Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: During the time my Terse was missing, a search party
Speaker 2: organized by doctor Ronda Hampton discovered a mural in a
Speaker 2: culvert high above Montanito on the cement around two large tunnels.
Speaker 2: Someone had painted a series of naked black women in
Speaker 2: various degrading and bizarre poses. This is doctor Hampton describing
Speaker 2: the scene in a video made by documentarian Chip Croft.
Speaker 3: This culvert area here is where there was the images
Speaker 3: that were taken by the searchers of approximately thirteen African
Speaker 3: American women with afros who were nude in very thick,
Speaker 3: sexually provocative positions.
Speaker 2: One was hula hooping, one was spread eagle, one was
Speaker 2: doing a handspring, one was climbing out of a vagina.
Speaker 2: Another was in a wheelchair giving a thumbs up. At
Speaker 2: the center, there was a man's face with crazed eyes
Speaker 2: and a mop of curly red hair.
Speaker 3: Along the concrete here were wordings indicating entering afro Land
Speaker 3: or something similar to that. Over the side here it
Speaker 3: said afro hose h o e s so afro hose.
Speaker 3: There were some other writings on.
Speaker 2: One of the figures really caught doctor Hampton's eye.
Speaker 3: One of the images was of a woman who was
Speaker 3: painted blue, kneeling on all fours on our Botox area.
Speaker 3: She had a simple the letters L A, and she
Speaker 3: had a marijuana joint out of her mouth. That's what
Speaker 3: makes us think that it's possibly that the person's trying
Speaker 3: to talk about my trees in terms of the fact
Speaker 3: that she was from LA, that she was accused of
Speaker 3: having marijuana.
Speaker 2: To my Teresa's friends and family, this mural was tantamount
Speaker 2: to a confession, a narrative depiction of her abduction, rape,
Speaker 2: torture and murder. According to my Teresa's mother, Latiste Sutton.
Speaker 2: There was even a forensic psychologist who wrote up a
Speaker 2: report about it unsolicited, saying it was a quote unquote
Speaker 2: sick trophy, the killer's calling card. But the day after
Speaker 2: it was discovered, when doctor Hampton went to see it
Speaker 2: for herself, it was already gone. She found that suspicious.
Speaker 2: Here she is again at the scene this immage.
Speaker 3: Yesterday was painted with the mural, which is what we're
Speaker 3: calling it, and here today the city has quickly come
Speaker 3: by and painted it over.
Speaker 2: There was nothing to see but a swath of babs paint,
Speaker 2: the kind used by the Graffiti Task Force. Law enforcement
Speaker 2: questioned the artist. It turned out he didn't know anything
Speaker 2: about my trees. This was just his thing, painting naked
Speaker 2: black women with afros in sexually explicit positions. He sent
Speaker 2: doctor Hampton an email telling her he was sorry for
Speaker 2: her loss. I knew the mural didn't have a direct
Speaker 2: connection to my trees, but still it was so unbelievably
Speaker 2: eerie and compelling, like a real of found footage explaining
Speaker 2: the total mystery of what had happened to my trees.
Speaker 2: So Haley and I figured we should see the spot
Speaker 2: and understand its proximity to the neighborhood and to Dark Canyon,
Speaker 2: where my Teres's remains were found. We met in Montanito
Speaker 2: and drove way up into the mountains. We parked on
Speaker 2: a narrow shoulder and got out. The covert ran underneath
Speaker 2: the road, so it wasn't visible till you went down
Speaker 2: below start level. I think we were expecting to see
Speaker 2: the beige government paint. We were seriously surprised.
Speaker 1: Oh, there's some weird graffiti here right now.
Speaker 2: Does not look like a it's like a similar style.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, I just got all the hairs on
Speaker 4: my arms.
Speaker 2: Set up on the main panel above the culverts tunnels.
Speaker 2: Someone had painted a new mural. It was nowhere near
Speaker 2: as elaborate as the original, but it did seem to
Speaker 2: share some basic DNA, Like that caricature over on the
Speaker 2: left looks similar to the and the yellow one too.
Speaker 3: The green one, well, that's creepy as fuck.
Speaker 2: I poked my head into one of the tunnels.
Speaker 1: How much do I not want to go in there?
Speaker 2: Well, then over on the right, I noticed something really weird.
Speaker 1: Look at this help.
Speaker 2: It's the same like creepy orange chair. It was a
Speaker 2: face outlined in orange with curly orange chair and crazy
Speaker 2: eyes next to the word help. Then there's another face,
Speaker 2: and it looks like there might be like a marijuana
Speaker 2: leaf in the middle of it.
Speaker 5: What the fuck?
Speaker 1: I want to go home?
Speaker 2: The original mural turned out to be a red herring,
Speaker 2: and this was just a copycat. So why did I
Speaker 2: feel a mounting sense of dread? I think it's because
Speaker 2: I was starting to see how easy it is to
Speaker 2: get turned around in these mountains, to be misled by
Speaker 2: seeming clues that don't solve anything. And I'm guessing that's
Speaker 2: pretty much what my Teresa's friends and family were feeling
Speaker 2: when the first mural was discovered and debunked. They still
Speaker 2: didn't know what had happened to my Trees. They were
Speaker 2: desperate to find her or find out, but they couldn't
Speaker 2: distinguish what might be crucial information that could lead them
Speaker 2: to an answer from what was spinning them blindfolded in circles.
Speaker 2: I'm Dana Goodyear and this is Lost Hills, episode five,
Speaker 2: So close. Throughout the fall of two thousand and nine,
Speaker 2: Teresa's case was all over the news, and the pressure
Speaker 2: on the Sheriff's department to explain their decision to release
Speaker 2: her without a safe ride home was intense. Here's a
Speaker 2: report from NBCLA.
Speaker 6: Among all the swirling questions in this case, one thing
Speaker 6: is certain. My Terce Richardson was lasting leaving this substation
Speaker 6: a week ago.
Speaker 7: She was not intoxicated, she was not disoriented. The La
Speaker 7: County Sheriff's Department did not only everything procedurally correct, but
Speaker 7: was morally right.
Speaker 6: The Sheriff's department says they'll launched another expansive search, a
Speaker 6: hunt for clues as authorities try to figure out how
Speaker 6: a beautiful young woman could simply vanish into the night
Speaker 6: outside a sheriff's station.
Speaker 2: The Sheriff's Department had arrested and released my Terse on
Speaker 2: the assumption that she was not gravely disabled or a
Speaker 2: danger to herself or others. Now that she was missing,
Speaker 2: they were at pains to explain why, if she was
Speaker 2: perfectly fine, she had not returned to her family. This
Speaker 2: is a recording that documentarian Chip Croft made of a
Speaker 2: press conference outside Lost Hills station three weeks after my
Speaker 2: Teresa's disappearance.
Speaker 7: Steve Whitmore, Sheriff's department spokesman. Now, the important thing that
Speaker 7: I want to say, and I've said since the beginning,
Speaker 7: is we want to find my Terce Richardson. That's all
Speaker 7: we want to do. We want to find her.
Speaker 2: At the station, he said, my Teres gave no indication
Speaker 2: of needing psychiatric help.
Speaker 7: She exhibited no signs of incapacitation whatsoever, no mental challenges,
Speaker 7: not she was not under the influence. We gave her
Speaker 7: an extensive field sobriety test, where the eyes are checked,
Speaker 7: where the pulse is checked, where this language is checked,
Speaker 7: where a person's physical abilities are checked.
Speaker 2: The jailer, he said, had offered my Teresa bed in
Speaker 2: an unlocked cell and also told her she was free
Speaker 2: to wait in the lobby for a ride.
Speaker 7: And when she came here, the jailer was an African
Speaker 7: American jailer, by the way, a woman who had been
Speaker 7: a jailer for fourteen years with the La County Sheriff's Department.
Speaker 7: Talked to a great length visited where they talked about music. Jazz,
Speaker 7: she liked, gospel, she didn't. There was a lucid conversation
Speaker 7: that jailer said, why don't you stay?
Speaker 2: A quick aside, A very senior member of the Detective Division,
Speaker 2: now retired, told me that one of the Sheriff's Department's
Speaker 2: biggest mistakes in the whole my Terce Richardson episode, was
Speaker 2: that they didn't ask the Lost Hills jailer, Sharon Cummings,
Speaker 2: a black woman, to explain to the public why she'd
Speaker 2: been released. I wondered what Cummings would have said. She's
Speaker 2: also retired now, so I called her. The minute I
Speaker 2: said my Terce Richardson, she hung up the phone. At
Speaker 2: the press conference, Steve Whitmore, the Sheriff's department spokesman, continued
Speaker 2: to defend the decision to let my teres leave.
Speaker 7: This is a twenty four year old adult who is
Speaker 7: fully coggon, sent of her surroundings, and coherent to said extent.
Speaker 7: If we hold them against their will, it's called overt detention.
Speaker 7: You can't do that in America.
Speaker 2: But reporters pressed, didn't the lost Hill's deputies have some
Speaker 2: responsibility to help her? Shouldn't she have been driven back
Speaker 2: to her.
Speaker 7: Car if she had asked?
Speaker 5: Sure?
Speaker 7: But let me that's an interesting question. We did that before.
Speaker 7: We've been asked to do that, and we've done it,
Speaker 7: and then we've been disciplined for doing it back exactly. Oh, yes,
Speaker 7: we've been people. If if it's late at night, if
Speaker 7: the situation warns it, not only a malleable, but any station,
Speaker 7: there's some especially in some stations where like Century, where
Speaker 7: there may be some danger. And I mean real danger.
Speaker 7: I mean you know, real danger. Now that doesn't say
Speaker 7: there's no danger here.
Speaker 2: It makes sense the Sheriff's department didn't want to dwell
Speaker 2: on my Teresa's mental state. It might expose them to liability.
Speaker 1: Soon.
Speaker 2: My Teresa's family sue the county for negligence, intentional infliction
Speaker 2: of emotional distress, and wrongful death. That claim ended in
Speaker 2: a nine hundred thousand dollars settlement for the family, but
Speaker 2: for the LAPD, the lead agency tasked with finding her.
Speaker 2: My Teresa's mental health was becoming an important investigative angle.
Speaker 2: Not long after my Teresa's disappearance, detectives reached out to
Speaker 2: Hannah Parks, the woman she'd fallen for in the summer
Speaker 2: of two thousand and nine. She knew my Terse was
Speaker 2: missing and was waiting anxiously for her to get in touch.
Speaker 5: In the back of my mind, I kept thinking, maybe
Speaker 5: she'll pop up, Like I thought, maybe she would just
Speaker 5: come to my house. I was waiting for her to
Speaker 5: kind of like reach out. I thought it was weird
Speaker 5: that she wasn't texting or calling, but then of course
Speaker 5: she didn't have her phone. But for me, in the
Speaker 5: back of my mind, of course, I was concerned because
Speaker 5: I knew the mental states she was in. But I
Speaker 5: was like, she'll come over, Like she'll she'll pop up.
Speaker 2: She was startled to get a call from LAPD Robbery Homicide.
Speaker 5: They said, hey, we need to meet with you about
Speaker 5: the disappearance of my Terce Richardson, and we're on our
Speaker 5: way right now, and I'm like, I'm at work, and
Speaker 5: they're like, we don't care.
Speaker 2: Hannah called her mom and together they went to meet
Speaker 2: the detectives at a Starbucks.
Speaker 5: They just asked me a bunch of questions about how
Speaker 5: I knew her, our relationship, things like that, and I
Speaker 5: asked them why why la homicide? Like why homicide? Because
Speaker 5: she's just missing, right, so shouldn't this be like missing persons?
Speaker 2: At first, Hannah felt like she might be a suspect.
Speaker 5: Then once they started talking to me more, I think
Speaker 5: they very quickly reed like I wasn't I didn't have
Speaker 5: anything to do with it. Then they started trying to
Speaker 5: just get more information out of me regarding my trees.
Speaker 2: Really, the detectives asked Hannah if they could look around
Speaker 2: her home.
Speaker 5: They ended up following me back to my apartment, and
Speaker 5: I gave them like everything I had of my terces.
Speaker 5: So there was a couple journals, some clothes, and just
Speaker 5: a few little things like I didn't have that much,
Speaker 5: but I gave them everything of hers that was at
Speaker 5: the house.
Speaker 2: Detectives also searched my Teresa's car at the tow yard
Speaker 2: in Malibu and recovered a black purse containing several more journals.
Speaker 2: According to her father, They also found her wallet underneath
Speaker 2: the seat. It contained a bank card connected to an
Speaker 2: account with plenty of money in it. The journals were
Speaker 2: handed over to Detective Chuck Knowles, one of the LAPD
Speaker 2: robbery homicide detectives who'd been assigned to take over what
Speaker 2: was still officially a missing person's case. Knowles had the
Speaker 2: journals analyzed by an LAPD psychologist who saw indications of
Speaker 2: severe bipolar disorder from my Teresa's phone records. They determined
Speaker 2: that she had not slept for five days by the
Speaker 2: time she arrived at Jeoffrey's. Knowles now understood how acute
Speaker 2: my Teresa's mental illness was at the time of her disappearance.
Speaker 2: It was the very recognition her friends and family had
Speaker 2: hoped for to add urgency to the search, but it
Speaker 2: had an unintended effect, because now the LAPD appeared to
Speaker 2: view her illness and erratic behavior as a likely explanation
Speaker 2: for the fact that she couldn't be found. My Teres
Speaker 2: might have committed suicide or succumbed to the elements, or,
Speaker 2: as Detective Knowles told the La Times, she could have
Speaker 2: quote gotten herself into a comfortable relationship outside of her
Speaker 2: immediate friends and family. In other words. The cops were
Speaker 2: implying my Teres had made herself disappear. One of the
Speaker 2: central mysteries of my Teresa's case is how she got
Speaker 2: from Lost Hill Station to Montanito, six miles in the dark.
Speaker 2: Law enforcement checked with local taxi companies. There was no
Speaker 2: record of her leaving Lost Hill Station. She would have,
Speaker 2: in all likelihood walked east on a Gurra road. In
Speaker 2: about a mile. She would have hit Las Virgines Road
Speaker 2: to the left, past the McDonald's and a couple of
Speaker 2: gas stations. Is the one O one freeway.
Speaker 1: To the right.
Speaker 2: The road takes you through Malibu Canyon to Montanito. If
Speaker 2: you keep going you hit Pacific Coast Highway and the ocean.
Speaker 2: Was she trying to get back to her car? And
Speaker 2: had she really gone all that way on foot? As
Speaker 2: soon as my Trees went missing, her inner circle began
Speaker 2: demanding documentation of her arrest and detention. More than anything,
Speaker 2: they wanted to see the video footage of my Trees
Speaker 2: leaving Lost Hill Station. They wanted to see which way
Speaker 2: she walked, or if someone who had yet to come
Speaker 2: forward had picked her up. They were hoping for a clue,
Speaker 2: but they were told there was no videotape, at least
Speaker 2: that's what they were told at first.
Speaker 3: That story changes. So originally okay, So originally we were
Speaker 3: told there were no front.
Speaker 2: Cameras, Doctor ron Dehampton.
Speaker 3: Again, every weekend, we were doing a search somewhere in
Speaker 3: some way, right, and so we kept coming back to
Speaker 3: how do we know that we're going in the right directions?
Speaker 3: So we were asking about the video so that we
Speaker 3: can see which way she walked when she out the
Speaker 3: front door. And then they just denied that there was
Speaker 3: ever the existence of a video.
Speaker 2: When they presented the Sheriff's Department with a picture of
Speaker 2: the camera at the front of Lost Hill Station, the
Speaker 2: story shifted.
Speaker 3: We were told, oh, there are cameras, but it's recorded over.
Speaker 2: And then the story shifted again.
Speaker 3: And then the next one was it's live and so
Speaker 3: we don't record that.
Speaker 2: All three of those, the evolving answer did nothing to
Speaker 2: satisfy my Teresa's friends and family and did everything to
Speaker 2: convince them that the Sheriff's Department was hiding information to
Speaker 2: throw them off on purpose. Eventually, doctor Hampton says she
Speaker 2: asked about the video in a meeting with Tom Martin,
Speaker 2: who was the captain at Lost Hills Station when my
Speaker 2: Terse went missing.
Speaker 3: And then Tom Martin admitted at that point that he
Speaker 3: had the video, that he had had it, and that
Speaker 3: it was in his desk.
Speaker 2: So there was a video, and this whole time it
Speaker 2: was at the station, in the captain's desk.
Speaker 3: I mean, we were. It was pretty heated because it
Speaker 3: was like, wait, you lied all this time and said
Speaker 3: that there wasn't a video, you know, like, why would
Speaker 3: you hide it? He never answered that question.
Speaker 2: The impression that the Sheriff's Department was lying only deepened
Speaker 2: when my Teresa's friends and family actually got to see
Speaker 2: the video. It was screened for them with a homicide
Speaker 2: detective named Lieutenant Mike Rawson who was assisting on the case.
Speaker 2: It showed my Teres inside Lost Hill Station, and, contrary
Speaker 2: to what the Sheriff's spokesman had claimed, she did seem
Speaker 2: to be acting erratic.
Speaker 3: From what I recall seeing on the video. She's placed
Speaker 3: in the cell with another woman, and she interacts with
Speaker 3: that woman a bit, and she's pacing back and forth,
Speaker 3: and eventually the woman leaves, and so she's there by herself,
Speaker 3: and she goes up to the phone. She picks up
Speaker 3: the phone several times. She picks up the phone, puts
Speaker 3: it down, picks it up, puts it down. She starts
Speaker 3: swinging on the side of so like the door and
Speaker 3: the jail has like a bar on it kind of,
Speaker 3: and so she starts swinging. You know how kids you'll
Speaker 3: see them kind of doing it in like when they're
Speaker 3: in a crib. It's kind of doing that. And then
Speaker 3: my teres is kind of sitting or laying like in
Speaker 3: fetal position on this like concrete bench.
Speaker 2: When it got to the part of the video where
Speaker 2: My Rise was about to be released, doctor Hampton watched attentively.
Speaker 2: This was the moment she'd been most focused on where
Speaker 2: she might get to see which way my terse went
Speaker 2: or if someone had picked her up.
Speaker 3: They're collecting her and say they gave her this, like
Speaker 3: it's like a clear baggie, right, and it has like
Speaker 3: her belt in and her hat's in it. There's some
Speaker 3: other paperwork in there, and then she's putting on her
Speaker 3: putting on her items, and then they walk her out.
Speaker 3: Sharon comings, the jailer walks her out of the side door,
Speaker 3: and so when she opens that door, it's pitch dark,
Speaker 3: so that when they both exit together. After that, all
Speaker 3: you see is darkness and then the screen goes black.
Speaker 3: Right at that point when the screen went black, we
Speaker 3: kind of thought the video was over.
Speaker 2: But the tape was still rolling showing the darkened exterior
Speaker 2: of the station.
Speaker 3: So the guy who was showing us the film, I
Speaker 3: was sitting to his right, and so even though the
Speaker 3: screen was black, he looks over at me and he
Speaker 3: like nods his head like he's trying to get me
Speaker 3: to look at something, so I, you know, I just
Speaker 3: kind of look up. And then Jonathan also looked up
Speaker 3: my Teresa's cousin and he says, who's that because even
Speaker 3: though the screen was black at some point, So two
Speaker 3: minutes pass, but Sharon Cummins comes back and opens her door,
Speaker 3: and then at the same time, the deputy a deputy leaves.
Speaker 3: Like as soon as that door shut, the deputy leaves.
Speaker 2: They hadn't known that a deputy had left the station
Speaker 2: shortly after my trees. It seemed like the answer they'd
Speaker 2: been looking for.
Speaker 3: So they were like, wait a minute, who was that?
Speaker 3: Who was leaving? I can tell that Lieutenant Rawson was
Speaker 3: very surprised that that there was more footage on that video.
Speaker 3: Because his face turned absolutely beat red.
Speaker 2: The Sheriff's Department claims that all the deputies working that
Speaker 2: night were accounted for, and a report from the Office
Speaker 2: of Independent Review, a civilian oversight group, concluded that deputies
Speaker 2: had acted lawfully in my Trees's arrest and release. Still,
Speaker 2: over the years, many people have speculated that a deputy
Speaker 2: from Lost Hills might have picked up my Teres, assaulted her,
Speaker 2: killed her, and dumped her body, or that a deputy
Speaker 2: may have picked her up and assaulted her, causing her
Speaker 2: to flee into Montanito, where she died. There is no
Speaker 2: evidence to support either scenario, but it doesn't seem to matter.
Speaker 2: The Sheriff's Department's consistent impulse to shield themselves from blame
Speaker 2: made everything they did look like a cover up. Here's Michael,
Speaker 2: my Teresa's dad. This is from the first time I
Speaker 2: met him almost five years ago, at an event being
Speaker 2: held on the ten year anniversary of my Teresa's disappearance.
Speaker 2: He was firm in his belief that my Teresa's death
Speaker 2: was an inside.
Speaker 1: Job, so it was a cover up.
Speaker 8: From the time my Terce was released all the way
Speaker 8: up and still to now to this day, is still
Speaker 8: a cover up, and even though you know, let's say,
Speaker 8: how can you one hundred percent surely say it was
Speaker 8: a sheriff that did so to my trees? Well, it's
Speaker 8: very easy at this point in time. I'm not gonna
Speaker 8: lie about something that I didn't do. If I didn't
Speaker 8: do it, here's all the information. And ironically, the same
Speaker 8: thing that the shares expect for you to do as
Speaker 8: a witness. If you don't do it, you get arrested
Speaker 8: for it. So like saying, withholding evidence such as the
Speaker 8: tape of a crime, guess who's going to jail the
Speaker 8: person withholding And none of them went at jail.
Speaker 2: With the help of doctor Hampton, Mitteresa's family asked then
Speaker 2: California Attorney General Kamala Harris to open a criminal investigation
Speaker 2: into the conduct of sheriff's deputies, including Captain Tom Martin,
Speaker 2: for his possession of the videotape. In a twenty sixteen report,
Speaker 2: Harris's office found, quote, it is entirely doubtful that Martin
Speaker 2: can be successfully prosecuted for concealment of evidence. The tape
Speaker 2: was preserved and its contents eventually produced. In the course
Speaker 2: of our reporting, we heard of two more irregularities from
Speaker 2: very different ends of the spectrum regarding deputies and my
Speaker 2: Trees at the time of her release. The first was
Speaker 2: from Chermaine Henderson, my Terce's cellmate at Lost Hills. She
Speaker 2: said she was uncomfortable with the way my Trese was released,
Speaker 2: even though they were no longer in the same cell.
Speaker 2: She could tell that my Teres was leaving the station
Speaker 2: without a ride after midnight. That seemed wrong to her.
Speaker 1: I guess they sighted her out.
Speaker 9: But when you cite someone out, you still don't let
Speaker 9: them leave, and so they have a way to get somewhere.
Speaker 9: I mean, they can call a calf on their own,
Speaker 9: you know, something like that, you know, because it's in
Speaker 9: the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 2: But what she heard next actually gave her the creeps.
Speaker 1: What I was hearing like they were saying they would
Speaker 1: drop her off.
Speaker 2: One of the deputies, she said, offered to give my
Speaker 2: Terse a ride.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, one of deputies. That was a male deputy.
Speaker 2: Did you think that was weird or inappropriate that he
Speaker 2: had offered to give her a ride?
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I think it was.
Speaker 9: When you release your release and you're gone, it is
Speaker 9: like they won't cares that you arrived.
Speaker 1: No, no, you released that rise. That's not the job.
Speaker 2: Take it with a grain of salt, because it's just
Speaker 2: a snippet of a story from someone whose memory is,
Speaker 2: by her own admission, unreliable, and I have seen no
Speaker 2: documentation to support it. The second thing we heard about
Speaker 2: my trees and cops and cars came from a very
Speaker 2: different source. Doctor Lisa Shyman, the forensic pathologist who conducted
Speaker 2: the autopsy. She worked closely with law enforcement as part
Speaker 2: of her job. She was sympathetic to the bind that
Speaker 2: the deputies were in when they believed they were legally
Speaker 2: obligated to release my trees, and she wanted to go,
Speaker 2: and they were very nervous about letting her go because
Speaker 2: they knew she had nothing.
Speaker 4: It was dark out, and they knew it was remote.
Speaker 4: But if she said no, they couldn't force her to stay,
Speaker 4: so they had to let her go.
Speaker 2: She vaguely recalls hearing that deputies were so concerned that
Speaker 2: they decided to go out of their way for her.
Speaker 4: I believe somebody said they actually followed her after she
Speaker 4: left a bit from a distance with a car, just
Speaker 4: to see that she was okay, And eventually they veered off,
Speaker 4: but they were actually quite concerned about her.
Speaker 2: If any of this is true, then all of these
Speaker 2: deputies and anyone they spoke to about it conspired to
Speaker 2: stay silent when the disappearance of My Trees became a
Speaker 2: nationwide scandal, and no one from law enforcement has ever
Speaker 2: come forward with any information about this. Intriguing as these
Speaker 2: fragments are, they don't lead anywhere, and they detract from
Speaker 2: what I think is the deeper truth. Had My Trees
Speaker 2: been given a ride from the station, she would likely
Speaker 2: still be alive. In January twenty ten, when My Trees
Speaker 2: had been missing for four months, authorities launched one of
Speaker 2: the largest searches in Los Angeles history. There were more
Speaker 2: than three hundred people, more than sixty horses, dogs, ATVs, bikes,
Speaker 2: and air support. They searched from Calabasas to Pacific Coast Highway,
Speaker 2: including all throughout Malibu Creek State Park and the Backbone Trail.
Speaker 2: Here's Sergeant twey Wright of Malibu Search and Rescue.
Speaker 10: I can tell you that it was a huge undertaking
Speaker 10: and it was pretty much unprecedented. I've never done a
Speaker 10: search with four hundred personnel before that or since then.
Speaker 2: By now, investigators had a clear understanding of my Teresa's
Speaker 2: mental state. They focused the January search on the area's
Speaker 2: below cliffs and dams and rock faces, thinking that my Trees,
Speaker 2: in her distress, might have jumped. Law enforcement had pledged
Speaker 2: to search every inch of the area, and there were
Speaker 2: trails near the Smith's house where my Trees was last seen,
Speaker 2: connecting to Dark Canyon, the treacherous steep, poison oak infested
Speaker 2: canyon that yawns above Montanito. It seemed unlikely that someone
Speaker 2: just trying to get back to her car would have
Speaker 2: gone in there, but maybe a person in the midst
Speaker 2: of a bipolar episode would, maybe a suicidal person would.
Speaker 2: Sergeant Wright ordered it to be searched. Back in the
Speaker 2: early two thousands, when Sergeant Wright was a narcotics detective,
Speaker 2: he'd learned about an illegal marijuana growing operation in Dark Canyon.
Speaker 10: So having that in the back of my mind when
Speaker 10: we're doing the matri search, I wanted to make sure
Speaker 10: what we call a sworn team in other words, an
Speaker 10: armed team with armed peace officers, was that it was
Speaker 10: a sign to search Dark Canyon.
Speaker 2: They were carrying some rudimentary GPS devices partly reliant on
Speaker 2: cell service. They were supposed to be able to track
Speaker 2: where each deputy had walked. The cell service in Montanito
Speaker 2: is spotty even today. Back then it was very limited,
Speaker 2: and in Dark Canyon it was pretty much non existent.
Speaker 10: They didn't work. We had no way of telling exactly
Speaker 10: how far searchers went up Dark Canyon.
Speaker 2: He also tried using drones, a new technology at the time.
Speaker 10: It was from a experimental drone. The program was out
Speaker 10: of I believe it was Sand Diego University down there.
Speaker 10: I would call this drone pretty rudimentary by today's standards.
Speaker 10: And what I mean by that it was a sort
Speaker 10: of what I would call a bat wing drone. You
Speaker 10: had to turn it on and throw it and it
Speaker 10: would take flight.
Speaker 2: They searched the bottom of Dark Canyon, but didn't get
Speaker 2: very far. The operators were afraid of losing their drone.
Speaker 2: It's these searches of Dark Canyon that fill Sergeant right
Speaker 2: with regret to this day. Knowing what he knows now,
Speaker 2: he told me he would have pushed the team to
Speaker 2: focus on Dark Canyon from the beginning and search its
Speaker 2: full extent.
Speaker 10: It was so obvious in hindsight, it was one of
Speaker 10: the darkest deepest canyons right there, and in hindsight, obviously
Speaker 10: we didn't go deep enough soon enough. I mean, it
Speaker 10: was so Closegeant.
Speaker 2: It's been retired since twenty nineteen, but the Mitrice Richardson
Speaker 2: case has continued to bother him. He wishes, of course,
Speaker 2: he'd found her alive, or even found her body sooner,
Speaker 2: when her remains could have told a more complete story.
Speaker 2: And I think all of that is why he decided
Speaker 2: to do something no one else in law enforcement has
Speaker 2: been willing to do. Help us figure out what happened
Speaker 2: to her, But that came a little later. At first,
Speaker 2: he just helped us understand what it had been like
Speaker 2: when my rise was missing. As the months passed, it
Speaker 2: was clear to authorities they were no longer searching for
Speaker 2: a lost person. They were searching for remains, possibly a skeleton.
Speaker 2: Finding bones is actually fairly common in Malibu because of
Speaker 2: all the wildlife. Here's Sergeant right.
Speaker 10: People see bones when they're hiking on trails, and they
Speaker 10: also see him on the side of the road. The
Speaker 10: Ticku Lilean turnouts. We might have an area where you
Speaker 10: could park a car and maybe look over at a
Speaker 10: beautiful view of the ocean or something. People are standing
Speaker 10: there and then they see bones and or they smell
Speaker 10: a dead smell.
Speaker 2: But everyone in Malibu was on high alert, and so
Speaker 2: were the authorities. They were looking for a high profile
Speaker 2: missing person. Those bones could be hers.
Speaker 10: During the time of the Matrese investigation, we never ignored
Speaker 10: any of those. We went out on each and everyone,
Speaker 10: and we were thorough and would investigate. And I do
Speaker 10: recall some of those where people reported the smell of
Speaker 10: something dead. I remember when we sent a team out
Speaker 10: and they went out and they looked, and they smelled something,
Speaker 10: and they looked and they basically found the remains of
Speaker 10: a dead coyote.
Speaker 2: Law enforcement records show that on June tenth and twelfth,
Speaker 2: twenty ten, two months before my Teresa's remains were found,
Speaker 2: Malibu Search and Rescue conducted two operations in response to
Speaker 2: reports of bones in the area.
Speaker 10: I do recall a tip came into the Detective Bureau
Speaker 10: and there was some talk of a rib cage was
Speaker 10: observed by somebody who was at a particular location off
Speaker 10: of Payuma where they described a fort like a tree fort.
Speaker 2: Sergeant Wright assembled a team, including his tracker and a
Speaker 2: cadaver dog.
Speaker 10: We went out there and a couple of different vehicles.
Speaker 10: We took at least one rifle with us, and maybe
Speaker 10: even a shotgun because it sounded suspicious.
Speaker 2: The location was in the wilderness off Payuma Road, about
Speaker 2: a mile up the mountain from the smith's house in Montenito,
Speaker 2: close to the Backbone.
Speaker 10: Trail, and we went in and eventually we found what
Speaker 10: could be described as a fort or in the marijuana
Speaker 10: investigation days, we would call it a hooch, which is
Speaker 10: a term basically from Vietnam of a tent type outpost
Speaker 10: in thick jungle. So that's what we found. We spread
Speaker 10: out and approached it, and I could see that it
Speaker 10: was made from camouflage tarps that had wrapped around several trees,
Speaker 10: including a real big tree, and it had a roof,
Speaker 10: and it had a doorway area, and we went in
Speaker 10: and clearly on public land, we went in and cleared it,
Speaker 10: and there was nobody inside. Inside was sort of a
Speaker 10: bed area where you could tell somebody could sleep.
Speaker 2: Someone was definitely living there.
Speaker 10: And I do recall one book in particular, it was
Speaker 10: a the US Army Survival Manual. I saw that in there.
Speaker 10: I saw on the outside of the outside the fort
Speaker 10: there was some cubes called grow dan cubes that were
Speaker 10: consistent with starting marijuana plants, and I actually saw some
Speaker 10: marijuana growing there, like a couple inches high.
Speaker 2: Hanging from a tree. Outside the fort, they spotted the
Speaker 2: rib cage. This was the reason they were there because
Speaker 2: the tipster had thought this rib cage might belong to
Speaker 2: my Terce Richardson.
Speaker 10: The ribcage was taken as evidence and submitted to the
Speaker 10: corner to the crime LAMB. If I recall, it turned
Speaker 10: out to be deer bones.
Speaker 2: Deer bones, still, the fort was potentially significant. The person
Speaker 2: living there seemed to have a funny habit of collecting
Speaker 2: items that belonged to various women.
Speaker 10: What I recall on it is I think it was
Speaker 10: IDs identifications and or ATM cards for a couple of
Speaker 10: different females.
Speaker 2: But my Teresa's driver's license, which she had on her
Speaker 2: when she left Lost Hill Station, was not among them,
Speaker 2: while my trees was missing. Her dad, Michael Richardson, had
Speaker 2: a wrenching experience. He was in Las Vegas with some friends.
Speaker 8: My friend was driving. I was in the backseat and
Speaker 8: I was on the window side, So when I looked
Speaker 8: over to the right, I just seen a girl standing
Speaker 8: at the light getting ready to walk across the street.
Speaker 8: Lit looked just like my trees. And I just stopped.
Speaker 8: The car stopped and they're like what what what? And
Speaker 8: I just jump out the car and they're like, man,
Speaker 8: where you going? And cars was stopping almost about to
Speaker 8: hit me, and they all get out like what what?
Speaker 8: I said?
Speaker 4: Man?
Speaker 8: I could have sworn I just seeing my daughter standing
Speaker 8: right here and we would in the alley. Did you
Speaker 8: just see this girl like that? Nobody saw that person
Speaker 8: that we were talking about, And I was like, I know,
Speaker 8: I'm not tripping. I saw that, you know, and I
Speaker 8: will still stand behind that. But this person that I
Speaker 8: saw vanished into the thin air, and it was another
Speaker 8: dead end.
Speaker 2: When he got back to his hotel room, he called
Speaker 2: the LAPD detectives.
Speaker 8: But I called it and said, man, I think my
Speaker 8: daughter in Vegas? All right, what makes you think that? Michael?
Speaker 8: And yeah, all right, well we'll check it out and
Speaker 8: let you know what we find. And it was like, eh,
Speaker 8: it was a dead end, Michael. I'm like, I know,
Speaker 8: I said, okay, Man, maybe it was just me wanting
Speaker 8: it to be her. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Then someone else thought they saw my terse in Las Vegas.
Speaker 2: It was a high school friend of hers. This was
Speaker 2: in June twenty ten. The LAPD took the sighting seatiously
Speaker 2: and I.
Speaker 8: Mean they all detectives and everybody set up camp and
Speaker 8: shop down there.
Speaker 2: But today Michael thinks this was a trap, a diversion
Speaker 2: by law enforcement to keep him out of Malibu so
Speaker 2: they could discover her remains.
Speaker 8: And they were trying to get us and me falling
Speaker 8: foid flew to Las Vegas.
Speaker 2: It's a wild theory, fueled by frustration and mistrust and
Speaker 2: by an unfortunate coincidence. On August ninth, twenty ten, while
Speaker 2: Michael was in Las Vegas for a press conference about
Speaker 2: My Trees, some park rangers checking out an old pot
Speaker 2: grow discovered her skull among the fallen leaves. The site
Speaker 2: was about a mile from where My treece was last
Speaker 2: seen on the side of a steep ravine in Dark Canyon,
Speaker 2: next time on Lost Hills.
Speaker 8: So it is all unfolded like they did a botched
Speaker 8: up job anyway, by sweeping or remains in a plastic bag,
Speaker 8: flying it out before the corner got there to make
Speaker 8: the call, which contaminated the crime scene.
Speaker 2: That's next in episode six, Reconnaissance. Lost Hills is written
Speaker 2: and hosted by Me Dana Goodyear. It was reported by
Speaker 2: Me and Haley Fox, our senior producer. The show was
Speaker 2: created by me and Benadere. Lost Hills is a production
Speaker 2: of Western Sound and Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus
Speaker 2: and you can binge the whole season right now ad free.
Speaker 2: Find Pushkin Plus on the Lost Hills show page in
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot FMS flash Plus