to be the end of this tale.
Bonnie came home from work one day at the beginning of June to find everything in disarray: we had been robbed. She paged me, I called, and I could hear the alarm and upset in her voice.
I asked her to check my coat pocket for the money I’d been saving for our wedding. But then she noticed that my stash of hundred-dollar bills—totaling about $3,000—had been neatly laid out on the kitchen table… along with a search warrant.
We hadn’t been robbed; we’d been raided. By officers of the Santa Cruz Police Department. Santa Cruz! I knew it had to be connected to my nighttime hacking excursions into the computers of Santa Cruz Operations.
When Bonnie said my computer and disks were gone, my world immediately crumbled. I told her to quickly pack some clothes and meet me. I knew there would be a lot of trouble coming my way. I needed to get a lawyer to do damage control. Fast!
Bonnie joined me at a local park, and my mom came, too. I told them both it wasn’t a big deal, since I had just poked around—I hadn’t damaged any of the SCO files or even downloaded their source code. I wasn’t as worried about dealing with the law as I was about the pain and suffering I was bringing down on these two and Gram, the most important people in my life.
Mom drove home, I took Bonnie to a nearby motel. She was upset,feeling violated. If she had walked out on me right then, I would have deserved it. Instead, without hesitation, she showed her true colors, her loyalty. Her attitude wasn’t “What have you done to me?” It was more, “What do we do now?”
The next morning she called her work and asked to take some vacation time for a family emergency. Her boss told her that some police officers had shown up, wanting to interview her. My first thought was that since I had been hacking from her apartment and on her telephone, they were assuming that
she
was the hacker. But then I concluded that their strategy was probably to use arresting my girlfriend as a bargaining chip: “Admit everything or your girlfriend goes to jail.”
I spent the next few days calling lawyers, explaining the situation, making plans. The way Bonnie remembers it, “We cried a lot together but we stuck by each other.”
Why didn’t she just walk out? “I was crazy about Kevin,” she says today.
We were able to release some amount of anxiety and worry by spending a lot of time making love. I felt really sorry that I had put Bonnie in this position, and that I caused my mom and grandmother such anxiety, and I guess Bonnie and I found comfort in that basic outlet.
Aunt Chickie drove Bonnie and me down to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s West Hollywood station. We turned ourselves in, and Chickie immediately posted our bond, $5,000 each. Somehow the police neglected to fingerprint and photograph us. Because of this major procedural error, there was no arrest record created for either of us. Still today, there is no official record that I was ever arrested on the Santa Cruz Operations charge. Please don’t tell anyone.
Over the next few months, for every appearance we had to make in the Santa Cruz courts, I had to buy four round-trip airplane tickets—Bonnie was using a different attorney—plus spring for hotel rooms, a rental car, and meals. Both of the attorneys had required a retainer up front. So much for the money I had been saving for the wedding: the entire $3,000 went to pay my attorney’s retainer. Mom and Gram loaned me money to pay for Bonnie’s attorney and all the other expenses.
So we didn’t have the money anymore for a proper wedding, but it was worse than that. There isn’t any loving, romantic way to put this: I toldBonnie we needed to get married so she couldn’t testify against me, and also so she could visit me if I landed in jail, which was looking like the way things were headed.
I gave Bonnie a diamond engagement ring, and we were married by a minister who conducted weddings in his home
Bonnie came home from work one day at the beginning of June to find everything in disarray: we had been robbed. She paged me, I called, and I could hear the alarm and upset in her voice.
I asked her to check my coat pocket for the money I’d been saving for our wedding. But then she noticed that my stash of hundred-dollar bills—totaling about $3,000—had been neatly laid out on the kitchen table… along with a search warrant.
We hadn’t been robbed; we’d been raided. By officers of the Santa Cruz Police Department. Santa Cruz! I knew it had to be connected to my nighttime hacking excursions into the computers of Santa Cruz Operations.
When Bonnie said my computer and disks were gone, my world immediately crumbled. I told her to quickly pack some clothes and meet me. I knew there would be a lot of trouble coming my way. I needed to get a lawyer to do damage control. Fast!
Bonnie joined me at a local park, and my mom came, too. I told them both it wasn’t a big deal, since I had just poked around—I hadn’t damaged any of the SCO files or even downloaded their source code. I wasn’t as worried about dealing with the law as I was about the pain and suffering I was bringing down on these two and Gram, the most important people in my life.
Mom drove home, I took Bonnie to a nearby motel. She was upset,feeling violated. If she had walked out on me right then, I would have deserved it. Instead, without hesitation, she showed her true colors, her loyalty. Her attitude wasn’t “What have you done to me?” It was more, “What do we do now?”
The next morning she called her work and asked to take some vacation time for a family emergency. Her boss told her that some police officers had shown up, wanting to interview her. My first thought was that since I had been hacking from her apartment and on her telephone, they were assuming that
she
was the hacker. But then I concluded that their strategy was probably to use arresting my girlfriend as a bargaining chip: “Admit everything or your girlfriend goes to jail.”
I spent the next few days calling lawyers, explaining the situation, making plans. The way Bonnie remembers it, “We cried a lot together but we stuck by each other.”
Why didn’t she just walk out? “I was crazy about Kevin,” she says today.
We were able to release some amount of anxiety and worry by spending a lot of time making love. I felt really sorry that I had put Bonnie in this position, and that I caused my mom and grandmother such anxiety, and I guess Bonnie and I found comfort in that basic outlet.
Aunt Chickie drove Bonnie and me down to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s West Hollywood station. We turned ourselves in, and Chickie immediately posted our bond, $5,000 each. Somehow the police neglected to fingerprint and photograph us. Because of this major procedural error, there was no arrest record created for either of us. Still today, there is no official record that I was ever arrested on the Santa Cruz Operations charge. Please don’t tell anyone.
Over the next few months, for every appearance we had to make in the Santa Cruz courts, I had to buy four round-trip airplane tickets—Bonnie was using a different attorney—plus spring for hotel rooms, a rental car, and meals. Both of the attorneys had required a retainer up front. So much for the money I had been saving for the wedding: the entire $3,000 went to pay my attorney’s retainer. Mom and Gram loaned me money to pay for Bonnie’s attorney and all the other expenses.
So we didn’t have the money anymore for a proper wedding, but it was worse than that. There isn’t any loving, romantic way to put this: I toldBonnie we needed to get married so she couldn’t testify against me, and also so she could visit me if I landed in jail, which was looking like the way things were headed.
I gave Bonnie a diamond engagement ring, and we were married by a minister who conducted weddings in his home
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