The adult son of convicted child molester William MacDonald now faces some serious charges of his own. Lance Kelly MacDonald, Sr. has been charged with five felony counts relating to trying to dissuade his family members from reporting the molestation by his father.

The younger MacDonald had testified at his father’s trial. During the testimony, prosecutors played voice mails that he left to two women. They were explicit and left little doubt as to his feelings about the pending case.

Those voice mails show that he used that to dissuade them from reporting the allegations of molest. He denied that during the trial, but his assertion was quickly rebuffed when Deputy District Attorney Kim Fletcher played the voice mails for the jury.

In each, he warns the recipient of the “ramifications” of going forward with reporting the incidents to law enforcement. “We’ll run you down the list,” he said to one of the victims. “Mariposa County’s broke, so they’re gonna just keep diggin’ and diggin’ and diggin’,” he said. “They’ll find out that dad and your mom were never married. She’ll be prosecuted for in- surance fraud from the state. She’s gonna lose her job. She’ll have big fines, and she’s gonna go to jail.”

He further tells the woman that he and his son will be without a place to live on the ranch, and that she will likely face jail for fraud, too. “So I don’t know what’s going on, but let’s think twice about all this, figure it out.”

Fletcher asked Lance Mac- Donald if the ranch was the most important thing in his life. He responded that his children were, but added, “I don’t want to lose the ranch. I love the ranch.”

When he heard the audio recording, he said he didn’t know why he said those things. “I was pretty upset about what was going on. I didn’t understand what she was up to.” He said his father had “never done anything to hurt that child in any way, shape or form” and that his sister had stolen some $20,000 from the ranch accounts while she was in college.

“If dad goes to jail, I figure that’d be all she wrote,” Lance MacDonald continued. “I was just trying to get her to talk about it. I wasn’t suggesting anything,” he said in response to Fletcher’s indication that he was purposely dissuading her. He said he was just “rambling on,” but right before lunch, MacDonald said the suggestion to call the women came from his father.

“I still don’t believe it happened,” he said of the four victims’ allegations, which were all found to be true by a Mariposa County jury.

Lance MacDonald has been charged with three felony counts of dissauding a victim from reporting a crime and two felony counts of conspiracy to commit a crime. He has entered not guilty pleas to all charges and was released on his own recognizance. He will be back in court on Aug. 10.

William MacDonald is scheduled to be sentenced for the 15 felonies and enhancements for having substantial sexual contact with his victims and for having more than one victim. He faces a state prison sentence of 150 years to life. The crimes happened from December, 1991 to December, 2008.

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