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Speaker 1: iHeartMedia or its affiliates. Previously on The Red Weather in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five, my neighbor and a trainer disappeared from
Speaker 1: a commune.
Speaker 2: So this guy was called the Father or something creepy
Speaker 2: like that. Very much polyamory, kind of like dude has
Speaker 2: a bunch of wives kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I was with Anna's sister Willow that night.
Speaker 3: If you were on the TenderHearts property, then none of
Speaker 3: the adults were there.
Speaker 1: They were all on the Sunrise seance hike.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was only a few days before their Tenderheart's
Speaker 4: alibi at Felippart.
Speaker 1: What are you saying that they weren't at the Sunds,
Speaker 1: not all of them?
Speaker 5: Good morning, good morning, good morning. I have.
Speaker 6: Tucked myself into a little space by.
Speaker 5: The wood shed, out of the rain.
Speaker 6: I think it's a perfect place and a perfect time
Speaker 6: for a ramble.
Speaker 1: This is Elrick Light aka Eric Lidsky, the man who
Speaker 1: founded a commune next to me when I was a kid.
Speaker 6: Anyone here that's living with us on this beautiful homestead
Speaker 6: here in Sebastopol will tell you. I'm very particular about
Speaker 6: my spots. I have a big believer that there are
Speaker 6: positive spots and that there are not so positive spots.
Speaker 1: These were recorded sometime between nineteen eighty eight and nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety two, while he walked in the woods or sat
Speaker 1: in meadows places I might have been roaming around in
Speaker 1: two me and Willow.
Speaker 6: Take this with you, suit along to these people if
Speaker 6: you can. And many of these people that we're discussing
Speaker 6: with heart and hearts aren't ready to hear the message.
Speaker 6: And that's fine. Sometimes it's enough to deliver the message.
Speaker 1: But between the lectures or sermons, there are human moments
Speaker 1: that are really specific.
Speaker 6: There's an owl I've named him Jabberwaukee.
Speaker 1: And sometimes bizarre.
Speaker 5: Why do I rock nicely? Why do I rock myself?
Speaker 5: Do I rock myself to sleep at night? What's the difference?
Speaker 1: I kept listening waiting for something. I'm not sure what.
Speaker 1: It's not like he was suddenly going to start talking
Speaker 1: about human sacrifice or mentioned and a trainer. In fact,
Speaker 1: he doesn't mention any names.
Speaker 7: Let it fall, let it fall, let it fall, let
Speaker 7: it fall, let it fall, and be free, Be free.
Speaker 1: But his commitment is intense, and sometimes the line between
Speaker 1: a sermon and something more personal gets blurry.
Speaker 8: I've done bad things, I know what, just like you,
Speaker 8: Just like all of you, I sit and I pretend.
Speaker 9: And because I want to be.
Speaker 6: That vision of.
Speaker 10: What I know, I am capable of being.
Speaker 6: So I pretend.
Speaker 5: I know what.
Speaker 8: I'm gonna do it again. No, I don't want to
Speaker 8: do it again. I'm going to do it again.
Speaker 9: Again. I don't want to do it again.
Speaker 1: When I went home to look into Anna's disappearance, I
Speaker 1: knew I was going to have to learn as much
Speaker 1: as I could about el Rick and the collective he
Speaker 1: ran called Tender Hearts. Since Anna lived there before she
Speaker 1: vanished in nineteen ninety five, I figured things would get
Speaker 1: a little new age, spiritual, little hippie dippy. But I
Speaker 1: never expected what I did find. I am actor and filmmaker,
Speaker 1: right or strong. This is the red weather. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: try this again. I was a week into going back
Speaker 1: to my hometown and researching Anna's case. I was still
Speaker 1: mostly just playing catch up to the investigation. I'm calling
Speaker 1: from my parents' landline, so idea doesn't come up. Sheriff Maldonado,
Speaker 1: who had led that investigation back in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: told me that things would make more sense if I
Speaker 1: got access to the official case file. Hello, Hi, this
Speaker 1: is Ryder Strong. I'm calling again for Grace Lachlan and
Speaker 1: the current sheriff. Grace Blachlan had promised to share transcripts
Speaker 1: of some witness interviews, but I hadn't heard back from
Speaker 1: her for days, and the people in her office didn't
Speaker 1: seem to have time for me. Everything's in storage, so
Speaker 1: it's not easy.
Speaker 11: We have one building for the whole county.
Speaker 9: You're a meddlin. You're a medling.
Speaker 1: My buddy Chris was helping me. You're like every housewife
Speaker 1: with a Facebook page who's playing Internet sloop.
Speaker 9: She's got a theory.
Speaker 1: So why don't I, you know, even if it's a
Speaker 1: complete nothing burger, why don't I bring them a pager? Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're going to go to the sheriff with a
Speaker 1: busty pager that your dead dog buried. I knew Chris
Speaker 1: was right. I had already admitted to the cops that
Speaker 1: I had lied to them when I was fifteen, and
Speaker 1: so if I was ever going to get their help
Speaker 1: and learning about the case, I had to play it cool.
Speaker 1: Going back over the details about that night, I really
Speaker 1: begun to think that Anna's boyfriend Mick had something to
Speaker 1: do with her disappearance. But then after talking to Maldonatto,
Speaker 1: it was becoming clear that the Sheriff's department was way
Speaker 1: more interested in Tender Hearts and its leader, Elrick Light.
Speaker 1: But as far as I knew, and it disappeared, all
Speaker 1: the adults of Tender Hearts had hiked up to Mount
Speaker 1: Saint Helena for a sunrise seance, right and suff for
Speaker 1: l Rick. Oh so you knew this too, yeah, almost immediately.
Speaker 1: Monica Tremblaine was reporting for The Press Democrat in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety five.
Speaker 3: It was only a few days after Anna was missing
Speaker 3: that the seance story it fell apart.
Speaker 1: A few of the women came forward. So where was
Speaker 1: he and what did that mean for the investigation? And
Speaker 1: who were Tender Hearts in the first place. When I
Speaker 1: started interviewing friends, I quickly realized I knew very little
Speaker 1: about their alternative living situations. Orion's commune had failed. Almost immediately.
Speaker 2: The community kind of got a little more contentious and
Speaker 2: a little more distance and kind of factioned off.
Speaker 9: You know, my mom describes it kind of just like,
Speaker 9: you know, not really lasting.
Speaker 2: There were a lot of strong personalities out there, you know,
Speaker 2: people who want to get away from it all.
Speaker 9: I think have some strong reasons sometimes.
Speaker 1: And I didn't realize that my friend Cole's parents actually
Speaker 1: met when his dad was handing out pamphlets for a
Speaker 1: cult in San Francisco.
Speaker 9: I don't think lasted.
Speaker 12: It didn't last, and it's like, hey, let's build a
Speaker 12: spaceship form much into the eighties. It was called Stell
Speaker 12: and they had a charismatic leader that was quite questionable,
Speaker 12: but the plan was to build a spaceship to escape
Speaker 12: the end of the world in two thousand and four.
Speaker 12: Obviously it came and gone, but I'm pretty sure kind
Speaker 12: of folded up when it realized that rocket building was hard.
Speaker 12: I'm just assuming. I'm just assuming that like a bunch
Speaker 12: of people out in cornfields just realize their limitation about
Speaker 12: building rocket.
Speaker 1: The tender hearts weren't that unusual for the area. But
Speaker 1: of course, once Anna disappeared. There were a lot of
Speaker 1: questions about them.
Speaker 3: A big part of the problem was they were just secretive.
Speaker 3: They didn't want to talk to the cops. I mean,
Speaker 3: they didn't trust anybody, but they really didn't trust authority figures.
Speaker 1: They had been targeted before by Maldon Auto specifically.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we had them up on a few violations. They
Speaker 4: had problem with one of their neighbors, had to do
Speaker 4: with with a truck or something.
Speaker 3: There was some argument over noise and they took the
Speaker 3: tires off a neighbor's tractor.
Speaker 1: That escalated to some incidents with animals.
Speaker 9: They had lamas. Oh that's right, I remember them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, some of those lamas would get out and
Speaker 4: then they'd get sick.
Speaker 1: At some point, there were accusations about poisoning. Well, I
Speaker 1: just remember, you gotta understand.
Speaker 4: I get out there and I'm just I'm there to
Speaker 4: calm the situation, you know, cool it down a little bit.
Speaker 4: But you got a group of women, very very angry
Speaker 4: women in there. They're topless, some of them even buttoning.
Speaker 3: If there was a confrontation or if someone walked on
Speaker 3: to the property. The women of Tender Hearts liked to
Speaker 3: enact what they called a skin bombing.
Speaker 1: They'd go out and nake it. I kind of love
Speaker 1: the It was a very specific, non violent tactic.
Speaker 4: It throws you off, you know, put you on guard,
Speaker 4: and I'm not talking about it in a good way.
Speaker 1: One thing about growing up in West County, if there
Speaker 1: was ever a gathering of some sort, there was always
Speaker 1: at least one person naked. A lot of confusing messages.
Speaker 13: A lot of it was like, you know, people are swimming,
Speaker 13: or you know, like you got a pool and people,
Speaker 13: you know, we were in the.
Speaker 1: Hot tub pool or whatever.
Speaker 13: My parents' friends were definitely hippies and of the casually
Speaker 13: nude variety when there was any call for it.
Speaker 1: It was part of the culture, a general belief in
Speaker 1: who needs clothes? Be natural. It wasn't threatening or anything,
Speaker 1: but still as casual as I think the adults wanted
Speaker 1: it to be. When you're a kid, you could never
Speaker 1: not notice it. If Will and I went to that
Speaker 1: like main area, the kind of deck that wasn't finished,
Speaker 1: that with the boards laid on the ground, there might
Speaker 1: be someone naked because.
Speaker 9: They had an outdoor shower that was right there. Yes,
Speaker 9: And I always felt like it was a little weird.
Speaker 1: But I didn't feel like I could say it was weird.
Speaker 9: You know, because if you did, you would be lame.
Speaker 1: But beyond the skin bombing and fights with neighbors, I
Speaker 1: wanted to know what they were all about. I found
Speaker 1: a historian who specializes in intentional communities, which I learned
Speaker 1: is the newer preferred term for a commune.
Speaker 9: Hey, how great. Thanks.
Speaker 1: Howard Tripp is the author of two books, counter Topia,
Speaker 1: which covers the communities of the nineteen sixties and seventies,
Speaker 1: and West of Eden, which chronicles the rise and fall
Speaker 1: of small religious sects in the area.
Speaker 9: I hope you don't mind my little friends.
Speaker 1: You are right with that.
Speaker 9: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: Howard's other hobby is ants. Yeah, so, how long have
Speaker 1: you been farming them?
Speaker 11: It's been I mean it's been over a decade.
Speaker 1: He has an entire wall of his house that is
Speaker 1: a series of ant farms, or, as I learned, they're
Speaker 1: called former carrea.
Speaker 11: But one of the things I've always been fascinated by ICs.
Speaker 9: Oh like, that's like pheromones, right, right, exactly.
Speaker 11: But you're talking about how an individual ant senses the
Speaker 11: world around them, the perception of what's real, what's happening.
Speaker 14: It can be altered completely like a drug.
Speaker 11: Even more than that, it's it's their actual sense of reality.
Speaker 11: It's not you'll have like a colony, right thin get
Speaker 11: invaded and they start working for another species.
Speaker 1: They don't even know why, and they're just as happy.
Speaker 1: They just just want to do Tripid research tender Hearts
Speaker 1: for his books, but they ultimately didn't make the cut.
Speaker 15: Well, if we're talking about the major communities from Sonoma County, Headwinds,
Speaker 15: morning Star, the Farm before they went to Tennessee, you're
Speaker 15: talking about these are much bigger operations groups that were
Speaker 15: formalized in ways that Tender Hearts they could never really
Speaker 15: get it together.
Speaker 9: Well, how many people were in it? It's like, oh wow, yeah,
Speaker 9: very small.
Speaker 1: But then for your second book, wouldn't they have counted
Speaker 1: as a spiritual group?
Speaker 11: You yeah, you would think that's uh, that's the sixty
Speaker 11: four thousand dollars question, isn't it meaning?
Speaker 1: Were they even technically a religion? Did they have a
Speaker 1: belief system?
Speaker 11: I know, I know what this looks like.
Speaker 9: These don't judge.
Speaker 1: Trip has an entire guest house behind his main house.
Speaker 1: It's full of books and papers.
Speaker 15: Okay, here are some of Elerick's newsletters.
Speaker 9: Cool, we have these signs they put up.
Speaker 15: Yeah, and there are tapes of this lecture series.
Speaker 9: Oh wait, what really recordings?
Speaker 15: Yeah, yeah somewhere.
Speaker 9: Oh my god, I would.
Speaker 1: Love to hear those, Which is how I got ten
Speaker 1: hours of el Ric light talking.
Speaker 5: Well, let's just jump into it.
Speaker 6: We'll start with our invocation.
Speaker 8: As we always do.
Speaker 1: I am of the Earth.
Speaker 6: From the earth. I burn with a fire inside that
Speaker 6: I promised to maintain, with the thick skin and a
Speaker 6: tender heart.
Speaker 1: I actually found the tapes kind of soothing. There's definitely
Speaker 1: a lot of jargon. Elrick liked to make up his
Speaker 1: own terms.
Speaker 6: This is what we might call skymine is not the
Speaker 6: only directo. Locusts and arrive at the choiceless awareness.
Speaker 1: Elric is earnest, thoughtful.
Speaker 16: We can absorb energetic facts by existing in in what
Speaker 16: Castanano would call the the kernel of non ordinary reality.
Speaker 1: And he goes out of his way to reject his
Speaker 1: own authority.
Speaker 5: No, I am not York or.
Speaker 6: I am not anyone's savior.
Speaker 1: One of the most exciting moments is when he gets
Speaker 1: frustrated with his recording equipment.
Speaker 6: My ankles burst under the weight of ill consumed mother
Speaker 6: fucking dammit. Really, Mike was off the whole time. My
Speaker 6: ankles burst under the weight of ill conceived compulsions, and
Speaker 6: I limped my way, like the hurried hair past Alice
Speaker 6: into wonderland where only those with thrones and axes reigned.
Speaker 5: What are you living for? Where are you going? Late?
Speaker 8: Late?
Speaker 6: Always late for?
Speaker 15: What? For?
Speaker 12: What?
Speaker 5: For what? It's not real?
Speaker 6: None of it is real.
Speaker 10: You have been tricked, You've been lied too.
Speaker 1: This section, like when he says he's going to do
Speaker 1: it again, feels raw, emotional and personal, but otherwise for
Speaker 1: ten tapes, Elric is a teacher. He stays abstract and philosophical.
Speaker 1: A unique worldview does evolve a metaphysics. He's inspired a
Speaker 1: little by Krishna Murdi and a lot by Carlos Castanetta.
Speaker 1: There's this belief in the positive power of psychedelic drugs
Speaker 1: and something he calls tree Time, which begins with the
Speaker 1: story of him being high on mescaline.
Speaker 10: Minutes can feel like hours, seconds could be a lifetime.
Speaker 1: But it gets somewhere kind of interesting. A baby cries.
Speaker 17: She cries if she's hungry or stared, and in that
Speaker 17: moment she might think this feeling will never end.
Speaker 6: But as we grow, we grow into a different time consciousness.
Speaker 11: Oh my gosh, so time moves faster as you get older.
Speaker 18: Listen, if you consider a human life and you put
Speaker 18: it on a scale of the semper baus.
Speaker 9: That's what he called redwoods, Of course he did.
Speaker 1: That's from their scientific name, or their Latin binomial sequoia sempaveerans.
Speaker 17: We're talking about three thousand years.
Speaker 18: And in that context, what's a day?
Speaker 17: What's a day?
Speaker 9: What's a year?
Speaker 17: In three time seasons? Last three days.
Speaker 6: All of American history would happen before you were eight
Speaker 6: years old. A child who would be born grow to
Speaker 6: be twelve in the span of a summer vacation.
Speaker 9: What is dude talking about time perception?
Speaker 1: He's scaling a human life up to a redwood tree.
Speaker 1: And look, I did the math. Of course, he's actually right.
Speaker 1: If you take one hundred years or the best human lifespan, sure,
Speaker 1: and you stretch that over three thousand, it's thirty times.
Speaker 1: So one hour is thirty hours. Just over a day,
Speaker 1: that's one point two five days. And yes, a month
Speaker 1: would go by in a day, winter would last three days.
Speaker 9: So all of his comparisons are exactly right. You need
Speaker 9: a break, probably, Yeah.
Speaker 18: Imagine wisdom that scale the inside.
Speaker 3: Well, from the outside, it looked like your classic guru
Speaker 3: cult situation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean if it's all the tropes, right, Oh, yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1: You've got a charismatic leader, he's got a new spiritual
Speaker 1: take on life, and he runs off. He has a
Speaker 1: bunch of.
Speaker 3: Whys, right right, right right, Except none of that, none
Speaker 3: of what you actually just said was actually true.
Speaker 1: Those are all lies. When I started this podcast, one
Speaker 1: of my main questions about Tender Hearts, which was kind
Speaker 1: of naive, was was it a commune or was it
Speaker 1: a cult? It turns out neither, and those categories are
Speaker 1: kind of fuzzy to begin with.
Speaker 11: Had ideas later on, it's not how it started.
Speaker 1: It turns out Tender Hearts didn't begin as a religion
Speaker 1: or a political movement or even a philosophy.
Speaker 11: It grew out of a woman shelter.
Speaker 1: Really before he found a Tender Hearts, Eric Letsky was
Speaker 1: an employee of the Pavilion House. Pavilion was at the
Speaker 1: forefront of a wave of shelters that sprung up in
Speaker 1: the late seventies with what was then a pretty radical
Speaker 1: idea that women might need their own place, a designated
Speaker 1: shelter away from men.
Speaker 11: He helped run the whole thing until eighty five eighty six.
Speaker 1: They were your classic San Francisco liberals, in your face
Speaker 1: and aggressive.
Speaker 11: Eleric got into trouble with the city officials.
Speaker 18: Four protesters were arrested today outside city Hall amidst ongoing
Speaker 18: tensions between the city council and the Pavilion House.
Speaker 1: The distinction between a homeless shelter and a domestic violence
Speaker 1: center was a blurry line that was still being worked out,
Speaker 1: and in the early eighties, the owners of Pavilion wanted
Speaker 1: to expand the shelter by allowing men to join, but
Speaker 1: for some of the women and Elric, this was anathema.
Speaker 1: It was a split in the Pavilion organization. There was
Speaker 1: Elric on one side and the owners and city officials
Speaker 1: on the other. Around the same time, Elrick came into
Speaker 1: some money.
Speaker 3: The assumption is that maybe one of his parents or
Speaker 3: perhaps grandparents passed away, but nobody knows for sure.
Speaker 1: So he pulled up stakes, left the city and bought
Speaker 1: fifty acres in West Sonoma County. The fifty acres right
Speaker 1: next to my parents, and so the women were.
Speaker 11: He got them off from the shelter, them personally and
Speaker 11: their kids to come live off the land.
Speaker 1: Besides Anna and Willow, there were only a few other kids.
Speaker 1: I remember a boy named Josiah and a girl named Francis,
Speaker 1: and maybe one more. We called them grammets.
Speaker 13: I felt antagonized by them. I felt like they were
Speaker 13: actively annoying to us. I think we might have just
Speaker 13: been hating on younger kids.
Speaker 1: They were wild, right, I mean, you know, it was
Speaker 1: like they were just kind of roaming free, and they
Speaker 1: were a pack, like I definitely remember it being a pack.
Speaker 1: It's like just a group of like loud, dirty kids,
Speaker 1: like and they had attitude, like they were strong. Basically,
Speaker 1: it's like an outdoor version of a women's shelter.
Speaker 11: Yeah, it was like a camp or a farm for
Speaker 11: women escaping domestic violence.
Speaker 1: Everything I learned about Tender Hearts, but especially this, made
Speaker 1: it even more important that I get in touch with
Speaker 1: Anna and Willow's mom, Laaney. I'd always thought of her
Speaker 1: as some sort of New age counter cultural seekers her,
Speaker 1: But if she came from a women's shelter in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: if she was escaping an abusive situation and brought her
Speaker 1: daughters to raise them in the woods. That's a very
Speaker 1: different person, Laney, Hi, it's rather or strong.
Speaker 9: How are you. I hope you're doing all right.
Speaker 1: For weeks I'd left messages. Weirdly, this new understanding of
Speaker 1: the tender hearts was more radical and ahead of its
Speaker 1: time than any of Elric's professed insights like tree Time
Speaker 1: or Directo Locust. He was actually creating what nowadays you
Speaker 1: would call a safe space for women. But we didn't
Speaker 1: know any of that. Anybody local just saw a polygamous cult,
Speaker 1: and interestingly Elrick and the women let that happen.
Speaker 11: So these, if you could see, they would post these
Speaker 11: all around the town.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Elric started spreading his teachings. So I'm looking
Speaker 1: at there's a drawer of a kind of elephant plant person.
Speaker 5: What else?
Speaker 15: What do you see?
Speaker 5: All right?
Speaker 1: Well, there's text.
Speaker 8: No look closer.
Speaker 9: What are you missing? I don't know what is it?
Speaker 15: It's a lotus position?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, all right, so it says you are a
Speaker 1: goddess Gaya shakti terra isis what do you see all
Speaker 1: around the world? Women of sounder minds and tender hearts
Speaker 1: insight isn't oriental, nor is it western. Elrick light offers
Speaker 1: only the sacred, in the universal, the divine, feminine. Oh
Speaker 1: and then there's there's an address and a telephone number.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 15: Ye.
Speaker 11: People had people subscribing from all across the country, Like
Speaker 11: how many are they?
Speaker 1: Hundreds, maybe thousands. But locally the postings made them notorious,
Speaker 1: and there were times when they could have easily spoken out,
Speaker 1: but they let the rumors spread, which is actually a
Speaker 1: brilliant way to keep people out of your business. Like
Speaker 1: skin bombing. Allowing people to think they were a cult
Speaker 1: ensured that outsiders, men in particular, stayed away. So the
Speaker 1: question is, did Elrick believe this stuff?
Speaker 9: No?
Speaker 1: No, really. For his part, Maldonado is adamant.
Speaker 9: No.
Speaker 4: No, A con is a con is a con A
Speaker 4: lot of make your money, a lot to cover your tracks,
Speaker 4: and you just keep online.
Speaker 1: But when I listen to the tapes, Elrick seems earnest
Speaker 1: to me.
Speaker 11: He was definitely having some kind of experience out there
Speaker 11: in the whips right. Probably started with secular intentions to
Speaker 11: live together on a farm, and then Eleric started reflecting
Speaker 11: on things. He starts thinking rearranging places in his mind
Speaker 11: and having new ideas that he has to share.
Speaker 1: But there was a pressing issue.
Speaker 14: It's really common among these intentional communities unless you have
Speaker 14: a donation or best case, a tithing system that everyone
Speaker 14: agrees on, right, someone has to pay the bills for
Speaker 14: the TenderHearts.
Speaker 1: At first, that meant getting jobs. Laney work a safeway
Speaker 1: what I can't No Connor, who lives in England, remembered this.
Speaker 1: I can't even imagine her.
Speaker 13: Yeah, I know, I know, but I swear I remember
Speaker 13: seeing her in a reflective vest in the parking lot,
Speaker 13: like collecting carts.
Speaker 1: But the jobs weren't enough, and so TenderHearts did what
Speaker 1: most everyone in Sonoma County did in the nineties.
Speaker 11: I mean, I would say in Sonoma, Mendosino, Humboldt, maybe
Speaker 11: thirty forty percent, almost half of the communities are funded
Speaker 11: by weed.
Speaker 1: Hence the cannabis that was in the barn the night
Speaker 1: that Anna.
Speaker 9: Disappeared, and it was all just sitting in that barn.
Speaker 1: This opened up a whole new avenue because if Elrick
Speaker 1: was lying to the cops about where he was that night,
Speaker 1: was he trying to protect the fact that he was
Speaker 1: growing marijuana?
Speaker 9: I thirty forty five minutes. Thank you, Lennie.
Speaker 1: Could Anna have been killed because of like a drug that?
Speaker 9: I mean, it's just weed that was a huge deal
Speaker 9: back then. He's right.
Speaker 1: This was the era of Camp.
Speaker 3: It's a theme that is reminiscent of those you see
Speaker 3: in war zones, but this is California and the enemies
Speaker 3: are marijuana.
Speaker 1: Grow Camp was the campaign against marijuana planting, a multi
Speaker 1: agency task force that launched in nineteen eighty three. They
Speaker 1: were a paramilitary organization with helicopters and machine guns.
Speaker 9: They were hardcore.
Speaker 1: So does that mean that people were smoking pot around us?
Speaker 1: Does that mean that they would have been smoking pot
Speaker 1: from tender hearts? Undoubtedly?
Speaker 9: Undoubtedly.
Speaker 1: So then who were some we know somebody who bought
Speaker 1: weed from them or sold for them?
Speaker 9: Like, do we know any drug dealers? I mean, do
Speaker 9: you remember anybody, Hilo, We're trying.
Speaker 1: To remember who sold weed back in the day. I
Speaker 1: feel like there was an older guy. God, it was
Speaker 1: like it was like there was Jim. He wasn't drug
Speaker 1: I don't think so. But there was a guy who
Speaker 1: was always hanging out at the Hesse building.
Speaker 9: He had like a battery nickname like Bunny that's copper talk.
Speaker 9: He is not a drug dealer. It was like that motorcycle. No, No,
Speaker 9: that guy was totally who.
Speaker 1: Was the gu There was a guy not a name
Speaker 1: like that, like a DJ name, and he used to
Speaker 1: sell to all the skater kids.
Speaker 9: Remember rip hits was the thing.
Speaker 13: Yes, yes, that was not his name, but that's what
Speaker 13: that's what they called him.
Speaker 9: That's what we called Do you think we could find him?
Speaker 9: I could we find him. I could find him. I
Speaker 9: think I could find him.
Speaker 1: So the other day, when I told you about willow
Speaker 1: burning the weed, is this what you meant when you
Speaker 1: said that the tender hearts weren't all kumbaya and butterflies.
Speaker 9: And they were always alive.
Speaker 1: Just to front, this was a criminal drug dealing operation.
Speaker 1: That's true, but a little reductive because when I finally
Speaker 1: got the transcripts of el Rick's interrogations, I realized Maldonado
Speaker 1: wasn't giving me the whole story.
Speaker 9: Chris, there, they're here.
Speaker 1: I got an email from Sheriff Lachlan with a PDF attachment.
Speaker 1: They had a watermark across every page, are strong and
Speaker 1: they were a total mess. The names were hard to
Speaker 1: figure out because everyone was designated by their initials.
Speaker 9: Oh okay, so RM seems like he's the one in
Speaker 9: charge of That'sonado and two many guys working with me.
Speaker 4: It would have been Kadio. He headed up anything with
Speaker 4: grow operations or substances. He was kind of like our
Speaker 4: vice squad. And then, uh, I think I put Orrin. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I put Bob Orrin as my ol leite.
Speaker 1: She sent me like, there's a couple interviews with a
Speaker 1: few different people. Look, this one is actually your neighbors. Then, dude,
Speaker 1: this is me. This is a transcript of me getting interviewed. No, yes,
Speaker 1: look it's quote.
Speaker 11: No.
Speaker 1: We were at Connor's house, right, and Willow was with you. Yes,
Speaker 1: and you didn't hear anything, not until the news.
Speaker 9: Connor's mom made.
Speaker 1: Us pancakes, and she told you about the fire. Yet,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, she put my interviews in here?
Speaker 9: Who did uh? Lachlan the shriff? She sent me my
Speaker 9: own transcripts. The why. I don't know just what to say.
Speaker 9: You lied. We have a record of you lying.
Speaker 17: You.
Speaker 1: She also didn't include any of the interviews with Mick Bowden.
Speaker 1: It was only me and Eleric. It looks like there's
Speaker 1: four different ones here. Oh here the ceremony. Does that
Speaker 1: involve the kids? And he goes no. They press him,
Speaker 1: why not something you don't want them to see?
Speaker 9: And el Rick says absolutely not. Okay, now we got
Speaker 9: we got three women, three of your.
Speaker 1: Women, your women, by the way, on the record, and
Speaker 1: they say you weren't there at all. You let off
Speaker 1: the blessing, the wind song or whatever it's called. And
Speaker 1: they didn't see you until Wednesday. At some points Elrick
Speaker 1: got defensive, there is nothing wrong with taking a hike
Speaker 1: to see a sunrise?
Speaker 9: Is there?
Speaker 1: And Maldon outto says that depends, and Elerck goes, how
Speaker 1: there is nothing.
Speaker 9: Do you go to church?
Speaker 1: The other cop is like, I have no problem with
Speaker 1: the hike, and Eleric he's not letting go.
Speaker 9: You go to a church and pray.
Speaker 1: You go into a building, we go outside. That's the difference.
Speaker 1: That's the only difference. And it's a good point, it's
Speaker 1: sweet point. His dialogue definitely could use a punch up.
Speaker 9: It's not dialogue. Wait, we should.
Speaker 1: Do this as a reading. Yes, we printed out two copies. Yes,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm the cops both of of course you
Speaker 1: don't have anymore. I'm gonna pick up the slack.
Speaker 9: Brainwashing ladies is one thing.
Speaker 1: Why are you doing a New York character?
Speaker 9: Brainwashing the ladies is one thing. But the kids, you
Speaker 9: get their checks footsteps. Rick says, I don't steal from kids.
Speaker 1: We had a ranch, Bob when was he a few years?
Speaker 9: Eleven kids? Eleven kids and none was in school. All
Speaker 9: of the Tender Hearts kids go to school.
Speaker 6: No electricity checks come in every month, and these kids
Speaker 6: are put out to the fields.
Speaker 9: It was it was their bulls come to life and
Speaker 9: these pull fish. It's coming in from the fields. What
Speaker 9: are they talking about? No idea? Okay, they're talking about
Speaker 9: the sex.
Speaker 1: Some situation where they arrested other people with a bunch
Speaker 1: of kids. It seems like they were trying to catch
Speaker 1: Elrick admitting the Tender Hearts was making money off welfare.
Speaker 1: Then they start fishing about drugs.
Speaker 9: Here we go, okay, this is this is classic good
Speaker 9: cutback Cup moving into the killer. Tell us about the guys.
Speaker 1: At Jenna, Yeah, tell us what the guys at Jenna.
Speaker 9: The god degener is definitely drug stuff.
Speaker 1: Alric says, I don't know who you're talking about.
Speaker 9: I am this is definitely where they would slap the taken.
Speaker 9: Just read it. Come me, please. If you weren't up
Speaker 9: the hill, I'm not saying I wasn't.
Speaker 1: We know you weren't.
Speaker 9: Why don't you tell us about Tubers? What down at Tubers?
Speaker 4: There's a guy damned daily you know, I'm talking about
Speaker 4: the lineless of dum sliless.
Speaker 9: Sometimes if I talk damn, what's he gonna tell me?
Speaker 9: You don't know about Thursdays at tubas? The garden bodies?
Speaker 9: Did you order the code red?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 9: Do you want answers? I want the truth?
Speaker 1: Stop it?
Speaker 9: And Lerrick isn't even talking anymore.
Speaker 1: This is I don't know what love this garden party shit?
Speaker 9: Oh dude, oh this is that's sad.
Speaker 1: It took some rereading and a bit of research for
Speaker 1: Chris and I finally figured out what was going on.
Speaker 1: Tubers and garden parties were about bars and hookup spots
Speaker 1: in the area. The cops were fishing for Leric to
Speaker 1: admit something they had suspicions about, not the weed dealing,
Speaker 1: not the fact that maybe he was lying about this
Speaker 1: whole cult, that he was gay. Elrick. So he did
Speaker 1: leave the seance.
Speaker 3: He went down to the East Bay, where he met
Speaker 3: up with this man named Lucas Park who.
Speaker 1: Was it turns out, an ex boyfriend. In reality, this
Speaker 1: shouldn't be shocking. We're talking about an outspoken feminist political
Speaker 1: activist in the heart of a very liberal, very gay
Speaker 1: friendly city, which is I guess exactly why there's something
Speaker 1: heart wrenching here. Could stand up for women, for counterculture,
Speaker 1: could be brave and outspoken about so much, but he
Speaker 1: was still crippled by shame and fear regarding his sexuality.
Speaker 1: How many of the women knew none of them.
Speaker 11: They knew he wasn't interested in them, but they figured
Speaker 11: it was all part of his vouels celebacy.
Speaker 1: I actually heard this on the recordings. He talks about
Speaker 1: the power of intracourse.
Speaker 6: Inter is between for among intras within a contained.
Speaker 1: Entity, polyamorous cult that wasn't Polly or a cult, a
Speaker 1: pioneering feminist commune led by a gay man who didn't
Speaker 1: come out of the closet. So the tender hearts were
Speaker 1: complicit and letting the world think they were something they weren't.
Speaker 1: This multi wife sex colt. They let that deception stand,
Speaker 1: but they were also deceived from within, and perhaps the
Speaker 1: most salient point for Maldonado in nineteen ninety five, and
Speaker 1: for us now couldn't have killed DNA.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, the confirm that Elrick was with Park
Speaker 3: all night and into the next morning. So first story
Speaker 3: was a lie, new alibi, it was salad.
Speaker 1: And as for the tender hearts, that's yeah, that's pretty
Speaker 1: much all she wrote. The women dwindled over the next
Speaker 1: year or so. Al Eric left for months at a time,
Speaker 1: and then there was nobody there anymore. The land itself
Speaker 1: eventually sold to one of our neighbors who has since
Speaker 1: passed away. So as far as I know, it's in
Speaker 1: some kind of probate limbo, all right, experiment.
Speaker 9: Tender hearts exist today? Right?
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, dude, me and like fifty naked chicks running
Speaker 1: around the woods getting to know each other physically.
Speaker 15: Ok.
Speaker 9: Do I get to have sex with a tender hearts specifically?
Speaker 1: But just a communal situation where you're sharing resources and
Speaker 1: living off the land, raising your.
Speaker 9: Kids do their sounds like a nightmare.
Speaker 1: Sounds pretty great to me, And I don't think I'm alone.
Speaker 1: Even with his own experience growing up on a failed one,
Speaker 1: Oriyan is optimistic.
Speaker 13: I mean, I feel like it's a little bit of
Speaker 13: a coming full circle in a way. You know, I
Speaker 13: got very very interested in some modern form of co
Speaker 13: living and you share resources, you have a shared garden,
Speaker 13: and you have a shared kitchen and co working space
Speaker 13: for parties and whatever else, and it's like, seems pretty idyllic.
Speaker 13: So it feels like I'm kind of like trying to
Speaker 13: do what my parents sort of did, but better. Right, Like,
Speaker 13: it's probably a classic, you know, thing that we all
Speaker 13: try to do to some degree at times, fix the
Speaker 13: mistakes that our parents made.
Speaker 9: Oh stop, think about that type people who want in
Speaker 9: on this thing. They're not easy going people. They're not
Speaker 9: cool people. No, they're vegans. There's social justice sumiers. But
Speaker 9: you also got independent, critical thinkers.
Speaker 1: Artists, prescientious dirty drug addicts.
Speaker 9: Look at your boy, Howard, Look at your boy. How
Speaker 9: do you want to move in with him and his aunts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you got to live communally with him and his
Speaker 1: insects as well.
Speaker 11: No no, no, Communism failed, but like socialism failed.
Speaker 9: Rider. Okay, there's a reason, dude, you ended up going
Speaker 9: to boarding school. What does that have to do with anything.
Speaker 1: Chris spent the second half of high school, starting our
Speaker 1: junior year in New Jersey at a boarding school So,
Speaker 1: dun't your mom send you there because you know you
Speaker 1: needed a different situation because you were being bullied.
Speaker 9: Oh, I would know the bullied stuff. That's not why
Speaker 9: I went there.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm just saying that the normal all American public
Speaker 1: school childhood didn't work out for you. So you know
Speaker 1: you needed something, You needed an alternative, and I think
Speaker 1: a lot of us do.
Speaker 9: Most of us want something different. You're drinking the kool aid, man,
Speaker 9: go go live in tree time.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety six, el Rick left Sebastopool went back
Speaker 1: to San Francisco.
Speaker 11: There were signs of some political involvement, some classes taught
Speaker 11: at some illness centers and retreats.
Speaker 1: But after Anna, he mostly vanished from the public.
Speaker 6: Not like these moments when it's just.
Speaker 5: You and I.
Speaker 6: Strange, stupid little medium of tape recorded.
Speaker 1: He died in two thousand and one cancer. Hold on,
Speaker 1: what is this? After our dramatic reading, I was looking
Speaker 1: back over the transcripts.
Speaker 12: Look at that?
Speaker 9: Oh who said that?
Speaker 1: It was a single line quote? R M. What do
Speaker 1: you know? The Swami turns out to be a faggot.
Speaker 1: That's Maldonado man. Oh, that's gross.
Speaker 9: Was that after he left the room or is that
Speaker 9: when he was still in there?
Speaker 1: I think it's after. I don't know what's worse. Seeing
Speaker 1: that sentence, it suddenly brought into focus where the investigators
Speaker 1: were coming from. These are the people whose official job
Speaker 1: it was to find out what happened to Anna. They
Speaker 1: didn't like the tender hearts, they didn't like that they
Speaker 1: did drugs, they didn't like that Elrick was gay. But
Speaker 1: none of those things on their own are any real
Speaker 1: justification for suspicion. That sucks, man, really, and you're gonna
Speaker 1: go meet this guy? I was my last conversation with
Speaker 1: Maldonado before I got the transcripts. He agreed to meet
Speaker 1: me and walk me through the crime scene.
Speaker 15: Why don't we meet out there at the property.
Speaker 4: We had some strawberries from Andre stand out there by wagon.
Speaker 9: I'll show you what we found.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what to think. Maldonado was being helpful.
Speaker 1: He was one of the few people who seemed like
Speaker 1: he actually cared that I was looking back at this case.
Speaker 1: And then, to make things worse, Chris got a voicemail.
Speaker 9: It was from Sparks.
Speaker 19: Chris, what up, man, It's Davie H.
Speaker 9: Sparks mcnight back in the.
Speaker 19: Day time for the time.
Speaker 4: Brother.
Speaker 19: Anyway, Yeah, I'll talk to rider. Uh, you know, I
Speaker 19: got stories. I got inside Infomaion for real though. You
Speaker 19: want to talk and a trainer, you got to talk
Speaker 19: about those fuckers detecting that shit Baldonado.
Speaker 9: Come on, man, dude was a fool.
Speaker 19: Well, I got I got some stuff for you. My boy.
Speaker 9: Oh man, my boy, Mick. You know he was my boy.
Speaker 9: But damn kid.
Speaker 1: Got a pass.
Speaker 9: You got a pass anyway, Yeah, man, hit me up.
Speaker 9: Let's get a drink.
Speaker 19: I'll lay it all on you.
Speaker 1: The Red Weather is an iHeart podcast hosted by writer Strong,
Speaker 1: sound engineering, editing and mixing by Bo Milkins, produced by
Speaker 1: Tess Porthology. Executive producers at iHeartRadio Trevor Young and Matt Frederick,
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