`I Blew It,' Says Killer Of Son's Alleged Abuser -- Imprisoned Ellie Nesler Has Had Regrets, Breast Cancer

CHOWCHILLA, Calif. - Ellie Nesler sits in prison denims, her hair short and spiky from recent cancer treatments, as she contemplates whether she did the right thing when she killed the man charged with sexually abusing her son.

"I've changed my mind; I can't undo it," Nesler says, at the maximum-security Central California Women's Facility where she is less than a year into a 10-year sentence. "It's been easier to say that I did the right thing, but really I blew it big time."

On April 2, 1993, Nesler, 40 years old, mother of two, and high on methamphetamine, walked into a courtroom in Jamestown, Calif., with a pistol. She pumped five bullets into the back of the head of Daniel Driver, who was handcuffed awaiting a hearing on charges of sexually molesting four boys. One was Nesler's only son. Despite a previous conviction for sexual molestation in 1983, Driver had never spent time in state prison.

He died instantly. Nesler told police: "Everybody knows he deserves to die. . . . He was sick."

The Nesler case attracted worldwide attention. She received thousands of letters from sympathizers and more than $40,000 toward her legal fees. Hollywood producers offered tens of thousands of dollars for her story. A jury convicted her of voluntary manslaughter. On Jan. 7, Nesler was sentenced and given 15 minutes to say goodbye to her children before being taken to prison.

"I'm not a hero," Nesler says. "What I've done is that I've ruined my family. I'm here in prison, for God's sakes. I should be at home right now, waiting for my kids to get out of school."

Until now, Nesler has always maintained that she did not regret her actions, that she had no choice.

But her eight months in the world's largest women's prison have given her time to think.

Many considered Nesler a hero, a mother protecting her child - all children. Child molesters in California serve an average sentence of less than 40 months, according to the state Department of Corrections. Many in the conservative community where Nesler grew up rallied around her. Bumper stickers appeared that read, "Nice shootin', Ellie."

But to others she was a dangerous vigilante whose actions would lead only to anarchy.

For Nesler, the shooting put an ironic twist to her life.

Her attempts to defend her son, to "give him back his life" as she calls it, have ended in their separation. She has sacrificed herself, she says, and the price is too high.

Citing her medical condition, Nesler filed a petition to be released on bail pending her appeal. Last month, the Fifth District Court of Appeal denied her request.

But the biggest irony of all, in Nesler's view, is her inflammatory breast cancer, which was diagnosed a year ago at Stanford University Hospital. Doctors recommended radiation and chemotherapy to shrink the tumor, followed by a mastectomy. They gave her a 50-50 chance of surviving five years.

Stress brought on the cancer, Nesler believes, stress she felt after relatives told her that 35-year-old Driver had repeatedly molested her son. Diana Samuelson, one of Nesler's lawyers, says Driver would come to Nesler's house under the guise of teaching Bible studies, but then would get the boy alone and abuse him.

Because of the shooting, the courts never had the chance to determine Driver's guilt or innocence.

Nesler rejected the prison medical staff's recommendation that she have a mastectomy, citing the quality of prison surgery and her lack of faith in the prison medical system. She has been overdosed, she says, with twice as much chemotherapy as prescribed. (Prison medical officials were unavailable for comment.)

Losing a breast would be a more painful irony than she could bear.

"It's my last symbol of motherhood," she says. "All the rest has been taken away, but not this."

There are plenty of other things to worry about. Her truck has recently been repossessed. Her home phone has been cut off because she can't pay her legal and household bills; she can no longer call her mother who is living in the house taking care of her 9-year-old daughter. Her son, now 12, lives with her sister in Angel's Camp.

"My children haven't adjusted too well," she says. "I'd never been away from them for more than two days, now it's been nine months. Everything I've done, I've done for my son, and now I'm not around for him. I worry about my daughter, too. My son got so much attention after I shot Driver. The Dallas Cowboys sent him toys, and my daughter didn't get any."

Nesler believes her son's life improved in some ways after she killed Driver. He no longer lives in terror - for months he wouldn't leave the house, even to go out on the back porch to fetch wood.

"I don't know the end result," she says softly. "But right now my little boy isn't scared anymore. He's a little boy again. He's out riding his bicycle. I couldn't give him back his innocence, but I did give him back his life."

She worries too about the message she gave her kids. A "mixed message," she says. But one with a logic. She did something wrong and now she's paying the price. "I don't want them to grow up believing that there are no consequences, like if I'd gone free and not served time."

But her biggest worry, she says, is that her abused son may turn into a child molester when he grows up. Psychiatrists maintain that the majority of pedophiles and molesters have been raped as children.

All this, she explains, is now her life. When she first arrived at Chowchilla, she became depressed. Prison doctors put her on Prozac but after three days she stopped taking it.

Several weeks ago she reached rock bottom and even contemplated suicide again. A survival instinct clicked into gear and she pulled out of her torpor. Nesler started praying and almost immediately, she says, her health began to improve. She now looks at Driver with less hatred.

She has begun work on a book. She became assistant activity director in the infirmary and got approval from the attorney general's office to begin her prison-based organization, Caring Hearts United For Children.

Nesler will be eligible for parole in 2000, the year her son turns 18.