What Happened
The trial took 10 weeks and the trial testimony is over 40 volumes (11,000 pages). This is a summary of what happened. Since the case is currently under appeal Brandon cannot comment on the accuracy of what has been written.
On May 22, 1995, Brandon Hein admittedly was headed down a very treacherous path. An "A" student through grade school - adolescence, junior high, and changes in family structure combined to put pressures on Hein which he relieved with alcohol.
He started drinking in ninth grade on Christmas break and kept right on drinking heavily. He dropped out of a good high school and chose an alternative school which unfortunately gave him more free time, more time to get drunk with his friends. Yet he was able to function, continue his education, hold down a part-time job, and for the most part conceal his alcoholism from his family.
Hein, just 18, and his friend Micah Holland, 15, were bored and looking to party. After calling a few friends who weren't home, they called Chris Velards,18, who had a pick up truck and was with his friend Tony Miliotti, 17.
Earlier that day Velardo had visited his friend Mike McLoren, 17, at McLoren's backyard clubhouse/bedroom known by local teens as "The Fort," a pretentious name for a skuzzy 11X12 foot shack thrown together out of plywood. "The Fort" was a hangout for McLoren and his upper middle class friends, a place for unsupervised "parties" and smoking dope. McLoren was the "dope dealer" as well, providing marijuana for his friends who in turn paid for their share of the drugs. According to the THOUSAND OAKS STAR, "McLoren testified that he sold marijuana to students in the Conejo Valley area, and had as many as 30 regular clients . . . " Velardo had stopped by the Fort, but finding his estranged girl friend there, left, arranging to come back later in the afternoon to get drugs. Brandon and Micah Holland, Velardo, and Miliotti then stopped at another friend's home where they met up with Jason Holland and started drinking "shots" of alcohol. By later afternoon these teens had consumed so much alcohol it is a wonder they could navigate, much less drive, or remember.
It was dark inside the fort, painted black, lit only by the light coming through one cloth-covered Plexiglas window. The events of the next minute have been played and replayed. Since everyone was high, including drug dealer McLoren, the state's only witness to the events that took place inside "The Fort", it is unlikely that anybody knows or remembers what really happened. Micah Holland and Mike McLoren got into an altercation which instantly escalated into a drunken brawl. Drug dealer McLoren beat the 15-year-old Holland on the head until Holland's older brother, Jason, jumped into the fight. and the neighbor, Jimmy Farris, jumped in to aid McLoren. Punches were flying. At one point in the fight Jimmy Farris turns to the physically smaller Brandon Hein and grabbed him by the shoulders with such force as to knock them both down. Farris landed on the couch and Hein on the floor. Hein jumped up and threw a couple of punches which Farris blocked with his hands. Then, as quickly as the fight began, it was over. McLoren will testify in court that the fight took only 1 minute.
Both sides withdrew to lick their wounds. Farris and McLoren ran to McLoren's house; while Hein, the two Holland brothers, and Miliotti got in Velardo's truck and drove away. Nothing was taken. It would seem like a brief, backyard brawl except that within an hour Jimmy Farris was dead and McLoren was in the hospital.
When they were driving away reliving the fight, Jason Holland announced, as he pulled a 2" pocket knife from a belt holder, that he "thinks he stabbed 'em." The others, drunk with alcohol, listened in shock and drunken disbelief. Jason opened the knife and showed a thin line of what he claimed was blood. The others, seeing this remained skeptical .
Nancy McLoren, a teacher, was grading papers when Mike and Jimmy burst into the kitchen and announced they had been stabbed. She called 911 and summoned her neighbor, Judie Farris. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's officers responded almost immediately. Jimmy Farris lay collapsed on the floor hemorrhaging internally with his mother at his side. Jimmy was rushed to nearby Westlake Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 9:05 PM. Mike McLoren, the drug dealer, was taken to UCLA Medical Center with a lacerated liver and minor wounds on his upper body.
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