LICENSE TO KILL

There is an elephant in the room that I've avoided discussing. Over the years, I was often encouraged by those close to me to keep this blog and website positive. That advice, which I wholeheartedly agreed with, came from a good place. It reflected who Jenny was—a positive soul who inspired those around her to do wonderful deeds, just as she did. However, life since the accident has often been marked by a series of profound lows, precisely because of what happened that day. Though neither Jenny nor I will be defined by the accident, I believe this space can also be used for good by honestly sharing topics connected to that day that changed us forever.

Animation taken from Facebook post by George Peter George, published August 2025

"The truth shall set you free, but first it will piss you off." --Gloria Steinem

A call came on May 28, 2025. Not knowing the caller's number or even the associated area code, I ignored it. After the caller hung up, I stood up from my desk at home and began reading a transcript of the voicemail, ready to delete it. Instead, what I read made me freeze. I stood there for 20 minutes, unable to move. Then I cried.

The caller, Connor Dore, was with KGET News, the NBC affiliate in Bakersfield. He informed me in the voicemail that the driver who killed my dear Jenny was out on bail when he did so. But, not only that, the reason he was out on bail was because he had killed another motorist in Kern County one year earlier. Also with his truck. Once my senses came back to me, I immediately called Connor. I told him he was surely mistaken. There's no way the state could let this driver back on the road after the first collision. The driver had a relatively common first and last name. These were two separate, albeit very unfortunate, accidents but with drivers who happened to have the same name, right? Wrong. Connor was looking at the DMV record himself and noted that the very same driver's license number was connected to both accidents.

My first emotion was one of outrage. Outrage not at the driver--at least not at first--but outrage that the system could let this happen. "Avoidable" was the word plastered across my brain. After one death, how is it that we could have let the driver go on the road again? In 2021, this guy killed a motorcyclist who had a spouse and two kids--just like Jenny did--by letting his truck swerve into oncoming traffic in Bakersfield. It is with some irony that during that very trip I thought we as motorists would be protected from incompetent truck drivers because they would be filtered out. In other words, I believed a truck driver can kill one person and then they're off the roads forever. The rest of us would be protected. But, that is clearly not the case.

We can talk all day about the legal process and how it failed Jenny and everyone who loved her. How come this wasn't brought up during the driver's criminal case in Fresno County? Because the first accident happened in Kern County and, at the time of the Fresno conviction, the Kern County case was unresolved. The Fresno County DA's office knew about the prior accident but didn't see it as necessary to tell me despite the at least half a dozen phone calls I had with them prior to the plea hearing. Yes, one infuriating fact in all of this is that the judge in Fresno decided on leniency precisely because she believed this driver had no violations in his past. And, because the Kern County case was tangled in red tape (my guess is because they decided to try for a felony conviction), their case took more time and did not finish until after ours did in Fresno. In other words, at the time of the hearing for Jenny's death, there was no determination of wrongdoing in the driver's history. Yet, during the plea hearing in Fresno the driver knew full well that he killed another motorist before killing Jenny and that he was at fault for it.

That leaves one state agency that knew about both accidents that could have done something but made the active decision not to: The California DMV. And, if this whole story isn't maddening enough, get this: The California DMV made the decision to let the driver keep his license not only after the first killing, but after the second one as well. It was only after his conviction in Fresno that his license was finally pulled--twenty months after the second accident. Let's recap: The perpetrator kills a motorcyclist by swerving his truck into oncoming traffic to kill a husband and father of two. The DMV was informed of this but does nothing. One year later, he slams his truck into my SUV, killing Jenny, and again the DMV is informed. And, again the DMV decides to do nothing. More than a year passes. Still nothing. A gun analogy proposed by an attorney is appropriate here. Imagine pulling out a gun and firing into a crowd. You kill someone. Everyone knows you did it, including whoever gets to decide whether you keep your license. But, not only are you running around free afterwards, you get to keep your gun. You do it again a year later and kill another victim. Again, everyone knows you did it, but you still get to keep your gun. And, afterwards, for more than a year and a half after the second killing you can bring your gun with you wherever you go, free to whip it out whenever you like. It sounds absolutely ludicrous, but at the same time it is not really that different. That's the DMV. (By the way, please let me know in the comments below if you believe a truck is any less dangerous than a gun.)

Some loose ends: First, if the Fresno County DA and the DMV both knew about the double killing and both stay mum and take no action, then how is it that the reporter, Connor Dore, came to know about it and its relationship with our case in Fresno County? There is an organization, CalMatters, whose mission it is to bring to light issues in California that don't pass the smell test. In April 2025, one month before Connor called me, Robert Lewis published an article on the CalMatters website called "License to Kill". The article can be found here and required meticulous investigation and due diligence. A CalMatters employee--perhaps Robert Lewis himself--spent countless hours scouring the DMV database, cross-referencing accidents, looking for common drivers. It was a manual, tedious process. The author then contacted KGET and asked if they wanted to produce a story.

Second, how did the cases resolve in Kern County and Fresno County? Despite my desperate pleas with the Fresno County DA prior to the conviction, they would not press further than misdemeanor manslaughter. But, to turn the knife in my back even more, the judge sentenced the driver to adult work program for 50 days. In other words, he got a paying job. The idea was that he would work and I would receive $30 per month from his income. The Fresno County DA's office, which if you haven't yet figured it out is a piece of work in its own right, never confirmed with me--as they were supposed to--that the driver started the program. So, I contacted them multiple times and eventually needed my attorney to prompt them to respond. I then found out he never reported. So, at last check there is a warrant for his arrest and he is a fugitive from justice. As for the case in Kern County, the one bright light in this story is that the driver was convicted of a felony and received incarceration.

And, why a felony for the Bakersfield killing but only a misdemeanor for Jenny's? The first case involved the falsification of call logs and I'm going to leave it at that. More details can be found in the story produced by Connor, who I should say is not only an investigative-reporter extraordinaire, but a damn fine human being as well. Connor's piece aired Wednesday--two days ago--and can be found here, but please know some of the images are graphic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSNuVUSr8-g

The purpose of this post is not to express my outrage. (Well, maybe a little.) Rather, the hope is that it might affect change in some small way. We all know it's a hopeless cause for us to try to take anything up directly with the DMV--you surely knew this before reading this post. However, if you're a California resident, you can vote. There is an election coming up this fall and perhaps how much our future governor cares about the performance of the DMV might matter to you. The governor is, after all, the state's chief executive and is ultimately responsible for the performance of executive branch agencies, including the DMV. Also, even if you're not a California resident but can vote for President, it's worth noting the governor who has been at the helm throughout this painful saga is a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. He is also the one who appointed the presiding judge in our case in Fresno County, Stephanie Negin. if you think assigning a person a paying job as "punishment" for killing my wife is bad, wait until you hear about a case she presided over a few months prior to ours. So, more on both Newsom and Negin in a future post. But, for now, my hope is that just like Jenny did so much good while she was alive, perhaps there's a chance that something positive can emerge from her passing.