HOT SPRINGS — After a four-hour hearing Monday in which a federal judge heard a recording of Ouachita County Judge Mike Hesterly threatening to shoot his estranged wife, Hesterly was released on electronic monitoring until his bribery and conspiracy trial, scheduled for March.
Hesterly, 47, who is in his 16th year as county judge, was indicted Jan. 17 by a federal grand jury in the Western District of Arkansas on accusations that he conspired with a contractor, Harry Clemons Jr., 39, to route federal disaster-cleanup funds to Clemons in return for a campaign contribution of at least $5,000.
At the men’s arraignment in El Dorado on Jan. 18, federal prosecutors asked that Hesterly be detained until trial because of “threats made to witnesses and FBI Agent [Nick] Powe and his family.”
The details of those threats were aired Monday in a detention hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Bryant, who heard from Hesterly’s ex-wife, Leigh Adams, the FBI agent and a state police investigator who arranged one recorded call, as well as from Hesterly himself, and three character witnesses, including the county coroner, a former sheriff and an area mayor who was once a court bailiff.
The government, represented by U.S. Attorney Conner Eldridge, had the burden of proving that the safety of the community couldn’t be ensured if Hesterly was released.
Bryant decided that burden wasn’t met, but imposed several conditions on Hesterly’s freedom, including restricting him to his mother’s home in Camden around the clock unless he needs emergency medical treatment, or needs to meet with his attorney or to attend court.
Bryant didn’t prohibit Hesterly from continuing to carry out his duties as the county’s chief administrative officer, if other authorities permit it, but Bryant forbade Hesterly from having contact with his ex-wife, the FBI agent and three witnesses in the federal case, including two of Hesterly’s employees.
“I don’t know how I will conduct my duties without being able to talk to my secretary or my road superintendent,” Hesterly complained in response to the no-contact order.
Bryant replied: “I don’t either.”
Earlier, Bryant listened as Hesterly’s ex-wife, who was married to him from Dec. 1, 2000, until May 2009, about a year and a half after the couple separated.
Adams, a nurse, testified that Hesterly threatened her repeatedly while they were separated and after their divorce, all while their children, including her daughter from a previous marriage, lived mostly with him.
She said that earlier this month, after he knew he was about to be indicted, “He told me he was trying to stay out of the f pen, but if he was gonna go, he’d go for a good reason - he’d put a bullet in my head.”
Powe, the lead FBI agent in the bribery case, later testified that his investigation into Hesterly sprang from accusations leveled by Adams.
Adams, who has since remarried, testified that Hesterly became enraged after learning he was facing federal charges and asked her if she knew Powe. Although she had been secretly cooperating with the FBI for a couple of years, she said, she pretended not to know Powe.
“He said, ‘Well, I tried to find out where he lives, and if he has a wife and kids, because if he is gonna f up my life, I’m gonna f up his.”
She said he also told her, referring to a cooperating witness: “Jeff Davis better watch his back.”
Adams testified that three days later, on Jan. 10, she was working at a doctor’s office when Agent Terrie Smith of the Arkansas State Police took his son to the clinic for an examination, and she told him she needed to talk to him, prompting him to give her his cell phone number.
She texted him the following day, and he returned the call.
Asked why she didn’t tell him about the threats immediately, she said: “I’m used to him [Hesterly] saying stuff to me, but the fact that it was somebody else - if something actually happened to somebody else, I couldn’t have lived with myself.”
She played a recording she made of a telephone call that she said took place after her divorce from Hesterly was final and he was upset that her boyfriend, whom she later married, was staying at her house in the presence of their children.
In the call, Hesterly could be heard saying: “Stay away from my son, or I’ll shoot you both.”
Moments later, Adams tells him: “You threatened to kill me, Mike,” to which he responds, “My son is at an impressionable age, and I don’t want some dip-s* hanging around pretending to be his daddy.”
In a recorded phone call she placed to him on Jan.16, in the presence of Agent Smith, Hesterly said: “The m who caused this ain’t gonna be OK one of these days.”
Asked later about his words on the two recordings, Hesterly said that in the first instance, “ I didn’t want her living that way before my son,” and admitted that “possibly, yeah,” he had made some threatening remarks.
In the second call, he said he wasn’t threatening Adams.
“Actually,” he said, “it was a fishing statement. I was looking for a reaction from her.”
He also testified that his ex-wife “is a notorious liar.She’s an actor and an opportunist. ... She does this every time. She accuses someone of making threats to cover up what she’s done.”
He added: “I believe the charges are trumped-up charges. I intend to fight the charges, and I want the jury to know that if they convict me, they’ll take away the only parent those kids have known for the last four years.”
Hesterly denied saying he wanted to know where the FBI agent lived or whether he had a family. “I love children,” he said. “All children. ... I would never threaten an FBI agent or any other law enforcement officer.”
Adams described incidents in 2007 and 2008 in which she said her then-estranged husband said he knew plenty of men who would “love to rape” her, and told her: “I’m coming over there to get my son even if I have to blow your head off.”
He later denied ever threatening to blow anyone’s head off and wasn’t asked about the other allegation.
Adams, however, acknowledged in cross-examination by attorney Jamie Pratt of Camden that she lied in a 2004 custody hearing involving her previous ex-husband in saying that Hesterly, to whom she was married at the time, never abused her. Pratt called her a “perjurer.”
Pratt asked her at another point: “Isn’t it true that you fed the government a bunch of lies so you could accomplish what you couldn’t do all these years, which is to get your children back from Mr. Hesterly?”
“No,” Adams replied.
She testified that she is so afraid of Hesterly that, “I’ve sat down and wrote out my funeral arrangements,” prompting Hesterly to laugh and shake his head from the defense table.
Powe, the FBI agent, testified that after he learned of the purported threat about his family, “I spoke with my supervisors and then I relocated my family.”
He said he was so concerned about Hesterly’s hot temper that he advised Adams to take her children out of school before he was arrested on the federal charge.
“I definitely didn’t want his children to be around if there was any type of incident, if he didn’t surrender,” Powe testified.
He said Hesterly later told him he had just been “popping off” when he made the remarks and didn’t mean it.
Hesterly’s mother testified that her son has always had a hot temper, but despite his propensity for “popping off,” he is a gentle soul who loves elderly people, children and animals.
“He is very soft-hearted under that bluster he has,” she said.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 01/29/2013