Conflicted

I had no idea that my work on a motion picture would cause a high-profile death penalty case to end up with the California Supreme Court. Jesse James Hollywood had been gone for nearly three years by the time I became involved. He had totally disappeared. Vanished into thin air. And he seemed so completely removed from the writing project I was about to begin.

The FBI and other federal and local law enforcement authorities trails had all but dried up. That’s why the prosecutor assigned to the case, Santa Barbara County Senior Deputy District Attorney Ron Zonen, who had also prosecuted Hollywood’s four co-defendants and a guy named Michael Jackson agreed to work with us. Mr. Zonen had wanted to create a sort of global wanted poster to see if someone somewhere in the world might be able to ID Hollywood, pick up the phone, and help global law enforcement authorities nab him. Zonen had already worked with the producers from the television show America’s Most Wanted, who featured the fugitive on nine of its shows between 2000 and 2003, and he wanted his man, badly.

Hollywood’s name had become daily fodder for national headlines after word of...