COLUMN ONE : His Life Flies Into a Tailspin : When pilot-for-hire Cheater Bella got the phone call, he never dreamed of the wild ride ahead, and his crash landing in the courts.

EL PASO —  One of the alligators was dozing in the dirt and the bear was playing with the Rottweiler in a nearby cage.

Charles (Cheater) Bella was giving the timber wolves some fresh water while, close by, his mountain lions lazed in the morning sun.

Bella, 44, was about to walk past the alligator when he stopped and gave it a friendly pat.

“Watch out,” he said. “Sometimes she likes to nibble on toes.”

These are better days for Bella, now that the trial is over. He is back tending to his strange menagerie. Here, at least he knows where he stands. Outside this odd compound, surrounded by a stone wall with barbed wire strung atop it, a man can have his good name and livelihood stripped away. That’s what happened to Cheater Bella.

He was just trying to survive. What he got in return was gunfire, handcuffs, an indictment, and a mountain of debt.

Amid his snakes, gila monsters, parrots, hawks and other creatures, he ponders his fate and one of the crazier tales of justice turned inside out.

It all started with his helicopter, now gathering dust by the front gate. It’s the reason the fat lady called.

What happened was a prison break, with Bella at the controls of the helicopter that swooped into the state prison recreation yard just outside Santa Fe, N. M., in July, 1988. From that time on, Bella’s already unusual life did a back-flip.

As events unfolded, Bella was charged with conspiracy in the escape attempt, although he claimed from the beginning that he flew his chopper with a gun pointed at his head.

Anger is a tame word to describe Bella in the months that followed. The injustice of it all haunted him. Bella’s wife, Carrol, would often awaken in the night and find him pacing the floor of their tiny living room. Or he would rail about how his business had gone bust since the charges were filed, about how the notion of innocent until proven guilty was just a load of bear poop.

There came a time when, despite 20 years of marriage, the couple could no longer talk about the case. A relationship forged over the years was developing cracks. Dark days, they were, terrible days.

And now, even after the sweet moment of victory in the courtroom, things are still not as they used to be. His wife is still by his side, but Cheater Bella says he is half a million bucks in the hole. The helicopter used on that fateful day has not been flown since because the expense of repairing it is too great. He is planning on suing the state of New Mexico until, as he puts it, “their pants fall off.” All because of one lousy telephone call.

Cheater Bella has always lived by a set of rules that aren’t quite the same as others, and that has made him something of a legend around El Paso, where he decided to stay after being discharged from the Army here more than two decades ago.

He always seemed to have the fastest car in town. They started calling him “Cheater” at the drag races because he won much more than he lost and the name eventually stuck. Even Carrol, who met him while he was pumping gas at a service station, calls him Cheater.

He’s quick with his fists when he thinks someone has done him wrong. He has a temper, and a deserved reputation as one tough guy. He wrestles with a 600-pound bear for the hell of it.

Over the years he built up his business of making engines run faster and better than anyone else’s. He became a pilot. He bought one chopper and then another and operated Bear Helicopter Service out of his front yard, which is a hodgepodge of old tires and cars and motorcycles and engines and sheds.

He flew as a stunt man in several movies, including Rambo III. A framed photo of Bella and actor Sylvester Stallone is prominently displayed in the living room.

The menagerie began with an injured coyote 20 or so years ago. Now Bella doesn’t even count all the animals inside the compound.

He and his wife have been licensed by the state and federal government as animal rehabilitators. They take wounded and abused and neglected animals and nurse them back to health. Every month, it takes 2,000 pounds of dog food, 600 pounds of chicken scratch and 900 pounds of meat to keep all the animals fed.

He keeps rattlesnakes in the bedroom and a coral snake in the living room. The gila monster is on the front porch, along with the parrots. The wounded hawks are in cages off to the side, along with the stiff-legged miniature horse.

Once, when a beautiful silver fox being cared for by Bella died, a friend asked him if he was going to skin it for the pelt. He looked at the man like he was crazy.

“This is my family,” he said.

As Bella tells the story, the one that a jury later believed, Carrol was actually the one who got the first call from the fat lady. The voice on the other end said she was a real estate agent in Santa Fe and wanted to rent a helicopter to show a potential customer some ranch land.

At the time, Bella was just outside Chicago, making a bid on a B-26 bomber.

So he came back early for the job. And before dawn of July 11, 1988, Bella lifted off in El Paso and flew due north toward Santa Fe. There, a 250-pound woman emerged from the back of a taxicab. She was wearing a flowered shirt and carrying a very heavy bag. In the words of Bella, she was “a big ol’ ugly sloppy ‘ol gal.”.

And as Bella described it, the woman did something unusual. She asked to sit in the back of the French-built Gazelle helicopter instead of the front seat. When the chopper was in the air, she kept telling Bella to change his course until they were on a direct line with the state prison. When Bella looked around he saw a .357 magnum pointed at his head. There were hollow point bullets in the chambers.

“That can do a tremendous amount of damage,” Bella said, in a bit of understatement.

Those next few minutes seemed like years. He told her he needed to drop fuel to compensate for the weight of the escapees. But when he landed to do so, she never let him get far enough away to make a break for it. When they were getting very close to the prison, he grabbed for the gun, but couldn’t pull it away. She was strong, very strong, and he had injured his hand a few days earlier in a fist fight.

They were screaming and cursing at each other. The helicopter was making a steep dive and Bella thought that it would begin to fall apart at any second.

“Death was right in front of her and it didn’t faze her a bit,” Bella said. “It was very obvious she was going to do exactly what she was programmed to do.”

So he set the helicopter down in the compound at first base of the ball diamond. Three men piled in. The woman, who would later be identified as Beverly Shoemaker, handed out more guns from her bag. But the chopper would not leave the ground and the temperature gauge was red-lined.

“They’re screaming at me to go up or they’ll blow my head off,” Bella said. “They were firing at us from the tower and there was just too much weight.”

One of the prisoners jumped out of the helicopter and ran next to it until the skids left the ground. He hopped back on as the helicopter gained altitude and headed toward a fence.

The helicopter clipped the top of that fence and barely cleared a taller one. One of the prisoners, Randy Lackey, handcuffed Bella to the helicopter. And then the chase began.

In the course of the next 45 minutes, the skies over northern New Mexico were the scene of as wild a ride as any movie. The escapees’ plan was to go to a small airport, steal a plane and go to Mexico. With a U.S. Customs Service Blackhawk helicopter in pursuit, the prisoners ordered Bella down at the small airport in Las Lunas, south of Albuquerque.

They all got out, and Bella, who said he was doing as he was told, shut down the helicopter engine. The Blackhawk landed and Bella started thinking the adventure was over, that he would be heading home in half an hour.

But to his disbelief, one of the prisoners, Francis Mitchell, began walking back towards him, right in front of the Blackhawk and the Customs Service officer armed with an assault rifle. He hopped in Bella’s helicopter and told him to get it off the ground.

When the Blackhawk’s pilot saw Bella’s rotors begin to turn, he lifted off and hovered over the other helicopter, trying to keep it on the ground with the downward wash of air. Flying rocks battered the windshield. As Bella’s helicopter lifted off, he pulled off a remarkable piece of piloting by scooting his craft out from under the Blackhawk with only a foot or so to spare between the two choppers. According to news accounts printed at the time, Mitchell was holding a gun to Bella’s head.

A Customs agent began firing at Bella’s helicopter. It was about then, as the two choppers were racing north toward Albuquerque, that Mitchell realized the game was up. Bella set the Gazelle down at the Albuquerque airport and Mitchell gave himself up.

Then the police did something Bella did not expect. They put handcuffs on him, even though he was still bound by the ones Lackey had put on him during the prison break.

That temper of Bella’s went through the roof. He had been shot at. They had allowed Mitchell back in the helicopter and they were still putting the cuffs on him. Hours later, when Carrol received the first call from her husband, she had to hold the phone away from her ear.

Reporters who had stationed themselves in her living room took notes as Bella questioned the collective IQ of the New Mexico law enforcement authorities. One of Bella’s lawyers speculated recently that the hot temper might have been the source of the trouble.

“I don’t think he held back his feelings about how stupid they were,” attorney David Norvell said.

Shoemaker, who was quickly apprehended in Las Lunas, told authorities Bella had nothing to do with the prison break, which she pulled out of love for one of the inmates, Danny Mahoney. Her lawyer said the same thing. But reports started coming out of “inconsistencies” in Bella’s story.

Mitchell, who was serving time for murder, told arresting officers that Bella was in on the deal. And Lackey, as part of a plea bargain agreement, would later testify against Bella.

On Bella’s second day in custody, he was charged with conspiracy and three counts of aiding and abetting an escape.

Bella’s somewhat simplistic view of life has always gone something like this: If you do right, you’re fine. If you do wrong, you get nailed. He said it was not until months after he posted bond that he realized that perhaps his case was not so open and shut as he saw it.

He figured he had better find himself some legal firepower, preferably someone who knew a lot about helicopters, someone who would understand that he would not have taken the Gazelle in for the kind of load he would carry out of that prison yard. Bella picked up the phone and called Palm Beach, Fla. The voice on the other end was that of helicopter pilot and famed criminal lawyer F. Lee Bailey.

The trial lasted 10 days. Dist. Atty. Chet Walter contends to this day that Bella would have been convicted had not Mitchell’s statement after his arrest been thrown out as hearsay.

But when the case went to the jury, Bailey was so sure of the verdict he left to catch a plane to Dallas. After less than three hours of deliberation, Bella was found innocent on all counts. Then the jurors made a somewhat unusual request. They asked if Bella would accompany them to the steps of the courthouse for a group photo.

“I’ve been practicing law for 32 years and I’ve won a lot and lost a lot,” said attorney Norvell, “But I’ve never seen a jury invite a defendant to go outside and have their picture taken with him.”

When he left Santa Fe after the trial, Bella did a fly-by of the prison where his troubles all began.

Bella is back in El Paso with his animals and the strains between him and Carrol are gone. It has been more than six months since the jury found him innocent, but he is still picking up the pieces, trying to get his debts taken care of. It’s been rough.

“I’ve been mauled by lions, and bit by alligators, but those crises seem insignificant now. I’ve found that one of the most difficult things in life is to prove your innocence,” he said.