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?

Decency defined the Tauzer friends remember

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

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

Casey Christie / The Californian District Attorney Ed Jagels eulogizes his No. 2 man and close friend, Assistant District Attorney Stephen M. Tauzer at Tauzer's funeral last September.

Stephen M. Tauzer prosecuted many of Kern County's most dramatic cases during his three decades as a high-profile member of the District Attorney's Office.

One irony in his death -- a brutal stabbing at his northwest Bakersfield home last September -- is that none of those cases ever generated the notoriety that Tauzer's own murder seems likely to provide when the case goes to trial later this year.

Tauzer was generally a private person -- soft-spoken, hard-working and unfailingly loyal to the man who was his boss for 20 years, District Attorney Ed Jagels.

But much of Tauzer's reputation could be undone at the trial of his accused killer, his one-time colleague, Chris Hillis. The case holds the potential to shed unflattering light on not only Tauzer, but the District Attorney's office and perhaps Jagels himself.

The trial's most prominent theme seems likely to be Tauzer's unusually close relationship with the defendant's son, Lance Hillis, who died last August.

Five weeks after Lance died, Tauzer's body was discovered in his garage, a knife still protruding from his head.

It was an ignominious end for a man who, at least to friends, allies and much of the public, seemed abundantly decent.

Tauzer, a native of Woodland, spent more than half his life in Bakersfield.

But he started his legal career as a criminal defense attorney in Sacramento, going to work at a law firm in January 1971, seven months out of the University of California-Davis Law School.

"He was kind of an absent-minded-professor type," said Clyde M. Blackmon, who ran the firm. "But he was a hell of a nice guy. Very bright."

Tauzer stayed just five months, however, leaving in May 1971 to join the U.S. Army as a second lieutenant. A mere three months later, after completing an officers' training course at Fort Benning, Ga., he was honorably discharged.