Overlake Pastor's Arrest Is Defended -- Lewdness Charge Was No Mistake, Florida Police Say

Although the leader of the state's largest church was officially cleared of an 18-month-old sexual misconduct charge in Daytona Beach, the arrest has continued to trouble the congregation and raise questions in Florida.

The Rev. Bob Moorehead of Overlake Christian Church and another man were arrested after police said they saw them masturbating in a public bathroom in Daytona Beach on July 23, 1996. Last year, a letter from the chief prosecutor's office there cleared Moorehead of any wrongdoing, saying the arrest was a case of mistaken identity. The charges were dropped and the records sealed.

Yesterday, however, commenting for the first time on the case, the Daytona Beach police chief said an internal police investigation indicated the arresting officers did not make a mistake, contrary to the prosecutor's finding.

And a Daytona Beach newspaper filed legal papers yesterday seeking to unseal the records. Because the prosecutor who dropped the charges served as Moorehead's lawyer in the case before taking office, the procedures were "tainted by conflict of interest," the Daytona Beach News Journal argued.

Talk of the Daytona Beach incident has run for months through the largely Eastside congregation of Overlake Christian, which recently moved into a $36 million building in Redmond.

Moorehead, 61, met privately early last April with a group of church members who were concerned about the charges. Later that month, he gave his account of the incident to thousands of parishioners at a church service.

Moorehead said he had stopped in the public restroom along the beach to relieve himself and was there only for a minute or two before he was arrested.

"I was taken to the police station and charged with lewd and lascivious behavior in the presence of a minor. I was horrified. Absolutely horrified. Shocked. Chagrined. Ashamed. Embarrassed.

"I have had a lot of accusations against me in my ministry. This is the most insidious, the most insidious by far. It was like a knife went through my chest."

At the service, a senior church member read a letter sent from the office of state attorney John Tanner saying all charges had been dropped because an investigation showed Moorehead was misidentified.

Tanner was Moorehead's defense attorney in the case before he was elected prosecutor for a four-county area in Central Florida in November 1996. He was a well-known private attorney active in conservative Christian causes.

Yesterday, Daytona Beach Police Chief Kenneth Small said the misidentification allegation troubled him and caused him to initiate an internal investigation to determine whether his officers had arrested the wrong man.

Officers viewed videotape shot by a Seattle TV station showing Moorehead being interviewed about his arrest. The undercover officer who arrested Moorehead again identified him as the man he said he saw masturbating for about five minutes. The officer's report said a man with two small children had briefly walked into the restroom while Moorehead was there.

"I don't believe this department did anything wrong," Small said. "I believe the arrest was proper."

Moorehead did not respond to requests for an interview.

Although he is the head of Overlake Christian, Moorehead is accountable to a 14-member council of senior church officials called "elders."

The elders have confidence in Moorehead and believe he was cleared of any wrongdoing, said Jim Bennetsen, vice chairman of the elders. But if the files contained any damaging revelations, the elders would seek a further review of Moorehead.

"If there was any new information to give us cause to question the guilt or innocence of our pastor, we would certainly do an investigation," Bennetsen said. "At this point we're satisfied. We have no burning desire to get into those files."

"We're interested that this thing go away. It's disrupting the life of our pastor and the life of our church."

Overlake, with as many as 6,500 people attending weekend services, is a powerhouse among evangelical churches. From the new, 250,000-square-foot building, church members support dozens of special ministries as well as a hefty new mortgage.

Moorehead, known for spirited sermons in which he emphasizes the literal truth of the Bible, has been the primary draw for members since he took over leadership of the church in 1970 when it had 75 members.

Rumors about the Daytona Beach incident have circulated throughout the congregation since last spring, Bennetsen said. In the fall, copies of the police report detailing Moorehead's arrest were placed on windshields of cars in the church parking lot.

Tanner's office has repeatedly declined to discuss the case. Through his spokeswoman, Linda Brinker, Tanner earlier this week said he was ethically barred from talking about the case because the record has been sealed. That was also the reason police cited for declining comment, until yesterday.

Just how the letter of exoneration came to be written is a mystery. Moorehead has indicated it was unsolicited.

And defense attorney Mike Lambert, a longtime associate of Tanner's who inherited the Moorehead case after Tanner won election, said he had never seen the letter before a Seattle Times reporter showed it to him earlier this week.

"I don't know what precipitated the exoneration letter," Lambert said.

Records on file with the Volusia County property appraiser show that Moorehead and his wife, Glenita, bought a home there in August 1993. The house is about 12 blocks from the public restroom where Moorehead was arrested.

The man who was arrested at the same time and place and on the same charge as Moorehead fared differently. Phillip R. Jacowitz, who has identified Moorehead from a Seattle Times photograph as the man using a urinal next to him, pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of "lewd and lascivious behavior." He was sentenced to 12 months supervised probation, ordered to perform 120 hours of community-service work and fined $1,000.

Jacowitz, 56, of neighboring Port Orange, said Moorehead was already in the restroom when he arrived, as was another man who turned out to be an undercover police officer.

Daytona Beach lawyer Craig Stephen Boda, a criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor who represented Jacowitz, said he has received exoneration letters such as the one Moorehead received on behalf of other clients but "never without begging or working out a deal."

No hearings have been scheduled in the Daytona Beach newspaper's move to unseal records in the Moorehead case.