Transcript: Cul de Sac: A Suburban War Story

00:14 Title Card: In May of 1995 Shawn Nelson, a 35 year old plumber from a suburb of San Diego, California, emerged from a mineshaft he had constructed in his backyard.

Title Card: After months spent mining for gold behind his Clairemont home, Nelson, an Army veteran, drove a mile down the road to a nearby National Guard Armory and stole a 60-ton tank.

Title Card: For nearly an hour Shawn Nelson continued unhindered down surface streets and freeways until he was finally stopped by police. No one else was hurt.

01:01 Scott Nelson: I drove up home and my next door neighbor was screaming for me to come over, and I thought he was playing his guitar and one of his speakers had fallen and pinned him to the floor again...

Friend: Big speakers man, they were cool....

Scott Nelson: I go walkin’ in, and he’s standin’ there goin’ “Check this dude out!”

Chuck Childers: Two or three months before he ever took that tank, he told me over in the back yard over here, watching the satellites, he said, Chuck, one of these days I’m going to take a tank, and drive it up to city hall, and park it on the steps over there, and demand live TV. So I can tell my statement.

Karen Rowlands: They asked me if he talked about the Army, if he had, you know if he had had any intentions against, you know, like if he was some kind’ve terrorist type person type, you know, what was his purpose, you know? You know, was he craved on GI Joe type things...no, you know? I told him “No.”

02:08 Title: “Cul de Sac: A Suburban War Story”

Narrative Voice: A mark of success for a city is to a great extent a matter of that city’s service to its citizens. This means that for most of us individual preferences must be satisfied. But San Diego has always been, and will always be, a city of dreams.
This is San Diego today. It didn’t look anymore like this a few years ago than it will a few years from now.

Chuck Childers: When I was a kid growing up here, this was the most beautiful place there was. Clairemont. San Diego. It was bitching. Neighborhood. Safe. You could leave the
keys in the ignition of your car, never had to worry about it. Never had to lock your front door.

03:07 Prof. Ford: Clairemont is the quintessential post-war housing tract, in the sense that it pioneered a new way of putting the city together. In the post-war years the idea of a builder gave way to the idea of a developer who would go in and build thousands of houses at the same time. And, so we began to get the sort of post-war, “Leave it to Beaver,” um, housing track areas. Two or three different kinds of houses. One, two, one, two, one, two, or one, two, three.

Ofc. Eliseo: Oh here’s a ticket I gotta write, this guys a problem here too,...Yeah, he’s small potatoes, he’s just an alcoholic basically, but we’re always hitting him because, well, he’s always leaving stuff parked on the street, this thing has been here forever, and this right here is a hazard so I’m gonna have to cite him...its unlawful to service a vehicle on the city streets, see how he’s got that jacked up, some little kid rolls under there on his skateboard or something, that would be a problem...so I’m gonna take care of it right now...that could be his name, he lives with his Mom, he’s 35 years old....
Oh, you guys would be interested in this, you know the guy that drove the tank? He lived right there.

04:36 Ofc. Paxton: Basically, I was on patrol in Ocean Beach, and we heard the call come out. We got the call from undercover detectives happened to be on surveillance in that area...and they were working a robbery detail and one of the detectives saw this tank come crashing out of the gate....

Old Woman: I was in the back of the house, and I heard this terrible noise, and I knew it was something real bad. Mostly it was the sound of the helicopters They were coming in so low I thought they was gonna land on top of my house.
...Well that bothered me. So I ran outside, and when I did, the whole street up there was in pieces, it was like a war-zone.

Man on Street: I could actually see his face. I could se his face. He had a smile, he looked like he was having fun....

Scott Nelson: (So why’d he do it?) Aww...man. Sniff. He had enough. He was sick and tired, he was screaming...trying to get some attention. What? Enough was enough...he was going for a joyride, yeah. Thank god no one got hurt. I dunno how. Twenty three minutes driving around, crushing vehicles, twenty three minutes...!

06:27 Ofc. Eliseo: The classic thing that happens here...a, uh, Mom passes away, house goes to uh, it was paid off, and went to a son and daughter...both drug users...the daughter eventually moved out, but I’d arrested her at one point for forgery...and she still lives in the area... these guys are what we refer to as bottom feeders, basically....

Narrative Voice: But aircraft is not the only industry that San Diego sponsorship offers it’s citizens. Electronics is booming. Missile production offers employment to citizens and strengthens the city’s economy. It also earns for the city a justified reputation of leadership in industrial cooperation. Where else, but in San Diego is new industry given such a welcome? Cooperative effort between the city and the San Diego chamber of commerce promotes the city’s 396 acre park.

Prof. Ford: You have all these relatively prosperous workers who can afford housing. And then, on the other hand, you have all these new areas opened up because of the automobile so houses could be built on relatively cheap land. At the same time it represented a period of increased affordability for the single family home, which was, in part a function of the prosperity of post-war America. After all, all of our competitive countries had been wiped out.

08:40 Scott Nelson: My Dad got out of the service then they put him to work....shipped him...out of the service he got a job in Washington, so we moved to Washington, when we moved to Washington they wanted to ship him down to San Diego to...General Dynamics...better job, more money, a future, the frontier opening, San Diego, hey....

Narrative Voice: The F-102A interceptor airplane is being assembled at the Plant 2 facility of the contractor’s San Diego plant. These are the first airplanes to be ordered by the Air Force under the Cooke-Kraige Plan.

Mike Jenkins: I don’t have a lot of personal Knowledge as to what happened in the Clairemont area, but it’s pretty obvious it was all part of the growth of the defense oriented industries and the high technology industries during the 50’s and 60’s. Associated very much I think with General Dynamics, which at that point employed over 30,000 employees in the city of San Diego.

Scott Nelson: Dad helped design, uh the tomahawk, um, part of, one of the first Gemini space capsules, and one of the first long range jets that we had....

Narrative Voice: By September, 1957, three airplanes per day will roll off the assembly line. In the event of national emergency, this number can be increased to ten airplanes every 24 hours.

Mike Steppner: It was like people who worked in Detroit for the auto manufacturers...it was a good life, you made good money...you were able to live fairly decently, and you always were gonna churn out cars, or missiles or airplanes...and it was a good life for your child to go into as well, and the era has changed.

10:33 Chuck Childers: (Shawn encouraged you with your art...with your trees?) He encouraged me with my trees. Like I said, I’m getting close to 300 trees. I’ve never marketed them, I’ve never gone out and marketed them but, I fully believe that I can. Shawn was successful at everything he did. Except for his gold mine.

Newscaster: I think a lot of us are fascinated by that mine shaft that was dug in the backyard...that a number of neighbors didn’t even know about...

Reporter: No...

Newscaster: ...that he filed for mineral rights, with the city.

Reporter: Yeah. He did...matter of fact...I’ll tell you one...one thing in talking with the younger Algren child, I think most of the kids in the neighborhood around new about it, they were the ones who would go by and play with the dogs and...and see Shawn and see what he was doing, but even the kids felt “naw, there was no gold there, all it is is dirt.” But yet, Shawn did feel like he had gold, filing a claim with the city even, and then we heard from his roommate of three days, Tim Wyman, who said he was very disturbed, Shawn was, he was fighting, he felt he was being harassed by the city, ‘cause the city wouldn’t allow him to have his claim on what he thought was his gold mine.

11:30 Chuck Johnson: Shawn started to dig a hole on the side of his house...and he ran into a little gold nugget, or at least he thought he’d found a gold nugget...and that made him want to get into his gold mining a lot deeper than what he had gotten into...so then he dug a 17 foot hole...in the back yard..

Karen: I’d say it’s 25 feet, but I’m shorter than him....

Chuck Johnson: No, we measured it, it was 17 feet....

Fela: And uh, and then he started digging and digging, next thing you know, he's got a fourteen foot hole, a sump pumps, big mounts in the back.

Karen: He was getting somewhere...And he was using all kinds of chemicals...and...and acids and stuff like that...he turned his jacuzzi into a sluice...I mean for a minute there it was like Omigod....Gold Fever. 49er’s, I see, there is such a thing as 49er’s....

Chuck Johnson: I told him you know, “Shawn, I want to believe you, but I need to have some substantiated documents that state you know, that this is not really fool’s gold or hearsay gold....

12:34 Chuck Childers: I don’t know, it was really weird, two days before he went on his little adventure, he came over to my house and he asked me to go in my room, and we went in my room and he sat down and went like this and he says Chuck, you need to come with me. “What?,“ he wouldn’t tell me. You need to go with me. In the back of my mind, he wanted me to go with him on that little ride. I was his closest friend for a year and a half, the year and a half before he died. He closed the door and he never would tell me where. It never dawned on me till way later...he was over there, basically, almost demanding that I would go with him.

Ofc. Paxton: We heard calls that cars were run over, people were trapped in their cars, we didn’t know if anyone had been hurt or injured, and there’s a lot of things going through your mind, you’re thinking I’m gonna stop this guy before he gets any further.

Diane Fletcher: The last time I talked to Shawn I could tell that something was wrong. He said, “I can’t hear, I can’t hear. I need to talk to my brother! Where’s Scott?!!” And his voice was really desperate.

Scott Nelson: Like I said, I wish that would’ve been me when I saw it first on TV...it was a trip. (Then you found out it was him?) No, at that time I didn’t know who it was. They didn’t say.

Ofc. Paxton: The helicopter pilots who have the best view are saying that this guy is going crazy, we need somebody to stop him, and when you hear that coming from those guys, you know you’re imagination goes wild, ‘cause you know that they’ve had the best observation throughout this entire ordeal....and things just happen so fast...and I know the adrenaline kicks in.

14:47 Clair Burgener: Clairemont was headed off as kind of a...not upper-scale, but a mid-scale community...that in its planning stages, ‘49, ‘50, ‘51, but with the Korean war impact there was a desperate need for housing.

Title Card: “Seoul Recaptured”

Narrative Voice: Exactly three months to the day after the city of Seoul fell to the Communist invaders, UN forces helped capture this South Korean capitol. These are Marines and U.S. 7th Division troops, advancing into Seoul under enemy fire.

Jeff Mountain: You’ve got to remember - when these guys came back from the second world war or Korean war, they didn’t have any money. They were good credit risks. They were honest people. Most of them were in a position to get a good job. But they didn’t have a lot of money. And you’ve got to remember there’s such a wide price difference between now and then. I mean you know -- uh you know you’re talking about buying a home for twenty, twenty-five thousand dollars. Now their payments were you know a hundred and fifty dollars a month. You know they could well afford that.

Clair Burgener: The idea with them was get the house up fast so somebody could, some wife of some serviceman in Korea could live in it...now. Build it quick, build it cheap, get it up there...90 bucks a month, 80 bucks a month.

Narrative Voice: It had been hoped that Seoul might be recaptured with a minimum of destruction, but this is impossible, as the reds stage a house to house fight.

Clair Burgener: Some of those duplexes were pretty, pretty flimsy...they were well built, but they were very stark, ...it’s good for the seller, but they lost control of kind of a higher grade...little better class community...just one of the victims of the war...so to speak.

16:42 Reporter: But they had instances here, I understand from some neighbors of confronting him and talking with him where he was talking about demons...that were bothering him and chasing him. There’s also word in the neighborhood of methamphetamine heavy use, and also drug...alcohol use.

Tim: That I don’t know about. Okay? You know...that I’m not certain of. Okay? Shawn never told me anything about...demons...okay.

Fela: Well yeah, because no, I mean, digging a fourteen foot hole in your backyard, and thinking that there's gold. That sounds like a tweak thing, you know what I mean?

Reporter: What were you afraid of, if at all? You had to be concerned here. He’s obviously was not...a a hundred percent...

Tim: He didn’t express that, he wasn’t...he never expressed that type of crazy person to me. Okay?

Karen: They all thought there was gold, and it became a large community tweak project, and the tweakers were over, actually....

Chuck Johnson: In a sense, yeah...(in a sense?) well...that he did have quite a few of the uh...I dunno, drug addicts in the neighborhood over there on a nightly basis....

Karen: They wanted, they wanted him to train them to be plumbers...they wanted to get off the dope, they wanted him to train them to be functional people. They were all ready. They will, they were over their digging his hole. But they thought in turn, to digging his hole, that they...he was gonna teach them how to be a plumber.

17:59 Tim: Shawn was an intelligent man. And he was a good worker...you know I’ve seen some of the work that he’s done and then I know what he’s capable of...he read plenty of books on uh...minerals and so on and so forth and he was well versed on uh...on, you know...

Reporter: He thought he had a...a mine shaft in his back yard.

Tim: Yes.

Reporter: Or he does have one?

Tim: Yes, he does.

Reporter: Will you go show it to us... so we can get through here, let’s pull some cable through here please. Tim Wyman we’re talking with folks...this is live, we’re in the Clairemont area...we’re in the home ...here as we walk through...going to the back...now bring this...this is live television...here we...can we get enough cable, can we make it? We’re out of cable. Right now. Bring some more if you can. There’s...watch your step here Dennis, this is ...is just ...not real good here. Come on Dennis, come on through here.... watch your step right there, there’s cords in front of you...folks, it’s in total disarray, but we’re live again, and coming through the...a jac... a jacuzzi here in what was a patio once, I...you, you know this is just...not really good living right here. Come back to the back here.
Okay, were live here, is that as far as we can get? Okay, we’ve got our cord here, I hope we’ve still got our picture. We’re...we’re coming through...we wanna show you right now here...here is a...(to Tim) This is the shaft he called his mineshaft?

Tim: Yessir.

Reporter: How far down does it go?

Tim: It goes quite a ways down. It goes probably, oh...you can look down the shaft if you can get in there.

Reporter: Can we get a camera over there? Maybe not. Let’s just see if we can get a camera.... Now he was finding flakes of gold?

Tim: Yessir.

19:25 Karen: ”Shawn, stop it. Quit it, you know what’s going on here? This is goin’ a little out of line.... You go to...keep working...and all this stuff, you know...this is gettin’ a little out of hand.... Oh no no, he didn’t wanna listen to me. He makes you go down in his hole, you know.
Interviewer: You went down inside?

Karen: Oh yeah. So here...we’re down...25 feet down his hole so can look around, I go “You know, as long as you’re down here,” I said, “why don’t you just go ahead, just dig until I, just dig until I see time. I. As long as you’re, you know....I would like to see time, you know (chuckling)? You know you’ve already dug this far...just dig so I could see time, you know, that’d be cool.”

Question: What do you mean, “time?”

Karen: Eh, over the ages, you know? With the grand canyon, or whatever? I like to see dino...I’d like to see time, you know? And things like.... It was weird to have that big ol’, you know, it’s weird to be down there too, it’s like, it was weird down there....

Reporter: Ok, now, you were showing me this. If we can show this right here, right here Dennis, in front of us here.... This, you say, is what’s coming out of his mineshaft?

Tim: Yessir.

Reporter: Where is there gold here? I see just nothing but like rocky, dusty rock.

Tim: If you see bright light on it you can see this flake-like...this gold flake color...

Karen: He was good at being a con-man, he was definitely good at being a con-man...because, you know, he got over on everybody....

Chuck Childers: ...You know, what he burned out of that dirt was sittin’ on my coffee table at home, my friend Neil, his father owns a gold mine in Oregon, uh, he uh, he saw these chunks sittin’ around, my friend Neil, he says, “Oh, where’d you get these, did I give you those?” I said “No, uh, Shawn did those.” Well, he’d already met Shawn and thought Shawn was off his rocker, so..,” you know, so he goes, “What do you mean Shawn gave you those?” And I said “ I watched him burn this particular chunk right here out of the dirt, you know?” And he’s like, “No way, this is what my Dad does when he’s shows off, with his gold mine,” and he says, “and they look just like this.” And I’m like ....(Chuck makes a histrionic gesture, shrugging his shoulders in wonder).

20:53 Reporter: And he was having a problem with the city because he wanted the...to stake a claim here?

Tim: He did.

Reporter: He did stake a claim.

Tim: Yes he did.

Reporter: And then he thought the city was harassing him?

Tim: Uhhhm...well, yessir...

Reporter: That’s what you said...the words you used!

Tim: Yessir. Yeah.

Reporter: In what way? Because they wouldn’t give him uh, uh a claim here, if you will?

Tim: Uhhm, well no, he got a claim. He filed it and it’s recorded. Uhm, he... (Woman’s voice from elsewhere calls out)

Woman: Get the fuck out of here!

Reporter: Okay, we have somebody here, now, were gonna....

Woman: Get out, g’wan, get the fuck out of here, now....!

Reporter: W...wait a minute, excuse us, wait a... wait a minute, don’t pull that cord...

Woman: Get out...!

Reporter: Wait a minute, don’t swear...now...

Woman: Get out!

Reporter: Now who are you? Now who are you?

Woman: None of your fucking business!

Reporter: Okay. We’re gonna...

Woman: Tim! How could you let them in here?

Reporter: We’re gonna leave the premises.

Woman: Tim, I want you outta here!

Reporter: What’s the matter? Who are you ma’am? Who are you?

Woman: None of your business.

Reporter: Okay, but do you live here?

Woman: None of your business, it doesn’t matter!

Reporter: No reason to talk that way, we’re on our way out, as long as we know who you are. Who are you? Are you his former girlfriend?

Woman: None of your business!

(From far away) Get the fuck out!

21:43 Reporter: Okay, we have other people yelling at us now. We’re gonna get out of here, it’s not a very good situation here, right now. C’mon Dennis, let’s just work our way out, we’re gonna keep the camera rolling in case something would happen...keep the camera rolling. Are we still live? Hellos KUSI? Can you hear us KUSI?

Newscaster: Yeah, we can hear you, you’re still live Rod...just stay with it...

Reporter: Okay, we’re going through, c’mon ..

Newscaster: I understand...

Reporter: I hear a male’s voice outside, swearing at us, using profane language, you heard the lady... we are leaving here right now, and again this place looks just....AWFUL. I don’t have a word to describe it. We might’ve lost our signal, I don’t know.

Newscaster: No, you’re still there Rod, we’ve still got you. Keep goin’ guy...

Reporter: We’re out, it’s over! Tim, if you could come out, as we finish, we’ll....We’re gonna get Tim Wyman here. As you can see there’s no police here, there’s nothing, there’s some news crews.... But let me just talk to Tim Wyman one last time. Tim you don’t plan on staying here, I would imagine?

Newscaster: Who was that...?

Tim: No, I don’t.

Reporter: Where are you going? Who was that woman? Please, you know her...who was that?

Tim: Well, I ..I don’t know her that well, I don’t know her...

Reporter: Who was that? Was that his former girlfriend?

Tim: Not that I know of.

Reporter: You said that you know her. How did you meet her?

Tim: I’ve just seen her a couple of times...but I...I don’t want to talk right now because people are upset.

Reporter: Are you in fear of your life?

Tim: No.

Reporter: Or any kind of reaction...uh...a heavy duty, uh...problems, with any people?

Tim: Not that I know of.

Reporter: You don’t think anybody’s gonna harass you?

Tim: No.

Reporter: Well, thank you for being live with us here.

Tim: Well I’m sorry for the problems, and I didn’t want to cause any problems, but I just wanted everybody to know that Shawn wasn’t a bad guy, he wasn’t.....

23:09 Ofc. Eliseo: Right here was one of the problems...67 Kleefeld...uhm...they call this a parolee pad because there was always parolees hanging out there...the guy that lived there was fourth waiver...he was on probation for drugs...

Agent Dulise: I don't know, the finest in America almost, moved out into the suburbs. The people that wanted a better life for their children, hard working, middle-class, self-reliant, blue-collar, white-collar workers, very independent folks. And, they moved into the suburbs to make a better life for their children.

Ofc. Eliseo: Specifically, everyone I’m talking about is strictly a methamphetamine addict of some kind or another. It all revolves around that drug.

Agent Dulise: Well, when you have that independence, and that self-reliance, methamphetamine is the perfect drug. As a drug it acts as a very powerful stimulant. If you're a hard worker, short term, you'll be an even harder worker.

Ofc. Eliseo: When I ask people they always say it keeps me going, it keeps me working, but one person I asked put it really succinctly...said uh, “ you start a hundred projects but you finish none of them....

Agent Dulise: You never have to deal with overseas sources of supply. It's something that you can do all by yourself. And, you can keep up that self-reliant spirit that you have.

24:32 Dr. Stalcup: If you look at the birth of America’s problems with methamphetamine, it arose from WWII, as a military decision. Uhh, the US Government introduced it for people who had to stay awake for long periods of time...in particular...bomber pilots.... This was medicine you took because you had to stay awake for eighteen hours...twenty four hours, and you had to function....
and on most of those...there were five or six crew members, were pretty much all under the influence. And at the end of WWII we saw the spread of methamphetamine across the Pacific...so the Marshall Islands and Guam

Question: Following the logistical lines...?

Dr. Stalcup: Literally the military logistic lines, and the military logistic lines came into San Diego, which was the major trans-shipment point from the Pacific theatre to America. And the first reports of amphetamine problems in the United States were in recently returned troops, uh, in San Diego

Chuck Johnson: I know that Shawn had a lot of uh...personal problems...and he didn’t know how to ask for help....well dealing with his Mom’s death, dealing with the divorce from his wife was very shattering to his ego...

Scott Nelson: Mom in ‘88, divorce in ‘91, Pop in ‘93, ‘92....

Question: Did he talk to you about it?

Chuck Johnson: A little bit, not in too much depth, but it did bother him...he did tell me that...at the same time I was going through kind’ve a separation with my wife...and you know, we had something there that was in common.

26:40 Karen: He was mean...he was really mean on a normal basis, this is long before the crystal came up into the picture. And I seen him out there, the yard, every night they’d be out there, they’d be so drunk that they’d wake up the next morning in each other’s arms out there, they were wrestling all night long...

Question: He and...

Karen: NO. Guys. They, oh, he, he’s gotta be macho macho man, and it’s gonna be this guy he’s gonna grab and take out there, and he’s gonna take him out back and prove to him, and if this guy takes him down, well Shawn could usually take everybody down...you know, but that last time, that Chuck...Johnson fucked up his back, you know.

Chuck Johnson: We got into a heated conversation, and I proved my point but even though I proved my point, he wanted to take me out into the backyard and prove that he was the man he was supposed to be and uh, we got into a physical wrestling match and I ended up breaking his back.

Karen: He was in the backyard laying there...I...not uncommon. So I tell...the kids “Call 911!”

Chuck Johnson: I heard something crunch and I let go of him and he laid on the ground and uh, told him to call the paramedic, and he told me to get out of there, and my neighbor, or his neighbor Karen came over and took care of it....

Dale Fletcher: He used to joke about you know – “I’m going to get me a tank and go drive it around - just kidding.” You know he said it to many people. And you know it’s like, who would ever do that?

28:09 Ofc. Paxton: That...was probably my worst nightmare too...’cause being in tanks, you know we joked about it, saying, you know, what if somebody got a hold of one of these tanks, can you imagine what they would do? I ain’t gonna deny it, that’s something you think about when your driving that thing, wouldn’t it be fun to just go run it through a building. And that’s just society and the way we are.

Dale Fletcher: That night that all that happened, Diana and I were watching the news about some Clairemont guy took and tank and did all this stuff. And I looked at her and I said, “You know the only guy in Claremont that can...” - and this is the truth you know - “that was in the army and knows how to drive a tank was Shawn!” We’re like “Yeah, right.”

Chuck Childers: Well, if he’d been smart, he’d a taught three other people to drive too, and we could’ve taken off in four directions, and they wouldn’t have been able to stop us all, and we could have made it to city hall. But, he wasn’t one to take people into trouble, and get people into trouble, he was one who if it was coming down hard he was going to take care of it himself.

Ofc. Paxton: You know people, and especially guys that are in tanks, they get that feeling of, you know, that they’re super people, no one’s gonna hurt ‘em, and, you know, I don’t know, maybe he was thinking that too...you know, something he can do whatever it was his intent was to do...and no one’s gonna hurt him....

29:50 Chuck Childers: I tell you what, when I first started doing crystal, when I was a kid, cause I've done it, ok, I did it quite heavily for a while, it was different. It was speed. Now it's all chemical, and it's not the same thing. Before it was like you did a little blast and you were up for days. You didn't jones on doing more, more more more.

Chuck Johnson: I mean, I had a problem with crystal myself. I’ve been clean now about a year and a half. But, uh, during that time we were using together.

Ofc. Eliseo: There’s another house over down the road here, where same situation...Mom passes away...daughter inherits the house...and this house was free and clear...this gal’s name was Karen she still lives there...but for the longest time it was a problem house...where people would... parolees and guys that get out of jail, they’d all go to Karen’s...because they knew they’d meet other people there who had dope to buy or sell, or guns, or whatever....

Karen: We were all, kinda, like, using it every now and again, at least twice a week, whatever. And, umm, for me the reason I was using it was, ‘cause when I moved into my Mom’s house, she collected everything...since the time we...you know? There was a path, through her house, to the ceiling, it was insane, ok? Everything was there. Anybody would take down a covered patio to build a gazebo, she took the patio home with her...the linoleum, the glass, anything and everything she took home with her.

Ofc. Eliseo: Karen’s been here the longest because these are rentals and she’s lived here the longest...but what would happen is someone would get out of prison, or get out of jail and they’d stop by Rogers house, and if nobody was there they’d go to Stacey’s house, and if nobody’s there they’d go to Karen’s house like uh...yeah you had three houses to choose from in this one little area...

Karen: So for about six months I tried to get going and get, you know, cleaned it up, and it was just overwhelming. In fact, at the end, George Eliseo, umm, they gave me three city dumpsters and parked them in front of my house, because it was that overwhelming.

Ofc. Eliseo: It just seems that certain ethnic groups prefer certain drugs, up here it’s, among lower income white...uh...people it’s methamphetamine. Cause it’s not as expensive as cocaine, it’s a similar high, it’s a stimulant, like cocaine is, uh, it’s just a harder, I think cocaine is more subtle.

32:17 Chuck Childers: I firmly believe that crystal is a government induced drug. I mean crystal was originally created by Hitler's chemist. It was part of the mind control, you know, being able to get his soldiers to march up on the hill for 3 and 4 days, a week straight or whatever, no sleep or whatever. I mean think about it. Why were all the people in Germany, other than being scared to death of Hitler, why were they backing him? Believing that he was winning the war, when the Allies are breaking the door down, to take them down. They're still believing in him. There's something there.

Narrative Voice: In this test, a B-57 shaped weapon is released from the weapon bay with both bay doors open. Aircraft speeds varying between Mach 1.6 to Mach 2, and altitudes between 16,000 and 40,000 feet were simulated. Wind tunnel tests like these yield results which are similar to those obtained in actual flight testing. They enable engineers to anticipate equipment fixes that can save thousands of dollars in potential aircraft damage during in-flight testing. For instance, in this test of a B-43 model weapon, the weapon strikes against the aircraft.....

34:40 Mike Jenkins: The Berlin wall came down in 1989 and we were no longer in a Cold War. And...people were jubilant, of course, we didn’t have to spend all of this money on defense expenditures, and people talked about “the peace dividend.” But in the short run, what it meant for San Diego was that we were no longer getting those kinds of hot, high-value, high dollar-added kinds of contracts.

Prof. Walker: The white working class from the 70’s, through the mid 90’s does terribly. Wages, industrial work, manual work, are absolutely flat. Very different from the 50’s, where those people felt that they were moving up. They were becoming part of the American Dream, and in fact, objectively speaking, there was a massive convergence of class wealth and income. So the 80’s are a hard time for the mass of Americans, and you can see that it’s all focused on a community like Clairemont.

Mike Steppner: Clairemont and Linda Vista...a lot of the people who once lived there anyway were tied in with the defense industries...either the ones that were down here on Pacific Hwy...or with General Dynamics out in Kearny Mesa...and those are all gone...and those kinds of jobs are gone.

35:58 Gilbert Marrow: Yeah, I figured I had a job forever. I got out of the military...

Question: You were in the Navy?

Gilbert Marrow: Yeah, I was in the Navy. I came to work here, at General Dynamics, I figured they’d be making bombs and missiles forever, and there’d be wars forever, so this was guaranteed employment.

Mike Steppner: There were thirty thousand employees going there every day to do things...and those were semi skilled jobs...there was a cadre of people who were the scientists and engineers, but the rest of ‘em were all people who were semi skilled...or highly skilled workers but not highly educated and they didn’t have skills that are transferable...they can’t suddenly go from a machine lathe to a computer and be as qualified as they once were....

Gilbert Marrow: We had a guy commit suicide down at Lindbergh Field. He got his layoff notice, and I guess he was going through a divorce and everything else. He come outside into the parking lot. He come to work like he was coming to work, sat out on the ground...one of the guards found him when he went out there, and he was laying on the ground, blood coming out.

Gilbert Marrow: I know there’s been a lot of divorces that has happened as a result of this. A lot of my friends have gotten divorced, ‘cause they don’t make the money. And, you know, you’re used to making $40,000 a year, and now you’re making twenty, but your bills, your house notes all of that is forty, you know, it’s been rough.

37:56 Reporter: Who are you...who are you...who are you!

Woman: Get the fuck out of here....

Reporter: Please...please...

Woman: Quit it! Quit it! Don’t fuckin’ put your hands on me...

Reporter: Please, don’t handle our cameras...

Newscaster: Uhhh....uh that’s....

Reporter: Will you tell us? We’d just like to know, please....

Newscaster: Okay, what we’re gonna do is...I think what we’ll do is....uh, we’re gonna re-...Rod?

Reporter: About you saying you were Shawn’s neighbor?

Man: Well, I lived with him for a while.

Reporter: And you were talking about his attitude and his... and his feelings?

Man: I can’t say what he thought, or how he felt, but I know that, he was a good man, and that he tried, and if anyone needed help, he tried to help ‘em, and when he went down he didn’t hurt anybody. He might’ve smiled, but he knew no other way out. He was wrong, they had to do what they had to do, and uh, Shawn was a good man...he really was.

38:36 Fela: Oh, he smoked pot. Yeah, he smoked pot, and he occasionally did meth, okay? Well, I guess, towards the end, the meth, you know, with the people that he was hangin' with, you know, uh, that crowd, or whatever. Or, it could have been him, who knows. But, he started doing more of it, I guess.

Karen: So they went over there and filled his nose full of more dope and more dope and more dope, and then the next set of group would come in and get him tweaked, you know, ‘cause they’re all hoping that that’s gonna win him over and gonna get them the job, to be trained to plumb. He’d take one or two people out one or two times..., this happened over and over again, it’s like, then the, they’d last one or two weeks, a month, two months, and then it was obvious he wasn’t gonna go nowhere but that hole.

Reporter: Have you...when’s the last time you saw him?

Man: Yesterday, before he left.

Reporter: But how close to six o’clock did you see him?

Man: I have no idea, I wasn’t looking at my watch...

Reporter: What kind of a mental state was he in?

Man: He seemed to be normal enough.

Chuck Childers: He was losing his house, he was going hungry, all his utilities were shut off. He just got consumed, trying to prove that he was right. Cause he’d been so successful at everything else.

39:39 Karen: Well one kid’s coming over there, he’s going “Well, Shawn owes me all this money for scrap gold I’ve been selling him.“ I go “Shawn, what’s goin’ on?” He goes “Well, OK, I’ve been melting down this scrap gold into my dirt, because, but,...the non-believers, to make them believe, so that it...you know, until I can find, until I can prove it...the non-believers, you know, the non-believers....”

Question: So he would bring in his own gold, and they would believe it?

Karen: Well, yeah.

Question: Some of ‘em did?

Karen: Some of ‘em did...let me tell yuh, there’s a twenty-five feet deep hole over there that Shawn wasn’t responsible for diggin’...!

Reporter: Did he say anything about going to get revenge against anybody?

Man: No.

Reporter: Did he have a drug and drinking problem, that seems to be the word, if he didn’t bring it out now that he didn’t. If he did, talk to us about it, there had to be something to put him over the edge!

Man: Uh, he never...he was always in control whenever I was around.

Reporter: Did he do drugs and alcohol?

Man: Not that I know of...

40:34 Karen: Nine, ten months later, Shawn’s been digging this hole for nine months, ten months...puttin’ his little gold trips into the dirt...tellin’ everybody he’s got all this little, you know. Tellin’ everybody he’s go all this little...you know...

Question: Did anyone else know he put the gold in their himself...?

Karen: Well, people suspected it...Nope, they weren’t even on it...they didn’t care...they didn’t care. You know? They were just like...anyone who was his friend at the end there...I dunno, it was, they were all just like backed off of him, because, you know, because it was just, “get the hell out of the hole Shawn, just get the hell out of the hole.” Nobody cared. Just get the hell out of the hole Shawn, just get out of the hole. It was ridiculous... you know, it was rid...it was totally ridiculous, to where he was saying that he had gone down there, and God came to him in a dream, and he found a uh, pyramid, and inside the pyramid was a, uh, dragon, and Chuck and him were gonna fight the dragon, and Chuck here wouldn’t be strong enough to survive.

Reporter: Did he do heavy meth...?

Man: He did do, he did do uh, rum...

Reporter: Uh, did do what?

Man: RUM! Rum! Cheap rum. But not in excess, not to where he wasn’t functional. I don’t know

Reporter: How long ago did you live with him?

Man: Uh...two months, or less...

Reporter: Why did you leave?

Man: I tried to get him out of the hole...uh...I mean, you know, back on the right track...uhhm.

Reporter: You say he was off the track then?

Man: Well, I don’t know, apparently. His gas and electric was off.... I don’t want to talk anymore.

Reporter: Ok. Thank you for talking with us. Just an incredible story this morning that continues to unfold, but I think we find the answers here as we find an unstable gentleman here uh..., especially over recent weeks.

41:52 Karen: See, now we need to touch on Chuck Childers, ‘cause Chuck Childers was the last person that hung out with him for the last six months of his existence, and fed him, and kept him going in the wrong direction.

Question: Oh, in the wrong direction?

Karen: In the wrong direction?

Chuck Johnson: Maybe so, you know, I don’t know, like I said, I was incarcerated at the time.

Chuck Childers: I don't know what year it was, I'll say between '80 and '84, there was an article came out in the San Diego Union, about a machine, and a bunch of apartment owners in Bay Park, and a group in Las Vegas, they all got together and bought this machine, one of a kind.
And basically what it is, is I don't know how it works, but it's got this sphere, that has points all over it that pulse laser. You know you can, uh, digital, technical, optical, uh, optical digital technology. you know what subliminal is, right? This particular, uh, optical digital technology, is very capable of producing the same thing. It's being pulsed by a laser, but your mind, your subconscious is digital, it picks it up. They could literally be programming you subliminally.

Question: ...and you wouldn't know it?

Chuck Childers: Right. You wake up and all of a sudden your morals that used to be over here are over her, and you don't even know it. It's been a gradual thing. When I read that in the library it kind of spooked me.

43:13 Dale Fletcher: Shawn was talking about this helicopter that was chasing him. About how the government was trying to get the mineral rights to his property and to come and buy his house. Wouldn’t let him sell it. I mean he was just going on and just he really adamant about this. You know that it was a government helicopter that was chasing him and trying to shoot him. And it’s like, you know I couldn’t, I couldn’t really believe it. I mean like if that really did happen – you know I’m like goodness you know.

Question: Would you try to reason with him?

Dale Fletcher: No, not at all try to reason with him. I mean he was - this was what happened to him.

Karen: Now, he’s hit rock bottom, and now...

Question: In about nine months...?

Karen: In about nine months....there’s no gold to show. He’s in??? He’s that much behind in his payments. He doesn’t have any money for dope. He doesn’t have any food, he’s desperate. Everything is off....ummm....and he’s like....he ain’t gonna...Now he’s having to save face, now he’s having to turn around and look at everybody and say...oops. And why can’t he say “oops I got in a good one?”

44:14 Fela: I don't know why he didn't get his insurance. But, his insurance fell through, and he was planning on using that to make his uh, you know, the payoff on his mortgage or whatever. And so, his mortgage came due, and then they foreclosed on him. They foreclosed, and so, he felt helpless. And, but with being headstrong, unreasonable and helpless -- now, you tie those all up together, and you get a, you know, what was it? An M60 tank, you know. And, you know, I'm just speaking, you know, they should be glad it wasn't loaded, you know what I mean?

Question: Now, to bring this back to Shawn, a little bit, you were telling us about his hallucinations?

Chuck Childers: Now, I don't know that he had hallucinations, cause he never specifically mentioned that he saw, things or people or whatever. But, stuff that happened to him, like I say, he'd be discussing something with this person over here, and he'd go across town and they'd be talking about the same thing. Not directly to him, but the people next to him would be talking to each other about the same, identical thing, almost word for word. He thought, coincidence, but it kept happening and happening.

Chuck Childers: I was tellin’ him about this machine, and all the weird stuff, ‘cause that’s when this gal was introducing me to all these people and they were showing me some weird shit, and when I told them I wasn't going to join them, I started having weird visions, hallucinations and shit. I mean right in front of people. I'd see something and I wouldn't even... I'd look at it and just look away. And somebody'd make a big deal out of it. “What do you see, what, what?” And I'd go, “what do I see, what?” And they'd go, “you're looking over there, Chuck, are you doing too many drugs?” Trying to make me think I was cracking up, you know? They tried real hard.

Question: Did you think you were crackin’ up?

Chuck Childers: At one point, yeah. I really did. At one point I really wondered if I was ok.

Question: Is this while you were using crystal?

Chuck Childers: I was using crystal at the time, yes.

46:23 Ofc. Paxton: It looked like something out of CNN...you know with the mass destruction...and it probably did too a lot of people...you know if they were flipping channels on the TV...they probably thought they were watching something from Desert Storm...or something in another country...you don’t think it would happen in your own country....

Fela: He was in the Army, and he was trained to, you know. He was trained to drive a tank, you know. So, and there was an Armory right around the corner. So, you know... So, the government, you know, it could have been government conditioning, who knows, you know? Maybe all the Army guys are gonna' snap, you know?

Chuck Childers: We’re just supposed to be part of the machine. Kind of like what Hitler was trying to do, what Stalin tried to do. It’s communism, that’s exactly what it is. It’s, hey, 1984. George Orwell. It’s going on right now. Big brother’s watching, probably right now as we speak. And controlling, trying to. They’re doing a very good job of it. But they haven’t got total control yet. That’s why all these coalitions and militias, underground.... I mean, there’s people that are very prominent that have arms and arms and arms; in a secret bunker in their house, waiting, for the call to arms.

47:39 Ofc. Paxton: Basically, we were just waiting for that moment where he was either gonna stop or make a mistake, and uh, it so happened he was gonna try to cross the center divider and that’s when we uh... made our move.

Ofc. Paxton: Um, but I believe he was trying to lose us by crossing that center divider, and he would have made it if he would’ve taken it at a straight on angle. You gotta remember, he ain’t got no helmet, no padding, that takes a lot of punishment on the body, right there. That’s me, I just run out....

Question: You’re wearing shorts?

Ofc. Paxton: I’m wearing shorts and tennis shoes.

Scott Nelson: First time I saw it, I thought, “how cool, I wish it would’ve been me.”

Question: Really?

48:22 Scott Nelson: Up to the point. I didn’t know it was him. ‘Cause it would’ve been something I’d like to have done.

Ofc. Paxton: I couldn’t open the loader’s hatch at the time, because of the padlock. I’m yelling to the other officers down there at the time that I need my bolt cutters, I had bolt cutters in the back of the truck, and one of the other officers remembered and threw ‘em up to me.

Chuck Childers: They don’t want you to strive to be better. They want you to be happy with what you have. And that’s how it will work, if the machine, if the machine ever becomes the big machine.

Fela: They're gonna' find out, like, with all that militia stuff going on, all this domestic terrorist stuff. It's going to rise, it's gonna' rise, because they treat, they treat the citizens of this country like shit.

49:31 Ofc. Paxton: I’m gonna cut the lock off. I’m telling these guys while I’m doing this where the driver’s located. I swing the big door open...I swing it open, it locks into place, you know, we can immediately see the driver, from the bottom of the shoulder blade up...to his head, and you could see his arms, he’s working the controls ...he’s trying to steer it, and we just start yelling at him to stop, turn the tank off....

Question: Did he look back?

Ofc. Paxton: Yeah, he looked back, made eye contact with us, never said a word, and went right back puttin’ it in gear again and tryin’ to turn it, and that was when um, the decision was made to use deadly force.

50:24 Scott Nelson: Michelle called. I kept going “Well, say something..” She says, “The guy in the tank, he’s your brother.” And I went, “no way.” She goes “Look, it is. It’s Shawn.” I’m like, “No. Don’t say that.”

Scott Nelson: My boss called me...and...he said I needed to call the coroner or the police, you know, and I said “Why? Why do I want to talk to them? Shit, they just shot my brother, hell sakes, why do I want to talk to them. They showed us a couple pictures. And uh, you couldn’t really, from the pictures even identify him. But I knew...that was him. The pictures that they showed me I could not identify him, really....with the tubes and laying on the gurney as it was, that was not my brother.

51:53 Fela: At first I thought that it was right on that he did that. Because it was like, somebody finally, you know, standing up to, you know, the callousness and the dis-compassion of, of the city, right? And then uh, I felt sad, and I, because they shot him. And, then for awhile, I thought, "Well, shit," you know, a cop, he's on top of a tank, and he's tellin' the guy to turn off the motor, and the guy's not doin' anything, and the turrets are goin' around, you know. Maybe he, it was justifiable. But, the more I think about it, no, death is not justifiable, you know. It's uh, you know. They had, even though they had the power, they don't have the morality to be doing it. You know what I mean? They don't, they just don't.

Scott Nelson: He was a good guy, a great brother, good citizen, a good person to follow! If we had more people like that.... I miss him.

53:37 Mike Steppner: There has been a lot written in the last few years about neighborhoods from that fifties era that are...reaching the end of their useful life in some ways, because they have not become the higher end areas...and they don’t quite fit in the poverty level so they’re somewhere in between but they are just going slowly down hill.

Prof. Walker: You see this over and over again in America: as industries move on, communities slide...and slip away into this kind of twilight. There’s no reason to think that Clairemont would be eternal. It’s day has passed.

Chuck Johnson: He was a man looking for solitude somewhere, and he didn’t know how to get it. And a lot of us don’t, it’s a learning skill.