Speaker 1: Pushkin. The day of their deaths, January second, nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: Verna and Doug's bodies were flown by helicopter back to
Speaker 1: the mainland. The next day, they were autopsied by the
Speaker 1: acting Medical Examiner of Ventura County, doctor Craig Duncan, Hi
Speaker 1: DUC Duncan Dan a good year. I met doctor Duncan
Speaker 1: recently at his home in Ventura, which is full of
Speaker 1: California oil paintings and human skulls. He's a psychiatrist now
Speaker 1: and wears a big opal ring, but back in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one, he was a forensic pathologist. Graduated from medical
Speaker 1: school in nineteen sixty nine that I went to Baltimore
Speaker 1: to complete my training under Russell Fisher, who was really
Speaker 1: the grandfather of forensic pathology, or a major figure. And
Speaker 1: he saw the case of Verna and Doug as uncomplicated.
Speaker 1: It's a standard autopsy of a standard drowning case, and
Speaker 1: handled in that fashion with fairly fresh bodies and obvious
Speaker 1: drowning results. There was clearly evidence of water drowning, lungs
Speaker 1: being full of water. I had the autopsy reports with
Speaker 1: me and we went through them together. It didn't take
Speaker 1: long the very little one on Douglas's body in terms
Speaker 1: of external markings up. I've Verna over here, so this
Speaker 1: is Verna. See no trauma, very little evidence of any
Speaker 1: trauma at all on Verna's body, same with Douglas, other
Speaker 1: than what I would anticipate in a struggle to prevent
Speaker 1: one from drowning, not a struggle with another human, just
Speaker 1: at other than the injury of drowning. There were no injuries,
Speaker 1: no indication that Verna or Dug had been attacked. And
Speaker 1: I contend that there was no evidence of homicide in
Speaker 1: the initial autopsies, as evidenced by no assault wounds clubbing
Speaker 1: on the head with an oar, etc. And no defense
Speaker 1: wounds bruises, fractures on the arms, which would be just
Speaker 1: human nature to do in the event of an attack.
Speaker 1: It was simple, he said. No trauma, no assault of wounds,
Speaker 1: no homicide. Doctor Duncan declared Verna and Doug's deaths accidental.
Speaker 1: That determination freed Fred as next of kin to proceed
Speaker 1: with his funerary plans. They drowned on Friday, the autopsies
Speaker 1: happened on Saturday. On Monday, he'd have a memorial for
Speaker 1: Verna and Doug at the Malibu Methodist Church, followed by
Speaker 1: a reception at the house on Sea Level Drive. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: he arranged to have the bodies moved to a mortuary
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles and scheduled them to be cremated on Wednesday,
Speaker 1: January seventh. Then their ashes would be scattered at sea,
Speaker 1: and Fred would begin to put back the pieces of
Speaker 1: his life as the single father of three young girls.
Speaker 1: Or that's what he assumed. I'm Dana Goodyear and this
Speaker 1: is Lost Hills episode two, Quiet No Longer. Fred slept
Speaker 1: alone in his and Vernah's bed. In the morning, he'd
Speaker 1: have the awful task of telling Verna's daughter Kim, and
Speaker 1: his daughters Heidi and Kirsten that Verna and Doug would
Speaker 1: not be coming home. They remember it how he sat
Speaker 1: them down and started methodically going through it. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: told us. And it was hard because it's like hearing
Speaker 1: a story that you do not want to know the
Speaker 1: ending two. And he didn't just start off. He started
Speaker 1: off telling us that they were out on the boat
Speaker 1: and the dog had jumped into the water. But it's
Speaker 1: you know, we're just waiting. He didn't just come out
Speaker 1: and say it. And then you know. He told us
Speaker 1: it was shocking. That's Heidi. We met up over the
Speaker 1: summer at Heidi's house in Colorado. Kirsten was there too,
Speaker 1: and so was Kim. Fred they said, had gone through
Speaker 1: the story in order, the Dog, the Birds, the dory,
Speaker 1: overturning the attempts at CPR. Here's Kim, but he did
Speaker 1: start from the beginning of what had happened and walked
Speaker 1: us through each step and then told us that they
Speaker 1: were God. The three sisters are incredibly close. Add to that,
Speaker 1: they all look a lot alike. Even though Kim, Verna's
Speaker 1: daughter from her first marriage, is not blood related to
Speaker 1: Heidi and Kirsten, the similarities are uncanny. Same straight, dark hair,
Speaker 1: same long oval faces, same vivid dark eyes. Oh, people
Speaker 1: have asked if we're triplets. I mean high and I
Speaker 1: get twins all the time, and then when the three
Speaker 1: of us are together they ask if for triplets. Kim
Speaker 1: says this was going on even back when Vernon Doug
Speaker 1: were alive. And then there were times when my mom
Speaker 1: would take us out and she might have like all
Speaker 1: four of us, and somehow it would come up that
Speaker 1: we were a blended family, you know, in the very beginning,
Speaker 1: and then who were the two biological siblings? And I
Speaker 1: think a lot of times it was sometimes was it
Speaker 1: you and Doug? Doug and I would get matched the time.
Speaker 1: It's strange, but the sisters remember that time right after
Speaker 1: Vernon Doug died as weirdly sweet, the three girls and
Speaker 1: Fred at home eating food dropped off by the neighbor ladies,
Speaker 1: figuring out how to cope. I have a lot of
Speaker 1: good memories of the three of us and Dad and
Speaker 1: the chokes about all the freaking castrolls. He would just
Speaker 1: pull something out because all the women were bringing over casseroles,
Speaker 1: so we're like, well, this is our dinner tonight. He
Speaker 1: rearranged their rooms so the girls could all sleep together.
Speaker 1: Kim and I had a bedroom downstairs, and Kirsten and
Speaker 1: Dug upstairs. And then after the accident, he built us
Speaker 1: a triple bunk bed so we were right off the kitchen,
Speaker 1: right next to his room, and I remember just being
Speaker 1: in there one time and he was in the kitchen
Speaker 1: doing the dishes, like listening to Divo and just like
Speaker 1: singing along. It was like another little lifetime of happiness
Speaker 1: because I felt like we all got it together and
Speaker 1: we were like, you know, a family again, the little
Speaker 1: lifetime wouldn't couldn't last. And I still don't remember the
Speaker 1: timeline of when we didn't know they were men coming
Speaker 1: to talk to my dad periodically and we didn't know
Speaker 1: what that was about. The men coming to see Fred
Speaker 1: were detectives from the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department. They
Speaker 1: specialized in homicides. Fred Railer is a waterman. Before prison,
Speaker 1: the water was his life, which is kind of surprising
Speaker 1: given where he grew up in Centerville, Indiana. You know,
Speaker 1: that's funny. I was always interested in water. As a kid.
Speaker 1: He became obsessed with the new sport of scuba diving.
Speaker 1: My parents put a pool in, which was sort of
Speaker 1: rare back in Indiana in the days. It was very helpful,
Speaker 1: and I actually bought a scuba tank and a regulator
Speaker 1: after I read some of Jocastos stuff and watched him
Speaker 1: on television. So I taught myself to swim on around
Speaker 1: and clean the pool without killing myself. And so that's
Speaker 1: basically how I really got fascinated with it. Later during college,
Speaker 1: he taught swimming. When I was at Purdue, one of
Speaker 1: my electives was water safety instructors, so they actually taught
Speaker 1: us the Red Cross methods for teaching swimming, and when
Speaker 1: I came back, actually did swimming lessons in our pool
Speaker 1: for a lot of people. And then when I left,
Speaker 1: I left my Red Cross hat and instruction books, and
Speaker 1: my mother started teaching swimming and she taught swimming for
Speaker 1: several years. After college, he got his job at Point
Speaker 1: Magoo working as an engineer for the Navy, and the
Speaker 1: Navy sent him to as scuba school in San Diego.
Speaker 1: The reason for diving was most of our trouble was
Speaker 1: with stuff underwater. It would either leaked, or it wasn't
Speaker 1: connected right, or you know, something was going wrong. So
Speaker 1: they sent me basically to scuba school, and then that
Speaker 1: allowed me to work with Navy diver to help install
Speaker 1: things and also take pictures of them, and you just
Speaker 1: see what was going on. The Navy started sending him
Speaker 1: to the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai. They actually
Speaker 1: had an underwater range, which is like a series of
Speaker 1: microphones spread out underwater and they can track surface ships
Speaker 1: and submarines and things. Fred oriented his whole life around
Speaker 1: the water for a while. He even lived on a
Speaker 1: houseboat called home in the Channel Islands Marina in Oxnard.
Speaker 1: He had a little side business there cleaning the bottoms
Speaker 1: of sailboats for race days. That's where he met one
Speaker 1: of the winningest skippers in the harbor, Dick felt On.
Speaker 1: So we did crazy things for sport. We had a
Speaker 1: friend who was a Navy pilot on helicopters, and we
Speaker 1: used to go to San Nicholas Island, which was sixty
Speaker 1: miles offshore, and I could do some jobs out there
Speaker 1: because we had some weather stuff out there, So I'd
Speaker 1: go out there on the weekend and he would actually
Speaker 1: drop us out of the helicopter in really nice spots
Speaker 1: where we could get lobster and things like that. The
Speaker 1: Channel Islands were Fred's playground before they became the place
Speaker 1: his wife and steps on died. One of the things
Speaker 1: the detectives from Santa Barbara were struggling to figure out
Speaker 1: was how someone with Fred's water experience had failed to
Speaker 1: save a child in a life preserver. They first showed
Speaker 1: up at Sea Level Drive five days after Verna and
Speaker 1: Doug died. It was eleven am on Wednesday, January seventh,
Speaker 1: the day Fred had scheduled Verna and Doug's creamations. Fred
Speaker 1: greeted them cordially. I thank both of your names. Their
Speaker 1: names were Claude Tuller and Fred Ray. Ray did most
Speaker 1: of the talking. He gave the impression that the last
Speaker 1: place he wanted to be was in Malibu bothering a
Speaker 1: grieving husband. He was reassuring, if disingenuous. He failed to
Speaker 1: mention that he had a taper quarter running living explain
Speaker 1: this Tokay. Santa Cruz Island, Ray said, was part of
Speaker 1: Santa Barbara County, so the deaths were in their jurisdiction.
Speaker 1: Our problem is this is that we were we received
Speaker 1: a phone call because we're supposed to ski because it
Speaker 1: was in Santa Barbara County. He was going to need
Speaker 1: Fred's help clearing up a few murky details. To be
Speaker 1: honest with you, Fred, we really don't know what much
Speaker 1: about what's going on, and we have no idea of well,
Speaker 1: I can't say we had no idea. We do have
Speaker 1: an idea of what happened out at the island, but
Speaker 1: everything is really sketchy. So, uh, we're kind of like
Speaker 1: thrown into it after the fact. We don't know Yah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: how it was ruled. If it's accidental or if it's
Speaker 1: intentional or whatever. We don't know that parts we know
Speaker 1: it certainly looks like it it was accidental, and so
Speaker 1: we we are only looking into it to ascertain what
Speaker 1: the circumstances or what happened. If you understand Detective Ray said,
Speaker 1: it certainly looks like it was accidental. That's because there
Speaker 1: was barely any physical evidence, just Fred's story and a
Speaker 1: whole lot of head scratchers. The only thing that I
Speaker 1: would suggest that maybe we do is so you know,
Speaker 1: remind you that that if if there's anything wrong with
Speaker 1: this at all, that you know you have certain rights too.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if it's necessary at that point,
Speaker 1: but certainly I would want to make your work every
Speaker 1: every that you have. Plus, I'm sure there's going to
Speaker 1: he mentioned that there might be some civil problems associated
Speaker 1: with the drownings. But I'm sure that there's gonna be
Speaker 1: a lot of legal things that you're going to have to,
Speaker 1: you know, consult with, don't you think, say you read
Speaker 1: Fred his Miranda rights, I should remind you that you
Speaker 1: do have the way right to remain silent, and anything
Speaker 1: you say cannon will be used against you for a
Speaker 1: while amazingly, Fred went ahead with the interview without his
Speaker 1: lawyer again just for awareness. You know, I'm Fred. It's
Speaker 1: gonna really it will be difficult to talk about this,
Speaker 1: I remarked when I I first heard about on the
Speaker 1: on the movies want a Transity. Fred seemed eager to
Speaker 1: please or form a rapport with the detectives. You know,
Speaker 1: we've had a service for both of them Monday, and
Speaker 1: we had friends over afterwards, and a lot of my
Speaker 1: friends are really into sailing and the ocean, and all
Speaker 1: those things were marked over and over that how many
Speaker 1: times have you dumped a boat? And everybody just got
Speaker 1: a little angry and got back in and everything was fine,
Speaker 1: he said. Doug, whom he referred to as his son,
Speaker 1: was very comfortable in the water. That's part of the
Speaker 1: things that I find, you know, as perverse as it is,
Speaker 1: is that my son was a good swimmer. He had
Speaker 1: just mastered standing up on a boogie board. I mean
Speaker 1: he's small, He was a small boy, but very agile,
Speaker 1: and it was a good swimmer. He was practically babbling
Speaker 1: answering questions the detectives hadn't even asked. But I think
Speaker 1: part of the thing that got him, was the fact
Speaker 1: that he was wearing a life jacket, that he was
Speaker 1: trapped underneath the boat. Cool was he talked him to
Speaker 1: the boat. Well, and again that's something that I can
Speaker 1: only surmise because initially I was trapped up the boat.
Speaker 1: They had a camera and the camera strapped got hooked
Speaker 1: in the door locked. I drew a picture of that.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he's familiar with the boat. It
Speaker 1: was a sixteen foot shock rolling doory. Yeah, I saw
Speaker 1: the boat, Yes, I did. Next, Ray wanted to know
Speaker 1: about any objects that were in the boat with them,
Speaker 1: clues that could corroborate the locations in his story or
Speaker 1: work to contradict them. Did you have anything in the
Speaker 1: boat other than than the three of you, I mean,
Speaker 1: any were you carry and saying which is or cults
Speaker 1: or no we had The answer was no. But Fred
Speaker 1: took the question as an invitation to back all the
Speaker 1: way up to the purchase of his sailboat months earlier. Well,
Speaker 1: let me let me go back. I guess the easiest
Speaker 1: thing is to really start in the beginning about September
Speaker 1: August or September of last year. We really had a
Speaker 1: desire to get a boat. We thought we went we
Speaker 1: were to a point where we could really take off
Speaker 1: and do some sailing. As it sounded like he wanted
Speaker 1: the detectives to be happy for him. We just felt
Speaker 1: so fortunate, I mean, so it was really just like
Speaker 1: a real gream come true that we could get the boat.
Speaker 1: And then we spent just about every weekend sailing or
Speaker 1: initially just day sailing or with friends, then finally going
Speaker 1: out to the island, and he made an er trips
Speaker 1: out there. Then he started talking about Lady the beagle.
Speaker 1: We had just gotten a dog about maybe a month.
Speaker 1: I'd have to look at the records, but maybe a month.
Speaker 1: For two months ago, the whole family want a dog,
Speaker 1: and I was sort of against the dog one because
Speaker 1: we had a boat and we had four children. I
Speaker 1: felt they could ted each other. They really needed it
Speaker 1: and we didn't need something else that they care of.
Speaker 1: But they won, and we got a little beagle puppy,
Speaker 1: and we had taken her in the car and we'd
Speaker 1: taken her up and spent the night on the boat
Speaker 1: that we never had her out. So one of the
Speaker 1: reasons for the trip was one my parents were here.
Speaker 1: From the end, I seem like I'm rambling. So we
Speaker 1: were all aboard and we got underway in the morning.
Speaker 1: My mother actually sailed the boat all the way over,
Speaker 1: and then we put the sails down, and then my
Speaker 1: wife takes the both handles the helm at that point,
Speaker 1: and we put down a bow anchor and the stem anchor.
Speaker 1: The detectives let him talk and talk until he pretty
Speaker 1: much talked himself out. I think I'm going to pick
Speaker 1: some tea. Can I get you some instant coffee? I
Speaker 1: got the happy Fred needed a break. What little coffee
Speaker 1: wasn't hurt. The hidden tape recorder capturing the interrogation wasn't
Speaker 1: the only secret Ray and Tyler were keeping from Fred.
Speaker 1: Doug Inverna had not, in fact been cremated that day.
Speaker 1: Unbeknownst to Fred, their bodies were sitting in cold storage
Speaker 1: at the mortuary, waiting for a deputy from Santa Barbara
Speaker 1: to pick them up. How to Judge's search warrant, that
Speaker 1: deputy would bring the bodies back to Santa Barbara, where
Speaker 1: they'd each undergo a second secret autopsy, which would tell
Speaker 1: a very different story about what happened at Bird Rock.
Speaker 1: After Fred returned with the coffee, Detective Ray took charge
Speaker 1: of the conversation. Basically, you're not sure what time it
Speaker 1: was when you went out in the d from your boat. No,
Speaker 1: the best you know it was after lunch. You know,
Speaker 1: it's probably and again it's probably between one and one
Speaker 1: thirty somewhere under there, okay. And then you rolled out
Speaker 1: and buy the rocks. From the point where you had
Speaker 1: the accident, you could still see your boat where it
Speaker 1: was anchored. Yes, how far off of that rock would
Speaker 1: you see? Your word, Probably twenty to thirty feet. When
Speaker 1: the accident had Fred had told the detectives that the
Speaker 1: purpose of being in the open ocean in the doory
Speaker 1: was to take a picture Doug and Lady with bird,
Speaker 1: rock and Perseverance. How are you going to take the
Speaker 1: picture now you wanted the picture? Yeah, where I was
Speaker 1: going to be sitting. I had been sitting on the
Speaker 1: floor on the boat, or and my son was going
Speaker 1: to be holding the dog, and the picture would have
Speaker 1: been looking from this point over his shoulder. You would
Speaker 1: have seen the rocks and the birds. He would have
Speaker 1: been in the foreground the rocks and the birds, and
Speaker 1: then Perseverance would have been in the background. But that
Speaker 1: didn't really square. Was that kind of close to take
Speaker 1: a picture of the rock. I mean, just because of
Speaker 1: the size of the rock, even that kind of close
Speaker 1: to get it into photograph, I don't really understand. I
Speaker 1: guess your question. In other words, if you're going to
Speaker 1: take a picture of of say he's your son, you know,
Speaker 1: I am you sitting here with a camera and you
Speaker 1: want the bolt in the background and the rock to
Speaker 1: the side. Well, to see that it's a rock, if
Speaker 1: you're so close to it's all, even the seas it's
Speaker 1: a big wall, well you have to, I guess, really
Speaker 1: look through the camera and see what the field of
Speaker 1: you is in the camera, because it's not a wide angle,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a narrower type of her thing. I
Speaker 1: was basically listening to her as to where she wanted
Speaker 1: the boat. We had rode out and we had stopped,
Speaker 1: and Verna said, okay, so this should work. Thank we're
Speaker 1: rewards this lot of work here. So I brought the
Speaker 1: oars in the boat and I slipped off the seat
Speaker 1: down into the floor so her back would have been
Speaker 1: towards us here, and she was sitting on a cushion,
Speaker 1: and she had another cushion up in this v excuse Fred,
Speaker 1: the newly single dad was juggling. Yeah, all right, No
Speaker 1: she went with grandma. Wow. I don't know what they
Speaker 1: would have the tell okay, oh, so she would have
Speaker 1: been sitting with her back to us. Ray wanted to
Speaker 1: know about Doug's condition after the doory flipped. What was
Speaker 1: his clothes? His eyes were open? What's he breathing? Could
Speaker 1: you too? No, he wasn't breathing, just flity, you know,
Speaker 1: it was just running from his mouth. He wasn't he
Speaker 1: wasn't shaking, he wasn't wretching. What color was involmit again? Yellow?
Speaker 1: It's almost like you could see the corn chips and
Speaker 1: stuff that he had had for lunch. Detective Ray knew
Speaker 1: Fred had a lot of ocean experience. To the ocean here,
Speaker 1: you've been around the ocean boast you are so. Came
Speaker 1: to California in nineteen sixty six and my first job,
Speaker 1: the Navy appointment. Do basically been near the water and
Speaker 1: ever since. Was this your first sailboat? It was my
Speaker 1: first sailboat. I'd had two houseboats before that, and I
Speaker 1: crewed on a number of sailboats, the biggest. The interview
Speaker 1: went on for hours until it was six o'clock at night.
Speaker 1: The detectives were still asking Fred questions while the kids
Speaker 1: were popping in and out. I'll be up. By the
Speaker 1: time the detectives were done with Fred, the tone had shifted.
Speaker 1: They were less reassuring and Fred was less chummy. Somehow,
Speaker 1: we need to figure out if there's a way we
Speaker 1: could figure out to make sure that there was no
Speaker 1: foul play or easy like that. This Ray handed the
Speaker 1: baton to his colleague Claude Teller. Well, it's a couple
Speaker 1: of ways. If you're willing to the polygraph examination. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I would probably have to talk to my
Speaker 1: attorney and then find out just exactly what, you know,
Speaker 1: what really I should be doing before you take a polograph.
Speaker 1: I think I really and I really need to talk
Speaker 1: to him before, you know, just Lord knows, you're sure
Speaker 1: going through a lot. Now, we understand. We were just hoping,
Speaker 1: because you know, there's no way to tell one we
Speaker 1: or another right now. We're just hoping there's some way
Speaker 1: that we could make it easy, shortened everything happen, you know.
Speaker 1: I think sometimes almost come down to that anyway, because
Speaker 1: I don't know if Verna and dougeat Insurance insurance. So
Speaker 1: that's what this was all about. Yes, so we'll have
Speaker 1: to we'll have to come to some type of resolution.
Speaker 1: They're very likely before they'll settle its way. But were
Speaker 1: they both insured? Yeah, our family was insure. Has it happened.
Speaker 1: There were life insurance policies on both Verna and Doug
Speaker 1: fresh ones. They've been finalized in the weeks before their deaths,
Speaker 1: and the policies were substantial, with an additional payout in
Speaker 1: the case of accidental death. The second secret autopsies would
Speaker 1: never have happened had it not been for a Malibu
Speaker 1: woman named Candy Henman. Candy had been a close friend
Speaker 1: of Fred's first wife, Jean, and she had serious concerns
Speaker 1: about Fred. I wasn't at liberty to say anything to
Speaker 1: anybody because it's such a small town and small group
Speaker 1: of people, and I didn't want to make some accusation
Speaker 1: or say anything that. I just didn't want to do that,
Speaker 1: So I kept quiet about it and just thought things
Speaker 1: would all things would unravel and everybody figure it out.
Speaker 1: But when she heard that Verna and Doug had drowned,
Speaker 1: she was beside herself. That's when I said, I am
Speaker 1: quiet no longer I don't care if I become persona
Speaker 1: non grata for all the community. I was not going
Speaker 1: to keep quiet. Candy started making calls. It was very urgent.
Speaker 1: They were scheduled to be cremated, and I said, hold
Speaker 1: hold it, hold everything. You got to do some kind
Speaker 1: of investigation. I think there was a murder committed. Kentty
Speaker 1: wasn't trying to gossip, burstling mud. She was on a crusade.
Speaker 1: I was determined that day that I was going to
Speaker 1: make sure that somebody hailed him accountable, somebody was going
Speaker 1: to realize that there's a monster out there. Before they
Speaker 1: closed the case on Verna and Doug, she told the
Speaker 1: cops they needed to find out what happened to Fred's
Speaker 1: first wife. Coming up on the next episode of Lost
Speaker 1: tells marriage in Malibu looked a little different in the seventies,
Speaker 1: but there there there was a group who, like me,
Speaker 1: had never slept with any body else before we got married.
Speaker 1: It was just you just didn't do it. And so
Speaker 1: there was a little bit of a freedom for some
Speaker 1: people to you know, get intimate with other people. It
Speaker 1: was open marriage, and it ended in a couple of divorces.
Speaker 1: That's next in episode three, The Shallow End, Part one.
Speaker 1: Lost Hills is written and reported by Me Dana Goodyear.
Speaker 1: It's created by me and Ben Adair and produced by
Speaker 1: Western Sound and Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to Pushkin plas and
Speaker 1: you can hear the whole season add free and get
Speaker 1: early access to the final two episodes. Find Pushkin plos
Speaker 1: on the Lost Hills show page in Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: at pushkin dot fm.