This photo does something for my soul. And when I wake up in the morning and turn my head towards the window after first opening my eyes, and this is what I see, I am so grateful!
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Sunrise at home, late December, 2009
This photo does something for my soul. And when I wake up in the morning and turn my head towards the window after first opening my eyes, and this is what I see, I am so grateful!
Friday, January 8, 2010
Woman Fights Back After 2002 Assault on Mammoth Mountain
Would-be rapist gets 23 years
By Catherine Billey
Mammoth Times Staff Writer
This story ran on the front page of the January 8, 2010, Mammoth Times and on the back page of its sister paper, the Inyo Register, on January 9, 2010
It was the cry for help heard by two skiers on Mammoth Mountain’s White Bark Ridge that saved Cecile Zimmermann’s life on Jan. 20, 2002 after she was injected with an overdose of the tranquilizer ketamine from behind by would-be rapist, Steven William Neff.
“What he didn’t count on was that she would fight and some skiers would come to her rescue so he had to snowboard away,” explained Detective Jesse Gorham of the Mammoth Lakes Police Department in a recent interview. He handled the long-running investigation after Sgt. Karen Smart’s initial intake.
“I have no doubt that if he had raped her and no one had come along she would have been found dead in the trees.”
As it was, Zimmermann – who is today pursuing a dual master’s degree in Communications and Business Administration at Johns Hopkins University – nearly died of respiratory and cardiac failure after her rescue on the slopes.
“Had it not been for Mammoth’s emergency workers, she would have expired,” Gorham said. “They used a breathing apparatus on her. She was on it at the hospital before the drug metabolized out of her body and she regained her ability to breathe.”
While would-be rapist Neff fled that January day to what he likely believed was obscurity, Zimmermann’s lightning instinct before she lost consciousness ensured that a piece of evidence – a ski glove – was left behind that would ultimately link him via DNA to future sex crimes and facilitate his conviction and sentencing last November to 23 years in prison.
“What happened was I saw the syringe in his hand, so I realized he wasn’t wearing the glove,” Zimmermann said in a Jan. 5 phone interview from Washington, D.C. “When he was about to reach for the glove, I stepped on it and held on to it until the paramedics got there. At that point, I was passed out.”
She recalls that something ferocious kicked in when she saw her attacker reach for the glove. “I think it was just one of those things where I thought, ‘you did something to me, now I’m going to keep your glove.”’
Zimmermann is what Gorham describes as “a righteous victim.” “I’m very proud of Ceci. She’s an inspirational lady. She’s a neat person.”
Zimmermann explained that she is “glad” it happened to her rather than someone else. “Because I wouldn’t want anyone else to go through this. Who knows what he would have done to someone else? Maybe it was my reaction that scared him off,” she said.
Her intentional taking of the glove, along with MLPD sleuth work, eventually connected Neff to a string of felony sex crimes in the Santa Barbara area. The MLPD assisted the Santa Barbara Police and Sheriff’s Departments and arrested Neff on March 2, 2007.
Today, Gorham is proud of the MLPD’s role in putting Neff behind bars. “Essentially, it’s a story about a lot of diligent police work,” he said.
“The glove was almost miraculous in a sense because we didn’t normally get DNA out of gloves in 2002. But I said I wanted the thing sent to Fresno for DNA analysis, and lo and behold, we got DNA out of it.”
It didn’t match anything in the DNA registry in 2002, however, so it went into CODIS, the criminal offender DNA database, and the Mammoth case went cold.
Four years later, however, on Dec. 5, 2006, Gorham received a notification letter of a match from CODIS, linking Neff to the DNA sample from the glove.
With that hit, the case was reopened and Gorham began working with Marty Ensign and later Jaycee Hunter, both of the Santa Barbara police. “I said I want everything on Neff,” Gorham explained.
Neff sold sports supplements from his base in Santa Barbara and often came up to Mammoth for snowboarding. He liked to hang out with college kids, according to Gorham. “He was not a bad looking guy, very athletic, kind of a Ted Bundy type.”
But Gorham had to establish Neff’s physical presence in Mammoth along with the glove on the weekend of the Zimmermann assault. He got that through a search warrant on Neff’s credit cards and utilizing what he describes as Mammoth Mountain’s excellent database to cross check his VISA card.
“He purchased a meal at Mammoth Mountain and a lift ticket. Then he also had to purchase some gas down at Giggle Springs in Bishop, all from the 19th through 21st of 2002,” Gorham said. “I clamped it on both sides of a vise.”
Gorham also has words of praise for Santa Barbara prosecutor Ron Zonen, who had to coordinate numerous witnesses in the case from a woman in France to an ex-girlfriend in Germany to Zimmermann and another woman in Washington State. “He did an absolutely phenomenal job,” Gorham said.
Two of Neff’s felony sex crimes put him behind bars, though it was a burglary that tripped the DNA sample.
Gorham said he sensed from the start that what happened to Zimmermann on Mammoth Mountain wasn’t an isolated case. “I thought it was serial even before we knew it because it was so bizarre,” he explained.
With the involvement of the Santa Barbara District Attorney’s offices, all agencies pooled their resources to obtain an arrest warrant for Neff. By that time, the Mammoth case could not be prosecuted as the statute of limitations had expired, but Zimmermann was called to testify as a material witness in both trials.
“I’m very happy with the conviction,” she said. “I’ve never wished ill on anyone, but I just don’t think there is any rehabilitating for this person.”
The trauma wound up being a life-changing event for Zimmermann, now 41. “I pretty much flat lined,” she recalls of that January day. “It gave me a different perspective on people and life.”
But she refuses to let someone like Neff make her “wary of friendly people.” It could have happened even if she had been skiing side by side with friends rather than alone below Chair 12, she added. “No one expects any of this.”
Realizing she had been very lucky not only in surviving the assault but throughout her entire life, she hastened back to school to complete her undergraduate education and take advantage of her second chance.
“I wanted to do something that would better myself and others in the future. Up to that point in my life, I felt that I had accomplished everything,” she said.
She met someone in foster care that inspired her on her current path. “ I just didn’t want to take anything for granted at that point,” she said. “My long term goal at this time is to start a nonprofit organization for kids who are aging out of the foster care system.”
She admitted she has not been back to Mammoth Mountain since the assault. “But honestly, I haven’t had the time,” she added. “I will once I’m done with school. I’ll come back there and get back on the horse, as they say.”
By Catherine Billey
Mammoth Times Staff Writer
This story ran on the front page of the January 8, 2010, Mammoth Times and on the back page of its sister paper, the Inyo Register, on January 9, 2010
It was the cry for help heard by two skiers on Mammoth Mountain’s White Bark Ridge that saved Cecile Zimmermann’s life on Jan. 20, 2002 after she was injected with an overdose of the tranquilizer ketamine from behind by would-be rapist, Steven William Neff.
“What he didn’t count on was that she would fight and some skiers would come to her rescue so he had to snowboard away,” explained Detective Jesse Gorham of the Mammoth Lakes Police Department in a recent interview. He handled the long-running investigation after Sgt. Karen Smart’s initial intake.
“I have no doubt that if he had raped her and no one had come along she would have been found dead in the trees.”
As it was, Zimmermann – who is today pursuing a dual master’s degree in Communications and Business Administration at Johns Hopkins University – nearly died of respiratory and cardiac failure after her rescue on the slopes.
“Had it not been for Mammoth’s emergency workers, she would have expired,” Gorham said. “They used a breathing apparatus on her. She was on it at the hospital before the drug metabolized out of her body and she regained her ability to breathe.”
While would-be rapist Neff fled that January day to what he likely believed was obscurity, Zimmermann’s lightning instinct before she lost consciousness ensured that a piece of evidence – a ski glove – was left behind that would ultimately link him via DNA to future sex crimes and facilitate his conviction and sentencing last November to 23 years in prison.
“What happened was I saw the syringe in his hand, so I realized he wasn’t wearing the glove,” Zimmermann said in a Jan. 5 phone interview from Washington, D.C. “When he was about to reach for the glove, I stepped on it and held on to it until the paramedics got there. At that point, I was passed out.”
She recalls that something ferocious kicked in when she saw her attacker reach for the glove. “I think it was just one of those things where I thought, ‘you did something to me, now I’m going to keep your glove.”’
Zimmermann is what Gorham describes as “a righteous victim.” “I’m very proud of Ceci. She’s an inspirational lady. She’s a neat person.”
Zimmermann explained that she is “glad” it happened to her rather than someone else. “Because I wouldn’t want anyone else to go through this. Who knows what he would have done to someone else? Maybe it was my reaction that scared him off,” she said.
Her intentional taking of the glove, along with MLPD sleuth work, eventually connected Neff to a string of felony sex crimes in the Santa Barbara area. The MLPD assisted the Santa Barbara Police and Sheriff’s Departments and arrested Neff on March 2, 2007.
Today, Gorham is proud of the MLPD’s role in putting Neff behind bars. “Essentially, it’s a story about a lot of diligent police work,” he said.
“The glove was almost miraculous in a sense because we didn’t normally get DNA out of gloves in 2002. But I said I wanted the thing sent to Fresno for DNA analysis, and lo and behold, we got DNA out of it.”
It didn’t match anything in the DNA registry in 2002, however, so it went into CODIS, the criminal offender DNA database, and the Mammoth case went cold.
Four years later, however, on Dec. 5, 2006, Gorham received a notification letter of a match from CODIS, linking Neff to the DNA sample from the glove.
With that hit, the case was reopened and Gorham began working with Marty Ensign and later Jaycee Hunter, both of the Santa Barbara police. “I said I want everything on Neff,” Gorham explained.
Neff sold sports supplements from his base in Santa Barbara and often came up to Mammoth for snowboarding. He liked to hang out with college kids, according to Gorham. “He was not a bad looking guy, very athletic, kind of a Ted Bundy type.”
But Gorham had to establish Neff’s physical presence in Mammoth along with the glove on the weekend of the Zimmermann assault. He got that through a search warrant on Neff’s credit cards and utilizing what he describes as Mammoth Mountain’s excellent database to cross check his VISA card.
“He purchased a meal at Mammoth Mountain and a lift ticket. Then he also had to purchase some gas down at Giggle Springs in Bishop, all from the 19th through 21st of 2002,” Gorham said. “I clamped it on both sides of a vise.”
Gorham also has words of praise for Santa Barbara prosecutor Ron Zonen, who had to coordinate numerous witnesses in the case from a woman in France to an ex-girlfriend in Germany to Zimmermann and another woman in Washington State. “He did an absolutely phenomenal job,” Gorham said.
Two of Neff’s felony sex crimes put him behind bars, though it was a burglary that tripped the DNA sample.
Gorham said he sensed from the start that what happened to Zimmermann on Mammoth Mountain wasn’t an isolated case. “I thought it was serial even before we knew it because it was so bizarre,” he explained.
With the involvement of the Santa Barbara District Attorney’s offices, all agencies pooled their resources to obtain an arrest warrant for Neff. By that time, the Mammoth case could not be prosecuted as the statute of limitations had expired, but Zimmermann was called to testify as a material witness in both trials.
“I’m very happy with the conviction,” she said. “I’ve never wished ill on anyone, but I just don’t think there is any rehabilitating for this person.”
The trauma wound up being a life-changing event for Zimmermann, now 41. “I pretty much flat lined,” she recalls of that January day. “It gave me a different perspective on people and life.”
But she refuses to let someone like Neff make her “wary of friendly people.” It could have happened even if she had been skiing side by side with friends rather than alone below Chair 12, she added. “No one expects any of this.”
Realizing she had been very lucky not only in surviving the assault but throughout her entire life, she hastened back to school to complete her undergraduate education and take advantage of her second chance.
“I wanted to do something that would better myself and others in the future. Up to that point in my life, I felt that I had accomplished everything,” she said.
She met someone in foster care that inspired her on her current path. “ I just didn’t want to take anything for granted at that point,” she said. “My long term goal at this time is to start a nonprofit organization for kids who are aging out of the foster care system.”
She admitted she has not been back to Mammoth Mountain since the assault. “But honestly, I haven’t had the time,” she added. “I will once I’m done with school. I’ll come back there and get back on the horse, as they say.”
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