Slaying Shakes a Tranquil Oasis

Kali Manley had a plan. It was the start of Christmas break and she wanted to spend the night at a friend’s house, just a few miles up the highway.

She called her father about 5 p.m. for permission. He, of course, said yes. Kali was a responsible kid, he reasoned. A pretty 14-year-old blond with blue eyes and a shy smile, she always let him know where she was or where she was going.

Sometime after midnight Dec. 20, 1998, Kali and her friend, Ashley Helfrich, dozed off after watching television and awoke to find David Alvarez, the older brother of a high school classmate, and his companion, Robert Miears, standing at the front door.

Kali didn’t know either man. Ashley did. Alvarez, 22, had a reputation around the Ojai Valley. He came from a well-to-do family. But there were those arrests on assault charges.

It was cold outside, the start of a five-day freeze that would devastate the valley’s lemon crop. Yet Alvarez beckoned the girls outside to see his new truck. Ashley declined. Her mother wasn’t home, but would be returning soon.

“You shouldn’t be here when she gets back,” she warned. She told Kali not to go outside either. But Kali wasn’t listening. Dressed in jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt, she stepped into the night to talk to the two men.

Fifteen minutes later, she was gone.

When his daughter didn’t come home the next day, Charles Manley began to worry. He spoke to Ashley. She didn’t know where Kali was. At 6:20 p.m., he called the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department and reported her missing.

The Manleys weren’t the only ones alarmed. Kali’s friend Erica Long, also 14, knew Alvarez. She was a close friend of his younger sister, Veronica.

“When you think of David,” she said, “the first thing that pops into your head isn’t good things.”

She prayed for Kali. In the days that followed, a massive volunteer search involving hundreds of Ojai residents was launched to find the Oak View teenager. But there were no signs. Four days after the hunt began, Erica broke into tears and wrote “Come Home Kali” in dark eyeliner on her bedroom mirror.

While Ojai residents continued the search, Alvarez spent Christmas in a County Jail cell. Even before Kali was reported missing, police had picked him up for allegedly threatening a woman in a separate case. Now they were beginning to suspect his involvement in Kali’s disappearance.

At the same time, attorney Louis “Chuck” Samonsky said Alvarez was already talking to him about Kali. Samonsky made a private offer to Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury--his client would reveal the location of her body if Bradbury promised not to go for the death penalty in any possible prosecution.

Bradbury refused, Samonsky said, but Alvarez decided he wanted to end the search--deal or not.

On Dec. 26, he led investigators to a culvert beneath California 33 in the mountains above Ojai. The scene was later described by authorities: From the back seat of Bradbury’s vehicle, with Samonsky at his side, Alvarez pointed to a large drainage pipe cradling the naked, strangled body of a girl.

The search for Kali Manley had ended.

A Mountain-Ringed Paradise

To many, Ojai conjures up images of a quiet tourist town inhabited by New Age hippies and reclusive movie stars. It’s been called paradise, a citrus-and-spa Shangri-La ringed by mountains and nestled into the Southern California landscape. People call it “the nest,” and it feels like one.

Indeed, parents come here to shelter their youngsters from the dangers lurking in the sprawling Los Angeles metropolis 80 miles to the south. They want safe streets, good schools and air perfumed by orange blossoms. And for the most part, that’s what they find.

Charles and Holly Manley settled their three daughters into a modest three-bedroom home in Oak View in 1987 for those very reasons.

Eugene and Marie Alvarez bought 20 acres in Upper Ojai the same year and built a sprawling five-bedroom estate. They too were drawn by Ojai’s scenic beauty, its tranquillity.

For 12 years, the families lived at opposite ends of the valley, unknown to one another until their worlds collided last winter.

Now, the Manleys reel from the loss of a child in a place where children aren’t supposed to get lost--and certainly aren’t supposed to get killed. And the Alvarezes brace for the trial of their only son, who pleaded not guilty after he was charged March 25 with murder and attempted rape.

Although Kali was not the first teenager killed in this valley, her slaying touched a nerve.

“It brought evil to our town,” said fifth-grade teacher Sarah Garrett, who moved to Oak View seven years ago to escape gangs and crime in Ontario. “I kind of thought we were more immune to that.”

The truth is that the Ojai Valley has always had a darker side. It is a place spiced with biker bars and methamphetamine labs, prowled by hard-core skinheads and drug-addled teenagers.

It is the place where two years ago hate-mongers scrawled a red swastika on the front door of a Jewish temple, and where more recently a Ventura teenager was beaten to death at a high school party populated by motorcycle gang wannabes.

Yet compared to other areas of Southern California, these incidents are a mere blip on the radar screen. Crime is inevitable in every community, valley residents say, but here there is less of it.

Now, that belief is being tested.

For many Ojai Valley parents, Kali’s slaying has been a reality check, a tragic reminder that the mountains insulating their community of 24,500 cannot keep out violence or protect teenagers eager to test those boundaries.

And test they do. The loud refrain of “there’s nothing to do in Ojai” echoes off the valley walls. Ojai is a place so peaceful it lacks a pulse, they complain. A place with not one multiplex, mall or bowling alley. A place so quiet, many teenagers say, that they itch to make some noise.

“There is just not enough to do here,” said 17-year-old Lindsay Ferro, a self-described party girl who likes to cruise the valley in her big pink convertible. “It’s like sitting a kid in a room all day long and expecting him not to scream.”

Boredom, peer pressure, a need to feel accepted or a desire to feel altered--they all fuel teenagers’ willingness to take risks, whether it’s smoking marijuana, drinking beer or hopping into a truck with two men you barely know. And in a haven like Ojai, what’s the chance of getting hurt?

‘They’re the Salt of the Earth’

Around David Alvarez, the chances were pretty good.

Two years before he was charged with murder, Alvarez pleaded guilty in court to battering his mother-in-law. Last summer, he was arrested on suspicion of assaulting his 20-year-old wife, Brooke. In court papers, she said he shoved her face into a bathroom mirror when she refused to have sex. That misdemeanor assault charge was dismissed at the prosecution’s request to clear their docket for the more serious murder case.

Alvarez’s advances weren’t limited to his own wife, said Kali’s friend Erica Long. He came on to her, too, she said, along with other young girls. “He doesn’t take no for an answer,” she said.

Although Alvarez did not attend the same school as his sister, Veronica, he often cruised by the Nordhoff High campus and had more than one run-in with Assistant Principal Susana Arce.

One time, Arce said, she saw him on campus, yelling at a female student. She marched outside to confront him.

Arce told him to leave. He called her a name and said, “I’m going to punch you!” she recalled. She said she didn’t flinch, and Alvarez turned and walked away.

But Arce didn’t forget that incident. “This is not your ordinary kid,” she said.

Alvarez was 10 in the spring of 1987 when his parents decided to move from New Jersey. Friends say that the couple were driving through the Upper Ojai when they laid eyes on an emerald pasture near the top of Dennison Grade and a sign advertising adjacent 20-acre lots. They drove into downtown Ojai and bought one the same day.

The Alvarezes built a dream home: a 4,000-square-foot mansion with stables, a pool and a guest house. A Cuban immigrant who made his fortune on a small chain of chicken restaurants, Eugene Alvarez and his wife became regulars at Western riding events. They dined with the district attorney and contributed to his reelection campaigns.

Their son had more trouble fitting in.

Stocky with dark hair, “Davi” Alvarez looked too Latino to hang out with the white youths and too white to hang out with the Latino youths. He had a quick temper and a foul mouth. He talked tough. He liked to hang out with a group of younger teenagers who called themselves the Crime Causing Stoners, and he even sported a “CCS” tattoo on his back.

His first run-in with local law enforcement came around the age of 13, when he tossed a lighted firecracker into a downtown restaurant. Other juvenile incidents followed.

Midway through high school, his parents sent him to a military-style academy in Colorado for troubled teenagers. He spent two years there before returning.

Over the years, Eugene and Marie Alvarez did not openly discuss their son’s problems with friends. But it was clear to those who knew them that they were concerned and trying to help.

“They kicked him out of the house, told him to get his act together,” a friend of the family said. “But I don’t think they realized how bad he was.”

Kay and Jaime Skeeters, former owners of the Ojai Valley Farms horse ranch, often rode with the Alvarezes. They said they know the family tried hard to help David.

“They’re the salt of the earth,” said Jaime Skeeters, a retired commander with the Oxnard Police Department. “I wish I could say the same for their boy.”

To some, all of this bad news about Alvarez is beside the point. Attorney James M. Farley, who represents Alvarez, has stated that there is no evidence of attempted rape. And, he adds, just because his client led authorities to Kali’s body does not mean that he killed her.

“The only thing that proves is that he knew where the body was,” Farley said. “That does nothing to establish any proof that he committed any crime. . . . It doesn’t mean he’s guilty of anything.”

‘She Never Did Anything Halfway’

Charles and Holly Manley are sitting on a blue couch in their living room, which carries the uneasy silence of a home missing one of its children.

It’s a Wednesday night. Ten weeks have passed since their daughter’s funeral, held on what would have been her 15th birthday. It’s still difficult to talk about what has happened.

The couple have returned to work. He teaches reading and English at Frank Intermediate School in Oxnard. She is a nurse at the Ventura County Medical Center in Ventura.

They’re trying to cope with Kali’s death. But none of it makes any sense.

“We were good parents,” Charles Manley says, fighting tears. “We knew where that kid was every minute.”

Kali was their middle daughter, preceded in life by Chelsea, now 18 and a senior at Ventura High, and followed by Liza, 12, a seventh-grader at De Anza Middle School.

As a child, Kali took gymnastics lessons at the community center, joined the junior lifeguards and the swim team. She loved to draw and often sketched pictures of her cat, Sugar.

“She was a very bubbly girl,” says Holly Manley. “She was very passionate about almost everything she did.”

Although Kali had not figured out what she wanted to do in life, her parents said she wrote in her journal that she wanted to be like her favorite TV character, Ally McBeal: professional, independent, with nobody telling her what to do.

“She never did anything halfway,” her mother says. “She was very strong-willed and determined and she just, I don’t know, for someone at that age, she really wanted to experience life.”

After Kali’s death, the Manleys decided to scatter their daughter’s ashes in the mountains above Ojai. During her funeral, Charles Manley explained that it was there that she felt at peace.

“Her spirit was filled with these mountains,” he said. “She was a part of the canyon.”

‘You Just Want to Be Older’

Leaning toward the windshield of his patrol car, Deputy Michael Marco tilted his head to get a better look at a thin veil of pink clouds hanging over those mountains.

“Boy, it’s beautiful tonight, isn’t it?” he said.

Marco, 27, has been patrolling the Ojai Valley for 10 months and like most shifts, this Saturday night had been fairly low-key.

It started with an indecent exposure call over a homeless woman sunbathing in the park with her dress pulled up and ended with the arrest of a teenager who was high on cocaine. As Marco and his partner hauled the teenager into the station, two other deputies fielded a report of a loose cow on the highway.

“It’s kind of a sleepy community,” Marco said.

Indeed, crime in the Ojai Valley just hit a 25-year low. But tension between Latino and white supremacist gangs has flared in recent months, and deputies say that they are seeing a rise in the use of marijuana and alcohol among teenagers.

About five months ago, Marco pulled over a car on a routine stop about 1 a.m. and arrested three men and a 15-year-old girl for being under the influence of rock cocaine. One of the men was on parole.

“I’m sure her parents had no idea who she was with that night,” he said.

Although such tales terrify parents, teenagers say it’s not unusual for young girls to hang out with older men, or experiment with drugs and alcohol.

Lindsay Ferro recalls the intense peer pressure during her freshman year at Nordhoff. She was 13, tall, pretty and overwhelmed by the attention of older boys. She was also curious.

“Thirteen was the turning point in my life,” she said. “Did I want to party or did I want to stay in sports?” Basketball and track lost out.

Wanting a taste of the weekend party scene, Lindsay was swallowed whole before she turned 16. She says her memories of high school include witnessing drug deals and lines of cocaine sniffed in the girls bathrooms.

Now, after a four-year struggle with drugs, Lindsay has enrolled in a home study program and embarked on a modeling career. Looking back on those years, knowing what happened to Kali Manley, she considers herself lucky.

“People are always like, ‘Why did she get in the car with Davi?’ ” Lindsay said. “At 14, I probably would have too. . . . You just want to be older, it’s all to be older.”

Report of Threats at Convenience Store

As the search for Kali intensified in the days before Christmas, Det. William Gentry started asking questions.

In addition to Ashley’s statement, Gentry had a report from an Oak View woman who said that Alvarez had threatened her at a Circle K convenience store in Miramonte the night Kali disappeared.

Kim Schmelz told authorities that Alvarez, who had an ongoing feud with her son, saw her in the parking lot. She said he flashed a gun and sneered: “I’m going to take you down.”

Scared, Schmelz called 911 and sped home. She later told authorities she saw two other people in the truck--an unidentified male and a blond female.

On Dec. 22, Gentry questioned Miears. He told the detective that after stopping at Ashley’s house, he, Alvarez and Kali drove to the Circle K, where he bought a four-pack of wine coolers.

When Miears climbed back in the truck with the drinks, Alvarez warned him that the woman in the car next to them was calling the police and they needed to leave. Alvarez drove to a trailer on Woodland Avenue that his family was buying for him.

There, Miears said, Kali and Alvarez started drinking. After a while, Miears said, Alvarez led Kali to a master bedroom, then returned to declare that he was going to have sex with the girl.

Miears told the detective that he subsequently fell asleep and woke up several hours later, finding the trailer empty.

As Miears told his story, Alvarez was already in custody at the County Jail for the alleged threats against Schmelz. But now authorities were beginning to wonder about him in connection with Kali’s disappearance.

The next day, Gentry asked a judge to increase Alvarez’s bail from $20,000 to $250,000--the standard bail for a murder suspect.

Prosecutors waited nearly three months before charging Alvarez. There was little urgency because he remained jailed on the allegations of terrorist threats.

Then, in early February, Dist. Atty. Bradbury turned the case over to the attorney general’s office, citing concerns about an appearance of impropriety given his long friendship with Eugene and Marie Alvarez. They often rode horses and dined together.

On March 25, state prosecutors formally charged David Alvarez with murder and attempted rape, plus an allegation that he killed Kali while trying to force sex with her.

As the lawyers gear up for a preliminary hearing July 27, students at Nordhoff have begun raising money for a memorial. They want to build a covered wooden trolley stop at the edge of campus and paint Kali’s picture on the ceiling.

Ojai itself is moving on. But many residents are finding it hard to shake the feeling of vulnerability that came with Kali’s slaying.

By most measurements, Ojai has worked hard to insulate itself from crime and rampant growth found elsewhere in Southern California. Two dozen deputies patrol the valley and pride themselves on the low crime rate.

City leaders have slammed the doors on future growth. Although the main two-lane highway into the valley clogs each morning and night with commuter traffic, residents firmly oppose any attempts to widen it. They like the community small.

“Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, there is a sense of isolation here,” said Assistant Principal Arce, a seventh-generation Ojai resident.

It’s the kind of isolation that brings people together in times of crisis. But it is also the kind of isolation that can lull young people into a false sense of security.

English teacher Rick Mohney has hammered that point home to his students in his two decades at Nordhoff.

“I think a lot of people come here to escape,” he said. “They turn their backs on the rest of the world and all its problems, and I think they pass that kind of attitude down to their kids.”

Music teacher Bill Wagner sees a community that in many ways would rather not acknowledge the problems that lie beneath the surface, whether racism, gangs or the intense peer pressure among teens to flirt with danger.

“Ojai is unique in the sense that we are very sheltered from other communities,” Wagner said. “But it doesn’t shelter us from the evils of society that are out there.”