Speaker 1: The following podcast contains explicit descriptions of violence, including sexual violence,
Speaker 1: that some listeners may find upsetting. Continue at your own risk.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you didn't have to be a fan if
Speaker 2: you followed popular culture in the nineties, if you were
Speaker 2: into music at all, hell, if you were in your
Speaker 2: twenties or even anywhere near him. You remember Kurt Cobain's suicide.
Speaker 2: You don't necessarily remember the date, like nine to eleven.
Speaker 3: Well I do.
Speaker 2: It was April the nineteen ninety four. That's the day
Speaker 2: they found his body. Anyway, he'd been dead a couple days.
Speaker 2: Crazy right, one of the biggest stars on the planet,
Speaker 2: and his dead body was rotting in the room above
Speaker 2: his garage for days. It wasn't even family who found him.
Speaker 2: It was some electrician dude who came over to install
Speaker 2: some lighting.
Speaker 1: That's Connor Langford remembering one of the seminal events of
Speaker 1: the nineteen nine the suicide of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain.
Speaker 1: You may remember from our previous episodes that Connor is
Speaker 1: the son of Domino Beach City councilman Greg Langford and
Speaker 1: one of the two men who found the body of
Speaker 1: the Domino Beach killer's first victim anyway.
Speaker 2: Shocked under the head blame no more Nirvana. He quoted
Speaker 2: Neil Young in a suicide note. You know it's better
Speaker 2: to burn out than to fade away. I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe he was right.
Speaker 1: Here's Maya Morales, Connor's girlfriend at the time.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, when the news hit, I was working first
Speaker 4: shift at Gravel Records. Spring break was just kicking up,
Speaker 4: so there were a lot of college kids in town.
Speaker 4: By noon the next day, we had sold out of
Speaker 4: every Nirvana ced, every vinyl record, every cassette, every T shirt, poster,
Speaker 4: even those little metal buttons you pinned on your jacket,
Speaker 4: remember those. Yeah, all of a sudden, Nirvana was everyone's
Speaker 4: favorite band, a bunch of posers.
Speaker 3: They were really fans.
Speaker 4: Don't you think that they would have already had all
Speaker 4: that stuff.
Speaker 1: I was twenty three years old in April of ninety four,
Speaker 1: and I have to admit I was one of the
Speaker 1: posers I was talking about. I was dating a guy
Speaker 1: who was in med school at USC at the time
Speaker 1: and was a huge grunge fan. So he was absolutely devastated.
Speaker 1: And I don't really know why, but I fell victim
Speaker 1: to the collective sadness of it all, Nirvana wasn't really
Speaker 1: my kind of band. I was still mostly into eighties
Speaker 1: music back then, and if you haven't figured it out
Speaker 1: by now, I was desperately uncool in my twenties. But
Speaker 1: Nirvana had had such an impact on popular music and
Speaker 1: a huge influence on so many of my fellow gen xers.
Speaker 1: In the weeks after Cobain's death, I listened to them
Speaker 1: more than I ever had before or since. I mean
Speaker 1: to be honest, the only reason I bought their breakthrough
Speaker 1: CD never Mind in the first place was to hear
Speaker 1: the song Paully that the Murderer of Vera Kendrick had
Speaker 1: quoted a year and a half earlier. To say Cobain's
Speaker 1: death was a big deal is an understatement. It may
Speaker 1: have affected us all in different ways. Some of us
Speaker 1: would miss his music, some of us related to the
Speaker 1: depression he felt. Some of us were simply saddened by
Speaker 1: the idea of a twenty seven year old musical genius
Speaker 1: at the top of his game checking out. And there
Speaker 1: are those who believe his suicide had an impact on
Speaker 1: the Domino Beach Killer because what he did next was
Speaker 1: a major escalation. I'm Courtney Barnes and this is the
Speaker 1: Murder Years, Episode three, Cornflake Girl.
Speaker 5: You got to understand. April is when Domino Beach started
Speaker 5: to wake up after the lean winter months.
Speaker 1: That's Damon Stokes retired Sheriff of Delsoul County.
Speaker 5: As soon as the spring breakers started rolling into town,
Speaker 5: the population tripled and everything opened up. Shops, restaurants, and
Speaker 5: bars that were only opened two or three days a
Speaker 5: week from September to March were open pretty much now
Speaker 5: twenty four to seven.
Speaker 3: Almost every hotel.
Speaker 5: And rental house was packed and booked solid until the
Speaker 5: end of August.
Speaker 3: It's like everything really came to life all of a sudden.
Speaker 3: I was a local. It was truly something to.
Speaker 1: See, it really was. Nineteen ninety four marked my second
Speaker 1: spring break spent in Domino Beach, and by then I
Speaker 1: had become a full fledged reporter on the payroll of
Speaker 1: the SoCal Journal. Glenn Sherman was still covering crime in
Speaker 1: politics and for the most part not letting me anywhere
Speaker 1: near it. My beat was lifestyle and entertainment, which, to
Speaker 1: be honest, I was pretty happy about covering the murder
Speaker 1: of Via Kendrick right out of the gate and then,
Speaker 1: shadowing Glenn for a year had led me to the
Speaker 1: conclusion that I did not want to be a crime reporter,
Speaker 1: at least not yet. Even a small tourist town like
Speaker 1: Domino Beach had crime. Besides the two unsolved murders of
Speaker 1: Via Kendrick and Billy Boy Reeves, there was the inland
Speaker 1: drug trade and everything that comes with that, prostitution, muggings,
Speaker 1: some shootings, you know, that sort of thing, and then
Speaker 1: you had domestic abuse cases, burglaries, bar fights. It was
Speaker 1: just too much for me. It's weird for me to
Speaker 1: think of myself like that, to remember there was a
Speaker 1: time before the world and all its cynicism burned away
Speaker 1: any sense of innocence and naivete I once had. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I'd been promoted over the winter, so spring break was
Speaker 1: going to be my first chance to shine, to plant
Speaker 1: my flag and really own my beat. I'd spend time
Speaker 1: on the crowded beaches writing about all that the college
Speaker 1: kids were doing. I'd eat it all the restaurants in
Speaker 1: town and review the ones I liked. And remember, this
Speaker 1: was long before the birth of Yo, when everyone and
Speaker 1: their brothers suddenly became a food critic. Although unlike most yelpers.
Speaker 1: I promised to never pan a place fight didn't like it.
Speaker 1: I'd follow the if you can't say anything nice, don't
Speaker 1: say anything at all rule. I still had to live
Speaker 1: with these people, and of course I'd cover the spring
Speaker 1: break nightlife, listening to live music and dive bars and
Speaker 1: watching half naked college kids rive on outdoor dance floors
Speaker 1: overlooking the ocean. It's going to be fun. It was
Speaker 1: supposed to be fun, and I have no doubt that's
Speaker 1: exactly what Holly Blake, Mary Crouch, and Sandra Gerard thought
Speaker 1: when they drove all the way from Arizona State University
Speaker 1: to Domino Beach.
Speaker 5: The way I understand it, Holly Blake had an unclehole
Speaker 5: in the house where they stayed. He never lived there himself,
Speaker 5: though you know it only met him once or twice.
Speaker 5: It was purely a rental property for him, you know,
Speaker 5: a money maker and a good one.
Speaker 1: Can you describe it?
Speaker 5: Well, sure, it's a long time since you know. It's
Speaker 5: torn down now, as you know, but I remember it
Speaker 5: pretty clearly. It was one level, three bedrooms, I mean
Speaker 5: maybe four, but I think three, and it was a
Speaker 5: modern kitchen, A couple of decent sized bathrooms, massive back deck.
Speaker 3: On stilts that overlooked the ocean. It's real beauty.
Speaker 5: Booked all summer long, but it was, you know, usually
Speaker 5: empty during the spring break. It was one of the
Speaker 5: most expensive rentals in town, too much for most college kids.
Speaker 3: So you know it was going to stay empty most
Speaker 3: of April.
Speaker 5: I guess miss Blake's uncle decided he might as well
Speaker 5: let her and her friends just use it.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 5: It was in a very active part of Domino Beach too,
Speaker 5: within walking distance of downtown and not too far from
Speaker 5: Senior Gusto, the beach front bar of choice for the
Speaker 5: spring Breakers. Cheap shots, live music, some nights of DJ others,
Speaker 5: wet t shirt contest, karaoke, and know all that nonsense.
Speaker 1: Holly, Mary and Sandra must have felt like they'd hit
Speaker 1: the jackpot. They were three fun, pretty college girls staying
Speaker 1: in one of the hottest houses on the coolest part
Speaker 1: of the beach, and yeah, it proved too good to
Speaker 1: be true.
Speaker 3: The way it went down was like this. Nine to one.
Speaker 5: One got a call a little after three in the
Speaker 5: morning on April twenty first. It was oh god, Thursday, Yeah, right,
Speaker 5: it's Thursday.
Speaker 3: The house next door was home to the Gillen family.
Speaker 5: Adam Gillen was a lawyer who worked in San Diego's wife, Darla,
Speaker 5: was a TV writer in Hollywood. I don't remember what
Speaker 5: shows she worked on. I didn't watch a lot of
Speaker 5: TV back then. Well, they were year round residents. Darla
Speaker 5: worked from home most times and Adam commuted back and
Speaker 5: forth from San Diego. Well, they didn't think too much
Speaker 5: of these spring breakers. I mean, like I said before,
Speaker 5: the house these girls were staying and was usually vacant
Speaker 5: during spring break, but that week the house was party central.
Speaker 5: Didn't take too long for those girls to become the
Speaker 5: most popular tourists in town. During the daytime, there were
Speaker 5: upwards of twenty kids going in and out from the beach,
Speaker 5: beating the heat or refilling their drinks and so on.
Speaker 5: And at night the girls invited half the town over
Speaker 5: to keep the park going after the bar has closed.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know they were doing it up.
Speaker 5: So anyway, it was after three am Thursday morning, April
Speaker 5: twenty first, nine to one one gets a call from
Speaker 5: Adam Gillen.
Speaker 3: Apparently there'd been some loud music.
Speaker 5: Coming from the house next door all night and he
Speaker 5: couldn't take it anymore. He had to go to work
Speaker 5: the next morning, so he walked over there in a huff.
Speaker 5: He's in his bathrobe and slippers, and he wants to
Speaker 5: ask him to turn it down. When he got there,
Speaker 5: he found the front door standing wide open, says He
Speaker 5: called out, but the music was so loud you could
Speaker 5: barely hear himself, so he took a few steps inside.
Speaker 1: What Adam Gillen saw inside the house made him turn
Speaker 1: right around, run outside, throw up in the bushes, and
Speaker 1: then hurry back to his house to call nine one one.
Speaker 5: What I saw when I arrived, I mean, it was
Speaker 5: just horrific. The deputy on duty beat me there, but
Speaker 5: only about by ten minutes. The nine one one dispatcher
Speaker 5: called me at home, told me that if what Adam
Speaker 5: Gillen was saying turned out to be true, I better
Speaker 5: go see it for myself.
Speaker 1: And what did you see when you got there?
Speaker 5: The first thing I saw was blood, lots of it,
Speaker 5: silking in the pale gray carpet of this living room.
Speaker 5: And lying in the middle of that blood is twenty
Speaker 5: year old Sandra Gerard.
Speaker 3: She was wearing shorts and a tank.
Speaker 5: Top, but you know, a nice one summertime going out closed.
Speaker 3: The top was torn up pretty good.
Speaker 5: She had the stab wounds all over her body, at
Speaker 5: least a couple of dozen. She was lying face down,
Speaker 5: the wrist tied behind her back, the plastic zip tie.
Speaker 5: There was another puddle of blood on the carpet right
Speaker 5: next to her, quite so big, and the start of
Speaker 5: a long red smear that went all the way across
Speaker 5: the living room carpet into the kitchen tile. And that's
Speaker 5: where twenty one year old Holly Blake was found. And
Speaker 5: she was wearing one of those summer dresses like her
Speaker 5: friend Sandra. She was just covered in stab wounds, had
Speaker 5: her hands bound. It look like sh she'd been dragged
Speaker 5: and reguled her way into the kitchen and probably trying
Speaker 5: to get to the phone call for help.
Speaker 3: But you know she I don't know, she didn't make it.
Speaker 1: And what about Mary Crouch?
Speaker 5: We found Mary, also twenty one years old, uh in
Speaker 5: the master bedroom.
Speaker 3: She was found naked.
Speaker 5: She'd been raped, beaten, uh, and she had been strangled
Speaker 5: to death.
Speaker 1: Just like Vera Hendrick.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: Adam Gillen, the next door neighbor who found the bodies,
Speaker 1: had come over to complain about the loud music coming
Speaker 1: from the house. As if the volume hadn't been annoying enough,
Speaker 1: it was the same song playing over and over for
Speaker 1: at least an hour that really got to him, Cornflake
Speaker 1: Girl by Tory Amos. The source of the music was
Speaker 1: a ninety minute cassette tape with that one song recorded
Speaker 1: onto it, repeating itself over and over on the living
Speaker 1: room stereo. Apparently the killer had played it during his
Speaker 1: assault on the women and let it play while he
Speaker 1: raped and strangled Mary Crouch, then repeatedly stabbed Sandra Gerard
Speaker 1: and Holly Blake. Then he cranked up the volume and
Speaker 1: left it playing on his way out the door, likely
Speaker 1: because he wanted the bodies to be found sooner rather
Speaker 1: than later. He was proud of what he'd done and
Speaker 1: wanted others to see his work. But why that song?
Speaker 1: Why Cornflake Girl?
Speaker 4: Cornflake Girl was kind of like a feminist anthem of
Speaker 4: the nineties. I was more of a hip hop R
Speaker 4: and B girl myself back then, so Tori Amos wasn't
Speaker 4: my jam. But it was a pretty good song, I
Speaker 4: admit it. Supposedly it was about how some women will
Speaker 4: screw over other women, even if they're good friends and
Speaker 4: that's what a cornflake girl is.
Speaker 1: In retrospect, it's not surprising that the Domino Beach killer
Speaker 1: would subvert a feminist song like that, letting it play
Speaker 1: while he raped and murdered these young women. He probably
Speaker 1: got some weird kind of pleasure out of it. If
Speaker 1: you listen to the lyrics. There are some ominous sounding
Speaker 1: phrases in there, like she's gone to the other side,
Speaker 1: and a nervous sounding stuttering of this is not really happening,
Speaker 1: followed by Amos almost screeching you bet your life it is.
Speaker 1: It's weirdly haunted. But that's not why the killer chose
Speaker 1: that song, at least it wasn't the only reason.
Speaker 4: So the story, and I heard this before the murders,
Speaker 4: but back when I was working at Gravel Records, is
Speaker 4: that Torri Amos had read some book.
Speaker 1: And was possessing the Secret of Joy. Huh, Possessing the
Speaker 1: Secret of Joy by Alice Walker. That was the book.
Speaker 3: Are you telling this or am I?
Speaker 6: You are?
Speaker 1: Maya?
Speaker 4: So she read this book which apparently talked about the
Speaker 4: practice of female genital mutilation in some parts of Africa,
Speaker 4: and I guess it was pretty common for a girl's
Speaker 4: friend or aunt or cousin or whatever to betray the
Speaker 4: girl and either do the deed themselves or bring them
Speaker 4: to someone who did sick, twisted shit right.
Speaker 1: Mary Crouch, the victim who was found raped and strangled
Speaker 1: to death in the bedroom, had her literal glands and
Speaker 1: labia minora sliced off with the same knife used to
Speaker 1: stab her friends to death.
Speaker 5: What we determined was after the party cleared out, the
Speaker 5: killer came in. Girls may have left the door unlocked,
Speaker 5: or maybe they he had been at the party. We
Speaker 5: weren't sure, but there was no sign of forced entry.
Speaker 5: He attacked the women, all three of them who had
Speaker 5: been drinking heavily that night, and tied them up, then
Speaker 5: put on the music and took Mary into the bedroom,
Speaker 5: where he raped and strangled her. Then he went into
Speaker 5: the kitchen, grabbed a knife, murdered Holly and Sandra, and
Speaker 5: went back into the bedroom and did what he did
Speaker 5: to Marry.
Speaker 3: At least you know, she was already dead.
Speaker 1: The knife was found on the floor next to the bed.
Speaker 1: The removed genitalia were never recovered.
Speaker 5: These were not only the most violent murders ever committed
Speaker 5: by the Domino Beach Killer, they were the most violent
Speaker 5: murders I have ever seen in my career and still
Speaker 5: are to this day.
Speaker 1: Maybe everyone, myself included, had fallen under the spell of
Speaker 1: Councilman Langford's there's nothing to see here rhetoric. But prior
Speaker 1: to the murders of Holly, Sandra and Mary, the thought
Speaker 1: of a serial killer in Domino Beach had never even
Speaker 1: entered my mind. Not in September nineteen ninety two, when
Speaker 1: Vera Kendrick was murdered, Not in July of ninety three,
Speaker 1: when the body of teenage junkie and prostitute Billy Boy
Speaker 1: Reeves was found with his throat slit ear to ear
Speaker 1: in the dumpster behind Triple Bes. Those two murders still
Speaker 1: felt completely disconnected. No one even considered they were related.
Speaker 1: Up until then, there had been no real sense of
Speaker 1: fear and certainly no panic in Domino Beach. But all
Speaker 1: that changed in April nineteen ninety four. I remember being
Speaker 1: in the journal offices the day Holly, Sandra and Mary's
Speaker 1: bodies were found, watching a pale, uncharacteristically quiet Glenn Sherman
Speaker 1: bang out the story on his old clunky mat. He
Speaker 1: wasn't nervous just because he suspected whatever he wrote would
Speaker 1: be picked up by other papers all across the country,
Speaker 1: which it was. No he had other concerns. It's hard
Speaker 1: to write about things like women being butchered in such
Speaker 1: horrible ways and still sound like you're being respectful to
Speaker 1: the victims and their families. And Glenn he was never
Speaker 1: the tight to hold back. He was looking to walk
Speaker 1: right up to the line where detailed accuracy becomes unnecessary
Speaker 1: exploitation without crossing it. And to his credit, I think
Speaker 1: he was successful. That was a rough year for our
Speaker 1: little town of Domino Beach.
Speaker 2: Well, my fucking dad couldn't exactly sweep that one under
Speaker 2: the rug, could he? Vera even though she was a
Speaker 2: of mine, didn't rate. Can you imagine that your own
Speaker 2: son is trying to get you to help solve the
Speaker 2: murder of someone he cared about and your response is
Speaker 2: essentially fuck it. She was just a homeless hippie, right,
Speaker 2: and she never contributed any money to the community.
Speaker 3: Who cares?
Speaker 2: But those girls, they went to college, They had families,
Speaker 2: families with money. Their murders got talked about on the
Speaker 2: national fucking news. There was no hiding this one, huh.
Speaker 2: And my father always true to fucking form. He saw
Speaker 2: it as a goddamn opportunity. He had his political sights
Speaker 2: set on a bigger office, and he saw this as
Speaker 2: a way to get his name out there, get people
Speaker 2: all over the country to know who he was off
Speaker 2: the backs of three mutilated college students piece of shit.
Speaker 3: Writing It's true.
Speaker 5: Counsel in Laneford leaned on me hard, especially when there
Speaker 5: were cameras around, said if I didn't solve those murders
Speaker 5: by the end of tourist season, I might as well
Speaker 5: just pack up and leave, because he'd make sure his
Speaker 5: hell I didn't win my next election, and he had
Speaker 5: the pull to make that happen too. So I started
Speaker 5: working on the only lead I had, Stan Majors.
Speaker 1: If you remember from last episode, Stan Majors was an
Speaker 1: ex con, registered sex defender and person of interest in
Speaker 1: the nineteen ninety two murder of Vera Kendrick.
Speaker 3: I admit that I never believed Majors was involved in
Speaker 3: the murder of the Asu girls, but we.
Speaker 5: Didn't have anywhere else to go. There were no usable
Speaker 5: fingerprints on the murder weapon or anywhere else on the scene,
Speaker 5: No semen or hair was found, no skin or blood
Speaker 5: under any of the girl's fingernails. No one saw a
Speaker 5: goddamn thing, you know. So the girls had thrown a
Speaker 5: party that night. There were at least two or three
Speaker 5: dozen kids at the house, most of them from out
Speaker 5: of town.
Speaker 3: We talked to every single one of them got nowhere.
Speaker 5: No one would admit to being the last one to leave,
Speaker 5: and no one said there was anyone who looked.
Speaker 3: Suspicious or shady.
Speaker 5: There either, just a bunch of kids getting drunk, getting high, dancing,
Speaker 5: hooking up. So I didn't see the harm in bringing
Speaker 5: Stan Majors back to the station for a word or two.
Speaker 3: But you know I was wrong.
Speaker 1: There was plenty of out of town press in Domino Beach.
Speaker 1: In the days after the murders of the ASU students
Speaker 1: and councilman Langford leaked to reporters from TV stations in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles and San Diego that Stokes was bringing in
Speaker 1: a suspect for questioning. This wasn't exactly true, since Stan
Speaker 1: Majors was never officially declared a suspect in any of
Speaker 1: the Domino Beach murders. But when Stokes arrived at the
Speaker 1: station with Majors in the backseat of his car.
Speaker 3: It was a shit show, is what it was. Goddamn
Speaker 3: media circus.
Speaker 5: It took me about an hour to make the round
Speaker 5: trip all the way to and from the gas.
Speaker 3: Station where Majors was working, and when I pulled up.
Speaker 5: To the sh station, if you have thought it was
Speaker 5: the red carpet of the oscars.
Speaker 1: Here's some archive footage from Sheriff Stokes interview with Stan
Speaker 1: Major's that day.
Speaker 6: No, I haven't been to Domino Beach in uh not
Speaker 6: since maybe last October.
Speaker 3: Why are you lying to me?
Speaker 6: Stan? I'm not lying?
Speaker 7: Yeah you are now.
Speaker 3: Maybe you killed those girls and maybe you didn't. I didn't.
Speaker 3: I didn't kill either way.
Speaker 7: Stan, you're lying to me right now, and I don't
Speaker 7: care for it. You were at that party that night,
Speaker 7: weren't you?
Speaker 6: What?
Speaker 7: No, you think they'd led me into that house. They
Speaker 7: were from out of town. Stand they didn't know you.
Speaker 7: They didn't know what you've done. What you're capable of.
Speaker 6: I'm not capable of that. I couldn't hurt anyone.
Speaker 7: Like you've done it before. You beat a minor half
Speaker 7: unconscious because she turned you down. That what happened here?
Speaker 7: You tried to get with Mary and what after you
Speaker 7: made you mad.
Speaker 6: No, I don't know who that is. I never seen
Speaker 6: those girls.
Speaker 7: Yeah, never met them before that night.
Speaker 6: Never look, men, what I did. It was almost ten
Speaker 6: years ago. Now I pay my debt to society. I'm
Speaker 6: still paying it. I hardly ever go anywhere besides working
Speaker 6: my trailer. I just want to get back there now.
Speaker 6: Please let me go back there.
Speaker 5: I I mean, I regret going at him so hard,
Speaker 5: considering he had no evidence on him whatsoever.
Speaker 3: But you know, like I said, I was under a lot.
Speaker 1: Of pressure from counseling Langford.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, he saw that fucking guy.
Speaker 3: It's the perfect target.
Speaker 2: I don't know if my dad ever thought he actually
Speaker 2: killed those students or not. I don't think the idea
Speaker 2: of justice ever entered into his thinking. No, what he
Speaker 2: cared about was making it go away. What was going
Speaker 2: through his mind was how can I put an end
Speaker 2: to this shit storm as fast as possible? And his
Speaker 2: answer was depended on the local registered sex offender. And
Speaker 2: it wasn't a bad idea either. I mean, who fuck
Speaker 2: cares about a guy like that? Who's going to go
Speaker 2: to bat for a goddamn rapist?
Speaker 1: Okay, look, I have to state for the record that
Speaker 1: like Connor Langford is saying Stan Majors was a tough
Speaker 1: guy to feel sorry for.
Speaker 3: He was found.
Speaker 1: Guilty for and later admitted to trying to rape a
Speaker 1: seventeen year old girl in Los Angeles in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: So first and foremost, fuck that guy.
Speaker 3: But oh, that poor son of a bitch went through hell.
Speaker 5: I mean, there was footage of him walking into the
Speaker 5: sheriff's station with me on every channel on every TV
Speaker 5: in the country. Over the next couple of months, they
Speaker 5: did investigations and expose a's on them on a couple
Speaker 5: of those primetime news shows, you know, making it seem
Speaker 5: like suspect number one. Even though I never charged him
Speaker 5: with the damn thing, he couldn't set foot outside his
Speaker 5: trailer without being called a rapist and a murder and
Speaker 5: a hell of a lot worse than that.
Speaker 3: In June of that year, a couple of frat.
Speaker 5: Boys from Asu came to town, found on the gas
Speaker 5: station where he worked, and beat the living shit out
Speaker 5: of him. I mean, they put him in the hospital
Speaker 5: and I put them in a lockup, but their daddy's
Speaker 5: made some calls to Greg Langford and they got out
Speaker 5: without so much as a slap on the wrist. I'm
Speaker 5: telling you, whatever Stan Majors has done, and he's done
Speaker 5: a lot, he paid for a dozen times over until.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: On September twelfth, nineteen ninety four, just six days shy
Speaker 1: of the two year anniversary of the death of Vera Hendrick,
Speaker 1: Stan Majors locked himself in his trailer, took a shotgun
Speaker 1: to his head, and committed so side just like Kurt
Speaker 1: Cobain had back in April.
Speaker 5: Within a couple of weeks, the District Attorney's office posthumously
Speaker 5: charged him with the murders of Holly Blake, Sandra Gerard,
Speaker 5: and Mary Crouch. And then they tacked on Vera Kendrick because.
Speaker 1: You know, why the hell not so you didn't believe
Speaker 1: Stan Majors was the killer.
Speaker 5: Even back then, I believed he could have possibly killed
Speaker 5: Vera Kendrick since that was, you know, an impulse crime.
Speaker 5: But when it came to those girls, Stan wasn't the
Speaker 5: sharpest tack in the box. You know, he had an
Speaker 5: IQ in the low eighties. I don't think he was
Speaker 5: capable of the planning it would have taken to pull
Speaker 5: off those murders without getting caught. But you know, I
Speaker 5: wanted him to be the killer, and not for the
Speaker 5: same reasons Langford wanted it. All he cared about was
Speaker 5: keeping the image of Domino Beaches, this fun, easygoing beach
Speaker 5: town where people could come and spend their money without
Speaker 5: fear of being raped or murdered. I mean, to him,
Speaker 5: it was all about perception. I wanted justice, and maybe
Speaker 5: because I wanted it so bad, for a while there,
Speaker 5: I deluded myself into believing justice.
Speaker 3: Had been served.
Speaker 1: We all wanted to believe that Domino Beach had experienced
Speaker 1: five murders and a suicide in less than two years.
Speaker 1: My friends back in Los Angeles were concerned for me,
Speaker 1: trying to get me to move back home. Can you
Speaker 1: imagine that? Who the hell moves to LA to feel safer?
Speaker 1: And I can't say I didn't consider it. I mean,
Speaker 1: what the hell was I still doing in Domino Beach anyway?
Speaker 1: I had enough experience at that point. I could have
Speaker 1: easily gotten a job in a major city. I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe not LA, but somewhere. And I was only making
Speaker 1: like twenty five grand a year, and rent wasn't exactly
Speaker 1: cheap in Domino Beach. I was barely making ends meet.
Speaker 1: Why was I still there. I didn't have a good
Speaker 1: answer back then, and I don't. All I could say
Speaker 1: was that somehow, somehow I knew Domino Beach was where
Speaker 1: I was supposed to be, and despite what the police
Speaker 1: and the politicians were saying in late nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: after the death of Stan Majors, somehow I knew it
Speaker 1: wasn't over.
Speaker 4: No, no one believed it was him. When that rapist
Speaker 4: piece of shit killed himself, all anyone thought was, oh good,
Speaker 4: there's one less rapist piece of shit in the world.
Speaker 3: But no one believed.
Speaker 4: It was the rapist piece of shit who killed those
Speaker 4: spring Breakers.
Speaker 1: So you thought it was a serial killer. Even back then,
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 4: Know if I thought it was a serial killer. I
Speaker 4: just knew it was a cycle and I guess I
Speaker 4: hoped whoever it was left town by the end of
Speaker 4: the tourist season that year.
Speaker 1: But we know now that he didn't.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we found that out pretty quick.
Speaker 1: There would be other murders and die Beach before it
Speaker 1: was over, but nothing would measure up to the violence
Speaker 1: and depravity of the murders of Mary Crouch, Sandra Gerard,
Speaker 1: and Holly Blake. Up to that point, the killer had
Speaker 1: been very careful. He had not left behind any evidence
Speaker 1: that could be traced back to him, and no one
Speaker 1: had so much as gotten a glimpse of him, his car,
Speaker 1: or anything. He was a ghost, but he was about
Speaker 1: to make his first mistake. The Murder Years is a
Speaker 1: production of AYR Media and iHeartMedia. Executive producer Elisa Rosen
Speaker 1: for AYR Media. Written by Tim Huddleston, directed by Alisa Rosen,
Speaker 1: Editing and sound designed by Tristan Bankston, Consulting producer Jean
Speaker 1: Chandil coordinator All Goldberg, Audio engineering and mastering by Justin
Speaker 1: Longerbeam studio engineer Josh Hook. Original music by Nathan Bankston.
Speaker 1: Original concept developed in partnership with Anne Margaret Johns and
Speaker 1: Greg Spring, Executive producer for iHeartMedia. Maya Howard performances for
Speaker 1: this episode by Erica Leniac as Courtney Barnes, Tom Virtue
Speaker 1: as Sheriff Damon Stokes, Alex Salem as Connor Langford, Melon
Speaker 1: Faxis as Maya Morales, Michael Cussman as Stan Majors, Matt
Speaker 1: Fogerty as young Detective Stokes.