Speaker 1: Pushkin. When I first got in touch with Fred's daughter Kirsten,
Speaker 1: she told me she and her sisters had tons of
Speaker 1: materials related to Fred's case. Court filings, notes, pictures, police reports,
Speaker 1: tapes of the actual investigation into Fred. All this stuff
Speaker 1: was sitting in boxes in a hayloft at Heidi's place
Speaker 1: in Colorado, which is actually her grandparents ranch where her mother,
Speaker 1: Jean grew up. So over the summer, when all three sisters, Heidi,
Speaker 1: Kirsten and Kim were going to be together at the ranch,
Speaker 1: I went out there to meet them and have a
Speaker 1: look at the trove of documents. We climbed into the
Speaker 1: hayloft and opened a box. It was full of letters
Speaker 1: the sisters had written to Fred. Heidi pulled one out.
Speaker 1: It was in her handwriting. Okay, so this is dated
Speaker 1: April eighteenth, nineteen eighty, or one weeks after he was arrested.
Speaker 1: Weeks after Dear Dad, how are you? I am fine.
Speaker 1: By the way, I'm ten years old to sea. I
Speaker 1: had a fun time talking to you. I hope you
Speaker 1: have a happy, happy Easter. I miss you very very
Speaker 1: very much. Here's a joke. Knock knock, who's there? Boo? Hoo.
Speaker 1: Why are you crying? I wish you could come out
Speaker 1: of jail soon. You never did anything wrong. I love you.
Speaker 1: Where on your side? Love? Heidi? PS? Please right back,
Speaker 1: I love you. It started raining, one of those afternoons
Speaker 1: summer storms you get in Colorado. Heidi pulled out another
Speaker 1: letter April sixteenth, nineteen eighty one, says, what have you
Speaker 1: been doing? We can see you Sunday. I love you
Speaker 1: very very much. You would never do anything so wrong.
Speaker 1: You're so nice to Mom and Doug. And then it
Speaker 1: says Muffett and Lady are not getting a long Lady,
Speaker 1: their beagle, who survived the journey to Bird Rock. She'd
Speaker 1: gone with the sisters to live with Fred's brother Ron
Speaker 1: and his wife Elizabeth, who had a Christmas tree farm
Speaker 1: far away from Malibu. Yeah. I'm gonna flip that in
Speaker 1: after you are clearly innocent and the dogs are fighting. Eventually,
Speaker 1: Lady went to live with Verna's sister Julianne. That must
Speaker 1: have been heartbreaking to have Lady leave Kie and he
Speaker 1: Julie took her. But I remember when I pulled into
Speaker 1: our house and my aunt Elizabeth and I think Kim
Speaker 1: were standing in the driveway. And it didn't look good
Speaker 1: and I was just like, oh no, and they told
Speaker 1: me lady died of cancer, and so that was just
Speaker 1: that was like our last link, you know, and I
Speaker 1: and that was really sad. And I also realized when
Speaker 1: when Robin Williams passed away. It hit me so hard
Speaker 1: because we would watch Mork and Mindy with my dad
Speaker 1: and it took a while to realize, like why so
Speaker 1: many people, but it was Robin Williams, Michael landon that
Speaker 1: because that all connected me to Malibu and my dad,
Speaker 1: and I think that's when it hit me. I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's why it's so devastating, because it was just part
Speaker 1: of our happy times, you know. By now it was pouring.
Speaker 1: So July seventh, nineteen eighty one, Dear Dad, how are you.
Speaker 1: I am fine. Sorry, I have not been writing. I
Speaker 1: love you and miss you very very much. This coming Tuesday,
Speaker 1: we are going to San Diego. I hope you are
Speaker 1: out by then. And then it says who has been
Speaker 1: writing you? I love you and miss you, Love Heidi.
Speaker 1: Then it is your tops. Yeah, I hope you're out
Speaker 1: by next Tuesday. I'm like, next Tuesday? How many tuesdays?
Speaker 1: I has it been a lot. I'm Dana Goodyear and
Speaker 1: this is Lost Hells episode nine. Prejudicial effect. Authorities believed
Speaker 1: that Fred Rayler had conceived the perfect crime, like something
Speaker 1: out of Hitchcock on a holiday weekend with so many
Speaker 1: people around, with his own parents on the sailboat nearby,
Speaker 1: the next best thing to an alibi. He'd managed to
Speaker 1: kill Verna and Doug without leaving obvious marks, so that
Speaker 1: when the three of them were discovered in the frigid water,
Speaker 1: he'd appeared to be rescuing them. But how to prove it.
Speaker 1: To do that, the da stan Rodin had to look
Speaker 1: at every possible angle, stands to nations afterward, fanacity, you know,
Speaker 1: he was just like a bulldog with his teeth in it.
Speaker 1: Stan Rodin didn't respond to my request for an interview.
Speaker 1: So this is Dempsey Billy, one of Roden's investigators. A
Speaker 1: lot of times stands say something, what you can find
Speaker 1: out about this? And I say, stand, you can't do that,
Speaker 1: no way, So I'd go do it, and sure enough
Speaker 1: you'd be right. We'd find whatever he was looking for.
Speaker 1: In a criminal case, the standard jury instructions are that
Speaker 1: the government must prove the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,
Speaker 1: but not to a scientific certainty. The case against Fred,
Speaker 1: the mysterious drownings of his wife and steps on the
Speaker 1: insurance policies, and in the background the story of another
Speaker 1: wife who'd also drowned inexplicably. It all looked bad but
Speaker 1: also potentially like bad luck. Maybe Fred was a Malibu job, pitiable, cursed.
Speaker 1: That's what his friends thought. Here's Mike Killeen. You have
Speaker 1: to ask yourself, is it possible for a human being
Speaker 1: from day one to be stakementten? You know I use
Speaker 1: that term, but you know how it applies to various things.
Speaker 1: Is that possible? He'd turn left, he'd turn right, and
Speaker 1: things would go wrong. And it was all built up
Speaker 1: as as circumstance to create this character who really wasn't Fred.
Speaker 1: There was room for a healthy dose of doubt. Stan
Speaker 1: Rodin had to try to make his case empirically by
Speaker 1: presenting the jury with science, because the circumstances, all those
Speaker 1: suspicious coincidences, might not be enough. But how could he
Speaker 1: do that when there was so little physical evidence. That's
Speaker 1: where doctor Thomas Nagucci, the long time weirdly famous Elle
Speaker 1: County Coroner, came in. Nagucci was the so called corner
Speaker 1: to the stars. He'd done Marilyn and RFK and Sharon Tate.
Speaker 1: He'd also been the coroner when Fred's first wife, Jean
Speaker 1: had died, and his office signed off on her death
Speaker 1: as an accident. Now the Santa Barbaradier wanted Nagucci to
Speaker 1: help figure out what had caused those bruises discovered in
Speaker 1: the second autopsies, the ones on the back of Doug's head.
Speaker 1: He was a cracker jack forensic pathologist. He really knew
Speaker 1: his stuff. That's Duane Mosay, the criminalist. He worked alongside
Speaker 1: Nagucci to recreate the last moments of Doug's life. Together,
Speaker 1: they designed a series of experiments centered on Fred's Orange Dory,
Speaker 1: the boat he'd been rowing in with Ferna and Doug,
Speaker 1: which he said had overturned in the open ocean by
Speaker 1: bird rock. Nagucci was eccentric and controversial. Well, He'd walk
Speaker 1: around the Corner's office waving scalpel and telling people sooner
Speaker 1: or later, I'll get you on a table, or words
Speaker 1: to that effect, and people complained about that, so they
Speaker 1: removed him from his office as La County Corner and
Speaker 1: sent him to be a pathologist at the County USC Hospital,
Speaker 1: which is just east of downtown La and doctor Nagucci
Speaker 1: put a sign on his office door that said corner
Speaker 1: in Exile. The experiments didn't take place in doctor Nagucci's lab, No,
Speaker 1: they happened at Nagucci's apartment building in Marina del Rey.
Speaker 1: The sheriff would haul down the dory, we'd do some
Speaker 1: work with it, and they'd haul it back when we
Speaker 1: were done. Their working theory was that Verna had been
Speaker 1: struck with an oar, but they didn't have the oars
Speaker 1: from Fred's dory. They were probably in the middle of
Speaker 1: the ocean somewhere, so they focused on Doug and the
Speaker 1: bruises on the back of his head, a linear bruise
Speaker 1: and a circular bruise three centimeters apart. That pattern repeated twice.
Speaker 1: They took a Doug sized dummy with a Doug sized
Speaker 1: dummy head, and they bashed it on every surface they
Speaker 1: could think of. One hundred and two times they bashed
Speaker 1: the dummy head and they found a match. I tested
Speaker 1: the dory inside and out, from bow to stern. Nothing
Speaker 1: panned out except one place, and that particular place was
Speaker 1: the edge of the seat in the middle of the
Speaker 1: dory where the rower would sit. Stan Rodin liked it,
Speaker 1: but Nagucci couldn't testify. He was in disgrace. So Stanley
Speaker 1: Roden and I had to sit down and figure out
Speaker 1: what I could testify too and what was out of bounds.
Speaker 1: Because I'm not a medical doctor, I could not express
Speaker 1: a medical opinion. And that's how Dwayne Mose criminalist, became
Speaker 1: stan Rodin's star witness in what would be the longest
Speaker 1: and most expensive trial in Santa Barbara history. One hundred
Speaker 1: and five days, four dozen witnesses, and one orange story.
Speaker 1: The trial for the murders of Verna and Doug started
Speaker 1: on December fifteenth, nineteen eighty one, in Santa Barbara's majestic
Speaker 1: Spanish style courthouse. The courtroom was packed standing room. Fred's
Speaker 1: family was there, so was Verna's mother. They were supporting Fred.
Speaker 1: There were journalists and screenwriters and look you loose. The
Speaker 1: famous mystery writer Margaret Millar was a regular. She lived
Speaker 1: in Santa Barbara and had made her name writing chilling
Speaker 1: tales of marital deceit. This plot line was right up
Speaker 1: her alley in California. For someone to be sentenced to
Speaker 1: death or life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Speaker 1: Their crime must meet certain criteria called special circumstances. In
Speaker 1: Fred's case, there were three alleged special circumstances. There was
Speaker 1: more than one victim that was special circumstance number one.
Speaker 1: Special circumstances Numbers two and three were the motive of
Speaker 1: financial gain the insurance payouts from the freshly aanked policies
Speaker 1: on Verna and Doug. If Fred was convicted and any
Speaker 1: of the special circumstances were found to apply, he'd be
Speaker 1: eligible for the most severe sentence. And Stan Rowden, the
Speaker 1: district attorney, was hoping to send Fred to the gas
Speaker 1: chamber at San Quentin. Rowden wanted to try a spectacle
Speaker 1: involving rich people and insurance and made for TV and
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. That's a pellet. Attorney Wendy Lasher
Speaker 1: she attended every day of Fred's trial taking notes because
Speaker 1: even before the trial started she was laying the groundwork
Speaker 1: for an appeal. I asked her what she remembered about
Speaker 1: Rodin Paul then at the time energetic, aggressive, pleasant on
Speaker 1: the surface, but kind of devious. I wouldn't quite go
Speaker 1: so far as to say, unscrupulous, but certainly pushing the
Speaker 1: envelope in terms of what he could do. A definitely
Speaker 1: concerned about his reputation and making his way as an aggressive,
Speaker 1: leading prosecutor in the world, a little bit politicianlike. At
Speaker 1: the outset, the defense was feeling strong. Fred had been
Speaker 1: working out every day in jail, and the papers were
Speaker 1: full of admiring descriptions of his thick, curly hair and
Speaker 1: athletic physique. At the time of his arrest, he'd worn
Speaker 1: a full beard. His team didn't think that look would
Speaker 1: fly in conservative Santa Barbara County. They thought it made
Speaker 1: him look resputeinish, like he was hiding something. He came
Speaker 1: to court with a clean shave. The concerns Fred had
Speaker 1: about being indicted for killing Verna's first husband and the
Speaker 1: navy diver who drowned while using Fred's scuba equipment were gone.
Speaker 1: The DA appeared to have dropped those lines of inquiry.
Speaker 1: All Fred's prior sketchy insurance history, it might as well
Speaker 1: have disappeared too. The judge wasn't going to allow the
Speaker 1: prosecution to introduce it, and Fred's defense attorney had scored
Speaker 1: a significant victory on the matter. Of Gene. The judge
Speaker 1: had ruled to exclude all evidence regarding the death of
Speaker 1: Fred's first wife from the guilt phase of his trial.
Speaker 1: The judge said its prejudicial effect would far outweigh its
Speaker 1: probitive value. In other words, the story of Jean's death
Speaker 1: wouldn't prove Fred had killed Werna or dug, but it
Speaker 1: would almost certainly persuade the jury that he had. The
Speaker 1: defense also made a motion to quash the results of
Speaker 1: the Santa Barbara autopsies. They'd been conducted in secret, and
Speaker 1: then the bodies had been cremated, so Fred's defense couldn't
Speaker 1: effectively counter their findings. Here's Wendy Lasher. What they found
Speaker 1: in the autopsies, or said that they found was like
Speaker 1: looking at roshock tests. You know, you could see what
Speaker 1: you wanted in those autopsy results, but you had no
Speaker 1: opportunity to look and say, preserve evidence that you could
Speaker 1: later say, see if you look at it this way,
Speaker 1: it doesn't show any such thing. That motion was denied.
Speaker 1: The second autopsies would be allowed. In fact, Stan Rodin
Speaker 1: would call them the lynchpin of the case. Stan Roden
Speaker 1: spent months arguing motive that Fred was running out of
Speaker 1: money and that his lifestyle was demanding more and more cash.
Speaker 1: Rodin argued Fred wanted freedom and unencumbered, newly flushed life
Speaker 1: in Malibu with houses and a sailboat and money to burn.
Speaker 1: Here's a pellet, attorney Wendy Lasher again, people like stories
Speaker 1: about rich people and rich people doing bad things. You know,
Speaker 1: this is mythology. If somebody killed got life insurance and
Speaker 1: killed their wife in a glamorous situation on a yacht
Speaker 1: on a holiday weekend, Wow, that's a big deal. And look,
Speaker 1: we've got this highly technical it's about it because you know,
Speaker 1: we're such a hot shot prosecution that we can do this.
Speaker 1: They also had the thing about Fred had thirty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in cash and a coffee canon is freezer, and
Speaker 1: they tried to make that out as you know, clearly
Speaker 1: he was going to kill these people and escape to
Speaker 1: Mexico with his cash and live on it, you know,
Speaker 1: make a new life for himself. The DA called doctor
Speaker 1: de Witt Hunter to the stand in January of nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two. Hunter was the Santa Barbara pathologist whose autopsy
Speaker 1: reports indicated trauma to Verna and Doug. The prosecution didn't
Speaker 1: present evidence about Fred using an oar to strike Verna's
Speaker 1: head because they had no ore. But Hunter did present
Speaker 1: a slide that he said showed a crush effect on
Speaker 1: Verna's scalp, a minor traumatic injury that had happened a
Speaker 1: minute to a minute and a half before her death.
Speaker 1: He said the trauma to Doug had also not been
Speaker 1: lethal and occurred before Doug's death. In other words, Doug
Speaker 1: had hit his head or had his head hit before
Speaker 1: he drowned. The story was there, he said, in a
Speaker 1: single hair follicle. They had preserved the whole hair, the
Speaker 1: follicle and the hair itself. This is doctor Michael Boden,
Speaker 1: who for twenty five years was the chief forensic pathologist
Speaker 1: for the New York State Police. Fred's family asked him
Speaker 1: to review his case, and he says the single hair
Speaker 1: theory was a misreading of the evidence. He testified that
Speaker 1: he could look at that hair under the microscope and
Speaker 1: tell that had been crushed by a blunt object one hair.
Speaker 1: But Boden says there was a very obvious and benign
Speaker 1: reason for the damage to Doug's hair, in order to
Speaker 1: reflect the scalp when it's a cut through the hair
Speaker 1: and pull up the hair and bruise the hair with
Speaker 1: rolling trying to lift the scalp tissue off the scowbones,
Speaker 1: which causes blood trauma to the hair. Doctor Duncan, who
Speaker 1: did the first autopsies in Ventura County, says doctor Hunter's
Speaker 1: findings were a joke. Hunter was unqualified, unqualified to really
Speaker 1: interpret forensic autopsies, but this was an especially troubling re
Speaker 1: autopsy case. Eight days after death or thereabouts, seven days
Speaker 1: after an initial autopsy. He was totally unqualified to interpret
Speaker 1: those findings, which changed dramatically, and what he presented the
Speaker 1: court never should have been allowed to be presented in court.
Speaker 1: I couldn't get in touch with Hunter. But Duncan contends
Speaker 1: that Hunter's lack of expertise sent the investigation down a
Speaker 1: treacherous path because, he says, forensic pathology is an art
Speaker 1: of exclusion, and Hunter saw a meaning where there was none.
Speaker 1: The difference between a non trained pathologist and a forensic pathologist.
Speaker 1: As a forensic pathologist knows what not to interpret, an
Speaker 1: untrained pathologist interprets everything. Hunter's biggest error, according to Duncan,
Speaker 1: was that he failed to account for the passage of time.
Speaker 1: The bruises and markings that Hunter saw on January ninth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one, that Duncan had not noticed six days earlier,
Speaker 1: on January third. Duncan says that's because the bruises weren't
Speaker 1: there on January third, he didn't miss the signs of trauma.
Speaker 1: He says the trauma was post mortem, most likely a
Speaker 1: result of the first autopsies, accentuated by time as the
Speaker 1: blood Inverna and Doug's bodies settled and pulled. The marks
Speaker 1: were artifacts phantoms, not maliciously inflicted wounds. It's more like
Speaker 1: a photograph of a ghost that wasn't there and now
Speaker 1: appears to be there, and it was nothing. Even the
Speaker 1: bruises on the back of Doug's head that I contend
Speaker 1: is from post mortem artifact. From the way bodies are stored.
Speaker 1: The bodies are laid on a head brace and they
Speaker 1: sit that way for a week. Is just describing artifacts
Speaker 1: as if they were significant throughout the autopsy. And once
Speaker 1: you're doing that, you know that's crazy from a forensic
Speaker 1: pathology point of view. So it's it's kind of clown
Speaker 1: car pathology. According to Duncan, the second autopsies served their purpose.
Speaker 1: They produced evidence for the DA to use against Fred Railer.
Speaker 1: I contend it was orchestrated to be used as an
Speaker 1: agenda for the prosecution, and that's not as far fetched
Speaker 1: as it sounds, because in Santa Barbara County the Coroner's
Speaker 1: office is part of the Sheriff's department. Hunter was working
Speaker 1: for law enforcement Detectives Ray and Tuller were present for
Speaker 1: the autopsies. They wanted clues, and he produced them. When
Speaker 1: it was time for Duane mos the criminalist, to testify
Speaker 1: about the dummy tests, the DA arranged for the orange dory,
Speaker 1: all one hundred and thirty eight pounds of it, to
Speaker 1: be delivered to the Santa Barbara Courthouse, and with that
Speaker 1: prop in place, Mosa demonstrated his experiments to spectacular effect.
Speaker 1: One of the exhibits the court was one to one
Speaker 1: picture of the back of Douglas's head with a scalp
Speaker 1: pulled back and a transparent overlay of the pattern on
Speaker 1: the back of the test dummy, and I overlay the
Speaker 1: transparency from the test dummy on top of Douglas Johnson's
Speaker 1: head and the patterns match. Nothing was off. Mose had
Speaker 1: a dummy the same size and weight as Doug. So
Speaker 1: he acted out the murder as the prosecution imagined it
Speaker 1: a beating, then a drowning. Here's Fred's friend, Mike Keilleen.
Speaker 1: It was very dramatic. He took the dummy and he
Speaker 1: slammed it against the boat and somehow, I think on
Speaker 1: his head or something, there was some carbon something that
Speaker 1: created a pattern. And that pattern was the same pattern
Speaker 1: they found on Doug's head after the accident. So they said,
Speaker 1: but it's really been called junk science by so many people.
Speaker 1: But what it did to the jury was because there
Speaker 1: was really nothing to counter it, it told him that's
Speaker 1: what happen. The visual was so powerful and that was
Speaker 1: definitely the turning point. Then the jury actually got to
Speaker 1: participate in a forensic discovery of their own. On one
Speaker 1: side of the dory, there was a small bump in
Speaker 1: the fiberglass, which Mosai said corresponded to a little tear
Speaker 1: shape visible at one end of one of the linear bruises.
Speaker 1: Fred says it was ridiculous. They ended up having the
Speaker 1: whole jury parade by and touched the bump. Then it
Speaker 1: was Fred's turn to testify, and right before he did
Speaker 1: he got a piece of very good news. Two days
Speaker 1: before Fred took the stand. He was acquitted on special
Speaker 1: Circumstance number three that he had killed Doug for financial
Speaker 1: gain because Doug's sister Kim and his stepsisters Kirsten and
Speaker 1: Heidee were the beneficiaries of his policy. The court found
Speaker 1: that Fred could not have killed him for the money.
Speaker 1: As for the policy on Verna, the insurance company paid it.
Speaker 1: It went into the Johnson Railer Trust, but only after
Speaker 1: Fred had removed himself as trustee. Bill Fairfield, Fred's friend
Speaker 1: and lawyer, replaced him as trustee. Bill also testified in
Speaker 1: the trial. He wept on the witness stand, swearing the
Speaker 1: insurance had been his idea. Fred's testimony began on March eleventh,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one. Were a dark blue suit and he
Speaker 1: was calm. A newspaper report from the time says he
Speaker 1: only broke down when describing his realization that Verna might
Speaker 1: be dead. He says there was never any question whether
Speaker 1: he would take the stand. He had unshakable confidence in
Speaker 1: his version of events. I said, the only way that
Speaker 1: they will ever you know, really understand the whole works
Speaker 1: as if I testify. He never doubted that he would
Speaker 1: be acquitted of murdering Verna and Doug because even though
Speaker 1: they basically, you know, cheated doing the second autopsy, in
Speaker 1: hiding that and all those things, the people that we
Speaker 1: had who testified basically showed that there was no foul,
Speaker 1: there was no harm, there was no murder. You know,
Speaker 1: in all the legalise that there is about proof beyond
Speaker 1: a reasonable doubt into a moral certainty, that's basically DS.
Speaker 1: You know, you're trying to convince twelve people by hook
Speaker 1: or crook to vote a certain way. During his cross
Speaker 1: examination of Fred, Stan Rodin made sure the dory was
Speaker 1: brought back into the courtroom. It hung in front of
Speaker 1: the jury box, suspended from four ladders seven feet off
Speaker 1: the ground. Rodin drilled down on all the things about
Speaker 1: Fred's story of the drowning that did not make sense.
Speaker 1: How could a Navy trained scuba diver, a water safety
Speaker 1: instructor forget all the basic rules. He failed to kick
Speaker 1: off his sneakers and pants, He swam away from the dory,
Speaker 1: the perfect flotation device. Why would he undertake the risky
Speaker 1: and exhausting swim to bird Rock supporting two drowning victims
Speaker 1: and a dog. Why was he dealing with the dog
Speaker 1: at all when his wife and stepchild were dying. At
Speaker 1: this point, Rodin introduced new evidence People's Exhibit thirty one
Speaker 1: C A toy bear. He said, your honor, at this
Speaker 1: time I have an animal. It is certainly not a dog,
Speaker 1: but it has movable arms and legs, and this is
Speaker 1: as close as we can come it is a bear.
Speaker 1: Then Rowdin asked Detective Ray to put on the float
Speaker 1: coat Fred had been wearing on January second, nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: and he placed the teddy bear on Detective Ray's shoulders
Speaker 1: and moved it around as Fred directed from the witness stand.
Speaker 1: It must have looked absurd, and that was exactly Stan
Speaker 1: Rowden's point. He didn't think Fred had swum with Lady
Speaker 1: the dog on his back. He didn't think Lady had
Speaker 1: climbed the sheer cliff on the north side of Bird Rock.
Speaker 1: He didn't even think Lady was still in the boat
Speaker 1: when it flipped. He thought Fred had dumped her on
Speaker 1: the eastern end of bird Rock, where there's a nice,
Speaker 1: gentle ledge which she could have easily climbed up. Saving
Speaker 1: the dog was just one more aspect of his bogus
Speaker 1: hero story of vanity or a distraction. It was a
Speaker 1: fib and Rodin was sure it was a flaw in
Speaker 1: the lie Fred had been telling on autopilot since the
Speaker 1: day his wife and stepson died. Fred sat through the trial.
Speaker 1: You could say stoically, or you could say sullenly. Here's
Speaker 1: Wendy Lasher. Fred was his big stoic guy, quiet and
Speaker 1: kind of dark and brooding looking, kind of dark hair,
Speaker 1: heavy eyebrows, and I think they really wanted to cultivate
Speaker 1: a dislike of him. During the trial, the judge instructed
Speaker 1: the jury in the distinction between direct and circumstantial evidence
Speaker 1: and told them that there had been no direct evidence
Speaker 1: of any act of the defendants that caused Verna and
Speaker 1: Doug to drown. They were also told that when considering
Speaker 1: circumstantial evidence, if there were two reasonable interpretations, they had
Speaker 1: to give the defendant the benefit of the doubt. The
Speaker 1: jury deliberated for five days. This is Fred's friend Mike Kelleen.
Speaker 1: When the jury went away to make their decision, I
Speaker 1: think on day two they asked for information about the dory.
Speaker 1: They wanted to see the dory again. That dory made
Speaker 1: all the difference regardless of how they felt about Fred.
Speaker 1: That demonstration with the dory and the dummy told him
Speaker 1: a story. Fred says he didn't see the verdict coming.
Speaker 1: I was literally stunned when the clerk of the court
Speaker 1: read the verdict. She had tears in her eyes when
Speaker 1: she read the verdict because I'm pretty sure she didn't
Speaker 1: think there was going to be a guilty verdict either.
Speaker 1: Fred was found guilty of two counts of first degree
Speaker 1: premeditated murder and special circumstances one and two more than
Speaker 1: one victim, and killing Verna for financial gain. According to
Speaker 1: a newspaper report, Fred's mother gasped when she heard the verdict,
Speaker 1: and as the spectators were leaving the courtroom, she hissed
Speaker 1: gossip kills. Fred's defense team thought it was the testimony
Speaker 1: of Duane Mosa, the criminalist, that tipped the scales. Appealing
Speaker 1: the trial verdict in nineteen eighty five, they'd even manage
Speaker 1: to get all three appellate judges to agree that Mosa's
Speaker 1: evidence did not follow reliable scientific procedure and should not
Speaker 1: have been admitted. But Mosa says, much as he would
Speaker 1: like to take credit for Fred's conviction, he really can't.
Speaker 1: Several months after the trial was over, Railer had been sentenced.
Speaker 1: I bumped into one of the members of the jury
Speaker 1: and we chatted a little bit about the case. I
Speaker 1: wanted some feedback, so I asked him what he thought
Speaker 1: of my testimony, and he smiled and he said, oh,
Speaker 1: we didn't give that any thought. And he said the
Speaker 1: guy was lying. It was obvious to us, and we
Speaker 1: convicted him because he was a liar. In the penalty phase,
Speaker 1: Vernon's daughter Kim testified on Fred's behalf. So did Fred's
Speaker 1: daughter's Heidi and Kirsten. Fred's defense attorney asked them to
Speaker 1: conjure up happy memories to tell the jury in the
Speaker 1: hope that it would help spare their father's life. In
Speaker 1: the hayloft in Colorado, Kim found a letter she'd written
Speaker 1: on the day she took the stand. She was twelve
Speaker 1: July seventh. Dere's Dad, today has been a long, hard day.
Speaker 1: We had fun at the hotel. Dad. I am sorry
Speaker 1: if I made it sort of hard for you today.
Speaker 1: I love you so very, very, very very very much
Speaker 1: and I miss you. Love Kim, And I wondered then,
Speaker 1: if this the only time that we were in court
Speaker 1: was for yeah penalty face, and to tell our little
Speaker 1: special story or memory mine I talked about I had
Speaker 1: a white bunny named Snowball, and my dad had made
Speaker 1: a harness for my rabbit so I could take it
Speaker 1: for a walk in the backyard and so she'd be
Speaker 1: on a leash. Kirsten, who had just turned eight, told
Speaker 1: a story about Fred and Verna making out at the
Speaker 1: register at a Bob's. Big Boy Hottie was eleven, and
Speaker 1: she doesn't remember what she said. I was so scared
Speaker 1: and like so dizzy. You know, it was just one
Speaker 1: of the scariest things ever, sitting in this big box
Speaker 1: with all these people staring at you and the weight
Speaker 1: of the world on your shoulders. Because I didn't know
Speaker 1: it was a penalty phase. I thought, if I just
Speaker 1: said the right thing, he is coming home. And we
Speaker 1: didn't find out it was years later. You know, of course,
Speaker 1: that would have been devastating if you found out that
Speaker 1: it was the penalty phase. But I just was so
Speaker 1: nervous and worried that I would say the wrong thing
Speaker 1: and then he couldn't come home. There's one for me,
Speaker 1: you know, day, Dear Dad, I miss you very much.
Speaker 1: I'm tired, but I do not want to go to bed.
Speaker 1: Do you have to stay for your life? I miss
Speaker 1: you very very much. I know that you won't like
Speaker 1: to stay there. Love Kirsten. And then here's another one,
Speaker 1: Dear Fred, and then Dad in parentheses. I was crying
Speaker 1: when I heard the news. I miss you so very much,
Speaker 1: and I hope you come home soon. Will you write
Speaker 1: us back if you can. We made chocolate chip cookies
Speaker 1: with Ann Elizabeth. See you soon, I hope. I am
Speaker 1: the youngest, but I love you just as much as
Speaker 1: the big kids. I need to go, even though I
Speaker 1: hate to love Kirston, I think you are the most
Speaker 1: wonderful dad in the world. I love you right back.
Speaker 1: I miss you. Come home soon. On the day Fred
Speaker 1: was arrested, April third, nineteen eighty one, he left Malibu forever.
Speaker 1: But he wasn't the only one. I mean, we didn't
Speaker 1: get to say goodbye to our friends or our teachers
Speaker 1: or anything like. I mean, we were kids. So the
Speaker 1: way that they explained it to us was there's been
Speaker 1: a huge like misunderstanding and that we're gonna you know,
Speaker 1: we're hiring these really smart people and they're gonna help
Speaker 1: and we're gonna like sort it out. But that's what
Speaker 1: we just kept being told that it was a misunderstanding.
Speaker 1: And when our uncle picked us up, we never went
Speaker 1: back to Malibu. The girls started new lives and didn't
Speaker 1: tell their new friends the story of Verna and Doug
Speaker 1: or that Fred was in prison for killing them, but
Speaker 1: they kept a secret vigil. Here's Kirsten. We weren't told like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is your life now, like this is how it
Speaker 1: is and we're going forward like it was. It was
Speaker 1: always this. You know, we're going to straighten this out.
Speaker 1: We're going to bring him home. I mean, even after
Speaker 1: the conviction and the appeals. I mean, I have memories
Speaker 1: of being at school. I'm like, I might go home
Speaker 1: today and my dad might be there, and I mean
Speaker 1: I don't know which appeal it was. But one time,
Speaker 1: Heidi Stephen and I Stephen is our cousin that we
Speaker 1: grew up with, made confetti with a single whole punch
Speaker 1: like punch paper, made all this confetti and then literally
Speaker 1: practiced throwing it, picking it all up and doing there
Speaker 1: like welcome home, and then we would throw it on
Speaker 1: somebody walking through the door, and then we would pick
Speaker 1: all these tiny pieces of confetti up, put it back
Speaker 1: in the bag, and then somebody else's turned like literally
Speaker 1: practicing his homecoming. We're so excited, and we use that
Speaker 1: analogy today. My husband will say, like if something like
Speaker 1: we're hoping for something, He's like, well, let's not make
Speaker 1: this a confetti incident. And it's it's true because we,
Speaker 1: like she said, we were so excited. I did, and
Speaker 1: I was thinking, oh my god, today's the day I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go home with my dad and my sisters and
Speaker 1: you know, get our dog back from Annie Julie and
Speaker 1: just be back together. And it was just disappointment after disappointment.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I know Kirston is the sisters were
Speaker 1: waiting for their dad to come back and make everything
Speaker 1: okay again, and they're still waiting today for what they
Speaker 1: believe is justice, Fred's release. But there's someone else in
Speaker 1: this story who's waiting for justice too, and that person
Speaker 1: is Heidi and Kirsten's mother, Fred's first wife, Jean. Coming
Speaker 1: up on the season finale of Lost Hills, a detective
Speaker 1: visits Bird Rock. I'm looking at that and I see
Speaker 1: all the rocks. I'm like, those are all tombstones. That's
Speaker 1: all death. That's how I look at it, like, I
Speaker 1: just this is a weird I got a creepy feeling.
Speaker 1: This whole place is not what I thought it would be.
Speaker 1: That's next in episode ten. Lifelines Lost Tails is written
Speaker 1: and reported by Me Dana Goodyear. It's created by me
Speaker 1: and Ben Adair and produced by Western Sound and Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1: Subscribe to Pushkin Plus and you can hear the whole
Speaker 1: season add free and get early access to the final
Speaker 1: two episodes. Find Pushkin Plus on the Lost Hills show
Speaker 1: page in Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin dot Fm.