Update: Dennis Tison Denied Bail in Daughter's Death
Maggie
He says she fell, but blood was found 9 feet away from the house. From KCRA:
Bail Denied For Accused Baby Killer
Judge Says Tison Would Be Danger To Society
SACRAMENTO, 7:07 p.m. PDT July 18, 2001 -- The man accused of throwing his
1-year-old baby out the window of their Sacramento home will remain behind
bars.
A judge ruled Wednesday that there's sufficient evidence that shows that Dr.
Dennis Tison would be a danger to society if he were let go. Prosecutors say
that Tison threw 14-month-old Isabel out of a second story window.
Tison's lawyer says that the girl fell out, and that it was a tragic accident.
In a legal brief, prosecutors described Tison as a man prone to "mental
instability," "threats of violence" and "drug usage." They go on to say that he
has a history of violence. In their legal brief prosecutors wrote that in 1995
"Dr. Tison threatened his then-wife Nicole, stating he was going to have his
friend in San Diego Take care of her."
Tison allegedly threatened a former employee in 1998, saying, "I know all about
your past. I know all about your future. Good luck Tamara. That's all I can
say, because there is no future for you," according to prosecutors. They also
said that in 1999, Tison told a former employee that he had pointed a handgun
some children that were playing in the street to "teach them a lesson.''
Authorities said that investigators found assault weapons, thousands of rounds
of ammunition, survivalist literature and nazi paraphernalia inside Tison's
Rocklin home
But Tison's attorney, Donald Heller, called all the evidence nothing more than
a smear campaign.
"This is an extremely weak case of murder," Heller said.
Tison's wife, Elena, supports that claim. "I do believe these are smears. He's
a good doctor and a good father. This is a nightmare. The whole entire process
since she died. He's innocent of all charges. He wouldn't hurt our daughter. He
wouldn't hurt me. Isabel was his whole world. When she died, so much of him
died. She fell out that window," Elena Tison said.
The judge did not have the jurisdiction to revoke Tison's medical license, but
he did rule that Tison couldn't practice medicine throughout the remainder of
the court process.
Maggie
"What made a woman presume that her rape (her miscarriage, her marriage, her
divorce, her loss of a child or a husband) was the only universal experience
that there was?"--John Irving
DedNdogYrs
Dogs & children first.
Maggie
>Dogs & children first.
>
Condit stories.
Maggie
Wife calls suspect in death of daughter a 'doting father'
By Sam Stanton
Bee Staff Writer
(Published July 22, 2001)
It's never a good sign when the wife of a man accused of murder has to sign a
statement swearing that "My husband is not a Nazi."
Or that he could not possibly have tossed their 14-month-old daughter out a
second-story window.
But that is the nightmarish place Elena Bravo Tison finds herself in today,
caring for a 2-week-old newborn son alone while waiting to see if her husband,
prominent weight-loss doctor Dennis Jay Tison, will stand trial on charges that
he murdered their daughter in January.
"I will note at the outset that Dennis Tison loved and adored our daughter,
Isabel," Elena Tison said in a statement filed in Sacramento Superior Court
this week. "Dennis could not intentionally harm our daughter, much less throw
her out the window."
There is little dispute that Isabel Nathasha Tison went out the window of the
Tison home on Snowberry Way in Orangevale the afternoon of Jan. 12 and died
hours later in surgery.
But there is a fierce fight brewing over whether the toddler tumbled out in a
horrible accident or was killed in a fit of rage by her father, a doctor and
law school graduate who had found a lucrative medical niche helping people lose
weight.
At the center of the dispute is the question of who is Dennis Tison: the
friendly, mild-mannered collector of antiques and guns whose reputation is
being smeared by prosecutors? Or a closet neo-Nazi with an explosive temper and
a penchant for creating unusual Web sites?
"I found him to be a wonderful guy," said former patient Will Dunnigan-Shread,
who lost 24 pounds under Tison's care. "I just can't imagine him doing anything
like this."
But prosecutors, who investigated the case for six months before filing charges
against Tison, say he has a dark side.
"There is something else lurking within this man," Deputy District Attorney
Mark Curry said this week as he successfully argued for Tison to remain in jail
without bail.
Even some of Tison's defenders say that he has made some strange choices in
life and that he craves approval, attention and success.
He liked to drop names, and had a fascination with the Internet. One of his Web
sites showed him in a photo with actor William Shatner.
In addition to a Web site promoting his Bravo Medical Centers -- named to honor
his wife's maiden name -- he constructed Web pages devoted to his daughter.
The pages include photos of the little girl and the family and a history of her
life that includes references to her protective father.
Users who clicked on the words "HE IS SO PROTECTIVE" in one section of her
short biography, for instance, found their computers linking to a new page: a
photo of a masked man pointing a pistol with the caption, "WARNING!!! Do not
bring my daughter home late from a date."
That reference was a joke, Elena Tison said in a telephone interview Thursday
from the family's new home in Rocklin, where she is caring for the couple's
newborn son, Caesar.
"He always joked that he worried she would someday be dating," Elena Tison
said. "He was very protective of us."
After Isabel's death, Tison updated the site, saying "with deep painful sorrow
that no further additions will be made to this site."
Tison was "a doting father," Elena Tison said, and had talked from the start of
their marriage of wanting to have children.
The pair met at Hastings College of Law, where he was seeking a law degree to
open a medical malpractice firm. Within five months, on graduation day 1996, he
took her to the top of Mount Diablo, dropped to one knee and proposed, she
said.
They were married in Walnut Creek, where his family lives, in the living room
of a judge who is a family friend. From there, they began to focus their
careers on the weight-loss business.
The Tisons operated offices in Citrus Heights and Sacramento until his arrest,
dealing with patients who needed help losing weight and selling them drugs to
help in that process.
Dennis Tison became such a specialist in the emerging field of drug therapy for
weight loss that he was quoted as an expert in The Bee and the New York Times
for his expertise with fen-phen, Xenical and other drugs.
The clinics now are effectively closed, although employees are there handling
paperwork. Tison is under investigation by the state medical board, which asked
the court to suspend his license.
Even if Tison is exonerated, his defense attorney says, he is essentially
ruined.
At the clinics, Dennis Tison worked hard to make his patients comfortable,
making certain that chairs had no arms to allow overweight people to sit with
ease. The scales could weigh people up to 600 pounds, a step Elena Tison said
her husband took after a woman came in crying that when another doctor was
unable to weigh her, he suggested she ask the butcher to use his meat scale.
"His patients love him because he's a very good listener," said Elena Tison,
who helped run the offices and handled the hiring and firing of employees.
Dennis Tison also was "very nice to the staff," his wife said.
However, two former workers cited in court documents have told investigators
that Tison made advances toward them or threatened them. They also reported he
had a fascination with weapons, including about 20 semiautomatic assault rifles
that records indicate he owned.
A third former worker, who asked not to be named, told The Bee that Tison was
abusive and obsessed with "certain movies and Nazi stuff."
"He would talk about trying to get on the Internet to purchase tanks," the
former employee said.
Elena Tison and defense attorney Donald H. Heller have denied all such
allegations, saying the former workers were fired for legitimate reasons and
this is the first time they have made claims of abuse or bizarre behavior.
The workers also frequently gave "thank you" cards to the Tisons for treating
them well at work, court filings from Heller said.
And the claims that Tison had Nazi paraphernalia are an overreaction to the
fact that he is a history buff and collector, Heller said.
Court records say investigators have found Nazi literature in Tison's home.
More disturbing to some was Tison's fondness for guns, including the loaded,
laser-sighted .357-caliber revolver that was on his home office desk.
That desk, pushed up against a second-floor window of the four-bedroom home, is
where Tison has told investigators Isabel was playing before she stood up and
accidentally crashed through the screen to a wooden deck below.
Elena Tison said Thursday that the gun was on a far corner of the desk away
from where her daughter was playing and that Isabel would not have had enough
strength to pull the trigger.
Both Tisons carried weapons and had concealed-weapons permits from the
Sacramento County Sheriff's Department. Elena Tison said they needed the guns
because of the volume of money and the value of the weight-loss drugs they
dealt with through the clinics.
But the presence of the revolver and a nearby speed loader were cited Wednesday
by Superior Court Judge Patrick Marlette as one reason to deny bail. "It makes
no sense to me whatsoever," Marlette said.
It's not the only perplexing issue in the case.
Tison has said Isabel fell out of the window and through the screen after he
opened the window to enjoy a pleasant day. Yet the temperature that January day
was about 50 degrees, to which his supporters responded that Tison enjoyed
brisk, cool weather and cold swims.
Elena Tison was out hunting for a larger house the day Isabel died and called
late in the afternoon to talk to her husband.
"I could hear her playing in the background," she said of Isabel. She told her
husband she would be home within an hour.
A short time later, however, the little girl went out the window and plunged to
the deck below. Tison said he ran down to get her and decided to drive her to
the emergency room himself rather than call 911 because he thought it would be
faster than waiting for an ambulance.
Since then, prosecutors have pored over every aspect of Tison's life, including
how frequently he drinks alcohol and how much he had to drink the day Isabel
died. He has said he had one and a half beers that day. Curry said Wednesday
that when Tison was arrested the afternoon of July 9, when he had been driving,
his blood-alcohol level was above the legal limit.
Investigators have made several trips to the Snowberry Way home to do tests and
study evidence, contributing to some surprising twists in the case that are
likely to come up if there is a trial.
Tison called the Sheriff's Department before his arrest and asked whether he
could donate extra ephedrine, a component in weight-loss drugs, from his
practice, perhaps for use in undercover drug stings. Officials declined his
offer about the same time they canceled his concealed-weapons permit.
And during one search of the Tison home, one of the officers called out was
sheriff's Patrolman Michael Heller, the son of the defense attorney.
Sheriff's officials say the patrolman was there through sheer coincidence, that
he was training that day with a crime scene investigator called to the home.
Heller never handled evidence, sheriff's officials said, and made it clear at
the time that his father represented Tison.
There also is the question about how some key evidence was handled. On the one
hand, investigators meticulously investigated whether the girl had been shaken
to death, sending her brain and eyeballs out to specialists. On the other, no
one bothered to test the blood from the wooden deck until last week.
That test took place only after the defense said the blood might have come from
Lightning, the family's Doberman pinscher, rather than from Isabel.
The blood was collected the day of the death by a sheriff's homicide
investigator. However, he hurriedly used paper towels to wipe it up, then
placed it in a plastic grocery sack, after seeing Tison prepare to wipe it up
himself, officials said.
The origin of the blood -- dog or child -- is a key point because the spot
where it was found could help determine the girl's trajectory, shedding light
on whether she fell or was thrown.
Heller, the attorney, said Isabel fell out of the window after crashing through
the screen, which he has said was not properly secured.
And Elena Tison blames herself, at least in part, she said, because she was in
charge of child-safety precautions at the home.
"I will always feel guilty," she said. "I bought those screens. I will always
feel terrible that I could have bought more expensive screens."
Jojoz
"Maggie" wrote in message
|
| In addition to a Web site promoting his Bravo Medical Centers -- named to
honor
| his wife's maiden name -- he constructed Web pages devoted to his
daughter.
|
| The pages include photos of the little girl and the family and a history
of her
| life that includes references to her protective father.
This is a really interesting case ... glad you posted more... here's the
website for Bravo Medical he created
Havent' found one on his daughter yet....but then again, it's not even 7am
here....and still have to finish a full cup of coffee :)
~Jojoz
Jojoz
"Jojoz" <jojozsd@hotmail.[SPAMBLOC]com> wrote in message
news:ROV67.11149$MC1.1...@news1.elcjn1.sdca.home.com...
Daughters website : http://www.softcom.net/users/tgtgti/izzmain.htm
~Jojoz
(the coffee kicked in !)
bradgr...@gmail.com
mccoin...@aol.com
coll...@gmail.com
> Brad you are a idiot. I lived across the hall from him in college and he was the coolest and nicest guy.