Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: She sat on the top step and I looked out
Speaker 2: that window got my husband. By the time I got
Speaker 2: my husband to look out the window, she was gone
Speaker 2: and we looked out the front. We never did find
Speaker 2: her sere again.
Speaker 1: This is Karen Smith.
Speaker 2: My name is Karen Smith, and I saw my Terce
Speaker 2: richardson the last day that she was seen by anyone
Speaker 2: that has come forward.
Speaker 1: The Smith's house is at the bottom of Cold Canyon Road.
Speaker 1: It's the tennis courthouse in Montanito. Karen had been reluctant
Speaker 1: to let me come over. Her husband, Bill, was the
Speaker 1: TV reporter who'd called the cops about a prowler in
Speaker 1: the yard and what turned out to be the last
Speaker 1: confirmed sighting of my trees. He passed away a few
Speaker 1: years ago, and she wasn't feeling her best.
Speaker 2: I found cheese, bad hips, bad shoulder. I'm a mess.
Speaker 1: She walked me around the side of the house to
Speaker 1: the back and we sat down on a couple of
Speaker 1: white plastic chairs. The patio was strewn with dark feathers.
Speaker 2: Probably the vultures, the Turkey vultures that like to land
Speaker 2: on my tennis court lights and leave me a gift
Speaker 2: every time they take off. Well, that's very The tennis
Speaker 2: court has all these white blotches right below the lights.
Speaker 2: They liked to open their wings in the morning and
Speaker 2: dry them.
Speaker 1: Beyond the patio was a large dusty yard with a
Speaker 1: sun bleached plastic play structure left over from her son's childhood.
Speaker 1: There were some railroad ties serving as steps. That's where
Speaker 1: Karen saw my trees around six thirty am on the
Speaker 1: morning of her disappearance. And it was Karen, even though
Speaker 1: her husband Bill, talking to the cops, described the scene
Speaker 1: as if he'd been the one to see her.
Speaker 2: He's the one that talked to the sheriffs. Mostly. I
Speaker 2: was being quiet, and he was a news reporter for
Speaker 2: thirty five years, so he took control of the discussion.
Speaker 2: And maybe they just assumed because my son said the
Speaker 2: same thing, No, Dad saw her, and I go, no,
Speaker 2: it was me. I'm the one that saw her. She
Speaker 2: was sitting on the top step here or in the back,
Speaker 2: and it was unusual because nobody really comes on the property,
Speaker 2: even though we don't have any offenses in the back
Speaker 2: of it. But I looked down and I said, are
Speaker 2: you all right? And she said, I'm just resting, And
Speaker 2: I said okay, And then I left went to get
Speaker 2: my husband, and by the time I got to the
Speaker 2: other bathroom window, she was gone. And then I looked
Speaker 2: out the front window of the dining room to see
Speaker 2: if she went one way or the other there never
Speaker 2: did see her.
Speaker 1: At the edge of the yard, beyond some dried out
Speaker 1: century plants, I noticed a trail. What does the backyard
Speaker 1: open out to just into the neighborhood, just.
Speaker 2: To another property, other properties, And people walk the horse
Speaker 2: trail which is above and over and down and they
Speaker 2: go to a cul de sac on the other side.
Speaker 1: Oh, what's that cul desac?
Speaker 2: Let's see, it's Malibu Meadows Road, is what it's called.
Speaker 2: And that's over there. It's wide open too, just like
Speaker 2: most of these properties.
Speaker 1: Uh huh. So there's a horse trail that leads from
Speaker 1: there to here.
Speaker 2: Yes, there's a horse trail. It comes up over and
Speaker 2: it goes around and down into the street right above
Speaker 2: the side of those trees.
Speaker 1: Riders can come along the trail, cross Cold Canyon Road
Speaker 1: and connect to the Backbone Trail, a sixty seven mile
Speaker 1: long trail that runs all through the Santa Mona the mountains.
Speaker 1: The Backbone passes by the mouth of Dark Canyon, the
Speaker 1: canyon where my Trees's remains were ultimately found. And she
Speaker 1: was definitely alone when you spotted her.
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, she was all by herself and non threatening.
Speaker 2: That's all I remember. That's it. Yeah, I wish I
Speaker 2: had more information than I was so upset that I
Speaker 2: just let her go like that, knowing what happened later
Speaker 2: that you know, she unfortunately made her demise. I always
Speaker 2: shook my head thinking, I wonder, I just don't know
Speaker 2: what happened, and I always wish I had done more,
Speaker 2: but at the time there was nothing more to do.
Speaker 1: I asked her about that other story, the one the
Speaker 1: Montanito lifer told in the video where he claimed My
Speaker 1: Trees had been at the front door of the Smith's
Speaker 1: house earlier in the morning, shouting. Karen said she didn't
Speaker 1: know anything about that. She did say I could check
Speaker 1: out the trail well. I followed it to where it started,
Speaker 1: in a grove of mature oak trees in the heart
Speaker 1: of Montanito. I looked around. There was no sign to
Speaker 1: mark the trail. In broad daylight, it was barely visible,
Speaker 1: just a faint impression in the dust, mostly obscured by
Speaker 1: fallen leaves. How had my Trees made her way here
Speaker 1: all the way from Lost Hill Station in the dark?
Speaker 1: And where had she gone? I'm Dana Goodyear and this
Speaker 1: is Lost Hills episode four, Hopscotch. My Terse went missing
Speaker 1: early on a Thursday morning. On Friday night, her mother
Speaker 1: called my Terce's mentor, doctor Ronda Hampton.
Speaker 3: I was driving home from work. I remember it, you know,
Speaker 3: like it was yesterday, and her mom called and said,
Speaker 3: you know, has my Riese reached out to you? I
Speaker 3: haven't seen her, So on my drive home, I'm telling
Speaker 3: her no, you know, we were going to have lunch
Speaker 3: on Monday, but I haven't talked to her since then.
Speaker 3: And then mom proceeded to tell me how she had
Speaker 3: been at the restaurant and acting, you know, strangely, and
Speaker 3: that she had been arrested and released.
Speaker 1: My Terce had been released approximately forty three hours earlier,
Speaker 1: and no one had heard from her, and besides the
Speaker 1: sighting at the Smiths, there'd been no other reports of
Speaker 1: anyone seeing her. Her girlfriend, Desiree Black finds this odd.
Speaker 4: I think that it would be just kind of missing
Speaker 4: the point if we didn't acknowledge the fact that she
Speaker 4: was a young black, single female in Malibu, calabassies somewhere
Speaker 4: where wasn't exactly made for us, somewhere where she should
Speaker 4: have stuck out. Somebody should have seen her. And I
Speaker 4: think that is one of the pieces to the story
Speaker 4: that's kind of still astonishing to me that nobody saw her,
Speaker 4: because those just being facts, the fact that she was young, attractive,
Speaker 4: black female alone alone. If someone saw her, they would
Speaker 4: have remembered that. In Calabasas, she would have been hard
Speaker 4: to miss, and that makes people a target.
Speaker 1: Latisa had filed a missing persons report at Lost Hills
Speaker 1: station the day she disappeared. Deputies took it as a
Speaker 1: courtesy because my Terce being a resident of the city
Speaker 1: of la it was really an LAPD case. When the
Speaker 1: deputy at Lost Hills told Latis that someone matching my
Speaker 1: Teresa's description had been seen in Montanito early Thursday morning,
Speaker 1: Latisa had driven out there, but no one else seemed
Speaker 1: to be looking for her daughter, and she felt that
Speaker 1: crucial time was being lost.
Speaker 3: And Mom called me because she said she did not
Speaker 3: know what to do because they were not searching for
Speaker 3: her and there was no plan search, and she asked
Speaker 3: if I would contact the detective on the case to
Speaker 3: plead for help.
Speaker 1: The detective was Kristen Merrill with the LAPD Missing Persons Unit.
Speaker 1: Doctor Hampton says detective Merrill told her LAPD Missing Persons
Speaker 1: didn't have funds to mount a search. There would need
Speaker 1: to be a compelling reason to search for my trees.
Speaker 1: If you go to the LAPD Missing Person's website, this
Speaker 1: is all spelled out quote. Since being a missing person
Speaker 1: is not a crime, police are given a very limited
Speaker 1: role while conducting these types of investigations. As a general rule,
Speaker 1: all people have a right to be left alone and
Speaker 1: police intrusion into their lives must be minimal. It goes
Speaker 1: on to say that where foul play is suspected or
Speaker 1: the person is otherwise endangered, the police will investigate.
Speaker 3: So when it started looking like they weren't going to search,
Speaker 3: you know, of course, my anxiety is rising, and you
Speaker 3: just say whatever it is you can say to get
Speaker 3: the help that you need.
Speaker 1: She shared some background on my Teres's mental health and
Speaker 1: the details about her behavior at Jeffrey's.
Speaker 3: So then I just start quoting the law. If she
Speaker 3: was at the restaurant, saying she was from Mars, if
Speaker 3: she was saying she was there to avenge the death
Speaker 3: of Michael Jackson. You know, the people, the patrons in
Speaker 3: the restaurant were saying she was acting strange. I was like, well,
Speaker 3: why wasn't she fifty one to fifty. So after about
Speaker 3: an hour and a half of talking to the detective,
Speaker 3: they did agree to do a search. So they agreed
Speaker 3: to do the search on Saturday, and at that they
Speaker 3: weren't going to start that search until ten o'clock in
Speaker 3: the morning, So that's a lot of time that went by.
Speaker 3: I couldn't sleep, obviously, and I had never been to Malibu,
Speaker 3: and so somewhere around five o'clock in the morning, I
Speaker 3: called my girlfriend and asked her, could have you ever
Speaker 3: been to Malibu? And can you come out with me?
Speaker 3: She's another therapist who worked in my office, so we
Speaker 3: both had clients that day, we shut the practice down
Speaker 3: and drove out to Malibu.
Speaker 1: Over the next several days, doctor Hampton, along with members
Speaker 1: of my Teresa's family and other supporters, kept returning to malibill.
Speaker 1: They didn't really know where to go.
Speaker 3: We were frantic passing out flyers, you know, at Pepperdine
Speaker 3: on Pacific clas Highway in calabasas anywhere we can think of.
Speaker 3: We stayed on Pacific Close Highway passing out flyers until
Speaker 3: about midnight.
Speaker 1: She remembers taking flyers to the Ralph Supermarket on PCH.
Speaker 3: And then on the side of that Ralph so there's
Speaker 3: like a homeless encampment kind of like on this hill.
Speaker 3: So we walked up there just to search, you know,
Speaker 3: maybe she ended up there or something, right, And so
Speaker 3: as we're searching, we saw this group of homeless men
Speaker 3: and we kind of just stopped and hey, we're looking
Speaker 3: for this person. And then one of the men he
Speaker 3: sits up and says, look, the police don't care about her.
Speaker 3: The law enforcement doesn't care about her because she's un here,
Speaker 3: and you guys just need to get over it. And
Speaker 3: that was my first kind of in my face, like,
Speaker 3: oh wait, this is a race component to this.
Speaker 1: Before long, doctor Hampton had reason to believe that the
Speaker 1: Sheriff's department didn't care except maybe about itself.
Speaker 3: And then we came home, you know, retired, turn on
Speaker 3: the TV and Steve Whitmore, who was the spokesperson from
Speaker 3: LASD is putting this twist on the story that was unbelievable,
Speaker 3: where he was kind of indicating that my Ruse was
Speaker 3: perfectly fine. Nothing was wrong with her. She's an adult.
Speaker 3: She wanted to leave, so we had to let her leave.
Speaker 1: Doctor Hampton was shocked. This was not only untrue, she thought,
Speaker 1: but entirely beside the point. They needed to find my
Speaker 1: Trese now.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: My Teresa's friends and family were passing out flyers on
Speaker 1: Pacific Coast Highway. Law enforcement was searching too.
Speaker 5: I'm retired Sergeant tow we Right, and at the time
Speaker 5: of this investigation, I was in charge of Malibu Search
Speaker 5: and Rescue at Malibu Lost Hills Sheriff Station.
Speaker 1: I met Sergeant Wright back when I was working on
Speaker 1: the first season of Lost Hills. He's one of the
Speaker 1: people who helped solve the murder of Tristan Boudett, the
Speaker 1: scientist who was shot and killed in twenty eighteen while
Speaker 1: camping with his young daughters in Malibu Creek State Park.
Speaker 1: Sergeant Wright tracked the killer, a drifter named Anthony Rauda,
Speaker 1: to his encampment in the hills behind Lost Hills Station,
Speaker 1: where he was ultimately arrested with the murder weapon. In
Speaker 1: the spring of twenty twenty three, Rauda was found guilty
Speaker 1: and sentenced to one hundred and nineteen years to life
Speaker 1: in prison. He's appealing his conviction. Over his career, Sergeant
Speaker 1: Wright searched for hundreds of lost and missing people in
Speaker 1: the Santa Monica Mountains. The LAPD didn't know the area,
Speaker 1: but Malibu sarch and Rescue did. On September nineteenth, two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine, two days after my Trees disappeared, Sergeant
Speaker 1: Wright conducted a search. He started at the Smith's house
Speaker 1: where my Trees was last seen, rather than at Lost
Speaker 1: Hill Station where she'd been released.
Speaker 5: Basically what I call a hopscotch. We basically start a
Speaker 5: search for missing persons at the last known location where
Speaker 5: somebody's seen. To start it before that just consumes unnecessary time.
Speaker 1: That day, Sergeant Wright was working with a certified man
Speaker 1: tracker who found an important clue.
Speaker 5: He's the one that found footprints going They were basically
Speaker 5: in the side yard I would call that the southwest
Speaker 5: side of the house.
Speaker 1: The footprints were clearly directional. They found them entering the
Speaker 1: Smith's property from the back by way of the trail
Speaker 1: and exiting at the front, and they were identif fiable.
Speaker 1: They had the waffle pattern unique to vans. They'd soon
Speaker 1: learn my trese was wearing vans when she left Lost
Speaker 1: Hill Station, and her shoe size matched the prints found
Speaker 1: at the smith's. It wasn't much, but the tracks told
Speaker 1: a story, or a fragment of one.
Speaker 5: Now, when you're looking at footprints, an expert can tell
Speaker 5: whether somebody's walking or running. It's usually pretty easy to
Speaker 5: tell a running individual because the print goes down into
Speaker 5: the ground different.
Speaker 1: The tracker measured each footfall at first entering the backyard,
Speaker 1: my trees had been walking. There was a consistent fourteen
Speaker 1: inch gap between the toe of one print and the
Speaker 1: heel of the next, but the prints leading from the
Speaker 1: backyard to the front should pronounced toe digs, and the
Speaker 1: stride was much longer twenty six inches between footfalls.
Speaker 5: They indicated running motion to the front of the house
Speaker 5: to the driveway area, so we assumed she was seen
Speaker 5: in the backyard and that she ran alongside the house
Speaker 5: out to the front, out of the driveway on to
Speaker 5: Cole Canyon.
Speaker 1: Sergeant Wright and the tracker found a few more footprints
Speaker 1: in the dirt at the front of the house, but
Speaker 1: they couldn't tell which way my trees had gone. The
Speaker 1: footprints stopped, but a team of dogs that was also
Speaker 1: working that day picked up my trees as sent and
Speaker 1: led their handlers to the neighboring house. That house, set
Speaker 1: back from the road and surrounded by trees, belongs to
Speaker 1: a family called the After Goods. Sergeant Wright obtained permission
Speaker 1: to search it.
Speaker 5: I made sure that we looked in the type of
Speaker 5: places where somebody could be hiding or secreted, such as closets,
Speaker 5: rooms under the stairs, things like that.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if anyone in either house was ever considered
Speaker 1: a suspect in my Teresa's disappearance.
Speaker 5: I wouldn't use the term suspect at that point. We
Speaker 5: were just looking at a missing person. At the time,
Speaker 5: we were thinking, well, maybe Matries was wondering from house
Speaker 5: to house.
Speaker 1: But at the After Goods, my Teresa's scent went cold.
Speaker 5: Now I don't recall if it petered out at that
Speaker 5: house's door or if it went a little further, but
Speaker 5: I'm pretty sure it petered out before we got to
Speaker 5: what I would call the bridge over Dark Canyon Creek
Speaker 5: on Co Canyon. I'm sure it didn't go past that.
Speaker 5: You know, I've heard rumors of people saying things about
Speaker 5: the scent all over the place. I am not aware
Speaker 5: of any other scent that was worked or located during
Speaker 5: the search.
Speaker 1: He remembers checking the sand on the banks of Dark
Speaker 1: Creek for signs that my rise had followed the creek
Speaker 1: up into Dark Canyon.
Speaker 5: And I got out of the vehicle and I looked
Speaker 5: in that area. It was an area where the creek
Speaker 5: flattened out, and it was there was quite a bit
Speaker 5: of sand there, and I looked for footprints at that time,
Speaker 5: and I did not see any footprints none whatsoever. So
Speaker 5: I didn't have any reason to believe that she had
Speaker 5: walked up there, at least from that direction, from that
Speaker 5: entryway into Dark Canyan.
Speaker 1: At the time of the first search, my Teres had
Speaker 1: only been missing for two days. Law enforcement was looking
Speaker 1: for a woman who might be lost or disoriented. They
Speaker 1: were looking for a missing person. They weren't looking for
Speaker 1: a victim. They weren't thinking about suspects. But three days later,
Speaker 1: on September twenty, second LAPD Missing Persons handed the case
Speaker 1: over to a pair of LAPD Robbery homicide detectives, Chuck
Speaker 1: Knowles and Steve Agucci, Sheriff's Department, which was assisting the
Speaker 1: laped investigation also assigned a full time team of homicide detectives.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of tips to investigate My Trees.
Speaker 1: While being nowhere, was suddenly seemingly everywhere. She was at
Speaker 1: the Ralphs in Malibu in a silver sports car. She
Speaker 1: was in carmel Or, Santa Monica, Topanga, a Kinko's in
Speaker 1: Culver City on a train, headed for the airport in
Speaker 1: pink slippers, talking to herself. These were phantoms. None of
Speaker 1: them turned out to be My trees. Back in Montanito, though,
Speaker 1: neighbors were starting to get scared. They didn't think My
Speaker 1: Trees had gone far. They'd started to believe that My
Speaker 1: Trees was in and around Montanito well past the morning
Speaker 1: of September seventeenth, hiding or being hidden, possibly for days
Speaker 1: before she died. There's not much to Montanito, just a
Speaker 1: few hundred homes clustered in the foothills of the Santa
Speaker 1: Monica Mountains under a canopy of oaks. People there claim
Speaker 1: it was the winter camp of the Schumash Indians and
Speaker 1: that it has mystical protection. Fires may rage all around,
Speaker 1: they say, but Montanito never burns. There are no sidewalks
Speaker 1: or street lamps. Intentionally, it's an official dark sky community,
Speaker 1: a haven for nocturnal animals, a place where you can
Speaker 1: see the stars. You get morning frost and Montanito in
Speaker 1: the afternoon. The peaks block out the sun. The stark
Speaker 1: nature is all there in the place names Cold Canyon,
Speaker 1: Dark Creek, Dark Cainion. The residents are private and circumspect,
Speaker 1: and they don't love talking to law enforcement. It's always
Speaker 1: been a place for alternative lifestyles, swingers, potheads, cowgirls and
Speaker 1: pornographers alongside the doctors and lawyers and shobaz folks and
Speaker 1: people who just want to raise their kids where they
Speaker 1: can play barefoot in a creek. My Teresa's vanishing threatened
Speaker 1: an essential myth about Montanito, a story about its safety,
Speaker 1: its special bubble of protection. Now it seemed like a
Speaker 1: place where bad things could happen. Or maybe bad things
Speaker 1: had always happened there, and now people were noticing. In
Speaker 1: the days after my Teresa's disappearance, there were a number
Speaker 1: of disturbances reported in the neighborhood. Many of them involved
Speaker 1: a woman seemingly in distress. One neighbor reported hearing a
Speaker 1: woman babbling in an unfinished house across from the Smiths,
Speaker 1: in an area known as the Triangle. There were multiple
Speaker 1: reports of a woman's screaming near Dark Creek, where it
Speaker 1: comes down from Dark Canyon into the neighborhood. According to
Speaker 1: a documentary about the case made by local filmmaker Chip Croft,
Speaker 1: residents heard a woman's scream two times around eleven PM,
Speaker 1: just a few days after my Trese disappeared. The second scream,
Speaker 1: one of the witnesses said, was cut short. Some speculated
Speaker 1: maybe the screamer's throat had been slit. Recently, Haley and
Speaker 1: I met up with a woman named Emma Schultz who
Speaker 1: lived in Montanito back in two thousand and nine. She
Speaker 1: remembers seeing police cars at the Smith's house on the
Speaker 1: morning that my Terse went missing. She'd been driving her
Speaker 1: kids to school. It was the deputies responding to Bill
Speaker 1: Smith's call about a prowler, the last official sighting of
Speaker 1: my Trees.
Speaker 6: I knew when she was last seen, so I knew
Speaker 6: where she was.
Speaker 1: She remembered seeing an unfamiliar white car parked near the
Speaker 1: Smith's house on Cold Canyon Road right around the time
Speaker 1: of the disappearance. She thought it could be significant.
Speaker 6: Maybe somebody picked her up, maybe she called somebody. Maybe
Speaker 6: she did get to a phone and called somebody, and
Speaker 6: somehow they ended up here and lost.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 6: I was just thinking there could have been any story.
Speaker 6: You know, in your head, you make up all these stories.
Speaker 1: She called the phone number on a bulletin she'd seen
Speaker 1: about my trees and talked to doctor Ronda Hampton.
Speaker 6: I called, and I said, I know you were missing
Speaker 6: my trees, and I don't know what the police have
Speaker 6: told you, but I and this may mean nothing or
Speaker 6: may mean something, but there was a white car that's
Speaker 6: parked where my treece was last seen. And they said,
Speaker 6: well where is that? And I said, well, what do
Speaker 6: you mean? It was where the police interviewed the couple
Speaker 6: that last saw her. And she said, I don't know
Speaker 6: where that is.
Speaker 1: Shocked, she figured everyone in my Teresa's inner circle would
Speaker 1: have had the address of the last place she'd been seen.
Speaker 6: And so I told Rohnda to come out. I'll walk
Speaker 6: you to where she was last seen. You can understand
Speaker 6: where you know that their daughter was last scene alive.
Speaker 6: And then I told them, you know, feel free also
Speaker 6: to walk around and put flyers out and shared with them,
Speaker 6: you know what the community was about. I think they
Speaker 6: were surprised how far it was and how woulded it was.
Speaker 6: I think that was surprising to them, and how dark
Speaker 6: it would have been.
Speaker 1: Emma agreed to drive us around Montonito too. We left
Speaker 1: the parking lot of the Saddle Peak Lodge, the only
Speaker 1: public building in the community, and followed Cold Canyon Road
Speaker 1: into a network of narrow streets.
Speaker 6: You know, your brain kind of goes crazy when you
Speaker 6: think someone just went missing right around the corner and
Speaker 6: she was last seen like right there and never seen again.
Speaker 6: And again, this is a small, very kind of closed,
Speaker 6: tight community, and you don't you don't kind of drive
Speaker 6: in here if you don't know somebody. You don't wander
Speaker 6: your way in here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a real tight community.
Speaker 6: You can see, and it has a little kind of.
Speaker 1: You know, little ling ding ming ming ming ming Ming.
Speaker 5: Was that deliverance.
Speaker 6: So here's the little creek in here. But you can
Speaker 6: see it's very kind of You don't drive in here
Speaker 6: unless you need to be in here, and everyone kind
Speaker 6: of looks at you when you drive by your car.
Speaker 6: Off you haven't been living here.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 6: I think there's a lot of people keeping a lot
Speaker 6: of information instead of just sharing it and finding someone.
Speaker 1: She turned up a street that dead ended into the woods.
Speaker 1: We got out of the car and stooded a trailhead.
Speaker 1: If you followed that trail, you'd hit the Backbone Trail.
Speaker 1: A lot of the properties in this part of Montanito
Speaker 1: basically border the wilderness. This was another place where there
Speaker 1: was a possible, though unsubstantiated sighting of my trees. A
Speaker 1: housekeeper had reported seeing a black woman near the Backbone Trail.
Speaker 6: And as you can see here, you're surrounded by mountains,
Speaker 6: but then there's this low area here and it's a
Speaker 6: lot of hiking trails. It's a lot of people have
Speaker 6: horses in this community.
Speaker 1: The riders were very involved with the effort to find
Speaker 1: my trees.
Speaker 6: She said, I know the horse riders in the community
Speaker 6: went out all the time looking for her.
Speaker 7: That I do know.
Speaker 6: That was very organized, and we did a lot of
Speaker 6: trail walks and everyone was always there's a community board,
Speaker 6: everyone talking about, you know, going out and looking for her.
Speaker 6: I think the neighborhood was very supportive of trying to
Speaker 6: help find my trees. I mean, the community was very
Speaker 6: you else, they wanted her found it's scary, you know.
Speaker 6: I think that's something you always I'll think about.
Speaker 1: Doctor Ronda Hampton began to make herself a presence in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood.
Speaker 3: And so it's like, we're going to do this big
Speaker 3: search in Montanito. And at the time, it was just
Speaker 3: a bunch of black folks, you know, kind of going
Speaker 3: in there.
Speaker 1: She says, they couldn't just show up and search. They
Speaker 1: needed Emma to help fanesse it.
Speaker 3: And I've always been thankful that she did that because
Speaker 3: I think the first because there was mention of her race.
Speaker 3: You know that you know, black people don't live out there.
Speaker 3: Black people don't come out here, and no one straight
Speaker 3: out said don't come here, but you were very clear
Speaker 3: that it was not a place that black people were
Speaker 3: supposed to be.
Speaker 1: She found Montanito to be a peculiar place.
Speaker 3: Any information that we would get from people was very
Speaker 3: like everybody was afraid to talk, so lots of information
Speaker 3: was just kind of given.
Speaker 7: Like on the sly, did you have the feeling when
Speaker 7: you were dealing with people in Montanito like they wanted
Speaker 7: to tell you something but they couldn't tell you something.
Speaker 3: Yes, definitely, it was a general feeling right and even
Speaker 3: rather or not it was about my trees or not,
Speaker 3: like something was going on in that area and people
Speaker 3: just didn't want to talk. Part of it is, and
Speaker 3: I heard from one person they're just afraid of law enforcement.
Speaker 3: So and I don't know if that's still true, but
Speaker 3: back then they were afraid of law enforcement because what
Speaker 3: it was explained to me is like we're in the
Speaker 3: middle of nowhere. They are the only source of protection
Speaker 3: that we have. This story by this time had broke
Speaker 3: on the news and law enforcement did not look good.
Speaker 3: They're not really in a position to talk because these
Speaker 3: are the people that they have to rely on to
Speaker 3: protect them and because you know, it's such in the middle,
Speaker 3: it is so secluded.
Speaker 1: She passed out flyers showing my Teresa's booking photo and
Speaker 1: a close up of the tattoo of Chinese characters at
Speaker 1: the nape of her neck. Hikers, trail bikers, horseback riders
Speaker 1: and helpers want to The flyer said, we will be
Speaker 1: searching the trails, hills and back roads in the Montanito
Speaker 1: region where she was last seen.
Speaker 3: I was never really guided and I still am not
Speaker 3: guided by my intuition on things, so even if I
Speaker 3: say this is what I think, I'm always considering every possibility.
Speaker 3: So I didn't mind doing searches wherever. We need to
Speaker 3: do those searches. So if there was a tip, then
Speaker 3: let's organize a party to go search. To me, if
Speaker 3: there was like a half a percent that she's still alive,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna search everywhere.
Speaker 1: Her brain became a repository for names, addresses, clues, and theories. Eventually,
Speaker 1: she uploaded a lot of that information to the Internet,
Speaker 1: a public data dump that anyone interested in the case
Speaker 1: can use. But while my treuse was missing, doctor Hampton
Speaker 1: became invested in a rumor. She heard about my trees
Speaker 1: being held hostage somewhere in the Santa Monica Mountains.
Speaker 3: So guy says, you know, there's some white supremacists. That's
Speaker 3: the word that they use. There's some white supremacist and
Speaker 3: word on the suite is that they're holding her somewhere
Speaker 3: in the canyon area.
Speaker 1: According to law enforcement documents, Malibu Search and Rescue conducted
Speaker 1: numerous searches quote in response to a claim that Miss
Speaker 1: Richardson was being held by white supremacists in Malibu Quo.
Speaker 1: During that time period. Some of the volunteers working with
Speaker 1: doctor Hampton found what appeared to be corroborating evidence. They
Speaker 1: were searching off Payuma Road, the winding road that takes
Speaker 1: you high up into the mountains over Montanito. They came
Speaker 1: across a culvert. It was freshly tagged with a large
Speaker 1: graffiti style mural. If the footprints in the smith's yard
Speaker 1: had been just the fragment of a story, this was
Speaker 1: a full scale narrative and it seemed like a confession
Speaker 1: to a crime. Next time on Lost Hills.
Speaker 3: Thirteen African American women with afros who were nude and
Speaker 3: in very graphic, sexually provocative positions. One of the images
Speaker 3: was of a woman who was painted blue, kneeling on
Speaker 3: all fours on our bodox area. She had a symbol
Speaker 3: the letters LA, and she had a marijuana joint out
Speaker 3: of her mouth. That's what makes us think that it's
Speaker 3: possibly that the person is trying to talk about my
Speaker 3: trees in terms of the fact that she was in LA.
Speaker 1: That's next in episode five.
Speaker 4: So Close.
Speaker 1: Lost Hills is written and hosted by Me Dana Goodyear.
Speaker 1: It was reported by Me and Hailey Fox, our senior producer.
Speaker 1: The show was created by Me and Benadere. Lost Hills
Speaker 1: is a production of Western Sound and Pushkin industries. Subscribe
Speaker 1: to Pushkin Plus and you can binge the whole season
Speaker 1: right now, ad free. Find Pushkin Plus on the Lost
Speaker 1: Tail show page in Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin dot fm,
Speaker 1: slash plus