Lee County judge tosses sex journals

DIXON - Some of the rape and molestation case against retired local Boy Scouts administrator Charles L. Bickerstaff, 57, could be tossed after a ruling Monday in Lee County court. Judge Stephen Pemberton said prosecutors must shelve six of Bickerstaff's handwritten journals and a scrap of legal paper that Lee County sheriff's deputies seized in April 2007. Potential evidence derived from those journals now also could be invalid. Deputies searched Bickerstaff's Dixon home for child pornography, under a search warrant that specified they were looking for computer images, DVDs and magazines. According to police testimony, one deputy thumbed through a notebook he found on the kitchen counter, tucked between a Bible and a stack of newspapers. Af