Above: Josh Klaver used to play along Little Llagas Creek with his childhood friend Buck Tole. (Photo by LiPo Ching)

Kathy Atkins with Josh, who was 2, at the wedding of Judi Werner and K.W. Klaver. (Photo courtesy of Kathy Atkins)

An unlikely couple Josh’s parents never built a home together. Atkins was barely in her 20s and Klaver was 19 when they met at a San Jose dance hall in the late 1970s. They even disagree on which one: She says it was Sam’s country western bar near the Capitol Drive-in. He insists it was the Saddlerack across town. He would call their relationship no more than “a three-hour fling.” She would say it was more than that, but it was clearly brief. They never married and couldn’t have been a more opposite pair. She was a free spirit, a self-described hippie who followed the Grateful Dead and hung cotton tapestries on her bedroom walls. He lived in a trailer on his parents’ place in nearby Morgan Hill while starting his custom butcher business. Women thought he looked like Tom Selleck right down to the bushy mustache that he twisted as he talked. He stood 6-foot-2 from his hat to his boots and kept a can of chew in his back pocket. Atkins fell for him the way all the women would: “He was just sprinkled with cowboy dust, I guess.”

Josh, not yet 3, held the rings as K.W. married Judi Werner, left. K.W.’s mother “Boots” Klaver is on the right. (Courtesy of Judi Werner)

She was seven months along before she told him she was pregnant — and neither were ready to be parents. When Josh was born, she named him after Joshua in the Bible, the one God commanded to be “strong and courageous” so that “no one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life.” Klaver came to the hospital after Josh was born and visited the baby from time to time. But as a new mother, Atkins’ life was unraveling. With Josh in tow, she moved from her parents’ house, then in with friends, then back to her parents. She plunged into drug abuse. At the same time, Klaver met and married a woman who was 11 years older, owned the Nails R Us salon in Gilroy and was raising three boys of her own. The couple met at a local rodeo and bought the house and barn on Columbet Avenue. Judi Klaver encouraged her new husband to take a bigger role in his own son’s life. At their wedding, Josh, not quite 3, carried the rings on a little white pillow and wore a powder blue tux, white corsage and cowboy boots, just like his dad. Judi said she thought she was doing the right thing when she convinced Atkins to “let us take care of Josh for a while while she got on her feet.” What could be better for a boy than life on a farm, raising rabbits and riding horses? “I said, ‘I’m not here to take your son away from you,’” Judi said. “‘I’m here to help you.’” Looking back, she fears she did the wrong thing.

K.W. Klaver drove Judi Werner’s Corvette to their wedding in 1981. She had three boys and encouraged Klaver to make Josh a bigger part of his life. (Courtesy of Judi Werner)

Detectives recently visited Judi Werner, pictured at her San Jose home, to ask if she thought K.W. Klaver had anything to do with Josh’s death. “Do I think he did it? I can’t answer that. I would hope not.” (Photo by Julia Prodis Sulek)



Hear what Judi Werner said she told detectives who asked if she thought K.W. was capable of murder

THE FIRST WIFE’S LAMENT I wasn’t the first person with questions to navigate the steep dirt driveway to Judi’s property in San Jose’s east foothills. She remarried and now goes by Judi Werner. A pair of sheriff’s department investigators had been there months before. “They asked me if I felt that K.W. was capable, did I think K.W. murdered Josh,” Judi said. She fiddled with a Marlboro as we sat at a table in her garden overlooking Silicon Valley. “My answer was, well, K.W. is macho and he’s very arrogant. He’s cold. He is cold,” she said. “But honestly, do I think he’s capable of doing it? “Yes,” she said. “Do I think he did it? I can’t answer that. I would hope not.” She still keeps a framed photo of Josh on her dresser. She retrieved a box of photo albums from their early years, with pictures of Josh on horseback and at their wedding. When Josh was a toddler, she remembers him as “happy, happy, happy,” always following his older stepbrothers around. Things started to change when Klaver became a sheriff’s deputy, she said, and began working in the jails. He took on a tough-guy persona that hung over the household. “One minute he’s OK, the next he snaps,” she said. If Josh had an accident while potty-training, she said, Klaver punished him by hosing him down outside. If Josh complained about his dinner, she said, Klaver back-slapped him off his chair. And if Josh didn’t like something on his plate, “he literally force fed him until he gagged.” “It was always me coming to the rescue,” she said. When I called Judi’s middle son, Gilbert Sandoval, he described the force-feeding of Josh, too. “It was a very scary thing to watch.” Sandoval said he has “no doubt deep in my mind” that Klaver loved Josh. “Who doesn’t love their child? But his personality was stronger. In his eyes, his son had to grow up to be a tough hombre,” Sandoval, now 51, said. There was something else Sandoval says always struck him. “I can’t say I ever saw K.W. hug his son and tell him he loved him,” Sandoval told me. “That’s not something K.W. would do.”

Josh heads to school. (Courtesy of Kathy Atkins)

The custody file arrives After three years, Judi Werner said, she finally left Klaver when the marriage became violent. She never reported anything to the police, including what Klaver did to Josh. It wasn’t long before Klaver’s new girlfriend moved into the house on Columbet Avenue. Chiara Van Pelt, who goes by “Bobbi,” was a California Highway Patrol officer who would become Klaver’s second wife. Josh’s mother, meanwhile, had married Dennis Atkins, a computer technician. While the couple moved to Los Angeles then Livermore then back to the South Bay, there were times Kathy Atkins saw Josh infrequently. She knew none of Judi Werner’s disturbing stories — and for months didn’t know Judi had left Klaver. Then, when Josh was 6, Atkins was summoned to his school in Gilroy. The boy had told a teacher that his father knocked him down the back steps and into the garbage cans. A Child Protective Services social worker was there. So were Klaver and some fellow deputies. The social worker said Josh was terrified of going back to his father’s house. Atkins remembers the social worker angrily confronting the deputies as they surrounded the boy in front of his father and questioned him about his bruises. “She's furious. She's yelling at them and she's saying, ‘This line of questioning needs to stop,’” Atkins said. “K-Dub’s standing there.” Klaver insisted he never hurt the boy and was not charged. Even so, the incident was logged in a sheriff’s report, setting off a four-year tug-of-war over Josh, excruciatingly laid out in pages of claims and counterclaims over who was most fit to raise the boy. Because of an arcane California law, custody cases between unmarried parents are not public, but Atkins obtained the file and sent me a copy stuffed inside a manila envelope. It’s difficult reading. The accusations did not touch only Klaver: At one point, Klaver reported Atkins when Josh came home from a visit to his mother’s with bruises and a puffy eye. Atkins says Josh fell off his bike while riding over a homemade ramp. It must have been bewildering for Josh to understand just who was family. By the time he was 7, he had a mother, a father, two stepmothers, a stepfather, three stepbrothers and a growing number of half siblings. Where did he belong? Whom could he count on? During a four-day custody trial in 1986, with Werner and her eldest son taking the stand, Atkins says she found out for the first time the extent of the abuse Josh had suffered. Judge James Stewart granted Atkins custody of Josh, calling her a “nurturing mother” motivated by a “genuine concern for the safety of her son.” While Josh was in Klaver’s primary custody for the previous four years, the judge ruled, Klaver “engaged in a course of abusive conduct toward Joshua,” including whipping him with a belt, kicking him, striking him across his face and “hitting Joshua on all parts of his body.” The judge wrote that Josh was “presently a seriously disturbed child. He is terrified of being hurt or physically punished by his father.” Klaver denied neglecting or abusing Josh, the court records show. To be able to see his son again unsupervised, Klaver was ordered into parenting classes, an experience he would later say in a court declaration “has clearly provided new insight into my own behavior and the needs of my son.”

David Sussman, a lawyer who represented K.W. Klaver in the custody battle, said a judge overreacted in a ruling that Klaver abused Josh.

Kathy Atkins and her husband, Dennis, pose for a family photo with Josh, and his half-sister, Kristin Atkins. (Photo courtesy of Kathy Atkins.)

‘Close to psychotic’ But the troubles with Josh and the conflict between his parents only worsened. While in his mother’s and stepfather’s care, Josh’s behavior spiraled. He was 9 and kicking holes in walls. He hit a neighbor with a bat and wielded a carving knife at his mother. At times, Josh’s tantrums were so violent, they had to physically restrain him. Again, Josh’s parents blamed each other. Atkins said she had no choice but to institutionalize Josh. K.W. and Bobbi Klaver opposed it, which Atkins said created more problems. Josh would say, “They say you think I’m crazy, and I’m not crazy,” Atkins recalls. K.W. Klaver pushed to get back custody, saying Atkins couldn’t control Josh and that the boy wanted to be with him instead. In a declaration to the court that now seems tragically ironic, Klaver wrote: “I am at a loss to understand how the risk of placing Joshua with me on a temporary basis could possibly be more dangerous than the likelihood of a continuing need to institutionalize him.” When the battle returned to Santa Clara County Family Court in December 1987, Judge Jeremy Fogel was on the bench for an emergency hearing. After considering the testimony of three child psychologists, including one who said Josh wanted to be with his father and another saying Josh should live with his mother, Fogel found that Josh was “close to psychotic.” “The main cause,” he wrote, “is the conflict between the parents.” And with that, Fogel restored partial custody to Klaver and implored both parents to work out their issues “in order to help the child.” For the following year, Josh spent weekdays at his father’s house and weekends at his mother’s. He seemed to be doing better until about nine months later when the school called to report that Josh had written an alarming message in a journal — that he wished he were dead. Bobbi Klaver called a suicide hotline for advice, and Kathy Atkins hid all the neckties in her house.

Video: Dennis Atkins, Josh’s stepfather, talks about trip to the Pinnacles with Josh — and a comment Josh made about his father.

The day before Josh’s death, in January 1989, another ugly dispute erupted that would set the stage for tragedy. Atkins refused to return Josh after a weekend visit — she said Josh told her he didn’t want to go back to the Klavers — and K.W. showed up with police. They agreed to settle the matter the next morning in court, where a commissioner gave Klaver permission to take Josh home for the night. They all promised to return to court yet again the next day, when Josh, for the first time, was supposed to talk to a judge himself and perhaps say with which parent he wanted to live. The prospect of Josh choosing one parent over another may have weighed heavily on both houses — in one, the mother who might be chosen or rejected by her son … in the other, the father whose history of abuse might come into question … and the boy whose answer could only cause more pain. That meeting with the judge never came.