Dateline NBC - Deadly Current

Episode Date: October 20, 2021

In this Dateline classic, an atheist and a born-again preacher set out on the project of their lives, but no one thought that Satan might come a long for the ride. Keith Morrison reports. Originally aired on NBC on August 20, 2010. 

The first crash could have happened to anybody. But the second accident, that one had people talking. We had a couple calls, I think, from people who had their suspicions. Same driver, a popular preacher. Same passenger, a wealthy farmer. But this time, he was dead. I knew instantly that it was murder. Murder committed by a man of God?

Why? I can't find a motive. I really can't. But maybe someone else could. They had come to realize that there was some funny stuff going on with the money. Money, mystery, and murder. Evil is not that sophisticated.

Evil is not that smart. And Doug Porter was an evil man. Two lives caught in a deadly current. He took them down to the river, the one that ran past their farms and orchards that kept the valley alive. But today, you're saying to the world that I'm not my first focus anymore, that Christ is. And there, as the cleansing waters flowed round them,

he baptized them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. This fine, simple man, this charismatic preacher, Pastor Doug. You'll hear what they say later, of course, the whispers, the arched eyebrows, the shock that came with discovery, but not yet. At first, the pastor was just who he appeared to be, Doug Porter, the toast of the Hamlet of Hickman, up at the north end of California's Central Valley. It must have been some kind of God-given talent that turned Doug into the perfect

preacher. He was a hometown boy from the beginning, star athlete on the local wrestling team, married to his high school sweetheart, and then later three kids in a swimming pool business and a vocation as the high school's widely admired wrestling coach. But then, he was 35 at the time it was the mid-80s. Something happened. And it must have been very powerful. Voice of God, a calling.

Because Doug Porter suddenly signed up at a divinity school and then reemerged two years later as pastor of Little Hickman Community Church. But one thing I am sure of is that Christ was resurrected from the grave on this day. When we first started going there, it was under 100 people. So it was just like a big family. Stacey Carlson watched those small Sunday gatherings swell. After a few years, people were driving in from towns miles away to hear Doug's unique preaching and feel his common touch. It was a country church.

You didn't have to dress up. You just, you know, he said that. Come as you are. God doesn't care what you wear. He cares what's in your heart. That's what he cares about. It was contagious, Doug's energy, his approachability, the preaching wrestling coach and everybody's friend. They came because Doug was a real guy living a real life, dealing with real problems

with a real family just like all the rest of us. A real guy. And we could leave Doug now as we could leave the rest of them, confident that God would smile on the little town, its pastor, and its remarkably successful community church. But that's where the atheist joins our story. Or should we say, makes our story. Doug brought it on himself, of course. It was his boundless enthusiasm that attracted old Frank Craig. Certainly wouldn't have been the preaching. Frank was no fan of religion and

didn't care who knew it either. Ask his own relatives. Frank was a kind of eccentric individual. He was also a very ornery, cantankerous, foul-mouthed. Foul-mouthed? Foul-mouthed, oh yeah, he's four. But Whitney was married to Frank's niece Marilyn, the pastor himself, once. But he liked old Frank and had no trouble making room for his unbelief. The two of them often stopped in to visit at the old man's little farm in Hickman. Every time they dropped by, there'd be another treasure they'd have to admire. Of course, treasure is not the word most people would use. There was never a piece of junk that was worth throwing out, in Frank's mind.

The community had an old ambulance, and they were ready to junk it. And Frank said, no, put it over to my place. He had a pile of bolts, machine bolts, metal bolts. And the pile was about 12 foot tall and about 10 foot across. And every year that pile grew, the old stuff filled up Frank's living room and his kitchen and bedroom. There were gadgets and clocks and china cabinets and antique furniture, and tractors and trucks spilled out onto the backyard and spread and grew and rusted all through the 17 acres of Frank's farm. You could barely walk through the house because there were so many things or treasures, as he called them.

Michelle Pickman had kind of adopted Frank as a sort of grandfather. There was a beautiful old spinning wheel, and I asked if that was a family piece, and he said no, that he had picked it up, and I asked if it was something that I could purchase from him. And he said no, that that was going to go in a museum someday. And that's when I first heard about the museum. So that's why he saved all the treasures. He'd been dreaming about that museum his whole life, a place where kids could learn what farm life was like back when Frank was a boy. So, if he was a tightwad, well, he had to be. Wasn't he saving up for a museum?

He had talked for years and years about a museum. And the family knew about it, but they didn't think it was something that would ever come about until after Roy's death. Roy, that would be one of Frank's brothers who died in 1998 and left everything he had to Frank. So now he had a cool two and a half million. Plus whatever amount of money he had in coffee cans around the house. How rich was he? Bud Whitney says Frank boasted once he was worth five million. Enough surely to make good on that dream to build his museum.

But of course, things are never really quite that easy, are they? Certainly Frank had lots of money now, and he had plenty of old stuff lying all over the place. But he was 80 years old. He didn't have the faintest idea how to develop a museum, one that people might actually want to come and see. Friends told him he'd have to hire a big city attorney or he should set up a non-profit corporation. And Frank did not want to spend his money on that sort of thing.

Instead, he sucked up his profanity-laced disbelief and went to call on that well-known optimist, the local pastor. And that's how Doug Porter got mixed up with the one man whose soul he couldn't save. Didn't have a clue how to plan or build a museum either, which is why he called Stacy Carlson, who was a real estate whiz. He goes, you know, Stacy, I would have to have you to help me do this because I don't have the real estate knowledge or the development knowledge and these types of things. So Stacy set up a meeting at which Frank told her all about his dream of an idea. He had envisioned a place where families could come, where the schools could bring young children

on a field trip. Basically, he says, I don't want kids to think that milk comes from a milk carton. But why would a church get involved in a farm museum? Good question. Stacey asked it, in the form of a possible solution, that is. Now, are you going to have a problem if we set up, say, a dining room in an area that would have been how a family would have been in the late 1800s with a Bible on the table. He said, no, I don't have a problem with that.

And that's when I knew, okay, we've got something. Not just about agriculture, but about religion. A Christian heritage. Seemed like a win-win, as they say. The church could get more space to grow. Frank would get his museum. And that's how a dyed-in-the-wool atheist and a born-again salvation preacher set out on the project of their lives. And no one thought, not for a minute,

that Satan, say, might come along for the ride. And what a bumpy ride it would be, starting with that car crash. Doug was fine. Frank wasn't. After that accident, that's what really bonded Doug to Frank Craig. And the odd thing about that was, some people believed the crash was no accident. When Deadly Current continues. Although before I take you down in the water, you're going to make a confession of faith in Jesus Christ.

Around Hickman, California, everybody knew their preacher, Doug Porter, could talk the birds out of the trees. And pretty soon he got the Hickman Community California, everybody knew their preacher, Doug Porter, could talk the birds out of the trees. And pretty soon he got the Hickman Community Church Board to sign off on Frank Craig's museum idea. Farm and Christian heritage all there in one building? Why not? So Stacy Carlson found the perfect spot for it, a 14-acre empty lot out behind the old church building. And now they just had to build it.

For design inspiration, Frank and Doug took field trips to other museums across the country. The two of them even traveled to Europe together, a six-week research excursion. Frank had the money for it, of course, thanks to that big inheritance from his brother. He was also, apparently, having the time of his life. And his partnership with Pastor Doug not only survived Frank's salty language and his unshakable atheism, it strengthened, it evolved, it bloomed. I think that Doug became the son that he never had. They did a lot of things together.

And it actually became way more involved for Doug than he originally thought. How did he feel about him personally? Was he fond of him? You know, he was fond of him. Even though he says, you know, he's cantankerous and he can be gruff, but he says, you know, he's got a wonderful history. And when you get him where you're just one-on-one with him and he's got great stories, he's intelligent, I enjoy his company. Back home, Doug and Stacey hired a local architect,

shelled out $10,000 or so of Frank's money for a proposed design. It was just what the old guy wanted, a 30,000-square-foot adobe brick building with a copper roof. It was also what Doug wanted, which was a church community center with plans for a baseball field, an amphitheater, a multi-purpose building. And the county seemed to like it, too. The project was approved in January 2001. Ah, but you know what they say about best laid plans.

As they prepared to enter the construction phase, a little hiccup. Before the county would issue a building permit, certain conditions would have to be met. One of the conditions was that we had to put in a paved parking lot. And they wanted a big parking lot, didn't they? Yes. Well, they wanted one parking place for every one and a half people that the capacity of the building. So when you calculated that out, a 30,000 square foot building in the capacity, the parking lot would have been more than the building. Now that was a problem. And try as they might, they couldn't come up with a solution. Maybe it was all just too grand. They'd have to

scale it down. And well, you know how these things can go. Little problems got big, expenses ballooned, as expenses will do, and everything seemed to take so long. In fact, a full year after the parking lot snafu, there wasn't a single brick on the weedy patch of land out behind the church. Too bad, because now fate, or an act of God, if you will, was about to intervene in a most unpleasant way on the partnership of the pastor and the atheist. It was the 5th of March, 2002. Doug and Frank had set out on yet another research mission, a visit to a tiny museum about 20 miles away. Doug drove, of course, he always did. And maybe it was the weather or the narrow,

winding road. But just outside of Hickman, Doug told responding officers an oncoming car crossed into his lane. He swerved to avoid it, left the road, crashed into a tree. Frank wasn't wearing his seatbelt. He survived. But only just. His right arm and shoulder were mangled. Bones were broken in just about every part of his body. Doug, who was wearing his seatbelt, was bruised up, but okay. Apart from his concern for Frank, that is. He hovered around his old friend at the hospital, brought him things, prayed for him, whether he wanted it or not,

and promised Frank that he himself would ensure the farm was cared for in Frank's absence. Everything was being taken care of. All the trees in his orchard were being taken care of, and the irrigation in the fields were being taken care of. Frank was laid up for months. You don't heal so fast when you're past 80. And even when they finally allowed him to go home, he just wasn't the same old independent cuss anymore. In fact, he was so crippled up he needed help just to get from one room to another in his treasure-cluttered house. After that accident, that's what really bonded Doug to Frank Craig. He wanted to make sure that that man was being taken care of. And

we had women at the church that would take, you know, food to him. We had kids that would go over and, you know, run the errands and do things for him. Doug hired a physical therapist to go right out to the farm to work with Frank. And Michelle, who, after all, thought herself as something like Frank's granddaughter, cooked for him and bathed him, did his laundry. And it took a while. More months went by. But bit by bit, he improved. He said, you know, he said, I can walk.

It was April 2004 when he showed off for his relatives, the Whitney's. I said, Frank, you've been in a wheelchair for, you know, almost two years now. And he said, well, watch me. And so he got up and he took his walker and set it aside and walked across the room. God's will? Frank and Pastor Doug would not see eye to eye on that question. And as he got better, the old man pressed the preacher for updates.

What had Doug been doing about the museum, he demanded to know. And two years after the accident, he demanded to know. And two years after the accident, three years after the building permit fiasco, and four and a half after Frank first approached Doug, no sign of progress. Still, the friendship, pastor and atheist, survived, and the partnership renewed. They embarked again on their dream. Were divine intervention awaited? No, no, this would be the other guy. Coming up. We had a couple calls, I think, from people who, you know, had their suspicions. They just didn't like what had happened. What did happen? I knew instantly that it was murder.

When Dateline continues. The old atheist of Hickman, California could feel, well, it must be for him oblivion closing in. Frank Craig was 85 years old now, didn't have many years left. He'd managed to recover somehow from the injuries he sustained in that accident in Pastor Doug's pickup truck. But he wasn't any closer to realizing his life's big dream, the agricultural museum. That's basically what Frank was living for, is for this museum. As he got stronger, Frank tried, without apparent success, to get progress reports from his partner, the pastor. But instead of hard answers...

Doug would turn on his charm, and Frank would just kind of melt away. Even Michelle, the woman who treated Frank like a grandfather, got frustrated by the non-answers her patient was getting from Pastor Doug. Still, when she threatened to complain about it... Anything that I felt that was negative with what Doug was doing or not doing, he did not want me to confront Doug on anything because he was afraid he would pull out from the program or the project. Doug Porter's a really charismatic individual, and Doug Porter was going to do for Frank what Frank couldn't do for himself.

He was going to help him build his museum. And Frank just became glary-eyed over him. Trusted him. Trusted him. Like father and son, almost, with so much work to do, which, now that Frank was feeling a little better, they could get going on, researching, checking out other nearby museums. Doug would pick Frank up at the farm, and the two of them would drive off, chatting away, apparently, talking about

the project, just like always. But now, Doug was driving Frank's pickup truck. In fact, he drove it all the time now, since the old man couldn't drive anymore. Frank had learned his lesson after that first accident. He wore his seat belt, because a man can never know what might be coming to meet him. And indeed, something was. It was April 22, 2004, about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Exactly what happened would become before very long the subject of dispute. But the simple and unquestioned fact was that Frank's pickup truck, dug at the wheel, plunged into the cold, fast-moving waters of an irrigation canal.

It wasn't a baptism this time. The pastor got out all right. He wasn't hurt at all. But Frank was stuck in his seatbelt. And that water filled up the cab of the truck and eventually, of course, Frank's lungs. By the time they pulled him out of the canal, he passed on to,

well, wherever it is atheists go. And Doug sure felt awful about what happened to Frank, judging by the letter he wrote to Frank's family. The accident and the loss of Frank has been horrific for me, and I know it has been for you as well. I truly wish that I would have been able to save Frank, but that was not to be.

On the very day of the crash, as Frank's body was still cooling on a slab somewhere, a few of his friends went out and poked around at the spot where the truck went in the water. They didn't like what they saw. Was this really an accident? They shared their sentiments with the sheriff's officers who came to investigate, and detectives, just as a matter of routine, of course, asked the pastor for an interview. We just want to make sure everything's on the up and up. What happened, they asked, when that truck went into the canal? I told Frank, stay there. I'm coming around to get you.

I'm going to get my seatbelt and go about my own way. Doug told the detectives he made his way to the passenger door, but couldn't open it. The water was too strong. The truck cab was filling up fast. He was holding his head up. He looked scared. Doug said he went back to the driver's side window but had to surface for air twice before he finally pulled Frank out of the truck. I got him out and I started paddling. I thought, I'm tired. And I switched arms. I put him in my right arm and started paddling my left. But by the time he got Frank to dry land and ran to call for help

and then performed CPR, it was too late. Hickman's a small town, remember. Everybody knows everybody. People talk. Doug's supporters, and that included most of the members of his flock, refused to even consider the hateful idea that their pastor would intentionally cause the death of that old farmer. Though frankly, a few of them knew, they said, that Doug wasn't much of a driver. Besides, said the real estate lady, Stacy Carlson.

My son's been in three car accidents with one of my good friends. Two of them could have been deadly. But did I ever think that my friend was trying to harm my son? No. So somewhere in the middle of Little Hickman, a wedge came down. Suspicious minds on one side, true believers on the other. And before long, the gossip leaked out and skipped across the valley to nearby Modesto, and specifically to Jeff Jardine, then a columnist of the Modesto Bee. We had a couple calls, I think, from people who were, you know, had their suspicions about what was going on out there.

They knew Frank. They knew Porter. They just didn't like what had happened. Jeff wrote a column, then some more. Though none of what appeared in the paper came as any surprise to Frank's relatives. No. When they heard about the accident, the truck, the canal, the drowning, they had one word for what happened that day. I knew instantly that it was murder.

And why was he so sure? Because of something Frank revealed after that first accident. Frank calls Marilyn over to the bed and says, I want to tell you something, but you have to promise not to tell anybody in the world about this. When Deadly Current continues. What a terrible story Pastor Doug Porter had to tell the day the pickup truck went into the canal. How he'd escaped drowning himself by squeezing out the driver's side window. How he'd risked his life trying to save poor doomed Frank caught in his seatbelt in the cold and muddy current. What a story.

And, thought Bud Whitney, what a lie. I knew instantly that it was murder. Whitney's mind raced back to that first accident, when he and his wife, rushed to Frank's bedside in the intensive care ward. He was very close to dying. And so Frank calls Marilyn over to the bed and says, Marilyn, I want to tell you something, but you have to promise not to tell anybody in the world about this. And Frank says, it wasn't an accident. He tried to hurt me. Tried to hurt him? The Whitney's wanted to go to the police back then, they said. But Frank was a determined man and suspicious as he may have been. He'd had none of that.

But I don't want you to tell anything because Doug Porter's a man. He's going to get this museum done. Whoa. We didn't go to the authorities. Because we knew if we went to the authorities and said to the authorities, this was an attempted murder, Frank would have said, I never said that. And he would also have never talked to us. What a terrible spot to be in.

It was an awful spot to be in. Very, very awful. So now to their grief and suspicion, they added guilt for not having said something before it was too late, and then before very long they were angry too. Why? Because as Frank's family focused on the dismal business of a funeral, wondering carefully how to reflect Frank's atheism,

they were astounded by a phone call from Doug Porter himself. Doug Porter decided that he was going to do Frank's funeral. Wait a minute, you suspected he killed Frank? Exactly. And now he's going to conduct Frank's funeral? Yes. He was going to do Frank's funeral. Pastor Doug, recall, was a man of considerable persuasive powers.

The Whitney's, even though Bud had been a preacher himself for many years, could not stand in his way. But when they listened to Doug deliver a religious eulogy, well, they were furious. Doug Porter in the funeral service tells, in the last month or so before Frank's death, Frank and I have been talking about this, and Frank privately has told me that he accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. And so we went on to about how salvation, you know, now Frank is going to heaven. Did you believe that? No. Even in death, it seemed to the Whitney's, Doug was determined to control Frank's affairs. Columnist Jeff Jardine attended that funeral, too.

But while the Whitney's were furious, Jardine was simply puzzled. It just didn't seem like a very impassioned speech, I can tell you that. Like you would expect from someone who'd been in a car with the guy who died. It just didn't ring with emotion from what I could see. These views were not confined only to Frank's family and one curious news columnist. Why? To cut to the chase, it was one word, money. Pastor Doug's eulogy aside, everybody knew Frank did not like religion. He avoided church like the plague, but he did like the pastor. Trusted him so completely at one point, in in fact that he gave him power of

attorney over his affairs not just the museum project but all his affairs his health care his finances Frank even made the Hickman Community Church the beneficiary of his will Doug the pastor was the one who was driving the vehicle in the first incident and then come to find out that he was also power of attorney over everything, it sort of raised some red flags that, hey, wait a minute, this is the guy that caused the accident. So that's why those sheriff's deputies seemed so interested in the accident. It was about the money.

So I have to ask you directly, did you in any way cause the death of Frank Craig? No, I didn't. Okay. You know, I didn't know what they think. Frank was pretty special to me. I'd just been around him for so long. I changed more diapers. I fed him more. I took him

not only all over the country, but all over the world. Convincing? Well, he did have a point. Frank and Pastor Doug were very close once, like father and son. Still, as months passed,

those investigators continued to quietly go about their work. There were bank accounts to look into, property records, assets. They followed the money. And Doug wasn't seen quite so much around town. He'd started up a new ministry in Mexico. It was a year and a half after the accident in the canal, November 2005, when church elders placed an ad in the Modesto Bee. Doug Porter has resigned, said the ad,

to protect the church from further negative focus. They asked the community for prayers. Oh, they would need them. Coming up, investigators discover something funny about Frank Craig's money. It all landed in Doug Porter's account or the accounts of his children. When Dateline continues. Columnist Jeff Jardine

was hooked. The small town mystery out in Little Hickman just got more and more interesting. But when the community church board announced that Pastor Doug was leaving to protect the church from negative focus, the real reason seemed clear enough to Jardine. They had come to realize that there was some funny stuff going on with the money. He was a problem. Right. He'd become a liability. But now, a somewhat distant liability. Pastor Doug began spending

quite a bit of time away from Hickman, in fact, outside the country altogether. He set up a ministry in Mexico. And the law? Well, the law wasn't about to let it go, even if around town the negative focus faded a little over succeeding months. Then-Deputy District Attorney John R. Main was very interested indeed. What, if anything, had the pastor done to the old atheist? The thing that really intrigued me about it was that you had two separate collisions. And there were, at least at that point, rumors or thoughts that there was some fairly severe financial malfeasance here. So I wanted to find out what happened in both of these collisions. I wanted to find out what happened to the money. In fact, wondered the DA, had Frank found out before the second crash there at the Cad that Doug was cheating him that he threatened to expose

the pastor? Well, that would ruin his ministry. Could even send him to jail. So, as Doug Porter was driving along beside the canal, Frank as his passenger, was he a man loaded with a motive for murder? So, D.A. Main sent investigator Mike Hermosa down to the scene of the accident, the canal near Hickman, told him to snoop around. Why? To check out Pastor Doug's description of the crash. You can see, coming around this turn, he said he hit the rocks over there, started fishtailing, went out of control, went into the canal. And to compare it with what he saw and the official accident report.

The highway patrol photographs showed the tire prints. He was going along and then did a gradual turn into the canal. If he started fishtailing, you would have seen signs of that. The more Hermosa thought about it, the more troubling it was. For example, those rocks Doug said he ran into, why didn't anyone else see them? The ditch tender for this canal had been by just a short time before and didn't see these rocks. Had the pastor put them there himself to stage the accident? Then there was Doug's claim he'd been driving here with his window open. Didn't make any sense.

You don't drive on a canal bank with your window rolled down because the dust from the loose soil just envelops into your car. So why might he have left that window down? I think that was for two reasons. He knew the water would come into the truck, sink it faster, and also it was an escape route. Escape for him, death for Frank.

But that was merely, what, an investigator's guess, reasonable speculation, not exactly hard evidence. But D.A. Main had suspicions of his own to look into. We investigated over, I think, a dozen bank accounts that were involved in this case. There were personal accounts. There was something called C&P Investments. There was Eastside Youth Fund. Bank accounts that seemed to multiply like the loaves and fishes. Why so many? What was going on? One day I came down here on a Saturday, and I

just, on the floor, I put all these different, he had like eight different accounts, and I started just moving money, seeing what the flow of the money was, and I just saw it was from account to account to account to account, but it all landed in Doug Porter's account or the accounts of his children. But of course, Frank had given Pastor Doug power of attorney, thus the right to set up the accounts and his children. But of course, Frank had given Pastor Doug power of attorney, thus the right to set up the accounts and receive the monthly checks from Frank's retirement accounts. Still, what was he doing with that money?

And what he would always do, he would deposit it less cash. So here he makes a deposit of a check and he takes out $1,000 cash. This was on June 2nd. June 4th, he deposits a check, takes out $200 cash. June 6th, he deposits a check and takes $1,000 cash. June 24th, makes a deposit, takes $3,000 cash. In just four months at Hermosa, Doug took more than $13,000 in cash from Frank's retirement fund. Was that for Frank's care? Or was it for himself? But more important, was any of it a motive for murder by a beloved pastor?

I can't find a motive. I really can't. As the investigation continued, it looked to many people around Hickman like a pretty thin case. Innuendo, really. Unsupported accusations. After all, said Doug's friend Stacey Carlson, hadn't he tried desperately to save Frank's life in the canal

that day? Even tried CPR to revive him. Hardly the behavior of a murderer. If somebody's going to murder somebody, you're not going to put your own life on the line, are you? And that's why I couldn't understand. That's why I told the DA that. I said, I don't understand. I mean, I don't understand where you guys are going with this case. The same thing with the first accident, you know, a little bit further one way or the other. Doug could have been killed in that accident. And as for the money, a big chunk of it vaporized, all right, said Stacey. But it didn't go into Doug's pocket. Frank lost that money in the stock market, she said. And the rest was sucked up by initial expenses for the museum project. And most important, Frank Craig himself, she said,

approved every action Pastor Doug took, every penny he spent. And you and his family and others around him are convinced that this is what? An accident. So, imagine the surprise. It was November 2006. Doug Porter was returning to Hickman from his new church in Mexico. He reached a border checkpoint near San Diego, California, and was met by a welcoming committee with a warrant for his arrest. The charge? First-degree murder. Coming up, was Doug Porter a murderer? He took the man's money, he took the man's health, he took the man's life. Or was he a man of God, wrongly accused?

I know that Doug Porter loves the Lord. When Deadly Current Continues. Around Hickman, California, were more than a few who believed that this time D.A. John R. Main had bitten off more than he could chew. Main had charged their popular former pastor with first-degree murder, claimed Doug Porter took Frank's money, and then staged an accident to kill the old atheist. But surely not that Doug Porter Hickman knew so well.

After all, Doug had been a star athlete, a popular coach, a loved pastor. He'd simply tried to help an old man realize a lifelong dream to build a museum. And now here he was, hauled into court like a con man and a murderer. Nearly a hundred witnesses walked through the doors of the Modesto Courthouse to testify, but none of them told a more illuminating tale than this silent witness. The money. Remember all those bank accounts Pastor Doug set up once Frank gave him power of attorney? For the jury and for us, the prosecutors spelled it out. These were really phony baloney accounts. They were accounts that were just designed to hide

what was going on. Couldn't there have been some other explanation than designed to hide? As it turned out, no. There could have been, but not when you look at what happened with the money. And that's why the DA gave a forensic accountant center stage at the trial of Pastor Doug. We were able to show that $820,000 of Mr. Craig's money went directly to benefit Mr. Porter. Benefits? They included property improvements to Doug's new home in La Grange, a 15-acre spread with a private pond and four houses. There was a $30,000 paved roadway, an $8,500 electronic entry gate, $21,000 to move one of those houses onto the property, even $2,000 to stock the pond with fish. Then there was another $300,000 that had gone to organizations and interests that the pastor was involved in. But even that wasn't all, because once Frank was dead,

Doug Porter, against Frank's most fervent wish, sold his farm to a local nursery. Got $400,000 for it. The money and all those treasures just kind of disappeared. The total transfer of wealth from Frank Craig to Doug Porter? $1.1 million. Frank's fate was sealed when he threatened to expose the pastor's scam, or so said the DA to the jury. And how could jurors know that happened? The DA called a witness named Paul Harvey, a local phone technician and friend to both men.

This, said Harvey, was his conversation with Frank not long after the old man learned the truth. I said, what's the matter, Frank? And he said, well, Doug Porter's taking my money. Paul said he encouraged Frank to call the police. He said, no, Doug's still my friend and I don't want him to go to jail. He says, I got myself into this mess and I'll get myself out of it. Still, just before the second accident, said Paul Harvey, Frank made a vow, still echoes in his memory. He said he was going to confront Porter, and he said that it was called a revocable trust, and he was going to revoke it.

Then Paul suddenly remembered the first car crash. I said, well, Frank, whatever you do, don't get in the car with him. And he laughed and he said, okay. He says, okay, I won't get in the car with him. And he says, and if anything happens to me, he says, then you, Mr. Harvey, will have to see to justice. That was the conversation Paul says he just can't forget. It was powerful stuff, but entirely circumstantial. The remembered snatches of conversation, the opinions of experts, the implications of financial numbers, but actual hard evidence of that, there was nothing. And then Pastor Doug himself took the stand,

and if anybody could persuade a jury of his innocence, surely it would be he. Sadly, there were no cameras in the courtroom, but we can tell you the pastor put it as clear as day. Any money he spent, be it on the museum or on himself, was approved by Frank. And those two accidents were just that, accidents. So, good idea to testify? Maybe not. The first question I asked him was, how much money did you convert to your own use? And his answer was, none.

And that was an answer that was inconsistent with his own accountant's fairly ridiculous testimony. We started off with he had $0 going to his benefit, and then the numbers would change, $10,000, $55,000. Where the money went would change. He would say, he said, I asked him, where did the money go? And he said, a plethora of possibilities. Two and a half days, the DA and the pastor. Not pretty. He'd been telling lies to

a lot of people for a long time, and people had believed them. People believed them because he was a pastor. People believed them because he was politically powerful in his area. The jury, made up of the good regular folk of Stanislaus County, was given four charges to contemplate, from theft from an elder by a caretaker to first-degree murder. The jurors were back in less than a day, guilty on all counts. The sentence, life without parole.

Evil is not that sophisticated. Evil is not that smart. And Doug Porter was an evil man. He took the man's money, he took the man's health, he took the man's life. I know that Doug Porter loves the Lord. Around Hickman, Doug Porter had his supporters, though Stacey Carlson was one of the few who would talk to us back then about the town's opinion divide.

Pastor Doug, a murderer? Not a chance, she said. He's too real in that area of his life to wear a mask. I just, I could never believe it and have it. And I've had fights with some of my good friends about it. They're, oh, you're just lying. I was going to say, this is not exactly welded the community together. No, it hasn't. In fact, it's divided us painfully.

We have, the way I see it, we have three camps. We have the Doug Porter camp, and then we have the Craig side camp, and then we have the camp that wants to really just act like it never happened. Sad what it's done to Hickman, said columnist Jardine. I wrote about a mother and her daughter who no longer speak. The daughter stayed in the church. The mother had left it. It's the kind of thing that makes people lose faith.

You know what it did? It made me lose faith in people. Not in God. In people. Frank Craig, the old atheist, put his faith in a man who claimed to work for God. He's discovered now what, if anything, comes in the great beyond. And Pastor Doug maintained his innocence and, last we heard now, preaches in prison.

And if he's right about eternal judgments, well, maybe he'll meet old Frank again one day.