Evidence against lone suspect in Jenner beach killings to be revealed

A Sonoma County judge Thursday ordered the case against a Forestville man accused of killing his brother in 2017 and a Midwestern couple camping on a Jenner beach in 2004 to move forward despite a request from his attorney for more time to prepare a defense.

Judge Robert LaForge’s decision sets the stage for the first public airing of the evidence against Shaun Michael Gallon to begin next month at a preliminary hearing in Sonoma County Superior Court for three separate incidents of violence spanning 13 years in what could be tried as a death penalty case.

Gallon is charged with the August 2004 slayings of Lindsay Cutshall, 22, and her fiance, Jason Allen, 26, at Fish Head Beach on the Sonoma Coast; a separate 2004 case involving a package bomb explosion that injured a Monte Rio woman; and the March 2017 death of his younger brother, Shamus Gallon, 36, who was shot in their family’s Forestville home.

Gallon, 40, was arrested more than two years ago on suspicion of killing his younger brother - a pivotal moment that would revive the investigation into Cutshall’s and Allen’s deaths when Gallon wrote a note to investigators saying he would talk with them about the Jenner beach case. Within two months, then-Sheriff Steve Freitas identified Gallon as the lone gunman suspected of killing the couple, newly engaged Christian camp counselors from Ohio and Michigan who were found slain in their sleeping bags.

Gallon stood before LaForge Thursday for a scheduling hearing alongside other jail inmates called to court. His brown hair went past his shoulders and his beard was touched with gray.

LaForge expressed frustration at the defense’s last-minute request to delay the June preliminary hearing, a proceeding when the prosecution presents its core evidence and the judge determines if it is sufficient to hold a trial. The hearing, originally scheduled to take place last September, has been delayed repeatedly.

Chief Deputy Public Defender Jeff Mitchell had filed a motion Thursday morning stating he needed more time in a case spanning more than a decade and an investigation that generated more than 53,000 pages of investigative records and 341 hours of video evidence.

“I deny the request for a continuance. The preliminary hearing will begin June 14. We will go every day until we finish,” LaForge said.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Spencer Brady said the preliminary hearing is expected to take four days and involve at least ?20 witnesses.

Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch has not yet determined whether she will seek the death penalty. A moratorium on executions in California ordered in March by Gov. Gavin Newsom doesn’t change the law allowing prosecutors to present death as a possible punishment in eligible cases. Ravitch said she will consider the moratorium alongside other factors.

Brady, the lead prosecutor in the case, said they have already begun the lengthy process to determine whether they will pursue the death penalty by meeting with Gallon’s defense team. After the preliminary hearing, Ravitch said she will convene a committee from within her office to discuss the information brought by the defense, input from the victims’ families and the facts of the case. That decision will occur in advance of trial preparations because a death penalty case involves a different set of procedures and methods when selecting a jury. Ravitch said she will announce her decision in a letter to Gallon’s attorney.

One year ago, Public Defender Kathleen Pozzi raised strong doubts about Gallon’s involvement in the Jenner case, telling The Press Democrat she was “absolutely, unequivocally not convinced that Shaun Gallon had anything to do with the Jenner killing.”

Gallon is being represented by Pozzi’s ?second-in-command, Mitchell, one of the few defense attorneys in the county qualified to handle death penalty cases. Mitchell declined to discuss the defense he intends to mount. He said he has been engaged in two separate areas of preparation, one to defend Gallon against the prosecution’s allegations and another to argue against the death penalty.

Defending a person against capital punishment involves an extensive investigation into the person’s life, Mitchell said. That effort faced a significant setback in April when the defense’s lead investigator, Mary “Max” Hadley of Fairfield, died in a motorcycle crash in Humboldt County.

Gallon’s mental health is likely to be a focus of his defense. Gallon grew up in Forestville and was already known to local law enforcement for strange behavior when the bodies of Cutshall and Allen were discovered. Gallon, then 25, was arrested six days later on an unrelated weapons charge and stolen property possession.

Gallon was sent to prison in 2010 for a felony conviction in a bow-and-arrow attack in Guerneville that launched an intense manhunt. He was known to carry a homemade bow and arrow around town to shoot squirrels and birds. Before his 2017 arrest, Gallon’s social media posts depicted an infatuation with weapons, war and sex. He railed against the government and quoted religious texts.

Sheriff’s officials said detectives interviewed Gallon early on in the investigation into the killings of Cutshall and Allen, but he was never detained as a suspect. But in 2017, when Freitas named Gallon as the lone suspect in the Jenner killings, he said Gallon had told detectives something about the Jenner case that “no other person could have known.”