Speaker 1: Pushkin as a girl. Growing up on a Colorado ranch,
Speaker 1: Jean Fred's first wife was Gutsie. Her sister Carol said
Speaker 1: she was fearless, bold, She rode horses and swam in
Speaker 1: rivers and fished in the pond. Then she moved away
Speaker 1: to Malibu and when she died at thirty four, her
Speaker 1: ashes were scattered on the sea. But near the ranch,
Speaker 1: several miles away, there's a tombstone with Jean's name on it.
Speaker 1: When I went to Colorado to meet Fred's daughters, I
Speaker 1: asked if I could see it. Jean was Kirsten and
Speaker 1: Heidi's mom. So one rainy afternoon, the two of them
Speaker 1: took me there. It was a spooky place, part junkyard,
Speaker 1: part bone yard, and the ominous thunderheads and vale of
Speaker 1: rain didn't help. So what kind of place is this?
Speaker 1: So we were I'm laughing because we were talking to
Speaker 1: a caretaker and just like he's pretty quirky. But he
Speaker 1: was a friend of my grandparents. Also, there's like a
Speaker 1: pet cemetery over there. This is a human cemetery. We
Speaker 1: walked over to a large rock with a plaque that
Speaker 1: said Schunhoven, Jean's maiden name. Jean's name was centered between
Speaker 1: her parents on its own plaque. I asked Kirsten to
Speaker 1: read it, sure, Jean M. Rayler Schunhoven nineteen forty two
Speaker 1: to nineteen seventy six, and the amas for Marguerite. I
Speaker 1: remember my grandpa telling me that they got a He
Speaker 1: showed me this stone and he said that he put
Speaker 1: my mom's name on there because her ashes were spread
Speaker 1: in the ocean. They just wanted a place to remember
Speaker 1: her by. Yeah, I don't feel her here or like
Speaker 1: feel the need to come here, even for our grandparents.
Speaker 1: Like that's what being at the ranches is, all those
Speaker 1: memories there. Do you feel your mom at the ranch?
Speaker 1: I don't know if I would say that I feel
Speaker 1: her there, but I'd think about the history, like you
Speaker 1: know that she grew up here and the memories there,
Speaker 1: And actually I think about like like that our dad
Speaker 1: has been there, and like he's taken a bath in
Speaker 1: this tub, like he talks about taking you know, taking
Speaker 1: baths there, and so just knowing that they were there.
Speaker 1: But it's not like I feel her presence or anything.
Speaker 1: It's more just right. They were so young when Jean died.
Speaker 1: Kirsten was in diapers. Hoti was barely six. Jean is
Speaker 1: understandably abstract to them. She's another loss, one they can't
Speaker 1: quite process, because to process that loss might make their
Speaker 1: pain unbearable. To most people who hear Fred's story, the
Speaker 1: rhyme of Jean's drowning and Verna's is uncanny, like something
Speaker 1: out of Edgar Allan Poe. It's so on the nose,
Speaker 1: it's practically clunky. It's definitely the hardest circumstance. To give
Speaker 1: Fred the benefit of the doubt about the mysterious death
Speaker 1: of the first wife makes the second wife's death suspect,
Speaker 1: and his conviction in the killing of the second wife
Speaker 1: makes the first wife's death seem like murder too, But
Speaker 1: not to the sisters. They don't see it at all.
Speaker 1: Here's Kirsten. I've definitely had hard conversations with my dad
Speaker 1: about Jean's death and just really finding out what happened
Speaker 1: because I was a baby, and just like the details,
Speaker 1: and also like were their investigations, you know, like supposedly
Speaker 1: Jean's dad like had it looked into, but it wasn't,
Speaker 1: like there wasn't a formal investigation. But I've definitely asked
Speaker 1: probing questions about it. But I kind of see it
Speaker 1: as like, look at my dad's history, and I mean
Speaker 1: I compare him to one of the Kennedy's. I mean,
Speaker 1: look at all just all of the horrible accidents that
Speaker 1: can happen to one family, like fires, bike accidents, car accidents,
Speaker 1: tractor accidents, just like accident prone or you know, whatever
Speaker 1: you want to say. Then Kim Verna's daughter said something
Speaker 1: totally surprising. She said she didn't know how Jean died.
Speaker 1: I mean, didn't she die of an aneurysm? No, see
Speaker 1: that it wasn't that. So our grandma kept telling us
Speaker 1: for some reason, how did she die? So she drowned
Speaker 1: in the swimming pool, but her ultimate cause of death
Speaker 1: was brain swelling and pneumonia from the drowning. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we were told that she had an aneurism. I mean,
Speaker 1: and I think that's medically. That is what people have proposed,
Speaker 1: you know, they're theories that because she was a flight
Speaker 1: attendant and the altitude and then she had just come
Speaker 1: back from a flight and they were drinking in the
Speaker 1: hot tub and then she got in the cold pool.
Speaker 1: So like vessels expanding and contracting, I mean, those were
Speaker 1: the theories, But I mean, ultimately she died of pneumonia
Speaker 1: and brain swelling. And I think the Corners report refers
Speaker 1: to occidental drowning. I mean drowning was the cause of death. Yeah, gotcha.
Speaker 1: I'm Dana Goodyear and this is Lost Hills episode ten Lifelines.
Speaker 1: Back in nineteen seventy six, the La County Coroner said
Speaker 1: that Fred's first wife, Jean, had died as a result
Speaker 1: of accidental drowning in the family pool. Her husband, the
Speaker 1: only witness, said he found her face down in the
Speaker 1: shallow end. Okay, case closed. Fred hinted at various reasons
Speaker 1: Jean might have drowned. She lost a lot of weight,
Speaker 1: She'd gone from a very hot, hot tub into an
Speaker 1: unheeded pool. She was deep into Life Spring, a potentially
Speaker 1: dangerous self improvement group. She was having visions of her
Speaker 1: own death involving water, but her death was unexplained. It
Speaker 1: wasn't until nineteen eighty one that Jean's drowning was investigated
Speaker 1: as a homicide by the Santa Barbara detectives, who were
Speaker 1: looking into Verna and Doug's drownings at Rock. At Fred's
Speaker 1: trial for the murders of Verna and Doug stan Rowdin.
Speaker 1: The DA was blocked from introducing testimony about Jean until
Speaker 1: the penalty phase, So while the jury was considering whether
Speaker 1: Fred should be sentenced to death, Rodin put on a
Speaker 1: mini trial for Jean. She was an aggravating factor, a
Speaker 1: reason in San Rowdin's mind to sentence Fred to death.
Speaker 1: Rowden told the jury that Jean's death was a murder
Speaker 1: quote a homicide done for the motive once again of
Speaker 1: enhancing this defendant's standard of living. This time, Fred didn't
Speaker 1: take the stand, but he'd certainly told his Jean's story before.
Speaker 1: He'd long been in the habit of buttonholing people and
Speaker 1: recounting the events of October fifteenth, nineteen seventy six. He
Speaker 1: cornered Jean's friend Barbara Warner at Jean's memorial service. I
Speaker 1: really think he had that story so down patch. He
Speaker 1: rattled off so bad with so little emotion, that I
Speaker 1: thought with him. He told the story repeatedly to his
Speaker 1: friend Mike Colleen. When Jean died. Fred spent an awful
Speaker 1: lot of time at our house. He would come over
Speaker 1: in the evening and cry, he if we went through
Speaker 1: it once, we went through it fifty times. Every step
Speaker 1: he took from the hot tub to the house. The
Speaker 1: way I recall the story was that one of the
Speaker 1: babies was crying in the background, and that when Fred went,
Speaker 1: Fred said, you know, like you stay here algi quay
Speaker 1: the baby and take care of the baby and get
Speaker 1: you a glass of wine, which he requested. So I
Speaker 1: believe he sais on the next seven minutes he was
Speaker 1: gone or something, because he'd stepped it out and timed it,
Speaker 1: and when he came back. Everybody knows the story. Jeanne's
Speaker 1: face out of the pool and all the terrible things
Speaker 1: had happened at that point. Fred even told the story
Speaker 1: to Santa Barbara detectives Fred Ray and Claude Tell when
Speaker 1: they came to talk to him about Verna and Doug's
Speaker 1: drownings in January nineteen eighty one. While discussing what had
Speaker 1: happened to Verna and Doug, detective said Fred quote continually
Speaker 1: referred to a handwritten set of notes that was weird.
Speaker 1: Fred also told the detectives he had notes on Jean's death,
Speaker 1: which they found later when they searched his house that
Speaker 1: was extra weird. Telling his gene story, Fred has always
Speaker 1: made a point of mentioning the alcohol he and Jean
Speaker 1: were drinking, and because he was the only witness. It
Speaker 1: features in other people's tellings too, A story with one
Speaker 1: source repeated so often it comes to resemble truth. She
Speaker 1: had already poured a glass of wine, even in the
Speaker 1: house to get her glass of wine to him, Would
Speaker 1: you mind bringing back to get your glass of wine.
Speaker 1: We sort of sold off that bottle, and then I
Speaker 1: got another bottle. The neighbor boy who ran over when
Speaker 1: he heard Fred calling for help that night, said he'd
Speaker 1: noticed wine glasses and a pair of unsmoked joints in
Speaker 1: the backyard, like a stage complete with props. But these
Speaker 1: were not incidental period details. They served a very important purpose.
Speaker 1: I believe they were intended to introduce doubt, reasonable doubt
Speaker 1: about how Jean ended up in the pool. And the
Speaker 1: reason I think this is Jean was not intoxicated, not
Speaker 1: even a little bit. Stan Rowdin the DA presented evidence
Speaker 1: that showed her blood alcohol level was point one milligrams
Speaker 1: per desolator, one one thousandth of the legal limit for driving,
Speaker 1: and there were no other drugs in her system. The
Speaker 1: fact of her sobriety is meaningful, and it could mean
Speaker 1: the La County coroner's report was wrong, and it can't
Speaker 1: be accident. Okay, this is doctor Ronald Wright, a forensic
Speaker 1: pathologist who's also a scuba diver. Adult humans that are
Speaker 1: not intoxicated won't drown in a swimming pool. It doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: If it does happen, they either committed suicide or they
Speaker 1: are a victim of homicide. Okay, it's easy. He testified
Speaker 1: at the mini trial, the Jeen's death was not due
Speaker 1: to natural causes. It was unnatural, and unnatural deaths are
Speaker 1: either accidents or suicides or homicides. I didn't see any
Speaker 1: evidence that she was suicidal, so therefore it looks like
Speaker 1: a homicide to me. But there were no signs of
Speaker 1: trauma to Jean's body. So during the mini trial, Rodin
Speaker 1: asked another witness, a pathologist who'd reviewed Jean's file, if
Speaker 1: it was possible for a person to hold another person
Speaker 1: underwater law enough to drown them without leaving marks. It
Speaker 1: is possible, was the response. In the end, though the
Speaker 1: judge ruled that the DA hadn't sufficiently made his case.
Speaker 1: He hadn't proved Fred's involvement with Jean's death. Beyond a
Speaker 1: reasonable doubt, and that's where Jean was left in a
Speaker 1: kind of limbo, unresolved, not likely an accident or a suicide,
Speaker 1: and not approvable homicide. Before we got off the phone,
Speaker 1: I asked doctor Wright about another part of his testimony
Speaker 1: which had caught my attention. Fred Rayler described having found
Speaker 1: his wife Jean, in the pool, face down, arms outstretched,
Speaker 1: and you said, that's impossible. That's not the way dead
Speaker 1: people float. Okay, when you lose consciousness from whatever you've
Speaker 1: lost consciousness, you know gravity works. Their arms aren't outstretched.
Speaker 1: They actually goes straight down in there. It's called a
Speaker 1: dead man's float. They teach people to do that in
Speaker 1: swimming lessons. So you found that to be suspicious that
Speaker 1: that's what his description of his wife. He's incorrect, Okay,
Speaker 1: she wasn't. That's not the way humans are when they grown.
Speaker 1: Did that make him seem like he was lying? I
Speaker 1: would think that's highly probable, although that is a jury determination,
Speaker 1: not mine. I'm just telling you you can't do it
Speaker 1: the way he said it happened. It was improvable. But
Speaker 1: it was so obvious. Fred the waterman, the navy diver
Speaker 1: had misdescribed the dead man's float. He says he didn't
Speaker 1: kill Jean. I asked him, just like I asked him
Speaker 1: about Verna and Doug. Fred, I have to ask you,
Speaker 1: did you kill Jean? I did not, but I don't
Speaker 1: believe him. And if it's possible to kill someone in
Speaker 1: water and leave no mark, that means those second secret
Speaker 1: autopsies of Vernon and Dug don't really matter. The findings
Speaker 1: of pre mortem trauma could be totally invalid, the bodies
Speaker 1: could present no traumatic wounds, and Fred could still be
Speaker 1: the one who killed them. In the search of Fred's
Speaker 1: house on Sea Level Drive, the Santa Barbara detective seized
Speaker 1: an eleven page document detailing plans for a sailing trip
Speaker 1: to Santa Island. It included an incredibly detailed hand drawn
Speaker 1: map of the island, including flora and fauna and shipwrecks,
Speaker 1: and all the spots to drop anchor. The guy was
Speaker 1: a planner. Fred told the detectives he had often sailed
Speaker 1: his boat Perseverance to Santa Cruz Island and had the
Speaker 1: dory out there at least a dozen times. He got
Speaker 1: to know the island and its features inch by inch,
Speaker 1: clocking every cove and inlet. How the shadows fell at
Speaker 1: the dot representing Bird Rock on the map, it says
Speaker 1: tunnel through rock. That's because the sea cave on the
Speaker 1: western end of Bird Rock at low tide becomes a
Speaker 1: passage through are on the John will help you, guys.
Speaker 1: On a month after we walked around Sea Level Drive
Speaker 1: together on a crisp clear October morning, John Lytell and
Speaker 1: I took a boat out to Santa Cruz Island. So
Speaker 1: welcome to board Blue guys. Glad to have you here.
Speaker 1: Um again, Captain Randy fun Fact on the boat, John
Speaker 1: McVie the basis on Fleetwood. Mac owned this boat for
Speaker 1: ten years. At the time of Doug's death, when they
Speaker 1: were both eight, John was Doug's best friend. Now he's
Speaker 1: a detective with the La County Sheriff's Department. I'm a
Speaker 1: deputy sheriff. You want me to not bring a gun
Speaker 1: on the boat. Sorry. For forty years, Doug's death has
Speaker 1: tormented him, but he'd never seen the place where it happened.
Speaker 1: Now he was ready to face it and hopefully get
Speaker 1: some resolution. Crossing the channel, John was chewing everything over.
Speaker 1: He takes him out there. Um, he knows when he's
Speaker 1: gonna do it, he knows why he's gonna do it,
Speaker 1: he knows where he's going to do it. Because this
Speaker 1: is the best scenario. I have to make it look
Speaker 1: like an accident. Well, this is what I got. He's
Speaker 1: a chatty guy, but as we approached the island, he
Speaker 1: got Captain Randy filled the silence. So Santa Cruz Island
Speaker 1: is about twenty eight miles long. It's the largest island
Speaker 1: off the California coast. So we'll just be seeing a
Speaker 1: very small, little, little tiny bit of the island. And
Speaker 1: then a bird rock loomed, craggy and imposing with creases
Speaker 1: and shadows that reminded me of he Man's Castle Gray Skull.
Speaker 1: At its western end was Scorpion Anchorage. We were heading
Speaker 1: to the other end to Little Scorpion Anchor. Just entering
Speaker 1: into the little Scorpion Anchory, the Perseverance anchored on January second,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one, rock is off to our starboard quarter.
Speaker 1: It was noon. We were right on time, and we'll
Speaker 1: come in here and circle around and find a find
Speaker 1: a good spot to set the anchor verna. Fred and
Speaker 1: Doug ate their lunch sandwiches and chips then got in
Speaker 1: the door. Between one and one thirty, Kirsen went below
Speaker 1: deck to take a nap with her grandparents. Heidi and
Speaker 1: Kim went with Fred's brother and his wife in the
Speaker 1: inflatable boat to explore the beach at Santa Cruz Island.
Speaker 1: John and I got in Captain Randy's motorized dinghy and
Speaker 1: powered toward Bird Rock. So if we get around, what
Speaker 1: we have now is a lot to lobster season, so
Speaker 1: we got to negotiate through this might feel the traps.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of kilp on the other side, so
Speaker 1: we'll see how close we can get. The criminalist Duane
Speaker 1: Moza had speculated that Fred killed Verna and Doug inside
Speaker 1: the sea cave on the western end of Bird Rock,
Speaker 1: so we headed there to see if the sea cave
Speaker 1: theory made sense. Cave entrances right around the quartery. I've
Speaker 1: been thinking the sea cave was too exposed. Anyone on
Speaker 1: the beach, including Heidi and Kim, could have seen Fred
Speaker 1: row the dory in or out of the cave, but
Speaker 1: the mouth of the cave was deep black with an
Speaker 1: aura of darkness around it. You can't see anything. You're
Speaker 1: not gonna see anything happening there, Pass up first rock,
Speaker 1: these people on shore work, and you see, you gotta
Speaker 1: think angles out here. Everything around the cave is dark.
Speaker 1: You really can't see even an orange the dory going
Speaker 1: in there. I told John about an earlier trip Fred
Speaker 1: and Verna had made to Santa Cruz Island six months
Speaker 1: before the fatal one. It was Fourth of July weekend
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty. They took the kids on perseverance and spent
Speaker 1: four days out there with get this, the lawyer Bill
Speaker 1: Fairfield and his family, and Fred's old sailing buddy, Jean's
Speaker 1: old flame Dick Philthowen and his wife and kids. It
Speaker 1: was the hot Tub Sextet reunited with Verna in place
Speaker 1: of Jean. They had a blast hiking to waterfalls, shooting
Speaker 1: off fireworks, belting out rounds of God bless America. It
Speaker 1: was the most perfect Fourth of July ever. Wrote later.
Speaker 1: He and Verna rode all around exploring in the dory.
Speaker 1: Fred commended her for her attitude. That's casing the joint.
Speaker 1: He understood exactly what he needed to do to get
Speaker 1: his job done without anybody knowing. That's what like technicians
Speaker 1: will do. The like I don't. A week after the
Speaker 1: July fourth cruise, Fred and Verna had their secret official wedding,
Speaker 1: solidifying the financial connection between them. If she died, everything
Speaker 1: she had and more the insurance they'd soon buy would
Speaker 1: be his outright or in a trust that he controlled.
Speaker 1: After looking at it, I didn't buy the sea cave theory.
Speaker 1: Too risky, no matter how low the visibility, and it
Speaker 1: was too different from the story Fred presented to authorities.
Speaker 1: Fred was methodical a planner. He liked to simplify hone control.
Speaker 1: So I asked Captain Randy to take us to the place.
Speaker 1: Fred said the dory had capsized in the open ocean
Speaker 1: on the north side of Bird Rock. So according to
Speaker 1: the drawings, the boat capsized right in here, out front
Speaker 1: of the rock. That's where. That's where, according to Fred,
Speaker 1: Lady jumped at the birds and they all lunged and toppled,
Speaker 1: and the dory overturned. He said he could see Perseverance
Speaker 1: anchored at Little Scorpion the entire time. That was the point,
Speaker 1: he said, to get a picture of Doug holding Lady
Speaker 1: in the dory with Bird Rock in the near ground
Speaker 1: and Perseverance in the distance. But as we moved toward
Speaker 1: the spot in front of Bird Rock, I noticed that
Speaker 1: Captain Randy's sailboat in Little Scorpion Anchorage was slipping out
Speaker 1: of view. The north face of Bird Rock is cupped,
Speaker 1: so when you're close to it, the sides of the
Speaker 1: rock block both anchorages from view, meaning you can't see
Speaker 1: or be seen by the boats on either side. If
Speaker 1: you're in this cove, you cannot see Scorpion Anchorage at all.
Speaker 1: All those boats on that side wouldn't see any Lady,
Speaker 1: where's that? If he doesn't right in here, nobody can
Speaker 1: see him. In front of the rock, there was an
Speaker 1: explosion of white water, a geyser that shot into the
Speaker 1: air as the waves pounded into an underwater cavern. Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: that's the blow hole. Go as close to that as
Speaker 1: we can. Fred said that after the cap size, he
Speaker 1: collected Verna and Doug and swam with them to Bird
Speaker 1: Rock with Lady on his shoulders, clawing at his head.
Speaker 1: He described maneuvering past the blowhole with difficulty to hoist
Speaker 1: Lady up. John stared up at the rock, the sixty
Speaker 1: foot cliff face. The dog up on this side. That's
Speaker 1: a dog, right, not a moungoat. This is a dog, okay,
Speaker 1: our eagle Popey, whose legs can't be more than you know,
Speaker 1: three inches block is all like muscles and stuff, and
Speaker 1: it's like it's sharp. The d did get him on
Speaker 1: the island on the side. No way, no way. We
Speaker 1: idled in our dinghy, looking up at the sheer rock wall.
Speaker 1: The blowhole went off again, and it all started coming
Speaker 1: together for me like a story. Fred would have rode
Speaker 1: them here, knocked them out, drowned them, flipped the doory
Speaker 1: and shoved it away, swum a short distance to the rock,
Speaker 1: and waited for rescue. Maybe he offloaded lady on his
Speaker 1: way to the spot on that gentle ledge on the
Speaker 1: eastern side, like the Santa Barbara Day thought making excuses
Speaker 1: to Verna and Doug about why or maybe lady he
Speaker 1: was still in the door until the murder, and she
Speaker 1: made her own way over to the eastern ledge, her
Speaker 1: survival instincts kicking in her little legs, paddling furiously. Verna,
Speaker 1: he would have killed for the money, Doug, because he
Speaker 1: was the witness. We went back to our boat and
Speaker 1: got ready to head home. From the back deck, John
Speaker 1: squinted out at bird rock. Doug's ashes had been scattered
Speaker 1: at sea, and there was no marker for him anywhere
Speaker 1: on land, so this was it. Bird Rock was his grave.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at that, and I see all the rocks.
Speaker 1: I'm like, those are all tombstones. That's all death. That's
Speaker 1: how I look at it. I just this is a
Speaker 1: weird I got a creepy feeling. This whole place is
Speaker 1: not what I thought it would be. Before Christmas, in
Speaker 1: December of nineteen eighty, John had said goodbye to Doug,
Speaker 1: thinking he'd see him again in a few months or
Speaker 1: whenever the railers got back from their sailing trip to Mexico. Instead,
Speaker 1: over the holidays, Doug had died here. John looked ill
Speaker 1: and kept turning his face away from the rock, only
Speaker 1: to have his gaze pulled back to it. This is
Speaker 1: like death. You just feel death. I don't. I know
Speaker 1: it's not like that for everybody, but I don't. I'll
Speaker 1: probably never ever come back here again. No way we're
Speaker 1: worth it. I don't know. That affects me so much.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I don't know. Back then, I
Speaker 1: wasn't like I want to be in law enforces to
Speaker 1: solve crimes. But more helping people that are helping people
Speaker 1: that are getting drowned and getting killed. Just say it's
Speaker 1: not fair. It's not fair. It's bullshit, like he didn't
Speaker 1: he didn't kill, just that he like killed part of
Speaker 1: our lives. We turned around and headed back across the channel,
Speaker 1: with hundreds of dolphins leaping in our wake. I asked
Speaker 1: John if the trip had brought him clarity, and he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: he felt he knew where Doug had died. It's a
Speaker 1: great place to kill somebody. Nobody can see you, nobody
Speaker 1: can hear you. But where that happened, Where that that
Speaker 1: little co is. It's like Professor Plum with the candlestick
Speaker 1: in the conservatory. Nobody saw it, but you know what happened,
Speaker 1: and that when you look at it that way, it's scary,
Speaker 1: Like that area is scary because it's perfect. The case
Speaker 1: against Fred Rayler, in spite of all that scientific evidence,
Speaker 1: was largely circumstantial if you looked at it one way.
Speaker 1: Fred was a victim of unfathomably bad luck. That's been
Speaker 1: the subtext of every conversation I've had with him. His
Speaker 1: persona is built around this idea of steadfast, stoic perseverance
Speaker 1: in the face of hardship. Looked at another way, the
Speaker 1: authority's way. Fred's a devious and malicious killer. From that
Speaker 1: point of view, it's no coincidence that people close to
Speaker 1: him kept drowning. He was drowning. But that's the thing
Speaker 1: about circumstantial evidence. It doesn't look the same to everyone.
Speaker 1: The first time I went up into the hayloft in Colorado,
Speaker 1: I saw something really strange. It was a kiddie pool
Speaker 1: with a plastic skeleton in it and an oar and
Speaker 1: a headless dummy dressed in boy's clothing and not attached,
Speaker 1: a painted pumpkinhead, a skeleton with an oar, A dummy
Speaker 1: with no head. Law enforcement thought Fred had stunned Verna
Speaker 1: with the door's oar. A dug sized dummy and a
Speaker 1: dummy head had been used in the trial and helped
Speaker 1: to convict Fred. Clearly, this was someone's morbid idea of
Speaker 1: a joke. Wait, Heidi, can you come over here and
Speaker 1: tell us about this? So what is this situation here?
Speaker 1: At first, she had no idea what I was talking about.
Speaker 1: She couldn't see it. It was a random collection of stuff, disconnected,
Speaker 1: not meaningful, unrelated, you're looking at a kiddie pool with
Speaker 1: there's a skeleton in it, and then there's also it
Speaker 1: looks like a scarecrow, and then there's paddles. The paddles
Speaker 1: are for a stepboard that's not up here right now,
Speaker 1: and the scarecrow my daughter's built for Halloween. We put
Speaker 1: it down at the then, like an optical illusion where
Speaker 1: a hidden picture emerges only after you stare at it
Speaker 1: a while. She saw what I saw, but it does
Speaker 1: now that I'm looking at it. It's bizarre. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: it's just a pile of junk with a few skeletonstone
Speaker 1: in Yeah. I considered whether her explanation was reasonable, that
Speaker 1: these things would have ended up together completely unintentionally. No way.
Speaker 1: She had a plausible explanation for everything, but it didn't
Speaker 1: pass a gut check according to the law. Though I
Speaker 1: would have to give Heidi the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 1: It was just an accident. The kittie pool moment illustrated
Speaker 1: something else for me too, how much Fred's daughters need
Speaker 1: him to be innocent, and how blinding that need is.
Speaker 1: Kim's father, Bill, died after falling from a rooftop in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five. Her mother died with her little brother
Speaker 1: at Bird Rock in nineteen eighty one. Heidi and Kirsten's mother, Jean,
Speaker 1: drowned in the family pool in Malibu in nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 1: Fred is all they have. Sometimes, when you love and
Speaker 1: need someone that badly, you can't see what's right before
Speaker 1: your eyes. And if they want to keep him, they
Speaker 1: must believe him. A few years ago, Kirsten, the youngest
Speaker 1: of the sisters, Fred's favorite prime kid, spearheaded a petition
Speaker 1: to ask Jerry Brown, the governor of California at the time,
Speaker 1: to grant her father clemency. The Governor's office sent someone
Speaker 1: to interview Fred in prison, and then the Santa Barbaradier's
Speaker 1: office began reaching out to victims, which meant they called Kim,
Speaker 1: Verna's daughter, Doug's older sister. Of the three sisters, Kim
Speaker 1: is the most secretive. Almost no one in her life
Speaker 1: knows the story of her childhood. The whole time we
Speaker 1: were in the hayloft, she rarely volunteered anything other than
Speaker 1: quiet agreement with her sisters. Now she spoke up when
Speaker 1: that happened, I mean, I was surprised by it, but
Speaker 1: then also like you know, her and offended that they
Speaker 1: even did that. You know, I got his voice message
Speaker 1: and then called him back the next day and then
Speaker 1: flat out told him that I support my dad's clemency
Speaker 1: and all this procedure and stuff like that, and then
Speaker 1: didn't hear from their office again. But ah, this is Kirsten.
Speaker 1: But then, I mean, we doubled down and sent another,
Speaker 1: you know, batch of probably twenty letters of everyone saying like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you may consider us the victim's family, but we love
Speaker 1: and support him to this day. We you know, want
Speaker 1: you to release him. I mean, how many times can
Speaker 1: the victim's family say that? And it doesn't matter. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's seventy eight years old with health problems. He's not
Speaker 1: a risk. You know, he's not a risk to anybody.
Speaker 1: If he ever was, he's not. Now they're accusing him
Speaker 1: of killing family members and we're his family, so yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll take the risk of him possibly killing us. Fred
Speaker 1: was the perfect father who designed the perfect crime murder
Speaker 1: with no witnesses that left no marks once authorities believed
Speaker 1: he got away with it the second time he got caught.
Speaker 1: On the surface, his family was perfect, but the real
Speaker 1: story was what happened below. The surface where he held
Speaker 1: them under and no one saw. I don't think the
Speaker 1: trial or even the investigation was necessarily fair, but I
Speaker 1: do think the jury sent a guilty man to prison.
Speaker 1: But Fred, he's still keeping up appearances. In the tapes
Speaker 1: from forty years ago. He sounds kind of numb, but
Speaker 1: also irritated, as if he's explaining things through gritted teeth
Speaker 1: to a dimwitted kid. In our conversations, he's mister Malibu again, genial, affable,
Speaker 1: chuckling like a shopping mall Santa Claus, who you know,
Speaker 1: is just an out of work actor in a polyester suit.
Speaker 1: Good morning, How are you? I feel contained? So for
Speaker 1: some reason contained, Yeah, that's a joke. This conversation was
Speaker 1: just a couple of weeks ago. On December eighth, it
Speaker 1: was our twenty fifth phone call. Fred said he was
Speaker 1: still working on his case. His appeal back in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five hadn't worked because even though all three judges
Speaker 1: felt that Duane MOS's testimony about the experiments with the
Speaker 1: dummy and the dory should not have been allowed, they
Speaker 1: didn't agree on how much it had influenced the jury's decision.
Speaker 1: Two of the judges said that even without Moses's testimony,
Speaker 1: the outcome of the trial would have been the same.
Speaker 1: And then the third one wrote a shepherd dissenting opinion
Speaker 1: where he went into the whole thing and said, no,
Speaker 1: this is primarily the reason we've got this gut. In
Speaker 1: recent years, California law has changed to reflect growing skepticism
Speaker 1: about forensic science, which can be so persuasive to juries
Speaker 1: but is also often total bunk. Now there's an appetite
Speaker 1: to take another look at cases where junk science may
Speaker 1: have played a role in conviction. So Fred's forging ahead,
Speaker 1: serving as his own lawyer. So I've been basically pressing
Speaker 1: that issue along with some others, all the way through
Speaker 1: the court system. So I started out with the Superior
Speaker 1: Court in Santa Barbara and then went all the way
Speaker 1: up to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of California,
Speaker 1: and that one's just done this year. I had a
Speaker 1: feeling this would be the last time I'd talked to Fred,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to understand something that had been bothering
Speaker 1: me all along. That his love for his daughters seems
Speaker 1: so real. It's the one part of his facade I
Speaker 1: just can't see through. I don't think it is a facade.
Speaker 1: So I asked him about his relationship with them and
Speaker 1: what they're unfaltering support has meant to him. Oh, it
Speaker 1: means absolutely everything. I'm fortunate that they're astute enough and
Speaker 1: old enough now to really comprehend both situations and to
Speaker 1: understand the legal process. And basically they're my lifeline at
Speaker 1: the moment, because if I, if I didn't have my daughters,
Speaker 1: I'd be in a lot of trouble. What would happen
Speaker 1: if one of them questioned either of those stories that
Speaker 1: you've told them? Sure, well, I would try my most
Speaker 1: to figure out why they had changed their mind and
Speaker 1: to do everything that I could to, you know, help
Speaker 1: them understand it even better. It's one of those It's
Speaker 1: one of those things that, knowing the three women, it
Speaker 1: would be hard for me to grasp, it would be
Speaker 1: hard for you to grasp why they might have questions.
Speaker 1: Oh exactly. In other words, there's a lot of things
Speaker 1: that none of us know, and that'll always be the case.
Speaker 1: But what they do know basically has led them to
Speaker 1: stay with me and be with me, you know, the
Speaker 1: entire time, and bring husbands up and bring babies up,
Speaker 1: and you know, visit me at all different funny places.
Speaker 1: They'll old folsome. We actually had family visits in the hospital,
Speaker 1: and so I had these three little girls basically visiting
Speaker 1: me for a weekend in prison, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: rather astounding that as they had the fortitude to be
Speaker 1: able to face that and basically for us to have
Speaker 1: a pretty good Do you think your identity remaining? Is
Speaker 1: your identity at root that you are a good father? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And the thing that we say over and over is
Speaker 1: that I'm probably better as a father in here than
Speaker 1: I would have been out there. Being in here, I
Speaker 1: followed them at every step of their lives and listened
Speaker 1: and shared letters, and you know, it's I've got them
Speaker 1: to know them and them to know me. So it's
Speaker 1: one of those little twists of irony. Do you think
Speaker 1: you'll get out? I do yes, because I know that
Speaker 1: what they did wasn't fair and it violated the rule
Speaker 1: of law. And at some point the line had gone dead.
Speaker 1: I talked to Fred twenty five times for a total
Speaker 1: of six hours, forty five minutes and forty seven seconds.
Speaker 1: He told me about Jean, that they were working things out.
Speaker 1: He told me about Verna, that she was the love
Speaker 1: of his life. He told me about their life in Malibu,
Speaker 1: that it was perfect, wholesome, sweet, a dream. But it
Speaker 1: was right there when Fred was talking about his daughters
Speaker 1: and the kind of father he's been, how they're his lifeline.
Speaker 1: That was the one moment, maybe the only moment, when
Speaker 1: I knew Fred was telling the truth. Lost Hills is reported,
Speaker 1: written and hosted by me Dana Goodyear. The editor is
Speaker 1: Ben Adair. Our senior producer is Hayley Fox, who contributed
Speaker 1: a ton of additional reporting. Producers are Nicole McNulty, Cameron Kell,
Speaker 1: and Savannah Wright. Mika Hauser is our fact checker. Our
Speaker 1: composer and sound designer is Dan Leone. Our mix engineers
Speaker 1: are David Hermann and Michael Raphael. Our cover art is
Speaker 1: called for a Kid, and It's by Francesca Gabiani. Bena
Speaker 1: Dare and I are the creators and executive producers. Executive
Speaker 1: producers for Pushkin Industries are Jacob Weisberg, The Tal Mullad
Speaker 1: and Jacob Smith. Thanks also to the Pushkin team Mia Lobell,
Speaker 1: Heather Faine, John Schnars, Carly mcgliori, Amy Gaines, Maggie Taylor,
Speaker 1: Nicole Morano, Eric Sandler, Mary Beth Smith, Brant Haynes, Jake Gorsky,
Speaker 1: Sean Carney, Royston Bezerv, Maya Koneg, and Daniella Lacan. Lost
Speaker 1: Hills the production of Western Sound and Pushkin Industries. You
Speaker 1: can sign up for Western Sounds newsletter at Western Dashsound
Speaker 1: dot com. Pushkin's newsletter is at Pushkin dot fm. Follow
Speaker 1: at Lost Hills Pod on social media, and please remember
Speaker 1: to rate and review the show in your podcast app.
Speaker 1: To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app,
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