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Speaker 1: Pushkin. At 12.25 a.m. on September 17, 2009, 24-year-old Mitrice

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Speaker 1: Richardson was released from the Malibu Lost Hills Sheriff's Station.

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Speaker 1: She had no money, no phone, and no ride. She

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Speaker 1: walked out of the station and into the night. and

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Speaker 1: she never made it home. A beauty contestant, an honor student,

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Speaker 1: and now a missing person. We were told he's just

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Speaker 1: another Black girl missing out of Malibu, that we were

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Speaker 1: wasting our time. Nearly a year later, Mitrice's naked, skeletonized

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Speaker 1: remains were discovered in a remote canyon six miles from

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Speaker 1: the station. Her death is Malibu's greatest unsolved mystery. I'm

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Speaker 1: Dana Goodyear. Five years ago, I started reporting on the

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Speaker 1: Mitrice-Richardson case. Everyone knows something horrible happened to Mitrice. Nothing

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Speaker 1: about her case makes sense. And for 15 years, the

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Speaker 1: Sheriff's Department has failed to solve it. I got a

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Speaker 1: text message. Hey, there was a partially mummified skeletal remains, naked,

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Speaker 1: found in Montanito. They discovered a skull. They discovered a

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Speaker 1: pelvis and they discovered a leg, just bones. So it

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Speaker 1: was a cover-up from the time Mitrice was released all

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Speaker 1: the way up and still to now, to this day,

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Speaker 1: it's still a cover-up. Homicide will continue their investigation. If

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Speaker 1: there was foul play involved, someone could confess. It's likely

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Speaker 1: that we can never find out exactly how she got there,

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Speaker 1: but they're going to do their very best to figure

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Speaker 1: that out. Mitrice was young and black and beautiful, a

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Speaker 1: professional dancer who was applying to graduate school in psychology.

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Speaker 1: She was also in the midst of what law enforcement

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Speaker 1: now acknowledges was a severe mental health episode. The cops

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Speaker 1: say this might explain her death. Maybe she wandered into

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Speaker 1: that canyon and died. Maybe she was bitten by a

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Speaker 1: rattlesnake or a poisonous spider. What they don't say is

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Speaker 1: that her mental state would have made her an easy

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Speaker 1: victim for a human predator. Malibu is a place of secrets,

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Speaker 1: but no secret can stay buried forever. I mean, that's

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Speaker 1: what I told the cops. If anybody was to get suspected,

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Speaker 1: it'd probably be him. Do you know anything about that girl?

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Speaker 1: And he's like, what girl? What girl? She's like, the girl,

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Speaker 1: the girl, you know, the girl that fucking, the girl

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Speaker 1: that's dead. The girl that they found. He knew exactly

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Speaker 1: where she was, which gives me the chills. In Malibu,

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Speaker 1: Every seductive surface has a dark side. The beauty is

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Speaker 1: the danger. The unspoiled wilderness hides unspeakable crimes. And a

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Speaker 1: place like that, a place like that breeds monsters. Coming

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Speaker 1: June 10th, Lost Hills, Dark Canyon. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus

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Speaker 1: to hear the whole season early and ad-free. Find Pushkin

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Speaker 1: Plus on the Lost Hills show page in Apple Podcasts

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Speaker 1: or at pushkin.fm slash plus.