The Tattler Has Now Filed a PRA Regarding the City's Investigation Into the Bob Matheson Affair

There are so many problems with the City these days that it could easily become a full time job just trying to unravel them all. At times what goes on at City Hall seems almost like the work of people from another town. Which, now that I think about it, most of them are. They do take our money in taxes, but how often is it spent on what this community actually needs? Their priorities are far more with Sacramento or SCAG than they are Sierra Madre Boulevard.

One of the ways that the City refuses to share with the people whose interests it is paid to represent is by not making public the results of its investigations. We saw this in its refusal to honor the spirit of our Public Records Act filing for the results of the Harabedian Campaign Postcard Scandal investigation. Despite the openness and honesty of our concerns about this matter, the City instead resorted to narrow legalisms in order to protect the apparent insiders involved.

There are two other notable investigations whose results have never been made public as well. The first is the matter of the EVG Gas Station "skimming" affair. Literally hundreds of Sierra Madre residents, along with out-of-towners who probably regretted bringing their trade here, had their credit  and debit card information stolen by a City licenced business. That being the now former EVG filling station on Baldwin, just down the hill from Sierra Madre Boulevard. Despite the involvement of the U.S. Secret Service no news from any investigation has ever been released to the victims of this one gas station crime wave.

We will be filing a Public Records Act request on the EVG matter in the not too distant future.

Today we are announcing that a PRA has been filed with the City for information regarding the results of its investigation into the Matheson Affair. As I am certain you are aware, Bob Matheson is the once socially prominent Sierra Madre resident and Chamber of Commerce member who was arrested in October of 2011 (click here) in Halifax Nova Scotia with a computer laptop jammed full of child pornography, both photos and videos. Bob was later tried and convicted in Canada, and served a stretch in prison there. Yet despite Federal statutes that clearly state how this matter was to be handled here, upon his return Matheson was not registered as a sex offender or anything else, and instead allowed to resume his life here as if nothing had happened.

There are several schools of thought on why this might be. The first is that local law enforcement lacked the understanding or drive to do right by this community and register a resident who was convicted on possession of child pornography. Despite the high percentage of available funding spent on public safety in this town, we did not have competent trained personnel in place to properly handle this situation.

Another theory states that Matheson's social prominence here made him an insider with this City's decision makers, and he was given a break. Pictures of Bob with former Mayors and other assorted dignitaries, many taken at important City social functions by Sierra Madre News.net site owner Bill Coburn (click herefor an example), have only helped to reinforce this impression. Plus it must also be noted that when former Mayor Joe Mosca held his re-election campaign kickoff party here in 2010, it happened at the home of Bob Matheson. Our most notorious child pornographer may have had enough political juice here to dodge registration.

A third theory states that Bob Matheson was not the only party in town engaged in the collection of child pornography, and such is the influence of this rumored community with certain politically connected people here in town that strings were pulled. The reason being certain individuals feared that should Mr. Matheson have been registered as a sex offender in Sierra Madre, he might have told all he knows to the authorities.

For links to a U.S. Department of Justice website that deals with the registration of convicted child pornography users, along with the failures of our City to honor those requirements, click here.

Here is our Public Records Act request for information on why the City of Sierra Madre apparently decided to give Bob Matheson a free pass.

To: Elaine Aguilar, City Manager for the City of Sierra Madre
Date: April 15, 2013
From: John Crawford, Editor of The Sierra Madre Tattler

Dear Elaine,

I hope you had an enjoyable weekend and return to the job both refreshed and soon filled with a renewed passion to bring some transparency to an issue that has remained "in the dark" for far too long. That issue would be the as yet undisclosed investigation into Bob Matheson's activities both here and in Canada as a collector of child pornography.

In an article posted to the Sierra Madre Patch at the time, the following observation was made:

The Sierra Madre Police Department and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are actively investigating Robert Matheson, 67, the Sierra Madre resident who was found with thousands of pornographic images and videos of underage boys on his laptop while traveling to Nova Scotia, Canada in October. Matheson served four months in a Canadian jail for smuggling before returning to Sierra Madre last week.

Police Chief Larry Giannone said Monday that the police department is waiting on documents from Canadian authorities.

Did Chief Giannone ever receive those documents? My conversations with the Canadian prosecutor of this matter indicate that they were sent. What conclusions did the Chief draw from this information? Did he discuss this with other members of our City's government, and if so, what were their observations on this matter? And what was the conclusion of this investigation?

Again, from the Sierra Madre Patch:

Why Hasn't Matheson Been Asked to Register as a Sex Offender? In a sworn affidavit, Homeland Security Special Agent Ricardo J. Rodriguez indicated that Matheson pleaded guilty to smuggling, but did not mention anything about him pleading guilty to a sex offense. 

Update: Canadian authorities indicated Wednesday that Matheson was also convicted of possession of child pornography, which is considered a sex offense.

Chief Giannone said that the plea bargain Matheson took with Canadian authorities did not require him to register as a sex offender.

According to the National Guidelines for Sex Offender Registration and Notification, the U.S.A. would recognize as a sex offense conviction that occurred in Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

From yet another Sierra Madre Patch article:

Matheson's laptop was found to contain about 2,500 pornographic images involving underage boys, 285 pornographic videos of underage boys and short stories involving molestation of children when it was searched by Canadian officials at the Halifax Stanfield Airport in October.

According to the affidavit, Matheson's laptop was found to have:

* Instant message chats revealing his "wish to find a young man to pass as his son or grandson, and his belief that it would be an honor and privilege to guide and teach young boys through puberty."

* 2,820 images ... 90 percent of them were found to be teenage boys engaged in sex acts.

* 285 videos of teenage males engaged in sexual activity, with 20 percent of the titles containing "young," "twink" or "boy." The file creation dates ranged from April 2009 to May 2011.

Obviously these are unpleasant matters. But we also need to consider the public's legal right to know how its government deals with such difficult issues. Chief Giannone has repeatedly claimed that Bob Matheson did not have to be registered as a sex offender in Sierra Madre, yet the reasons for his conclusion were never made public. And as the Sierra Madre Tattler's 2,000 or so daily readers know, the U.S. Department of Justice has a very different opinion. Here is their take:

Section 111(5)(B) of SORNA instructs that registration need not be required on the basis of a foreign conviction if the conviction "was not obtained with sufficient safeguards for fundamental fairness and due process for the accused under guidelines or regulations established by the Attorney General." The following standards are adopted pursuant to section 111(5)(B): 

Sex offense convictions under the laws of Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand are deemed to have been obtained with sufficient safeguards for fundamental fairness and due process, and registration must be required for such convictions on the same footing as domestic convictions.

Here is the rest of our PRA request: