Killing at Party Wrapped in Blanket of Silence

Somewhere on the margin between two worlds--one an all-American California childhood and the other a world of brutal youths--Nicholas James Dowey lost his life.

He was beaten to death with a club at a raucous party populated by high school punk rockers, hard-core skinheads and a sprinkling of motorcycle gang wannabes.

When Dowey walked into that party Sept. 12, the 21-year-old college junior was entering a world that seemed quite apart from the one he knew as a good Irish Catholic honor student raised on surfing, fishing and hard work.

But Dowey, a Ventura son, was never really that far from the kind of brutality that killed him. And perhaps, his friends and family say, none of us is.

“It’s really opened my eyes to all the violence and craziness that goes on here,” said Carrie Waller, Nick’s girlfriend. “But you just don’t realize it until it happens to you. The simplest mistake can get you killed, it’s so stupid. I hate it and want to run away, but I have a feeling that it’s the same everywhere.”

It was not the first time that such brutality hit close to home for the Doweys. When Nick Dowey was in high school, a friend, Jesse Strobel, was stabbed to death while walking home from work at his father’s pizza parlor.

“You try to keep your children safe,” said Dowey’s mother, Ann, in a voice still carrying the soft Irish brogue of her homeland. “Thinking about it, it’s hard to believe that they both were murdered.”

The messy and unclear facts of her son’s death make it even harder for her to mourn.

“It gets in the way,” she said, sitting in the living room of the family’s modest east Ventura home. “I can’t even truly grieve for my son because there is so much of this stuff hanging.”

The accounts of what happened at the party are sketchy. Various versions conflict on basic facts. There are even reports that as their son stumbled outside, blood streaming down his face, a sheriff’s deputy tried to subdue him and hit him at least three more times on the head with a metal flashlight.

Dowey’s parents do not know what to believe.

They have bumped up against a wall of silence from the party-goers as well as from the authorities. Investigators refuse to go into much detail about what they know, nor will they release the coroner’s report because the entire matter is under investigation as a homicide.

That leaves them grasping for answers to painful questions: Why their son? What could he possibly have done to arouse such violence? Or did he just walk into the wrong place at the wrong time?

“Nicholas wasn’t even supposed to be there,” his mother said. “It was a last-minute thing. He didn’t even know those people. A friend of his--an acquaintance--called him and asked if he wanted to go. He wasn’t even going to be there very long because he was supposed to meet Carrie afterward. It doesn’t make any sense.”

*

Ann Dowey remembers talking to her son at 9 o’clock that fateful Friday night, Sept. 12. Nick Dowey was getting into his truck to drive to the party in Meiners Oaks near Ojai. About an hour later she received a call from the emergency room. Her son was barely clinging to life.

“I remember we were watching the funeral [of Mother Teresa] and I had gotten on my knees when the priest began the consecration and all [of a] sudden the picture went snowy,” Nick’s mother said. “That’s when I think he, you know, left us.”

Nicholas Wasn’t Living Any Secret, Double Life

“Nick wasn’t perfect,” said his father, James Dowey, noting that his son would stick up for himself if confronted. “But he was a good kid, a good person.”

And he wouldn’t provoke a fight.

“Nick was no skinhead. He had no secret life,” James Dowey said. “He didn’t have time for that sort of thing.”

Solidly built at 5-feet-10 and 180 pounds, he lifted weights, wore his hair short and sported a goatee.

His mother and girlfriend described him as shy and unassuming. He loved the outdoors, sports, working on computers, playing with cats and his dog Freckles.

His friends were the same friends he had growing up in Ventura since 1982, a mix of young men, many of whom were still living at home, going to school and working.

Dowey was no different. Over the summer he had worked odd jobs selling cars, delivering glass doors and cabinets, and gardening to earn money to pay for school.

He was close to his older brother, Sean, and younger brother, Colin. All three sons continued to live with the parents while their sister, Jennifer, had moved out to be on her own.

Nick Dowey was busy making progress on his future.

He was three weeks into the fall semester at Cal State Northridge’s Ventura campus, after transferring from Ventura College and winning a scholarship.

It was a full load of classes that included upper division business courses in statistics, management, marketing and communications.

“You don’t take that kind of load unless you’re serious about school,” said Bill Roberts, the associate dean of the business school at Northridge.

Dowey talked about becoming a stockbroker. He and his girlfriend, Carrie, would set goals for themselves. Goals in school and goals in life.

Her boyfriend had plans, she said. He wouldn’t throw that kind of future away.

Biggest Mysteries Are Who Did It, and Why?

Ann and her husband, James, arrived at the hospital by 11 p.m. and saw their son strapped to a gurney, shirtless, his head with its gaping wound still a bloody mess.

But Nick Dowey’s muscular body was clean and as unmarked as it was just a few days before, when his mother remembers watching a cat jump on his bare chest as he was lifting weights on his bench press.

He never regained consciousness.

A neurosurgeon operated on him for several hours through the early morning. On Saturday, with his brothers, Sean and Colin, his sister, Jennifer, and friends gathering at the hospital, he was placed on a ventilator to keep him breathing.

Nick Dowey was given last rites by a priest and “plenary indulgence” that evening to forgive him for his sins on Earth. His parents received Communion for him. His friends filed in one by one and touched him.

A doctor declared Nick Dowey brain dead at 10 minutes to 10 Saturday morning.

“That was the hardest part for me,” his mother said. “To walk away at that moment.”

His kidneys, eyes and heart were donated for transplant for people in need as he had requested.

“He saved people’s lives when he died. That’s the kind of person he was,” Ann Dowey said.

What kind of person would beat someone to death? Nick’s parents asked. And who, they asked, would see such a thing and then not be willing to tell authorities what they saw?

Although seven party-goers have reported that they saw a sheriff’s deputy strike Dowey, no witnesses have told investigators who delivered the first blows that cracked his skull and ultimately killed him.

“That concerns me,” said James Dowey of the alleged beating by a deputy. “But I don’t want to comment on that right now . . .. We’re just interested in bringing the person responsible to justice.”

*

Since burying their son, the family has pleaded with witnesses to talk to investigators.

“They should be responsible and come forward,” Ann Dowey said with anger in her voice and tears in her eyes. “I say come forward and clear your conscience . . . otherwise you have blood on your hands too.”

Most witnesses are simply afraid, said party-goer Christian Taylor, a 21-year-old oil rig worker and punk rocker.

“I suppose they’re afraid of the repercussions,” said Taylor, who said the Ojai Valley--known for its peacefulness and spirituality--has a dark underside characterized by racism and skinhead violence.

The party--billed as the punk event of the year--featured the bands No Regard and Dysfunction.

By the time Dowey had arrived sometime before 10 p.m., Taylor said, the party had already turned chaotic and violent.

Earlier in the evening, a 19-year-old Latino man was beaten bloody by some party-goers on the street in front of the home. Deputies had already come and gone, dealing with that trouble.

An hour later, the 19-year-old’s friends arrived at the party and there was a standoff. Many of them were armed with sawed-off broomsticks, clubs or heavy flashlights, Taylor said.

Nothing happened, but the tension was high enough that when the band started playing, the slam dancing became particularly violent, party-goers said. Small scuffles soon erupted.

At one point the guitarist for one of the bands slammed his instrument onto the head of a young man who was fighting, witnesses said.

When Dowey arrived with his friend, he walked into a powder keg that was ready to explode with violence, Taylor said.

What happened next is still shrouded in mystery, according to Sheriff’s Department investigators.

Family members and friends said they think Dowey simply was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But a few party-goers said that Dowey was “acting out” or that his friend had gotten into a shoving match.

His family says that version makes no sense. Their son was at the party less than 30 minutes before the fight broke out. He wasn’t drinking and he wasn’t taking drugs, they say; he wasn’t drunk.

*

Dowey’s parents have heard many of the stories. The one that sounds most plausible is that soon after their son arrived, he was asked by a young woman to intervene with a troublemaker. Dowey confronted the young man, who left but then returned with friends. They surrounded Dowey and struck him at least twice in the head with a metal club or a baseball bat.

Although investigators have spoken with more than 50 people who were at the party, they still have not pieced together what happened, said Capt. Bill Montijo.

“We have not had a lot of cooperation, no,” Montijo said. “I just hope that some would have the conscience enough to come forward. This man lost his life and we know that several people witnessed what happened.”

Detectives have recovered several items with blood on them, including baseball bats, a metal club-like device used to lock the steering wheels of cars, sticks and beer bottles.

The pieces of evidence have not yet come together to paint an accurate picture of what happened.

And the lingering questions might never be answered, said John Strobel, a family friend whose son, Jesse, was killed four years ago. Investigators were never able to assemble a case against the teenager suspected in the death of Strobel’s son.

“I know what they’re going through,” said John Strobel, after paying his respects to the Doweys at their son’s funeral. “You can’t imagine the pain they are feeling right now, and the thing is, it doesn’t end here.”

FYI

Anyone with any information about the beating is asked to call investigators at 654-2340 or the sheriff’s dispatch number at 654-2311. Information can be given anonymously.