Speaker 1: The Red Weather is a work of fiction. Any resemblance
Speaker 1: to actual persons or events reflects the adaptation of real,
Speaker 1: publicly available materials for creative and legal reasons. The content
Speaker 1: of this podcast is the sole responsibility of Red Weather
Speaker 1: LLC and does not reflect the views of responsibilities of
Speaker 1: iHeartMedia or its affiliates. A few days before she died,
Speaker 1: I got a letter from Willow. Willow was my neighbor
Speaker 1: and one of my best friends as a kid. We
Speaker 1: grew up in the Redwoods outside of Sebastopol, California. It's
Speaker 1: about sixty miles north of San Francisco, and even though
Speaker 1: we were just through the woods from one another, we
Speaker 1: had very different childhoods. Willow was part of a commune,
Speaker 1: or what they called it a collective. It was a
Speaker 1: group of maybe thirty people and it was called tender Hearts.
Speaker 2: It was one guy, really, the leader, Elric, and then women,
Speaker 2: then kids.
Speaker 1: That's Sheriff Maldonado. He was the sheriff back in the
Speaker 1: eighties and the nineties, so he ended up dealing with
Speaker 1: the tender Hearts when birds would complain or if kids
Speaker 1: got into trouble. It was hard to wrap your head
Speaker 1: around it. Was nature and trees and praying. I guess
Speaker 1: it would be called meditating today, and drugs those pot
Speaker 1: mushrooms Mescoon. Willow's mom was a founding member of Tender Hearts,
Speaker 1: so she lived there with Willow and her sister Anna.
Speaker 1: When we were young, Willow and I were close, really close.
Speaker 1: We used to meet in the woods between our houses
Speaker 1: and spend all afternoon together, sometimes camping out, but things
Speaker 1: got complicated in our teens. By the time I got
Speaker 1: her letter, I hadn't talked to her in years. I
Speaker 1: didn't even know she had my address. She was in Panama,
Speaker 1: in Pocas del Toro. It's a series of islands close
Speaker 1: to Costa Rica. Apparently she'd gone with an organization to
Speaker 1: help sea turtles protect their habitat or something, but really
Speaker 1: it sounds like she went to get away and to
Speaker 1: get sober. The letter was mostly about what she was
Speaker 1: up to in Panama, working in a vegan pizza place
Speaker 1: down there. Before I could at her back, I found
Speaker 1: out she took her own life. My mom saw it
Speaker 1: on Facebook. So you're still in touch with her mom.
Speaker 3: Well, only through Facebook. I mean, it's not like I
Speaker 3: see her or talk to her, have private phone calls,
Speaker 3: but you know, she posts things, and this was one
Speaker 3: of the things she posted. I was surprised. It's really sad.
Speaker 3: It's really sad.
Speaker 4: She was begging me to come visit her.
Speaker 1: This is Noah. He grew up with Willow too.
Speaker 5: She begged me. She was like, hey, please please come visit.
Speaker 5: I'm really lonely. I need a friend, I need some help.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: She wrote me this.
Speaker 5: Poem that was very you know, in that context, was
Speaker 5: quite deep and dark and basically just talking about loneliness
Speaker 5: and isolation and kind of meaninglessness of everything.
Speaker 1: He's now a psychiatrist up in Seattle.
Speaker 5: And it's really challenging. It's really I mean, I've had
Speaker 5: a number of patient suicide and even with that, it's
Speaker 5: really hard to reconcile that of like, could I have
Speaker 5: done something more?
Speaker 1: If I was honest, I might not have even written
Speaker 1: her back. I mean, we were in very different places.
Speaker 1: She was single, childless, hopping around different countries. I'm married,
Speaker 1: I had a kid. I live in LA I work
Speaker 1: as a writer director, and as you might know, I
Speaker 1: host a podcast about the TV show I was on
Speaker 1: as a kid, Welcome to Vodney's World.
Speaker 4: I'm Dannie official.
Speaker 1: I'm rather strong than I'm will Fordell. Willow was still
Speaker 1: chasing new experiences, new people, and new places in a
Speaker 1: way that when we were young was exciting and admirable,
Speaker 1: but now that we're in our forties, it felt a
Speaker 1: little desperate, erratic.
Speaker 5: I remember for the first few years of our friendship,
Speaker 5: you know, like it was kind of like being a
Speaker 5: being on a drug near her. She had so much
Speaker 5: energy and excitement and spotanity and like. But then I
Speaker 5: remember as she started to decompensate in our teen years,
Speaker 5: it was like it was it was really challenging to
Speaker 5: be around her. I should say all this with a
Speaker 5: caveat that it's impossible for me not to use my
Speaker 5: psychiatric nosology on her now now looking back, I mean,
Speaker 5: she was just the archetype of someone who had had
Speaker 5: clearly had a lot of childhood trauma.
Speaker 1: There's a few traumas Noah could be referring to here.
Speaker 1: There was the fact that she grew up on a
Speaker 1: collective in the woods. She definitely had some awful boyfriends,
Speaker 1: there were drugs, But the central trauma of Willow's life
Speaker 1: had to do with her sister Anna. Anna was two
Speaker 1: years older than us, which isn't much except when you're fifteen.
Speaker 1: Back then, she was in a whole other category of existence,
Speaker 1: and I probably would have gotten to nowhere better. Except
Speaker 1: on Halloween night nineteen ninety five, Anna disappeared. It was
Speaker 1: a horrible time for a couple of there. It seemed
Speaker 1: like everyone we knew was a suspect or had a secret.
Speaker 1: We all got interviewed by the cops. People blamed Willow's mom,
Speaker 1: people blamed the Tender Hearts and his boyfriend. People blamed
Speaker 1: the town. But no one knew what actually happened. Nobody
Speaker 1: was ever found, no charges ever filed. Most everyone assumed
Speaker 1: that Anna ran away, that she just wanted out of
Speaker 1: Tender Hearts or small town took off. But Willow never
Speaker 1: thought that she knew her sister would never leave without her,
Speaker 1: or at least without saying goodbye. This is from Willow's letter.
Speaker 1: I know I made you promise something about the night
Speaker 1: Anna disappeared. You and Christo Vecchio and Oriyan and Connor
Speaker 1: were there too. Do you remember we pinky swore. So
Speaker 1: here's the deal. I want you to know I don't
Speaker 1: fucking care anymore. I released your pinky, Sir, I am no.
Speaker 1: I can't read this, but I think she wrote authority.
Speaker 1: But I want to know the truth. If Anna is
Speaker 1: still out there, or the person who killed her is
Speaker 1: out there, then keeping my secret is stupid. It always
Speaker 1: has been. I kept going back over the letter, going
Speaker 1: back over my memories and my relationship with Willow. I
Speaker 1: kept wondering, why did she send this to me? Why
Speaker 1: didn't she decide to tell the truth herself. In nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety five, my neighbor and a trainer disappeared. She was seventeen.
Speaker 1: Her body was never found, no one was ever arrested,
Speaker 1: no explanation given. And back then, I lied to my parents,
Speaker 1: I lied to police, I lied to everybody because Anna's sister,
Speaker 1: Willow asked me to. I've decided to go back to
Speaker 1: my hometown, interview my friends and family, and talk to
Speaker 1: police and journalists whoever I can to try to find
Speaker 1: out what actually happened. I am actor and filmmaker writer
Speaker 1: Strong This is the Red Weather. Before I left for Sebastopol,
Speaker 1: I called up my friend Chris because he's one of
Speaker 1: the few people who knew what Willow was talking about.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what's up right? Recorded?
Speaker 1: What that you no it's the thing Elly, that it's recording.
Speaker 7: That is Sean Hayes with you telling me that this
Speaker 7: all being recorded.
Speaker 1: Chris is a comedy writer now who also lives in
Speaker 1: La So I don't I don't know if you've heard,
Speaker 1: but Willow Trainer died.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: My cousin Tarn texted me.
Speaker 7: You've never torn, right, No, Sacramento torn. Uh, there was
Speaker 7: a Thanksgiving you came with I'm pretty sure you came
Speaker 7: with me anyways. Crazy. I don't know if she killed
Speaker 7: herself in Puerto Rico or Panama, Panama. Well, she was
Speaker 7: always a fucking train rack, dude, I mean, even before
Speaker 7: the kid fucking grew up in a cult.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know if I would even call it that.
Speaker 7: I think that's because you're a sweetheart, sweetheart. Okay, I'm
Speaker 7: gonna call it a call, because there's a creepy fucking
Speaker 7: tree calls. They were out, They were basically like rural homeless.
Speaker 1: Before she killed herself, she sent me a letter she's
Speaker 1: I know and saying that we can uh tell the truth.
Speaker 1: Chris had also made a promise because he was with
Speaker 1: me and Willow the night that Anna disappeared.
Speaker 7: Who cares if we could tell the truth now, like
Speaker 7: I know, I know, but I mean there's there's so
Speaker 7: much that I don't even know about the case. The case,
Speaker 7: you know, oh, yes, oh the case. Like these detective
Speaker 7: riders on the case.
Speaker 8: Now there was a first party and they didn't they
Speaker 8: like find a bullet in a tree.
Speaker 7: Or bullets in yes, three bullets country, multiple bullets.
Speaker 4: That's what I mean.
Speaker 1: I don't even know the basics. It's like and then
Speaker 1: let alone the fact of.
Speaker 7: Like what we did, but what Willow did? Right, So
Speaker 7: that is why you're recording this phone call. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I'm just I you know, I feel like I've got
Speaker 4: this this this platform.
Speaker 7: You know, dat's a public figure. I did a podcast
Speaker 7: and all right, Colombo, well you're not going to go
Speaker 7: solo on this. Brother will be the Hardy Boys or
Speaker 7: the Scooby Gang. And I'm not gonna be Shaggy. It's
Speaker 7: too on the nose. I want to be Scooby or Velma.
Speaker 1: I'm definitely Velma and testing testing one about sound gear
Speaker 1: so I could doc a man everything I could. I
Speaker 1: said goodbye to my wife Alex and her son. Indeed
Speaker 1: recording right now, Yeah, I'm never gonna stop rowing.
Speaker 8: That's the whole point, okay.
Speaker 9: And you have the draft.
Speaker 1: Too, Yeah, but it's I've got time, so I think
Speaker 1: while I'm up there, I'll be able to get writing
Speaker 1: done with this loud guy. Hey dude, I'm saying goodbye.
Speaker 1: I had three months to write a script, a horror
Speaker 1: movie for a small studio. It wasn't my original idea.
Speaker 1: They had brought me in after they sold the pitch,
Speaker 1: but they were pain This sort of thing has become
Speaker 1: my life, writing movies that never get made.
Speaker 10: All right, I love you having fun having special, dude,
Speaker 10: time special, all right, I love you guys.
Speaker 9: A week or two week or two? What? Yes, we're two?
Speaker 4: Hell hello it is.
Speaker 1: I drove across town and I picked up Chris. I
Speaker 1: was glad he was coming with me.
Speaker 8: I knew there'd be gaps in memory, conflicting versions and
Speaker 8: things people maybe didn't want to think about it or
Speaker 8: talk about, so I thought it'd be good to have
Speaker 8: his help.
Speaker 1: I am not driving at all.
Speaker 11: Not at all.
Speaker 1: You do not need to see my road rage. Bro
Speaker 1: Ooh another fun rule.
Speaker 12: You get one moody whiny white guys song per hour.
Speaker 1: That's okay, that's all I have.
Speaker 5: I know that.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna put on your phone. Yeah, dude, you're
Speaker 1: getting beach Boys and Jimmy Buffett. He'd also, I know,
Speaker 1: keep things lighthearted. I did some research before we left
Speaker 1: l A. And when I looked into Anna's case, there
Speaker 1: was one name that kept coming up. Monica Tremblaine.
Speaker 4: All right, Hi, I are you doing.
Speaker 1: Hey? She was the journalist who covered the story for
Speaker 1: the Press Democrat or local paper.
Speaker 4: Hey.
Speaker 8: You know we've met before, right, Well, yeah, I mean
Speaker 8: we talked back in the day.
Speaker 4: I mean I feel like my mom was there. No, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: this was way after then. It was in the two
Speaker 4: thousand and three. Yeah. I came to the Graduate play
Speaker 4: when you did it with Jerry Hall.
Speaker 13: We talked for a second at uh huh at the
Speaker 13: opening night party. Okay, yeah, I was for sure. I
Speaker 13: was like, oh, he doesn't remember me, or either you
Speaker 13: were avoiding me.
Speaker 4: No, oh god, sorry, do me a favor, though. Don't
Speaker 4: look up the review of that play.
Speaker 1: Manica graduated from Berkeley and then moved to Santa Rosa
Speaker 1: to work for the Press Democrat only a month before
Speaker 1: Anna disappeared. It was a small paper doing all the
Speaker 1: things paper did in the nineties, classified its town hall meetings,
Speaker 1: the kind of things today you just find online if
Speaker 1: at all.
Speaker 4: You know, it was like my first real story. I
Speaker 4: mean I was only twenty three then. I was so young.
Speaker 13: Yeah, But what was interesting was that, like everybody, everybody
Speaker 13: at the paper assumed that Anna was a runaway.
Speaker 4: But I did not believe that. Why hmmm, you know, there.
Speaker 13: Was something off and everything about this, I mean everything
Speaker 13: just felt like there was something there, felt like there
Speaker 13: was something more, like more going on.
Speaker 4: I felt a vibe vibe.
Speaker 13: I was younger than everybody at the paper, you know,
Speaker 13: and so when I talked to the kids, you kids,
Speaker 13: I felt closer to you than everybody else. But then again,
Speaker 13: you guys were a bunch of white kids in this
Speaker 13: very white hippie town.
Speaker 4: I mean y'all had money.
Speaker 13: I mean you you were already on TV, you were famous,
Speaker 13: so right right, it was a lot, you know, the commune,
Speaker 13: the drugs fire, that's.
Speaker 8: Like I want to get into all of that stuff,
Speaker 8: but let's just start with this. What can we just do?
Speaker 8: Like the uh, what where Hannah was that night? What
Speaker 8: happened to her? Just like the pure only the facts
Speaker 8: version of what we know.
Speaker 13: Anna Trainer was at a party in downtown Sebasketball that.
Speaker 1: Would be Heather Colburn's house, a Halloween party.
Speaker 13: There are a lot of witnesses that said Anna was
Speaker 13: there and she was drinking, and that she had a
Speaker 13: fight with her.
Speaker 1: Boyfriend or ex boyfriend, depending on your point of view.
Speaker 1: His name is Mick Bowden. My brother Shilah was actually
Speaker 1: there at the party. I remember sitting there. I just
Speaker 1: remember he punched the window.
Speaker 12: There was a lot of screaming and arguing going on,
Speaker 12: and then, you know, I don't remember exactly what it
Speaker 12: was about, but it definitely stopped the situation. Lateryone was
Speaker 12: like whoa, okay, and then you know, but it's kind
Speaker 12: of in a party scene, so like everybody's you know,
Speaker 12: and I think they might have been out smoking.
Speaker 13: Well yeah, Mick, he left the party an hour or
Speaker 13: so before Anna.
Speaker 1: More on that later.
Speaker 4: So she gets a ride.
Speaker 13: So she gets its ride from these three girls, Lindsay Green,
Speaker 13: Gianna Parata, and Audrey Wick.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if I should tell you this,
Speaker 1: but I call them the mean girls.
Speaker 4: Were they pretending to help her or I mean they
Speaker 4: were you know, honestly, there was a lot of back
Speaker 4: and forth with that.
Speaker 1: Lindsay, Jenna and Audrey gave her a ride and when
Speaker 1: they were asked by the police, they said they drove
Speaker 1: her home.
Speaker 13: On Lindsay told the police that they were actually messing
Speaker 13: with Anna and that they dropped her off a few
Speaker 13: miles from her house.
Speaker 1: Actually, like I said, mean girls.
Speaker 13: But we can assume at least that she didn't go
Speaker 13: home because then Nick got that page from Anna ten
Speaker 13: oh three.
Speaker 1: This was the era of pagers. We all had them,
Speaker 1: and we all had our own code that we used
Speaker 1: to let someone know if we wanted them to call
Speaker 1: us back or meet us somewhere.
Speaker 13: Well, first she paged him to a phone number, which
Speaker 13: we let her found out was the Juniver Street pay phone,
Speaker 13: and he told police that he paid her back with
Speaker 13: his cold that he was going to meet her there.
Speaker 6: But then the fire a devastating night in western Sonoma
Speaker 6: County as fire rage over one hundred acres and burned
Speaker 6: four homes in its path.
Speaker 13: Sources te well, we have that the first witness caught
Speaker 13: in the fires at ten twenty pm. It started out
Speaker 13: on the Tenderheart property and then you know, as we know,
Speaker 13: it's bread.
Speaker 1: No one was hurt, but a lot of loss.
Speaker 4: It was a big deal to firefighters I don't know
Speaker 4: their names.
Speaker 13: In front of me on the way towards the fire,
Speaker 13: they saw a young woman, blonde walking alone on Juniper.
Speaker 1: That was the last time anyone saw an a trainer. Well,
Speaker 1: I have some info, some new info, maybe answers for
Speaker 1: some of this.
Speaker 13: Well, damn rider, it's only been thirty years.
Speaker 1: It's an eight hour drive from La to Sebasterful. So
Speaker 1: along the way, Chris and I talked about our hometown. Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean when we were kids, it was like this tiny,
Speaker 1: crusty and now it's like now it's like nice, nice
Speaker 1: restaurants and cute little shops. Yeah, and like even the
Speaker 1: Foster Freeze is now a place that you know, you
Speaker 1: get like milkshakes and fifteen dollars Hamburgers are so good.
Speaker 1: So Basketball isn't all that different from a lot of
Speaker 1: small towns in California. But back in the seventies it
Speaker 1: had a very particular culture. Here's how my brother Shiloh
Speaker 1: put it.
Speaker 12: A lot of hippies that moved from San Francisco, like
Speaker 12: our parents. But then there were also the pot growers
Speaker 12: and like that sort of edgyness to it.
Speaker 1: Kind of where the hate Ashbury Summer of Love crowd
Speaker 1: went to grow up, grow some vegetables, grow some pot
Speaker 1: and raise kids with names like Rioter and Willow. In
Speaker 1: the actual town where Chris grew up, you could still
Speaker 1: have a pretty typical suburban childhood. But outside of town
Speaker 1: it was the wild West of alternative parenting. There were
Speaker 1: all kinds of situations. Take my buddy Ryan. He grew
Speaker 1: up on a commune.
Speaker 4: It was fifty four acres of land.
Speaker 8: There was a ranch house where all of this stuff happened,
Speaker 8: like a central ranch house that was owned and common
Speaker 8: by everybody.
Speaker 4: So this was the common land.
Speaker 8: You know, people would take turns with, like running the daycare.
Speaker 1: It wasn't religious or spiritual, but it was certainly a
Speaker 1: counter cultural.
Speaker 8: Scene, kind of like you know, hippie dancy thrill your
Speaker 8: hands and spacey, you know.
Speaker 4: Kind of just like you know tied I. That was
Speaker 4: so much Tied Die.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, a.
Speaker 4: Love as it really was that it really was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my own home life wasn't that extreme. Chris and
Speaker 1: I pulled into my parents place that evening, I.
Speaker 8: All right Island.
Speaker 1: They moved into the woods, put in a well built
Speaker 1: our house. As a kid, we had electricity, but we
Speaker 1: didn't have TV. I was homeschooled on and off. We
Speaker 1: were vegetarians. And while my parents' property has a name,
Speaker 1: we call it redwood Shire, unlike Tender Hearts. That started
Speaker 1: as kind of a joke.
Speaker 11: As soon as we bought it, you know, we just
Speaker 11: the redwoods were just so beautiful, and so Dad, coming
Speaker 11: from an accounting background, he wanted to make something that
Speaker 11: was productible. So we made it an experimental farm, and
Speaker 11: we had to give it a name, so I said, well,
Speaker 11: it has to be redwood Yeah, and then.
Speaker 1: It also relates to my dad's name, which is for real,
Speaker 1: King Arthur Strong.
Speaker 11: Well yeah, but a lot of it came from King
Speaker 11: Arthur like Shire.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so redwood Shire.
Speaker 13: It's just stuck.
Speaker 1: Our day to day life was positively mainstream, compared to
Speaker 1: Willow and Anna, who were literally a few hundred yards
Speaker 1: away living in tents and barns with some kind of
Speaker 1: guiding spirituality or philosophy, which I was realizing I knew
Speaker 1: nothing about, and neither did Oryan.
Speaker 8: I think I understood what was going on more even later,
Speaker 8: when I was in my twenties or something like that.
Speaker 4: But girth family.
Speaker 8: So this guy was called was he called like the
Speaker 8: father or something creepy like that? You know, very much polyamory,
Speaker 8: but like not modern you know, consensual, et cetera, much
Speaker 8: more of kind of like dude has a bunch of
Speaker 8: wives kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Our lives couldn't be more different. But we were within
Speaker 1: walking distance, which is how I ended up physically smack
Speaker 1: dab in the middle of this case. And that was
Speaker 1: news to Monica.
Speaker 4: So I was. I was with Anna's sister Willow that night, and.
Speaker 13: Yeah, you and your friends are at kind of Drake's
Speaker 13: house watching horror movies.
Speaker 4: Well that's that's what we said. Yeah, that's what she said.
Speaker 4: But we were actually in the woods. We were on
Speaker 4: the Tender Hearts property.
Speaker 13: Wait, if you're on the Tender Hearts property, you can
Speaker 13: confirm none of the adults were there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we didn't. As far as we knew,
Speaker 1: no one was there. They were all on the sunrise
Speaker 1: seance hike the night that Anna vanished. The adults of
Speaker 1: Tender Hearts said they were holding something called a sunrise seance,
Speaker 1: which was an annual tradition for them. El Rick and
Speaker 1: the women would hike up Mount Saint Helena for a
Speaker 1: ceremony and apparently it involves psychedelics. Shiloh and I actually
Speaker 1: went on one of these with Oryan and Willow when
Speaker 1: we were younger, like maybe twelve or thirteen, and the
Speaker 1: whole idea is to go up there and watch the sunrise. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I just remember being so tired and exhausted.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I did it a couple of times, but only
Speaker 4: got lost the ones. Oh ma.
Speaker 1: To us, it was just a hike, but who knows.
Speaker 1: We were clueless kids. At the time of Anna's disappearance.
Speaker 1: None of the Tender Hearts were charged with a crime,
Speaker 1: but it was shut down within a year. I never
Speaker 1: knew why, and WILLI never talked about them. Part of
Speaker 1: doing this podcast is about finally getting some answers about
Speaker 1: what was going on next door.
Speaker 4: So does that does that change anything? I don't think so.
Speaker 4: I mean it confirms what they said at the time.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so, I think what we were doing, me and
Speaker 8: Willow and our friends.
Speaker 1: I think the person that it affects the most is Mick.
Speaker 1: Mick Bowden was the ex boyfriend and argued with that
Speaker 1: night because he.
Speaker 4: Was also with us.
Speaker 13: He hold on, I need to grab a pin. Hey, right,
Speaker 13: are you talking to me? And that's fine? But are
Speaker 13: you voting on record? Are you hoping to officially reopen
Speaker 13: this case?
Speaker 1: I actually wasn't sure if what I had to say
Speaker 1: would warrant that, but I was willing to find out.
Speaker 1: Our first morning in Sebastopol, Chris and I went to
Speaker 1: the police station. I thought it'd be good to do
Speaker 1: this in person and get an honest reaction in real time,
Speaker 1: but I had a lot to learn. Hello, Hi, So
Speaker 1: we're here to talk to someone about an old case
Speaker 1: from nineteen ninety five. I tried to explain what we
Speaker 1: were there for, which took way longer than I expected.
Speaker 4: Peterburg teenager on Juniperle.
Speaker 1: I think that's county, but let me ask, hey, Ken,
Speaker 1: turns out I wasn't even in the right jurisdiction.
Speaker 6: Really, that would be the Sheriff's office, Western County. Yeah,
Speaker 6: if you're asking about a missing girl outside the town limits,
Speaker 6: we wouldn't have anything to do with that.
Speaker 4: That was a huge dead ends.
Speaker 1: That was awful. It was so embarrassing for you. I
Speaker 1: gotta say to a question, God, Sherlock Homeschool to crack
Speaker 1: the case wide over.
Speaker 5: Oh she called nine years ago.
Speaker 1: Did you take that call personally?
Speaker 8: Idiot?
Speaker 1: Dude, you gotta leave this in no, no, no. Of course,
Speaker 1: if I had just asked Monica and stead of running
Speaker 1: off and trying to play gotcha, she could have told
Speaker 1: me that the Sheriff's department ran the investigation. But when
Speaker 1: she and I talked, we were deep in the weeds
Speaker 1: of my whereabouts that night.
Speaker 4: Mick Bolden was with you when after the.
Speaker 8: Party and then before Anna paged him. I think, I really,
Speaker 8: I'm not exactly sure what the timing is.
Speaker 4: Well, what were you doing out there? Uh, it's kind
Speaker 4: of a long story.
Speaker 1: A lot of this goes back to, well, let me
Speaker 1: ask you this, what do you know about Anna's social life?
Speaker 4: I know she was in a tough spot.
Speaker 13: It was sexual, some rumors in any window, harsh stuff
Speaker 13: with you guys.
Speaker 1: I'm actually surprised Monica even knows that Anna was going
Speaker 1: through a lot that fall. There's a reason the mean
Speaker 1: girls were picking on her, and there was a reason
Speaker 1: that I was running around the woods that night with
Speaker 1: my friends. And this is the most uncomfortable part of
Speaker 1: doing this podcast, because in order to really get into
Speaker 1: the story, I'm going to have to get into what
Speaker 1: was going on among us kids in ways that will
Speaker 1: probably be hard to confront. But as it turns out,
Speaker 1: even Sheriff Maldonado, who was indeed the correct official investigator,
Speaker 1: he knew some of this. Well, I know she had
Speaker 1: a REP. I do know that.
Speaker 4: I remember that.
Speaker 1: I tracked down Maldonado easily just to google away. It
Speaker 1: turns out he's retired now, but he remembered the case immediately.
Speaker 4: Well, yes, and no.
Speaker 2: I mean we tend to assume run away with a
Speaker 2: team like that, you know, But then there were also
Speaker 2: other things there. You had that home situation that she
Speaker 2: was in, and you know, that's not something that we're
Speaker 2: used to dealing with. Then there was the fire, the
Speaker 2: fire that there was for a loop, and then I
Speaker 2: do remember we found her car down south of here.
Speaker 1: Anna's car technically it was her mom's car was found
Speaker 1: almost a month later in a parking lot near the
Speaker 1: San Francisco Airport.
Speaker 2: Well, finding the car like that that pushed us in
Speaker 2: the in the runaway direction, you know. Uh, But at
Speaker 2: the same time we had the bullets and then uh yeah,
Speaker 2: there was there was just.
Speaker 1: A lot of a lot of loose ends with that.
Speaker 4: Mm hmmmmm.
Speaker 2: Man, uh, you just calling me, that's that's uh bringing
Speaker 2: it back, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: He agreed to talk with me, so we made a
Speaker 1: plan to meet at his house and sit down for
Speaker 1: an interview. After my utter fail at the police station,
Speaker 1: Chris and I went to the Pine Cone Diner, which
Speaker 1: is one of our favorite old downtown spots. This is
Speaker 1: the real stuff, the stuff that everybody cuts out of
Speaker 1: their podcast. That that's gonna say. That's I just want
Speaker 1: I just want to make sure that you know the
Speaker 1: sharer or whoever it is like that. I want them
Speaker 1: to take me seriously. If they don't arrest you, Oh
Speaker 1: come on, then why would they arrest because you lied
Speaker 1: to the Okay.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're gonna thank you.
Speaker 9: Oh my god, I love her.
Speaker 1: Look I'm saying, is teke to be to exhale, like
Speaker 1: cover your bases. Like have you talked to a lawyer?
Speaker 1: You should talk to my brother in law. I like,
Speaker 1: find out where you stand legally. Well, I mean I
Speaker 1: already talked to Monica the reporter. You did, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just with her before I left.
Speaker 4: What did she say? Okay? Okay? Well that was always
Speaker 4: one of the big questions.
Speaker 1: For the first time I had broken the pinky swear.
Speaker 13: I guess I'm honestly, I'm not sure. Does that answer
Speaker 13: things or does that just create more questions?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: I mean, that's kind of my whole with this podcast,
Speaker 1: That's what I want to find out. I told Monica
Speaker 1: the truth that the night er sister disappeared, Willow started
Speaker 1: the fire. She's gonna didn't immediately say lawyer.
Speaker 4: Up, No, no.
Speaker 1: And I know some of you might be thinking, why
Speaker 1: keep this a secret? We knew Willow had accidentally started
Speaker 1: the fire, and we thought that if it came back
Speaker 1: to her, she might get arrested for arson on top
Speaker 1: of losing her sister. But I'll be honest, I didn't
Speaker 1: really think through all that. I was fifteen, Willa was
Speaker 1: my friend. I didn't tell anyone because she asked me
Speaker 1: not to. Yeah, That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: So it made not It just might not change anything.
Speaker 1: Maybe not. But while we had lunch, I got out
Speaker 1: my notes. Fine, let's just go over the theory. Yes,
Speaker 1: let's talk about what we do know what we need
Speaker 1: to know. Theory number one, Anna ran away the most
Speaker 1: likely situation by leeps and guts Okay, I mean that's
Speaker 1: what everyone I think, that's what everyone assumes. But I
Speaker 1: have a hard time imagining that she changed her name
Speaker 1: and ran off to I Don't wear and has never
Speaker 1: called anybody, and now she's just what Sippy Martini is
Speaker 1: on a rooftop somewhere. That sounds lovely. Theory Number two,
Speaker 1: someone killed Anna that night, right, But well there's l Rick,
Speaker 1: the leader of tender Hearts, because he's a very shady guy. Yes,
Speaker 1: maybe people except shady people. From all that I know.
Speaker 1: The cops did look into him, and he was exonerated.
Speaker 5: At the time.
Speaker 1: Oh exonerate. It's just stup, look at you. I think
Speaker 1: in order to get more information about that, I need
Speaker 1: to talk to Laney, because Laney is Willow and Anna's mom.
Speaker 1: But she hadn't responded to any of my calls or
Speaker 1: Facebook messages. There's gonna be her worst killer, says I know,
Speaker 1: so I'm not looking forward to There's also always the
Speaker 1: chance that it was a random Yeah, sure, some psycho
Speaker 1: killer just driving. That happens all the time. And have
Speaker 1: you not seen the dateline? On dateline, it's always the husband.
Speaker 1: She was too young to have a husband, yes, but
Speaker 1: the husband in this game. No, the husband in this
Speaker 1: case is Mick, right, that is the theory. But they
Speaker 1: never brought charges. But maybe once I tell the cops
Speaker 1: what we were.
Speaker 9: Doing that night or coffee?
Speaker 1: Yes, was the coffee here?
Speaker 4: Always this terrible Jesus Gars terrible.
Speaker 1: Well, my friend is doing a podcast and we are
Speaker 1: trying to be very honest, so I'm just gonna lay
Speaker 1: it on the table.
Speaker 4: This coffee is terrible.
Speaker 1: But you, my dear, are it light. You're wonderful.
Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you, thank you, And if you.
Speaker 9: Need anything else, wave mede down.
Speaker 1: I might think of something. Are you kitty the waitress?
Speaker 1: I mean, what you want me to call fee on?
Speaker 1: She's just calm down, some random waitress with the pine
Speaker 1: co Oh my god? What lighting up?
Speaker 4: Okay, but excuse me. My friend here thinks that I
Speaker 4: was hitting on you. Now look I'm clearly married, and okay,
Speaker 4: I got it. I was joking. Yes I know. Oh
Speaker 4: I know she knows.
Speaker 1: Do you know?
Speaker 9: Yes?
Speaker 1: Now I know? Now you know?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 9: Oh?
Speaker 1: Now I'm sorry. Sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 4: What are you sorry for it?
Speaker 1: For being too sensitive? For thinking that you were making
Speaker 1: her uncomfortable? You're it's fine, Yes, we're good.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry you are such a debute downer. Can you
Speaker 1: please just lighten up. Let's have fun. There'll be the brooding, sad,
Speaker 1: sack reformed child actor. Okay, you're not going to crack
Speaker 1: this case, buddy, Okay, I know, but I gotta try it.
Speaker 1: I knew I wasn't going to solve anything, but I
Speaker 1: hoped that looking back at this time in my life,
Speaker 1: I might be able to understand some things that never
Speaker 1: made sense and in some way and maybe this wasn't healthy.
Speaker 1: I felt like I owed that to Willow and my parents.
Speaker 1: That night round a campfire, Chris and I got into it.
Speaker 1: Guess when I just think about Willow, you know how
Speaker 1: she was when we were teenagers, complete mess, right, But
Speaker 1: you know I wrote her off? Yeah, I guess because
Speaker 1: I was out of town all.
Speaker 12: The time, and the drugs that she did, and her
Speaker 12: bad attitude and the way she slept.
Speaker 1: Around right right there that you know, we were still
Speaker 1: in the era of slugshaming and not like you and
Speaker 1: I did that. But I definitely I felt like she
Speaker 1: was going down this path and I didn't. I don't
Speaker 1: know how to deal with it. I don't want to
Speaker 1: deal with it. Willow isn't an easy figure to describe
Speaker 1: in my life. I might have met her earlier, but
Speaker 1: I didn't really connect with Willow until I was seven
Speaker 1: or so, when I ran into her in the woods,
Speaker 1: this barefoot girl with hand me down clothes. We used
Speaker 1: to meet between our properties. We'd climb trees, find salamanders,
Speaker 1: banana slugs, play house, play war. She sort of felt
Speaker 1: like an imaginary friend for a while. She was funny, fearless.
Speaker 1: I mean, I went back to my house every night.
Speaker 1: But her house back then was a teepee and later
Speaker 1: they had a building a shack, but I think she
Speaker 1: still slept out in the woods a lot of nights.
Speaker 1: My brother thought she was crazy. She threw rocks at
Speaker 1: him once and he never got over that. My mom
Speaker 1: said she has spunk, and my dad said watch out
Speaker 1: for that one. But you know that was a compliment.
Speaker 1: She was there when I broke my arm. I was
Speaker 1: there when she stepped on a yellowjacket hive. She taught
Speaker 1: me how to make.
Speaker 8: A spear and how to skin a squirrel. She was
Speaker 8: my best friend. She was my first kiss. For a
Speaker 8: lot of reasons, we drifted apart in high.
Speaker 1: School, not the least of which I ended up on
Speaker 1: a TV show for seven years.
Speaker 4: Oh what the heck with that? Marry me?
Speaker 1: I live in a trailer park and I have no education,
Speaker 1: but my hair does this? Shut up? Man, I'm going
Speaker 1: for it. I had been acting since I was little,
Speaker 1: doing plays in Santa Rosa, which is the biggest town
Speaker 1: about thirty minutes away. And then I got lucky. I
Speaker 1: was discovered. Boy Meet's World took over my life, took
Speaker 1: me away from Sebastamal to go work in La put
Speaker 1: me in magazines and on TV every Friday night. And
Speaker 1: even though I still went to school back home and
Speaker 1: I flew home every weekend, it wasn't the same. I
Speaker 1: never really fit in in my hometown. And Willow and
Speaker 1: I got older, we got different. There was a moment
Speaker 1: when it seemed like we should date, so we did,
Speaker 1: but then we went back to just being friends. I
Speaker 1: woke up one day and realized I hadn't talked to
Speaker 1: her for years. I was twenty years old when boy
Speaker 1: Met's World ended. I moved to New York and Willow
Speaker 1: and I lost touch. And then the letter. So you
Speaker 1: feel like you bailed on her? Kind of yeah, didn't you.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess yes, because all of us guys
Speaker 1: managed to stay in touch, right, we managed to stay friends,
Speaker 1: You and me, Connor and Oriyan, not Willow, And that's fucked.
Speaker 1: She lost her sister and her whole family situation. Just
Speaker 1: I feel like maybe if we had told the truth
Speaker 1: back then she asked us not to, she bret. But
Speaker 1: you can see that was obviously the wrong call. You're
Speaker 1: in full martyr mode right now.
Speaker 4: Dude.
Speaker 1: You're in for a world of pain. I don't understand
Speaker 1: because you're the ones telling me that I should be
Speaker 1: honest and leave in everything, like going to the wrong.
Speaker 12: Cops because that's funny, because that's entertaining, and that's not
Speaker 12: potentially going to get you arrested.
Speaker 1: You keep saying that why would we be arrested because
Speaker 1: Willow accidentally started the fire, accidentally started a fire. That
Speaker 1: that is not at all what happened. What are you
Speaker 1: talking about? What are you talking I'm with the pinkies
Speaker 1: where the barn. Yeah, she lit the barn on right
Speaker 1: with the sixties that we had because she was trying
Speaker 1: to scare them. It was not an accident. She didn't
Speaker 1: accidentally drop m sixties. She saw that weed, and she
Speaker 1: lit it all on fire. What this was the first
Speaker 1: I'd heard this. Apparently the barn that Willow burn was
Speaker 1: full of marijuana.
Speaker 12: From Florida ceiling wald wall was most weed I've ever
Speaker 12: seen in my life, and Willow burned it down to
Speaker 12: the ground intentionally.
Speaker 4: Did you really not know that?
Speaker 1: Aren't you calling this thing the red weather because of
Speaker 1: the fire? No? No, from a walla Stephens poem.
Speaker 12: Oh, of course an obscure poets even more obscure poem.
Speaker 1: Holy Christ writer, No one cares. Willow started that fire.
Speaker 1: She took out four houses, burned to the ground because
Speaker 1: she found a craft ton of drugs in that barn.
Speaker 1: Where'd the pod come from? You should probably find out,
Speaker 1: shouldn't we. I was only two days into recording, and
Speaker 1: already I felt like I had no idea what I
Speaker 1: was getting into. For what it's worth, the title from
Speaker 1: a poem called Disillusionment of ten o'clock. Here it is.
Speaker 1: It's short. The houses are haunted by white nightcounts. A
Speaker 1: nun are green or purple with green rings, or green
Speaker 1: with yellow rings, or yellow with blue rings. None of
Speaker 1: them are strange with socks of lace and peedded censures
Speaker 1: people are not going to dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Speaker 1: Only here and there. An old sailor, drunk and asleep
Speaker 1: in his boots, catches tigers in red Weather. It's tough
Speaker 1: to not conform. Maybe impossible. We wear the same nightcowns,
Speaker 1: we have the same dreams. And if I think about
Speaker 1: how my parents, how Willow and Anna's mom, just the
Speaker 1: baby boomers in general, they had such high hopes. It
Speaker 1: really thought that they could change the world and remake
Speaker 1: it for us kids. And they tried protests, the sex,
Speaker 1: drugs and rock and roll, running off into the woods
Speaker 1: to build houses, to join communes. I want to believe
Speaker 1: that it meant something, but it did some good. But
Speaker 1: maybe not. Maybe they were just catching tigers and red Weather.
Speaker 1: The Red Weather is an iHeart podcast hosted by writer Strong,
Speaker 1: sound engineering, editing and mixing by Bo milkis produced by
Speaker 1: Tess Bartholomey, executive producers at iHeartRadio, Trevor Young and Matt Frederick,
Speaker 1: Associate producer Bo milkis original score by Kyle Morgan. If
Speaker 1: you're enjoying the show, please remember to leave a review
Speaker 1: in rating. Thanks for listening.