that there are two things that got Three Strikes passed into law. One of them is Polly, and the other one is Mike's big balls and iron will. I can understand that. He faced down the politicians--they blinked, he didn't. I admire that, but it's unfortunate that what resulted isn't better public policy because we'd all be better off for it.
"Still, I can't blame him for what he did."
Would Klaas do the same thing if the situation had been reversed?
"My god, no," he replies. "I've talked to a lot of parents who were in my same situation, and the first thing I tell them is that everybody is going to try and take advantage of them, including myself. Everybody's got a personal agenda to push and they have to be very careful that that agenda fits their own. But I would never do it.
"It's a horrendous thing to do."
These days, there is a battle raging within Marc Klaas for control of his soul. On the one hand, he speaks passionately about feeling it is his destiny to lobby for children's safety issues. On the other hand, he articulates a desire to put politics aside and to work more directly with communities, families, and children in a effort to prevent others from suffering the loss that he has experienced. "I'm a better, stronger person than I was a year ago," he says. "I don't really have fears anymore. I can look anybody in the face and talk them down. And I'm doing something that's for the social good. So, I think I'm a better person, though the price is way out of line to any personal benefit that I have gotten, to have lost like we lost.
"There will always be a large void that will never be filled an emptiness that will always be there. And there are my own demons that I guess will haunt me."
He chokes up when the conversation turns to Polly and the horror she must have felt in her last moments of life. And Klaas turns bitter when he discusses self-serving politicians whom he says care little for the public's best interest and disdain the good intentions of those children's rights advocates Klaas has seen shot down repeatedly over the past year because of petty partisan bickering. "That scares the hell out of me," Klaas says. "But that's what politicians do. Listen, a politician is never looking at anything more than the chance for re-election. I totally understand that, but what are you going to do? You have to make them see your point of view and hope that they will believe that it will somehow help them get re-elected. And this year that happened with all the anti-crime legislation.
"That's how all the good ones got through. That's how all the bad ones got through."
That sort of insight has taken its toll on Klaas, however, who has tasted both power and powerlessness. "What are you going to do?" he asks, referring to the way politicians have manipulated him for their own gain. "They came to us at the lowest point in our entire lives and took advantage of us. That's the game. And unfortunately we bought in and there's nothing we can do, though we tried to get more focused by fighting the Three Strikes bill. But we were turned back by politicians who were afraid to stand up.
"You see, that's where Mike Reynolds and I are different from the politicians. We've got nothing to lose. We've already lost big time! But the politicians have everything to lose. They have their high-profile jobs, their comfort, their gorgeous secretaries, and their influence, plus a $70,000 a year salary."
Clearly, there are plenty of good reasons to steer clear of the political arena, especially for someone who says he wants to get a grip on his life. But there also is the seductive nature of power. After returning last Friday from Washington, D.C.--and still pumped up from his appearance at the Crime Bill signing and a week of stumping the TV talk-show circuit--Klaas talks excitedly about starting a new child-safety foundation--a rival to the beleaguered Polly Klaas Foundation, which has stumbled this year from in-fighting among board members. The next morning, he joined archconservative Sen. Bob Dole for breakfast in an effort to get bipartisan support for a crime conference that Klaas plans to host in Los Angeles in February. Clinton already is on board, he boasts.
"It's very flattering to be summoned by the president," he admits, explaining his waffling on plans to bail out of politics. "It was something that I believed in and it was an opportunity to address the world on some things that I felt were important issues. And I feel destined in some way to continue on trying to fight this fight. Yet I don't want to keep harping on crime legislation. I want to move on to advocate for social and educational legislation because that's ultimately more important. You can only go so far toward putting the bad guys away.
"What we need to do is to try and be sure that we don't raise another generation of bad guys."
Seated on a bench on Kentucky Street after his meal, Klaas smokes a cigarette and reminisces about the thousands of volunteers who stuffed envelopes at the center and the dozens of schoolkids who poured out into surrounding streets last year distributing fliers depicting Polly and her suspected abductor. Shifting his attention from politics, Klaas grows visibly more relaxed. His voice softens and it's easy to imagine him, not as the angry crime fighter, but the loving father who once coddled his daughter on weekend visits to his waterfront condominium in Sausalito.
"I really like talking to neighborhood groups who want to find a way to protect their kids because those are the ones who are there for the right reasons," he says, when asked to imagine what he'll be doing a year from now. "I'm working with a group down in Southern California called the Child Safety Network, and they're actually paying me money to help them with some programs that they're running with the Kiwanis Clubs. So I'll probably put my energy into those types of endeavors. It's a lot less pressure than working in the political arena. It's not a chess game," he says with a slight smile. "I mean, it's a chess game when you're playing politics--you're always making a move and trying to think three moves ahead. It's so much better when you're just talking to regular folks and trying to get a message across to help teach them ways to protect their own neighborhoods.
"A lot of people just want to know how the hell we accomplished what we did here," he says, glancing wistfully toward the old search center. "You know, how it happened and what the lessons are and what came out of the Polly search. And those kinds of things are real easy to talk about. I don't know that I've figured out what all those lessons are, but certainly there are enough of them that I can share those with people for awhile."
One thing he's certain about is that he'll never return to a "regular job" not related directly to children's safety issues. "The perfect universe as I see it is a world where there is no child abuse and I'm teaching kindergarten," he says with a gentle smile. "That's where my heart is, around the kids, and that's what pulled me into this."
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