A case of mistaken identity kept one man in a California jail for 7 weeks, and cost the other his job

When Michael Buckholz moved from San Diego to Tulsa, Okla., a decade ago, he was looking for a fresh start.

He had spent much of his 20s and 30s in and out of prison and jail, and before his last stint there, in June 2011, he had written a letter to the judge, asking to be sent somewhere with a drug treatment program.

“I am 100% taking responsibility and accountability for my actions and behavior,” he wrote. “I’m not asking the court to overlook what I’ve done. I just want to be able to work on being a productive member of the community instead of a menace.”

In Tulsa, he landed a job with Sand Springs Railway, loading and unloading cargo.

“I’ve taken responsibility for my life and have lived sober and crime-free since my release in 2014,” he told The San Diego Union-Tribune in a recent interview.

But in June 2024, a routine background check by his employer showed that he’d recently been charged with assaulting several people in San Diego — even though he had been in Tulsa at the time.

“They said, ‘Hey, Michael, you know, you got to get this fixed,’” he recalled. “Because I clocked in, they knew that I was at work on these dates.”

Then in January, Buckholz’s boss at the railway learned there was a warrant for his arrest in San Diego. He says his boss believed he hadn’t done anything to cause the warrant, but the employer’s hands were tied. Buckholz was fired.

The warrant had Buckholz’s name on it. But police were looking for a different man — a San Diego man 18 years his junior named William Pixler.

. . .

Pixler, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a teen, had been detained by police in August 2023 in Pacific Beach while experiencing a psychotic break. Body camera footage later obtained by his attorney shows officers debating whether to take Pixler to a nearby psychiatric hospital.

Then an officer searching a warrants database found a picture of Michael Buckholz.

Like Pixler, Buckholz is a White man with brown hair. But he’s 3 inches taller than Pixler and nearly two decades older. His eyes are brown. Pixler’s are green.

Pixler didn’t have an ID on him. Body camera footage reviewed by his attorney, Keith Rutman, doesn’t show police asking Pixler if he was Michael Buckholz.

“Sedate, quiet, compliant, disengaged,” is how Rutman described Pixler’s demeanor. “He sat quietly in the police car.”

Pixler was arrested as Michael Buckholz, jailed as Michael Buckholz and arraigned as Michael Buckholz.

Buckholz said he had no knowledge of that warrant, which was issued in November 2015 for a probation violation.

“I had legal problems at one time in my life, but I have been free and clear of any type of that kind of stuff for many, many, many years,” he said.

San Diego police tried to fingerprint Pixler before taking him to jail, but the portable scanner wasn’t working.

Still, Pixler would have been fingerprinted when he was booked into jail, to “ensure accurate identification of the individual being fingerprinted,” San Diego Sheriff’s Office policy says.

Policy also requires special precautions when booking a person with mental illness who might refuse to provide a name or who insists they’re someone else.

It’s unclear why Pixler was booked as Michael Buckholz, despite having a different set of fingerprints.

Seven weeks passed before he was able to convince a jail deputy that he wasn’t Michael Buckholz. The deputy helped him call his parents, who had filed a missing persons report weeks earlier and were sure their son was dead. He was released from jail that day.

But the experience was traumatic, his father, Dennis Pixler, said.

He’d been transferred to George Bailey Detention Facility, a high-security jail that lacks a psychiatric unit. There Pixler was attacked, punched in the eye, requiring stitches, his wrist stomped on and severely sprained.

He told his parents that he’d tried to explain to deputies, to the judge and to his public defender that he wasn’t Michael Buckholz. No one believed him.

“He was able to get a hold of me, and I got him out,” his father said. “But from there, his life snowballed. It just went downhill after that.”

. . .

In the months following his release, Pixler, who lived with his parents, would get angry for no reason.

He’d refuse to see his doctor, or to take his medication. Even though Dennis and his wife would watch William take it, Dennis would later find the pills in the trash.

Last May, Pixler was arrested for battery after he jabbed a man with a pen at a supermarket.

In October, while Dennis was making dinner, William punched him several times.

Dennis called the county’s psychiatric emergency response team — something he’d done in the past when his son had an episode. Instead, several San Diego police cars showed up.

William was arrested and charged with multiple felonies, even though his father, 70 at the time, said he didn’t want to press charges; he was fine.

“They couldn’t find a mark on me,” he said. “I’m not saying that he didn’t attack me. I’m just saying that I don’t want him charged with elder abuse and stuff like that. Well, they did it anyway.”

The district attorney’s complaints were filed against Michael Buckholz and describe Buckholz as attacking Dennis Pixler.

Until asked about it by the Union-Tribune, the court’s online database showed Pixler as Buckholz’s aka and 1971 — the year Buckholz was born — as Pixler’s year of birth.

Some court files show Buckholz listed as Pixler’s aka while others show Pixler listed as Buckholz’s aka. For most of Pixler’s court appearances, he’s referred to as Michael Buckholz.

“Defendant states his true name is William Pixler,” one of the records notes. It wasn’t until a March 10 hearing that the records list only Pixler’s name and his correct date of birth.

After being arrested for punching his father, Pixler was granted supervised release. Over Dennis’ objections, he was ordered to stay away from his father.

In early January, when Pixler didn’t show up for a court appearance, an arrest warrant was issued — for Michael Buckholz.

. . .

As recently as Thursday, a background check still showed Buckholz as having been charged with multiple felonies in October.

San Diego Superior Court spokesperson Emily Cox said the court database had been updated, and orders to clear Buckholz’s record of Pixler’s felony cases have been sent to the California Department of Justice.

Steve Walker, spokesperson for District Attorney Summer Stephan, said prosecutors rely on information provided by the Sheriff’s Office when filing charges.

“Sheriff’s data includes information captured at the time of first arrest and subsequent bookings,” he said.

In early December, Pixler filed a lawsuit against the county and the San Diego Police Department, arguing that his August 2023 arrest and imprisonment violated his Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

In a motion to dismiss the case, county attorneys argued that it was Pixler’s responsibility to let police, jail deputies and the court know that he wasn’t Michael Buckholz.

A response filed by Rutman, Pixler’s attorney, countered that the physical differences between the two men alone created a duty to investigate the identity of the person being booked.

“Mr. Pixler’s fingerprints did not match those of the subject of the warrant, Mr. Pixler was 3 inches shorter, 18 years younger, and 35 pounds lighter than the person wanted in the warrant and Mr. Pixler was undergoing a mental health crisis and incapable of demanding an investigation,” Rutman wrote.

Two weeks later, after he’d been stabilized on psychiatric medication, Pixler tried to tell deputies that he wasn’t Michael Buckholz.

“They did nothing about it and told him that Pixler was simply an alias,” the lawsuit says.

“Mr. Pixler’s height, weight, age and fingerprints were all different from Michael Vincent Buckholz,” Rutman’s filing says. “These facts were enough to create a duty to investigate. No one bothered to care.”

Pixler remains in jail and is facing several years in prison on charges including battery, elder abuse, threatening great bodily injury and resisting arrest. His father hopes a judge will agree to sentence him to inpatient psychiatric treatment instead.

Buckholz, after spending months and thousands of dollars trying to clear his name, got a job last week as a welder.

But he still worries that somewhere, at some point, a website or database will wrongly tie his name to crimes he didn’t commit.

“If I tell this story to somebody, they look at me like I’m crazy,” he says. “‘You’re a criminal who’s just lying.’”