Neighbors Rally to Aid Teen-Ager Accused of Murder

Billy Cardiel had good grades, an interest in sports and a best friend named Andy who grew up with him in the old, largely Latino section of Moorpark where families tend to be close and loyalty runs deep.

But today, the high school junior, described as a good if unremarkable youth, finds himself at the center of a small-town tragedy and ardent cause. Cardiel is charged with murder in the mid-July fatal beating of a 59-year-old eccentric named Chester Lawson, a man who died wielding a pitchfork and was known to even his best patron in town as a “cantankerous old devil.”

The case is seen as a clear-cut matter of self-defense by Cardiel’s Moorpark neighbors, who have started a legal-defense fund for him. So far $3,500 has been raised.

Law enforcement authorities and Cardiel’s attorney agree that Lawson was killed during a confrontation with Cardiel and his friend Andy Amavisca, a Moorpark High School graduate headed for the Army. The two youths, friends since they were toddlers, had been drinking beer and talking in a pickup truck parked in a secluded area near the small trailer where Lawson lived with his dogs.

All sides agree that Lawson came at the youths with a pitchfork, apparently angered that they had parked in a lot he was paid to guard. Cardiel struck him with a board and Lawson was found dead the following morning. Cardiel’s lawyer argues that the youth hit Lawson to defend his friend.

But Cardiel, 17, faces the possibility of being tried as a adult instead of a juvenile--an issue as troubling to his supporters as the killing itself. Any murder is shocking enough to Moorpark, a city of 25,000 residents still on the cusp of rural and suburban life. But many residents find it hard to understand the prosecution’s tough stance toward Cardiel, a quiet youth with no criminal record.

Lawson, on the other hand, left few friends.

“Chester was not a model citizen and had the reputation of being very cantankerous. Anyone who ever came in contact with him had some altercation with him or something,” said Nellie Montano, a retired assistant elementary school principal. She has known the Cardiel family for years and taught Cardiel’s mother, Yvonne, in the first grade.

“To be asking for such a kid to be treated as an adult, to be given the worst possible situation, I guess I can’t understand it. It doesn’t seem logical,” Montano said.

A hearing is scheduled Monday in Ventura Superior Court to determine whether Cardiel’s case should remain a juvenile matter or be treated as an adult felony. If he were tried as an adult and convicted of murder, he would face 25 years to life in prison. As a juvenile offender, the maximum sentence would be detention in a state youth correctional facility until he is 25, said the prosecutor handling the case, Ventura County Deputy Dist. Atty. James S. Irving.

A large crowd of friends and family is expected at Monday’s hearing, including many Moorpark High School students and their parents who organized the Cardiel Defense Fund. Students have also been writing to Cardiel at the county’s juvenile detention center in Ventura, where he has been held since his arrest Aug. 28.

“We haven’t really set a goal. Whatever we can get will be appreciated because attorneys’ fees are very high,” said fund organizer Shearon Millar, whose children are friends of Cardiel.

Supporters held a carwash last month and are planning to work at Magic Mountain, then donate their earnings to the fund, Millar said. Many of the contributions have come from members of Holy Cross Church, Moorpark’s only Catholic church and the Cardiel family’s parish, where the support has been emotional as well as financial.

“It’s very troubling, very heartbreaking for everyone,” Montano said. She said she recently saw Cardiel’s mother at church and “all she could do was just hold on to me and cry. . . . There is nothing sadder to see.”

Irving declined to discuss details of the case but said “if there wasn’t more to it, we wouldn’t be going through this. He’s dead--the guy is dead. The question is, to a large extent, did he deserve to die the way he died? And my contention is he did not, no matter who he was.”

Lawson’s injuries are among the case’s complicating factors. “Blunt force trauma to the head” is listed as the cause of death, a fact consistent with Cardiel’s contention that he struck Lawson with a wooden plank to protect Amavisca.

But police and autopsy reports show that Lawson received not just one but multiple blows. He also had abrasions on his abdomen and several broken ribs, said Ventura County coroner’s investigator Jim Wingate.

In addition, the youths were sitting in Amavisca’s pickup when Lawson approached them, said Ventura County Sheriff’s Detective Mike Barnes. “Why didn’t the guys just leave?” asked Barnes, who said that the truck’s engine was running and that the teen-agers were in the process of leaving when they heard shouting, stopped and got out of the truck to see what was happening.

“They discovered it was Chester, and things went downhill from there,” Barnes said.

Lawson’s body was found the next morning, on July 14, in a parking lot on Maureen Lane next to the Air Dry Corp., a business that paid him $40 a week to keep an eye on its property. He was lying atop a pitchfork, hands clenched, in the cutoffs he usually wore while riding his bicycle shirtless around the city.

Cardiel and Amavisca were arrested six weeks later after confiding in a football coach who contacted the Sheriff’s Department, Barnes said. Cardiel was eventually charged with murder. Amavisca, who joined the Army and is stationed in Missouri, was released.

“Billy felt Andy’s life was in danger,” said Cardiel’s attorney, Charles English of Santa Monica.

English said that Lawson came toward the truck with a pitchfork and that the level of alcohol in his blood was 0.18%, nearly twice the level used to establish intoxication in drunk-driving cases.

“Andy got out to see what was going on and he started after Andy,” said English, who would not permit Cardiel or his family to be interviewed.

English said Cardiel was a “very nice young man” who earned Cs and Bs in school, enjoyed sports and had never been in trouble, a description confirmed by friends and police investigators. Cardiel’s father works in construction and his mother is employed by the Moorpark Unified School District as a health clerk who cares for students’ minor injuries and illnesses.

Lawson’s violent death came as no surprise to many Moorpark residents, especially downtown merchants who say the transient’s eccentric charm was outweighed by his drinking bouts, temper and offensive language.

Riding around town on his bicycle with a pet dog in tow and known to rummage for cardboard behind the Hughes supermarket, Lawson was a popular feature subject in local newspapers.

When he was killed, the coroner’s office was unable to find a relative or friend to claim his body or belongings. The county took care of Lawson’s cremation and threw out what few possessions he had, Wingate said.

Lawson had benefited from the charity of Moorpark’s shopkeepers and citizens--odd jobs, day-old bread and conversation were among the small kindnesses he received. But sooner or later, Lawson would say or do something to alienate them. Just weeks before his death, he spent the month of June in the Ventura County Jail after threatening a grocery store clerk with a box cutter.

“This community is very sympathetic, very caring, and a lot of businessmen, they all gave to that man,” said a downtown resident who asked not to be named. “They gave him food, let him fix his bike, gave him water, let him use their facilities. And without exception he became belligerent with every last one of them.”

Curran Cummings, who formerly owned a bicycle shop in town and offered Lawson a part-time job after he fixed his bike for free, recalled how Lawson verbally abused his wife Joy one evening when the store was closed and she refused to give him a new wheel.

Lawson was also banished from Whitaker Hardware, a landmark establishment on old-fashioned High Street, after he threatened to beat up the blind, elderly owner during a drunken rage, said Cummings, who joined others in describing Lawson’s death as “no real loss.”

But at the Air Dry parking lot, Lawson was still welcome. “He was kind of a cantankerous old devil,” conceded manager Ken Purdy, who befriended Lawson and helped him get the job of watching the parking lot.

“Old Chester felt responsible for the place, for keeping an eye on it,” Purdy said. “Chester liked the bottle occasionally. He never hurt anybody but he could get real loud.”

Purdy, who defended Lawson in a letter to a local newspaper, said he resented the city’s protective attitude toward Cardiel and Amavisca. “I just felt that, OK, these boys were religious, clean-cut and jocks, but my contention was, what the heck were they doing here at 11, 12 o’clock at night with alcohol on property that didn’t belong to them?

“That confrontation would not have occurred had they not been where they didn’t belong.”