No remains of missing children found at defrocked priest's home <BR>Mark Martin, Kevin Fagan, Janine DeFao, Chronicle Staff Writers<BR>Friday, June 7, 2002 <BR>©2002 San Francisco Chronicle <P>URL: <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/06/07/BA124797.DTL";>http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/06/07/BA124797.DTL<;/a> <P> <P>Truckee, Nevada County -- Investigators finished digging up the yard of a defrocked Catholic priest's vacation home Thursday, and said they found no signs of the remains of four missing children from Northern California. <P>However, authorities said the allegations of molestation being investigated against Stephen Kiesle, 55, now involve more than a dozen people, including several from the East Bay. <P>Investigators, aided by cadaver-sniffing dogs and a backhoe, had been hunting around Kiesle's vacation home for clues linking him to the disappearances of four girls, including 7-year-old Amber Swartz of Pinole and 11-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard of South Lake Tahoe. They had suspected a connection to Amber's disappearance because Kiesle lived a block and a half from the girl when she vanished in 1988. <P>The dogs had picked up human or animal scents around Kiesle's Swiss chalet- style home, which sits on a street where neighbors are more used to bears foraging in the pines than swarms of investigators. But after excavating holes as large as 8 feet deep and 15 feet wide, authorities gave up. <P>"We have nothing to show that there's anybody in the ground," said Truckee Police Cmdr. Scott Berry. If they see a need for it later, investigators may return with sonar devices, he said. <P>Kiesle, who still lives in Pinole, recently retired as a computer consultant at ChevronTexaco in San Ramon. He was ordained in 1972 but was stripped of his priesthood in 1981 after being convicted of child molestation. <P>He already faces charges he molested five children 30 years ago when he was a priest at Santa Paula Church in Fremont. <P>The end of the hunt dashed the latest round of hopes for Amber's mother that after 14 years, she would learn what happened to her daughter. Kim Swartz has endured several false alarms in that time, and wasn't counting on this one panning out. <P>"For some weird reason, even though I was surprised this thing came up involving a former neighbor who just seemed like a nice man, I really didn't feel like we were going to find anything," Swartz said. "But then you never know." <P>Pinole Police Cmdr. John Miner said the end of the digging is also the end of investigators' focus on Kiesle in Amber's disappearance. <P>"There's nothing for us to pursue the Amber case at this point, but if something comes up we'll do that," he said. <P>Kiesle's attorney, Bill Gagen, said the excavation was "a complete red herring." <P>"It's an unfortunate coincidence they (Amber and his client) were in the same neighborhood," he said. Kiesle says he knows nothing about the girl's disappearance, Gagen added. <P>With the excavation done, investigators now are turning their attention to the molestation cases. <P>Three people called Pinole police Wednesday night to say Kiesle molested them as children in mid- to late 1970s, and investigators revealed Thursday that three similar cases have cropped in the Fremont area from the mid-1990s. <P>In recent weeks, two other people have contacted authorities saying Kiesle molested them in Pinole in the mid-1980s, authorities said. <P>Combined with the charges filed last month involving incidents of 30 years ago in Fremont, the number of people involved in molestation complaints against Kiesle now totals 13. <P>"There will be charges filed," Berry said. <P>Kiesle pleaded not guilty May 20 in the decades-old Fremont cases and has been free on $180,000 bail. <P>Gagen said said he knew of one new molestation allegation against his client, but had no direct knowledge of others. "I think all the complaints relate to what can generally be called inappropriate touching, and nothing more," he said. <P>Miner said some of the allegations go beyond touching, but he would not elaborate. <P>Gagen also said the week's developments are taking an emotional toll on his client. <P>"It's bad enough having to deal with problems in your life that are a direct result of an unfortunate seminary process that takes 12- and 13-year- olds and expects them to be normal," Gagen said. Kiesle entered the seminary at 13. <P>"We're not contesting the fact where there was a point in his life where his hands ended up where they didn't belong," Gagen said. "We know he had a problem. (But) it was a long time ago." <P>Kiesle was arrested in 1978 on charges of molesting two teenage boys at Our Lady of the Rosary parish school in Union City, where he was a priest and teacher. Kiesle was sentenced to three years' probation and was defrocked in 1981. <P>"My only excuse for getting into this situation was that I was somehow able to convince myself that I was not hurting the children," he said at the time. <P>The conviction was expunged from court records before Amber disappeared, under a law that has since been changed. Because there was no record, Kiesle's name never came up when police queried every child molester on file in the area after Amber was snatched -- something that had Kim Swartz and the families of other missing children seething. <P>Chronicle staff writers Henry K. Lee, Ryan Kim and Charlie Goodyear contributed to this report. / E-mail the writers at mmartin@sfchronicle.com, kfagan@sfchronicle.com and jdefao@sfchronicle.com. <P>©2002 San Francisco Chronicle Page A - 23 <BR>