Powerful gay men. Vulnerable teen-age boys. Murder. For years, some prominent local men who led secret lives were rumored to be protected. Whispers surrounding another important man's death prompt the question: Is there really a conspiracy?

The 'eerie' suicide note

By ROBERT PRICE, Californian staff writer
e-mail: rprice@bakersfield.com

Monday January 20, 2003, 03:40:00 PM

Jack Knight / The Californian Glenn Fitts was found dead at his house in May 1979 with a gunshot wound to the head and an unfinished note the sheriff called "eerie." His death was ruled a suicide.

A week after the pickets laid siege to the courthouse, Fitts was charged with three felony counts of providing marijuana to minors and four other charges.

A few days later, he shot himself in the head, leaving behind a letter that seemed to have been unfinished -- a suicide note the sheriff described as "eerie."

"Dana Butler was last scene (sic) in front of a church between 11:30 and 12:30 on April 9. I, on the morning of April 9, was home waiting for ..." And there it ended.

Fitts "was like Santa Claus to those kids," Bakersfield attorney Milt Younger, who represented Fitts, recalled last month. "The kids used him, used his house. He could no more commit that murder than a jack rabbit could. He was a weak old man.

"They just hounded that old man until he killed himself."

Fitts was named in a $5 million wrongful death lawsuit brought by Butler's parents. Ultimately, James E. Brown, the attorney for Butler's family, secured a $5,000 judgment against the Fitts estate and $50,000 from an insurance company.

Fralick, who told investigators he was Fitts' gay companion and one of the people at the Rancho Bakersfield coffee shop the evening of April 11, was named as a co-defendant in the Butler family's civil suit, and then dropped.

Today, Fralick -- who turns 41 this month -- lives in the Los Angeles area and sells used cars at a tiny lot on Hollywood Boulevard. He now calls himself Jeff.

"I'm writing a book about all this," he said in November.

The Dana Butler case remains unsolved. It's one of just a couple that Brown, of the law firm Clifford & Brown, said will always stay with him.

"It had the most intriguing, perplexing set of circumstances I've ever been involved with," Brown said. "... it had enough tentacles to make an octopus -- I just couldn't get them all to connect."

That observation might aptly summarize the entire Lords legend.

"The more I think back about it, the more I wonder if (the Butler case had) a common thread that runs through some of these other cases," Brown said. "I don't know where the connection is. I guess it's just a feeling. "