Speaker 1: The following podcast contains explicit descriptions of violence, including sexual violence,
Speaker 1: that some listeners may find upsetting. Continue at your own risk.
Speaker 1: By the end of nineteen ninety two, the murder of
Speaker 1: Erik Kendrick, just over three months before, had become old news.
Speaker 1: I had resumed my duties as copy editor at the
Speaker 1: So Call Journal, which I was assured wasn't a demotion
Speaker 1: since I had never officially been promoted to reporter anyway,
Speaker 1: but it sher felt like one. Glenn Sherman, the journal's
Speaker 1: star reporter, had written two follow up pieces to the
Speaker 1: one I wrote on Vera's death. Both of them focused
Speaker 1: on Vera's unorthodox lifestyle and honestly made it feel like
Speaker 1: she had it coming. One even suggested she may have
Speaker 1: committed suicide in the ocean, and that her injuries could
Speaker 1: have been caused by her body being battered around on
Speaker 1: the rocks. When I worked up the nerve to ask
Speaker 1: Glenn about that angle, he took off his glasses, pinched
Speaker 1: the bridge of hiss, sighed deeply, and said, Courtney, sometimes
Speaker 1: you have to learn to play ball. I may have
Speaker 1: been young and idealistic at the time, but I was
Speaker 1: of the mind that journalism was about finding facts, not
Speaker 1: playing ball, and my opinion hasn't changed over the years. Well,
Speaker 1: let's just say it hasn't changed much. The ball playing
Speaker 1: Glenn was referring to was a result of the pressure
Speaker 1: being put on him and the journal's editor in chief
Speaker 1: by city councilman Greg Langford, who wanted the story to
Speaker 1: fade away as quickly as possible. They wanted to keep
Speaker 1: the paper on his good side, and it seemed that
Speaker 1: Vera Kendrick wasn't a hill either of them was willing
Speaker 1: to die on, and I guess I wasn't willing to
Speaker 1: die on that hill either. At the paper's holiday party,
Speaker 1: sherman asked me if, in addition to my copy editing duties,
Speaker 1: I wanted to shadow him. He'd been at the paper
Speaker 1: for fifteen years and had tons of sources all through
Speaker 1: southern California and some national contacts. I would have been
Speaker 1: stupid to turn him down, even though I knew it
Speaker 1: was a whole thing he and his boss decided on
Speaker 1: to keep me close and keep me quiet, and it
Speaker 1: worked too, to my eternal shame, I kept my mouth
Speaker 1: shut for far too long, even as the murders kept
Speaker 1: on coming. I'm Courtney Barnes, and this is The Murder Years,
Speaker 1: Episode two. Pretend We're dead. Once the calendar flipped to
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three, I was kept pretty busy. I helped
Speaker 1: Glenn research and write about the inauguration of Bill Clinton
Speaker 1: in January.
Speaker 2: My fellow citizens, today we celebrate the mystery of American renewal.
Speaker 1: And the month after that, I helped him with a
Speaker 1: major story when terrorists bombed the North Tower of the
Speaker 1: World Trade Center.
Speaker 3: At this hour, more than five hundred rescue workers are
Speaker 3: there on the scene of a massive underground explosion that
Speaker 3: ripped through the World Trade Center just after noon.
Speaker 1: Today, killing six people and injuring one thousand more. It's
Speaker 1: weird to remember how big and scary that felt at
Speaker 1: the time, before we knew just how bad an attack
Speaker 1: on the Twin Towers would be. Later that year, in April,
Speaker 1: the FBI stormed the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas
Speaker 1: and sent it up in flames, killing seventy nine people,
Speaker 1: including twenty one children and the Colts leader David Koresh.
Speaker 1: I was eating lunch in Gerty's Diner when it happened.
Speaker 1: Everyone in there was glued to the TV screen over
Speaker 1: the counter for hours, and it was all anyone talked
Speaker 1: about for weeks. With all that going on in the world,
Speaker 1: and with a new tourist season just ramping up, the
Speaker 1: death of a teenage homeless girl just didn't anymore with
Speaker 1: pretty much anyone, myself included. I'm ashamed to say.
Speaker 4: It's not like we were doing nothing.
Speaker 1: That's Damon Stokes, Sheriff of Delsoul County during the Domino
Speaker 1: Beach murders, who you met in episode one.
Speaker 2: Council in Langford wanted us to keep it quiet, and
Speaker 2: we did, but I was still running down every lead
Speaker 2: I came across, like.
Speaker 1: Stan Majors and who was Stan Majors.
Speaker 2: Come on, Courtney, you remember Stan Majors. You can't write
Speaker 2: it that.
Speaker 1: It's for our listeners.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I forgot. You don't work in print.
Speaker 1: Anymore, No one does.
Speaker 4: Well, yes, you're right, okay, So Stan Majors.
Speaker 2: Major waste of space is what we called them at
Speaker 2: the Sheriff's station. Lived in a trailer park about thirty
Speaker 2: miles inland from Domino Beach, almost right at the border
Speaker 2: of Riverside.
Speaker 1: County, middle of nowhere.
Speaker 2: You could say that, which is what Stan Majors wanted. Well,
Speaker 2: I don't know if you wanted it, but the state
Speaker 2: California didn't want him within twenty six hundred feet of
Speaker 2: a school or a city park, or anywhere.
Speaker 4: Else the minor might be.
Speaker 1: And why was that?
Speaker 2: Because he was a registered sex offender, which is what
Speaker 2: put him on my radar in the first place.
Speaker 4: In regard to the death of Arrick Hendrick.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty five, Stan Majors, then twenty three years old,
Speaker 1: didn't take no for an answer from a young woman
Speaker 1: who caught his eye at a bar in North Hollywood.
Speaker 1: According to a transcript of his interrogation by the LAPD,
Speaker 1: he was ridiculed by his so called friends for striking
Speaker 1: out and decided to follow her out of the bar.
Speaker 1: When she left, he pulled her into an alley, hit
Speaker 1: her with his fists about the face and head until
Speaker 1: she was semi conscious, and then dragged her behind the
Speaker 1: nearest dumpster. He had pulled her underwear down around her ankles.
Speaker 1: When another man came into the alley to urinate, Majors
Speaker 1: tried to run, but he was caught, beaten to a pulp,
Speaker 1: then arrested, tried, and sentenced to six years in prison.
Speaker 1: As it turned out, his victim was seventeen years old
Speaker 1: and had been in the bar with a fake ID,
Speaker 1: so Majors served every day of those six years. When
Speaker 1: he was released from prison, he found life on the
Speaker 1: sex offender registry kind of difficult, to say the least.
Speaker 1: He moved to a much less populated part of the state,
Speaker 1: got a minimum wage job as an attendant and mechanic
Speaker 1: at a seldom visited gas station on a seldom traveled
Speaker 1: stretch of highway, where he lived a quiet, miserable little life.
Speaker 2: I didn't have anything on him, mind you, other than
Speaker 2: his criminal history. And when you're investigating a violent sexual assault,
Speaker 2: it's just good practice.
Speaker 4: To check him with the local sex offender.
Speaker 1: Well that was it, That's all you had.
Speaker 2: Well, he didn't have an alibi for the night Vera
Speaker 2: was killed. He probably didn't have an alibi for most
Speaker 2: nights of his life. Wasn't exactly mister popularity.
Speaker 1: You know? Did you consider him a suspect?
Speaker 2: Not a suspect. And I had no reason to charge him,
Speaker 2: even hold him.
Speaker 4: He was a person. Event though I questioned him multiple times.
Speaker 1: When was the first time I drove out to.
Speaker 2: The filling station where he worked, and asked him some questions.
Speaker 2: The afternoon VARA's body was found. He was nervous, and
Speaker 2: you know, why shouldn't he be, even if he hadn't
Speaker 2: done anything wrong.
Speaker 4: Excan's get nervous around cops? You know, it's understandable.
Speaker 2: Anyway, he answered everything I asked him. Didn't make me
Speaker 2: get a warrant. When I asked if I could search
Speaker 2: his car and his trailer didn't find so much as
Speaker 2: a joint. A couple of weeks later, when we still
Speaker 2: hadn't come up with any suspects, one of my deputies
Speaker 2: brought him to the station to sweat him out in
Speaker 2: an interrogation room, and that was mostly done out of frustration,
Speaker 2: not because of any new evidence or anything. Again, he
Speaker 2: answered every question to our satisfaction, and we had no
Speaker 2: choice but to let him go. In the end, we
Speaker 2: decided it wasn't too hard to get a hold of
Speaker 2: him if we needed him, but pursuing him any further
Speaker 2: just felt like a wasted time.
Speaker 1: So in the weeks and months following Viera is murder.
Speaker 1: How much pressure are you getting from the city council.
Speaker 2: Through the rest of nineteen ninety two, not too much.
Speaker 2: We were just pretty much alone to do our jobs.
Speaker 2: But by February or so of ninety three, they didn't
Speaker 2: want to hear a word about.
Speaker 4: It from anyone.
Speaker 1: By they, you mean Councilman Greg Langford.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, my dad could have used his pull
Speaker 5: to help find Vera's killer. Instead, he used it to
Speaker 5: get everyone to shut up about it.
Speaker 1: That's Connor Langford, whom you may remember from our last episode.
Speaker 1: Connor was one of the surfers who found Vera Kendrick's body,
Speaker 1: and he's also the son of city councilman Greg Langford.
Speaker 5: I tried to get him to help. He said he
Speaker 5: was doing everything he could, but we both knew that
Speaker 5: was bullshit. He was doing everything he could to get
Speaker 5: dominant beach. Just move the fuck on.
Speaker 1: You know, when I started working under Glenn Sherman at
Speaker 1: the Sokow Journal, one of the things he asked me
Speaker 1: to do was attend city council meetings and take notes.
Speaker 1: I didn't blame him for pawning that off on me.
Speaker 1: If I could have gotten someone else to go on
Speaker 1: my place, I would have. The meetings were usually excruciatingly dull.
Speaker 1: There were some moments of levity or excitement provided by
Speaker 1: citizens who would go up to the podium to demand
Speaker 1: that books they didn't like be banned from schools, or
Speaker 1: for bikinis to be banned from beaches, or for bars
Speaker 1: to be forced to close by ten o'clock, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. But if you were to condense every council
Speaker 1: meeting down to one line, it would have to be
Speaker 1: how can we bring more tourists to Domino Beach and
Speaker 1: squeeze more money out of them.
Speaker 5: My father was angling to become mayor of Domino Beach.
Speaker 5: What's her face? Either retired or died?
Speaker 1: What's her face? Being Deborah Charles, the eighty five year
Speaker 1: old mayor who would neither retire nor die for another
Speaker 1: six years.
Speaker 5: But even that was only a stepping stone for him.
Speaker 5: He didn't give through fucks about Domino Beach. Once he
Speaker 5: served his mayor, he'd run for state office, then try
Speaker 5: to go national with the House of Representatives, and from
Speaker 5: there he'd weasel his way into somebody's cabinet and eventually
Speaker 5: run for president himself. And he thought I was delusional
Speaker 5: for trying to make it with my band.
Speaker 1: He said that laid out his political ambitions like that.
Speaker 5: Well not in so many words.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 5: The thing about my dad was if there was a
Speaker 5: bigger job with more power, he wanted it.
Speaker 1: I see. So getting back to why he didn't want
Speaker 1: to help Salvera's murder, all.
Speaker 5: Right, Well, with him, everything was all about perception. If
Speaker 5: he was responsible for it, it had to be motherfucking perfect.
Speaker 5: I'm in his family, which, yeah, I'm man enough to admit.
Speaker 5: I said to embarrass the son of a bitch every
Speaker 5: chance I got.
Speaker 1: And his town too, right, Domeno Beach had to be
Speaker 1: the safest, cleanest, most lucrative tourist spot in California, or
Speaker 1: what he'd consider himself a failure?
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, he'd never see himself as a failure. He
Speaker 5: never took responsibility for a goddamn thing. You Competitive, things
Speaker 5: weren't going his way, he'd find someone to blame for it.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Langford blamed me for just about anything he could.
Speaker 2: If he wanted something cleaned up, he'd order me to
Speaker 2: do it, And when I'd say I needed the council
Speaker 2: to give me more resources, he'd get over wanting to
Speaker 2: get it cleaned up and settle for hiding it where
Speaker 2: no one would be able to see it.
Speaker 1: You know you're talking about Domino Beach's heroin problem.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the heroin problem.
Speaker 1: In the early nineties, if Domino Beach was known for anything,
Speaker 1: it was good vibes and good times. It was a
Speaker 1: safe place occupied by safe people, doing mostly safe things,
Speaker 1: and having a great time doing them. A lot of
Speaker 1: that was because of where it was, far enough away
Speaker 1: from the big cities to feel like a vacation nation,
Speaker 1: but close enough to them to take advantage of all
Speaker 1: the conveniences they provided. But in spite of what it
Speaker 1: looked like from the outside, Domino Beach had a heroin
Speaker 1: problem that rivaled that of any major city, at least
Speaker 1: on a per capita basis. After all, Domino Beach was
Speaker 1: only about an hour's drive from the Mexican border, but
Speaker 1: small enough that we didn't receive the scrutiny La and
Speaker 1: San Diego got. Anyway, we had drugs in Domino Beach,
Speaker 1: and wherever there are drugs, there are drug addicts.
Speaker 2: The War on drugs was always a loser, but we
Speaker 2: did what we could to manage it. I mean, during
Speaker 2: the off season, the junkies would fade inland, which, to
Speaker 2: be honest, was fine by me if they wanted to
Speaker 2: waste their lives shooting up junk. As long as they
Speaker 2: were doing it in the privacy of their own homes
Speaker 2: and as long as they were not hurting anyone, wasn't
Speaker 2: a priority to me.
Speaker 1: What about during the tourist season.
Speaker 4: Well, that was different.
Speaker 2: When the tourists came to town, the junkies would wander
Speaker 2: in and two they panhandle turn tricks, sell skunk weed
Speaker 2: to college students.
Speaker 4: You know, in a way, they were just like the
Speaker 4: rest of us.
Speaker 2: From April to August was when you had a chance
Speaker 2: to make your nut in Domino Beach.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about Billy Boy Reeves.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: In July of nineteen ninety three, I had been shadowing
Speaker 1: crime and politics reporter Glenn Sherman for over six months,
Speaker 1: and I was starting to step out from under that shadow.
Speaker 1: I had figured out that part of the reason he
Speaker 1: kept tabs on me was because he read the article
Speaker 1: I wrote on Vera Kendrick and got nervous. He saw
Speaker 1: me as a good writer that the journal could hire
Speaker 1: for a lot less than what he was making. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't really a mentor protege thing. It was more
Speaker 1: like a keep your enemies closer thing. So unless I
Speaker 1: was working directly with him, I wasn't getting any crime
Speaker 1: or politics stories to cover. During the summer, I wrote
Speaker 1: a lot of pretty superficial fair like covering the fourth
Speaker 1: of July five K fun run, or doing write ups
Speaker 1: on new bars and restaurants, and I got admit I
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. I was developing a style that seemed to
Speaker 1: play better with lighthearted stuff than all that doom and gloom.
Speaker 1: So when Billy Boy Reeves was found dead in a
Speaker 1: dumpster on Wednesday, July twenty eighth, nineteen ninety three, it
Speaker 1: wasn't me who wrote the story.
Speaker 2: Billy Boy Reeves had been in Domino Beach less than
Speaker 2: a year, and I had had him in lock up
Speaker 2: at least half a dozen times. He'd claimed to have
Speaker 2: come from San Diego on his way to LA and
Speaker 2: got distracted by the heroin.
Speaker 4: Market in our sleepy little town so decided to stay.
Speaker 1: Awhile, what do you mean he claimed to have come
Speaker 1: up from San Diego?
Speaker 2: I mean, no one knew where he really came from
Speaker 2: or even what his real name was. Other than the
Speaker 2: rap sheet I had on him. There was no documentation
Speaker 2: he ever existed, and his body was never claimed.
Speaker 1: Here's what I learned about Billy Boy Reeves. He was
Speaker 1: somewhere in the neighborhood of sixteen years old and completely
Speaker 1: on his own. Lord only knew how long he'd been
Speaker 1: hooked on heroin, but it had to be long enough
Speaker 1: that there was no limit to what he'd do to
Speaker 1: feed his addiction.
Speaker 2: Prostitution goes hand in hand with illegal drugs anywhere you go.
Speaker 2: Junkies need their fix, and getting someone off in exchange
Speaker 2: for a few bucks is one of the easiest ways
Speaker 2: to make it happen. I picked up Billy Boy twice
Speaker 2: already since April of nineteen ninety three for solicitation. Well
Speaker 2: don't see propossessioned the wrong guy. Some spring break frat
Speaker 2: boy didn't like the fact that Billy thought he might
Speaker 2: enjoy a little attention from another guy. Frat boy beat
Speaker 2: Billy Boy up pretty good, and I had him treated
Speaker 2: at the hospital instead of arresting him. I tried to
Speaker 2: help him see the error of his ways. But you know,
Speaker 2: I guess that was naive of me.
Speaker 1: So Domino Beach wasn't without it, Sarah. For violent crime,
Speaker 1: of course not. We certainly didn't have it on the
Speaker 1: scale of a big city. But you know, people will
Speaker 1: be paid every year.
Speaker 2: We had some fights, occasional sexual assault, although well you know.
Speaker 1: I mean they were probably more than occasional, just underreported
Speaker 1: and under prosecuted.
Speaker 4: It was a different time. It was wrong, and I
Speaker 4: never intentionally turned a blind eye to anything.
Speaker 1: I'm not here about that, no.
Speaker 2: But I could have made more of a difference. I mean,
Speaker 2: that is something I regret about my career.
Speaker 1: I understand. But let's get back to Billy Boy Reeves.
Speaker 2: Okay, So, like I said, in the six or seven
Speaker 2: months he'd been in town, I'd gotten enom as well
Speaker 2: as I knew any of our troublemaking element. So that
Speaker 2: morning when I got the call, I felt like I failed.
Speaker 2: I tried to help him, but I failed.
Speaker 1: Billy Boy Reeves was found with his throat slit in
Speaker 1: a dumpster in the alley behind Bleach Blonde Betty's one
Speaker 1: of the more popular bars and music venues in Domino Beach.
Speaker 1: Triple Bees, as it was known to the locals, served
Speaker 1: some of the cheapest boos in town and could hold
Speaker 1: about three hundred sweaty mosh pitting kids. They had a
Speaker 1: cool stage and a great sound system, and during the
Speaker 1: peak of tourist season, hosted two or three bands a night,
Speaker 1: four or five times a week.
Speaker 2: According to the autopsy, Billy Boy had been high on
Speaker 2: heroin at the time of his death, maybe even unconscious.
Speaker 2: We came to believe that his murderer helped him score,
Speaker 2: got him higher than he'd probably ever been in his life,
Speaker 2: and then once he was so out of it, he
Speaker 2: had no idea what was going on.
Speaker 1: But that was later. You didn't think that at first,
Speaker 1: did you.
Speaker 4: Well, No, like I said, Billy Boy was a troublemaker.
Speaker 2: We'd assumed that he'd tried to get over on a
Speaker 2: dealer or a john and it just worked out.
Speaker 4: Poorly for him.
Speaker 1: Did you investigate?
Speaker 2: Of course we did. I talked to every junkie in
Speaker 2: Delsol County. No one saw shit as usual. I did
Speaker 2: get one girl to tell me Billy Boy told her
Speaker 2: he was planning on hustling that night, but no one
Speaker 2: saw him with anyone. No one saw him get into
Speaker 2: a car or anything, or if they did, they didn't
Speaker 2: want to tell me.
Speaker 1: So Billy Boy got swept under the ruck like Vera Hendrick.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say that it wasn't the same thing no one.
Speaker 2: No one thought those deaths were related, not.
Speaker 4: At the time.
Speaker 1: What no one noticed at the time was the clue
Speaker 1: that linked Billy Boy Reeve's death with the death of
Speaker 1: Vera Hendrick. There was a lot of graffiti in the
Speaker 1: alley where Billy Boy was found, so it would have
Speaker 1: been very easy to miss. But spray painted on the
Speaker 1: brick wall above the dumpster were the words just say
Speaker 1: no to individuality. In time, when the connection would be made,
Speaker 1: we would learn that this is a lyric from a
Speaker 1: song by the all female Los Angeles punk band L seven.
Speaker 1: The title of the song Pretend We're Dead. If anyone
Speaker 1: had been paying attention, they would have seen a pattern
Speaker 1: for me. In less than a year, two people had
Speaker 1: been murdered in Domino Beach, with song lyrics left alongside
Speaker 1: their bodies, but no one was paying attention. The two
Speaker 1: victims were both homeless teenagers, forgotten by their families and
Speaker 1: easily dismissed by the town of Domino Beach.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, that junkie kid.
Speaker 3: Wish you barely even heard about that.
Speaker 1: That's Maya Morales again, girlfriend to Connor Langford. At the
Speaker 1: time of the murders of both Vera Hendrick and Billie
Speaker 1: Boy Reeves.
Speaker 3: I mean, I practically lived at Triple B's during the
Speaker 3: summer when I wasn't working. Bartender would usually let me
Speaker 3: drink for free, long as I tip them good. And
Speaker 3: Connor's band played there at least twice a week, first
Speaker 3: set usually, but still.
Speaker 1: So no one at Triple Be's talked about it, not really.
Speaker 3: I mean, we knew a body had been found, but
Speaker 3: it wasn't like. Look, Jeff Franklin, the owner of Triple B's,
Speaker 3: he hired undocumented workers, okay, and it was one of
Speaker 3: them who found the body, and well, he ended up
Speaker 3: getting deported because of it. And Jeff considered.
Speaker 4: It a pretty sensitive subject.
Speaker 3: He didn't talk about it, and if anyone else did,
Speaker 3: he would shut it down and kick them out of
Speaker 3: the bar. To tell you the truth, we didn't even
Speaker 3: know it was a murder. You didn't, no, I mean,
Speaker 3: we just heard they found a dead junkie.
Speaker 4: Back then. We all assumed it was an overdose.
Speaker 3: And I guess everyone who knew better just let us
Speaker 3: believe that. The cops, the council, Jeff, everyone.
Speaker 1: Was Connor's band playing that night the.
Speaker 3: Night before the body was found.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and were you there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I didn't stay for the whole set. I
Speaker 3: had just gotten a second job at Gravel Records and
Speaker 3: I had to open the next day, so I did
Speaker 3: that early.
Speaker 1: So I have a question.
Speaker 5: You've asked me a lot of questions already.
Speaker 1: This is a more sensitive question. Okay, shoot, Well maybe
Speaker 1: it's more of an observation than a question. It is
Speaker 1: strange that you were kind of connected to both the
Speaker 1: murders of Vera Kendrick and Billy Boy Reeves.
Speaker 5: So I mean, I'll give you Veria. I knew or
Speaker 5: I slept with there a couple of times, and I'm
Speaker 5: the one who found her body. But the junkie kid.
Speaker 1: You were a Triple Bees the night before his body
Speaker 1: was found.
Speaker 5: So were a lot of people. Triple Bees was a
Speaker 5: popular spot. I'd never even heard of that kid before.
Speaker 1: Not even I mean, like I said, I know this
Speaker 1: is sensitive, but you were using drugs pretty heavily at
Speaker 1: the time, weren't you, And he was very much in
Speaker 1: that world, and you didn't interact with him at all.
Speaker 5: Back then. I was just spoking weed, dropping acid, doing
Speaker 5: a bump of coke every now and then. I didn't
Speaker 5: have to go Inland for that. Look, I didn't know
Speaker 5: anything about that kid when he was alive, and after
Speaker 5: he was dead, all I knew was that it was
Speaker 5: another thing my dad was trying to hide.
Speaker 4: Nothing's wrong here.
Speaker 5: Keep sending use of your college kids and credit card numbers,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 1: So the murder of Billy boy Reeves was seen as
Speaker 1: unconnected to the murder of Rick Hendrick. He was just
Speaker 1: another junkie who met with a bad end, and for
Speaker 1: a long long time, no one would think about Billy
Speaker 1: boy Reeves at all.
Speaker 2: What we later came to believe, once things played out
Speaker 2: a little further, was that Verra Kendrick's murder was an impulse,
Speaker 2: maybe even accidental. Started off with some drunken grab ass,
Speaker 2: escalated to sexual assault, then rape, and then progressed all
Speaker 2: the way to her being strangled at death. And that
Speaker 2: might have been the end of it, but the killer
Speaker 2: got a taste for it. Maybe it was the power
Speaker 2: he felt taking a life. Maybe it was the simple
Speaker 2: fact he thought he could get away with it. But
Speaker 2: whatever it was, he wanted to try it again. So
Speaker 2: he picked the easiest target he could find, drugged out kid.
Speaker 4: With no family and no future.
Speaker 2: In time, what I learned was that the murder of
Speaker 2: Billy Boy Reeves it was practice. Billy Boy was chosen,
Speaker 2: he was hunted. The killer made a plan and followed
Speaker 2: it to the letter. And when he was done, he
Speaker 2: discarded Billy Boy like he was nothing, threw him in
Speaker 2: a dumpster, a human.
Speaker 1: Being except to the Domino Beach killer, he wasn't a
Speaker 1: human being. None of his victims were. Just look at
Speaker 1: the lyrics he chose to write near the bodies. For Vera,
Speaker 1: it was Polly wants a Cracker. Yes, the song is
Speaker 1: from the point of view of a rapist, but that's
Speaker 1: on the surface. Dig deeper and we see he was
Speaker 1: trying to diminish her humanity, comparing Vera his Polly to
Speaker 1: a parrot. And with Billy Boy Reeves, it was just
Speaker 1: say no to individuality, as if Billy Boy wasn't an
Speaker 1: individual at all, just something to be picked up, used
Speaker 1: and discarded. And the killer wasn't the only one who
Speaker 1: saw them as less than human. Two homeless teenagers found
Speaker 1: dead and roughly eight months, within five miles of each other,
Speaker 1: and no one seemed to care. It wasn't even as
Speaker 1: if Councilman Langford covered things up he didn't have to.
Speaker 1: No one wanted to believe anything was wrong in Paradise.
Speaker 1: No one wanted to believe something like that could happen
Speaker 1: to them or their sons and daughters. But things were
Speaker 1: about to escalate. Sheriff Stokes was right. The murder of
Speaker 1: Billy Boy Reeves was practice, and if the killer learned anything,
Speaker 1: it was that he wanted to take things much, much further.
Speaker 1: What happened next would shake Domino Beach to its very core.
Speaker 1: The Murder Years is a production of AYR Media and iHeartMedia.
Speaker 1: Executive producer Elisa Rosen for AYR Media. Written by Tim Huddleston,
Speaker 1: directed by Alisa Rosen, Editing and sound designed by Tristan Bankston,
Speaker 1: Consulting producer Jean Chandil coordinator Olive Goldberg. Audio engineering and
Speaker 1: mastering by Justin Longerbean studio engineer Josh Hook. Original music
Speaker 1: by Nathan Bankston. Original concept developed in partnership with Anne
Speaker 1: Margaret Johns and Greg Spring. Executive producer for iHeartMedia, Maya Howard.
Speaker 1: Performances for this episode by Erica Leniac as Courtney Barnes,
Speaker 1: Tom Virtue as Sheriff Damon Stokes, Alex Salem as connor
Speaker 1: Langford melon faxis as Maya morales