Speaker 1: Pushkin. The Channel Islands have the kind of stark, pristine
Speaker 1: beauty that makes people fall in love with California. Santa
Speaker 1: Cruz Island is probably the most stunning in the archipelago.
Speaker 1: About thirty miles due west of Malibu. It's surrounded by glassy,
Speaker 1: indigo water, giant kelp forests, and tide pools. But probably
Speaker 1: the island's most fascinating feature, the one that draws kayakers
Speaker 1: and scuba divers from all over, is its abundance of
Speaker 1: sea caves with names like Shipwreck Cave and Limbo. On
Speaker 1: the north side of the island, a couple hundred feet
Speaker 1: into the ocean, there's a huge, white, spattered rock with
Speaker 1: a sheer cliff face. It's called bird Rock for obvious reasons.
Speaker 1: Bird Rock has its own sea cave, a tall chamber
Speaker 1: with walls that are covered in green algae. It's mysterious
Speaker 1: and cool, but once you know the story of Fred Railer,
Speaker 1: it's impossible to look at the sea cave or any
Speaker 1: part of this beautiful island the same way again. On
Speaker 1: January second, nineteen eighty one, Railer, a thirty eight year
Speaker 1: old man from Malibu, was pulled out of the water
Speaker 1: on the open ocean side of Bird Rock, along with
Speaker 1: his wife, thirty six year old Verna Johnson Railer and
Speaker 1: her son, his stepson, eight year old Doug Johnson. Verna
Speaker 1: and Doug were soon declared dead. Fred was cold, but
Speaker 1: other than that fine, His pulse was steady, his breathing
Speaker 1: was normal. He appeared to be unscathed. Fred said their rowboat,
Speaker 1: a sixteen foot orange story, overturned and he had done
Speaker 1: everything possible to save his wife and stepchild. He was
Speaker 1: the sole survivor and the only witness. For many, many months,
Speaker 1: we were just trying to figure out what happened and
Speaker 1: is there any truth to Railer's story. That's a criminalist
Speaker 1: named doctor Dwayne Mose. At the time of Verna and
Speaker 1: Doug's deaths, he worked for a California state crime lab,
Speaker 1: and eventually we decided there was no truth to it
Speaker 1: at all. We could not substantiate anything he said, but
Speaker 1: we could substantiate alternatives. And as I saw this going on,
Speaker 1: it all came together in my head as a story.
Speaker 1: Doctor Mose is an expert in crime scene reconstruction. When
Speaker 1: he found out about the sea cave inside Bird Rock,
Speaker 1: he wanted to investigate and I said, I want to
Speaker 1: go inside, and I looked around at the rocks, the
Speaker 1: height of the cave, and that's when another piece of
Speaker 1: the puzzle fell in place. That's what I turned to
Speaker 1: the people in the boat and I said, this is
Speaker 1: where it happened. It did not happen out there in
Speaker 1: the ocean. It happened in this cave. The cave, he said,
Speaker 1: was spacious and secluded, and it's tall and narrow. It's
Speaker 1: tall enough so that a man can take an oar
Speaker 1: to a rowboat, swing it high, and bring it down
Speaker 1: on an object with some force. My theory is that
Speaker 1: he rowed the boat into this cave with the intention
Speaker 1: of killing both of them. He would have started with
Speaker 1: Verna catching her off guard. Verna was in the bow
Speaker 1: and Douglas was in the stern, and Railer was sitting
Speaker 1: where a rower would normally sit, and he was in
Speaker 1: the middle. So while Verna would be looking forward to
Speaker 1: defend the bow of the boat against the rocks, Railer
Speaker 1: could easily pick up an oar, swing it hit her
Speaker 1: on the head. Then he would have turned to Doug.
Speaker 1: I believe that Douglas Johnson sprang from the stern of
Speaker 1: the doorway onto Railer in an attempt to protect his mother,
Speaker 1: and I believe that Railer took Douglas by the head
Speaker 1: slammed the back of his head twice into the edge
Speaker 1: of the seat where the seat met the inside surface
Speaker 1: of the hull. Verna was petite, one hundred and fifteen pounds,
Speaker 1: Doug only fifty something. Fred was six feet two. First
Speaker 1: thing in the morning. He could have easily overpowered them,
Speaker 1: knocking them out, Moses says, so he could finish them off.
Speaker 1: He then threw, pushed, or carried both of them overboard
Speaker 1: and drowned them. He then exited the cave, and it
Speaker 1: would have been difficult to get both bodies back in
Speaker 1: the boat, so I think he pushed the boat out
Speaker 1: of the cave and then took the two bodies and
Speaker 1: swam around on the other side of Bird Rock, where
Speaker 1: he was found and taken out of the water by
Speaker 1: the people on this boat that was passing by. That
Speaker 1: explained so much, explained all the damage to the hull
Speaker 1: of the dory, explained while there was no witnesses to
Speaker 1: what went on, it just made it easier to do
Speaker 1: what he did. By the way the oars for the
Speaker 1: Dory were never recovered. They were lost somewhere somehow in
Speaker 1: the ocean. But this is just a story, albeit a
Speaker 1: powerful persuasive one. It's a story that a lot of
Speaker 1: people have come to believe is true. It's a story
Speaker 1: that helps send Fred Rayler to prison. But Fred's story
Speaker 1: that he was trying as hard as he could to
Speaker 1: save his wife and stepson, that he was a rescuer,
Speaker 1: not a murderer. His story has a few supporters too.
Speaker 1: To this day, I do not believe he did this.
Speaker 1: That's Verna's sister, Julianne, Verna's mother, went to her grave
Speaker 1: convinced of Fred's innocence. And Verna's daughter Kim, who lost
Speaker 1: not only her mother but also her little brother Doug,
Speaker 1: she believes Fred too, So do his two daughters, Heidi
Speaker 1: and Kirsten. They all maintain that Verna and Doug died
Speaker 1: in a tragic accident. And it's not just the family.
Speaker 1: There are legal experts who leave Fred's case was a
Speaker 1: miscarriage of justice. This is Justin Brooks, director of the
Speaker 1: California Innocence Project. Well, it looked to me like the
Speaker 1: kind of case where a person was convicted based on bias.
Speaker 1: This summer, I got access to an archive of recorded interviews,
Speaker 1: investigation reports, and court filings. They led me into a
Speaker 1: forgotten world Malibu in the late seventies and early eighties,
Speaker 1: when the consummate family man was accused of horrible crimes,
Speaker 1: and Malibu itself was the motive. I'm Dana Goodyear and
Speaker 1: this is Lost Hills. This is Season two, Dead in
Speaker 1: the Water, Episode one. Mister Malibu. Fred Railer is an
Speaker 1: inmate at the California State Prison in Lancaster. He's serving
Speaker 1: a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the
Speaker 1: murders of his wife, Erna and his stepson Doug. For
Speaker 1: the past few months, he's been calling me most days,
Speaker 1: usually at eight thirty am sharp, just after I've dropped
Speaker 1: off my kids at school. Good morning, Hi, Fred, how
Speaker 1: are you? His daughter Kirsten put us in touch. She's
Speaker 1: forty seven, the youngest of the sisters, and she doesn't
Speaker 1: have a family of her own. She's devoted her adult
Speaker 1: life to freeing her father. In the time since I
Speaker 1: started talking to Fred, he's been given a diagnosis of
Speaker 1: kidney cancer, and the project of getting him released has
Speaker 1: become even more urgent. For his kids. Fred has told
Speaker 1: his story a thousand and one times. He's written it down,
Speaker 1: recorded it into a polygraph machine, sworn to it on
Speaker 1: the witness stand, committed it to memory. So the story
Speaker 1: has a plot in quality, like an old horse that's
Speaker 1: been led around the ring too many times. On January second,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one, the family set out early from Ventura
Speaker 1: Harbor on Perseverance, their fifty foot sailboat. It was a Friday,
Speaker 1: the first weekend of the new year. Much of Fred's
Speaker 1: extended family was on board, his mother and father, and
Speaker 1: his brother and sister in law, who were visiting from
Speaker 1: Indiana for the holidays. His wife, Ferna, the four kids
Speaker 1: they had between them, ages six to eleven, and the
Speaker 1: family dog, a six month old beagle puppy named Lady.
Speaker 1: They crossed the channel to Santa Cruz Island. Verna steered
Speaker 1: Perseverance into the anchorage to the east of Bird Rock.
Speaker 1: Around noon. They had lunch. Then Fred's brother and his
Speaker 1: wife took an inflatable dinghy to the island, bringing the
Speaker 1: two older girls with them. Kirsten was only six, and
Speaker 1: she was told to stay back with her grandparents and
Speaker 1: take a nap. That left Fred, Verna and Doug. Fred
Speaker 1: says an idea popped into Verna's head. We had to
Speaker 1: puppy aboard the first time, and Verna suggested that we
Speaker 1: go out and maybe take some pictures with the dog
Speaker 1: and Douglas and the boats and things. Verna, he says,
Speaker 1: had a specific shot in mind, Doug holding Lady in
Speaker 1: front of Bird Rock with perseverance in the deep background.
Speaker 1: So Fred, Verna, Doug, and Lady piled into the orange story.
Speaker 1: Fred made sure dog grabbed a life jacket. Fred had
Speaker 1: on a float coat buoyant but not life saving, and
Speaker 1: Verna didn't have any kind of floatation device. He rowed
Speaker 1: them around the north side of Bird Rock, the open
Speaker 1: ocean side to the spot Verna chose approximately thirty feet
Speaker 1: off the rock. In the anchorage, the water had been glassy,
Speaker 1: but out here it was rougher, and they were also
Speaker 1: effectively alone. So we had just gotten passed what they
Speaker 1: called bird Rock, and we're getting ready to start lining
Speaker 1: things up. According to Fred, Verna was in the bow,
Speaker 1: the front of the boat. He was in the middle,
Speaker 1: sitting on the bottom of the boat with his knees
Speaker 1: over the seat. He had his back toward Verna and
Speaker 1: was facing Doug, who was in the stern the rear
Speaker 1: of the boat. Verna had been holding lady with the
Speaker 1: dog's name, and she passed them to me, and then
Speaker 1: I passed the dog to Douglas. When the dog got
Speaker 1: very enamored with the birds that were on the rock
Speaker 1: and got excited, and no sooner head he got ahold
Speaker 1: of the dogs, and the dog started to go over
Speaker 1: the side. Lady, he says, lunged for the birds, and
Speaker 1: Doug lunged for Lady, toppling halfway out of the dory.
Speaker 1: So Douglas started to go for the dog too, and
Speaker 1: then I had one of the dog's legs and then
Speaker 1: I fall a bump in my back, and I was
Speaker 1: probably Verna trying to help as well. And with that
Speaker 1: final accidental jolt from Verna, Fred says, the dory flipped.
Speaker 1: Then the boat went over, and when I was underneath it,
Speaker 1: I got tangled and got stuck underneath the boat. It
Speaker 1: was terrifying, he says. Between the bow and stern lines
Speaker 1: and his camera strap and the strings on the hoodie
Speaker 1: of his float coat, he was caught. He couldn't find
Speaker 1: an air pocket and he couldn't breathe. I actually thought
Speaker 1: I was gonna die under there because I couldn't get
Speaker 1: my head away from the seat. And when we were
Speaker 1: I was underwater, so my head was up against his
Speaker 1: seat and I couldn't get loose, and I kept trying,
Speaker 1: and finally I did get loose. When he surfaced, he says,
Speaker 1: he looked around and spotted Ferna. Then I saw her
Speaker 1: on the bow of the boat with sort of like
Speaker 1: one arm on the on the overturned portion. She was
Speaker 1: like she was sort of holding on. Her eyes were open,
Speaker 1: but unseeing. He swam straight to Doug. Doug was in
Speaker 1: bad shape, listing in the water near the Doory's stern.
Speaker 1: I noticed Douglas was off just a few feet away,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't saying anything. The waves Fred says were
Speaker 1: splashing in Doug's face, so I got to hold his
Speaker 1: doug us and then I noticed that he was vomiting
Speaker 1: and wasn't really responding. So I cleared the vomita and
Speaker 1: I tried getting some air into him. Carrying Doug with
Speaker 1: one arm, he swam back to Verna. He tried giving
Speaker 1: them both CPR. They didn't respond. I was so stunned.
Speaker 1: I didn't really know what to do it it was
Speaker 1: way too far to swim back to Perseverance. He was
Speaker 1: desperate to get to land. The dory was overturned and
Speaker 1: it was basically floating to the south away from us,
Speaker 1: and so I tried to go over to the rock,
Speaker 1: bird Rock itself. Meanwhile, Lady had somehow clawed her way
Speaker 1: onto his shoulders. So he swam that way with Verna
Speaker 1: under one arm and Doug under the other and the
Speaker 1: puppy riding piggyback. But Bird Rock was not to be
Speaker 1: there salvation. And when I got to the where the
Speaker 1: rock was, the bird Rock, there was a blow hole,
Speaker 1: which is like a cavity where the water goes in
Speaker 1: and then it shoots the water out. So we had
Speaker 1: to swim past that. That side of bird Rock is
Speaker 1: a sheer cliff some sixty feet tall, craggy covered in barnacles,
Speaker 1: no place to get footing. But somehow Fred says he
Speaker 1: was able to get Lady onto bird Rock. And then
Speaker 1: I pushed the dog up on the rocks, and I
Speaker 1: was trying to get a handhold so I could pull
Speaker 1: Vernon and dug out of the water right now into
Speaker 1: the rock, but I couldn't. It was January, the water
Speaker 1: was fifty degrees and they'd been in it, according to
Speaker 1: Fred's timeline, for something like an hour. They were bundled up,
Speaker 1: water logged by now. Fred had on jeans of a
Speaker 1: lore shirt and the float coat. Vernon was wearing pants,
Speaker 1: a blouse, sweater, and a brown and orange nylon ski jacket. Doug,
Speaker 1: Fred later noted, was dressed like Charlie Brown going out
Speaker 1: to play in the snow. Underneath his life jacket, he
Speaker 1: was wearing a bulky winter sweater and parka and a
Speaker 1: pair of jeans. Near the rock, the waves surged to
Speaker 1: four feet. There's three heads bobbed up and down. They
Speaker 1: were exhausted, near death, or maybe in Vernon and Doug's case,
Speaker 1: already dead. And then I knew, I was thinking. I
Speaker 1: knew that if I didn't, if we didn't get help,
Speaker 1: soon all three of was gone down. Finally, Fred says
Speaker 1: he saw a sailboat and yelled for help. They heard me,
Speaker 1: and then they came over to where I was and
Speaker 1: threw me a rope. We got. Vernon and Douglas were
Speaker 1: pulled up on board their boat. And then as I
Speaker 1: was trying to get get up the ladder. My aggs
Speaker 1: were shot, and then they winched me aboard, And the
Speaker 1: next thing I really knew was I woke up in
Speaker 1: the helicopter. He woke up into a nightmare. His wife
Speaker 1: was dead, his stepson dead. I'm gonna ask you point
Speaker 1: blank about Verna and Doug. Did you kill Verna and Doug?
Speaker 1: I did not to Fred. Verna was perfect. Their life
Speaker 1: together in Malibu was a dream. Why would he have
Speaker 1: killed them and ruined everything? You have to imagine Malibu
Speaker 1: when the tailors lived there, same epic beaches, bathed in
Speaker 1: the same magic our light, but with practically no one
Speaker 1: on them. It was the seventies. The innocent, squeaky clean
Speaker 1: gidget era of the nineteen fifties was over. The coke
Speaker 1: fueled eighties were just roaring into view. Malibu was on
Speaker 1: the cusp of becoming the maximalist fantasia it is today,
Speaker 1: one hundred million dollars mansions and Lamborghinis and Birken bags
Speaker 1: at the beach, But not yet. There were celebrities, but
Speaker 1: they were low key, laid back cool. Movie star Ali
Speaker 1: McGraw lived out there with her young son and her
Speaker 1: movie star husband Steve McQueen was nineteen seventy two, and
Speaker 1: we rented a house on that fantastic broad Beach, which
Speaker 1: at the time was the widest swath of perfect sand.
Speaker 1: I love, I loved it, and it provided my son
Speaker 1: with an incredible childhood. Their house, a rental on Broadbeach Road,
Speaker 1: was a street away from the railers. And she doesn't
Speaker 1: remember this, but Fred coached her son in sports. All
Speaker 1: of us had funky little houses left over from the fifties.
Speaker 1: You know, sand dunes in front of the house and
Speaker 1: the kind of flowers that only grow where there's sand.
Speaker 1: My house was a funky little clapboard house, really small,
Speaker 1: three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a small kitchen, a living room
Speaker 1: facing the ocean. It was when I rented it, an
Speaker 1: absolute horror of brown wood inside, shag carpeting, brown kitchen appliances.
Speaker 1: Back then, the celebrities had privacy. Nobody came out there
Speaker 1: to photograph Steve or Goldie Hawn or Sylvester Stallone. These
Speaker 1: are people artists and directors and musicians. Half of the
Speaker 1: rock stars had second homes there. There was a freedom
Speaker 1: to do whatever. There were tons of drugs. I didn't
Speaker 1: do drugs at that point, but yeah, of course, I
Speaker 1: mean it was the most amazing moment in Los Angeles music.
Speaker 1: I never met Bob Dylan and he's still out there.
Speaker 1: But there, you know, there was Neil Young, there were
Speaker 1: most of the Eagles. There was you know, Peter Paul
Speaker 1: and Mary and Chris Christofferson, him and the band. You know,
Speaker 1: all of Robbie Robertson's crowd were out there. Robbie Robertson
Speaker 1: had moved his family there sight unseen, into Sam Peck
Speaker 1: and Pau's house in the Malibu Colony because his friend
Speaker 1: David Geffen told him to the night that we arrived
Speaker 1: there thing And I was sitting there with my wife
Speaker 1: and then we heard this ungodly screaming from a woman.
Speaker 1: So we jumped up and we ran out to the
Speaker 1: front door, trying to figure out what was going on.
Speaker 1: What was that? And we should call the police, we
Speaker 1: should what should we do? We're running back and forth,
Speaker 1: but the screaming keeps going on and on until it
Speaker 1: becomes like an odd thing and odd screaming. And as
Speaker 1: it turned out, our next door neighbor was Diane Cannon,
Speaker 1: the actress, and she was practicing primal scream he set
Speaker 1: up a studio in a former bordello called Shangola overlooking
Speaker 1: Zooma Beach. Everyone recorded out there, the band and Bob Dylan,
Speaker 1: we just we found this to be kind of like
Speaker 1: a sanctuary that you could be invisible as well as
Speaker 1: be around some of the most famous people in the world.
Speaker 1: It was a very unusual and great combination. The seventies
Speaker 1: became pretty crazy, and there was a lot of drugs
Speaker 1: and a lot of everything going on, and when you're
Speaker 1: just in the middle of something, it seems very natural,
Speaker 1: seems very normal, so you just participate. You just hang
Speaker 1: out and say, oh, everybody's doing it, this is cool.
Speaker 1: But most of the people in Malibudan were pretty normal,
Speaker 1: and the electricians and the school teachers and the movie
Speaker 1: stars all sent their kids to the local elementary school.
Speaker 1: What was extraordinary about it was in that time, I
Speaker 1: have to call them, real people lived there. It was
Speaker 1: just people who did every sort of job you can imagine,
Speaker 1: and it was so normal. So of course the sea
Speaker 1: there then was clean and beautiful, and the kids swam
Speaker 1: in it every single day after school. It was maybe
Speaker 1: the last moment that a middle class family could live
Speaker 1: beachfront in Malibu. Before long, even Ali McGraw got priced out.
Speaker 1: The house she was renting got put up for sale.
Speaker 1: I couldn't afford to buy it, and so a big
Speaker 1: entertainer bought it, took every single thing down off of
Speaker 1: the property, and is currently on the market for sixteen
Speaker 1: million dollars. Back then, Malibu was fun and it was sexy,
Speaker 1: and it was a little out there. It wasn't really
Speaker 1: yet on the map, at least not in the way
Speaker 1: it is now. But it was also changing, getting flashier, fancier, faster,
Speaker 1: and I was losing my fascination with the place because
Speaker 1: it was changing. This vibe that it was there before
Speaker 1: started evolving into different people and it didn't have the
Speaker 1: same charm, didn't have the same quality of coolness with
Speaker 1: all of these wonderful people. The drugs had changed, and
Speaker 1: that changed everything. I don't know. In the beginning, it
Speaker 1: felt fun and more inclusive and friendly, and later on,
Speaker 1: you know, with hard drugs, I mean, that's all it
Speaker 1: takes you. You know, you go from a social drugs
Speaker 1: through hard drugs and ain't social anymore. And there was
Speaker 1: a new crowd in town. It was a combination of
Speaker 1: some people with money and drug dealers, and you kind
Speaker 1: of scroungy people, and there was even It went from
Speaker 1: being this shangril world out there, this bit of paradise,
Speaker 1: into a feeling of it just felt dirty all of
Speaker 1: a sudden. Soon the middle class, the real people, would
Speaker 1: be edged out. People like Fred and Verna. She was
Speaker 1: a teacher's aid. He was a civilian employee of the
Speaker 1: naval base at Point Magoo, highly educated with the Masters
Speaker 1: from Berkeley in naval architecture, but a government employee making
Speaker 1: government money. They were raising four kids and what was
Speaker 1: quickly becoming one of the most expensive communities in America.
Speaker 1: It would have been hard to compete, let alone hang on,
Speaker 1: but the Railer family had something very valuable. They owned
Speaker 1: a house on Sea Level Drive, a private, gated street
Speaker 1: that dead ends at one of the prettiest beaches in Malibu.
Speaker 1: Their house was large and ugly, covered an orange shag,
Speaker 1: but Fred was fixing it up, building a roof deck
Speaker 1: with panoramic ocean views. He knew what they had and
Speaker 1: if they played it right, they might be able to
Speaker 1: ride this wave of real estate and money and get
Speaker 1: to live in Malibu forever. Fred and Verna bought the
Speaker 1: house on Sea Level Drive in the fall of nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven. They were a new couple in love, and
Speaker 1: they had a powerful connection. Fred was a widower. His wife, Jean,
Speaker 1: the mother of Heidi and Kirsten, had died the year before,
Speaker 1: and Verna was a widow. Her husband, Bill Johnson, the
Speaker 1: father of Kim and Doug, had also died by suicide.
Speaker 1: People whispered lovely. Verna's hair had turned prematurely silver. The
Speaker 1: kids were all little. Heidi and Kirsten needed a mom,
Speaker 1: Kim and Doug needed a dad. Fred was attractive, thick, curly,
Speaker 1: dark hair, a little broody, a catch, and Verna. Everyone
Speaker 1: in Malibu loved Verna. They found each other and it worked.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people envied Fred and Verna.
Speaker 1: You know, they were the perfect story of yours, mine
Speaker 1: and ours. That's Mark Hetrick, an old friend of the
Speaker 1: family that I talked to recently. His wife, Beth, and
Speaker 1: Verna taught together at the elementary school. Mark was a carpenter.
Speaker 1: He was helping Fred with the roof deck and they
Speaker 1: all hung out a lot. He kind of could do anything.
Speaker 1: I mean, he wasn't a professional contractor or a carpenter,
Speaker 1: and he wasn't afraid to, you know, take the roof
Speaker 1: off of his house and put a deck on it.
Speaker 1: You know, he could weld, and he you know, he
Speaker 1: was a mechanic. I mean, he could just do all
Speaker 1: these things. He was just very mechanical and very engineering.
Speaker 1: As a family, they were athletic and outdoorsy, always hiking
Speaker 1: or getting in the ocean. They were a hundred percent
Speaker 1: involved in their children's lives. You know, Verna was in
Speaker 1: the teacher's assistance in their classes, and you know, Fred
Speaker 1: was there for all of the kids all the time,
Speaker 1: and Verna was there for all the kids all the time.
Speaker 1: And I mean they were the parents that every kid
Speaker 1: would want, and their family was just the most important
Speaker 1: thing to him. Mark told me he and Beth looked
Speaker 1: up to Fred and Verna. They were the picture postcard
Speaker 1: Christmas postcard family of just you know, two very handsome,
Speaker 1: intelligent people with four kids that were just delightful. Those
Speaker 1: were the kind of kids that we wanted to have
Speaker 1: and the kind of the family that we wanted to have.
Speaker 1: Fred and Verna seemed pretty unimpressed by the wealth and
Speaker 1: glamor of Malibu. They weren't your you know, your real
Speaker 1: upscale Malibu people that had a Hollywood connection, you know,
Speaker 1: or a movie industry of connection. Because Fred and Verna,
Speaker 1: you know, they were you know, they were pretty settled, solid,
Speaker 1: you know, upper middle class family living there that m
Speaker 1: you know, had this wonderful piece of property and they
Speaker 1: were you know, and it was a wonderful place to
Speaker 1: live in, a wonderful place to raise kids. Fred in
Speaker 1: particular did not seem concerned with appearances. You know, he
Speaker 1: was sort of not your average Malibu guy, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, he wasn't trying to be mister Malibu. So
Speaker 1: was Fred affected by the whole Malibu glitz and glamour. No,
Speaker 1: not at all. Fred, you know, he didn't really care
Speaker 1: about that stuff. He was a family man living his values,
Speaker 1: and there wasn't a lot of that going around Malibu
Speaker 1: at the time. Here's another friend in an interview with investigators.
Speaker 1: We've seen so many people our age that sort of
Speaker 1: the man goes through this sort of midlife crisis where
Speaker 1: they're sort of insecure and concerned with material things and girlfriends,
Speaker 1: you know, driving a poor and chasing girls, and you know,
Speaker 1: sort of where their family is a drag on him,
Speaker 1: and there were an awful lot of people like that alboat,
Speaker 1: and you know, Fred couldn't be more different than that.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of engineers, Fred was logical and analytical,
Speaker 1: and he was highly competent, especially in the water on
Speaker 1: the sailboat. He was meticulous about safety. Here's Mark Keatrick
Speaker 1: again in an archival interview. The kids always had their
Speaker 1: life jackets on if they weren't in the cockpit, and
Speaker 1: they had to ask an adult permission to get out
Speaker 1: of the cockpit and go anywhere else on the boat.
Speaker 1: Anytime they were ever rowing around in the dinghy, whether
Speaker 1: it was in the harbor or whether it was over
Speaker 1: on the island, they couldn't go out of shouting distance
Speaker 1: at the boat. Mark sailed with Fred a lot and
Speaker 1: was in several harrowing situations with him. But whatever was
Speaker 1: going on, he said, Fred kept his composure, never never
Speaker 1: raised his voice, never shattered or got angry. Man was
Speaker 1: extremely calm and in situations that were potentially dangerous or scary,
Speaker 1: remain calm under pressure. Fred's extensive training in the water
Speaker 1: had taught him this. But that quality of composure of
Speaker 1: not succumbing to panic or hysteria, it hadn't helped him
Speaker 1: say Verna and Doug's lives. Fred was the only survivor
Speaker 1: of the dory incident, the only human survivor. The day
Speaker 1: after Verna and Doug drown, Lady the beagle puppy was
Speaker 1: rescued from Bird Rock. Here's Tony Clinch, an experienced tailor
Speaker 1: who knew the waters around Santa Cruz Island. Well, he's
Speaker 1: telling an investigator about how he found Lady hiding under
Speaker 1: a shrub. Were not supposed, Bob, that's how we spotted
Speaker 1: the dogs. Das dog. Maybe that's begle. It would seem
Speaker 1: a bittersweet footnote to the tragic story. Fred's heroic efforts
Speaker 1: in the water had not been a total waste. At
Speaker 1: least he was able to save his dog, But the
Speaker 1: fact of Lady that she was improbably alive, opened up
Speaker 1: a seam in Fred's story. Fred said he swam from
Speaker 1: where the dory capsized over to Bird Rock, carrying Verna
Speaker 1: and Doug with Lady on his head. Clinch didn't buy it.
Speaker 1: With the current and the wind, just no, what I
Speaker 1: could he have? He couldn't have in front the dog
Speaker 1: couldn't have made it a shore. Then the claim that
Speaker 1: he hoisted Lady up onto bird Rock and Lady scrambled
Speaker 1: up at Suli. I would define that the line of
Speaker 1: even being could have scaled and faced Cliff must If
Speaker 1: Fred was telling the truth about where they capsized, what
Speaker 1: he did where he swam, then Lady should be dead.
Speaker 1: But Lady was alive. Fred's sailing buddy Dick had picked
Speaker 1: her up from Tony Clinch, and soon Lady would return
Speaker 1: to Sea Level Drive and provide a small bit of
Speaker 1: comfort to Kim, Heidi, and Kirsten because they began their
Speaker 1: lives without Verna and Doug. Lady's inexplicable survival that was
Speaker 1: just one of the things that made the police suspect
Speaker 1: Fred's story was the invention of a murderer. Coming up.
Speaker 1: On the next episode of Lost Hills, detectives come knocking.
Speaker 1: They have a lot of questions for Fred. To be
Speaker 1: honest with you, Fred, we really don't know what much
Speaker 1: about what's going on. We have no idea of well,
Speaker 1: I can't say we had no idea. We do have
Speaker 1: an idea of what happened out at the island, but
Speaker 1: everything is really sketchy. So we're kind of like turn
Speaker 1: into after the fact, somehow we need to figure out
Speaker 1: if there's a way we can figure out to make
Speaker 1: sure that there was no file play or easy like
Speaker 1: that's next in episode two. Quiet No Longer Lost Hills
Speaker 1: is written and reported by Me Dana Goodyear. It's created
Speaker 1: by Me and Benedair and produced by Western Sound and
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus and you can hear
Speaker 1: the whole season add free and get early access to
Speaker 1: the final two episodes. Find Pushkin Plus on the Lost
Speaker 1: Hill Show page in Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin dot Fm.