MONTEREY, Calif. - Charles Louis Moore, a former district attorney of Santa Cruz County whose political career was brought to a halt by a bribery scandal in the 1950s, has died. He was 80.

Moore died Sunday in Monterey, according to the Paul Mortuary in Pacific Grove.

In 1954, Moore became the youngest district attorney in the state when we was elected on a platform of cleaning up gambling and corruption. But even before the end of his term, he was forced to resign after the local newspaper, the Register-Pajaronian, reported his shady dealings with the same gamblers he had vowed to prosecute.

Moore was indicted by a grand jury for "willful and corrupt misconduct in office," but charges were dropped after he resigned. The paper received a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service based on its reporting of the scandal, which grabbed national headlines.

His political path curtailed, Moore eventually turned to religion. He was ordained a priest of the Roman Catholic Church, but in the early 1970s, left the priesthood and started his own congregation.

He held weekly services at his Pacific Grove house, calling his church The Gathering of the Way.

Members of his church remember him as a spiritual leader in the community.

"He led an incredibly full life and left quite a legacy," said Patricia Carney of Santa Cruz, one of the church members.

In a final interview with Moore, former Pajaronian editor Mike Wallace, who is working on a book proposal about the paper's Pulitzer Prize, asked him if he had any regrets about his experience as district attorney and his involvement with the scandal.

Moore said the experience helped him open his eyes to the fact that "the problems of the world weren't politics it was religion. I lived the rest of my life with that - without Santa Cruz I would never have gone there."

Moore was born Feb. 15, 1927, in Portland, Ore., and graduate in 1951 from Stanford Law School. He served in the Navy for 18 months. He was an only child and left no survivors.