Back row (lr): Author Lora Lusher's paternal grandfather, her father SFPD Inspector Ted Lusher, her mother Claire, her maternal grandmother (who lived with Jack Bokin and his parents) and Bokin's father, Jack Sr. Front row (lr): Lusher's brother, her sister, Lora Lusher at age 2 and her cousin Jack Bokin at age 9.
The Secret Life of a Sexual Predator
by Lora Lusher
From http://crimemagazine.com/bokin.htm
I’m sitting in the gallery of Courtroom 25 in
the San Francisco Hall of Justice. It is Aug. 5, 1999. My 56-year-old cousin,
Jack Bokin, is on trial charged with over 40 counts of violent sexual assaults
on four different women. Amber, the 19-year-old prostitute who identified Jack
as the man who tried to kill her, is on the witness stand. She has just finished
describing the night of Oct. 4, 1997 when she was bound, raped and beaten for
five hours before her skull was bashed in and she was dumped into San Francisco
Bay.
Jack’s defense attorney, Michael Gaines, requests a side conference and he and
Asst. D.A. Elliott Beckelman huddle at the judge’s bench, whispering.
The quiet in the courtroom is an abrupt change
from the violence in Amber’s words, which although spoken softly, are still
ricocheting off the walls. Jack is sitting at the defense table with his back to
the gallery; he appears unconcerned. I’m staring at his familiar outline and
thinking back on the holiday dinners and birthday parties, camping trips and
vacations, and the family members who are now gone. It seems so long ago. I
don’t know how we got here.
Jack Alexander Bokin, Jr. was born on March 20, 1943 in San Francisco. He was an
only child. His parents were decent, law-abiding and decidedly middle-class.
They worked in their small Mission District hardware store six days a week and
made a comfortable home for Jack and our maternal grandmother who lived with
them.
The worst thing that can be said about Jack’s parents is that they were simple
and unsophisticated. From the beginning Jack seemed unwilling to accept their
blue-collar status, refusing to call them "Mommy" and
"Daddy" and insisting on "Mother" and "Father"
instead. As an adult, he would bitterly complain that they were never his social
or intellectual equals and that their lack of refinement had been the cause of
all his problems. But the truth is that his parents were no worse than most and
considerably better than many. He was a much-loved member of a tightly knit
extended family and he was given an abundance of encouragement, acceptance and
approval.
Jack’s mother, Evelyn, and my mother, Claire, were sisters and best friends.
Because our mothers were so close, my siblings and I grew up thinking of
"Jackie" as an older brother. As the first-born of our generation, and
a boy, he was automatically granted a special status that we all, especially
Jack himself, accepted as his birthright. And he did seem rightfully entitled.
From the time he started school he was a brilliant student, especially in math
and science. He was also a piano prodigy, instantly able to reproduce the most
complex classical works entirely by ear. As he grew older he excelled in chess,
built his own telescope and became a body builder.
A Secret Life
It seems like Jack always had a secret life. At
age 7 he managed to sneak his father’s handgun out of the house and take it to
school. By the time he was 9 he was stealing bicycles from the nearby park and
selling the parts. In 1953, when I was 3 and he was 10, he started molesting me.
Even at that young age Jack was already so practiced in stealth that the abuse
was never suspected. In the years that followed, not even my father, who was a
San Francisco Police Inspector on the Sex Crimes Detail sensed that anything was
wrong.
One of the dirtiest secrets about incest is that young children rarely tell, and
even when they do, it’s too disturbing for family members to hear so the child
is often ignored or turned away. I silently endured the molestation for four
years. By the time I was 7, I was so desperate for it to stop that I blurted out
to my mother that whenever I was alone with Jack, who was then 14, he would take
me upstairs to his bedroom or down into the basement or up onto the roof, remove
my clothes and push his penis in between my legs. Her response, which stunned
me, was that I should tell him "no." I hadn't anticipated that she
might hand the responsibility back to me, so I wasn't prepared to have to plead
my case for parental intervention. I was in the second grade; I didn’t know
how to explain that Jack had a scary, secret personality none of them knew about
and that I couldn’t stop him by myself. I never mentioned the abuse to my
mother again and she never asked me about it. I gathered that things like being
made to stand naked while someone ejaculated all over me (not knowing any
better, I thought he was urinating) were just inescapable parts of childhood
like spankings and dentist drills and booster shots.
"I’m glad I learned my lesson at a young age so I won’t have
to make the mistakes other people do." - Jack
Bokin, 1966
Jack had a few acquaintances as he was growing up, but he never had any friends. Other children didn't come to his house to play and he was rarely invited anywhere. As a teenager he didn't go to parties or dances or out on dates. He was hopelessly out of touch with the music, fashions and fads of his peers; he didn't dress right, he didn't speak the language and he didn't know the rules. His unsuspecting parents were delighted that their teenage son seemed focused on school and wholesome hobbies. In fact, our entire family praised Jack as a "good boy" who didn't waste his time on girls, cars and teenage mischief.
When Jack was 16, he broke into the electronics shop next door to his parents’ hardware store by crawling through the connecting false ceilings. He told his parents he'd been making some repairs to the wiring and had accidentally fallen through the ceiling of the other store. When he was 18, he burglarized a parked car and was arrested for the first time. He told his parents that he was merely standing next to the car and that the police officers were lying.
By this time my family had moved 30 miles north of San Francisco to Marin County and I no longer saw Jack every day. But his family drove out to visit us every Sunday and Jack nearly always found a way to separate me from the group and take me someplace where he would not be seen or heard. Our new home was surrounded by five acres of trees and creeks and meadows. It did not seem suspicious to the adults that Jack, a city boy, would want to spend his visits outdoors, hiking and exploring, or that he would want me to accompany him. As for me, my earlier failed attempt to enlist my mother's protection had convinced me that I had no choice but to go along with him uncomplainingly.
In December 1964, when he was 21, Jack assaulted
a 30-year-old woman on a University of California-Berkeley Extension campus in
San Francisco. He disabled her car while she was in class and then casually
walked by and offered to help her start it. Once inside the car, he wrapped a
shoelace around her throat and threatened to choke her if she made any noise.
Then he made her strip to the waist and ordered her to remain quiet while he
spent two hours kissing and fondling her breasts. She later identified him and
he was arrested. The court found Jack to be a "mentally disordered
sex offender." He spent the next two years in Atascadero State Psychiatric
Hospital in Atascadero, Calif.
Thirty years after the incident, Jack would still angrily repeat the same
version he'd given his parents (who believed him); that the police had
intentionally misrepresented what was actually an innocent, albeit clumsy,
social encounter. He would sneer and sputter over the characterization of a
shoelace as a "deadly weapon" and complain that the "sex
offender" label was inaccurate and unfair (yet court records show that he
admitted to hospital psychiatrists that he had previously committed three other
sexual assaults). But in 1966, at least, he seemed to have accepted
responsibility for his predicament. He wrote, "I’m glad I learned my
lesson at a young age so that I won’t have to make the mistakes other people
do."
In May 1966, while Jack was still in Atascadero, my parents were killed in a car
accident in San Francisco. I was 15 years old and my brothers were 14 and 5.
They stayed with our older sister and her husband, and I went to live with
Jack’s mother and father. When Jack returned home the following year
(supposedly cured and rehabilitated) he immediately started in on me again. But
my world had been shattered since he'd last seen me and in the process of trying
to slowly put it back together I’d begun to learn how to take care of myself,
so this time when he tiptoed into my bedroom while I was asleep and shoved his
penis into my mouth, I wasn’t afraid to tell.
The difference in our ages and levels of sophistication had always given Jack the upper hand and, at 16, I was still no match for his ability to redefine a situation and control how others perceived it. His soft-spoken, gentle manner, often sprinkled with empathy, had always been more powerful than facts or logic. Jack denied everything and told his stunned parents that I was lying. He explained that his stay in the psychiatric hospital had taught him enough about mental illness to know that I had serious emotional problems stemming from the loss of my parents. He told them I was only trying to get attention and that they should feel sorry for me. Then he turned around and privately accused me of betraying him by revealing "our secrets."
Rather than discourage Jack, my going public seemed to titillate and challenge him. He was careful never to touch me again, but the abuse didn't stop; it just changed forms. Orphaned and separated from my siblings and my home, I was dependent on the goodwill of Jack's parents. Always predatory, Jack zeroed in on my vulnerability and calculated, correctly, that having disrupted the household once by complaining about his visits to my bedroom, I would be very reluctant to drop another bomb. But just to be sure I didn't surprise him again, he began varying his tactics enough so that he would be able to easily explain away anything I might report.
Jack's new molestation style was so multifarious that, even if I had been brave enough to speak out again, it would have been nearly impossible for me to describe all that he was doing or how it made me feel (particularly since, true to Jack's nature, he always did things in secret). He began exposing himself to me whenever he found the opportunity. He started monitoring my visits to the bathroom; he would follow me and stand at the door, quietly checking to see if it was locked and then hover there, listening and waiting. He made a point of knowing when I went out with friends or on dates and would wait until I came home and accuse and interrogate me about what sexual activities I'd engaged in. He talked about my late mother, describing the size and shape of her breasts and her mouth and claimed that she'd harbored a secret sexual desire for him. He told me obscene jokes. He constantly critiqued the size and shape of my various body parts. He lectured me about all things sexual: positions, aphrodisiacs, homosexuality, incest, bestiality, necrophilia, masturbation, etc. And once he smeared his own semen on a slide and managed to trick me into looking at it under his microscope. When I realized what I was seeing, I ran from the room gagging.
As disturbing as all this was, it was such a relief to not have Jack touching me anymore that at first it seemed like an improvement. But it wasn't long before I realized that nothing had really changed. I tried to block out my pain and anger and thought I'd succeeded, but as the years passed and the abuse continued it would weigh more and more heavily on me.
"I just won’t let myself get bogged down again and revert back to
crime as an alternative." - Jack Bokin, 1979
After his release from Atascadero, Jack got his contractor’s license, started
his plumbing business and bought a house a few blocks from his parents’ home.
He’d never had a girlfriend or even been on a date, but his charm and
clean-cut good looks attracted the attention of an assertive young woman whose
family owned a bookshop across the street from his parents’ hardware store.
Both sets of parents objected to the relationship, but Jack’s sexual-assault
conviction and his stay in the psychiatric hospital did not dissuade Nancy; they
wanted each other and that was that. They were married in 1968.
For a while it seemed that Jack had overcome his problems with the law, but it
wasn’t long before his secret life caught up with him again. No matter how
much money he had, he was always hungry for more. His contracting and plumbing
business never seemed to bring in enough cash to satisfy him. He resented having
to buy the tools and materials he used on his jobs, so he figured out how to get
them for free. He also desperately wanted to appear wealthy and successful, but
he didn't want to have to pay for the possessions that would project that image.
His greed won out over his desire for social standing: He stole expensive stereo
systems, furnishings and appliances, eventually filling his house and basement,
most never to be used. Between 1970 and 1990, he would be convicted six times on
burglary and stolen-property charges and serve five separate prison terms.
True to form, after each conviction he portrayed himself as repentant and
remorseful and promised that this time he’d learned from his mistake and would
never do it again. "I just won’t let myself get bogged down again and
revert back to crime as an alternative," he wrote from Vacaville California
Medical Facility in 1979.
Nancy stuck by Jack through three incarcerations and then divorced him. It was a
bitter break-up; Jack never forgave her for using his sex-offender status to
sever his parental rights to their young adopted daughter. I silently applauded
her for risking his wrath to protect her child.
After the divorce, Jack wasn’t alone for long. This was the early 1980’s and
he quickly discovered how easy it was to meet willing women by answering their
personal ads. Within a few months he’d met Cheryl, a 36-year-old elementary
school teacher who described herself in her ad as "an expert pamperer."
Cheryl was eager to find a husband and have children; she saw Jack as strong,
sensitive and kind. Jack wanted a family too, and he realized that Cheryl could
give him children and much more. She not only had a secure job and a steady
income, she also had a trust fund and very wealthy parents who lived in another
state and weren’t getting any younger. Before their second date Jack was
already telling me and his parents how much money Cheryl would inherit and
making plans for his retirement. They were married in June 1982 and their first
child, a daughter, was born five months later.
Cheryl delighted in showing off her new husband
and Jack revelled in the attention. She retired his unstylish clothing and took
him shopping for an entirely new wardrobe. She vetoed his old-fashioned
hairstyle and gave him a more contemporary look. When her elementary school held
a Career Day she brought him in to talk to her fifth grade class about his work
as a contractor. She organized dinner parties and get-togethers at their home
and proudly introduced him to her friends and co-workers. She enthusiastically
accepted every invitation they received and made sure he accompanied her, with
bells on.
Jack didn’t offer Cheryl much information about his past and she didn’t ask.
He told her only that he’d been to prison once, on a stolen property charge.
She didn’t learn the extent of his criminal history until two years into the
marriage when the police burst into their home one night and arrested Jack for
burglary. Pregnant with their second child, Cheryl threatened divorce but Jack
charmed her out of it. He said he was sorry and convinced her that it would
never happen again. She agreed to give him another chance. This scene would
repeat itself over and over during their 15-year marriage, but each new arrest
drove them a little further apart.
As Jack entered his forties, his personality
began to darken. He became agitated and paranoid and talked incessantly about
‘getting even’ with other people. He'd always been somewhat vindictive, but
up until then his vengeance had been limited to petty cruelties, like refusing
to attend my 24-year-old brother’s funeral because he’d never visited Jack
in prison. Now Jack seemed dangerously out of control, variously talking about
hitting this person or that one "over the head," or killing people and
throwing them into the Bay with weights tied to their bodies or threatening to
burn down the homes of certain family members because they had more money than
he thought they needed and weren’t sharing it with him.
In 1985, Jack’s fantasies crossed the line into reality. For several years
he’d had an ongoing feud with a certain San Francisco building inspector.
Jack’s plumbing work was notoriously sloppy and the inspector was strict, so
Jack’s jobs often didn’t pass inspection and he wasn’t able to get paid.
It infuriated Jack when anyone dared to come between him and money, so he hired
a work-furlough convict from San Francisco County Jail to follow the building
inspector to lunch and hit him over the head with a tire iron. The inspector
wasn’t permanently injured, but it would be more than 10 years before he
learned who had targeted him.
Jack’s behavior toward me was changing too. I’d always been close to his
parents and as they grew older I spent more and more time with them. This meant
I had to continue seeing Jack and couldn’t back away from him the way others
in the family had done. By the time I was 35 I'd spent most of my life fending
off his advances and I was exhausted. One day, in front of his parents, he made
some typically off-color remark to me and I snapped at him, saying that I was
tired of all his sick sexual bullshit and I wanted it to stop. It was a
comparatively mild rebuke, but it was the first time I'd ever directly, or
publicly, confronted him. Jack was shocked and embarrassed; he turned almost
purple, but said nothing.
In hindsight, that was the turning point in our relationship. I knew that Jack was getting sicker and losing control, but I felt I was exempt from his anger. I didn't understand that my safety hinged on his need to believe that I found him sexually appealing, and that by destroying that fantasy I would make myself into an enemy.
Jack had always been glad that I was around to relieve him of the responsibility of helping his parents, but after I stood up to him he started imagining that I was plotting to replace him as the heir to their estate. In 1986 his paranoia exploded; he told his mother I deserved to die and that he was going to hire someone to kill me. I continued seeing his parents but we had to develop a complex system for keeping me out Jack’s way.
I'd never distanced myself from Jack before and he was furious. He felt I was his personal property and that I had no right to make myself inaccessible to him. When he learned that I'd secretly moved and changed jobs, he reacted like a spurned lover. He demanded that his parents give him my telephone number and address, and, when they refused, he frantically called everyone he could think of trying to locate me. But my friends and our other family members had already been warned about his threat to kill me, so no matter how he cajoled or threatened, he didn't get any information. But he didn't give up; he was determined to find me and prove that I could never escape from him.
In 1991 Jack began pressuring his parents to
mortgage their home and "loan" him a large sum of money. His father
was willing, but his mother refused. Jack was livid. That fall his mother became
ill and I had to admit her to a care home in Greenbrae, Calif. I was still
hiding from Jack and now my siblings and I also needed to keep his mother's
whereabouts a secret from him because we were concerned that he would harm her.
After she’d been in the care home for a few months, she suddenly started
complaining that Jack was coming into her room at night and frightening her. She
was very distressed, but we felt sure we had her well hidden and that she must
be imagining it. Still, I questioned the care home staff, who swore he'd never
been there. A couple of weeks after Jack’s mother started talking about these
visits I received a late-night call from a staff nurse saying my aunt had been
discovered dead in her bed, less than an hour after she'd been checked and found
to be fine. We were sure Jack was responsible, but we had no hard evidence. Five
years later, Jack's wife Cheryl revealed that Jack admitted to her that he had
indeed gone to the care home on two occasions and that his mother had screamed
in terror. By then it was too late to launch a murder investigation; our only
comfort was the homicide officers who knew Jack and agreed that "he
probably did it."
Jack didn’t miss a beat. Within days after his mother’s death he’d
convinced his grieving father to give him the money he’d been asking for. Four
months after that, he found a way to collect more fast money by forging my
signature to a legal document involving the estate of one of our deceased aunts.
When I discovered the forgery I reported it to our attorney, Charles A. DeCuir,
Jr. a member of Melvin Belli’s legal team. DeCuir, who was eager to have the
matter closed and collect his substantial fee, told me I had no choice but to
abide by the agreement the forgery bound me to. I refused and DeCuir became
angry. He knew Jack was dangerous to me; I’d told him about his history and
instructed him countless times never to give Jack any personal information about
me. So when Jack suddenly called me and boasted that he'd gotten my phone number
from DeCuir along with my home address, I knew the attorney had done it
intentionally. Jack said that if I didn’t cooperate with them I would be
"sorry. " Then, like tag-team wrestlers, Jack hung up and DeCuir
called me back and demanded that I immediately fax him a statement giving him
permission to sign my name to the remaining documents. Betrayed by my attorney
and fearing that Jack was lurking around the corner waiting to murder me, I
backed down and gave them what they wanted.
(A side note on DeCuir: On June 2, 2000, The California Supreme Court suspended DeCuir from the practice of law in connection with two separate cases in the 1990s involving his misuse of funds his clients had been awarded in settlements. DeCuir pleaded nolo contendere to both charges that he had willfully violated Rule 4-100 (A) of the Rules of Professional Conduct. The court said that the "legal effect of such a plea shall be the same as that of an admission of culpability for all purposes." In its ruling the court ordered DeCuir suspended for two years, but stayed the suspension, ordering that as conditions of the stay that "he be actually suspended for 60 days" and "take and pass the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination within one year.")
Jack was delighted to have the money but I knew it wouldn't end there. Now that he'd won and regained his precious access to me, I knew it would only be a matter of time before he'd start getting even with me for having evaded him for so long. I felt I had no choice but to drop everything and run. I walked away from my job, moved to another Bay Area city, cut off contact with nearly everyone I knew and went into deep hiding. It would be nearly five years before I felt safe enough to reemerge.
"He laughed and said I could kick the horn all night and no one would
hear me."- Marion
By 1993 Jack and Cheryl were no longer close. They didn't sleep together and
spoke only when necessary but they agreed to stay married until their son and
daughter were grown. Jack remained involved with the children, driving them to
school, helping them with their homework and participating in school functions.
But he'd developed a strange new intensity that made them all uncomfortable. He
was angry and short-tempered. He lectured and criticized. And he was secretive,
disappearing and reappearing at odd hours and staying away from home for long
periods of time.
That same year Jack met a woman named Marion in a
park near his home. "He sent a gentleman over to find out if I was a
prostitute and to say that he wanted to meet me." They began a relationship
that was part business and part personal. Marion performed clerical work for
Jack in his home office and they engaged in sexual acts, at times in the master
bedroom while his wife was at work and his children were in school. Marion was a
heroin addict and often purchased her drugs from Jack’s next door neighbor, so
at first it was a convenient arrangement for them both.
On the evening of Sept. 7, 1993 (ironically, Jack’s late mother’s birthday)
Marion, perhaps not realizing the dangers of asking Jack to part with money or
else too badly in need of a fix to care, went to his Bryant Street home to ask
to be paid. The family and several guests were eating dinner and Jack's
8-year-old son got up from the children's table and went downstairs and answered
the door. Marion asked to see Jack. The boy called his father to the door and
then went back upstairs and whispered to his sister that Jack was talking to a
strange woman. Then, curious about this provocatively dressed stranger, the boy
went out onto an exterior balcony that overlooks the front door and eavesdropped
on the conversation. He heard Jack and Marion discuss money for several minutes
before they left together in Jack's car.
Jack drove to a nearby industrial area that is deserted at night. Suddenly, he
kneed Marion in the ribs and placed his hands around her neck. Terrified, she
kicked the car horn with her foot to make noise. "He laughed and said I
could kick the horn all night and no one would hear me." Then he ordered
her into the back seat. She felt she had no choice, "I was afraid for my
life." In the back seat, Jack tied Marion’s hands behind her back with
pantyhose and grabbed and hit her repeatedly. He sucked and chewed on her tongue
and forced her to orally copulate him. Then he choked her until she lost
consciousness. Marion’s injuries would later show that Jack’s final act was
to push her, unconscious, out of his car as he drove away.
"She had bright red marks around both wrists and throat area and she had
two pieces of nylon hanging from her wrists." - SFPD Officer Marquita
Booth
At approximately 11 p.m. plain clothes SFPD Officer Marquita Booth responded to
"a call about a person screaming at 16th and Mississippi Streets."
When she arrived at the scene, she found a crouching woman wearing only a shirt
and underpants. Officer Booth stated in her report, "She was shaking,
crying, extremely upset and distraught. She had bright red marks around both
wrists and throat area and she had two pieces of nylon hanging from her
wrists."
Marion told Booth that her assailant was a man she knew named "Jack."
From the ambulance on the way to the hospital, Marion pointed out Jack’s house
and the next morning SFPD Officers Booth, Cunningham and Smith went there and
arrested him. Jack made bail, and a few months later Marion disappeared and the
district attorney was forced to drop the charges.
"I told the police but they didn’t do anything." - Janie
Every summer, Cheryl and the children left town for a month and went to visit
her parents. On July 7, 1996 at approximately 11:15 a.m., Janie, a 30-year-old
prostitute, was picked up on So. Van Ness Ave. by a man who drove her to a house
on Bryant Street. He held her there for 16 hours while he repeatedly raped and
beat her and forced her to orally copulate him. An epileptic, Janie lost
consciousness several times and at one point awoke to find a champagne bottle
stuffed into her vagina. The man made her shower while he washed her and called
her, "Dirty, dirty," and he forced her to let him watch her use the
toilet after which he wiped her himself.
Janie was afraid to report the assault because she had an open warrant and
didn’t want to go to jail. But a week and a half later she was arrested for
prostitution and she told the arresting vice officer, Officer Raymond Luk, what
had happened.
Officer Luk knew there was a serial suspect victimizing Capp Street prostitutes
and he was even familiar with Jack, but he didn’t file Janie’s complaint or
pass her information along to the appropriate department. In fact, he would
later testify that he had no recollection of Janie telling him she’d been
assaulted. "If she’d reported it I would have generated paperwork. There
is no paperwork."
"I thought I was going to die. I thought
this man was going to kill me." - Martha
On Jan. 22, 1997 a 34-year-old prostitute named Martha walked into the Mission
Police Station and reported she’d been picked up at 7 that morning by a man
who held and assaulted her for over eight hours in a house on Bryant Street. The
man tied her arms and legs, and repeatedly sucked and chewed on her tongue and
forced his fingers into her vagina. She lost track of how many times she was
forced to orally copulate him. She finally escaped after attacking him with a
pair of scissors. The police went to the address Martha provided and arrested
Jack, who still bore the scratches from the scissors attack.
Martha and Janie knew each other only in passing, but their boyfriends were
friends. When Janie’s boyfriend heard about Martha’s assault and Jack’s
arrest, he realized this was the same man who had assaulted Janie six months
earlier. Janie contacted the SFPD and again reported the July 7, 1996 assault.
This time the police paid attention and Janie’s case was added to Jack’s
growing list of charges.
"On Bokin, I’m looking at a rap sheet that starts from the ceiling and
ends up on the floor. This is an extremely low bail." - Susan Breall,
SF District Attorney’s Violent Crimes Division
Within days after being arrested for assaulting Martha and Janie, Jack was a
free man again. Despite his status as a convicted sex offender and the
seriousness of the charges in the two assault cases, Municipal Court Judge
Perker Meeks inexplicably lowered Jack’s bail from $100,000 to $30,000, and
Jack was released.
A couple of weeks later, in early February 1997, Marion, the girlfriend Jack
assaulted in 1993, suddenly resurfaced and agreed to testify. She explained why
she changed her mind, "I initially thought that if I didn’t talk about
this I’d get over it. I didn’t want to come to court and tell people – the
jury, the judge, the DA – what had happened. That I was assaulted. That I had
to run down the street with no clothes on and beg for someone to help me. Now I
feel like I have to testify for myself emotionally so I can go on."
The district attorney re-filed the previously dropped charges and merged
Marion’s case with Janie and Martha’s. Based on the new charges, Judge James
McBride set Jack’s bail at $500,000. However, at a subsequent bail hearing
Judge Perker Meeks once again lowered Jack’s bail, this time to $65,000. It
began to seem like Jack could fool just about anyone.
"I stood on street corners and cried with women. They knew Bokin and
felt they were sitting ducks." - Norma Hotaling, Director of SAGE
Jack’s preliminary hearing in the three assaults was held in July 1997.
Municipal Court Judge George Choppelas presided. On July 28, during a break in
the proceedings, Deputy Sheriff Carl Olson saw Jack make a threatening gesture
at Marion. Olson would later testify, "The defendant looked at the
victim/witness and made two slashing motions across his neck. The witness then
turned away and looked down." When court reconvened, Deputy Olson reported
the incident to D.A. Elliott Beckelman. Beckelman argued to Judge Choppelas that
it was "a gesture that to any reasonable person would mean ‘you’re
dead.’" and asked him to raise Jack’s bail to $1 million. The judge
refused and Jack remained free.
Norma Hotaling, director of SAGE, a group that
provides services to women both in and out of prostitution reacted, "People
were outraged and stunned. I stood on street corners and cried with women. They
knew Bokin and felt they were sitting ducks. They felt with judges not
protecting them they were going to die."
"He sucked on my tongue so hard I thought he was going to tear it out of
my mouth." - Amber
On Oct. 4, 1997 Jack was still out on bail awaiting trial on the three assault
cases. At approximately 5:30 p.m. a 19-year-old prostitute named Amber was
picked up by a man who told her his name was "Jimmy" and said he
worked for the government. He drove her to a remote area off Bayshore Blvd.
where he bound her hands behind her. He repeatedly beat and raped her and forced
her to orally copulate him. He sucked and chewed on her tongue "like a dog
chewing on a piece of meat" and bit her clitoris until she shrieked in
pain. He warned her he had a relative in the San Francisco Police Department who
would protect him if she tried to report him.
The man alternately hit her and called her a "crybaby" then held her
in his arms, wiped her tears and apologized for hurting her. He told her he
loved her and asked if she liked him and would go out with him again. "I
told him I’d go out with him again, now that I knew what he wanted. At that
point I was going to tell him anything he wanted to hear.
"My hands were numb from being tied behind me for so long. I told him if he
untied me that I’d give him a really good blow job." The man told Amber
to get out of the car so he could untie her hands. Then he grabbed her by her
hair, jerked her head down to her knees and began hitting her in the head with
an object she thought was a hammer. She could hear her skull cracking,
"like an eggshell."
She fell to the ground and lay motionless, hoping he would think she was dead
and stop hitting her. She rolled back her eyes and forced herself to remain limp
as he lifted her up by her hair and threw her into the trunk. He drove a short
distance then stopped to stuff her into a plastic garbage bag and toss her back
inside the trunk. He resumed driving. She managed to free her hands and bite an
air hole in the bag. Convinced she was going to die, she wiped blood from her
head wounds on the inside of the car trunk so that someone would know she’d
been there. But then she became afraid that he might open the trunk and see the
blood and realize she wasn’t dead, so she tried to wipe it off.
The man drove to a car wash where he vacuumed the car and sprayed water inside
the trunk. Then he drove off again. Amber felt around in the darkness for
something she could use to open the trunk. "I’d heard there was a way to
pop open car trunks from the inside." She found some sort of a tool and
used it to bang on the trunk latch, but it remained locked. At some point Amber
felt the car go into reverse and then stop. The man opened the trunk and this
time, he gently lifted her out and cradled her tenderly for a few moments,
"like you would hold your child." Then he ‘tipped’ her out of his
arms. She fell for a second or two and then landed in water.
Amber waited until she saw his car’s taillights disappear, then she wriggled
free of her bindings and the plastic bag and swam through the darkness to a
small dock. Weak, exhausted and numb with cold, she paddled around the dock for
several minutes before she found a way to pull herself up onto it. Then she
climbed a low wall and walked along the top, stepping sideways and clinging to a
barbed-wire fence, until she reached the Embarcadero, a fast-moving
thoroughfare. Naked except for a pair of socks and dazed from open skull
fractures and loss of blood, she stumbled out into traffic. A woman in a passing
car stopped and picked her up and called 911.
"This has been a case that shocked law enforcement and citizens as well,
and that intensified our effort to make an arrest. This was great police
work." - San Francisco Police Chief Fred Lau
At the hospital over the next few days, SFPD officers showed Amber photographs
of possible suspects. Jack was well known to the officers, but initially he
didn’t come to mind as a suspect so they didn’t include his picture in the
first two groups of photos. After Amber failed to identify anyone in those
groups, the officers compiled a third group and, as an afterthought, added
Jack’s picture. Amber looked through the photos and when she came to Jack’s
she screamed and threw it across the bed.
The FBI and the SFPD staked out Jack’s Bryant Street home and arrested him on
Oct. 11 for attempted murder, kidnap, rape and false imprisonment, among other
charges. This time he was held without bail.
D.A. Terrence Hallinan blasted the judges who had lowered Jack’s bail in the
other cases. "This terrible crime wouldn’t have happened if our requests
for higher bail were not ignored. He is a registered sex offender. He has a
prison record. He was accused of raping three prostitutes and still they let him
back on the street. He nearly killed this woman."
When I heard about Jack’s arrest I called one of my father’s former
colleagues in the SFPD. He said they’d been trying to locate me to interview
me about Jack but hadn’t been able to find me. I explained that I’d been
hiding out for the past few years. I went in and gave them a five-hour taped
statement. Finally, 44 years after the molestation began, I was officially
declared the victim of a violent crime.
Two months after his arrest, on Dec. 11, Jack wrote from SF County Jail,
"Here it is Christmas. I’m in jail – awaiting trial – this was a
terrible year for me."
"Jack Bokin is a victim of an overzealous prosecution. These women were
paid for sex and they did their job." - Michael Gaines,
Defense Attorney
After nearly two years of delays and legal wrangling, Jack’s trial began on
Aug. 3, 1999 in the courtroom of Superior Court Judge James L. Warren. From the
first day, Michael Gaines, Jack’s diminutive and perpetually angry defense
attorney, seemed to be on a suicide mission. His opening statement to the jury
was confusing and contained bold promises which would later come back to haunt
him. As the trial progressed he would repeatedly lose control of his exhibits
and even his own witnesses.
"The crimes were so similar it’s as if
he’d signed his name to them." -
Prosecutor Elliott Beckelman
Assistant D. A. Elliott Beckelman is a study in contrasts. One-on-one he can
come across as arrogant and ill mannered. (He’s quick to explain, "I
apologize if I seem rude. I’m from New York.") In front of a jury,
however, he becomes a gentleman, gracious, confident, and unflappable. Most
importantly, he’s very smart and he does his homework. The prosecution team
would not find themselves searching for lost paperwork or doing damage control.
I first met Beckelman in the hallway outside of
the courtroom on the first day of trial. I have dark brown hair and I've worn it
long all my life. When I approached him and introduced myself, he looked at my
hair with such a startled expression that I wondered what was wrong. It turned
out that all four of Jack's victims had long brown hair as well.
Throughout the prosecution phase of the trial and during his closing argument,
Beckelman kept referring the jury to a large chart where he’d graphed all of
the similarities between the victims and the assaults. Three of the women were
prostitutes. All four had been tied up and forced to orally copulate their
assailant. They’d all had their tongues sucked and chewed on. They’d all
been held captive for extended periods of time. And they all gave the
description of a burly man who had a high-pitched feminine voice and difficulty
maintaining an erection.
"I didn’t want to believe that a father would betray his home or his
children like that." - Cheryl Bokin
In the defense’s opening statement, Gaines acknowledged that Jack assaulted
Marion but called her a "shakedown artist" who was blackmailing Jack
for money by threatening to tell his wife and their two children about the
affair.
In one of the worst miscalculations of the trial, Gaines subpoenaed Jack’s
wife Cheryl and their son and daughter and then opened the door for D.A.
Beckelman to question them about Jack’s affair with Marion. Cheryl testified
that she and Jack "had not been sexually close for years" and that she
wasn't hurt by the affair, but their children were. She trembled and sobbed as
she told the jury, "I didn’t want to believe that a father would betray
his home or his children like that." When their 14-year-old son took the
witness stand and shyly admitted to Beckelman that he loved his father and
wanted to help him, it nearly brought the entire courtroom to tears. Their
appearance gave the jury their first clue that Jack might really be the Jekyll
& Hyde monster the victims had described.
"Desperate men have desperate measures to do desperate things. What did
he have to lose?" - Prosecutor Elliott Beckelman
The nine-man, three-woman jury deliberated for more than five days. On Oct. 25,
1999 they found Jack guilty of 25 felonies in the assaults on Amber, Marion and
Martha. The guilty verdicts included attempted murder, assault, rape, mayhem,
sexual battery and false imprisonment. By a vote of 10-2 the jurors had been
unable to reach a verdict in Janie’s assault; Judge Warren declared a mistrial
in that case.
Jack’s sentencing was held on Jan. 14, 2000. Judge Warren advised Jack that he
was facing a possible sentence of 60 years to life plus 195 years, then he
called a short break. A deputy sheriff escorted Jack, now handcuffed and
shackled and wearing an orange jail jumpsuit, to a holding cell behind the
courtroom. When court reconvened and the deputy returned and opened the holding
cell door, Jack, who had somehow managed to unlock and remove his handcuffs and
leg chains, slammed the door into the deputy and ran. In the courtroom, the
judge, attorneys and spectators saw a flash of orange as Jack streaked past the
doorway and bolted down an exterior balcony that led directly to a fire-escape
stairway.
Pandemonium erupted in the courtroom. Bailiffs, spectators, activists, reporters
and even Judge Warren himself joined the chase, his robes flapping in the wind.
Jack's attorney Michael Gaines put his head down on the defense table and didn't
budge. Jack made it as far as the stairway door before two deputies tackled him.
"I came real close to leaving this jail." he later said. It was not an
exaggeration.
After the escape attempt it was revealed that shortly after Jack’s conviction
three months earlier, a homemade handcuff key, a map of the Hall of Justice and
German passport information had been confiscated from his jail cell. Despite
this clear indication that Jack was an escape risk, the SF Sheriff’s
Department did not elect to use the new design handcuffs (which cannot be
unlocked with a standard handcuff key) when transporting Jack between the jail
and the courtroom.
The Sheriff’s Department announced there would be an investigation into how
Jack managed to unlock his handcuffs and shackles after being placed in the
holding cell, but investigators showed little interest in a TV-news videotape
shot moments before that clearly shows Jack awkwardly maneuvering an object
around in his mouth.
"This was an important case. It’s not often you get such a righteous
case, when you know there are so many victims out there and you’re
doing something good. I hope it sends a message." - Erin Gallagher,
District Attorney Investigator
The rescheduled sentencing was held five days later on Jan. 19. The courtroom
was standing room only, as if the entire city of San Francisco had turned out in
case Jack made another break for it. This time he wouldn’t get the chance. In
a show of force that was embarrassingly a day late, SF Sheriff Michael Hennessey
wasn’t about to also be caught a deputy short. He stationed 11 uniformed and
armed deputies inside the packed, medium-sized courtroom. Five stood
shoulder-to-shoulder in front of the double doors at the rear, one guarded the
single door behind Judge Warren’s bench, and the remaining five formed a tight
circle around Jack, who was heavily shackled and seated at the defense table.
The deputy standing immediately to Jack’s left never moved his eyes from
Jack’s face throughout the two-hour hearing; it was clear that this time they
meant business.
Having already been advised of Judge Warren’s tentative sentence, Gaines
argued for less time on this charge and that one, splitting hairs and trying to
chisel off six months here and two years there, as though it would make any
meaningful difference to a 200+ year sentence. Beckelman countered each of
Gaines’ arguments. Judge Warren listened patiently to both then checked and
re-checked his math.
Before imposing sentence, Judge Warren addressed the testimony of the four
victims, calling it "as chilling as any that has come before this court.
The lurid descriptions of sexual assaults, rapes, oral copulation, throwing
bodies around, tying people up was simply very difficult to hear." Then
helooked directly at Jack and sentenced him to 60 years to life plus 171 years.
The courtroom erupted in cheers and applause and the deputies quickly led Jack
away. I didn’t cheer. As I watched Jack disappear through the doorway for the
final time I was thinking about his mother and silently telling her, "This
was for you."
Outside the courtroom after the sentencing, I introduced myself to some of the jurors and thanked them for doing what needed to be done. One of the women told me she'd been curious about my connection to the case; she'd noticed me crying when the victims testified and then again when the verdicts were read and it made her wonder which side I was on. Her comments brought home to me another terrible truth about incest: When you grow up caught between one loved and trusted family member who hurts you, and other loved and trusted family members who won't protect you, even you don't always know which side you're on.
Jack will always be part of my family. He bandaged my knees when I fell off my bike and told me jokes until I stopped crying. He taught me how to swim and how to play chess. He introduced me to philosophy, physics and Rachmaninov. He taught me all the constellations in the night sky and showed me how to make mercury dimes. He will never, and should never, have another chance at freedom but I find no joy in that, only relief for myself and deep regret that he wasted his life and shattered so many others.
In June 2000 Jack was installed in Mule Creek State Prison near Sacramento. Because of the notoriety surrounding his trial and his demonstrated potential for escape, he is housed in a "Sensitive Needs" unit reserved for the highest-security prisoners. His first parole hearing is scheduled for January 2148.