Her story has entered the lore of this Gold Rush town. More than a decade ago, Ellie Nesler took the law into her hands, stepping into a courtroom to gun down the man facing trial for allegedly molesting her 11-year-old boy.
Now the son finds himself accused of murder and is on the run.
William Nesler grew into a powerful young man, his formative years clouded by the nationwide notoriety of his mother’s case, his life rattled by run-ins with the law.
His troubles worsened last week. Law enforcement officers say Nesler, now 23, inflicted a ferocious beating on David Davis, who lived on the family’s junk-strewn acre north of Sonora.
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The attack came July 25, just an hour after Nesler was released from jail. He had been serving time for assaulting Davis a month earlier. Davis, 45, died last week of head injuries.
William Nesler disappeared after the assault, and the Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Department has launched a manhunt through the Sierra Nevada foothills.
Nesler’s relatives, who received phone calls from the fugitive after the attack, have pleaded with him to surrender.
William Nesler allegedly was molested as a boy at a Christian summer camp. The suspect, Daniel Driver, was at 35 already a twice-convicted child molester.
On April 2, 1993, as Driver faced trial on charges of molesting William Nesler and a half-dozen other children, Ellie Nesler walked into the courtroom in nearby Jamestown and fired five bullets into his head.
She later told police, “Maybe I’m not God, but I’ll tell you what: I’m the closest damn thing to it for all the other little boys.”
Ellie Nesler was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to 10 years in prison. A made-for-TV movie was made about the case, and her family received more than $250,000 from its producers.
After three years behind bars, she won an appeal based on juror misconduct and was released. But it did not end her problems with the criminal justice system. In July 2002, she was convicted of buying 10,000 pseudoephedrine tablets, which can be used to make methamphetamine, and was sent to prison for six years.
By most accounts, William Nesler, raised by an aunt, grew up as a quiet, troubled youth.
He repeatedly landed in juvenile hall and teenage work camps as a youth and in jail as an adult. In the past five years, deputies have booked him into County Jail 18 times on robbery and drug charges and for complaints about a pet Rottweiler.
“He was always really quiet,” recalled Nick Njirich, who attended elementary school with William Nesler. “He always seemed to be in his own little world.”
When his mother was initially released from prison, he returned to live with her and his grandmother in a home on the 1-acre property the family owned on Shaws Flat Road.
In recent years, William Nesler was the only family member living there.
Anita Gilles, who lives with her boyfriend and three children across the road from the Nesler place, said William would occasionally come over to trade a videotaped movie or ask to borrow the phone. One time he showed up with a new bike for her 11-year-old son.
“He was nice to my kids and nice to me,” Gilles said. But Gilles said she took pains never to mention his mother’s case.
“I figured everyone else probably invaded that space,” she said. “This is all just so bad.”