Sex Offender Convicted In Superior Court

Following a five-week-long trial, Dale Leroy Yeadon, 50, of Redding, California, was convicted on June 14th on five felony burglary counts and four misdemeanor petty theft counts in superior court in Shasta County. Beginning in April, 2003, park visitors began finding obscene notes on the windshields of their vehicles, describing them engaged in sexual activity along the shoreline of Whiskeytown Lake. By August, several young women had reported thefts of beach bags from the shoreline, keyed entry into their locked vehicles parked nearby, and theft of purses, pocketbooks and undergarments. Shortly after each of the burglaries, many of the victims, several of them high school girls, received obscene phone calls to their homes, parents and friends, with the male caller describing them as they appeared in sexually explicit videos or photographs. Several parents responded to meetings with the caller with offers to recover the nonexistent images, but the caller never made himself known at the meeting locations. Yeadon, at the time an employee of Redding Electric Utility, was found to frequent Whiskeytown in his personal and official vehicles without any regard to his official duties. He was terminated from his employment while awaiting trial. Several surveillance operations of the area were conducted by National Park Service Investigative Services Branch agents, Whiskeytown and Lassen rangers, Shasta County sheriff’s detectives and California Highway Patrol investigators. They revealed that Yeadon repeatedly drove back and forth along park roadways, apparently looking for victims. He was seen by victims and officers in the immediate vicinity of several burglaries and placing notes on cars. On July 26, 2004, Yeadon was arrested on a warrant issued as a result of this investigation, and search warrants were served that day on his home, vehicles, office and storage unit. The searches revealed stolen property and surreptitiously taped videos of women sunbathing and many unidentified people engaged in sexual activities at Whiskeytown. Initially released on $50,000 bail, Yeadon is back in custody and being held without bail pending sentencing. He faces a maximum of five years in prison and lifetime registration as a sex offender.