Speaker 1: Pushkin or sick cr zero season nine seven six six
Speaker 1: zero five Shift. Thank you very much. You're welcome to
Speaker 1: I'd like to speak. I sit in court and watch
Speaker 1: Anthony Rowda a lot. No, you'd denied. This is the
Speaker 1: tape from that first time I saw him, when he
Speaker 1: threw himself up against the walls of his plexiglass cage,
Speaker 1: shouting at the judge, his own lawyer, the bailiff, the world.
Speaker 1: So I don't give a shit. I'm want to speak.
Speaker 1: You don't have a right speak. I'm speak, but you
Speaker 1: speaking through your return. No, I'm not gonna speak. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna cooperate with the pup defenders oppose anymore. So
Speaker 1: that's that's the case. And on that one piece of ship,
Speaker 1: you're a piece of ship, bitch sharks that motherfucker, fucking
Speaker 1: your mama. I think my client is a little over.
Speaker 1: I haven't been accustomed to him. The murder case is
Speaker 1: dragging through pre trial hearings. Routa is a frequent miss out.
Speaker 1: I never know if he'll even show up, or which
Speaker 1: router will show up. He can seem calm and lucid.
Speaker 1: Other times he's out of it. He appears to be
Speaker 1: smiling or laughing, but I can never tell it who
Speaker 1: or at what he stretches, pulls his cheek, yawns. It's
Speaker 1: like watching someone watch a sitcom. I can't see. Then,
Speaker 1: without warning, Hilly rupped his lawyer, a new one every
Speaker 1: several months. Is quote a little punk ass motherfucker, and
Speaker 1: Rotta wants to go proper represent himself. I've wondered a
Speaker 1: lot about his mental state and about his guilt. Could
Speaker 1: this person really have killed Tristan Bodet? What would have
Speaker 1: been his motivation? I've been sending rout of letters in jail,
Speaker 1: googling every name I can find that connects to him,
Speaker 1: trying to find out as much as I can about
Speaker 1: this man who seems to have wanted so badly to disappear.
Speaker 1: And I keep coming back to the same questions. What
Speaker 1: kind of loaner camps out in the hills behind the
Speaker 1: Sheriff's station and why would a hermit wander into a
Speaker 1: campground with a gun? I'm Dana Goodyear and this is
Speaker 1: Lost Hills, episode five, Crazy Horse. All Right, we're ready
Speaker 1: to do this. I'm just gonna go for it. I'm
Speaker 1: standing outside a large complex of attached houses in the
Speaker 1: middle of the sprawling San Fernando Valley. I'm not too
Speaker 1: far from Malibu, just on the other side of the mountains.
Speaker 1: But it's a different world, fast food places and low
Speaker 1: slung housing, the stucco jungle. It's six o'clock at night,
Speaker 1: ninety five degrees. I'm about to knock on the door
Speaker 1: to the unit where I think Lisa Rouda Cook lives.
Speaker 1: Lisa Rouda as in Anthony's sister. Hello, Hi, are you Jerry? No?
Speaker 1: Hold on a second, okay, ye all, Actually I'm trying
Speaker 1: to find Lisa. Okay, one second, Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: I know that Lisa is married to a man named
Speaker 1: Jerry Cook, and they've lived at this address for quite
Speaker 1: some time. She has a good job at a bank,
Speaker 1: and I have a feeling that Anthony and Lisa are
Speaker 1: or were close. At one point, he carried around letters
Speaker 1: from Lisa in his backpack. I found that in some
Speaker 1: old court documents he filed petitioning to get the letters back.
Speaker 1: That detail kills me. So here I am knocking on
Speaker 1: her door. Hi are you Jerry? Please? Okay? Can I
Speaker 1: just tell you who I am? No, I don't need
Speaker 1: to know. I've got Jerry Cook's number, so I try
Speaker 1: calling him from the car, just as a guy with
Speaker 1: a leaflower walks by. Oh, hi is this Jerry, Jerry,
Speaker 1: This is Dana Goodyear. I just was at your door.
Speaker 1: I'm really sorry to have disturbed you. I just I'm
Speaker 1: trying to explain what I'm doing. I've been course sponding
Speaker 1: with Anthony. I've been talking to Oswald and I'm trying
Speaker 1: to learn more about him and his background and his childhood,
Speaker 1: and that's why I'm trying to reach out to you
Speaker 1: and Lisa. Jerry is pretty down on the idea, but
Speaker 1: if Anthony wants him to talk to me, he will.
Speaker 1: I'll just need to get written permission, he says from Anthony.
Speaker 1: That tells me something. Even if these people never show
Speaker 1: up in court or associate publicly with Routa in any way,
Speaker 1: they're still supporting him. But I'm just saying, if Anthony
Speaker 1: tells me in writing, then I'll take a snapshot of
Speaker 1: that and texted to you at this number, and then
Speaker 1: we can talk. They still care what he thinks. Okay,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. And Jerry tells me they all
Speaker 1: think this is a frame job. Ozzie Anthony Rowda's dad
Speaker 1: shows up for almost every hearing. I check his face
Speaker 1: for signs of fatigue. The days when his cheeks are sallow,
Speaker 1: helled not a quick hillo and then hurry off to
Speaker 1: work afterward. But when he's in a good mood, we
Speaker 1: talked for long stretches and I ask him about the
Speaker 1: Anthony Routa. He knows his kid, not the alleged Malibu killer.
Speaker 1: He tells me that Anthony was born at the Big
Speaker 1: Kaiser Hospital in Hollywood. He grew up on the East
Speaker 1: side of Los Angeles in Highland Park before it was gentrified.
Speaker 1: Anthony's the youngest of three kids. Ozzie remembers him as
Speaker 1: shy and neat and meticulously clean. He didn't even get
Speaker 1: dirty playing baseball. He loved cats. These details are so undescriptive.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm looking at the back of someone's minivan. Anthony,
Speaker 1: his parents and siblings are like those stick figure drawings.
Speaker 1: Is Ozzie withholding or does he just not know? It's
Speaker 1: almost like his youngest son barely registered for him, and
Speaker 1: none of it even begins to explain how Anthony finds
Speaker 1: himself in jail on murder charges. Ozzie says that he
Speaker 1: and Anthony's mom divorced in the late eighties. Then she
Speaker 1: moved the kids to Florida when Anthony was ten or twelve.
Speaker 1: At that point, Ozzie lost track of him completely. When
Speaker 1: Anthony showed up in la again years later, Ozzie says
Speaker 1: he was different, friendless, joyless, sleepless, laughing weirdly all the time.
Speaker 1: His son, but not Hello, Dana. I'm writing in response
Speaker 1: to your letters. I would have written you earlier, but
Speaker 1: the jail staff has been sending back stamps, envelopes, etc.
Speaker 1: In June twenty nineteen, I got my first letter from
Speaker 1: Anthony Rawda. He's careful, always playing close with information about
Speaker 1: his time in Malibu, but he's generous with itineraries accounts
Speaker 1: of a vagabond life. It's kind of a Kerouac hobotale.
Speaker 1: In his telling about twenty years ago, I decided to
Speaker 1: leave my life due to threats on me and my
Speaker 1: family's life. Rata's letters are being read by an actor.
Speaker 1: They've been lately edited for clarity. I packed a backpack
Speaker 1: with no money, and I traveled on foot and car
Speaker 1: rides from Florida to Niagara Falls. After that, he's been
Speaker 1: drifting around for two decades, spending time with homeless and
Speaker 1: transient communities up and down the West Coast. Malibu and
Speaker 1: the nearby San Fernando Valley were a home base. The
Speaker 1: terrain he kept returning to. I did this three times
Speaker 1: and got tired and decided to stop traveling and settle
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. I did not want to work and
Speaker 1: could not adjust to a stable life, so I decided
Speaker 1: to be homeless. I spent many days and nights on beaches, mountains, etc.
Speaker 1: I have hike parts of the Pacific Crest Trail, traveled
Speaker 1: to Texas and Arizona. I've been in various parts of
Speaker 1: the Santa Monica Mountains. In his first letter, he also
Speaker 1: starts to tell me about his history with law enforcement.
Speaker 1: It goes back years. He has a special hatred for
Speaker 1: the Lost Hills cops. I have a history of being
Speaker 1: assaulted by sheriff's deputies inside jail and by the Lost
Speaker 1: Hills Department. I've tried to sue the sheriffs. I have
Speaker 1: written internal affairs in the past, including the ACLU and
Speaker 1: Amnesty International, but no one helped or even investigated. I
Speaker 1: wrote the county ombuntsmen many times. They usually investigated, but
Speaker 1: the officers protect each other with lies. They're lying now,
Speaker 1: over the course of nine months, I get a total
Speaker 1: of five letters. It's a bumpy correspondence. He accuses me
Speaker 1: of ignoring letters I never received, and letters of mine
Speaker 1: come back unopened. From the erratic rhythm, it seems like
Speaker 1: the Sheriff's department is interfering with the mail. He says
Speaker 1: they're messing with him in other ways, too outraged, for instance,
Speaker 1: that they put him in with the general population. His
Speaker 1: name and face have been all over the news as
Speaker 1: an attempted murderer of two little girls. As far as treatment,
Speaker 1: they refused me a phone call at arrest and tried
Speaker 1: to question me after I asked for an attorney. They
Speaker 1: put me in general population after arrest, even though my
Speaker 1: face was on television. Deputies try to question me about
Speaker 1: my case. They sent back mail with stamps and envelopes.
Speaker 1: They have refused me visits. They sometimes try to smut
Speaker 1: my name among the inmates. I don't want the wrong
Speaker 1: image to be conveyed to people that I am a
Speaker 1: monster benefiting from the hardship of the victims of the case.
Speaker 1: He writes that he's being stonewalled and railroaded, maybe even
Speaker 1: by his own lawyers. I have been wronged by the
Speaker 1: system and other people. I am not a violent person,
Speaker 1: and I would never want to be known as someone
Speaker 1: who would hurt innocent people or children. I try to
Speaker 1: draw him out on other subjects. Tell me about your art,
Speaker 1: I say. He often includes a sketch with his letters.
Speaker 1: I've been writing and sketching since i was eleven or
Speaker 1: twelve years old, and have been complimented over them since then.
Speaker 1: I've been interested in rap hip hop since my teens,
Speaker 1: and it was always a dream to make an album.
Speaker 1: He cites his creative inspirations Elvis, the Three Stooges, Tupac, Edgar,
Speaker 1: Allan Poe, and now me. He sends me a poem.
Speaker 1: It's called lies. It's all about lies, lies surrounding him,
Speaker 1: pain killing him, living a lie for his enemies. One
Speaker 1: pair of line sticks out quote when I opened my
Speaker 1: hands and see blood instead of sweat and dirt. That
Speaker 1: gets me thinking. It's not to be taken literal, he writes.
Speaker 1: He tells me he wanted to be a DJ. That
Speaker 1: didn't work out. Then he submitted a headshot to Central
Speaker 1: Casting in Burbank. He says, he cast in something, but
Speaker 1: the role was canceled. That's as close as I came
Speaker 1: to success. I met Will Chamberlain as a kid, and
Speaker 1: also Richard Pryor in Canada. I did a little looking
Speaker 1: into the television industry there. Once I tried to get
Speaker 1: to the set of Dark Angel just to see Jessica Elba,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it was the right time. I
Speaker 1: didn't see anyone the weird stuff I'd do. He signed
Speaker 1: up for Social Security and got a driver's license. He
Speaker 1: rented a car and drove up to Big Bear and camped.
Speaker 1: He says he reads a lot of anarchist books, Illuminati conspiracies,
Speaker 1: handbooks for outdoor survival, manuals on how to disappear. He
Speaker 1: once made himself a fake press pass. I could make
Speaker 1: birth certificate state ID, which led to the city News
Speaker 1: ID to convince someone I was who I was and
Speaker 1: maybe go to shows and concerts free. His life was
Speaker 1: lonely by design, especially in Malado. I've seen a lot
Speaker 1: of places. The Santa Monica Mountains are beautiful and I
Speaker 1: have a lot of pictures. The fog in the morning
Speaker 1: off Mulholland is very thick. At night. I would take
Speaker 1: pictures with my phone of the colorful flowers. Baby lizards
Speaker 1: used to crawl on me when I was sitting in
Speaker 1: the sun. He did a lot of weird stuff on
Speaker 1: his own, tripping out in nature. I did do some meditation,
Speaker 1: but not a lot. Once I think I had a vision,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. There were no drugs involved. I
Speaker 1: was trying astral projection at the time. It was not
Speaker 1: breathing exercises, but a total relaxation of the body. To me,
Speaker 1: it worked. I've never had a similar experience again. Sometimes
Speaker 1: he was scared, like in the summer of twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: I heard a lot of gunshots around the time of
Speaker 1: the Boudette killing. I thought I got shot at one night,
Speaker 1: but not sure if it was intentional. I just heard
Speaker 1: the bullets fly by. That's interesting he's claiming he was
Speaker 1: nearly a victim of the Canyon shooter. Is this guy
Speaker 1: messing with me? Or is this some kind of clue
Speaker 1: into his psyche. They closed down the park. I heard
Speaker 1: the sheriff's cruiser sirens a lot during the summer. It
Speaker 1: felt like I was being followed when I was hiking
Speaker 1: because I've seen the same automobiles more than once, so
Speaker 1: I don't know the family had a reward for information,
Speaker 1: yet no one had information leading to my arrest. Well
Speaker 1: that's all for now. I hope I've given you some
Speaker 1: confidence in me and something to build on. I don't
Speaker 1: know about confidence, but there is definitely a lot to
Speaker 1: build on. In his letters, a timeline emerges, and with
Speaker 1: it the beginnings of a narrative. A little flash on
Speaker 1: the stick figures bones. He dropped out of school in
Speaker 1: Tampa in twelfth grade and then spent a couple of
Speaker 1: months in the army. The army turned into a bad experience.
Speaker 1: I joined to get away from personal matters, but when
Speaker 1: I got there for basic training, I could not leave
Speaker 1: my personal behind me and I could not adjust mentally.
Speaker 1: I did complete basic training with good grades and returned
Speaker 1: back to Tampa Bay to worse problems. So he hit
Speaker 1: the road. He didn't really work. The only thing he
Speaker 1: says he did was some kind of private eye work
Speaker 1: called skip tracing, essentially looking for people who don't want
Speaker 1: to be found. I am beginning to think he was
Speaker 1: his own hardest case. He left only the faintest impression
Speaker 1: on the world. That is, until Tristan Boudette was killed.
Speaker 1: I didn't meet a lot of people in the mountains
Speaker 1: where I was arrested, and definitely not in my spot.
Speaker 1: The po boxes he lists as addresses on court documents,
Speaker 1: they don't exist, or there's no record that router rented them.
Speaker 1: The library where he says he spent time. When I
Speaker 1: go there, the librarians just look concerned and shake their heads.
Speaker 1: Where I got arrested, there was no tent. I have
Speaker 1: not used tents in years one, so I can travel
Speaker 1: anytime lightly too, so I can learn to survive outdoors
Speaker 1: with as little as possible. As stated, I do not
Speaker 1: know everything that was there, as I traveled and hiked
Speaker 1: when I wanted. I was in that area less than
Speaker 1: a year. The McDonald's, the grocery store, the other places
Speaker 1: with dumpsters he might have picked through. No one's seen him,
Speaker 1: No one except the owner of the sandwich shop, who
Speaker 1: swears Ratto was hanging around last week. Only he's been
Speaker 1: in jail for a year. In my letters, I plead
Speaker 1: with him to come up with just one name. A cousin,
Speaker 1: a teacher, a childhood friend. He does not comply. My
Speaker 1: family has nothing to do with the crimes I'm charged with.
Speaker 1: And know nothing of the things I'd do. But he
Speaker 1: does give me permission to talk to his sister Lisa
Speaker 1: and her husband Jerry, if you do not floyd them.
Speaker 1: I don't mind you talking to them if they want
Speaker 1: to talk to you. But when I tell Jerry that,
Speaker 1: he declines the interview. Anyway. I find a page on
Speaker 1: Facebook devoted to the high school in Tampa that Rawdah
Speaker 1: attended for a while in the nineties. Someone remembers him.
Speaker 1: It's a guy who says he was friends with Rautah
Speaker 1: in eighth, ninth, and tenth grade. I think I'm finally
Speaker 1: going to get it, that one story that crystallizes who
Speaker 1: Anthony Rawda is and makes sense of everything. So I'm
Speaker 1: all excited, and I ask Tony Tucker, the friend, if
Speaker 1: he has any strong memories of Rauta. To be completely honest,
Speaker 1: I mean, I really don't. Hey was normal. Our group
Speaker 1: of friends were very much kind of the sports kids.
Speaker 1: We didn't mind getting dirty, so we were always there
Speaker 1: early in the morning playing basketball before the bell rang.
Speaker 1: And did he party know, have a girlfriend, a nickname,
Speaker 1: a hard time in school? Not really, no, no more
Speaker 1: than anyone else. But he didn't. I mean seemed like
Speaker 1: a normal every day kid to me. Tony lost track
Speaker 1: of him, and he doesn't even really know why Pooh
Speaker 1: Woosh gone. One day after a hearing, Ozzy comes back
Speaker 1: to the office with me and I walk him through
Speaker 1: some documents that have recently been unsealed. He promises me
Speaker 1: that next time he'll do the recorded interview, but that
Speaker 1: court date comes and he ghosts me. A few days later,
Speaker 1: I opened my last letter from Anthony Rowda. I have
Speaker 1: returned from court and I wish to reply to your
Speaker 1: letter out of courtesy. I no longer trust talking to
Speaker 1: you or other media. I cannot condone or forgive you
Speaker 1: or anyone who personally tries to help law enforcement build
Speaker 1: a case against me or harass me. The letter is short,
Speaker 1: just two pages, a bitter, self pitying rant. I'm no
Speaker 1: help to him, actually probably the opposite, So he's not
Speaker 1: going to help me. God, he's the best judge and
Speaker 1: my only friend, the only one I have to answer to.
Speaker 1: Anthony Rawda is done telling me about himself. Another way
Speaker 1: into the mind of Anthony Rowda is through his music.
Speaker 1: Rowda has cut an EP and two full length albums.
Speaker 1: You can find them on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music
Speaker 1: search up his pen names crazy Horse and crazy Horse
Speaker 1: to one that's Crazy with a K. This is a
Speaker 1: song called kill a Pig from his album The Great
Speaker 1: White Liar. Get Ready to get get ready, get set,
Speaker 1: get going. Let's go kill a fucking cop. Liars, sadus, pedophiles, motherfuckers.
Speaker 1: He's going to get them with his nine millimeter. People up, millimeter,
Speaker 1: put the heater straight, typic dome to see him. If
Speaker 1: they don't yet see that, mother fucking eyes from out
Speaker 1: of the head, now they dead behind in the floor
Speaker 1: of blood. To kill a cop must beat the greatest
Speaker 1: feeling in the world. I want to enjoy it over
Speaker 1: and over again. Year. To kill a cop must be
Speaker 1: the greatest feeling in the world. I want to enjoy
Speaker 1: it over and over again. On his album Covers, Routa
Speaker 1: draws a long haired warrior with high cheekbones emaciated, almost skeletal.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing it's Roudah's idea of a Native American. He
Speaker 1: wears a headband that says crazy horse with a K.
Speaker 1: The original Crazy Horse with a C was an Oglala
Speaker 1: Lakota warrior. He painted his cheek with a lightning bolt
Speaker 1: and wore a hawk feather in his hair. People say
Speaker 1: that whenever someone asked to take his picture, crazy Horse
Speaker 1: would respond, would you imprison my shadow? Also this is
Speaker 1: the song fall Guy from Rouda's first album Sometimes They
Speaker 1: Come Back, which he made in twenty thirteen Satellites. As
Speaker 1: best I can make out, the lyrics are paranoia, conspiracy, theory,
Speaker 1: cia Manchurian candidacy, my anxiety, something something on database, satellite
Speaker 1: in space, something something they want to make me the
Speaker 1: fall guy, lise or assholes. Then later look at my
Speaker 1: middle finger. I'm the fall guy middle finger up in
Speaker 1: the sky the same. In one of his letters, Rada
Speaker 1: says he taught himself to use recording software and wrote
Speaker 1: both albums on a laptop. Each one took him about
Speaker 1: a month. I used hotels and sometimes the library, Calabasas
Speaker 1: and any mall with Wi Fi and electrical outlets. The
Speaker 1: themes of both albums center around police and harassment, drinking
Speaker 1: and getting fucked up, and violence, a fair amount of violence,
Speaker 1: avenging himself on cops, women and undefined others out to
Speaker 1: get him. He almost seems to be psyching himself up
Speaker 1: for a confrontation. His music hits on all the gangs
Speaker 1: to rap cliches. But there's something else in there too,
Speaker 1: a worldview, maybe even a cosmology. This is the opening
Speaker 1: track from his album The Great White Liar. He'll be
Speaker 1: others in slaveries, a freedom, a freeze, put the eight
Speaker 1: that grows in the unrooted in justice. He's saying, I'm
Speaker 1: rooted in justice. I murdered the serpent. He grew wings
Speaker 1: like a phoenix. I shot him from the sky, pulled
Speaker 1: out his spine, his true, fake mind. So he found
Speaker 1: it a nation built on lies. It's a glimpse into
Speaker 1: a chaotic mind, the mind of a paranoid, self righteous,
Speaker 1: pissed off mystic. I've been trying to find rowda trace
Speaker 1: his ghostly presence in the world. Didn't anyone know him,
Speaker 1: hadn't anyone seen him? Thinking about the case, it occurs
Speaker 1: to me that there are some people around Malibu who
Speaker 1: do think they saw him on security cameras while he
Speaker 1: was allegedly committing armed burglaries. Which is how I find
Speaker 1: myself with Jim Corcus and Mike McNutt, who worked for
Speaker 1: the local water district. I'll give you my theory. That's Jim.
Speaker 1: We're driving over to the Tapia Water Reclamation facility. It's
Speaker 1: right next to Tapia Park, not far from where Jimmy
Speaker 1: Rogers was shot. So I think he'd been living off
Speaker 1: the coolers in the campsite for all these years, and
Speaker 1: once he shot Tristan, they closed the park and his
Speaker 1: basically his lunchbox was empty at that point because he
Speaker 1: had no source of food, and that's when he got
Speaker 1: desperate to look around. It's here that in the fall
Speaker 1: of twenty eighteen, a man in black was caught on
Speaker 1: camera in the middle of the night. What would you
Speaker 1: normally be looking at on these camerasbcat and pumas. We'll
Speaker 1: say that we did have we did have a We
Speaker 1: do have another patrol in the area. We call it
Speaker 1: the Puma Patrol, or a P fifty four. So we
Speaker 1: had a Mountain Lion and that was like hanging out
Speaker 1: and checking things out, tagged and everything like that. So
Speaker 1: but P. Fifty four is off on those evenings that
Speaker 1: he was here. So they tell me that strange things
Speaker 1: had been happening around the plant. There had been other
Speaker 1: times where employees were noticing that some of their food
Speaker 1: is missing, and so a lot of the employees is saying, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's just somebody eating my lunch or whatever. Right, the
Speaker 1: first break in, he was pretty good. How he got in.
Speaker 1: It was undetected, really, and so he got in and
Speaker 1: he was like stealing chicken sandwiches and everything he took
Speaker 1: was protein based. One of the other things that I
Speaker 1: was told that he was taking a stuff that he
Speaker 1: didn't need to cook. I know for sure. One of
Speaker 1: his favorites was Jimmy Dean's breakfast sausage sandwiches. They reviewed
Speaker 1: the footage from the security camera and that's when they
Speaker 1: saw the man. He looked for battle. Yeah. So he
Speaker 1: had like almost like black camo attire on and tactical gear. Right,
Speaker 1: his boots, you know, his pants were bloused. In his boots,
Speaker 1: he had high you know, boots at half you know,
Speaker 1: halfway up his calf. This is Brett Dingman, a manager
Speaker 1: at the plant. Everything was black. He had a backpack,
Speaker 1: he had a what you called balajava a mask. You know.
Speaker 1: He just looked like almost like military. Jim scrolls through
Speaker 1: his phone and finds the video. It shows a man
Speaker 1: with a headlamp stealthily making his way to the door
Speaker 1: of the plant. It's a creepy video. A few seconds
Speaker 1: that loop over and over, and it's totally captivating. If
Speaker 1: this is Rauta on the tape, it's the closest I'll
Speaker 1: ever get to seeing him in his element, Rauta alone
Speaker 1: in the night, surrounded by woods, scavenging, hunting, surviving, Rauda
Speaker 1: in the wild. Jim slows the video down so I
Speaker 1: can clearly see something sticking out from behind the man.
Speaker 1: So it was it was around slung around his waist
Speaker 1: here with the barrel pointing backwards, okay, And you can
Speaker 1: see that it had a clip in it, which it
Speaker 1: was a nine millimeter. Everybody at the plant knew about
Speaker 1: the murder in the campground and the news of the
Speaker 1: other shootings was spreading. He started going, what's going on.
Speaker 1: There's some nut with a gun out there, and we
Speaker 1: thought about that. But right about you, soon after those
Speaker 1: reports came out, it's when the break in happened here.
Speaker 1: And at first like, oh, something broke in. Then we thought, whoall,
Speaker 1: he's dressed a full stranger breaking in and you see
Speaker 1: the rifle, Oh, this might be the guy, And that
Speaker 1: was right then that's the one that clicked. It clicked
Speaker 1: for law enforcement too. Shortly after this footage was taken.
Speaker 1: The Sheriff's department searched the hills and eventually found Routa
Speaker 1: at his camp. That narrative shootings to murder, to break ins,
Speaker 1: to capture. It follows a certain kind of logic. But
Speaker 1: is it just me? Or is there something contradictory about
Speaker 1: the idea of a person stealing food in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night and also shooting people at random. It's
Speaker 1: a crime of survival versus totally gratuitous violence, calculated opportunism
Speaker 1: right up against outright depravity. Anthony Rowda's music is really visceral.
Speaker 1: Take kill a pig. It talks about wanting to creep
Speaker 1: up on him with a nine millimeter put the heater
Speaker 1: straight to the dome, see the CoP's eyes pop out
Speaker 1: of his head, and watch him die in a pool
Speaker 1: of blood. It's strong stuff. You can't condemn someone on
Speaker 1: their lyrics. But I've got to wonder what was going
Speaker 1: on with Rowda and the cops. So I turned to
Speaker 1: the court documents, old cases with hundreds and hundreds of
Speaker 1: pages of handwritten filings by Anthony Rowda. He seems to
Speaker 1: prefer to represent himself. There are also many, many pages
Speaker 1: of case narratives, evidence logs, statements from law enforcement, witness testimony,
Speaker 1: a lot to wade through. I learned that Rowdah's trouble
Speaker 1: with the law started in his teens, back when he
Speaker 1: was in Florida, but his problems really begin in the
Speaker 1: early two thousands, when he started hanging out in and
Speaker 1: around Malibu. First, it was pretty small time, unambitious. Two
Speaker 1: thousand and three, he breaks into a high school ten
Speaker 1: miles from Alubuqreek State Park, just outside Lost Hill's jurisdiction.
Speaker 1: He sets a fire. The break in is a felony,
Speaker 1: and he gets one hundred and eighty days in jail,
Speaker 1: three years probation and counseling. He's ordered to pay three
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in restitution to the Coca Cola company, which
Speaker 1: sounds to me like he busted a vending machine. That
Speaker 1: reminds me of the burglaries he's charged with now. That
Speaker 1: vending machine he allegedly smashed open with a rock. The
Speaker 1: next case is a bigger deal. This time Rod is
Speaker 1: arrested during a warrant sweep at a sleazy motel in
Speaker 1: North Hollywood. In his motel room, the arresting officer's notice
Speaker 1: a fuse like for explosives sticking out of his black backpack.
Speaker 1: The bomb squad searches Ozzie's house and the house in
Speaker 1: the valley where Anthony's sister Lisa and her husban when
Speaker 1: Jerry live. They find a bunch of contraband. Routa apparently
Speaker 1: has ordered three shipments of gunpowder. One of the shipments
Speaker 1: is four pounds. They also confiscate two old fashioned guns,
Speaker 1: a forty four black powder revolver and a four to
Speaker 1: fifty one double barrel derringer handgun. I have to dig
Speaker 1: into this a little more black powdered guns. It seems
Speaker 1: like an odd choice for a guy with gangs to
Speaker 1: wrap aspirations. I call up Greg Block, a firearms trainer,
Speaker 1: an expert witness who testifies in court about guns all
Speaker 1: the time. So these are guns that were used during
Speaker 1: the Civil War and the Revolution where we didn't have
Speaker 1: cartridge firing guns. They're muzzle loaders, which means you pour
Speaker 1: gunpowder directly into the guns mouth, hence the four plus
Speaker 1: pounds of it. They're basically what John Wilkes Booth used
Speaker 1: to assassinate President Lincoln. They're often referred to as antique guns.
Speaker 1: But really they're replicas of obsolete technology. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: they make toy guns, they make prop guns, and then
Speaker 1: they have replicas which are exact copies of the original firearms.
Speaker 1: Those are a couple hundred dollars. I want to know
Speaker 1: who the audience is for weapons like these. Maybe it'll
Speaker 1: give me some insight into Rauta. Well, people that feel
Speaker 1: that they were born in the wrong century. I mean
Speaker 1: they will dress up in period costumes and they'll have
Speaker 1: competitions and matches and shoot this. Other people that like
Speaker 1: the Old West or the seventeen hundreds. Because these replicas
Speaker 1: are so inexpensive, they'll buy him and we call them
Speaker 1: wall hangers. They'll hang them on the wall above the fireplace.
Speaker 1: They look kind of cool. That doesn't sound like Routa
Speaker 1: to me. He wasn't decorating his fishing cabin or re
Speaker 1: enacting shootouts at the OK Corral. But Gregg tells me
Speaker 1: there's another category of antique gun buyer, people who buy
Speaker 1: them because they're easier to get than other guns. That
Speaker 1: sounds like Routa, a convicted felon, someone who couldn't pass
Speaker 1: a background check. You can order them on the internet
Speaker 1: and they can ship them to your house because they're
Speaker 1: antique firearms. The black Petter guns, the explosives, and the
Speaker 1: fuse land route. In prison, he parols out and in
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, he gets arrested by a Lost Hills deputy
Speaker 1: in the parking lot of an upscale suburban mall. It's
Speaker 1: a DUI, which doesn't sound like that big a deal,
Speaker 1: but in the trunk of the car there's a box
Speaker 1: of ammunition, the kind that fits an R fifteen. I
Speaker 1: track down the deputy. I ask if he remembers Routa. Oh,
Speaker 1: he remembers him. The guy threatened his life. Routa represents
Speaker 1: himself in court and is sentenced to sixteen months in
Speaker 1: county jail for the ammunition. He's supposed to complete an
Speaker 1: alcohol rehab program, but doesn't. When a judge leader asks
Speaker 1: him about that, he says, I'm going to go. I
Speaker 1: was making a date for my therapy. This is from
Speaker 1: a court transcript. I'm just going to go through counseling
Speaker 1: and try to get a residence and you know, try
Speaker 1: to get my health better. That's really what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to do. I should have went to the classes, but
Speaker 1: they were a little rough for me. I can't stand
Speaker 1: being around people. I didn't tell you that last time
Speaker 1: because it's irrelevant. But basically, I'm going to try and
Speaker 1: do counseling and stay on SSI if they'll have me,
Speaker 1: try to get a residence and get my health back up.
Speaker 1: The incident that sends Routa back to prison in twenty
Speaker 1: fourteen is a weird one. It takes place outside of
Speaker 1: high school, about a ten minute drive from Malibu Creek
Speaker 1: State Park. A jogger sees someone passed out in the
Speaker 1: bushes by the school. It's rout Up, dressed head to
Speaker 1: toe in black. Inside his backpack deputies fine gloves, a
Speaker 1: camouflage mask and a headlamp. There's a post it containing
Speaker 1: bank account information and routing numbers, also some forty four
Speaker 1: ball ammunition and wrapped in a bandana, a wood handled
Speaker 1: black powder gun. What exactly was he up to? Was
Speaker 1: he planning burglaries, identity theft? Dressing up as a bad
Speaker 1: guy for Halloween. He spends another two years in prison,
Speaker 1: and when he gets out, he makes a vow to
Speaker 1: change his life. When I got released from prison in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, I made a promise to live without welfare
Speaker 1: SSI or handouts. This is from one of Router's letters
Speaker 1: to me. I wanted to do solely on my own
Speaker 1: knowledge of survival, to prove something to myself and maybe
Speaker 1: right about it. He says. Avoiding people, a specially law enforcement,
Speaker 1: became his number one priority. In another letter, he wrote,
Speaker 1: I worried every time I left the wilderness, as the
Speaker 1: sheriffs would usually try to stop and question me and
Speaker 1: my being around such exclusive neighborhoods. I did not want
Speaker 1: to get questioned as to my probation. When I was
Speaker 1: alone in the wilderness, I did not have a lot
Speaker 1: of contact with people, news, etc. I did not want
Speaker 1: any contact, and I do not enjoy any current television, movies, music, etc.
Speaker 1: The most important thing out there was to have shelter
Speaker 1: and a two week weather forecast. In October twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: Routa makes his last contact with his probation officer, and
Speaker 1: a couple weeks later, allegedly he shoots Jimmy Rogers as
Speaker 1: he sleeps in a hammock in Malibu Creek State Park.
Speaker 1: The charges route is facing now murder and attempted murder
Speaker 1: mark a break with everything I learned about his criminal past.
Speaker 1: He's been troublesome, antisocial, volatile, messed up, He went down
Speaker 1: some creepy roads, got into some obscure weapons. He was
Speaker 1: potentially but not actually violent. Shooting Jimmy Rogers is the
Speaker 1: first time that I know of that Route has been
Speaker 1: accused of physically hurting a stranger out of the blue.
Speaker 1: The accusation is that he intended to kill Jimmy Rogers,
Speaker 1: and that after shooting him, he tried over and over
Speaker 1: to inflict deadly harm, and that in the case of
Speaker 1: Tristan Bodet, he succeeded. It doesn't really make sense, does it.
Speaker 1: But reading back through Routah's court filings, I realize there's
Speaker 1: an incident he refers to repeatedly with a lot of bitterness.
Speaker 1: He's been trying to get someone to pay attention to
Speaker 1: this for years. It was a run in with some
Speaker 1: Lost Hills cops. Way back in two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: Lost Hills Sheriff deputies responded to a public disturbance call
Speaker 1: at Padre's restaurant at Agra Road and Cornell Road. This
Speaker 1: is what Rowda says in a filing he made about
Speaker 1: the incident. I was stopped on a dark street as
Speaker 1: a suspect, though I am innocent. When I attempted to
Speaker 1: plead with the deputy, others arrived surrounding me, while one
Speaker 1: higher ranked deputy attempted to choke me till the arresting
Speaker 1: officer asked him to halt. This could be the thing
Speaker 1: that propels the whole bizarre machinery of Routah's criminal life
Speaker 1: takes it to the next level. This incident, Rowda says,
Speaker 1: caused him to get a gun for self protection against
Speaker 1: the Lost Hills cops. It might even explain how Rowda
Speaker 1: got to be where he is right now, facing by
Speaker 1: far the most serious charges of his life. It's not
Speaker 1: a straight line by any stretch, from that alleged assault
Speaker 1: to where he is today, but I can see a connection.
Speaker 1: It's like a process got set in motion. Rouda in trouble.
Speaker 1: Rowdah uncooperative, imprisoned, hurt, deteriorating, and possibly wanting some kind
Speaker 1: of revenge. He isn't too good with authority, his dad
Speaker 1: told me, and his experiences in custody and in court,
Speaker 1: it seems like they just drove the splinter deeper. Anthony
Speaker 1: Rowda didn't know Tristan Bodat or any of the near
Speaker 1: miss victims, but everyone knows who would respond to a
Speaker 1: murder in the park Are the Lost Hills cops? Somehow
Speaker 1: part of this could it, on some level be about them?
Speaker 1: If only I could get inside Lost Hills Station, I
Speaker 1: could figure all this out. Lost Hills is written and
Speaker 1: hosted by me Dana Goodyear. It's produced by Western Sound
Speaker 1: and Pushkin Industries. For more information about my investigation, follow
Speaker 1: at Lost Hills Pod on social media. Up next episode six,
Speaker 1: Another Day in Paradise,