CLEARLAKE, Calif. – The Clearlake Police Department is investigating a Tuesday night fight between a Clearlake man and a county supervisor who was engaged in business for his bail bonds company.
Lt. Tim Celli said the incident involved 55-year-old Clearlake resident Robert Sanders and 52-year-old Rob Brown of Kelseyville.
Brown, who chairs the Lake County Board of Supervisors, also owns a bail bonds business.
Celli reported that Clearlake Police officers responded to a reported disturbance at 3747 Buckeye St. at 9 p.m. Tuesday.
When they arrived on scene they contacted both Sanders and Brown, Celli said.
Celli would offer few details about what occurred during the fight, stating only that Brown had gone to the residence to serve civil paperwork regarding the property and that, while serving the paperwork, a confrontation between the two men ensued.
Police officers contacted both Sanders and Brown, who each claimed they were assaulted by the other, Celli said.
Initially neither of the men wanted the other arrested or prosecuted but Celli said Sanders changed his mind as officers were complete the call and said he wanted Brown prosecuted.
“It’s still under investigation,” Celli said Wednesday afternoon, saying he could offer no further comment on the case specifics.
He said the police reports already had been submitted to the Lake County District Attorney’s Office for review.
Lake County News attempted to call the Sanders family, but their phone was disconnected.
In Facebook messages with Robert Sanders’ wife, Jan, on Wednesday, she declined to speak to Lake County News directly about the incident, only alleging that Brown’s version of the story was not true.
Washington state resident Lynda Smith, Jan Sanders’ half-sister, said she doesn’t believe the account her sister and brother-in-law gave of the incident.
“They’ll lie for anything, just to make themselves look good,” Smith said. “They’ll play the victims.”
Dispute arises over bail in sex abuse case
Smith’s distrust about the Sanderses’ account arose from a sexual molestation case involving their son.
Robert and Jan Sanders are the parents of Christopher Sanders, who in January was sentenced to 41 years in state prison for committing a lewd act with a child, lewd act with a child by duress, continuous sexual abuse of a child and statutory rape.
Christopher Sanders had been found guilty by a jury last year of sexually abusing his young stepdaughter for a three-year period, beginning when she was 11 years old.
Smith said the Sanderses lied to her and the rest of the family about Christopher Sanders’ case, and convinced them at one point that he was innocent.
As a result Smith and her husband Tim took $25,000 from his retirement and loaned it to the Sanderses to go toward their son’s defense. The Sanderses are now refusing to pay the money back, which Smith recounted in a January 2012 letter to Lake County News; the letter can be read at http://bit.ly/Pe4Zpm .
Brown said he was owed $20,000 by the family for a bail bond that which was active over a three-year period while Christopher Sanders’ case went through the courts. They had paid the $10,000 annual premium owed for the first year, and Brown had not demanded the following two annual payments up front but had tried to work out arrangements with them.
After the 41-year sentence was handed down to their son, Brown said Bob and Jan Sanders refused to pay the outstanding bail amount, claiming their son was set up. Brown said they never disputed the actual bond contract.
Betty Welch, Christopher Sanders’ grandmother, put up the property at 3747 Buckeye St. – next door to her home – as collateral on the bond, according to Brown.
In Facebook posts attributed to Jan Sanders, she claimed that while her mother signed the deed she and her husband Bob owned the house.
That statement appears to conflict with county assessor records, which showed that Betty Welch and her husband, Orville, owned the property up until American Contractors Indemnity Co. took it in foreclosure, with the trustee’s deed recorded on Aug. 13. A separate deed transferred it to Rob and Kim Brown on Aug. 17, but the assessor’s office said the transfer hasn’t been finalized in its system.
Assessor’s records also showed that Bob Sanders had a mechanic’s lien on the property at one point, but that he didn’t appear to have owned the property. That lien could have been because he furnished materials while acting as a contractor, according to the assessor’s office.
Sanders did have a contractor’s license which expired in March 2011, according to the Contractors State License Board.
Jan Sanders also stated on Facebook that Brown was there to inform them that he was taking their home, a fact which Lynda Smith said her sister had known long before that point.
Smith said she also has documents to show that her sister and brother-in-law didn’t own the Buckeye Street property, which she and her husband also had liened in an attempt to get their money back.
Brown said he canceled the foreclosure sales six times since the proceedings began last year, trying to work things out. He said this is the first time he’s taken a property in foreclosure.
He said that, against the advice of friends and family, he didn’t start an eviction but had wanted to give the couple a last chance to rent the property or buy it back.
Brown was at a special evening session of the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday night at Kelseyville High School. The meeting ended shortly before 8 p.m. and he left the school at about 8:10 p.m. – at the same time that this reporter left the school – to pick up his wife, Kim, to go to Clearlake to speak with the Sanderses.
Due to insurance requirements, the house needed to be inspected, and the law requires a 24-hour notice to a home’s occupants in such cases. Brown said he was going to give the Sanderses notice that he wanted the inspection to take place on Friday, and he carried with him a letter from an attorney explaining the request.
When he knocked on the door, Brown said Jan Sanders opened it then slammed it shut, and was cursing at him.
Brown said Bob Sanders then came out in his bathrobe and started to charge him – calling him scum, a thief and a “good ol’ boy.” Sanders demanded Brown leave his property or he was going to call the police, which Brown urged him to do.
He said Bob Sanders came at him again. At that point Brown told Sanders he was going to wait nearby for police and turned and started toward the gate. Jan Sanders remained in the house at this point, he said.
When Brown turned to walk away, he said Bob Sanders came up behind him and grabbed his left arm above the elbow to spin him around. Brown said he believed Sanders was spinning him around to hit him.
“When he spun me around he caught a right hook to the jaw, and that was pretty much the end of the hunt right there,” Brown said.
Brown said Sanders was knocked backwards but didn’t fall. Brown said he then walked off and waited for police to show up. He said he didn’t know the two officers who arrived to investigate.
Jan Sanders said in a Facebook post that she and her husband asked Brown to leave, and alleged that Brown instead punched Sanders in the jaw and twice in the ribs.
Further fallout
Smith said her stepmother and Jan Sanders’ mother, Betty Welch, spent everything she had on her grandson’s court case and ended up losing her home next door to her daughter and son-in-law. Smith said the Sanderses didn’t take Welch in, so she had to go live with her son in Idaho.
Smith, who said she and her family are distancing themselves from the Sanderses, said she “couldn’t be happier” for Brown.
She said she’s accepted she will never get back the money she and her husband loaned for their nephew’s defense, and actually feels that the experience helped reveal the Sanderses’ true nature.
For that reason, “It was the best $25,000 I ever spent,” Smith said.
Brown said he has no intention of asking that Bob Sanders be prosecuted, adding that he wasn’t hurt and that he understood that Sanders was upset about losing his home.
As for Bob Sanders seeking prosecution of him, Brown said he believes the District Attorney’s Office should forward the case to the California Attorney General’s Office for review.
Jeri Spittler, a Clearlake businesswoman, vice mayor of Clearlake and friends of the Sanderses’, jumped into the fray on Wednesday, circulating an email to District Attorney Don Anderson, members of the Board of Supervisors, Clearlake Mayor Joey Luiz, City Manager Joan Phillipe, Clearlake Police Chief Craig Clausen and Sheriff Frank Rivero in which she said Jan Sanders contacted her on Tuesday night after the incident.
Spittler repeated the Sanderses’ version of the story – with the exception that she said they called her to say the police were at their home at 10 p.m. not 9 p.m. – and the claim that police refused to arrest Brown.
She said Bob Sanders is a plumber who donated all the plumbing to the youth center and that he was “clearly” assaulted by Brown.
“Mr. Brown has no right to call on them at 10 at night,” she wrote. “Bob called the PD and Mr. Brown began to leave. Then Mr. Brown returned saying this is my property, I'll wait for the PD. This is when the assault took place, Bob asked Mr. Brown to leave and Mr. Brown began to hit him in the stomack (sic) and the face. Bob had marks on his face and stomack (sic) from the assault. Bob only asked Mr. Brown to leave his property.”
She added, “I have know the Sanders for 20 years, Bob is a good man and should not have to be assaulted in his own home. If Mr. Brown feels he has a valid complaint then he should go through the courts and not take it apon (sic) himself to treaspass (sic) and assault a man in front of his wife and granddaughter.”
Spittler wrote that she was “not impressed with our PD, an assault had clearly taken place, and Mr. Brown is not above the law.”
Brown said Spittler doesn’t know what she’s talking about, and her criticisms of the officers on scene are unfair.
“She should leave law enforcement to the highly qualified Clearlake city police department and go back to the studio and do someone’s hair and nails,” he said.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
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