Speaker 1: Pushkin no more going home. I'm on the ninth floor
Speaker 1: of the LA County Courthouse. It's the celebrity murder floor.
Speaker 1: This is where O. J. Simpson was tried, and Phil Spector,
Speaker 1: the grim Sleeper, the night Stalker, and now Anthony Rowda.
Speaker 1: Rowd has been awaiting trial for over a year. He
Speaker 1: looks like he's aged a decade. He's in a restraint chair,
Speaker 1: arms strapped down, doubtless the result of so many courtroom disruptions.
Speaker 1: He gets wheeled in backwards by half a dozen deputies.
Speaker 1: They're filming him, but the judge won't let me record
Speaker 1: in the courtroom, so I take notes the old fashioned
Speaker 1: way by hand in my reporter's notebook. By now, Route's
Speaker 1: exhausted the public defender's office and the alternate public defender's office.
Speaker 1: He's onto a private attorney who represents indigent clients. But
Speaker 1: still at almost every hearing he's asking the judge, sometimes nicely,
Speaker 1: sometimes not if he can represent himself. The question of
Speaker 1: Routa's mental state hangs over the whole proceeding. Which Route
Speaker 1: will show up today, what will provoke his rage? Is
Speaker 1: anyone going to mention the fact that he seems completely
Speaker 1: unstable today, he's a rate. He's yelling at the judge.
Speaker 1: A crime scene is outdoors, there was a fire, whereas
Speaker 1: his ballistics expert time is passing time he can't get back.
Speaker 1: I don't want to sit in jail another two years,
Speaker 1: he shouts, What do you want me to do? Be dumb?
Speaker 1: Want me to close my eyes and my ears? I
Speaker 1: have a brain, I have a soul, So I use
Speaker 1: that you don't tell me. I'm almost relieved when at
Speaker 1: a later hearing, the judge expresses doubt about his competency
Speaker 1: to stand trial, even though that means everything will slow
Speaker 1: down while he's assessed and stabilized. But what he's yelling
Speaker 1: about today is something I've been thinking about too, the evidence,
Speaker 1: What there is, what there isn't, and what it all
Speaker 1: adds up to in the case against Rowda. In other words,
Speaker 1: what's the theory of the case. How would Rowda have
Speaker 1: committed all these crimes? And more important why? I'm Dana
Speaker 1: Goodyear and this is Lost Hills, Episode seven, Morning Light.
Speaker 1: I'm holding a file stamped secret. It's the testimony that
Speaker 1: was presented to a grand jury convened several months back.
Speaker 1: It's been unsealed so finally I can see what the
Speaker 1: prosecutor's thinking. This is her best argument, all the evidence
Speaker 1: she wants to present intact, unblemished, no holes poked by
Speaker 1: Rowdah's defense attorney. That'll come later when the criminal trial
Speaker 1: gets under way. It's surprising, remember near Missus one through five,
Speaker 1: the shootings that use shotgun AMMO. She says. The reason
Speaker 1: law enforcement never found a shotgun is that there never
Speaker 1: was one. She says, Anthony Rowda used a zip gun,
Speaker 1: a crude DIY weapon he made out of pipes and nails.
Speaker 1: She called various investigators to testify to the grand jury.
Speaker 1: They said they found shotgun shells at Rowdah's camp that
Speaker 1: had markings indicating they hadn't been fired from a manufactured gun.
Speaker 1: They also said they found pipes and nails, But pipes
Speaker 1: and nails don't constitute a zip gun. They're just some
Speaker 1: of the elements. It's like if you walked into a
Speaker 1: kitchen and saw milk, eggs, and sugar some dirty cake pans.
Speaker 1: You might infer a cake had been made, but you
Speaker 1: also might wonder where's the flour. The prosecutor says Routa
Speaker 1: was fixated on killing when the homemade zip gun didn't kill.
Speaker 1: She says he left the area around Malibu Creek State Park,
Speaker 1: went to northern California. Cell Phone data places him there
Speaker 1: in January twenty eighteen, and when he came back a
Speaker 1: few months later, she says he had a new weapon,
Speaker 1: a nine millimeter carbing, and that's what allowed him to
Speaker 1: fulfill his deadly plan. Hallelujah blessed Mary Crazy's back. So
Speaker 1: we went from a crudely cobbled together zip gun to
Speaker 1: a precise and deadly semi automatic weapon, the nine millimeter carbing.
Speaker 1: I've never even heard of a zip gun and know
Speaker 1: almost as little about carbs. I call up Greg Block,
Speaker 1: the weapons expert. Again. A zip gun is a homemade,
Speaker 1: make it yourself gun, normally shooting shotgun rounds. It's a
Speaker 1: couple pieces of pipe, he says. Everything you need to
Speaker 1: make a zip gun you can get at the hardware store.
Speaker 1: The most basic would be a pipe to hold the
Speaker 1: shot shell, a nail, and something to force the nail
Speaker 1: into the back of the shell. Basically, they're a weapon
Speaker 1: for a person that cannot legally purchase one. So since
Speaker 1: Rowdah couldn't buy regular weapons and had gone to prison twice,
Speaker 1: for having antique weapons, maybe the next logical step the
Speaker 1: last resort was to make his own. It also fits
Speaker 1: Rowdah's survivalist lifestyle. One of his favorite survivalist authors wrote
Speaker 1: a book which Rawdah owned, called Gorilla Gunsmithing, about making
Speaker 1: your own weapons. Greg tells me that zip guns are dangerous, clumsy,
Speaker 1: and imprecise. They're unreliable if not made properly. They do
Speaker 1: not have an effective range. A zip gun is for
Speaker 1: up close personal, he says. You've got to be really
Speaker 1: motivated to build one. Usually it's hardcore gun geeks and teenagers.
Speaker 1: Depending upon the metal he's using for one or both
Speaker 1: pieces of pipe, it could blow up in his hand
Speaker 1: because when that round goes off, you're causing an explosion.
Speaker 1: And if you're not using good metal, that barrel could
Speaker 1: separate like a banana peels, and if you're holding that
Speaker 1: in your hands, it's going to get religious. The zip
Speaker 1: theory doesn't just explain why the detectives never found a shotgun.
Speaker 1: It could also explain a distinct feature of near misses
Speaker 1: one through five, the shotgun ammo shootings that took place
Speaker 1: well before Bodette's murder. In those incidents, the shooter fired
Speaker 1: only once. It was one of the oddities, along with
Speaker 1: the time of day in the area that early on
Speaker 1: made Sergeant Wright and Lieutenant Royal think the crimes were connected.
Speaker 1: Reloading a zip gun takes time, which could mean getting caught,
Speaker 1: especially if you're hunting ground is a crowded public park.
Speaker 1: So what about the other gun? The one Route was
Speaker 1: arrested with the Macon model was a Ruger PC nine.
Speaker 1: It looks just like a rifle, except that it takes
Speaker 1: a pistol cartridge. A pistol cartridge. In other words, Route
Speaker 1: as rifle took a nine millimeter handgun round. See, that
Speaker 1: was the whole thing with the car being going back
Speaker 1: to the wild West. Whatever your handgun shot, your car
Speaker 1: being shot, or your saddle rifle. Then the Old West,
Speaker 1: you carried a bandalier that had one caliber and it
Speaker 1: was used for your car being and used for your handgun.
Speaker 1: The Ruger PC nine resembles a short barreled military style rifle.
Speaker 1: According to grand jury testimony, Routes had been modified. The stock,
Speaker 1: which rests on the shoulder had been removed. Instead it
Speaker 1: had a pistol grip. And how much does a carving cost?
Speaker 1: You can get him for five or six hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: I ask him what people use them for? Hunting? Home defense?
Speaker 1: Not really, They're more for plinking and target shooting. That's
Speaker 1: really what they're designed for. I mean, because it's a
Speaker 1: it's a handgun round. It's really not effective as a
Speaker 1: hunting rifle. So why would someone get one of these
Speaker 1: guns for reasons other than target practice availability? I believe
Speaker 1: that's what he had available to him to get illegally.
Speaker 1: You know, he can't go into a gun store and
Speaker 1: buy a gun. He's going to get refused. He will
Speaker 1: fail the California Department of Justice background clearance check. So
Speaker 1: my personal belief is it was probably stolen and he
Speaker 1: bought it from a fence, or maybe he stolen himself.
Speaker 1: We don't know. Greg says that the Ruger PC nine
Speaker 1: is a loud gun. There's actually two noises. When you
Speaker 1: hear the noise of the gun going off, and then
Speaker 1: down range you hear what is, basically, for lack of
Speaker 1: a better description, a sonic boom, just like an airplane
Speaker 1: a flash on Scott McCurdy, Tristan Boudette's brother in law,
Speaker 1: and his bleary thought in the early morning hours that
Speaker 1: he was hearing the crack of fireworks and the sonic boom.
Speaker 1: Is that what would sound possibly like fireworks? Yes, very
Speaker 1: much so. And how accurate is it? I'll do one
Speaker 1: hundred yards. You can do a head shot with it
Speaker 1: if you know what you're doing. That's a long range.
Speaker 1: But even at that maximum distance, the shooter still might
Speaker 1: have heard the Boudette girls crying. Before we get off
Speaker 1: the phone, I ask Greg for his best guess as
Speaker 1: to what happened to the zip gun, that cake that
Speaker 1: the prosecutor assumes existed, but which detectives never found. Once
Speaker 1: he got the newer modern Ruger PC nine, he would
Speaker 1: either bury, hide, or stash his previous weapons. I don't
Speaker 1: see him throwing them away because he may need them
Speaker 1: down the road. I go back to thinking about the
Speaker 1: prosecutor's evidence based on what she presented to the grand jury.
Speaker 1: There's a lot she has and a lot she doesn't have.
Speaker 1: She doesn't have the zip gun, just some pipes and
Speaker 1: nails and spent shells with suspicious markings on them. She
Speaker 1: doesn't have witnesses placing Routa at the scene of any
Speaker 1: of the near misses, and she doesn't have Routa in
Speaker 1: the campground at Malibu Creek State Park with the rifle
Speaker 1: at the time of the murder. But she does have
Speaker 1: a lot of data from all those electronic devices found
Speaker 1: in Routah's backpack and on his camp mark. Donald, that
Speaker 1: Major Crimes detective told the grand jury that location data
Speaker 1: from the devices put Routa in the general area of
Speaker 1: the park on the dates of many of the crimes.
Speaker 1: There's also the stuff that was stored on the devices.
Speaker 1: One of Routa's phones had a file on how to
Speaker 1: make zip guns. The kindle had one called expedient Homemade Firearms.
Speaker 1: Routah's search history tells a story too, quote bullet hits
Speaker 1: car gas tank and quote nine millimeter incendiary bullets. And
Speaker 1: on the morning of the murder, the prosecutor says Rowda
Speaker 1: was nearby, Andy was awake an hour before Bodett was killed.
Speaker 1: One of Rodda's devices pinged on a nearby network, suggesting
Speaker 1: that he was in the area. About ten minutes after
Speaker 1: Bodett was killed, Rowda's searched breaking news headlines. Here's something
Speaker 1: else the prosecutor has which will probably be more important
Speaker 1: in the eyes of a future jury than any other
Speaker 1: single piece of evidence. She has the Sheriff's Department weapons expert.
Speaker 1: He testified to the grand jury that the bullet excavated
Speaker 1: from Tristan Bodet's right shoulder was fired by Rowdah's rifle.
Speaker 1: Beyond positing that Anthony Rowda was a killer bent on killing,
Speaker 1: the prosecutor hasn't offered much about why. Why would he
Speaker 1: have done these things? What would have motivated him? She's
Speaker 1: got ideas about the mechanics, but nothing about the meaning.
Speaker 1: From the research I've been doing, listening to his music,
Speaker 1: listening to him in his letters, reading all those court documents,
Speaker 1: I've started to see some patterns. I wonder if there's
Speaker 1: anything else out there that could help me understand him.
Speaker 1: I head back to the Internet to see what else
Speaker 1: I can find out. He's got a couple of LinkedIn pages,
Speaker 1: a word Press account, all those music sharing pages. He's Crazyhorse,
Speaker 1: He's Tony Rowda MC. He was almost in hiding in
Speaker 1: the real world, but online he really put himself out there.
Speaker 1: I think he wanted to be noticed as a musician
Speaker 1: and also as a writer. I searched up one of
Speaker 1: his aliases, Crazyhorse to one, and that's how I discover
Speaker 1: there's only one way to say it, a pair of manifestos.
Speaker 1: There is a great debate going on now about the
Speaker 1: Illuminati and New World Order. This is from one of them.
Speaker 1: It's called The True Illuminati. Rata posted it in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: Like Rada's letters, his writings are being read by an
Speaker 1: actor and have been lightly edited for clarity. I first
Speaker 1: heard of the New World Order through music albums in
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen nineties, and the Illuminati a few years
Speaker 1: later through the same channels. It's cut and paced conspiracy
Speaker 1: Theory the tracks from King David to George Washington, Freemasons,
Speaker 1: Skull and Bones, Morgan Stanley, and the founder of FedEx.
Speaker 1: I obviously listened and formed my own opinion, but it
Speaker 1: was only years later, when fighting some legal court cases,
Speaker 1: that I seen firsthand the existence of these illuminary beings.
Speaker 1: The other manifesto is called The Luciferian Theory. It too
Speaker 1: was posted in twenty eighteen. On the cover, there's an
Speaker 1: etching of a voluptuous eve handing an apple to Adam.
Speaker 1: They're naked in the garden underneath the Tree of Knowledge.
Speaker 1: The snake dangles from a branch above, just as there
Speaker 1: is a choice of good and evil. A person must
Speaker 1: decide between a nightmare or a vision in their way
Speaker 1: of thinking. This is where a Lucifer dwells. The Luciferian
Speaker 1: theory is named for Lucifer. He was one of God's
Speaker 1: favorites until he tried to overthrow him and was cast
Speaker 1: out of heaven. Narcissism and sadism are the foundation of
Speaker 1: my theory. They are the devil's marks. After his banishment,
Speaker 1: Lucifer stopped by the garden of Eden. Now with a
Speaker 1: God's eye, which means using facts and truth, we look
Speaker 1: to the paradise where what they call the stage is set,
Speaker 1: and Lucifer is about to set a scene in how
Speaker 1: to commit murder. Route is fascinated by Satan. Satan was
Speaker 1: like a snake in the grass. That he could still
Speaker 1: move quickly and strike with one lethal move, and that
Speaker 1: he was cunning and beautiful also plays into the story.
Speaker 1: He says he personally has felt Satan's manipulations through my
Speaker 1: own experience from my family life, community, my short time
Speaker 1: in the army, and the legal system. I have seen
Speaker 1: firsthand what mind games can accomplish or destroy. Mind games,
Speaker 1: he says, lead to pain, trauma, alienation, and ultimately paranoia.
Speaker 1: One of the most common tactics is to plant doubt
Speaker 1: in the individual, either by sexual inadequacy such as thinking
Speaker 1: of homosexuality when they're not, bring out the individual's feelings
Speaker 1: of insecurity, shame, guilt, and by some force or threat
Speaker 1: cause feelings of loneliness. Then, once alienated, they hope to
Speaker 1: wear the mind down. Paranoia develops and the individual begins
Speaker 1: to become suspicious of those close to them. Person can
Speaker 1: feel betrayed of what is true and who to trust.
Speaker 1: Then there's the unfairness that sense Rauta has that he
Speaker 1: is the victim that supposedly good people do bad things
Speaker 1: to him and then he gets punished for it. So
Speaker 1: why did these things happen? Did I do anything to
Speaker 1: these people? No? Shouldn't these people be suffering a state
Speaker 1: of hell and not me? The manifesto has dated April ninth,
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, that's two and a half months before Tristan
Speaker 1: Boudett was killed In it. Rada sounds tortured, like he's
Speaker 1: in a cosmic battle for his soul. Like he said,
Speaker 1: person must decide it's nightmare or vision immortal vision. I
Speaker 1: promise you I will not lose my soul. The only
Speaker 1: official assessment I have of Routah's mental health is a
Speaker 1: form attached to one of his court cases. It's a
Speaker 1: case he brought in two thousand and six against the
Speaker 1: California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, claiming abuse and civil
Speaker 1: rights violations while he was in prison. Next to developmental problem,
Speaker 1: the form says abuse eleventh grade education ged. If you
Speaker 1: read that as a chronology, it's a pretty awful coming
Speaker 1: of age story. The form says that in two thousand
Speaker 1: and two, Routa twice attempted suicide by pills, and that
Speaker 1: he has a history of alcohol in marijuana use and
Speaker 1: a history of depression and PTSD. The PTSD stems from
Speaker 1: an ledged two thousand and three assault in the Ela
Speaker 1: County jail. Rada has documented this allegation elsewhere, that he
Speaker 1: was badly assaulted by five or six other inmates and
Speaker 1: the deputies failed to protect him. His father, Ozzie, told
Speaker 1: me that the deputies were the ones who left his
Speaker 1: cell open, facilitating the attack. The form says he's been
Speaker 1: prescribed the antidepressant Lexapro and the antipsychotic whispered All which
Speaker 1: at low doses can be used to treat depression, and
Speaker 1: at high doses is used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Speaker 1: In a letter from jail, Rada wrote, my mental health
Speaker 1: had got worse as I've gotten older, but living alone
Speaker 1: has helped, even though being alone or in jail is
Speaker 1: what caused it. I'm not sleeping well right now. Somehow
Speaker 1: my thoughts get dark. I do not like taking medication.
Speaker 1: I usually receive counseling when I want outside or inside.
Speaker 1: He told me that when it's up to him, he
Speaker 1: doesn't take meds. He also said he drinks sometimes to
Speaker 1: the point of oblivion. When I was free, I drank
Speaker 1: liquor when I could, and my memory was sometimes bad.
Speaker 1: I would forget my age, write down what I needed
Speaker 1: to do so I wouldn't forget I've lacked out sometimes?
Speaker 1: Is he trying to tell me that he may have
Speaker 1: done things he doesn't even know he did. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to understand rowdas psychology, to imagine what his motive could
Speaker 1: have been. What I've been able to assemble combing through
Speaker 1: his writings and court documents is a weird, sad, scattered jumble,
Speaker 1: and it's far short of an explanation, still nothing to
Speaker 1: suggest a why I decided to call a psychologist. I
Speaker 1: find someone who specializes in adult male offenders, especially the
Speaker 1: connection between childhood trauma and adult deviance. His name is
Speaker 1: doctor James Revs. He's never examined Anthony Rowda, but he
Speaker 1: agrees to give me some educated guesses. I tell him
Speaker 1: everything I know about Rouda's past, what I've observed, and
Speaker 1: the crimes he's accused of. Now, the heat that you
Speaker 1: were talking about in regard to his emotionality, that to
Speaker 1: me comes from something that he has undergone, you know,
Speaker 1: in other words, someone has betrayed his trust or hurt him,
Speaker 1: or at least he perceives that to be the case.
Speaker 1: Revas says, it doesn't sound like rout is a psychopath.
Speaker 1: He sees him more as quote intelligent, wounded, impulsive, obsessional,
Speaker 1: and poorly skilled. I just have the sense, as you talk,
Speaker 1: that there's a lot of heat behind all of these acts,
Speaker 1: that they're not coldly premeditated in the service of gaining
Speaker 1: some good. That there's a lot behind that Rauta, he says,
Speaker 1: sounds like a textbook narcissist. You also mentioned that he
Speaker 1: acted as his own attorney in court, and many, many
Speaker 1: narcissistic criminals will do that, and he did that, for example,
Speaker 1: because they believe that they are smarter than their own counsel.
Speaker 1: And so then it may be that the murder and
Speaker 1: the shootings are sort of a narcissistic compensation for feelings
Speaker 1: of insecurity. My guess is it may make him feel
Speaker 1: very very powerful. If in fact he set fires, it
Speaker 1: may make him feel very very powerful. It's his way
Speaker 1: of sort of giving the middle finger to the world.
Speaker 1: I've witnessed Rout to do exactly literally this give the
Speaker 1: middle finger to the TV cameras in court. My guess
Speaker 1: is what's happening is it makes him feel omnipotent, all powerful,
Speaker 1: and probably in that moment it's massively relieving of all
Speaker 1: of these other negative tensions inside of him. So shooting
Speaker 1: cars and people could make him feel masculine, powerful and important,
Speaker 1: godlike even getting to decide who and who dies. It
Speaker 1: could be very satisfying for someone who's identified as a
Speaker 1: victim for so long. He's going away with a bang.
Speaker 1: He's pronounced if he's doing these things, he's pronouncing that
Speaker 1: he's still there. He's going away and then coming back
Speaker 1: and engaging an aggression, you know. So to me it's anger,
Speaker 1: narcissism and paranoia. Well that's one person anyway who can
Speaker 1: figure an explanation for a series of violent crimes against
Speaker 1: unsuspecting strangers. But in his letters and in court, Rauda
Speaker 1: keeps saying he's innocent. I go back to his writings,
Speaker 1: the manifesto he published just before Tristan Boudette's murder. I
Speaker 1: force myself to reread the Luciferian theory. Rowda makes a
Speaker 1: lot of connections. There's stuff about the third eye the sun,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot about Lucifer. Lucifer equals light equals
Speaker 1: in light. Mint to stay on the subject, my theory
Speaker 1: of an ancient secret knowledge being passed down through history
Speaker 1: by Lucifer. The name Lucifer literally means the morning star
Speaker 1: the planet venus or is like bringing onto the highest
Speaker 1: of initiates. Lucifer. The name actually means the one who
Speaker 1: brings the light, the morning star, first light. That makes
Speaker 1: me think about the timing of the crimes just before
Speaker 1: the morning light, and something I'd skimmed right past before
Speaker 1: jumps out at me this time. Routa makes a reference
Speaker 1: to Saint John's Day, the feast day of John the Baptist.
Speaker 1: It's in late June, and it's a big deal to Freemasons.
Speaker 1: Some of the Illuminati routa frets about the most. He
Speaker 1: writes that a quote happens to be Midsummer's Day, the
Speaker 1: day the sun is at its strongest. Midsummer's Day, the
Speaker 1: day the sun is at its strongest is the solstice,
Speaker 1: the longest day of the year. It's a day that,
Speaker 1: in old religious myths, represents a turning point in the
Speaker 1: battle between light and shadow, when the Winter King begins
Speaker 1: his ascendants by killing the Summer King. In twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: Midsummer's Day was June twenty first, the day Tristan Bodett
Speaker 1: took his children camping, The last day of Tristan Bodett's life.
Speaker 1: I've been living with Anthony Rawda for two and a
Speaker 1: half years now. My office is full of his stuff.
Speaker 1: At one end of my desk I keep a stack
Speaker 1: of books on how to disappear, how to survive in apocalypse,
Speaker 1: live off the land, build a bomb, or make a
Speaker 1: gun from scratch. They are all books I know He's
Speaker 1: owned at one time or another in his life. I've
Speaker 1: got file, boxes of notebooks, court filings, letters, his lists
Speaker 1: of grievances, misdirections, red herrings, split hairs. Why has no
Speaker 1: one asked law enforcement why they have lied? Why has
Speaker 1: no lawyer wished to represent me? Why has no one
Speaker 1: tried to prove my accusations of the sheriff's assaulting me
Speaker 1: as lies? Why did the sheriff tell the media I
Speaker 1: was a suspect in the murder of mister Baudet on
Speaker 1: the day of my arrest, when the rifle had not
Speaker 1: been tested and I did not admit any wrongdoing. Why
Speaker 1: is there no direct evidence leading me to the attempted
Speaker 1: murder when the Sheriff's department official statement to Lieutenant Royal
Speaker 1: is that these crimes were not connected. Why did Lieutenant
Speaker 1: Royals in instigation not lead to any suspects. The media's
Speaker 1: portrayal of me has been slanderous. I have not been
Speaker 1: to Maliboon years. I spend a lot of time looking
Speaker 1: at his drawings, especially one that was published in a
Speaker 1: prison literary magazine in twenty sixteen, the year he was
Speaker 1: most recently released. On the left are two cops surrounded
Speaker 1: by little word bubbles that say nine one on the right,
Speaker 1: a snake and an apple with a bite out of it.
Speaker 1: Above that, the gates of Eden, with Adam and Eve
Speaker 1: standing underneath a radiant tree of knowledge. They look like
Speaker 1: they're walking away to the east of Eden after the fall.
Speaker 1: I feel like I know Rautah a little now, and
Speaker 1: I think he's grafted this story of paradise and loss
Speaker 1: onto his own and his artist's name, Crazy Horse. It's
Speaker 1: not random either. The original Crazy Horse defeated custom Army
Speaker 1: at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. He met
Speaker 1: the army in steep and treacherous terrain, then killed Custer
Speaker 1: and every last one of his men. That sounds like
Speaker 1: a rout of revenge fantasy come true. And you know
Speaker 1: how Crazy Horse died resisting imprisonment. Ded Rouda says he's
Speaker 1: not guilty and the trial will determine that. But here's
Speaker 1: what I think. Part of Anthony Rowda wants to be
Speaker 1: left alone. Part of him is dying for a fight.
Speaker 1: And now that I know about his hatred of police,
Speaker 1: his long and contentious relationship with the Lost Hills cops,
Speaker 1: I have my own theory of the case. It was
Speaker 1: never about Tristan Boudet or Campers or someone getting in
Speaker 1: his way as he was stealing food. I think Rouda
Speaker 1: camped behind Lost Hill Station and started shooting off his
Speaker 1: guns to make fool of the cops, to draw them
Speaker 1: into a fight in treacherous terrain where he was comfortable
Speaker 1: to kill them or be killed. One of the cops
Speaker 1: told me that during Radah's arrest, he was shouting at
Speaker 1: the deputies stuff like kill me, fucking shoot me before
Speaker 1: I get you. On my desk, I keep a map
Speaker 1: I printed out that covers Malibu Creek State Park in
Speaker 1: the surrounding area. It's annotated with every crime route as
Speaker 1: accused of dates, victims, jurisdiction, ammunition. I also marked Ratah's
Speaker 1: camp north of a hairpin turn on Mulholland Highway. I
Speaker 1: need to get out there. I still haven't been. I
Speaker 1: searched my inbox for correspondence with Lou, the guy in
Speaker 1: the Maga hat that I met on the tour of
Speaker 1: Malibu Creek State Park. I remember he said he'd take
Speaker 1: me to Ratah's camp, and that's how I come across
Speaker 1: a photo album that Lou shared with me a while back,
Speaker 1: pictures he took when he went to Routah's camp. A
Speaker 1: few weeks after he was arrested, I clicked through them again.
Speaker 1: I've looked at them a handful of times, always with
Speaker 1: a vaguely disappointed feeling. They look like nothing, dry gray
Speaker 1: and brown leaves littering the hillsides, pieces of blue tarp boring.
Speaker 1: But this time I see something I never noticed before.
Speaker 1: In one of the pictures, there's a piece of scrap
Speaker 1: wood that looks almost like garbage. It's roughly l shaped,
Speaker 1: with all kinds of crude notches and cuts, an odd
Speaker 1: shape like a puzzle piece. By now, I've spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time looking at diagrams and images of homemade
Speaker 1: guns in Routah's books on YouTube. Am I seeing what
Speaker 1: I think I'm seeing? This piece of wood looks to
Speaker 1: me like the frame for a zip gun. Maybe the
Speaker 1: last ingredient route would have to bake the cake, and
Speaker 1: it was in his camp. I call up Greg Block again,
Speaker 1: he's the weapon's expert. Okay, can you yeah describe what
Speaker 1: you see? It doesn't look like a random piece of wood.
Speaker 1: It looks like it was made to do something or
Speaker 1: be something. I mean, it's got a lot of cuts
Speaker 1: in it that are made for a certain reason. On
Speaker 1: one side, there's what looks like a handle or a
Speaker 1: way to grip it. Above that part of the wood
Speaker 1: has been removed, possibly to make space for a barrel,
Speaker 1: and just in front of the grip is another series
Speaker 1: of cuts, notches in a zigzag line. Those notches are
Speaker 1: very crude and rudimentary. It was done by hand. And
Speaker 1: then you'd have to ask, why is that piece of
Speaker 1: wood in this area? It is definitely suspicious. It's been
Speaker 1: cut and designed for one thing, which is something to
Speaker 1: launch a projectile commonly referred to as a zip gun.
Speaker 1: The investigators knew they were looking for a zip gun,
Speaker 1: and they knew they hadn't found all the necessary elements.
Speaker 1: So if you're law enforcement and you know you're looking
Speaker 1: for a zip gun and you see this on the ground,
Speaker 1: what do you do? You're taking his evidence. This idea
Speaker 1: is so crazy. I call up a couple of hardcore
Speaker 1: gun geeks YouTubers who make guns all the time. We
Speaker 1: talk about the limitations of the photograph. It's taken from above,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't show the object in three dimensions. Close
Speaker 1: inspection might yield other interpretations. But still they both say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see that it's not crazy to think this
Speaker 1: might be a prototype or a rough draft. One of
Speaker 1: them says, I can make a zip gun out of that.
Speaker 1: Law enforcement never found the weapon used in near misses
Speaker 1: one through five. They found some elements, pipes and nails,
Speaker 1: but nothing close to a finished product. Could this be
Speaker 1: the missing ingredient? The cops combed through Rout's camp multiple
Speaker 1: times and no one picked it up. And you know
Speaker 1: what happened the day after lou took that photo, the
Speaker 1: Wolsey fire. So now, in all likelihood it's been reduced
Speaker 1: to ash, and all that exists is this photograph. Zip
Speaker 1: guns have another name. They're known as ghost guns. They're untraceable,
Speaker 1: they disappear. I'm having a holy shit kind of realization.
Speaker 1: But it's not that I think I've discovered the lost
Speaker 1: puzzle piece that solves the Route A case. It's that
Speaker 1: law enforcement overlooked this an object at Route's camp that
Speaker 1: your average gun geek on YouTube could make a weapon from.
Speaker 1: The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, of course, won't comment, but
Speaker 1: I can't stop wondering, how could they have missed this?
Speaker 1: How could they not see it? It's almost like denying
Speaker 1: the existence of the Canyon shooter became a habit the
Speaker 1: law enforcement couldn't break. They were so used to saying
Speaker 1: that there was nothing going on out there, no mystery
Speaker 1: to solve, that they couldn't recognize what was right before
Speaker 1: their eyes. Lost Hills is written and hosted by me
Speaker 1: Dana Goodyear. It's produced by Western Sound and Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1: For more information about my investigation, follow at Lost Hills
Speaker 1: Pod on social media. Up next episode eight East of
Speaker 1: Eden