Opinion ID: 2509517
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Investigation of the Murder of Paul Bailly

Text: About 6:30 a.m. on March 23, 1990, Mary Bailly, Paul's mother, dropped him off at Darby Elementary School. At 11:50 a.m., Captain Fred Baugher of the Ventura County Fire Department responded to a fire in the Black Canyon area near Simi Valley and discovered Paul's body in the fire. Paul had been gagged with a cloth gag and duct tape. A set of handcuffs was found at the scene. According to supervising investigator James Allen, the burn pattern on the ground and the condition of the body showed that someone had poured fire accelerant on the corpse and set it on fire. Dr. Frederick Lovell, the Chief Medical Examiner for Ventura County, attributed the cause of death to asphyxiation due to strangling and to aspiration of vomit. In his opinion, the victim had also been forcibly sodomized. The victim was dead before his body was set afire. On March 24 and 25, 1990, Ventura County sheriff's deputies searched defendant's residence. They found, among other items, a pair of keys that fit the handcuffs found near Paul's body, several rolls of duct tape, and several newspapers. The newspapers, which were about two months old, featured an article about a well-publicized child molestation case in which the defendants were acquitted and another case where the victim had been set on fire by his father.