Speaker 1: Pushkin Memorial Day weekend, twenty nineteen. It's a month after
Speaker 1: my meeting with Erica. Tristan Bodett has been dead for
Speaker 1: nearly a year. Anthony Route has been in jail for
Speaker 1: seven months, and this is the weekend that State Parks
Speaker 1: thinks it's safe to open the camp round again. From
Speaker 1: the time of Bodette's murder until Route has arrest, the
Speaker 1: authorities offered almost nothing to the public, no warnings, little information,
Speaker 1: so people in Malibu were left to figure things out
Speaker 1: for themselves. There were a lot of creepy similarities among
Speaker 1: the near miss and the murder, but publicly the cops
Speaker 1: kept repeating the same old story, not related, at least
Speaker 1: nothing they would share. But then after Rout's arrest, that changed.
Speaker 1: The crimes were all related, and not just that one
Speaker 1: person had done them all. Was that even possible? I
Speaker 1: need to walk around the campground see it for myself.
Speaker 1: So tonight on the grand reopening weekend, I'll be camping out.
Speaker 1: Turning off the Canyon Road, there's a long entrance road
Speaker 1: leading to a little guard check. The park employees take
Speaker 1: your money and give you your parking pass. The two
Speaker 1: people working seem skittish. Are they nervous about something? A
Speaker 1: park by Site forty nine, that's where Scott McCurdy, Tristan's
Speaker 1: brother in law, camped. That's where I'm staying tonight. It's
Speaker 1: right next to Site fifty one, where Tristan Bodatt was murdered.
Speaker 1: I'm trying not to get creeped out. The campground is
Speaker 1: basically deserted, empty campsite after empty campsite. It's a little eerie.
Speaker 1: There is a young couple here. They're celebrating their second
Speaker 1: wedding anniversary. We were just driving up to go camping,
Speaker 1: and we were planning to actually go to Los Padres
Speaker 1: National Forest, but we're nubs at the camping game and
Speaker 1: did not reserve like six months in advance like everyone
Speaker 1: else did. So we call they decided to try Malibu
Speaker 1: Creek State Park. So we just popped on in and
Speaker 1: there's like a line of you know, cars coming in.
Speaker 1: But we said, like or like for sure it's packed,
Speaker 1: you know, And so he pulled up and they're like, nope,
Speaker 1: there's there's still some spots available. And then we come
Speaker 1: and there's like no one here. So then it's just
Speaker 1: another like the one other camper here at like eleven
Speaker 1: am this morning. It was just like like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: because we're asking if they knew of any hikes, and
Speaker 1: he's like, you know, they check this heck out, this
Speaker 1: heck out, but don't be scared about the murder. And
Speaker 1: we were just like, what are you talking about, Bromly,
Speaker 1: are you the murder? Like I gos like, oh my
Speaker 1: gotch so, but yeah, maybe we'll lea tonight. Walking around,
Speaker 1: I noticed one of those interpretive signs you often see
Speaker 1: in state parks, Animals of the night. It says while
Speaker 1: campers sleep, the park belongs to the animals. Can you
Speaker 1: hear the howl of a coyote, the scratch scratch off mice,
Speaker 1: or the hoot of an owl? As you walk through
Speaker 1: the park, your flashlights suddenly reflects the glowing eyes of
Speaker 1: an animal. The sign talks about bobcats, coyotes, raccoons, but
Speaker 1: doesn't say anything about mountain lions. Maybe they didn't want
Speaker 1: to start a panic. It starts getting dark, so I
Speaker 1: head back to Site forty nine. I pitch my tent
Speaker 1: in the meadow beside the fire pit. I light a
Speaker 1: fire and sit next to it while I eat my
Speaker 1: dinner take out from the grocery store. There's no one
Speaker 1: in triest in site Site fifty one. That's strange. When
Speaker 1: I drove in the park, workers told me it was
Speaker 1: already reserved. I zip into my tent. I text home,
Speaker 1: I'm fine, but this feels weird. I have a sleepless night.
Speaker 1: Every noise feels too close, rainfalls, I'm sure I feel
Speaker 1: something brush up against my tent, the thin wall of
Speaker 1: my tent. I'm sure I hear footsteps approach and then recede.
Speaker 1: I'm so relieved. When the sky lightens to gray, I
Speaker 1: opened up my tent. It's before dawn, lightly drizzling. I
Speaker 1: noticed that the anniversary couple didn't make it through the night,
Speaker 1: and no one ever showed up to claim Sight fifty one.
Speaker 1: I'm Dana Goodyear and this is Lost Hills, Episode four,
Speaker 1: Animals of the Night. In the morning, I decide to
Speaker 1: explore a little more. The campground is the site of
Speaker 1: the murder and two of the near misses. Also the
Speaker 1: place people are the most vulnerable, gathered sleeping guards down.
Speaker 1: I mean, part of being here is trying to understand
Speaker 1: this place that Rooda lived and this place that Tristan
Speaker 1: and Burdett died. Tristan's tent might have been there just
Speaker 1: beyond the picnic table, or he might have been right
Speaker 1: here where I am. But I wondered if his I
Speaker 1: wondered where his door was. I guess I study the
Speaker 1: map Site forty nine where I am, Site fifty one
Speaker 1: where Tristan was. Then the road curves around the meadow
Speaker 1: fifty four fifty five, fifty eight fifty eight. That's where
Speaker 1: near Miss number two happened. It was November ninth, twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: three thirty am. A man named Ron Carson was lying
Speaker 1: in bed when he says his camper was rocked by
Speaker 1: an explosion. He later testified that it quote felt like
Speaker 1: a bomb went off. He wasn't hit, but when he
Speaker 1: turned on the light he saw shotgun pellets stuck into
Speaker 1: the wall right next to where his head had been.
Speaker 1: Just across the road from Site fifty eight is site
Speaker 1: fifty seven, the location of another attack, Near Miss number three.
Speaker 1: On January seventh, twenty seventeen, a woman and her boyfriend
Speaker 1: were sleeping in the back of her car when they
Speaker 1: were awakened by a bang between four and five am.
Speaker 1: The next day, she found a hole in her trunk.
Speaker 1: State Parks police recovered a metal shotgun slug. This is insane.
Speaker 1: These three crime scenes, the camper, the car, and Bodette's
Speaker 1: tent are just a couple hundred feet apart. These shootings
Speaker 1: happened in a tight cluster in the same corner of
Speaker 1: the campground, where a footpath disappears into the woods. I
Speaker 1: follow it. It's overgrown with wild mustard and little purple flowers.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of curious about this way because this seems like,
Speaker 1: I mean, no one is out and about at four am,
Speaker 1: so anywhere would be a place you could go wouldn't
Speaker 1: be observed. The path heads north toward the mountains. I
Speaker 1: know that somewhere out there, two or three miles away,
Speaker 1: beyond Mulholland Highway, in a remote and seldom traveled part
Speaker 1: of the park is where Anthony Rauta lived. It's where
Speaker 1: he was arrested, and it's not that far. There are
Speaker 1: only a couple hundred homeless people in Malibu, and they
Speaker 1: fall into distinct categories. There are the beach dwellers, a
Speaker 1: lot of them living in RV's along Pacific Coast Highway.
Speaker 1: They're the mountain men, homestead or loner types like Routa
Speaker 1: who live up in the hills, and there are the
Speaker 1: townfolk who congregate in and around the library and shops. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll go. Um, let's just shake over here by the
Speaker 1: library and win Park and then we can walk in
Speaker 1: the Legacy I'm tagging along with the sheriff departments Homeless
Speaker 1: Outreach Team. These deputies make regular welfare checks to the
Speaker 1: camps scattered around Malibu. I'm hoping that they might have
Speaker 1: run into Route at some point. We're across from the
Speaker 1: library in Legacy Park, right behind the ultra high end
Speaker 1: Malibu Country Shopping Center. This is a spot where a
Speaker 1: lot of homeless people gather. One of the deputies shows
Speaker 1: me an app they use to keep a record of
Speaker 1: everyone they make contact with. This is everyone I've spoken
Speaker 1: to in the last two years. Ozzie Anthony Route's dad
Speaker 1: told me that his son had a library card that
Speaker 1: he hung out at libraries a lot, in spite of
Speaker 1: being a mountain man. I take a deep breath. Would
Speaker 1: you be able to check that database for someone for
Speaker 1: me to find out if they've received homeless services? And so, Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I can check it. Okay, what's the name? Last name? First,
Speaker 1: first name, first Anthony. Okay, rout At, r A U
Speaker 1: d A seller right, you did it right. Okay, it's
Speaker 1: when I'm to scroll up, but it'll see did not
Speaker 1: find did not match any client. Okay. Disappointing, but not surprising.
Speaker 1: Routa seems like the kind of person who would have
Speaker 1: avoided this kind of contact at all costs. But then,
Speaker 1: just as we're about to leave, a man named Josh
Speaker 1: Crawford walks up to him. My name is Josh Mail.
Speaker 1: How he used to camp here? Now he sleeps in
Speaker 1: a car. The cops tell me that he actually volunteered
Speaker 1: to help fight the Wolsey fire. Sleep over there in
Speaker 1: the park man, and uh, you know, kind of giving
Speaker 1: up on life. So you know, I'm curious how he
Speaker 1: ended up out here. Turns out it's the energy. It's
Speaker 1: so beautiful, you know. Mallible is like, I say, that's
Speaker 1: the reason people come here, because it's an energy here.
Speaker 1: It's a nobody wants to leave. It's like, we'd rather
Speaker 1: sleep on the ground here than an apartment in hell?
Speaker 1: Do you hear me? I rather sleep on the ground
Speaker 1: here around this good energy. How how do you describe
Speaker 1: the community of people living in tents and sleeping rough
Speaker 1: and homeless around Malibu? Is it a welcoming community? Is
Speaker 1: it tight knit? Is it a lot of loaners? What's
Speaker 1: the vibe? It's all above, it's tight en it. It's
Speaker 1: a lot of loaners. It's you got your junkies, you
Speaker 1: got your alcoholics, you got your people that's depressed. You
Speaker 1: got people that have lost their kids, made them lose
Speaker 1: their mind. You know, it's a lot of reason people
Speaker 1: end up out of here. On a psychological level, Can
Speaker 1: I ask you about a specific person, if you ever
Speaker 1: heard of somebody living in I pull up a picture
Speaker 1: of Router on my phone. There are only a few online.
Speaker 1: One from the day of his arrest, another one that
Speaker 1: looks like an old mug shot, and if few from
Speaker 1: his courtroom appearances where he's in a restraint chair wearing
Speaker 1: a blue jumpsuit and a spit mask. Now I'm not pure,
Speaker 1: but that picture show looks so I think he used
Speaker 1: to come down and go to the library. And because
Speaker 1: that guy that's like a younger picture of my thing.
Speaker 1: He's talking about the old mug shot where Rauda has
Speaker 1: a defiant old West outlaw luck. Yeah, because it looks
Speaker 1: like this guy used to be with this, uh white
Speaker 1: lady that was also you know, she was on the street,
Speaker 1: but he was a drinker. Like and uh, yeah, he
Speaker 1: had a girlfriend. I don't know about a girlfriend, but
Speaker 1: he was a white lady. He will be around every
Speaker 1: day and he will be with her. But this was
Speaker 1: like a couple of years ago or something. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: kind of want to say he had a He kept
Speaker 1: a good tar with him too. What no hell of
Speaker 1: a player, I know, but he had a guitar with him.
Speaker 1: You know, everybody will kinna be out for the rockles
Speaker 1: or whatever. He used to say things like about him
Speaker 1: singing and stuff like that because he always had a
Speaker 1: gata with him, a guitar, a lady friend. It's so
Speaker 1: tempting to think of this as Rauta, but I can't
Speaker 1: find anyone who'll confirm it. No one else I talked
Speaker 1: to in Malibu has ever laid eyes on him until
Speaker 1: the day of his capture. I'm trying to catch a shadow.
Speaker 1: Rodas so hard to pin down, so hard to place
Speaker 1: anywhere when he's not firmly behind bars. For months, I've
Speaker 1: been trying to get information from California State Parks, the
Speaker 1: government agency that runs Malibu Creek State Park, and for
Speaker 1: months they've been totally stonewalling. Hi Dan, Now, this is
Speaker 1: Gloria Sandoval from the firm California State Parks, returning your
Speaker 1: phone call. Unfortunately, due to the ongoing investigation, we can't
Speaker 1: make anybody available for your interview at this time. But
Speaker 1: I ask for anything and everything, crime data, staffing levels,
Speaker 1: staff lists, occupancy data, incident reports, anything that might shed
Speaker 1: even a little light on what happened. Months go by
Speaker 1: between my emails and calls and their responses. After a
Speaker 1: long wait, I do get some data from State Parks,
Speaker 1: but it's incomplete and inconclusive, they tell me repeatedly, in
Speaker 1: every way you can think of. No, no, we will
Speaker 1: not explain what happened Malibu Creek State Park between twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen and twenty eighteen. The parks have their own police force.
Speaker 1: Those are the rangers, sworn peace officers with badges and guns.
Speaker 1: They could have investigated the shootings. I know from talking
Speaker 1: to Sergeant Right that at least one person fairly high
Speaker 1: up at the park knew they needed Lostell's help. But
Speaker 1: what were they doing over there? It's impossible to find out.
Speaker 1: The Only thing I do find out. I learned from court.
Speaker 1: It's pretty damning. The tent that Tristan Bodett was killed
Speaker 1: in the crime scene itself. It was never booked into evidence,
Speaker 1: it was never properly examined. It couldn't be because State
Speaker 1: Parks threw it away. If the craziest thing I've learned
Speaker 1: about the park is that they left a campground to
Speaker 1: open after there'd been multiple shootings there, then this is
Speaker 1: the second craziest thing. Someone was murdered in his tent
Speaker 1: in that same campground and you throw it in the trash.
Speaker 1: No wonder. No one wants to talk to me. The
Speaker 1: only thing I can do is keep going back to
Speaker 1: the park. One day, I join a walking tour led
Speaker 1: by a former ranger to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of
Speaker 1: Planet of the Apes, which was filmed in Malibu Creek
Speaker 1: State Park. So many people refer to this as the
Speaker 1: Jewel of Santa Monica Mounds. That's how desperate I am.
Speaker 1: It's roughly a three mile round trip from here. We
Speaker 1: will just go up the road a little bit to
Speaker 1: see our first scene location. Then we'll come back and
Speaker 1: we'll head down into the heart of the park. It's
Speaker 1: a motley crew of film buffs and science fiction fans
Speaker 1: and people looking to fill as Sunday with a hike
Speaker 1: in Malibu Creek State Park. We're about thirty minutes in
Speaker 1: when someone brings up the Boudette murder. Oh oh, that
Speaker 1: was in the campground. Unsurprisingly, the ranger doesn't want to
Speaker 1: talk about it, but I think it's possible they got
Speaker 1: the tire. Yeah. Well him, until we got the evidence,
Speaker 1: I guess. He does say that the killing has significantly
Speaker 1: depressed attendance at the park, and sifting through the data
Speaker 1: that state Parks gave me, I've learned that the financial
Speaker 1: impact was significant. Revenue fell by fifty percent, a loss
Speaker 1: of seven hundred thousand dollars compared to the year before. Ye,
Speaker 1: it's all I mean. I'm not the park spokesman. No,
Speaker 1: that's for sure. I don't know really any more than
Speaker 1: I read in the newspapers or here on the news.
Speaker 1: And he says he thinks the element of danger has
Speaker 1: been eliminated, but also that there's still a lot that
Speaker 1: hasn't been released, which I don't know. But there were
Speaker 1: one day that the hills were covered with sheriff's deputies
Speaker 1: and they're just you know, following all these various social trails,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm sure this guy went off trail as well, right,
Speaker 1: So the more evidence the better, that's, you know, how
Speaker 1: you approve the case. During the tour, I've been keeping
Speaker 1: my eye on one of the other hikers, a guy
Speaker 1: wearing camouflage and to make America Great Again hat. He
Speaker 1: seems very interested in the murder talk. I introduced myself
Speaker 1: and he tells me his name is Lou Johnson, and
Speaker 1: he's here with a boy named Huts and his landlady's son.
Speaker 1: We just stopped going anywhere. He tells me that before
Speaker 1: the murder, he and Hudson spent their weekends hiking all
Speaker 1: over this area. That changed. Just the randomness of it
Speaker 1: was very troubling, I think, because it didn't matters like
Speaker 1: if you were if you were in the wrong place
Speaker 1: at the wrong time and moving in the wilderness, and
Speaker 1: this guy saw you, you know, you immortal danger there.
Speaker 1: As we fill up our water bottles, he tells me
Speaker 1: that one day, as he was driving to work, he
Speaker 1: saw that the hills were swarming with deputies collecting evidence
Speaker 1: from Rounds campsite. One morning, I came around one of
Speaker 1: the last hairpine curves there, and there were police cars,
Speaker 1: sheriff's cars everywhere, ranger cars, some sheriffs, a group of
Speaker 1: sheriff deputies were coming up the road and I said, Hey,
Speaker 1: is this have to do with the investigation wrapping it up?
Speaker 1: And said yeah, we're just up here, you know, doing
Speaker 1: cleanup and stuff like that. You know, he said a
Speaker 1: few years earlier he tried to take Hudson hiking right
Speaker 1: there in that exact spot, start hiking up there. There
Speaker 1: were animal trails and I remember remarking, Wow, these are
Speaker 1: He's really good with animal trails, and this was the
Speaker 1: trail in the grass was pretty well trodden. I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe some hikers go up here. And it sort of
Speaker 1: follows a little canyon rise and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: big oak trees there with big canopies, and I remember
Speaker 1: we sat up underneath one and he was sort of
Speaker 1: just sort of not maybe he didn't feel good. I
Speaker 1: don't know what it was, but he just didn't want
Speaker 1: to hike. And it was strange, lu says, really out
Speaker 1: of character for Hudson. But he couldn't make him go on,
Speaker 1: so they turned back, and you know, the thing that
Speaker 1: strikes me is now knowing that you know that was
Speaker 1: where route as camp was, that that's kind of a
Speaker 1: scary thing we could have if we had gone hiking
Speaker 1: up in there. Would he have felt threatened? You know,
Speaker 1: he would kind of hiding out. I read, you know,
Speaker 1: he just didn't like people who knows We don't know.
Speaker 1: And it just was now looking back and I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: that felt like a close call for us safety wise.
Speaker 1: And again, had we known that these other things had
Speaker 1: happened at that time, we didn't know about We'd never
Speaker 1: heard about any problems. And it just is it's not
Speaker 1: kind of frustrating, it's very frustrating. It's infuriating because this
Speaker 1: transparency that these guys all take an oath for it.
Speaker 1: I support the police. I'm a real supporter of law
Speaker 1: enforcement and all that, but when they pull stuff like
Speaker 1: this it seems political or for whatever reason, it really
Speaker 1: pisses me off. Lu says, the trail to Routa's camp
Speaker 1: is not too far from where we are now. He
Speaker 1: can show me if I want to meet him out
Speaker 1: there when the tour ends. We trade email addresses and
Speaker 1: he tells me he'll be in touch after my visits
Speaker 1: to the park. I keep thinking about Routa, sleeping night
Speaker 1: after night in the wild. With his first letter, he
Speaker 1: enclosed a careful pencil drawing of two mountain lion cubs snuggling.
Speaker 1: I want to know more about his life outdoors. In
Speaker 1: his next letter, he writes, I was hardly ever scared.
Speaker 1: I did a lot of hiking, starving and freezing. I
Speaker 1: seen little baby bears, foxes, bobcats, eagles. There's a spot
Speaker 1: on the Tapanga Mountains where you can see the ocean.
Speaker 1: There's a spot on the Pacific Palisades where you can
Speaker 1: see to pass a robelus. Those words stop me cold.
Speaker 1: I just moved to the Palisades, but he couldn't know
Speaker 1: that I've been using a different mailing address. It's right
Speaker 1: around that time I start having nightmares about Anthony Rowda Mhore.
Speaker 1: So like when I woke up, I woke up like
Speaker 1: I almost you could imagine if an explosion went off
Speaker 1: by your head, like really suddenly. And I don't really
Speaker 1: know why I woke up like that, because there was
Speaker 1: no pain or anything. So like the bottom of me,
Speaker 1: this is Jimmy Rogers near Miss number one. He was
Speaker 1: attacked twenty months before Tristan Bodett was killed. He's agreed
Speaker 1: to meet up in this shady grove in Tapia Park,
Speaker 1: which is part of Malibu Creek State Park. So like,
Speaker 1: I woke up and then I was just like what
Speaker 1: happened in all Jimmy's a serious outdoorsman, a trained wildlife
Speaker 1: biologist who's worked for the Forest Service. He's telling me
Speaker 1: about the morning of November third, twenty sixteen. He was
Speaker 1: sleeping in a hammock in the park. He was on
Speaker 1: a solo backpacking trip, trying to complete all sixty seven
Speaker 1: miles of the Backbone Trail in three days. Between three
Speaker 1: and four in the morning, he was startled awake, and
Speaker 1: then I felt something was on my arm or something
Speaker 1: was like clawing at my arm, which was my initial
Speaker 1: thought because my hammock was somewhat low to the ground.
Speaker 1: He tumbled out of his hammock, which had split in half.
Speaker 1: He stood there listening as his arm began to sting.
Speaker 1: His jacket was torn, and when he took it off,
Speaker 1: he saw holes in his arm, a lot of them.
Speaker 1: It looked like a small animal had been gnawing on him.
Speaker 1: Because then I was like, well, if it was an animal.
Speaker 1: It had to have been rabbit or something. But I
Speaker 1: determined like any animal could have been, whether it was
Speaker 1: a rabbit, coyote, or fox, or just dog or skunk
Speaker 1: or anything. Even of rats, like they're pretty easy to find,
Speaker 1: especially in this oak leaf litter, because they can't move
Speaker 1: very fast, and especially he tells me that he ventured
Speaker 1: very carefully into the woods. So I walked without a
Speaker 1: light down there because I really it's really about hearing
Speaker 1: the sounds. To me, I did hear one like that.
Speaker 1: It was just a one sudden movement in leaf litter,
Speaker 1: so it could have been a very small animal moving
Speaker 1: its whole body, or it could have been a person
Speaker 1: moving afoot. So I stopped and I just stared at
Speaker 1: where that sound was. I wanted to keep going, but
Speaker 1: I didn't because I literally thought, I don't want to
Speaker 1: get shot in the face. I kind of literally thought
Speaker 1: somebody was looking at me, and they probably with that
Speaker 1: movement or getting ready to do something. So I sat
Speaker 1: there for a couple of minutes. I just said, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna pack up all my stuff and leave. He
Speaker 1: gathered up his stuff, walked out of the park and
Speaker 1: along the canyon road, till his phone had a signal.
Speaker 1: He called his girlfriend and asked her to pick him up.
Speaker 1: She took one look at his open wound, dozens of
Speaker 1: tiny punctures, and drove him straight to the emergency room
Speaker 1: for weeks. Afterward, he says he tried to rationalize the experience,
Speaker 1: so just none of the scenarios I kept painting made
Speaker 1: any sense. I literally just started thinking about every single
Speaker 1: animal that lives out here and it could possibly live
Speaker 1: out here. And I kind of ended it on a
Speaker 1: crazy thought and I literally determined it was vampire bats.
Speaker 1: Vampire bats because when they bite, they secrete this numbing
Speaker 1: sensation so you can't feel it. And then they lapped
Speaker 1: your blood and it seemed like a superficial wound and
Speaker 1: the but then one day something unexpected happened. A round
Speaker 1: metal pellet fell out of his arm, then another and another,
Speaker 1: and it just popped out and it didn't feel like anything,
Speaker 1: and it was just a perfect shallow circle that it left.
Speaker 1: And then I found it and it was metal biting
Speaker 1: your teeth. You drop it on glass, and like, did
Speaker 1: my body just make that? I don't think so. And
Speaker 1: then um, and then eventually we just a few of
Speaker 1: the wounds were still kind of open, so I go.
Speaker 1: Friend started like squeezing at it, so he took that
Speaker 1: one out and then we were like, all right, we
Speaker 1: need to get X ray and they found four There
Speaker 1: were four more embedded in there pretty deep, So then
Speaker 1: I went and got surgery. He hadn't been bitten by
Speaker 1: a rabbit animal or by a vampire bat good. He'd
Speaker 1: been shot with bird shot, small shotgun pellets used to
Speaker 1: kill birds in flight. Jimmy shows me the scar. It's
Speaker 1: about three and a half inches across on the underside
Speaker 1: of his right arm, between the elbow and the shoulder.
Speaker 1: It's a big, scary looking wound. If you just look
Speaker 1: at the pattern of my arm, like, it looks like
Speaker 1: they are pretty close, but it's hard to say. But
Speaker 1: within five feet is what the police officers actually told
Speaker 1: me it was most likely. But the wound isn't even
Speaker 1: the most disturbing part. The most disturbing part is how
Speaker 1: Jimmy sleeps. How he was sleeping when he was shot,
Speaker 1: bundled up in his down jacket and sleeping bag, wrapped
Speaker 1: up in his hammock, with his right arm draped over
Speaker 1: his head. It seemed to Jimmy that the person who
Speaker 1: shot him was aiming for his head. After the pellets
Speaker 1: fell out of his arm, Jimmy went back to the
Speaker 1: park and tried to find someone to talk to, someone
Speaker 1: he could tell this bizarre story too and maybe get answers.
Speaker 1: So I just came out here and I was just
Speaker 1: looking around, and I found a state park employee and
Speaker 1: just told them what happened. And he told me that
Speaker 1: somebody's vehicle was shot with the same bird shot, and
Speaker 1: so they were really concerned about it, and so he
Speaker 1: gave me the number for the sheriff. I tried to
Speaker 1: contact them a few times, but they pretty much never
Speaker 1: revealed much information, and so probably after like a couple
Speaker 1: of emails and a couple of phone calls, I just stopped.
Speaker 1: I asked Jimmy, if he'll indulge me go on a walk.
Speaker 1: I want to see how long it takes to get
Speaker 1: from where he was shot over to the campground. He's game.
Speaker 1: It's not far, but it takes us an hour on
Speaker 1: dusty trails through the foothills out a run fifteen minutes max.
Speaker 1: So we're going under a little sort of riparian area.
Speaker 1: We're in a ripe Parian area. From the campground, we
Speaker 1: walked to the entrance of the park out onto the
Speaker 1: canyon road where all those cars were shot near misses four, five,
Speaker 1: and six. And while we walk, it hits me how
Speaker 1: small this area really is. I just want to say
Speaker 1: one thing, because we may not be here again. Up
Speaker 1: and down this stretch of road is where the tree
Speaker 1: dawn shootings at cars were concentrated. Wow, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. It seems so obvious. It is all right here.
Speaker 1: Jimmy's right, it is all right here. How could the
Speaker 1: Sheriff's department in state parks not have seen that? How
Speaker 1: could they think or say they believed these were isolated incidents.
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't they have warned the public? The authorities, Jimmy says,
Speaker 1: we're pretty unhelpful throughout his ordeal. After taking his report,
Speaker 1: they never followed up. They didn't seem to care. But
Speaker 1: they did say something odd. Well, they didn't really tell
Speaker 1: me much because they said that you can actually kind
Speaker 1: of manufacture different weapons. So like the officer actually said,
Speaker 1: they could have made something to fire this type around,
Speaker 1: like even something really small that you just hit from
Speaker 1: the back. It could have been a handheld thing or anything.
Speaker 1: This is about the so called missing shotgun, The gun
Speaker 1: that was used in near misses one through five, the
Speaker 1: one that was fired at Jimmy while he slept in
Speaker 1: his hammock, The gun that has never been found. From
Speaker 1: what the cops told Jimmy, it sounds like that gun
Speaker 1: wasn't a gun at all.