Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Hey guys, it's Lucy here with a bonus episode of
Speaker 2: Where's Dear. Today, I'm going to share an update on
Speaker 2: where things stand.
Speaker 1: More than a whole.
Speaker 2: Year after we release the series, A pretty significant date
Speaker 2: in the Dea Abrams investigation has now passed, and I've
Speaker 2: been in touch with my sources about their reactions to
Speaker 2: that and the podcast. I'm also answering questions from listeners
Speaker 2: and getting into some of the details that we couldn't
Speaker 2: quite fit into the series. And here to help me
Speaker 2: out is my amazing producer, Daphne Chen.
Speaker 1: Hey, Licy, how's it going good?
Speaker 2: Thank you?
Speaker 1: It's been a while. It has been so what have
Speaker 1: you got to ask me? Lots of questions, lots of updates,
Speaker 1: and I definitely want to talk to you about the
Speaker 1: important deadline, But let's start with the general reactions from
Speaker 1: the people you interviewed after the series came out. Do
Speaker 1: you hear back from them about anything?
Speaker 2: I did have one message from Clinton saying how disappointed
Speaker 2: he was in the reporting. That was after the first
Speaker 2: episode came out. I encouraged him to listen to the
Speaker 2: entire podcast, but I didn't hear any more thoughts from him.
Speaker 2: On that, I had a few messages from Peggy saying
Speaker 2: how grateful she was that we had covered her sister's disappearance,
Speaker 2: and so that was quite nice. And then I did
Speaker 2: have a couple of people get in touch with me
Speaker 2: asking me to investigate certain angles. One was a lawyer
Speaker 2: that Dia had actually approached before she went missing. She
Speaker 2: didn't ever officially retain this lawyer because she disappeared, and
Speaker 2: the lawyer wouldn't speak to me because of client attorney privilege,
Speaker 2: so I couldn't get a lot of information.
Speaker 1: Out of her.
Speaker 2: But she did tell me that I and the police
Speaker 2: should be closely looking at the case that Dea had
Speaker 2: in the courts with her two kids over her late
Speaker 2: husband's estate. I had done quite a lot of research
Speaker 2: into that, but I never really came up with anything
Speaker 2: that I thought was.
Speaker 1: Substantial, and she kind of loved it at that. She
Speaker 1: didn't want to do an on record interview now at
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 2: No, unfortunately not. But again, it's it was the same
Speaker 2: kind of thing that I found throughout the series, which
Speaker 2: is people had all these experience, says of interacting with Harper,
Speaker 2: but none of it was ever a smoking gun. There
Speaker 2: was never any hard evidence, and that's why there's never
Speaker 2: been any charges brought against anybody.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm, Yeah. I feel like we talked about that
Speaker 1: a lot. Was just the difference between you know, characterizing somebody,
Speaker 1: which we did a little bit in the series, that's
Speaker 1: different from evidence for a case or like anything like
Speaker 1: that that might be helpful in you know, a police investigation.
Speaker 1: So hopefully we told that line, but it is really
Speaker 1: hard to differentiate between the two of them sometimes.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, and there was one other person I think you
Speaker 1: heard from after the series aired, and it was a
Speaker 1: woman who came across something from DIA's estate. Can you
Speaker 1: talk about that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So, I received an email from a woman who
Speaker 2: said that she had in her possession a pair of
Speaker 2: DEA's cowboy boots. And this was particularly interesting because there
Speaker 2: was a little thread that we decided not to include
Speaker 2: in the podcast just because we already had so much information.
Speaker 2: And it was again another court case that Harper had
Speaker 2: filed trying to get reimbursed for a pair of cowboy
Speaker 2: boots that Dea had bought and never picked up. And
Speaker 2: this was I believe this was actually how I found
Speaker 2: Harper's details because when he logged this complaint in the courts.
Speaker 2: All of a sudden, it kind of flagged him as
Speaker 2: a person, and then you're able to trace somebody because
Speaker 2: it's public record. And so the fact that, by the way,
Speaker 2: that court case never went anywhere, it was thrown out
Speaker 2: of court, and it was just such a strange little twist,
Speaker 2: and the fact that this woman was emailing me saying, oh,
Speaker 2: I have a pair of DEA's cowboy boots. I was, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that was quite curveble, and I did look into it.
Speaker 2: It turned out that it wasn't anything significant, and she
Speaker 2: had come across them completely legally. And unfortunately that was
Speaker 2: another rabbit hole that didn't go anywhere, which is kind
Speaker 2: of how I felt a lot of the reporting when
Speaker 2: on the series. I would go down all these different
Speaker 2: rabbit holes and they just wouldn't go anywhere.
Speaker 1: But once once in a while something did. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: never know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's kind of why I felt like I had
Speaker 2: to just follow all of them.
Speaker 1: Right. So we ended the series on a major deadline
Speaker 1: that everyone was waiting for. This date of June twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five, can you just give us a quick recap
Speaker 1: of you know what this statement?
Speaker 2: So Dea Abram disappeared on June's sixth, twenty twenty and
Speaker 2: in the state of California, if you've been missing for
Speaker 2: five years, you are considered legally dead.
Speaker 1: Right, So we were waiting for June sixth of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five, which has come in passed and what happened.
Speaker 2: So Dia has never been found, her body has never
Speaker 2: been found, and as a result, she is now considered
Speaker 2: legally dead according to the state of California, and her
Speaker 2: assets are going to be divided up in three ways.
Speaker 2: Half is going to go to Keith Harper, who says
Speaker 2: that he was engaged to Dia Abrams, although this was
Speaker 2: always contested by both of her children and her friends.
Speaker 2: And the other half is going to be split equally
Speaker 2: between her son Clinton and her daughter Chrissara. Two of
Speaker 2: her properties have already been sold. Benita Vista, where she
Speaker 2: primarily lived and was last seen, is on the market
Speaker 2: for around three million dollars, and the total value of
Speaker 2: her estate is over five million dollars. So there's quite
Speaker 2: a bit of money involved, and I'm sure that the
Speaker 2: parties are pretty interested to get this all wrapped up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So they're basically in the middle of evaluating her estate.
Speaker 1: But even before this deadline passed, Harper was kind of
Speaker 1: looking to try and get some money. Can you talk
Speaker 1: about that and what was happening there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he has had a pattern of filing quite
Speaker 2: a lot of petitions throughout DIA's disappearance, and in April
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four, he filed another petition looking to be
Speaker 2: reimburseed for half a million dollars for the work he
Speaker 2: says he did on the ranch. He claimed he worked
Speaker 2: ten hours a day, seven days a week to just
Speaker 2: make sure that it didn't fall into disrepair. But I
Speaker 2: can't imagine that the judge is going to grant that
Speaker 2: petition considering that in the past, all of these similar
Speaker 2: kind of actions that he's brought into court have been dismissed.
Speaker 1: So since this deadline has passed, you've also reached out
Speaker 1: to many of those involved who you were in touch
Speaker 1: with for the series. What are some of the reactions
Speaker 1: from them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, I did reach out to most of the
Speaker 2: people that I spoke to for the podcast to see
Speaker 2: if they wanted to share any thoughts, any feelings, and
Speaker 2: a few people got back to me. I was texting
Speaker 2: with Clinton the three hundred thousand dollar reward that he
Speaker 2: organized is still active and they are looking for information
Speaker 2: about her disappearance. He unfortunately didn't get back to me
Speaker 2: in time with an on the record quote. He did
Speaker 2: forward me an email saying that he has been harassed
Speaker 2: incessantly since his mother went missing, and since his last
Speaker 2: media into view it has increased one hundredfold, and he's
Speaker 2: convinced that he is being stalked and he's going to
Speaker 2: end up being charged with something. And again this is
Speaker 2: I received a lot of emails like this from him.
Speaker 2: In fact, I received almost one hundred emails in the
Speaker 2: duration of my reporting that he had sent to police
Speaker 2: and other people. He was just completely convinced that there
Speaker 2: was some kind of group that was after him, and
Speaker 2: he still, unfortunately seems to believe that. He did tell
Speaker 2: David Godfredson, the reporter from CBS, that he thinks Keith
Speaker 2: Harper got away with murder, and that not only did
Speaker 2: he get away with murder, but he's profiting tremendously. I
Speaker 2: also spoke with Kelly Snyder, who, if you remember, is
Speaker 2: the former DEA agent who runs a miss persons organization
Speaker 2: and had conducted two searches with Keith Harper looking for Dea,
Speaker 2: and he sent me quite a long quote that I'm
Speaker 2: going to paraphrase. He still believes he knows where Dea
Speaker 2: is buried, and he believes that his search dogs alerted
Speaker 2: to this area, which is up in the Idle World area,
Speaker 2: near where Dea owned her Beneatha Vista ranch and where
Speaker 2: she lived. And he expressed his frustration that the police
Speaker 2: hadn't searched this area properly, and he called it laziness
Speaker 2: and incompetence, and so he said he's not going to
Speaker 2: be searching again unless he gets written permission from the police,
Speaker 2: which is very unlikely to happen. So unfortunately that was
Speaker 2: a bit of a dead end with him.
Speaker 1: He never really means his words. I think around how
Speaker 1: he feels about the police and life.
Speaker 2: Now he doesn't.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk a little bit more about, you know,
Speaker 1: the Riverside Sheriff's apartment later. But you also heard from
Speaker 1: Peggy DIA's sister.
Speaker 2: I did, and it was really lovely being back in
Speaker 2: touch with her, because she really, out of everyone, seemed
Speaker 2: to be the one that hadn't well. She was the
Speaker 2: one who had nothing to gain from DEA's disappearance, and
Speaker 2: she really genuinely just wanted to find out what happened
Speaker 2: to her sister. I'm not going to read out everything
Speaker 2: she says because I think some of it is quite
Speaker 2: defamatory and our lawyers may not be very happy with it.
Speaker 2: So I again, I am going to paraphrase, but she
Speaker 2: did say this, My sister has never been found. She
Speaker 2: has the most beautiful granddaughter she will never meet, and
Speaker 2: the baby will never know her Grandma. Peggy believes that
Speaker 2: Harper knows what happened to Dia, and she expressed her
Speaker 2: anger that Harper was going to be financially benefiting from
Speaker 2: DIA's disappearance.
Speaker 1: Right, So, I mean, speaking of Harper, did you reach
Speaker 1: out to him after this deadline?
Speaker 2: I did. I messaged him a few times. He never
Speaker 2: responded to me. In fact, after my final interview with him,
Speaker 2: where I confronted him about his behavior and about his
Speaker 2: unreliable narrative, he sent me a string of texts basically
Speaker 2: breaking off contact with me, and that was the last
Speaker 2: day I ever heard from him. And just he is
Speaker 2: just a very short excerpt from one of the texts
Speaker 2: he messaged me. There was a time I trusted you
Speaker 2: with information not openly shared. You have betrayed the trust
Speaker 2: and failed to do any info on the info given
Speaker 2: on Clinton. I thought you were non partial, but you
Speaker 2: are swayed by all speculations. So that gives you a
Speaker 2: sense of how he feels about me. So I wasn't
Speaker 2: really surprised that he didn't respond to me reaching out
Speaker 2: right right.
Speaker 1: And then we also heard some from listeners, including some
Speaker 1: questions after we asked for some. You also didn't ask
Speaker 1: me anything on Reddit, So we will talk about some
Speaker 1: of those questions after we take a short break. We're
Speaker 1: going to answer some questions from listeners, but I want
Speaker 1: to start with a bit of background about you, Lucy.
Speaker 1: So in the first episode of the series, you talked
Speaker 1: a little bit about what legie to do a story,
Speaker 1: but people might not know that you have a different
Speaker 1: beat as a reporter usually. Can you talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I am a climate reporter and I primarily work
Speaker 2: for the BBC, And it's quite funny because this is
Speaker 2: so out of my wheelhouse, and my colleagues at the
Speaker 2: BBC were quite amused to find out that I was
Speaker 2: doing a true crime podcast and actually asked me to
Speaker 2: host a storytelling session for them about reporting that kind
Speaker 2: of big story and you know what, what tips and
Speaker 2: tricks they could take from it. So maybe maybe I'll
Speaker 2: find a niche in environmental crime or something somehow find
Speaker 2: a way to cross them over.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I've had this a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I know there is there is that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's not normally what I do. And it was
Speaker 2: a real learning curve just dealing with the courts and
Speaker 2: police and getting sources to talk to me anonymously, and
Speaker 2: even in the whole world of audio because I'm usually
Speaker 2: a print reporter with some video thrown in. I don't
Speaker 2: usually record podcasts. So yeah, it was a very interesting
Speaker 2: process and I learned a lot.
Speaker 1: Well it was most different or what do you think
Speaker 1: was like the most difficult thing.
Speaker 2: I think it was making sure that I that I
Speaker 2: walked the line of impartiality. I think it's very easy
Speaker 2: or tempting to get wrapped up in someone else's narrative
Speaker 2: and making sure that I kept pulling back and saying, Okay,
Speaker 2: as this person a trustworthy source, can I find anyone
Speaker 2: else else to back up what they're saying? You know,
Speaker 2: you kind of really have to go back to journalism
Speaker 2: one O one and just strip everything back to the basics.
Speaker 2: And I think the hardest thing for me was making
Speaker 2: sure the.
Speaker 1: Story was.
Speaker 2: Entertaining and engaging, but not sensationalizing. Anything that was really
Speaker 2: important to me that I didn't I didn't include something
Speaker 2: because it was really sensational. It was juicy tail, you know.
Speaker 2: I really wanted to find out what happened to Dea,
Speaker 2: and it was always coming back to the fact that
Speaker 2: this is a woman who went missing and may have
Speaker 2: been really scared when she went missing, or if she
Speaker 2: is indeed dead, was probably really scared in the last
Speaker 2: few moments of her life. And it was always remembering
Speaker 2: that and staying true to that and not getting carried
Speaker 2: away with anybody else's version of events.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Yeah. Also shout out to Kiara and our editor,
Speaker 1: who's so good at being like do we need this detail,
Speaker 1: Like is this relevan this person? Uh huh uh huh.
Speaker 1: That's so hard, especially when so many people had such compelling,
Speaker 1: you know, narratives and stories. Yes, you know, because there
Speaker 1: are real people too, and that totally makes sense. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Everyone had their own idea of what happened, and I
Speaker 2: tried my best to investigate everybody's idea of what had happened.
Speaker 2: But some of you know, sometimes you just can't, like
Speaker 2: the trail just stops and you can't follow it any further.
Speaker 2: You know. At the beginning, when I first started talking
Speaker 2: to Keith Harper, he told me that he had spoken
Speaker 2: to a fireman who had seen Dea out hiking shortly
Speaker 2: after she went missing, and that he thinks she had
Speaker 2: met somebody from where she used to live in La
Speaker 2: Joya in San Diego, and they had met her in
Speaker 2: a van, and she had voluntarily gone off somewhere on
Speaker 2: her own, and she was waiting somewhere for you know,
Speaker 2: the coast to be clear, and then she was going
Speaker 2: to call Harper and they were going to go off
Speaker 2: and get married. And I really followed that trail to
Speaker 2: try and find that fireman and to try and find
Speaker 2: that van, and to track all these people down that
Speaker 2: he had mentioned, because at the time I didn't know
Speaker 2: that he was going to be a potential suspect, And
Speaker 2: so I did spend quite a lot of time looking
Speaker 2: into that, and for a for a bit of time
Speaker 2: I thought that, yeah, she had gone off on her own.
Speaker 1: Right, that was a genuine theory. Yeah, because for many people,
Speaker 1: I think, at least really on who you spoke to
Speaker 1: mentioned that too, right, like the possibility that she could
Speaker 1: have left on her own or maybe run away or
Speaker 1: something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there were all of these court proceedings going on
Speaker 2: with her kids, and so many people said to me,
Speaker 2: she was so over whelmed by that, and so it
Speaker 2: was you know, it wasn't It wasn't an outlandish theory
Speaker 2: at the time, But now I look back on it
Speaker 2: and I think, yeah, no, she that she definitely didn't
Speaker 2: just trot off on her own, accord.
Speaker 1: M m M. So I feel like related to some
Speaker 1: of what you're talking about in terms of like first
Speaker 1: getting in touch with everybody, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: listeners were really curious about, like how you got people
Speaker 1: to speak with you, especially you know on Mike. What
Speaker 1: was that process Like was that hard or difficult?
Speaker 2: It was really hard, yeah, because you you are asking
Speaker 2: people to publicly say what they think happened to somebody
Speaker 2: and point the finger at someone else, And a lot
Speaker 2: of people wouldn't talk to me because they were too scared.
Speaker 2: And I never was able to speak to DEA's daughter, Chrissara,
Speaker 2: and I tried very hard to speak to her. She
Speaker 2: didn't respond to me, but she would never go on record.
Speaker 2: There was also someone else mentioned in DEA's will, a
Speaker 2: former personal trainer of hers, and he wouldn't speak to
Speaker 2: me either. A lot of DEA's friends in Idlewa wouldn't
Speaker 2: speak to me. So it took. Yeah, it took quite
Speaker 2: a while to find people. And you know, you really
Speaker 2: have to exercise all of your investigative skills and just track,
Speaker 2: just be relentless and trying to track people down.
Speaker 1: And you also, I think for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: you had a lot of conversations before you did, like
Speaker 1: a formal interview yea on the record, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a lot of background chatting and explaining
Speaker 2: who I was and what my intentions were, and the
Speaker 2: fact that I just wanted to tell the story and
Speaker 2: I wasn't really interested in taking sides. And I think
Speaker 2: a lot of people responded to that, And you know
Speaker 2: a lot of people wanted Dea to be found, and
Speaker 2: so I wanted to help and thought that perhaps if
Speaker 2: they appeared on the podcast, it might jog somebody's memory
Speaker 2: about something, or it might encourage someone else to come out.
Speaker 1: Out of the woodwork, and.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, there wasn't any kind of massive breakthrough that I'd hoped.
Speaker 1: For, you know, so far.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it hasn't happened yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah yet. So another listener question was specifically I think
Speaker 1: about Harper and why he focused so much on the
Speaker 1: Psychics Lake theory and not the Arizona theory. And I guess,
Speaker 1: just to recap, you know, the psychics that worked with
Speaker 1: Kelly Snyder had pinpointed a few possible coordinates that they
Speaker 1: thought that DIA's body maybe a few of them, or
Speaker 1: in this lake in Idlewild near Idlewild that they ended
Speaker 1: up searching. But there was also this coordinate in Arizona
Speaker 1: that we also touched on in our series. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: do you have a sense of why Harper focused so
Speaker 1: much on one another other?
Speaker 2: I honestly don't know if he even remembered so it
Speaker 2: was an Arizona coordinate. It's so hard to know. With him.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I felt like he was genuinely confused. Other times
Speaker 2: I felt like he was trying to shape a very
Speaker 2: specific narrative, and then we just lose track of what
Speaker 2: he told me. So I never really quite got down
Speaker 2: to what the truth was with him. Or at least
Speaker 2: what he believed the truth was. And that was frustrating
Speaker 2: for me because I would never be able to get
Speaker 2: at answer, and so I could just never put him
Speaker 2: down on that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think the Arizona coordinate we mentioned sort
Speaker 1: of talking to Kelly a little bit more about and
Speaker 1: you know, about why he hadn't searched shit. Did you
Speaker 1: hear anything else from him about that?
Speaker 2: I kept pushing him on that. I kept saying, please
Speaker 2: please go and search it, Please let me come with you,
Speaker 2: and he won't. He won't search it until he's got
Speaker 2: written permission from the police, which, like I said earlier,
Speaker 2: thinks very unlikely to happen. Right.
Speaker 1: So, one of the last listener questions that we got
Speaker 1: was about DIA's dog Ruby. What updates did you get
Speaker 1: about her?
Speaker 2: So unfortunately she passed away under Harper's care. I did
Speaker 2: get some correspondence from Clinton a few years ago go
Speaker 2: about DEA's horses and the fact that Harper wasn't looking
Speaker 2: after them properly, and he sent me some quite upsetting
Speaker 2: photos about their hoofs being horribly overgrown. So it was
Speaker 2: really it seemed really tragic because Dea was such an
Speaker 2: animal lover, and for that to happen just felt like
Speaker 2: an added insult to everything else that had happened.
Speaker 1: So, in general, have there been any updates from Riverside
Speaker 1: Sheriff's Department or Detective Lrero on the case?
Speaker 2: Oh? No, it's been really Again. Another thing that's been
Speaker 2: really frustrating is that there's just been nothing. I've been asking.
Speaker 2: The only thing that they tell me is that the
Speaker 2: case is still active and they're still investigating. I have
Speaker 2: been told by somebody I considered to be a reliable
Speaker 2: source that they're going to search the ranch again, but
Speaker 2: I don't quite know when that's going to happen, considering
Speaker 2: that it's up.
Speaker 1: For saf So I think we should just talk about
Speaker 1: maybe like your last thoughts and feelings, like how are
Speaker 1: you feeling now that the deadline has passed, now that
Speaker 1: the series is out? About everything?
Speaker 2: It was this weird sense of anti climax. It was
Speaker 2: like everybody was working towards this deadline of when she
Speaker 2: was going to be declared dead and her assets divided,
Speaker 2: and then it came and went, and I felt sad
Speaker 2: that this date had passed and she still hadn't been found,
Speaker 2: and nobody knows what happened to her, And yeah, it
Speaker 2: was just sad, I think, because you realize how many
Speaker 2: other people go missing and that's it. Nobody ever really knows.
Speaker 2: And then you think about the people left behind and
Speaker 2: how they reckon style that never knowing. And I'm still,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm still hopeful at some level that either
Speaker 2: she'll be found or we'll find out what happened to her.
Speaker 2: And maybe it did jog somebody's memory listening to it
Speaker 2: and they went straight to the police, and you know,
Speaker 2: you never know. And I think that, especially when it
Speaker 2: comes to missing women, and I know that there are
Speaker 2: a lot of missing women cases, especially that it's really
Speaker 2: important to tell these stories because they obviously don't have
Speaker 2: a voice when they go missing, and hopefully stories and
Speaker 2: podcasts like these give them a voice in some sense,
Speaker 2: even if we don't directly hear from them.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much, Lucy, and think thank you
Speaker 1: to everybody who wrote in with a question or joined
Speaker 1: Lucy's asked me anything on Reddit, or even to everyone
Speaker 1: who just listened to the series. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you. Where's Dear is written and hosted by
Speaker 2: me Lucy Sheriff, Our producer is Daphne Chen, editing by
Speaker 2: Karen Shakerji, fact checking by Lauren Vespoli. Our executive producer
Speaker 2: is Jacob Smith. Original score by Echo Shaw's mastering by
Speaker 2: Sarah Bruger. Where's Dear is a co production Pushkin Industries
Speaker 2: and iHeartMedia and was originally developed with Truly Adventurous. You
Speaker 2: can listen to all of Where's Dea right now ad
Speaker 2: free by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber. Find Pushkin Plus
Speaker 2: on the Apple show page for Where's Dea or at
Speaker 2: pushkin dot fm slash plus