Former Stanislaus official accused of sending recent death threats to herself

Karen Mathews Davis, who gained fame for resisting extremist tax protesters when she was Stanislaus County’s clerk-recorder in the mid 1990s, has been arrested and charged with fabricating death-threat letters to herself when she was a congressional candidate in late 2013 and early 2014.

Mathews Davis, 67, of Lodi failed a polygraph test and admitted to federal investigators that she wrote, printed and sent herself two disturbing letters during the campaign, says an arrest warrant affidavit made public Wednesday. When she finished last in a four-way primary last year, Mathews Davis told The Modesto Bee that threats had dampened her enthusiasm for campaigning, and a few months later she released a book detailing her account of being ambushed, beaten and sexually assaulted in the garage of her Modesto home in 1994.

Nine people were convicted of conspiracy and racketeering and an Oregon man, Roger Steiner, served 18 years in federal prison for the assault. He was released to a Fresno halfway house in early 2015 and called The Bee, saying he was “totally innocent,” just before Mathews announced her candidacy.

Mathews Davis steered U.S. Department of Treasury investigators toward Steiner, her grandson, a neighbor’s nephew and a member of her church as possible suspects in the threat letters, the affidavit says. One threatened “a close-up shot to your head or to your husband” if she refused to end her candidacy, and the other read, in part, “You won’t see it coming! Your family will have to plan a funeral.”

An investigator could not tie envelope or DNA evidence to suspects. In February, Mathews Davis failed a polygraph test and admitted fabricating the letters, including writing on the inside of an envelope “white bitch,” words she said were spoken during the 1994 assault and which were quoted by a prosecutor at Steiner’s trial, says the affidavit submitted by Treasury agent John Hartman.

The document says Mathews Davis took depression medication, hid the ruse from her husband and mailed the second letter while running errands to avoid being captured by a security camera at her home mailbox. Investigators had placed the camera there after she reported receiving the first threat in an envelope with no postmark, suggesting someone had approached her home.

Born and raised in Stockton, Mathews Davis was city clerk in Manteca from 1981 to 1984 and Stanislaus’ clerk-recorder from 1990 to 2001. She had reported receiving a 1993 written threat from protestors reading, “The next bullet will be directed at your head!!!”

Steiner had called The Bee in February 2014 to complain of being railroaded in the press and said, “I’m the victim, not Karen Mathews. I was wrongfully imprisoned for 18 years.” He called again in July 2014, at about the time her book, “The Terrorist in My Garage,” was published, and restated claims of innocence.

U.S. Rep. Jerry McNerney was re-elected last year to the 9th Congressional District, which includes Lathrop, part of Escalon and portions of Contra Costa and Sacramento counties.

This story was originally published October 28, 2015 at 3:48 PM with the headline "Former Stanislaus official accused of sending recent death threats to herself."