Modahl discovers joys of freedom

Filed: May 29, 1999

By FRED LUDWIG
Californian staff writer

Part of Jeffrey Modahl’s trouble sleeping lately is the thrill of freedom.

Petting a dog again. Fixing a pickup. Even the feeling of grease on his fingers is comforting.

But part of his insomnia — he doesn’t sleep more than three hours at a time — comes from a fear he will wake up to the concrete walls of a jail cell, a steel bunk above him.

Modahl doesn’t have to worry about that anymore.

Kern County prosecutors announced Friday they will not retry Modahl on charges of molesting his daughter. After 15 years behind bars, Modahl was released May 18 when his conviction was overturned.

The 1986 conviction relied on the testimony of the daughter he was accused of molesting, Carla Modahl. Dan Sparks, chief deputy district attorney, said he still believes Modahl is guilty. But prosecutors probably cannot get a guilty verdict because Carla Modahl has recanted, Sparks said.

The conviction was tossed out after a Superior Court ruling that it had been compromised by evidence not being turned over to Modahl’s attorneys before the trial.

Since then, the outside world has changed a bit. Modahl, 45, is fascinated by the "new" concept of the all-night grocery store, sometimes shopping until well past midnight.

“I don’t want the days to end," Modahl said. “I just stay awake.”

Bakersfield has changed a lot, too. His brother lives in a now-developed area where Modahl used to hunt rabbits.

Modahl’s arrest came after several other family members were implicated in a child sex ring, one of many that police were investigating.

There were eight defendants in all, Sparks said. Some served their sentences, and at least one died in prison.

The group included Richard Cox, who spent five years in prison until his conviction was overturned in 1990 due to poor legal representation.

Modahl had been the foreman of Cox’s landfill-compacting business at Cox’s home along Cottonwood Road in rural Bakersfield. Modahl moved in with Cox after his release.

“This is a comfortable place for me to relax,” Modahl said.

Still, the 10-acre property is littered with abandoned machinery and construction vehicles, visible reminders of the fallout from the legal tangles.

“It (success) was there in our grasp,” Modahl said. “Kern County took it away.”

Modahl said he and Cox had put in 12-hour days building the business during the early 1980s. Then the legal battles started.

The company collapsed, and family members sold the equipment for pennies on the dollar to pay the lawyer bills. The equipment was literally picked clean for parts, leaving the metal skeletons behind. Many still sit there.

After Carla Modahl changed her story, a new hearing was held in 1987. But a judge said he didn’t believe the recantation.

“It’s quite common for victims over a period of time to change their stories,” Sparks said. “They’re very often pressured by family.”

But when new evidence was discovered, a request for a new trial was made.

Judge John Kelly cited two pieces of evidence missing from the trial in scrapping the verdict ó a medical report showing no sign of molestation of Carla Modahl and a tape of an interview from Jeffrey Modahl’s stepdaughter, Teresa Modahl.

The interview used techniques “likely to generate false and unreliable accusations of sex abuse” and may have been used with other children, Kelly ruled.

Kelly said evidence showed prosecutors did not have those items of evidence at the time of the trial.

Now, Modahl doesn’t know what he wants to do.

He plans to file a lawsuit against the county, and he wants to travel. He has to start over with such things as getting a driver’s license.

For the time being, he’s going to work on a 1982 Chevrolet S-10 pickup ó a new vehicle when Modahl went away ó at the Cox home.

It survived the salvage sale of equipment; nobody touched it because it was inoperable.

“It will be fun to get it running again,” Modahl said.

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