Stolen Boy’s Weblog

We sit down and we go through life and we make observations. Based on what we see or hear or the way it makes us feel, we have been conditioned to make judgments upon others, to label people and things in our minds’ eye. Our egos need this to classify what we perceive, to shelve it in the drawers of our brains, and to be able to separate us from everything that surrounds us. This is what egos are good for; they like to separate. We are all guilty of this, because this is what we’ve been conditioned to do. We love or hate, agree with or disagree with, appreciate or don’t appreciate something and this is what colors our view of this thing or that person forever in our minds, until we change it.

This is exactly what the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s office has done with the Jesse James Hollywood case from its inception. They’ve labeled Jesse as a drug kingpin, a kidnapper, a street hood, a cold-blooded killer. And now, he’s being called a coward by people with an agenda, by public servants who don’t really know who this kid was or is, who have a staked interest in where he goes. And, I must tell you right here and now, there is much more to Jesse James Hollywood and his story than can be put in a six-letter word.

BEING AFRAID IS NOT THE SAME AS BEING A COWARD

One of the biggest pulls I felt in needing to write Stolen Boy, was the fact that I believed the labels that had been placed on Hollywood and his five co-defendants during five years of media oriented mass demonization (while Hollywood had been on the run) had been inaccurate. My feelings were based on all the incredible materials I had received from Santa Barbara County Senior Deputy District Attorney Ron Zonen (while I worked on the movie Alpha Dog) and all the interviews I had conducted in following up with Stolen Boy. After finally going through the volumes of materials I had accrued, including those from law enforcement officials, I understood immediately that this case was not what law enforcement had portended it to be.

Unfortunately, this realization had not really formulated in my mind while working with my childhood best friend Nick Cassavetes on Alpha Dog. It probably didn’t really begin to gel until the amazing afternoon sessions I’d spent with Nick Markowitz’s brother, Ben. This is when I really began to understand why all this took place. Why six families’ lives had to be destroyed. Why Jesse James Hollywood was facing death squarely in the face. And this was what drove me to write Stolen Boy. I hoped to better clarify the record, to make available to the public eye more truth in who these kids were and what motivated them to do what they did.

Whatever Jesse is ultimately found to have done, I believe the jurors will realize that these crimes were not committed through cowardice. These guys all acted through the negative primordial emotion of fear. Fear for self. Fear for life. Fear for family. And, maybe most importantly, the fear of discovering the truth of who these kids really were.