Speaker 1: Pushkin Hello, Hello Revision's history listeners. Today we're taking you
Speaker 1: to Malibu to explore one of the city's greatest unsolved mysteries.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and nine, a woman named Matrice Richardson
Speaker 1: was released from the Malibu Lost Hills Sheriff's Station, and
Speaker 1: she never made it home. Nearly a year later, Patrees's
Speaker 1: remains were discovered in a canyon six miles from the station.
Speaker 1: Everyone knows something horrible happened to Mctries, and for fifteen years,
Speaker 1: the Sheriff's department has failed to solve her case. In
Speaker 1: the latest season out of Pushkin Industries, host Dana Goodyear
Speaker 1: is investigating what happened to Matries in Lost Hills Dark Canyon.
Speaker 1: Today you'll hear the first episode of the season. If
Speaker 1: you want to hear more, you can find a show
Speaker 1: in your favorite podcast player. And if you want to
Speaker 1: hear the entire season right now at free, you can
Speaker 1: subscribe to Pushkin Plus on the Lost Hills Dark Canyon
Speaker 1: Apple podcast show page or at pushkin dot fm, slash Plus.
Speaker 1: Here's Dana.
Speaker 2: A couple of years ago, I found a video buried
Speaker 2: on the Internet, deep in the metadata behind the four
Speaker 2: or four error codes. In it, a young black woman
Speaker 2: is questioning a middle aged white guy who's sitting on
Speaker 2: the edge of his bed drinking a beer.
Speaker 3: Did you hear Bena on the door talking the door
Speaker 3: like they just shut it on her or something on.
Speaker 2: The person they're talking about is my Teres Richardson, a
Speaker 2: twenty four year old black woman who disappeared in Malibu
Speaker 2: in two thousand and nine and whose remains were discovered
Speaker 2: there eleven months later. They're talking about the day of
Speaker 2: her disappearance.
Speaker 4: And was above when I first hearted to void him
Speaker 4: by the time I got down with love and kind
Speaker 4: of curiosity kind of drugged me closer.
Speaker 2: In the Facebook, the interview is being shot vertical, seemingly
Speaker 2: on a cell phone, with the guy taking up the
Speaker 2: whole frame. He looks like an aging California golden boy
Speaker 2: with gray and blonde hair, a tan and a barrel chest.
Speaker 2: He's relaxed, wearing a sky blue Henley shirt tucked into
Speaker 2: a pair of camouflage shorts.
Speaker 3: So I really couldn't see her face, but I could
Speaker 3: see her shadow.
Speaker 2: That's While he says this, he gestures broadly, waving his
Speaker 2: big paws around in the air.
Speaker 4: In the light of the knife, you know, with the
Speaker 4: light of the front porch, and she was screaming at something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was pretty loud. I'm thinking, God damn's forth,
Speaker 3: three of them morn What was she saying? She was saying,
Speaker 3: God damn, buddy. Still, you know, she was pit or something,
Speaker 3: you know, something that he was.
Speaker 5: The people at the house, she was angry and maybe
Speaker 5: they told her she had to read get a call
Speaker 5: at police, and she was telling him miss you sun
Speaker 5: him whatever.
Speaker 2: But he got curious. The scene was so out of
Speaker 2: place in this quiet neighborhood, a young woman alone in
Speaker 2: the early morning hours, shouting she might be in trouble.
Speaker 3: Because I think, well, if there's some dude there, I'm
Speaker 3: not going to let some dudy here her.
Speaker 5: You know, I would have hesitated to walk on that property.
Speaker 6: But since I wasn't, you know, and I couldn't see
Speaker 6: anybody else except for her, or not really even her,
Speaker 6: just she was she was angry something.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm kind of that would have been right there.
Speaker 3: I would donald protected.
Speaker 2: The interviewer her name's Raven Masterson. She made the video
Speaker 2: so sometime after my Terce's remains were found, like so
Speaker 2: many people she wanted to figure out what happened to
Speaker 2: my trees because the death of my Teres Richardson is
Speaker 2: Malibu's most horrifying, notorious, and scandalous unsolved case. For fifteen years,
Speaker 2: my Teresa's story has been shrouded in mystery. The scant
Speaker 2: clues have been worked over a thousand times to no end.
Speaker 2: There's no resolution, no satisfying explanation, and no one has
Speaker 2: been held accountable. Many people blame the Los Angeles County
Speaker 2: Sheriff's Department for her death. Some take it farther, and
Speaker 2: this is how Ravenlean's in the video. They even think
Speaker 2: a deputy may have killed my Teres. My Terrese was
Speaker 2: arrested at Geoffrey's Restaurant on Pacific Coast Highway on September sixteenth,
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine. She was released from Lost Hill
Speaker 2: Station at twelve twenty five am on the seventeenth. After that,
Speaker 2: there was one official sighting of her at six thirty
Speaker 2: am in the backyard of a house in Montanito, a
Speaker 2: secluded neighborhood off Malibu Canyon that's about six miles from
Speaker 2: the Lost Hill Sheriff Station. But the guy in the
Speaker 2: video he says he saw her too, two hours earlier,
Speaker 2: at four thirty am, making a commotion in the front
Speaker 2: yard of that same house. Montaneito Mountain Nest. It's a
Speaker 2: tight knit community in the shadow of the Santa Monica Mountains.
Speaker 2: Most people in La don't even know it exists. It's
Speaker 2: got creeks and horses and neighbors that have known each
Speaker 2: other in some cases for generations. Kids run around barefoot.
Speaker 2: There's a big Fourth of July parade and an annual
Speaker 2: square dance. It's a place out of time. It feels
Speaker 2: like the rustic horsey California of the nineteen forties mixed
Speaker 2: with the free wheeling party culture of the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 2: And it's got none of the flash of coastal Malibu
Speaker 2: or the nearby gated communities of Calabasas. This is California,
Speaker 2: so of course there have been a couple of waves
Speaker 2: of gentrifiers. But among the old timers, the people who
Speaker 2: practically homesteaded there in the fifties, there's a distinct backwoods
Speaker 2: ingrown feeling, and it bears mentioning. The whole place is
Speaker 2: extremely white, with one notable exception, Will Smith, one of
Speaker 2: the most famous black men in America owns an estate
Speaker 2: in Montanito, but I don't think he frequents the Square
Speaker 2: Dance or the Fourth of July parade. It's hard to
Speaker 2: express how unlikely it is that my trace would end
Speaker 2: up in this isolated community. There isn't even a sign
Speaker 2: for Montanito on Malibu Canyon. How would she even have
Speaker 2: known it was there. Eleven months after my Terce Richardson disappeared,
Speaker 2: park rangers checking a known illegal pot grow found her
Speaker 2: remains in a treacherous canyon above Montanito called Dark Canyon.
Speaker 2: During this time, the Santa Monica Mountains were notorious for
Speaker 2: harboring large marijuana operations run by organized crime syndicates. These
Speaker 2: massive grows were often protected with armed guards who would
Speaker 2: camp out in the canyons for extended periods. The rangers
Speaker 2: had disrupted a Dark Canyon grow in July two thousand
Speaker 2: and nine, two months before my Teresa's disappearance. When they
Speaker 2: returned in August of twenty ten, they didn't report any
Speaker 2: fresh signs of pot growing activity. But there in the
Speaker 2: dormant grow were the remains of a black woman. She
Speaker 2: was mostly bones, a skeleton with small flats as of
Speaker 2: mummified skin remaining, and she was naked. From the beginning,
Speaker 2: every aspect of the case seemed off. What was wrong,
Speaker 2: how she was arrested, how she was released, how she
Speaker 2: was searched for, how her remains were discovered, how her
Speaker 2: remains were recovered, and how her death was investigated. All
Speaker 2: of it looked like a colossal screw up on the
Speaker 2: part of law enforcement, starting with the Lost Hills cops
Speaker 2: and what the Sheriff's Department has said about the case
Speaker 2: over the years, it just makes no sense. Their refrain,
Speaker 2: essentially is some cases can't be solved. This is a
Speaker 2: Sheriff's spokesman three days after my Teres's body was found.
Speaker 3: Homicide will continue their investigation.
Speaker 4: It's likely that we can never find out exactly how
Speaker 4: she got there, but they're going to do their very
Speaker 4: best to.
Speaker 2: Figure And they're still saying my Teres's death will always
Speaker 2: be a mystery. But I don't accept that. It's a stubborn, strange,
Speaker 2: problematic case. But I do think it's solvable because someone
Speaker 2: in that secluded, tight knit community of Montanito knows what
Speaker 2: happened to her. I'm Dana Goodyear and this is lost
Speaker 2: Hills Season four, Dark Canyon, Episode one, Vultures. Right off
Speaker 2: Pacific Coast Highway, across from the Malibu Lagoon and next
Speaker 2: to the gas station, there's a small memorial. It's a
Speaker 2: rock with a plaque on it, commemorating the life of
Speaker 2: a man who was known as Malibu Jo. Malibujo was
Speaker 2: Joe Costello. He was originally from Genoa, Italy, but starting
Speaker 2: in the mid nineteen fifties, he became a beloved Malibu figure,
Speaker 2: riding his bike slowly up and down pH in a
Speaker 2: fedora and a baggy overcoat. In the summer of nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty eight, he was beaten and left for dead in
Speaker 2: the only under bushes where he lived, where the memorial
Speaker 2: is today. He died a few days later. He was
Speaker 2: ninety six years old. The Sheriff's department investigated, but the
Speaker 2: killing was never solved, so no one was ever punished.
Speaker 2: Malibu Jo died two decades before my Terce Richardson. The
Speaker 2: cases have nothing to do with one another except this.
Speaker 2: Both Joe and My Trees show moments of rupture. They're
Speaker 2: both signals that Malibu isn't what it seems. Malibu is
Speaker 2: not paradise sunshine, nature, beauty, health, wealth, and eternal youth.
Speaker 2: That's the myth. But if I've learned one thing reporting here,
Speaker 2: it's that every seductive surface has its dark side. The
Speaker 2: beauty is the danger. It makes you let down your
Speaker 2: guard and believe in the fantasy. The unspoiled wilderness hides
Speaker 2: unspeakable crimes, and a place like that, a place like
Speaker 2: that breeds monsters. In the fall of two thousand and nine,
Speaker 2: my Teresa's disappearance was all over the local news.
Speaker 7: The mystery unraveled on a September night in two thousand
Speaker 7: and nine, right where the Pacific reached the shore of Malibu.
Speaker 2: It all started when my Teres tried to leave Jeffrey's,
Speaker 2: a pricey restaurant on Pacific Coast Highway, without paying her bill.
Speaker 2: She was arrested and taken to Lost Hill station, about
Speaker 2: thirteen miles away.
Speaker 7: They contacted her mother, who said that she will pick
Speaker 7: her up in the morning if you will keep her there.
Speaker 3: Deputy said we will.
Speaker 2: But instead of staying at the station, my Teres walked
Speaker 2: out into the Malibu night. Her car was at a
Speaker 2: towyard near pch with her belongings inside.
Speaker 4: She was released at twelve thirty a m no wallet,
Speaker 4: no cell phone, no credit cards, no car.
Speaker 2: She was gorgeous and charismatic, and as would later come out,
Speaker 2: she was in the midst of a mental health crisis.
Speaker 7: A beauty contestant and honor student, and now a missing person.
Speaker 2: According to her mom, she had no street savvy whatsoever,
Speaker 2: and she didn't know Malibu at all.
Speaker 7: My Terce Richardson walked out of a Los Angeles County
Speaker 7: Sheriff's office and into a miss that continues to baffle investigators.
Speaker 2: And then the mystery became a horror.
Speaker 8: Eleven months later, the twenty four year old college graduates.
Speaker 3: Remains were found here in Dark Canyon. She was naked
Speaker 3: and partially mummified.
Speaker 2: They discovered a skull, They discovered a pelvis, and they
Speaker 2: discovered a.
Speaker 3: Leg, just bones.
Speaker 2: They determined officially, unequivocally, and unfortunately it was my Terce Richardson.
Speaker 4: Corners.
Speaker 5: Officials haven't determined the cause of death, and they say
Speaker 5: Richardson's body was in the canyon for more than six months.
Speaker 7: Whatever happened in Dark Canyon remains from the moment a
Speaker 7: dark secret.
Speaker 2: It's been fifteen years since my trace disappeared, fourteen years
Speaker 2: since her remains were found, and there's been no progress
Speaker 2: on her case. There's no sign that law enforcement is
Speaker 2: actively working on it. But it's not a cold case.
Speaker 2: It's a quote active criminal investigation, which means the Sheriff's
Speaker 2: department doesn't have to share information. And believe me, they
Speaker 2: take that very seriously. They do not like to talk
Speaker 2: about this case. In the midst of their silence, a
Speaker 2: sinister narrative has taken hold in the public imagination that
Speaker 2: the La County Sheriff's Department, specifically the Lost Heils cops,
Speaker 2: are behind my Teres's death. They deny this, but the
Speaker 2: idea lives on in a new generation of true crime
Speaker 2: TikTokers and YouTubers.
Speaker 8: Welcome to another episode of Murder, Mystery and Makeup Monday.
Speaker 8: Today's story was about Matrise Richardson.
Speaker 3: Kind of feels like that they were hiding something.
Speaker 7: The police work in this case was off long. Is
Speaker 7: this incompetence or cover up?
Speaker 8: I mean they originally were trying to hide the fact
Speaker 8: that they had security footage.
Speaker 2: The previous captain was in on it and promoted for
Speaker 2: his cover up job.
Speaker 3: I believe that matterse Richardson was murdered and it was
Speaker 3: covered up by the La County Sheriff.
Speaker 2: We know the cops took My Trees to the station,
Speaker 2: and the cops let her go in the dark. This
Speaker 2: part is true, undisputed fact. And then what how did
Speaker 2: she get from the station to Montanito six miles away?
Speaker 2: How did she end up in dark Canyon? Why was
Speaker 2: she naked? And what happened to her missing bones? Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: that's one more undisputed fact. While most of my Trees's
Speaker 2: bones were eventually accounted for, discovered in the canyon's heavy
Speaker 2: leaf litter, an important one has not been found, the
Speaker 2: fragile bone above the larynx that often breaks when a
Speaker 2: person is strangled. My Terce Richardson's death is not officially
Speaker 2: a homicide. The autopsy reads, quote, while there is no
Speaker 2: evidence of antimortem trauma to the bones or the limited
Speaker 2: amount of tissue accompanying them, in the absence of internal viscera,
Speaker 2: internal injury cannot be completely ruled out and quote, in
Speaker 2: the absence of suitable specimens for toxicology testing, the possibility
Speaker 2: of fatal substance abuse cannot be ruled out, and quote
Speaker 2: death due to exposure snake bite, pneumonia, or other natural
Speaker 2: diseases also cannot be ruled out. Therefore, quote both cause
Speaker 2: and manner of death remain undetermined. Unquote Hello, how are you.
Speaker 3: I'm Dana, Dana. Hi, nice to meet.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm at the home of Lisa Shinen. She's the
Speaker 2: forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsy of my Teresa's remains.
Speaker 2: She's also one of the world's foremost authorities on roller coasters.
Speaker 7: That is my big hobby, that collecting butterflies.
Speaker 2: Her house, a normal looking suburban house in Redondo Beach,
Speaker 2: is basically a natural history museum. So do you capture
Speaker 2: them in a net?
Speaker 7: And then uh tick a look.
Speaker 2: Shadow box frames filled with specimens are stacked in every corner.
Speaker 7: There's something called a killing jar which you can make.
Speaker 7: It's a jar that has a plaster of Paris base
Speaker 7: and then you pour in. You can use cyanide when
Speaker 7: you screw the cap on. It's a closed environment and
Speaker 7: it makes fumes that kill the butterfly, basically put it
Speaker 7: to sleep in seconds.
Speaker 2: Doctor Shinen worked for the La County Coroner's Office for
Speaker 2: twenty four years or.
Speaker 7: I was a deputy medical examiner at the La County
Speaker 7: Coroner's Office.
Speaker 2: Now retired, she worked on a lot of high profile cases.
Speaker 2: She did the autopsies on the musicians Elliott Smith, a
Speaker 2: notorious big.
Speaker 7: My autopsyed Steve Allen, Doctor Nor from the Killing Fields,
Speaker 7: Brittany Murphy, Brian Keith. That goes back.
Speaker 2: But my Terce's case stands out.
Speaker 7: There are, over the years some cases that do stick
Speaker 7: with me because of the circumstances of the case. There
Speaker 7: were so many unknowns. I mean, every time I've been
Speaker 7: near Malibu, I'd start thinking of oll, geez, this is
Speaker 7: where my trace was, and this is just such a
Speaker 7: tragic case.
Speaker 2: But she knew at the start was very basic. A
Speaker 2: few scattered pieces of clothing and a human skeleton had
Speaker 2: been found in an inaccessible canyon in Malibu. The autopsy
Speaker 2: report details the pie of my Teresa's clothing that were
Speaker 2: recovered from the remain site. One navy blue or black
Speaker 2: padded bra two pink narrow belt, medium large alligator skin pattern,
Speaker 2: three blue jeans US size twenty nine, dirty, empty pockets.
Speaker 2: She'd been wearing a Bob Marley T shirt and a
Speaker 2: pair of vans when she left Lost Hill Station. She
Speaker 2: also had her California driver's license on her. Those items,
Speaker 2: along with her hat and her keys, were missing.
Speaker 7: I had the investigator's report. This particular investigator's report was
Speaker 7: very straightforward. It said somebody from law enforcement was checking
Speaker 7: an area in a remote canyon and found the bones
Speaker 7: and the clothing, and the clothing was about one hundred
Speaker 7: feet away from the skeleton. You know, that's very limited information.
Speaker 7: Sometimes we have two or three pages of information, but
Speaker 7: some in this case. So the first thing you do
Speaker 7: is you lay everything out in anatomical order and count
Speaker 7: what you've got. It was a nearly complete skeleton. It
Speaker 7: wasn't in an intact skeleton, and that everything was connected.
Speaker 7: There were a lot of disarticulated bones, but there were
Speaker 7: some areas or certain blocks, like some parts of the
Speaker 7: lower extremities, parts of some of the upper extremities were
Speaker 7: held together by a minimal amount of soft tissue.
Speaker 2: The soft tissue was mostly skin that had been mummified.
Speaker 7: Yeah, mummification is a process. It can be accidental. If
Speaker 7: you have a body in a very dry, hot environment,
Speaker 7: the liquid essentially disappears and what you get is this
Speaker 7: very leathery, rigid skin. Sometimes some soft tissue. Usually the
Speaker 7: internal organs don't mummify, so it's mostly the skin muscle
Speaker 7: tendons at that type of thing.
Speaker 2: There were a few small marks on some of the
Speaker 2: bones the work. Doctor Shinen thought of animals scavenging the remains.
Speaker 7: The toes of the left foot were missing, and that
Speaker 7: was consistent with animal activity.
Speaker 2: But otherwise the bones were intact.
Speaker 7: We look for things like fractures, which would usually mean
Speaker 7: some sort of a blunt force impact. We would look
Speaker 7: for any evidence of a gunshot wound, or a stabbing.
Speaker 7: I didn't see any evidence of a physical traumatic injury.
Speaker 2: There was also no way to tell if my Trees
Speaker 2: had been sexually assaulted.
Speaker 7: Without soft tissue, there's really nothing that you can do
Speaker 7: or see, and sperm doesn't last.
Speaker 2: Without internal organs. There was no way to tell if
Speaker 2: she had overdosed.
Speaker 7: She wasn't found with cocaine, with amphetamine, heroin, anything like that.
Speaker 7: I didn't really have a history of that type of thing,
Speaker 7: But again without being able to do an accurate test,
Speaker 7: we don't know.
Speaker 2: There was a small amount of leg muscle. Doctor Schinen
Speaker 2: sent it in for toxicology, and that report came back inconclusive.
Speaker 2: As soon as my Trees's remains were discovered. Law enforcement
Speaker 2: began suggesting that my Trees, experiencing a mental health episode,
Speaker 2: had probably wandered into Dark Canyon by herself and died
Speaker 2: from exposure, dehydration, venom, or something. Her death, they implied,
Speaker 2: was tragic but natural. I asked doctor Shinin about the
Speaker 2: natural causes theory.
Speaker 7: In this particular case. There's several possibilities. There are rattlesnakes there.
Speaker 7: She could have been bitten by a rattlesnakes fire. Ants,
Speaker 7: she could have had a severe allergic reaction to something.
Speaker 7: There's poison oak there. That's horrible. It's everywhere, and some
Speaker 7: people are more sensitive than others.
Speaker 2: But why would the skeleton be naked. My Trees's broad
Speaker 2: belt and jeans were found hundreds of feet from the skeleton,
Speaker 2: and the belt was no longer on the jeans. A
Speaker 2: seasonal stream, Dark Creek runs through the canyon, and cops
Speaker 2: suggested that a flash flood could have removed her clothes,
Speaker 2: carrying them downstream. The winter my Trese was missing was
Speaker 2: a rainy one, but even so, it takes a real
Speaker 2: contortion of logic to imagine a flood could strip a
Speaker 2: body naked and remove a belt from a pair of pants.
Speaker 7: Usually, when we have a person who's dead with their
Speaker 7: clothes on, the clothes will stay on. Even if the
Speaker 7: body mummifies, the clothes are going to stay on. Water
Speaker 7: might wash all socks or something like that, but it's
Speaker 7: not going to completely undress a body.
Speaker 2: Doctor Shinen raised a different natural explanation for my Teresa's
Speaker 2: nudity hypothermia.
Speaker 7: There's something that happens with extreme cold cold, paradoxical undressing. Normally,
Speaker 7: when you're cold, your blood vessels will constrict to try
Speaker 7: to keep the blood more central in the body. Well,
Speaker 7: what happens with paradoxical undressing is there is a reflex
Speaker 7: dilatation of these blood vessels. So all of a sudden,
Speaker 7: you get this rush of nice warm blood into these
Speaker 7: areas that were previously cold, and people who were probably
Speaker 7: a little bit out of it by this point think,
Speaker 7: oh my gosh, it's so warm, I'm too hot, and
Speaker 7: they take their clothes off. However, that tends to happen
Speaker 7: more often in extreme cold where there's snow.
Speaker 2: In mid September two thousand and nine, the average overnight
Speaker 2: low at the weather recording station nearest to Dark Canyon
Speaker 2: was in the mid sixties, and.
Speaker 7: I'm not sure it would get cold enough up in
Speaker 7: the canyon for that to happen, But it's just something
Speaker 7: to think about.
Speaker 2: Obviously, there's another possible explanation foul play.
Speaker 7: There are sinister reasons for the person not having their
Speaker 7: clothes on. I mean, could she have been sexually assaulted
Speaker 7: and they just took her clothes off and left them off.
Speaker 7: Who knows. It's certainly a real possibility.
Speaker 2: And what about the missing clothing, and also the.
Speaker 7: Fact that it was an incomplete set of clothes and
Speaker 7: none of the additional items of clothing were ever found,
Speaker 7: and including shoes, which I think have a little more
Speaker 7: weight than other clothing.
Speaker 2: As with everything about my Teresa's case, the story of
Speaker 2: her remains is a story of absence, gaps, and guesses.
Speaker 2: A forensic pathologist works by process of elimination, but with
Speaker 2: so little hard evidence, it was difficult to rule out anything.
Speaker 7: So the fact that I didn't see any trauma in
Speaker 7: the bones doesn't mean trauma didn't happen. It's always possible
Speaker 7: that a gunshot wound can go through and through a
Speaker 7: body without hitting bone, same thing for a stab wound.
Speaker 7: What's also possible is asphyxia or a manual strangulation, or
Speaker 7: maybe you know, choked with a rope. The reason people
Speaker 7: die when they're strangled is you're cutting off the blood
Speaker 7: flow to the brain. We're looking for things that reflect
Speaker 7: the fact that you are compressing neck structures.
Speaker 2: In the autopsy report, there's a list of missing bones
Speaker 2: from the hand, the left toes presumably scavenged by animals,
Speaker 2: the tailbone, the zyphoid process at the bottom of the sternum,
Speaker 2: and a thin, fragile neck bone called the hyoid.
Speaker 7: The hyoid bone is the only floating bone in the body.
Speaker 7: It's not attached to any other bone. It sits a
Speaker 7: little bit above the thyroid cartilage, and it's essentially there
Speaker 7: as a base of muscle attachment.
Speaker 2: Because of its shape and position in the body, a
Speaker 2: broken hyoid can provide clear evidence of strangulation for a
Speaker 2: forensic pathologist. It's a very significant bone.
Speaker 7: And what's important about it is it's a U shaped
Speaker 7: bone with the projections heading towards the back of the neck.
Speaker 7: So if it's compressed from both sides, which is what
Speaker 7: happens when you have a strangulation case. With the manual
Speaker 7: strangulate is that you're putting pressure on the wings of
Speaker 7: the hyoid bone and a can fracture. The thing with
Speaker 7: the hyoid is if you found it and it was broken,
Speaker 7: you could say, aha, this person was strangled.
Speaker 2: But like the missing clothing and her id, my Teresa's
Speaker 2: hyoid bone was never found. Doctor Shinen says my Teresa's
Speaker 2: case could still be resolved with new evidence. The coroner
Speaker 2: could change the cause of death from undetermined.
Speaker 7: If there was foul play involved, someone could confess. You
Speaker 7: never know, it could be deathbed confession. Maybe they'll raid
Speaker 7: somewhere someplace and they'll find pictures of her. Anything is possible.
Speaker 7: They could just investigate the right person at the right time.
Speaker 7: Sometimes killers will save souvenirs that can be recognized as
Speaker 7: something from the person. Anything like that could happen.
Speaker 2: Anything could happen, including this. Someone who knows something could
Speaker 2: decide they've kept the secret for too long. My Teresa's
Speaker 2: movements on September seventeenth, two thousand and nine, are mostly unknown.
Speaker 2: After she was released from Lost Hil Station at twelve
Speaker 2: twenty five am, she somehow made her way six miles
Speaker 2: to Montanito in the dark. The next morning, around six
Speaker 2: thirty am. She was spotted there in the backyard of
Speaker 2: a house at the bottom of Cold Canyon Road, and.
Speaker 4: I saw somebody sitting on the top step of the
Speaker 4: sixt railroad ties that we have in the backyard.
Speaker 3: I called David, said are you okay?
Speaker 5: And the answer was yes, I'm just resting, And by
Speaker 5: the time we were around to the other window, she
Speaker 5: was gone.
Speaker 2: That's Karen Smith speaking in an ABC seven documentary about
Speaker 2: my Teres's disappearance. Karen's house is kind of a landmark
Speaker 2: in the neighborhood because it has a tennis court out front.
Speaker 2: Her husband, Bill Smith, who died in twenty seventeen, was
Speaker 2: a reporter on KTLA, a local TV news station. The
Speaker 2: Smith's called the cops, and later deputies confirmed that the
Speaker 2: woman who'd been in the backyard was my Terce. That's
Speaker 2: the one official sighting of my Terce Richardson after she
Speaker 2: left Lost Hill Station. But then there's the other story,
Speaker 2: the unofficial story, the one the guy on the edge
Speaker 2: of his bed told Raven in the Lost interview.
Speaker 3: It was four thirty in the morning. I'm coming down
Speaker 3: off my mountain a little higher.
Speaker 4: So what do you lose?
Speaker 3: Right? I lived therese, Yeah, right down the street. I've
Speaker 3: lived in want and you know, all my life, so
Speaker 3: my folks lived here early.
Speaker 2: And so he says he was heading down into the
Speaker 2: neighborhood from his spot on the mountain in the early
Speaker 2: morning hours.
Speaker 3: Come down four to thirty in the morning.
Speaker 5: And because I left about four fifteen for my spot,
Speaker 5: tax by that ten minutes certateen minutes.
Speaker 3: See down and I'm coming down.
Speaker 5: There's that well almost step with bluff and Cold Canyon,
Speaker 5: and there was a right with Cold Canyon. There's a
Speaker 5: house with a tennis court right there, and as a
Speaker 5: as a big horseshoe driveway.
Speaker 2: That's the Smith's house.
Speaker 3: Are you looking up on the internet, because the guy
Speaker 3: gave a.
Speaker 2: Statement, but his story and the Smith's story they're really different.
Speaker 2: The time where my terrace was on the property, they
Speaker 2: don't line up.
Speaker 4: He found her in the backyard talking to herself, but
Speaker 4: you know when she wasn't in the backyard and I
Speaker 4: she was in the front door, but I couldn't.
Speaker 2: And in his count, she wasn't quietly resting. She was
Speaker 2: audibly distressed.
Speaker 3: But I could hear the scream.
Speaker 7: I can tell you the blacks by her draw yeah,
Speaker 7: the intonation in your voice.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that black people lived in want to Neo.
Speaker 2: So he says he decided to hang out just to
Speaker 2: make sure she was safe.
Speaker 3: Stayed there for about thirty seconds, and I said, come
Speaker 3: a little bit five of this right now.
Speaker 2: But when she didn't seem to be in danger, he
Speaker 2: figured he should move along.
Speaker 3: She was scream about enough did I go in the
Speaker 3: couse's going to be here. I got to get out
Speaker 3: of here. So I was at home.
Speaker 2: The woman, he says, was a total stranger to him
Speaker 2: at the time. He didn't know she was about to
Speaker 2: become a household name.
Speaker 3: And so I just I didn't think much of it,
Speaker 3: you know, I didn't know that she did be harassed.
Speaker 3: It was the same night, you know, certain stay ex
Speaker 3: of the situation.
Speaker 2: He didn't know that deputies and search parties with horses,
Speaker 2: drones and dogs were going to be pouring into sleepy
Speaker 2: little Montanito looking for her, this young woman who was
Speaker 2: not from Malibu, who he thought didn't really fit in there.
Speaker 3: There.
Speaker 5: I go, huh, Yeah, I didn't think much about it
Speaker 5: until like two days later when all.
Speaker 3: This came on the news.
Speaker 2: You know, even though he didn't know any of that.
Speaker 2: He knew something out of the ordinary had happened.
Speaker 3: I told my land on the next morning, I said,
Speaker 3: what adline should be able to vound?
Speaker 2: Last night, the next thing that happened, he saw the vultures,
Speaker 2: so many vultures. Vultures are a fact of life in Montanito,
Speaker 2: but this was more than he'd ever seen before, more
Speaker 2: than he could count.
Speaker 3: But so I just.
Speaker 5: Leaves later, you know, I hear that she's missing and that,
Speaker 5: you know, I walked through all this stuff's going on, like.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I'm up at my spot like two days later,
Speaker 3: and I see And I've seen a lot of vultures
Speaker 3: in my life. I've lived after in fifty years, right right,
Speaker 3: never seen one hundred vultures they swoo. That's that seemed
Speaker 3: like a thousand of them, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I've never seen that many. So when did you see this?
Speaker 5: I saw this like two days after she was missing.
Speaker 5: I maybe four days after she was missing. You know,
Speaker 5: I thought to myself, you know, because I lived.
Speaker 3: At through all my life. Now I'm kind of like
Speaker 3: a trapper o'co mountain man, right like that. I wondered
Speaker 3: what they doing up there? You know there's something dead
Speaker 3: out there. You know, obviously there's that many cultures.
Speaker 2: This story of the Montanito lifer who saw my trees
Speaker 2: the morning of her disappearance, it's not out there. The
Speaker 2: recording and all the new information in it got buried
Speaker 2: under so much other information, so much misinformation, conspiracy theories,
Speaker 2: dead ends lies. It was lost in the leaf litter,
Speaker 2: detritus of the Internet. But it's kind of like that
Speaker 2: hyoid bone, tiny and super significant because this ordinary guy,
Speaker 2: sitting on the edge of his bed, drinking a beer,
Speaker 2: telling a story, he makes what is probably the single
Speaker 2: most important statement of any witness in this case.
Speaker 3: I don't know any of the facts except for that
Speaker 3: the constant eye was the last one to see her. Lie.
Speaker 2: If he was the last one to see her alive,
Speaker 2: did he know something about her death? This season on
Speaker 2: Lost Hills, I know one.
Speaker 3: Of them all officers, I had something to do with it.
Speaker 3: It's like when I seen a move, it was like, damn,
Speaker 3: that's crazy, because I was like in a sale with
Speaker 3: this woman.
Speaker 7: Somebody said they actually followed her after she left.
Speaker 2: Do you think you heard someone talking about how the
Speaker 2: deputy could give her a ride somewhere.
Speaker 5: Yes, I was a male deputy.
Speaker 3: I'm getting murdered anybody it's going to be a cop.
Speaker 4: I mean I had to sleep in front of my
Speaker 4: kid's store because of people coming to kill my kids.
Speaker 1: I was dating her at the time, and she ended
Speaker 1: up going missing, and I was questioned by LA Homicide
Speaker 1: as a possible suspect.
Speaker 7: For her disappearance, and one of the other guys came
Speaker 7: in and said, what do you know about my trees?
Speaker 4: He knew exactly where she was, which gives me the chills.
Speaker 3: Imagine if this was your kid that was swept up
Speaker 3: and put in a box like this.
Speaker 2: Lost Tails Season four, Dark Canyon is written and hosted
Speaker 2: by Me Dana Goodyear. It was reported by me and
Speaker 2: Hailey Fox, our senior producer. The show was created by
Speaker 2: me and Ben Adare. Lost Tails is a production of
Speaker 2: Eastern Sound and Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus and
Speaker 2: you can binge the whole season right now ad free.
Speaker 2: Find Pushkin Plus on the Lost Hill Show page in
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin dot Fm, slash plus