Police: Information leads to tentative identification of man found dead March 20

CLEARLAKE, Calif. – Clearlake Police Department officials believe they have tentatively identified a man found dead last week.

Sgt. Nick Bennett said a positive identification of the man is pending the results of fingerprint analysis, and as a result a name has not yet been released.

At approximately 5:50 a.m. last Thursday, March 20, Clearlake Police officers were notified that a person was lying in the street on the 3000 block of Green Street, as Lake County News has reported.

On arrival officers located a male at that location and he was unresponsive. Lake County Fire Protection Department medics responded and determined the male was deceased, police reported.

Clearlake Police Department requested assistance from the public in identifying the person and subsequently received information that led to a tentative identification, Bennett said.

Bennett said the cause of the man's death is pending the results of an autopsy.

The Clearlake Police Department thanked those individuals who came forward with information leading to the probable identification of the young man.   

Anyone with any information on this incident is encouraged to contact the Clearlake Police Department at 707-994-8251.

Police seek help in identifying man found dead Thursday

CLEARLAKE, Calif. – The Clearlake Police Department is asking for the community's help in identifying a man who was found dead in a city street early Thursday morning.

Sgt. Nick Bennett said officers were notified at 5:50 a.m. Thursday that a person was lying in the street on the 3000 block of Green Street.

On arrival officers located a male at that location and unresponsive. Lake County Fire Protection District medics responded and determined the male was deceased, Bennett said.

The individual had no identification on him and was not recognized by officers on the scene, Bennett said.

The Clearlake Police Department is asking assistance from the community in identifying the man, who is described as a white male adult, 25 to 35 years in age, approximately 5 feet 8 eight in height and 180 pounds, with short brown hair, brown hair and had a nipple ring.

He was wearing a black t-shirt, black jeans, burgundy Nike tennis shoes with red shoe laces and a red and yellow bracelet that reads in part “keepitchronic” on his right wrist, Bennett said.

Anyone with any information on this unidentified individual is encouraged to contact the Clearlake Police Department at 707-994-8251.

Appeals court upholds Lakeport man's conviction for murdering neighbor listed on Megan's Law Web site

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The First Appellate District Court of Appeals has upheld a Lakeport man's conviction for the November 2007 murder of a neighbor who he believed, wrongly, was a child molester based on information he got from the state's Megan's Law Web site.

The appellate court handed down the seven-page decision in the case of Ivan Garcia Oliver, 36, on Thursday.

The three-judge panel unanimously affirmed, in its entirely, Oliver's August 2012 conviction for the murder of 67-year-old Michael Dodele at the Western Hills Mobile Home Park outside the Lakeport city limits.

Oliver – the first person to be convicted of using information from California's Megan's Law Web site in the commission of a crime – received a sentence of 32 years to life, which he is serving at San Quentin State Prison.

Concerned because he claimed to have witnessed a strange car come up to the mobile home park, Oliver spoke to the park manager, who helped him use the Megan's Law Web site to look up information about sex offenders in his neighborhood, according to on trial testimony.

Dodele, who it was stated in court had only moved into the mobile home park a short time earlier after being released from prison for the rape of an adult female in the late 1980s, appeared on the Web site because he was required to register as a sex offender.

The park manager printed out information about Dodele and told Oliver that Dodele was a child molester, a misinterpretation that apparently resulted from the Web site having reported his crimes as being “rape by force” and “oral copulation with person under 14/etc. or by force/etc.,” according to testimony at trial and court documents.

After getting the Web site information, Oliver became increasingly irate and tried to get other tenants to join him in getting Dodele evicted, the appellate documents state.

About two to three days after meeting with the park manager to review the Web site, Oliver confronted Dodele in his home on Nov. 20, 2007, stabbing him some 65 times, according to the autopsy report presented at Oliver's trial.

In his appeal, Oliver argued that the five-year sentencing enhancement finding for the use of Megan's Law had to be reversed due to “instructional error and insufficient evidence,” but the appellate court disagreed.

“Oliver argues that a defendant must personally access the Megan’s Law Web site and acquire the information in order to be liable for the enhancement because 'the plain intent of the statute is to deter persons from going to the Web site to acquire information about sex offenders that can then be used to harm them. There would be no deterrent effect if the defendant did not personally acquire the information from the Web site, but gained his knowledge from an independent source. To hold a defendant criminally responsible for using information he did not acquire, and may not have known the source of, is not the legislative intent, and would be an absurd and unjust result,'” the decision explained.

The justices continued, “The People counter that the objective of the statute is to punish anyone who
misuses information from the Web site, including those who acquire the information from another source,” adding that there was no instructional error, with evidence showing that Oliver “personally and knowingly” obtained information from the Megan's Law Web site.

Even if the court had erred in failing to instruct the jury that Oliver had to personally acquire information from the Web site, “the error would have been harmless under any standard,” the justices found.

“It is sufficient here that Oliver’s belief about what the Web site disclosed could reasonably be found to have influenced his decision to murder Dodele,” the appellate court concluded.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.