For many Northern California sailors, the most jaw-dropping ‘WTF’ news story circulating this week is a Lake County Record-Bee report that Russell Perdock has been appointed — not elected, appointed — mayor of Clearlake, the tiny town on the shores of the North Bay lake with the same name.

What’s this got to do with sailing? As regular readers will recall, on the moonless night of April 29, 2006 then-Deputy Sheriff Perdock was at the helm of the 385-horsepower 24-ft powerboat that slammed into the drifting O’Day 28 sailboat Beats Workin’ II, fatally injuring crew Lynn Thornton. Despite the fact that Perdock was blasting across the dark water at an estimated speed of 45 to 50 mph — unsafe by any standard — he was never charged with any crime. Instead, sailor Bismarck Dinius, then 39, became the fall guy — charged with felony vehicular manslaughter, among other things — because he was sitting in the helmsman’s position of the nearly motionless sailboat when the collision occurred, and he’d had a few beers. 

Controversy over the incident raged on for several years as the manslaughter trial and various lawsuits progressed. In addition to Latitude‘s extensive reporting on the case, widespread accusations of rampant corruption in the handling of the investigation prompted in-depth reporting by KGO Channel 7’s Dan Noyes, which turned up the heat substantially on Lake County District Attorney Jon Hopkins. Ultimately, Dinius was found not guilty of two counts, with charges dropped on a third. Although he was much relieved by the outcome, his legal fees reportedly ran up to $300,000.

In April, 2010, Lake County Sheriff Rod Mitchell fired Perdock from his position as the #2 man in the department, with no reason given, although many observers made the connection that Mitchell was up for re-election two months later. He lost to Deputy Francisco Rivero who had campaigned on the promise to eat his hat if voters could find a more corrupt place in California. Once in office he pursued "aggressive law enforcement," cut $1 million in "waste" from the department’s budget, and asked the FBI to reopen the investigation into Lynn Thornton’s death. (Request denied.) District Attorney Jon Hopkins was also voted out of office.

But Perdock did not fade away. In 2012 he was appointed to the Lake County Fire Protection District’s board of directors. At some point he became a city councilman, and last week was elected by the council — not the citizenry — as mayor. News of the closed-door promotion brought a range of reactions from Record-Bee readers. From: "Good for Russ. He will do a good job!" to "Yeah, he sure did a good job killing Lynn Thornton in the drunken boating accident. He should be in prison not running the town."