D.A. calls for higher Haidl bail

Deepa Bharath

The Orange County district attorney filed a motion on Monday to

increase bail for one of the three defendants in a high-profile rape

case after he was detained Thursday by police for the third time

since the case began.

The district attorney is asking Orange County Superior Court Judge

Francisco Briseno to take action against Greg Haidl, son of Orange

County Assistant Sheriff Don Haidl. Prosecutors allege that Greg

Haidl has continually had brushes with the law and that his attorneys

have intimidated and harassed the alleged victim.

Haidl is now out on $100,000 bail, as are co-defendants Kyle

Nachreiner and Keith Spann. The three are accused of gang raping an

unconscious 16-year-old girl in Don Haidl’s Corona del Mar home.

The motion states that Haidl’s “attitude toward the laws that

govern him” was publicly seen when he made an obscene gesture toward

television cameras during his arraignment.

Prosecutors are not specifying an amount they want the bail

increased by, but have said they will leave that to the judge.

“If [Greg Haidl] is not taken into custody, the People fear that

Haidl will figuratively give another middle-finger gesture, this time

to the court,” the motion states.

Greg Haidl’s attorney, Joseph Cavallo, brushed aside the motion

saying it’s a document “filed for the media, not for the court.”

“Everything in there is based on conjecture,” he said. “There is

no evidence for anything and no charges were filed against my client

in any of the incidents.”

Cavallo said the district attorney’s office is “obviously sending

a message to Greg to cut it out.”

“But this is not the way to do it,” he said.

Greg Haidl’s most recent encounter with law enforcement officials

occurred on Thursday, three days after his jury trial began, the

motion states. Prosecutors say Greg Haidl and two other men were

reportedly stopped by Orange County Sheriff’s deputies after they

illegally entered a private walkway in a Dana Point condo complex by

climbing over a locked gate posted with a “No Trespassing” sign.

They then unbolted and removed the upper railing on a walkway to

ride skateboards down the lower railing, the motion states. A

neighbor called the police, who later inspected the railing and found

that the fence post and railing were unstable and there were several

gouge marks in the upper and lower railings, officials said.

In January, Greg Haidl, along with 12 other men, was stopped and

cited for trespassing after they illegally entered an abandoned piece

of property in Laguna Niguel to ride their skateboards, officials

said in the motion. The owner decided not to file charges, however.

The motion also brings up an Oct. 26 incident where Greg Haidl was

stopped yet again for illegally skateboarding at a closed business

park in San Clemente.

“A subsequent search of the car revealed marijuana and drug

paraphernalia on the rear floorboard adjacent to where Haidl had been

sitting and near where Haidl had been sitting, and near Haidl’s keys,

cigarettes and a bottle of tea,” the motion states. No arrests were

made in that incident.

Prosecutors also allege that an investigator for the defense was

found rummaging through the trash outside the girl’s home and that he

had also been following her. They say the girl also had to transfer

to a different school and had to use a different name because she was

being intimidated by investigators and friends of the defendants. An

investigator even followed the girl, talked to her “new friends,”

divulged her real name and told them about the criminal case,

prosecutors said.

Cavallo said the defense’s investigators were doing everything

they could, legally, to obtain the information attorneys need to

defend their client.

“If he’s rummaging through the trash without trespassing he’s

allowed to do that,” Cavallo said. “If he’s talking to her friends,

it’s because I want to know every one of her friends. It’s his job to

go out and investigate and if he doesn’t do his job, he’d be fired.”

Cavallo said the investigator the defense used in this case was

reliable.

“He used to work with the FBI,” he said. “He knows what he’s

doing.”

As for Greg Haidl’s alleged actions, “that’s for the family to

deal with,” Cavallo said.

“I haven’t talked to Greg about it,” he said. “I don’t want to

talk to him about it.”

Prosecutors argue in their motion that their laundry list of

incidents involving Greg Haidl “presents the picture of an

out-of-custody defendant behaving in such a bizarre and

self-destructive fashion that any rational observer would have

serious doubts that his existing $100,000 bail is sufficient to

ensure that he will not flee the jurisdiction of this court.”

The motion also states that the bail is a meager sum “for a family

reportedly worth near a $100 million.”

Cavallo challenged the validity of that statement saying: “[Greg

Haidl] is not worth $100 million. That’s not true.”

Briseno is expected to hear the motion Wednesday.

* DEEPA BHARATH covers public safety and courts. She may be

reached at (949) 574-4226 or by e-mail at deepa.bharath@latimes.com.