Former Golf Coach Arrested on Suspicion of Child Molestation (CA Penal Code 288)

Not long ago, the Livermore area was rocked by the admissions of 32-year-old former golf coach (name withheld in order to protect the privacy of the accused) at Las Positas Golf Course arrested on suspicion of child molestation (CA Penal Code 288). Now, officials say, he’s confessed to hiring a hit man in order to try to get rid of at least 2 of his 3 known victims.  The molestation began in 2009 and lasted until about 2012 and he was initially facing 75 felony counts.  He’s been in custody at the Santa Rita jail in Dublin for some time and his letters to friends on the outside clearly stated that he wanted 2 of his victims to be ‘taken care of.’  Armed with this knowledge, an inspector from the district attorney’s office visited him, pretending to be the requested hit man and caught him in the act.  Authorities made a deal at that point and he should plan on spending more than 27 years in jail for his actions.

Luckily, he did not succeed in hiring a hit man to off his victims, but if he had, he would have been in violation of California’s ‘Capital Murder’ law, otherwise referred to as first-degree murder with special circumstances.  If you murder a witness  (using a hit man or not!) with the express purpose of preventing them from testifying against you in a court of law, then you become subject to the severest of penalties.  You may be subject to the death penalty or at least life in prison.

Interestingly, in the last decade it has become California law that if a person’s spouse hires a hit man in the course of a nasty divorce, they can no longer receive monies or payments from the spouse they tried to kill.  Weirdly, the law used to be that they had to attempt the murder themselves, not through a third party.  The police detective had this happen to him back in 2010 and was influential in helping to make California Family Code 4324 a reality.