Nesler Pleads Not Guilty in Fatal Beating

The son of a vigilante mother who once gunned down the boy’s accused molester in a Tuolumne County courtroom pleaded not guilty to murder in the beating death of a man living on his property.

William Nesler, 23, was arraigned late Friday afternoon in Tuolumne County Superior Court on the single charge of murder, in the death of David Davis, 45, last month, an hour after he was released from jail for beating Davis a month earlier in a dispute over tools.

Nesler surrendered to a Sacramento bounty hunter, who turned him over to authorities after a 10-day manhunt.

Nesler is widely known as the boy whose mother, Ellie Nesler, took the law into her own hands by shooting his alleged molester in a Jamestown courtroom 11 years ago.