Speaker 1: Pushkin. Four or five months before My Trees disappeared, her
Speaker 1: girlfriend Desiree, began to have a recurring dream. There's a
Speaker 1: blanket of thick fog covering everything, so she can't see,
Speaker 1: but she can hear My Trees calling her name over
Speaker 1: and over.
Speaker 2: But I can't find her, and so I'm running through
Speaker 2: the fog to where I think she's at. And when
Speaker 2: I think I find her, it's just the fog clears
Speaker 2: and nothing's there.
Speaker 1: Desiree was so affected by this dream that she did
Speaker 1: something totally out of character. She got a tattoo.
Speaker 2: So it's really abstract of a face kind of coming
Speaker 2: through the fog.
Speaker 1: The tattoo stretches from Desiree's ribs to her navel. It's
Speaker 1: my Teresa's face, one almond shaped eye, a pair of
Speaker 1: bright red lips, partially obscured by swirls of fog, and stars.
Speaker 1: Underneath My Teresa's lips is the word princess. That was
Speaker 1: one of Desire's nicknames for her. Was she flattered?
Speaker 3: She was? She was.
Speaker 2: I think that she was still a little disappointed that
Speaker 2: it wasn't her name, just because I mean, she had
Speaker 2: she had a little ego about it. And I call
Speaker 2: her princess, but it was like two handed.
Speaker 1: In retrospect, the dream seems like a premonition. My teres
Speaker 1: alone in Dark Canyon, staring up at the night sky,
Speaker 1: and the tat two is there to remind Desiree every day.
Speaker 2: And I had no idea that it was going to
Speaker 2: mean what it means to me now.
Speaker 1: My Trees was found on August ninth, twenty ten. She'd
Speaker 1: been missing for eleven months. People had been searching for
Speaker 1: her all over the Santa Monica Mountains and as far
Speaker 1: away as Las Vegas, but the way she was found
Speaker 1: was entirely unexpected. Here's the story as law enforcement told it.
Speaker 1: There was aknown illegal marijuana grow in Dark Canyon. It
Speaker 1: had been discovered in two thousand and nine. Before My
Speaker 1: Trese went missing, a marijuana enforcement team, including state park
Speaker 1: rangers and rangers from the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority,
Speaker 1: had come across plants and irrigation lines, which they destroyed.
Speaker 1: The following summer, some of these rangers returned to see
Speaker 1: if the operation had resumed. They were hiking through the
Speaker 1: creek's drainage when one of the rangers saw a skull
Speaker 1: and a leg bone, partially submerged in the heavy leaf
Speaker 1: litter of the canyon floor. Attached to the skull was
Speaker 1: a hank of hair identifiable as a black woman's. One
Speaker 1: ranger believed they might have found my Terce Richardson. What
Speaker 1: happened next was a communication meltdown that turned into a
Speaker 1: pr catastrophe. The remains were removed from the canyon before
Speaker 1: the coroner had a chance to examine them on site.
Speaker 1: That led to a public dispute between the Sheriff's department
Speaker 1: and the coroner, an internal inquiry, and a whole new
Speaker 1: reason for my Teres's friends and family to be suspicious
Speaker 1: of law enforcement. But while so much attention was trained
Speaker 1: on how her remains got out of the canyon, the
Speaker 1: focus shifted away from the most important question, how she
Speaker 1: got in there in the first place. I'm Dana Goodyear
Speaker 1: and this is Lost Hills, Episode six, reconnaissance.
Speaker 3: So now we're heading back pretty much over Melbolt Canyon,
Speaker 3: and we'll go back towards I'll show you the Montanito area.
Speaker 1: Five years ago, when I started looking into my Teresa's case,
Speaker 1: I took a helicopter ride with Sergeant Twoey Wright from
Speaker 1: Malibu Search and Rescue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is Montanito area down here, and this is
Speaker 3: Dark Canyon that we're flyever. Yeah, we're flying over Dark
Speaker 3: Canyon right now. And of course it's where Montesa Richardson's
Speaker 3: remains are found.
Speaker 1: The sides of the canyon fell away beneath us at
Speaker 1: a steep pitch.
Speaker 3: I keep going this way and bank a little to
Speaker 3: the left. So Mtesa was last seen down here here,
Speaker 3: these streets down here, but Dark Canyon goes up there
Speaker 3: and here's where it gets real steep.
Speaker 1: On one wall of the canyon, the rock face was
Speaker 1: marked with vertical lines like a layer cake turned on
Speaker 1: its side. And how far up the canyon was she found?
Speaker 3: Oh? Show see the middle area there with the most trees.
Speaker 3: The shadow cuts right through it. Yep, right in there,
Speaker 3: underneath the canopy of some of those trees.
Speaker 1: To shock us, Starwell, who'd been helping my Teresa's family
Speaker 1: with their searches, told doctor Ronda Hampton that human remains
Speaker 1: had been found in Montanito.
Speaker 4: I got a text message from him saying, Hey, there
Speaker 4: was a partially mummified skeletal remains naked found in Montanito.
Speaker 4: So I think you guys should head out there.
Speaker 1: She let the family know. My Terce's aunt called Lieutenant Rawson,
Speaker 1: one of the homicide detectives.
Speaker 4: She called the detective to say, hey, this is what
Speaker 4: we are hearing. That there's you know, partially mummified remains.
Speaker 4: And she spoke to Lieutenant Rawson who said, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: there's just a couple of bones. It's not complete. There's
Speaker 4: just a few bones. We don't even know. You guys
Speaker 4: don't need to come out, which alerted us to come out.
Speaker 1: Now that there was a body in the Sheriff's Department's jurisdiction.
Speaker 1: They took over from the LAPD. The sheriff set up
Speaker 1: a command post at a large ranch overlooking Dark Canyon.
Speaker 1: It's known as the Porn Ranch because they shoot a
Speaker 1: lot of porn out there. It has a long driveway
Speaker 1: that runs along one side of Dark Canyon.
Speaker 4: So we get out there, the media is there. It's
Speaker 4: like a media frenzy, like clearly something has been found.
Speaker 1: But they couldn't get access to the site.
Speaker 4: Like they only let us go so far, so we
Speaker 4: didn't know where her remains were. We just know it
Speaker 4: was somewhere around there. And eventually they told us you know,
Speaker 4: after a few hours, it's getting dark. You guys should
Speaker 4: just go home. We're probably just going to lift her
Speaker 4: remains in the morning, and you guys can just leave.
Speaker 4: I felt like they were waiting us out because we
Speaker 4: just wouldn't leave.
Speaker 1: Finally, as the sun was setting, they saw a helicopter
Speaker 1: leaving Dark Canyon and heading for Lost Hill Station. Apparently
Speaker 1: there'd been a change of plans.
Speaker 4: And then, to shock us, looked up and said, hey, look,
Speaker 4: I bet you that's hurt.
Speaker 1: When they got to the station, there was a briefing.
Speaker 4: And they told us we don't know if it's male
Speaker 4: or female, we don't know the race of the person.
Speaker 4: We don't know that much details about anything, and that's
Speaker 4: all they would actually tell us.
Speaker 1: Two days later, the assistant Chief coroner, Ed Winter called
Speaker 1: to confirm that the remains belonged to my Teres.
Speaker 4: So we were kind of just waiting for the phone call,
Speaker 4: and we knew it was her. I mean, the way
Speaker 4: that they were acting, we believed that they knew who
Speaker 4: it was.
Speaker 1: This was the horrible news my Teresa's friends and family
Speaker 1: had been waiting for. They'd looked everywhere for her, but
Speaker 1: all along she'd been in Dark Canyon, about a mile
Speaker 1: from where she was last seen at the Tennis Court
Speaker 1: House on Cold Canyon Road. Now, presumably a new investigation
Speaker 1: would begin, this time led by the Sheriff's Department, and
Speaker 1: presumably someone would be held accountable for my Tercea's death.
Speaker 1: But that's not what happened.
Speaker 4: So then they had a press conference and said it
Speaker 4: was her and proceeded to say we're not likely to
Speaker 4: ever know what happened to her during that press conference.
Speaker 3: It's likely that we can never find out exactly how
Speaker 3: she got there, but they're going to do their very
Speaker 3: best two figure.
Speaker 1: This attitude, will never know what happened. It's impossible to
Speaker 1: find out. It's not what the public expects from investigators
Speaker 1: responsible for solving crimes. But the autopsy conducted on August eleventh,
Speaker 1: two days after the remains were found, had discovered no trauma.
Speaker 1: My Teresa's cause of death was ruled undetermined, and because
Speaker 1: it was not ruled a homicide, the Sheriff's Department apparently
Speaker 1: settled on the only explanation that made sense to them
Speaker 1: that my Teres, in the midst of a bipolar episode,
Speaker 1: had walked into the canyon on her own and died.
Speaker 1: But for many reasons, her friends and family had a
Speaker 1: hard time believing that. They didn't believe the autopsy. They
Speaker 1: didn't think the coroner had the full picture. They thought
Speaker 1: the Sheriff's Department had intentionally botched the recovery of my
Speaker 1: Teres's remains so that the case could not be solved.
Speaker 1: They didn't even believe the story of how the remains
Speaker 1: were discovered because no one would tell them who these
Speaker 1: rangers were who had stumbled across my trees. We thought
Speaker 1: that was curious too. The information released about the discovery
Speaker 1: was so minimal. We filed public Records Acts requests with
Speaker 1: California State Parks and the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority,
Speaker 1: the two agencies listed in the report whose rangers made
Speaker 1: the discovery, and we got a very strange reply. Both
Speaker 1: agencies claimed to have no records related to the discovery,
Speaker 1: nothing connected to the search words my Terce Richardson remains, cannabis,
Speaker 1: or dark Canyon, no records at all of the operation
Speaker 1: in which they originally disrupted the grow in July two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine, and no records of what happened when
Speaker 1: they went back to check it on August ninth, twenty ten,
Speaker 1: and unexpectedly discovered human remains, and they refused to make
Speaker 1: anyone available for an interview to explain how such a
Speaker 1: lapse was possible. But that bizarre and inexplicable lack of
Speaker 1: information about the circumstances of the discovery, it would be
Speaker 1: lost in the chaos that was about to engulf the
Speaker 1: my Teres Richardson investigation. Michael Richardson, my Teres's father, was
Speaker 1: three hundred miles away when my Teres's remains were found.
Speaker 1: He was attending a press conference about recent alleged site
Speaker 1: trees in Las Vegas, Nevada, and he does not think
Speaker 1: that was a coincidence.
Speaker 5: I just knew it was a deviation plot to get
Speaker 5: us out to Vegas so they can do what they did.
Speaker 1: He thinks law enforcement deliberately sent him to Las Vegas
Speaker 1: so he'd be out of the way when they purposely
Speaker 1: contaminated the evidence scene, so they know.
Speaker 5: Lee Barka said, well, it was getting dark and we
Speaker 5: had officers out there, and they have wild life, and
Speaker 5: so we had to hurry up and clean up the
Speaker 5: crime scene and leave. They did a botched up job anyway,
Speaker 5: by sweeping or remains in a plastic bag, flying it
Speaker 5: out before the coroner got there to make the call,
Speaker 5: which contaminated the crime scene, and by them tampering with it,
Speaker 5: we don't know if my Trees was killed elsewhere and
Speaker 5: dumped there because they botched up the crime scene.
Speaker 1: If this seems like an elaborate conspiracy theory, I get it.
Speaker 1: I'm not convinced by Michael's version of events, but considering
Speaker 1: everything that happened with my Teres's remains, I understand how he.
Speaker 3: Arrived at it.
Speaker 1: According to an official timeline, my Teres's remains were discovered
Speaker 1: by the rangers at one pm. A few hours later,
Speaker 1: LASD homicide detectives Dan Mackildery and Kevin Asabado, along with
Speaker 1: Sergeant Towey Wright and other Malibu Search and Rescue personnel,
Speaker 1: were lowered by helicopter to the spot. One detective observed
Speaker 1: the skull, a leg, and a pelvic bone in a
Speaker 1: depression covered in leaves. The detectives also saw the clothing
Speaker 1: which the rangers had found a few hundred feet down
Speaker 1: the drainage. Then the rangers hiked out and everyone else
Speaker 1: waited for the coroner's team to arrive. They waited and waited,
Speaker 1: but the coroner's team never came because the helicopter that
Speaker 1: was supposed to bring them in was diverted twice, both
Speaker 1: times to rescue stranded teenage hikers. The helicopter had just
Speaker 1: enough fuel to extract the team that was already on
Speaker 1: the ground, and just enough time. The sun was setting
Speaker 1: and it was too dangerous to attempt an extraction in
Speaker 1: the dark. The deputies at the site were faced with
Speaker 1: a dilemma leave the remains for the coroner to examine
Speaker 1: in place the next day, or bring them out on
Speaker 1: the last helicopter flight of the day. No one was
Speaker 1: prepared to stay overnight in dark canyon guarding the bones.
Speaker 1: The site was infested with fire ants, venomous spiders, and
Speaker 1: poison oak, and they had no supplies, and.
Speaker 3: You know, it was a remote area.
Speaker 1: Sergeant to we write, there was no way to.
Speaker 3: Sleep there, and no way to be prepared to stand
Speaker 3: up stand all night, and no need to.
Speaker 1: Quite frankly, Detective Macelderry argued that leaving the remains overnight
Speaker 1: was unacceptable. He didn't want to risk there being disturbed
Speaker 1: by animals or even by a potential perpetrator who could
Speaker 1: have observed the police activity in the canyon. He called
Speaker 1: the command post and spoke to a coroner captain. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the coroner captain agreed they could bring out the bones
Speaker 1: they'd found the skull, a leg bone, and the pelvis,
Speaker 1: But when the search and rescue team lifted the skull
Speaker 1: from the leafy ground, they found it was attached to
Speaker 1: a nearly complete human skeleton. They put the skeleton on
Speaker 1: a plastic sheet in a body bag, along with the
Speaker 1: clothing my Terce's, jean's braw and belt.
Speaker 3: Macklderry called back, and that's when some media at the
Speaker 3: command posts on the corner side said, and put it back,
Speaker 3: And I said, no, we don't do that. We're not
Speaker 3: going to pretend like we didn't move the bones. And
Speaker 3: it was a done deal at that point. You know,
Speaker 3: it was controversial because the corner did get permission. I
Speaker 3: was a witness to that on the end on the
Speaker 3: Dark Hanyon side, and of course there were witnesses at
Speaker 3: the command posts also ed.
Speaker 1: Winter the assistant chief corner, was incensed. He said no
Speaker 1: one had his permission to move an entire skeleton, and
Speaker 1: he publicly accused the sheriff's Department of compromising his evidence scene.
Speaker 1: He even suggested the Sheriff's department might have broken the law.
Speaker 6: Under the law, the corners ultimately have the authority to
Speaker 6: decide how remains are going to be removed that are discovered.
Speaker 6: There's no question about that.
Speaker 1: This is Michael Janaco, But.
Speaker 6: In reality, the corner's office doesn't have the wherewithal to
Speaker 6: make some of the rescues and recoveries that need to
Speaker 6: be done, and in those cases, almost always they request
Speaker 6: search and rescue and other law enforcement agencies to assist
Speaker 6: in removing remains.
Speaker 1: He's an expert in law forcement procedures, policies, and officer wrongdoing.
Speaker 1: It was his job to figure out if the Sheriff's
Speaker 1: Department had acted improperly by removing my Teresa's bones. You've
Speaker 1: looked at probably thousands of cases of police misconduct.
Speaker 6: Certainly in getting close to one thousand, if not surpassing
Speaker 6: that number over the years.
Speaker 1: Does this case stand out for you for any reason?
Speaker 6: The unique set of circumstances, for sure, the tragic outcome
Speaker 6: for sure, the unanswered questions for sure.
Speaker 1: In twenty twelve, Janako produced a report for the Office
Speaker 1: of Independent Review which oversees the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
Speaker 6: It was extraordinary the degree of disconnect in this case.
Speaker 6: Some of it's explainable by the unusual circumstances, but it
Speaker 6: was a significant disconnect.
Speaker 1: And the unusual circumstances that you referred to are what.
Speaker 6: The time of day, the remoteness of the location, the
Speaker 6: inability to effectively communicate on the cell phones. There was
Speaker 6: also some issues with regard to who was in charge
Speaker 6: of the Corners team, which I think created some issues
Speaker 6: for the Shif's department.
Speaker 1: Do not Go and his staff reviewed all the materials
Speaker 1: related to the recovery. He even hiked to the remain
Speaker 1: site to see it for himself. He's still not sure
Speaker 1: exactly what happened, but he doesn't believe it was police misconduct.
Speaker 6: And as indicated in the report, there was some communication
Speaker 6: with the Corners. The Corners and went back and forth,
Speaker 6: and it's hard to figure out, you know, exactly what happened,
Speaker 6: but the decision was made by homicide to remove the
Speaker 6: remains as it was getting to and they they felt
Speaker 6: like they needed to do that.
Speaker 1: Dunako was able to determine that the removal of the
Speaker 1: remains didn't influence the outcome of the autopsy. The harm
Speaker 1: was in the relationship with the family and public perception,
Speaker 1: and that harm was significant.
Speaker 6: And the reason that we write about it, and the
Speaker 6: reason that it's so unfortunate is because any missteps by
Speaker 6: law enforcement in these kinds of cases, even then, when
Speaker 6: all of a sudden done, it might not have made
Speaker 6: a difference to the eventual outcome, it does create distrust
Speaker 6: by those who are most impacted by what's going on,
Speaker 6: family members and others. And certainly the back and forthing
Speaker 6: between those two agencies did not create an element of
Speaker 6: trust and the capability of the law enforcement agencies and
Speaker 6: recovering her remains.
Speaker 1: And there was more after the autopsy. The coroner accidentally
Speaker 1: released my Teresa's clothing to the funeral home were discovered
Speaker 1: in the body bag with her remains on the day
Speaker 1: of her funeral.
Speaker 6: That was also a mess. That's a legal term, by
Speaker 6: the way, But yeah, releasing the clothes to the family,
Speaker 6: or for the family discovering that the clothes were still
Speaker 6: with her remains was was wrong. I think there was
Speaker 6: a recognition that the clothing needed to be transferred over
Speaker 6: to an investigative agency, and I think eventually it was.
Speaker 1: But that certainly would have led the family to feel
Speaker 1: that the whole process and investigation and inquiry hadn't been
Speaker 1: handled carefully. That is correct, And yet, in spite of everything,
Speaker 1: Janako has never doubted the core contention of law enforcement
Speaker 1: that my Trees was not a victim of homicide and
Speaker 1: that she made her way into Dark Canyon on her own.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me why you think.
Speaker 6: That, because I don't have any other explanation for how
Speaker 6: she got up. She got tired, she was disoriented, she
Speaker 6: couldn't her way out, and she expired as a result
Speaker 6: of probably like a water where food or both. Certainly,
Speaker 6: the allegations that I've heard over the years that deputies
Speaker 6: were involved in her demise, there's absolutely not one shred
Speaker 6: of evidence to support that theory.
Speaker 1: But just as my Teresa's family didn't think she walked
Speaker 1: six miles to Montanito from Lost Hills Station, they certainly
Speaker 1: didn't think she climbed up into Dark Canyon on her own.
Speaker 1: And when they went into Dark Canyon themselves, they knew
Speaker 1: it for sure. When the coroner's team finally made it
Speaker 1: to the site of my Teresa's remains. More than two
Speaker 1: weeks after the initial discovery, they retrieved several additional bones.
Speaker 1: The Sheriff's department, working hastily against the dying light, had
Speaker 1: missed them. Michael Richardson was outraged and he did something outrageous.
Speaker 1: He sent a box of chicken bones to Sheriff Lee Baca.
Speaker 1: He called it his bone to pick campaign.
Speaker 5: So the way that they took my trees remains and
Speaker 5: just boxed them up and threw them in a plastic bag,
Speaker 5: we went to Roscoe's Chicken and Waffle, and the bones
Speaker 5: that was left remaining, we put them in a box
Speaker 5: and mailed them to Bacca and says, imagine if this
Speaker 5: was your kid that was swept up and put in
Speaker 5: a box like this.
Speaker 1: Even after the coroner's team searched Dark Canyon, there were
Speaker 1: still bones missing. My Teresa's friends and family wanted to
Speaker 1: do their own recovery.
Speaker 4: So we had wanted to go hike back into the site.
Speaker 1: Doctor Ronda Hampton again.
Speaker 4: So finally I'm I called Liebaka and so we have
Speaker 4: a meeting and he's and he says, well to his
Speaker 4: commanding staff, like I don't understand why we can't just
Speaker 4: let the family know, and then he says, no better yet.
Speaker 4: I want the search and rescue team to hike the
Speaker 4: family in there so that they can, you know, you know,
Speaker 4: feel where she was and you know, kind of have
Speaker 4: their memorial.
Speaker 1: In November of twenty ten, three months after my Rise
Speaker 1: was found, her mother, her aunt, Doctor Hampton, and Clea Koff,
Speaker 1: an independent forensic anthropologist who was working with the family,
Speaker 1: hiked up Dark Canyon. They were escorted by Sergeant Wright
Speaker 1: from Malibu Search and Rescue and several members of his team.
Speaker 1: It was a grueling hike. At one point they had
Speaker 1: to put on harnesses and belay up a sheer rock face.
Speaker 4: They had an equipment on us and everything, and they
Speaker 4: it was overgrown, so they would hack through the poison
Speaker 4: oak and whatever. And when we need to go over boulders.
Speaker 1: There wasn't a chance they thought my trees had come
Speaker 1: this way. She was a suburban girl in vans who
Speaker 1: had asthma. It took them several hours to reach the site.
Speaker 1: In a depression about forty feet off the creek bed.
Speaker 1: Looking around, doctor Hampton felt a rush of anger. People
Speaker 1: had been there. There were metal irrigation pipes related to
Speaker 1: the marijuana grow, and there was a ton of trash.
Speaker 4: When we were down there. There were food wrappers. Certainly
Speaker 4: the marijuana grow had all their equipment down there. I
Speaker 4: didn't want to touch it because I thought, oh, I'm
Speaker 4: going to tell the detectives about this so they can
Speaker 4: come and look at it.
Speaker 1: There was no way the growers would have carried all
Speaker 1: that stuff up the creek bed. Clearly there was another
Speaker 1: way in.
Speaker 4: I don't believe that they would access all that equipment
Speaker 4: through the creek bed the way that they took us.
Speaker 4: I think there's a much easier and probably more than one,
Speaker 4: much easier way to get there.
Speaker 1: But how would my Teres, stumbling around in the dark
Speaker 1: have found that way in unless she was taken there
Speaker 1: by someone who knew the trails. Clia Cough, the forensic anthropologist,
Speaker 1: had worked in Rwanda after the genocide, helping to exhume
Speaker 1: victims and look for evidence of war crimes. She was
Speaker 1: trained in finding and identifying small bone fragments. That's why
Speaker 1: the family wanted her there. They wanted to find the
Speaker 1: rest of my Teresa's bones.
Speaker 4: When we were down there, I had already arranged for
Speaker 4: Clia to show me how to search for bones.
Speaker 1: Doctor Hampton started sifting through the leaves.
Speaker 4: I was mimicking her hand movements, and as soon as
Speaker 4: I did that like that, then there was a bone
Speaker 4: right there. She looked at me like like shocked that
Speaker 4: it was just the bone that was right there. And
Speaker 4: then she had to alert to E that we found
Speaker 4: a bone. And then that was it. They had to
Speaker 4: airlift us out of their What bone does it turn
Speaker 4: out to be? It turned out to be her fingerbone.
Speaker 1: A few months later, in February of twenty eleven, the
Speaker 1: coroner's team went into Dark Canyon for a final sweep.
Speaker 7: I went out there with the it's called the Short
Speaker 7: Team Special Operations Recovery Team.
Speaker 1: This is doctor Lisa Shinen, the forensic pathologist who performed
Speaker 1: the autopsy on my trees.
Speaker 7: They wanted to go back one more time that I
Speaker 7: went out with the investigators on this team.
Speaker 1: Rather than hike up the creek bed, the SORT team
Speaker 1: was lowered into the canyon by helicopter.
Speaker 7: My heart was in my throat the whole time, because
Speaker 7: you were just attached to this line that they had
Speaker 7: running down from the one thousand feet or however many feet
Speaker 7: it was from the helicopter into the canyon and you
Speaker 7: were held on with a carabineer, which is like a
Speaker 7: big clip, and that's the only thing really holding you
Speaker 7: on there. And I'm going, oh my god, this thing
Speaker 7: better not come loose.
Speaker 1: The terrain was forbidding it.
Speaker 7: It was not pretty. Is extremely overgrown, a very irregular terrain.
Speaker 7: It's not a good place for hiking trails. It felt
Speaker 7: kind of claustrophobic the way there was so much foliage
Speaker 7: and it was so dense. It was that, Yeah, you
Speaker 7: were feeling kind of hemmed in.
Speaker 1: And were you successful and finding any more remains on
Speaker 1: that track?
Speaker 7: We did? We found several additional remains, mostly small bones.
Speaker 7: We don't really know exactly if they were where the
Speaker 7: whole body was. They're probably close, but they could have
Speaker 7: been washed downstream.
Speaker 1: Doctor Shining and the sort team collected eight additional bone
Speaker 1: fragments that day, but one important bone was still missing,
Speaker 1: arguably the most important bone, the hyoid, the bone in
Speaker 1: the throat that often breaks during strangulation. There was no
Speaker 1: trauma to my Teresa's skull, no sign of gunshot, wound,
Speaker 1: or stabbing. That tiny bone could be the one piece
Speaker 1: of forensic evidence that would change her cause of death
Speaker 1: from undetermined to homicide, but the coroners didn't find it.
Speaker 1: Sergeant Dewey Wrights had many opportunities to think about my
Speaker 1: Teresa's death. He visited the site numerous times back then.
Speaker 1: He thought what everyone in law enforcement thought.
Speaker 3: A lot of us had the opinion that my Trees
Speaker 3: had some kind of a mental breakdown, that she somehow
Speaker 3: got up in Dark Canyon, and that she somehow died
Speaker 3: from exposure of some type or possibly something else like rattlesnaks.
Speaker 3: There's feminist spiders, things like that.
Speaker 1: He concluded that she'd wanted to die, otherwise she would
Speaker 1: have walked back out the way she'd come in. And
Speaker 1: there was one more thing about the site where the
Speaker 1: remains were found that made him think my Trees hadn't
Speaker 1: wanted to be rescued. It was so close to the
Speaker 1: Porn Ranch.
Speaker 3: And when I was standing where the remains were found,
Speaker 3: I could hear the dogs that were owned by those
Speaker 3: people that was called the porn Ranch. So that tells
Speaker 3: me if I can hear their dogs barking, they could
Speaker 3: hear her yelling if she needs help, if she's screaming
Speaker 3: in the middle of the night, I would think that
Speaker 3: it's possible, very possible that that location or might hear her.
Speaker 3: So it led me believe that she just didn't want
Speaker 3: to be found.
Speaker 1: Sergeant Wright figured my trees hadn't needed help. But to me,
Speaker 1: the fact that the people at the porn ranch didn't
Speaker 1: hear a call for help could mean something else. Not
Speaker 1: that she didn't scream, but that she couldn't. What if
Speaker 1: whoever had taken her there strangled her, or what if
Speaker 1: by the time she got into Dark Canyon she was
Speaker 1: already dead? Next time on Lost.
Speaker 3: Hills, do you think somebody could have taken her?
Speaker 5: Or you know what if somebody took her and did
Speaker 5: whatever they did, I think they would.
Speaker 3: Have had to have come back with more than one person.
Speaker 3: Did drag that body down to where it was? She's
Speaker 3: two miles up on the man you want to go
Speaker 3: up through? I'm yeah, sure.
Speaker 1: That's next in episode seven in the Shit. Lost Hills
Speaker 1: is written and hosted by Me Dana Goodyear. It was
Speaker 1: reported by me and Hailey Fox, our senior producer. The
Speaker 1: show was created by me and Benadere. Lost Hills is
Speaker 1: a production of Western Sound and Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to
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