San Jose Mercury News (CA) June 13, 1988 Section: Local Edition: Morning Final Page: 1B Memo:Whatever happened to... EX-D.A. CHANG HAS 'BUMPY' RIDE BACK BOB LEVY, Mercury News Staff Writer Fifteen years ago, Peter Chang was Santa Cruz County's flamboyant district attorney, a man who prosecuted three mass murderers in three years and grabbed headlines with the quote that Santa Cruz was the "murder capital of the world" -- a phrase that Chang says was a misquote. Today, Chang has a successful private law practice in Santa Cruz, lives in one of the community's most expensive neighborhoods and drives a Lincoln with a Jesse Jackson bumper sticker. It seems like a smooth progression, but for the 51-year-old Chang, the trip from then to now has been anything but. After he left the district attorney's office in 1975, Chang said, he had a long string of acquittals as a criminal defense attorney. Then, he said, around 1978 "things started going downhill." Art Danner, Santa Cruz County's current district attorney, who was hired as a rookie prosecutor by Chang nearly two decades ago, said "it's been a bumpy, bumpy road" for his former boss. By far, the biggest bump has involved Chang's coming to grips with alcoholism. Before he did so seven years ago, he "hit bottom" and was cited by a judge for contempt when he showed up drunk in court. He abandoned the practice of law for more than a year following the contempt citation, and, he said, became deeply involved in Alcoholics Anonymous. Chang has resumed his practice, which consists largely of criminal defense work. He said he now only takes cases "that are interesting and where a (satisfactory) result can be achieved and where I know I'm going to be paid." After the dark period of the early 1980s, Chang says, "Things really are going well now." Chang, who was district attorney from 1967 to 1975, made a national name for himself when he gained convictions of John Frazier, Herbert Mullin and Edmund Kemper, who between them slaughtered 26 people. Frazier gunned down eye surgeon Victor Ohta, three members of his family and his secretary at Ohta's Soquel home in 1969. Felton resident Mullin murdered 13 people, most of them seemingly at random, in 1973. About the same time, the 6-foot- 8-inch, 280-pound Kemper killed six young women, his mother and her friend. Chang tried the three killers between 1971 and 1974. It was as the horror of the Mullin killings was unfolding that Chang says he made the remark that has been misquoted ever since, much to the dismay of area boosters. Chang, recalling that the grimness of the day was accentuated by frigid, wet January weather, said that after finding four of Mullin's victims he tossed out the comment, "This must be Murdersville, USA." He said a reporter picked up the remark as, "This must be the murder capital of the world," sent it out over news wire services under a Santa Cruz dateline, and thus immortalized the community in the minds of people who had never heard of it before. Chang is of Korean descent, and says that when voters chose him in 1966 he was the first Asian district attorney elected in the continental United States. He grew up in Palo Alto and received both his bachelor's and law degrees from Stanford University. It is no surprise that Chang is active in the Jesse Jackson for president campaign. His liberal credentials were established early when, as a Stanford student, he became involved in starting an American Civil Liberties Union chapter in Santa Cruz County. District Attorney Danner remembers those credentials were one of the things that impressed him. ''I was a Kennedy Democrat and I wasn't sure I wanted to be a prosecutor," Danner said. But Chang "blew away the stereotype" that a prosecutor had to be a hard-nosed conservative, Danner said, and persuaded him to join the district attorney's office. The graduates of the office under Chang have an impressive record. Chris Cottle and Danner each became district attorney, Cottle a judge, and three other assistants -- Bill Kelsay, Tom Kelley and the late Rollie Hall -- also became judges. Chang tried to become a judge in 1974, running unsuccessfully for a Superior Court seat instead of seeking a third term as district attorney. He says now that he has no regrets he lost the one and didn't try the other. The district attorney's job had ceased producing challenges, he says, and he has long since decided that a judge's life is not for him. Although Chang drank heavily while he was district attorney, his drinking didn't escalate into an almost all-day situation until several years after he left office, both he and former colleagues said. To Danner and others who had worked with Chang, the increasing magnitude of their hero's problem was devastating. Danner said, "One of the toughest things I ever had to deal with was a report on my desk that indicated he had been arrested for drunken driving." Chang himself looks back on his up-and-down life this way: "The halcyon years of my career were from 1970 to 1978. . . . Then it all went downhill. ''But I've learned a hell of a lot about life since then, and I'll say this: I don't think I've ever been happier than I am now."
