'Lords' Story Hit Close to Home for 'Californian'

By: Mark Fitzgerald Three months after The Bakersfield Californian published his mammoth expose, "The Lords of Bakersfield," Robert Price still hasn't been able to get back to his old column in the "Metro" section. He's getting too many new investigative tips to check out, almost all of them unrelated to the lurid tale of double lives, murder, pedophilia, and corruption he detailed in his report.

"Suddenly, the phones are ringing, and people are offering story suggestions, tips, and concerns -- and I get from a lot of people that they would never have considered coming to the Californian with these things before if it hadn't been for this project," Price says. "It made people look at us in a different light."

The huge project, published Jan. 19, gave residents a different perspective on almost everything about their city of 277,393. Price and Lois Henry, the Californian's assistant managing editor/days, presented evidence that the Lords were no urban legend: There really was a ring of closeted gay men with powerful positions in Bakersfield who enjoyed virtual immunity from the law while engaging in sex with teenage boys and young male prostitutes. But the story also noted the ring had no immunity from violence: "Occasionally, however, the preyed-upon lashed out, leading to a string of murders involving young gay men and their prominent, older male suitors."

Right from the start of the project, Price, a 15-year veteran of the paper, knew he could not write about the Lords without writing about the Californian. "It was going to hit home," he says. "Anybody who had been at the paper for any length of time was familiar with the Ted Fritts story, the little we knew."

Alfred Theodore "Ted" Fritts had been editor and then publisher of the Californian from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. He was, the special report said, one of the Lords, "a flamboyant character," and one linked to a 17-year-old gay hustler accused of murdering another gay man said to be in the Lords.

Fritts, who died of AIDS in 1997, was also a brother of the current publisher, Ginger Moorhouse.

Executive Editor Mike Jenner says he knew immediately that the report would have to include a sidebar on Ted Fritts. "I thought it would be a small sidebar -- I didn't realize it would end up being 60 inches," Jenner says. "Later, I had to go back and let her know that this is not just a paragraph -- this is a big piece of the story. There's some credibility issues for the newspaper here, and it's time for us to address that and clean that up."

Moorhouse says she expected no less: "If my brother Ted had been alive, he would have encouraged us to do it, too. He never tried to hide his situation. He had tremendous pride in the newspaper."

The special report noted that Fritts made no effort to keep his name out of the paper at the time of the slaying, but that other editors made no mention of his involvement with the prostitute until his name came up in the trial. Even then, it was buried on a jump page, the report said.

The Lords piece disclosed a far seamier aspect of Bakersfield's elite when it reported on rumors about Walter Kane, who was the paper's general manager from 1946 until he retired 21 years later. It said Kane was "rumored to have been a central figure in the White Orchid Society, a secret organization of gay pedophiles said to have existed in Bakersfield in the 1950s." Kane, the report said, had "an unusual arrangement regarding police reports," suggesting he was able to quash any mention of illegal activities by him or other prominent people.

Californian executives, and Price himself, were surprised not by the huge reaction but by how positive it has been. For years, Executive Editor Jenner says, a Californian critic would distribute bumper stickers that said, using the newspaper's logo, "I don't believe The Bakersfield Californian."

After "The Lords of Bakersfield" was printed, Jenner says, he saw a new bumper sticker: "I DO believe The Bakersfield Californian."
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