A Bitter Mom With A Gun Gets Her Deadly Revenge -- Town Rallies After Accused Molester Is Shot

JAMESTOWN, Calif. - Long before she gunned down her son's accused molester in court and became at once a heroine of this gold rush country and an emblem for crime victims, Ellie Nesler learned some harsh lessons of life here from her mother and grandmother.

Rely on yourself, she was told, because a woman in the Mother Lode must often go it alone. Trust in the Lord but pack a pistol just in case. And don't seek trouble - but if trouble finds you, strike first.

"We're like rattlesnakes," Nesler's 65-year-old mother, Marie Starr, said last week. "You don't know we're there until someone steps on us."

Daniel Mark Driver, 35, violated the family creed when he allegedly sodomized Nesler's 7-year-old son at a local church camp back in 1988. He had insinuated himself into their lives in the cruelest way, toting a Bible and reciting whole verses word for word. There were few transgressions worse in the eyes of Nesler, whose God-fearing mining family goes back three generations in these stinting hills.

Still, family and friends say the 40-year-old single mother would have never walked into the Old West-style courtroom April 2 and pumped five bullets into Driver's head had she not been pushed over the edge by several events that morning.

"Ellie couldn't take it anymore," said Ardala Inks, a cousin who accompanied Nesler and her son, now 11, to court that day. They were scheduled to testify against Driver, who had been charged with seven

counts of child molestation involving the Nesler boy and three other boys, ages 6 to 8.

"After four years trying to find this guy, after four years of watching (her son) become a Jekyl and Hyde, she had reached the end," Inks said. "Then this guy walks into the courtroom with this big smirk on his face."

In the week since the killing, journalists, talk show and TV movie people have swooped down on this tiny gold rush town that served as backdrop for the film "High Noon." They have come to document what one local calls the "phenomena of Ellie Nesler," a miner's daughter who blew away her son's alleged tormentor.

In the upshot, she has found herself a local darling and a beacon for people everywhere besieged by crime and frustrated at a porous legal system.

Two area banks have set up Ellie Nesler defense funds. Shops and honky-tonks are collecting cash in big glass jars. T-shirts and bumper stickers proclaim: "Nice shooting, Ellie." Calls of support have poured in from around the world.

"The press says this was vigilante justice. The kind of thing we do here in `frontier town,' " bristled Monika Gilmore, a patron at The Office bar. "Sure, we've got our share of rednecks but this is about a mother protecting her cubs. You mess with my young, honey, and you're dead meat, too."

Nesler thanked her supporters last Tuesday after a bail bondsman posted her $500,000 bail. Otherwise she has kept mum and stayed out of sight while awaiting her preliminary hearing on first-degree murder charges.

But over the past week, in interviews with family and friends, a picture has begun to emerge of Nesler's difficult past and the events leading up to the shooting.

That Friday morning, Nesler's son recalled, he awakened sick to his stomach in anticipation of facing the man who haunted his nights for four years. The boy said Driver had threatened to kill his family if he told investigators about the "nasty things Danny did to me." As he sat outside the courtroom that day waiting to testify, the boy said he couldn't stop vomiting. Then Driver was led into the courtroom wearing an orange jailhouse outfit, handcuffs and a belly chain. He caught sight of the boy throwing up into a plastic garbage bag and flashed a big smirk.

"My aunt was standing in front of me so I wouldn't see him," the boy said. "My face was in the plastic bag and I looked up and he was staring at me with this funny grin on his face."

The boy said his mother became so enraged at the idea that Driver was mocking them that she lunged at Driver before family members stopped her.

"Ellie's eyes were crackling and her face was flushed," said Inks, Nesler's cousin. "(Her son) was puking his guts out, right down to the bile, and this guy has the gall to walk by with this big smart-ass grin."

Inks does not know whether Nesler was packing the .25-caliber handgun at that point. She was pacing the hallway and trying to comfort her son when one of the other mothers walked out of the courtroom shaking her head.

"She came out and said it was going badly in there," Inks recalled. "She said she thought Driver was going to walk. The kids were giving weak testimony. `He got to the kids again,' she said."

The court took a short break and a sheriff's deputy led Nesler into the room. Sitting on the near side of the table, his back to Nesler, was Danny Driver. Without saying a word, she pulled out her semiautomatic and emptied the clip, missing her mark only once.

Because local prosecutors witnessed the crime, the state attorney's general office has taken over the case.

In 1989, Driver was arrested in Palo Alto, Calif., for theft, pleaded guilty, and was returned to Tuolumne County to face the molestation charges. It was not the first time he had been accused of lewd acts with young boys. Five years earlier, he pleaded guilty to multiple counts of sex with boys in the San Jose area.

He was given probation then after Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Robert Foley was bombarded by letters from Driver's church attesting to his fine character.