Steven Mitchell (by Ed Koskey © 2002/2003)

According to those who know him, Steven Mitchell is a good, God-fearing man, the kind of man who would, as his lawyer put it, "do anything for you any time you asked," the kind of man whose "family is the most important thing in the world to him."

But that raises the question of why Mitchell, a man who views himself as righteous and deeply religious, would let his stepdaughter, of whom he was notoriously protective, spend time in the company of a man like Jason Moyer. Born and bred in the hills around the Schuylkill River, Jason Moyer certainly had his problems with the law. In fact, in the summer of 2002, he had only recently been released from jail where he had spent time for sexually molesting another woman, authorities have confirmed. In Orwigsburg, as in all small towns, it's hard to keep a secret, and Mitchell certainly knew about Moyer's past.

Maybe it was his rural religiosity, a sense that country people seem to have that redemption is real and that people deserve a second chance regardless of their past, that made Mitchell willing to tolerate Moyer. Maybe in a place like rural Schuylkill County, a place with a history of mistrusting authorities that stretches back more than two centuries, the fact that someone has spent a little time in jail isn't particularly stigmatizing.

Mitchell and Moyer were hardly friends, say authorities and those who knew them. They were acquaintances, and on occasion Moyer would help Mitchell out with odd jobs.

In reality, Moyer was sort of a peripheral character in the Mitchell universe. Moyer's wife, a mousy and submissive young woman by all accounts, was the best friend of Mitchell's young stepdaughter, and that gave him an in with the family.

By August 2002, Mitchell's stepdaughter's first foray into independence had ended. After moving briefly to Delaware, she had recently returned home. Not long after she came back, according to Moyer's lawyer, Lynn Erickson, the young man's wife called and asked if they could get together.

The truth was, Mitchell's stepdaughter was an adult, Erickson says, and neither Mitchell nor his wife had absolute authority over her. It's not at all clear that they could have stopped her from going even if they wanted to. But there is also no indication that Mitchell or his wife had any great concern about letting the young woman visit with Moyer's wife, despite the young man's troubling history.

"I don't think it occurred to anybody that he would do anything with his wife around," Erickson told Crimelibrary.

Precisely what happened at the Moyer home that night remains a mystery. Erickson contends that the young woman was plied with booze and when she finally lost consciousness, Moyer forced himself upon her, in essence using the unconscious girl as a prop in a sort of sordid ménage-a-trois with his wife.

Moyer's supporters, among them a family member who spoke on condition of anonymity, have a very different view of the events that transpired that night. "There are people who believe otherwise," the family member said. "They believe that they had three-way sex," and whatever happened was between consenting adults.

But after she returned home the next day, Mitchell later said, the young woman seemed upset and distant. He and his wife pressed her, and in the end, Mitchell claimed, the girl told them that she had been sexually assaulted.

It may seem odd that neither Mitchell nor his wife immediately went to the authorities to report that the girl had been the victim of a sex crime. The way prosecutors see things, the reason was simple. Mitchell was a man who had no respect for the law, who believed that he was above it, and that he had not only the right but the responsibility to handle the matter himself.

To Erickson, though, Mitchell's mistrust of the system was not based on an eye-for-an-eye interpretation of scripture, but instead on how he had seen the criminal justice system behave in the past. The way Mitchell saw it, she says, the criminal justice system had an opportunity to deal with Moyer in the past, and had gone easy on him. What's more, he was filled with rage, a righteous rage, in his estimation. "It was simply because his daughter was so distraught, he couldn't do anything else," Erickson said.

Though his daughter pleaded with him not to "do anything stupid," Mitchell decided to take matters into his own hands. He rounded up an old buddy, Kevin Nestor, a man, according to prosecutors, with limited intelligence and infinite loyalty to Mitchell. Together, they went out in search of the man they believed had sexually abused Mitchell's stepdaughter.

Though there was never sufficient evidence to charge Moyer in connection with the assault against Mitchell's daughter after interviewing her, authorities were deeply skeptical about her allegations few if any people in Schuylkill County doubt that Mitchell, at least, believed his stepdaughter had been abused. Even Moyer's family member concedes that Mitchell's rage was sincere, even though it may have been unfounded.

"That's what they believed," the family member said. "She went home and lied."