Mammoth Lakes Doctor Commits Suicide

1-24-2012 California:

KEY News has learned a Mammoth Lakes doctor charged with sex crimes involving a 14 year old Santa Barbara girl has committed suicide.

Doctor Andrew Bourne faced eight counts of illegal communication with a minor to facilitate sexual activity.

Sources tell KEY News that Bourne killed himself on Tuesday by injecting himself with drugs.

Santa Barbara police arrested Bourne and businessman Joe Walker, earlier this month in Mammoth Lakes. Both men were transported to Santa Barbara where they went before a judge and eventually posted $750,000 bail.

The Mono County Sheriff's Office released a statement saying 46 year old Dr. Bourne was found unresponsive in the Mammoth Lakes area. Local authorities were dispatched to the scene and found Bourne dead. The coroner's office has started an investigation, however foul play is not suspected.

KEY News was first to report that the alleged sexual contact with the girl happened for more than a year and included possibly thousands of emails and other electronic communications between Bourne, Walker and the girl. Sources say both men knew the family.

Police were called after the girl's parents discovered a suspicious email. That's when Santa Barbara Police detectives started an investigation.

Bourne was notified on January 9th that his contract at the Mammoth hospital where he worked was terminated because he could not fulfill its terms due to the ongoing criminal case. Dr. Bourne also resigned from his post on the Mammoth Lakes School Board. ..Source.. by C.J. Ward

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Accused Sex Offender Found Dead

Dr. Andrew Bourne, a highly-regarded vascular surgeon who had been recently charged in Santa Barbara with unlawful contact with a child with intent to commit a sexual crime, was today found dead near his Mammoth Lakes residence. As reported in Crime Voice on January 19th, Bourne, 46, and Joseph Walker, 48, filed pleas of not guilty with the court and were released by Santa Barbara Superior Court Judge George Eskin on $750,000 bond with GPS tracking devices to monitor their movements.

It was Bourne’s tracking device that led to the discovery of his body by his wife on Hot Creek Hatchery Road in the Mammoth Lakes community.

Mono County Sheriff’s Department issued a media release indicating that Bourne had been found unresponsive in the late afternoon of January 24th, and that while they do not suspect foul play in Bourne’s death, the exact cause of death remains under investigation by the Inyo County Coroner’s Office in Bishop. It had earlier been reported that Santa Barbara Deputy District Attorney Mary Barron, reputedly expert in prosecuting sex crimes under the guidance of D.A. Joyce Dudley, informed Judge Eskin that Bourne had announced to his alleged teenage victim his intent to commit suicide if he were indicted.

Bourne’s Ventura County attorney, Ron Bamieh, indicated to the media that his client had committed suicide by self-inflicted lethal injection. Bamieh did not mince words in comments to the media, suggesting that the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s aggressive charging of the case based upon the evidence at hand is the underlying motivator in Bourne’s suicide. “These charges led to my client’s suicide,” he said. “The charges filed are life-altering, and Dr. Bourne could not deal with the fact that everyone assumed him to be guilty.”

Bamieh’s frustration was apparent in his comments to the media, as he had spoken to his client just six hours before the reported time of death. “I told him I though we had a viable defense and that there were a lot of assumptions that were defensible.”

Dr. Bourne, who was recently chief of staff at Mammoth Hospital and sat on the Mammoth Lakes Unified School District Board of Trustees, resigned those positions when he was arrested and extradited on warrants issued by the Santa Barbara County District Attorney, Joyce Dudley.

Upon learning of Bourne’s death, Dudley indicated that an amended complaint will be filed against his co-defendant, Joseph Walker, who is due to next appear in Judge Eskin’s courtroom on February 10th. ..Source.. by R.L. McCullough

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Parents of Victim in Child Sex Case File Civil Suit Against Perpetrator

3-20-2012 California:

Mammoth Lakes ski instructor Joseph Walker, who pleaded guilty in a child sex case earlier this month, is facing a civil case filed last week by the minor and her parents in Santa Barbara County Superior Court.

Walker, 48, and Dr. Andrew Bourne, 46, also of Mammoth Lakes, were arrested Jan. 4 by Santa Barbara police on suspicion of illegally contacting a minor for sexual activity.

The two friends were released on bail Jan. 10 after entering not guilty pleas in the case, which involved a now-16-year-old Santa Barbara girl whose family was friends with both men.

Bourne committed suicide Jan. 24, and the charges against him were later dropped. Prosecutors subsequently amended the case against Walker and filed 21 charges against him.

Walker pleaded guilty to five felony counts of illegal sexual activity with a minor, and could be ordered to serve five years in state prison at his June 1 sentencing.

Santa Barbara police launched an investigation last September after suspicious emails sent to the girl were discovered by one of her parents and reported to police.

The new civil case was filed against Walker last Wednesday by the minor’s attorney, Chris Kroes. The complaint alleges sexual battery, infliction of emotional distress, fraud and deceit, statutory violations, conspiracy, seduction of a minor and violation of mandatory reporting obligations.

“Bourne and Walker held themselves out to be pillars of the community when in fact they were both sexual predators,” the documents read. In the fall of 2009, the pair “engaged in a common plan to befriend the parents of Jane Doe, a minor, for the actual purposes of deceit and in order to gain trust and sexual access to their daughter, in order to engage in illegal lewd acts and sexual relations upon the minor child.”

According to court documents, the plaintiffs believe that the 47-year-old Walker had sex with the girl in excess of 30 times, when she was 14 to 15 years old.

The documents also said that 45-year-old Bourne had sexual relations with the girl multiple times, and that the men knew about the other’s activities and “encouraged the other to have sex with Jane Doe for approximately the last two years.”

The plaintiffs say the men told the girl that they loved her and “both made false promises to her regarding her future with them” in order to persuade the girl to have sex with them. The complaint also alleges that they engaged in “extensive electronic exploits” with each other and with the girl. ..Source.. by Lara Cooper, Noozhawk Staff Writer