Wendy Howard’s trial concludes Week 1 in Bakersfield, CA
The first week of Wendy Howard’s trial concluded on Friday with testimony from Wendy’s daughter, Bayley, detailing the sexual abuse of her father, Kelly Pitts, and confirming that his ATV was moving towards Wendy when she defended herself by shooting him on June 5, 2019, 3 days after she learned of the abuse and it was reported to the police. Preceding Bayley’s testimony was testimony by Wendy’s oldest daughter, Miranda, and a woman who dated Pitts’s son. Both of these women’s experiences of sexual abuse by Pitts resonated with Bayley’s description of the violence she witnessed and experienced by Pitts, establishing that Pitts sustained a devastating pattern of sexually abusing multiple girls and young women in the community.
All three women described their terror of Pitts. Pitts’s son’s former girlfriend lived in Pitts’s home, and when her boyfriend had to work nights, she was so fearful of being raped by Pitts, she shoved a heavy dresser in front of her door to block him from entering the room. Wendy’s daughter-in-law, Kierra Whitney, also testified about her own fear of Pitts’s anger. In a personal interview with the Wendy Howard Defense Committee, Kierra recalled an incident when various family members, including Pitts’s son, were playing monopoly at Pitts’s house. Pitts got upset with his son and without saying a word, flipped over a 120 lb. table, knocking over the monopoly game without warning.
Miranda testified that Pitts threatened to shoot Wendy’s children when they lived with him. Bayley testified that her father became angry when she refused to perform oral sex on him when he trapped her in a car in the desert. Pitts’s anger and threatening violence were a theme throughout the week of trial. On June 2nd, 2019, Miranda reported Pitts’s abuse of Bayley to the police, and the police went to Wendy’s home in multiple police cars. Kierra testified that when Pitts, who lived three doors away, saw police cars gathered at Wendy’s home, he called between 50-100 times that day to inquire about them. Based on Pitts’s acts of extreme violence and intimidation, the entire family became increasingly terrified of him. Though Wendy previously had a 5-year restraining order against Pitts due to violent abuse, the police did not arrest him while they investigated, nor did they help the family make a realistic plan to stay safe. The police told Wendy to “act natural.”
All three women who testified expressed their doubts that the police would protect them. When Wendy learned that Pitts had abused Miranda in 2006, she went to the police, but the Kern County DA refused to file charges. The woman who dated Pitts’s son testified that she did not contact the police because Pitts bragged that he was friends with them. Bayley also testified that he bragged of being the only marijuana distributor in Tehachapi and that he sold marijuana to police officers before legalization. Kierra Whitney says, “The police enabled Kelly Pitts. He had 7 felony charges and they allowed him to continue to slip through their grasp. He groomed our entire family…The Kern County DA is responsible for putting Wendy in the situation she’s in since they never protected this family despite allegations of abuse that spanned two decades.”
The Wendy Howard Defense Committee calls this trial an outrage, a miscarriage of justice, and a total waste of taxpayer dollars. It is also an act of violence to pursue first-degree murder charges against a shell-shocked mother of 7 children, 3 still living at home, who had to choose between being run over or beaten to death by Pitts or defending her life when he attacked her. It is an act of violence to force all of these victims of sexual abuse who have been failed by police and prosecutors to re-live their traumatic experiences for an unjust public trial. Punishing women for saving their own lives when the police and the DA abandoned them is state-perpetuated gender violence.
We call on DA Zimmer to DROP ALL CHARGES!!!
