Speaker 1: Pushkin. Malibu has layers. They're the hill people and the
Speaker 1: coast people, the super rich and the homesteaders. What they
Speaker 1: have in common, what's deep in the DNA of this place,
Speaker 1: is that they don't like outsiders. This is a private paradise.
Speaker 1: You can visit, but you can't stay, and you better
Speaker 1: not ask any questions or the walls go up. I
Speaker 1: find that out when I first start trying to report
Speaker 1: on the killing of Tristan Boudett. This is back in
Speaker 1: the summer of twenty eighteen, right after I heard about
Speaker 1: the murder and the near myth. I do what curious
Speaker 1: reporters do. I start making phone calls and coming out
Speaker 1: to Malibu every chance I get. The cops at Lost
Speaker 1: Hill Station want nothing to do with me, someone who's
Speaker 1: not from around here, looking into a series of shooting
Speaker 1: crimes around Malibu, trying to figure out who's responsible for
Speaker 1: Tristan Boudet's death. No thanks. Whenever I do reach someone
Speaker 1: at Lost Hills, they immediately redirect me to headquarters, where
Speaker 1: the outrageously misnamed Sheriff's Information Bureau either ignores me, buries
Speaker 1: me in press releases, or invites me to enter into
Speaker 1: a collaborative partnership, which gives them creative control over how
Speaker 1: I tell their stories. No thanks, but I keep coming
Speaker 1: out to Malibu anyway seeing what I can learn. What's
Speaker 1: going on with this What properties am I ingesting magic?
Speaker 1: That honey on top is rescue? Did you see my Instagram?
Speaker 1: And I keep ending up at this weird health food
Speaker 1: restaurant called Sunlife Organics. That bee pollen comes from a
Speaker 1: region in Spain that is just completely untouched by man.
Speaker 1: It's it's the purest. It's ridiculously overpriced, like seventeen dollars
Speaker 1: for a smoothie. It's just so Malibu. If we really
Speaker 1: could somehow get in some magic machine that would take
Speaker 1: us on the journey of the bees and what they
Speaker 1: went through to make that bee pollen, I mean that
Speaker 1: is like it's mind blowing and the nutrients. This is
Speaker 1: Khalil Rafadi, a co founder of Sunlight Organics. We're sitting
Speaker 1: in the sunshine outside one of his stores. When I
Speaker 1: asked him about the Boudette murder, he kind of shrugs
Speaker 1: it off. That happened in the hills, not his Malibu.
Speaker 1: It was an isolated event far from home. Malibu Creek
Speaker 1: State Park is mostly an unincorporated Malibu that rugged will
Speaker 1: Olderness north of the coastal city of Malibu, and the
Speaker 1: park's address is technically Calabasas. But even if Rafadi has
Speaker 1: no opinion about the killing, he really gets Malibu, the mystique,
Speaker 1: the image that's his bread and butter, or should I
Speaker 1: say his bee pollen and rescue honey. My experience with
Speaker 1: Malibu has been a very very magical, very multifaceted experience.
Speaker 1: When I was first brought to Malibu, I didn't even
Speaker 1: know Malibu is a real thing. I thought that was
Speaker 1: some sort of a Barbie Doll name or something like that.
Speaker 1: And Malibu's a tourist town. They're only thirteen thousand residents,
Speaker 1: but more than thirteen million people visit every year. Most
Speaker 1: of the people who come to Malibu in search of something,
Speaker 1: the day trippers, they're just not going to find it.
Speaker 1: The first thing tourist say. I mean, and I've had
Speaker 1: this question asked to me, no joke, a hundred times.
Speaker 1: Where's Malibu? And I'm like, this is it? Like, yes,
Speaker 1: Lady Gaga lives here, but she doesn't want you to
Speaker 1: know that, and you're never going to see her house
Speaker 1: the Malibu that we get to enjoy and get to
Speaker 1: experience is not available for the public. Have you ever
Speaker 1: heard the expression that Pink Bubble used to describe Malibu,
Speaker 1: pink bubble rose tinted glasses. Sure, this isn't reality. This
Speaker 1: is definitely not reality. I mean this is There's nothing
Speaker 1: on this planet that equals this. It is the most magical, healing, powerful,
Speaker 1: strange at times, pretentious and shallow at times highly highly spiritual.
Speaker 1: There's an energy here that you cannot put your finger on,
Speaker 1: and you cannot describe it. And it is something that
Speaker 1: will make you if you allow it and you accept it,
Speaker 1: and you honor and you respect it. And there's an
Speaker 1: energy out here that will fucking bury you if you don't,
Speaker 1: and you will lose your mind and you will go crazy.
Speaker 1: I'm starting to think Malibu actually has a lot to
Speaker 1: do with these crimes. I'm Dana Goodyear and this is
Speaker 1: Lost Hills, Episode two, the Pink Bubble. In the weeks
Speaker 1: after Boudette was killed, all through that summer of twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: I kept hearing that everyone in Malibu was panicking. The
Speaker 1: situation seemed out of control. There was a murderer at large,
Speaker 1: and residents kept calling nine one one reporting the sounds
Speaker 1: of gunfire in the night. Tristan Boudette was dead? Who
Speaker 1: would be next? And no One? What's your emergency? How? Yes?
Speaker 1: I could folk up to a gun shot outside? Are
Speaker 1: you served one gun shot? No? Four? Or five? I
Speaker 1: just heard another one while you put me on hold. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be back on hold on't hang up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a third one breath. Neighbors didn't think the
Speaker 1: authorities were taking their concerns seriously, and the victims of
Speaker 1: the near misses were starting to speak out. C. C.
Speaker 1: Woods is a self described Malibu bigmouth who writes an
Speaker 1: online tabloid called The Local. She posted on Facebook that
Speaker 1: there might be a sniper or sicko in the community.
Speaker 1: She included a screen grab about the Tesla shooting near
Speaker 1: miss number six, which caused another near miss victim to comment,
Speaker 1: I am one of those shootings. It was near miss
Speaker 1: number three. The victim had been sleeping in her car
Speaker 1: with her boyfriend in the campground at Malibu Creek State Park.
Speaker 1: They woke up to find a bullet lodged in the trunk.
Speaker 1: She wrote. The shooter used a shotgun with a slug
Speaker 1: shot through my car from a point blank range and
Speaker 1: then took off. I came very very close to being hit,
Speaker 1: but luckily I wasn't. When the police came, which took
Speaker 1: over two hours to show up, they told me quote,
Speaker 1: things like this don't happen out here. I asked what
Speaker 1: they were going to do about it, and they told
Speaker 1: me they couldn't do anything. I asked if I'd been dead,
Speaker 1: if they would have shown up sooner. All the story
Speaker 1: has had something in common the fact that the authorities
Speaker 1: didn't seem to care. The driver of the Porsche hit
Speaker 1: on the Canyon Road near Miss number four later reported
Speaker 1: that after calling nine to one one, he waited thirty
Speaker 1: minutes for a patrol car to come. When one did,
Speaker 1: it passed him by without stopping. He finally drove himself
Speaker 1: to Lost Hill station and demanded deputies take a report.
Speaker 1: One of them dug metal pellets out of his car
Speaker 1: with a knife, but didn't book them into evidence. Did
Speaker 1: anyone even want to solve these crimes? Residents wanted answers,
Speaker 1: but the Sheriff's department kept putting out press releases saying
Speaker 1: things like, quote, homicide detectives are advising At this time,
Speaker 1: there is no evidence to suggest the past shootings are
Speaker 1: related to the June twenty second, twenty eighteen homicide. Finally,
Speaker 1: in August, State Senator Henry Stern called a public safety meeting,
Speaker 1: the first since all this started. We're here today because
Speaker 1: many of you, including myself, have serious concerns that Senator Stern,
Speaker 1: we need to take our land back and we can't
Speaker 1: see these mountains to any kind of violence or fear.
Speaker 1: We don't want to be known in this region for
Speaker 1: these kinds of incidents. We don't want to be defined
Speaker 1: by this, and we certainly don't want to live in fear.
Speaker 1: He asks a detective named Lieutenant James Royal to speak
Speaker 1: on behalf of Lost Hill Station. Good afternoon, can you
Speaker 1: hear me? Okay? He's been the community liaison to Malibu
Speaker 1: for years. People trust him. Our primary objective today is
Speaker 1: to share with you as much information as possible without
Speaker 1: jeopardizing our case. What I'd like to do first is
Speaker 1: discuss the exact dates of the actual shooting events. Confirmed
Speaker 1: shooting events that we've been dealing with since November third,
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, and culminating on June twenty of twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: with the tragic death of mister Bodatt. He states the
Speaker 1: department's official position detectives haven't established a connection between any
Speaker 1: of the near misses and the murder, and the newly
Speaker 1: reported shots may or may not be related to the
Speaker 1: near misses, the murder, or to each other. I really
Speaker 1: want to reassure you that this investigation did not start
Speaker 1: on June twenty second. However, we still cannot confirm that
Speaker 1: the series of events are related forensically. It just seems crazy.
Speaker 1: A specific area of the park and the Canyon Road
Speaker 1: are being targeted repeatedly. People keep hearing shots. What law
Speaker 1: enforcements saying isn't calming anybody down. It doesn't even seem true.
Speaker 1: And I just want to think everyone who came out
Speaker 1: from the community, especially to take time out of your
Speaker 1: day so hopefully get some answers and some clarity. A
Speaker 1: couple of weeks later, in September of twenty eighteen, I
Speaker 1: meet up with Cecy Woods of the local. When we
Speaker 1: get together, there's still no suspecting custody and Ceci is outraged.
Speaker 1: She thinks law enforcement is engaged in a big cover up.
Speaker 1: We arranged to meet at a shopping mall on Pacific
Speaker 1: Coast Highway, and I spot her right away, Cecie. You
Speaker 1: can't miss her, bright blonde hair, low cut T shirt,
Speaker 1: homemade press pass sticking out from a Louis Vuittam purse. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what exactly are you gonna want to get? Like? Overall?
Speaker 1: She points to her hands, which are covered in little spots.
Speaker 1: By the way, I don't have chicken box, so I
Speaker 1: just got laser. That's cc. CC is new to reporting
Speaker 1: and she's definitely unconventional. Some of her best tips come
Speaker 1: from a tea leafreeder in Burbank named Monica Source. Source,
Speaker 1: she says, has given her a lot of information about
Speaker 1: the case. The killer was a hiker or he was hiking,
Speaker 1: who was wearing a mask, all alone, camping out crazy.
Speaker 1: His name started with the letter R. Wait until I
Speaker 1: tell you about that one, because that I did. You
Speaker 1: see my rant on Facebook. With little official information and
Speaker 1: no one in custody yet, Cecie's filling a vacuum. She's
Speaker 1: got sources in the community. They're telling her what's happening.
Speaker 1: Even if law enforcement won't problem missus. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of people who are out there already delivering information to
Speaker 1: me because they want to make sure somebody that they
Speaker 1: can trust, and you know it. Who knows. If these
Speaker 1: criminals out there know that this stuff is being blasted
Speaker 1: and they're more likely to get caught, maybe they'll maybe
Speaker 1: they'll slow it down a little. Just then, she spots
Speaker 1: a tall man coming out of a Starbucks carrying Ventti coffee.
Speaker 1: He's wearing a fireman's uniform. Mister Mullen, this is our mayor,
Speaker 1: the mayor of Malibu. Believe it or not, Dana Goodyear,
Speaker 1: It's Rick Mullen. He's the mayor of Malibu. He's also
Speaker 1: a fire captain and according to a big La Times expose,
Speaker 1: he made more than four hundred thousand dollars in pay
Speaker 1: and overtime in twenty seventeen. Running into the mayor coming
Speaker 1: out of Starbucks, that makes Malibu feel perfectly quaint, Like
Speaker 1: mister Rogers neighborhood with laser surgery. The Mayor, I sec warily.
Speaker 1: They clearly know each other. This could be a new
Speaker 1: Kumbayan moment. I'm trying here, I'm trying. Really, she's now
Speaker 1: a resident of the city of Malibu. I live in
Speaker 1: Point Doum right now. I do I live on Point Doum.
Speaker 1: I live in it. Yes, we're a resident, unincorporated. Lot
Speaker 1: of science of this account. That's a good story. I
Speaker 1: tell him that I'm looking into the cluster of shooting
Speaker 1: crimes in Malibu. Those are very new, dual events, kind
Speaker 1: of sleepy but sophisticated beach town in southern California, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden there's this other facet of it
Speaker 1: that's being revealed or has emerged. Well, you're from a
Speaker 1: New Yorker, so I'll leave the sophistication judgments up to you. Guys.
Speaker 1: So it is a quiet, small coastal town that isn't
Speaker 1: known for dramatic things like that. As she can tell you,
Speaker 1: it's difficult to figure out what's going on. Are they
Speaker 1: all independent things, not related to each other, or is
Speaker 1: it kind of odd that there's so many things that
Speaker 1: are shooting related in a fairly close proximity to each
Speaker 1: other relatively. We just want to make sure that people
Speaker 1: are locking their doors, are careful when they're on trails,
Speaker 1: are not caught by surprise, and are informed like this
Speaker 1: guy who went camping Tristan Boudet had state parks just
Speaker 1: put up a flyer and said, listen, we've had these
Speaker 1: incidents here. Let people make their own informed decisions. This
Speaker 1: guy had no warning and his girls were laying right
Speaker 1: next to him, and that to me, the way he died,
Speaker 1: and the fact that this guy didn't spray all the
Speaker 1: other tents around him, I mean, was it a lucky shot?
Speaker 1: Was it not a lucky shot? You know it? It
Speaker 1: could be a target. I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't pretend to know. I don't know if any
Speaker 1: of these other shootings are even the same guy. It
Speaker 1: could be other people. Who knows. But the fact of
Speaker 1: the matter is people need to be careful. And that's
Speaker 1: all I care about is I'm being careful. I don't
Speaker 1: want them to live in fear, which is why I'm
Speaker 1: trying to inform them and keep them safe, Okay, And
Speaker 1: I expect my city to do the same. I expect
Speaker 1: law enforcement to do the same. I expect state parks
Speaker 1: to do the same. I shouldn't be the one doing it,
Speaker 1: and I have been, unfortunately. So let me address what
Speaker 1: she just said. And by the way, I was the
Speaker 1: first fire department person to respond to Tristan Boudet's murder
Speaker 1: work and when a tragedy like that happens, everybody wants
Speaker 1: to know. How come I didn't know about that. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to be like the mayor from Jaws saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, you yell shark and we got a problem
Speaker 1: on our hands. It's not the city of Melibou where
Speaker 1: all these things happen, but nevertheless, it affects a lot
Speaker 1: of people who live in Malibou, and they should know
Speaker 1: about this policy Number thirty eight. Can we talk about
Speaker 1: Jaws for a second. Jaws takes place in high summer
Speaker 1: in a fictional beach town that's being terrorized by a
Speaker 1: great white shark. After a young tourist is killed, the
Speaker 1: mayor refuses to warn the public. He's worried about the
Speaker 1: town's reputation. The famous line Mayor Mullins referring to is
Speaker 1: you yell shark, and we've got a panic on our
Speaker 1: hands on the fourth of July. Maybe may Or Mullin
Speaker 1: doesn't want to be the mayor from Jaws, but he
Speaker 1: also doesn't seem particularly eager to get to the bottom
Speaker 1: of anything. I would defer the questions to the people
Speaker 1: actually doing the investigation. It's a big mystery it's a
Speaker 1: big mystery, and everybody wants to know the answers, and
Speaker 1: maybe there aren't answers. After saying goodbye to the Mayor,
Speaker 1: Cecie and I jump into her black Porsche Suv. I
Speaker 1: thought we were going for a tour of where the
Speaker 1: shooting has happened. But there's someone she wants me to meet,
Speaker 1: someone who was shot at a few days ago. So
Speaker 1: we're going up Malibu Canyon, which is also known as
Speaker 1: Las Virginus, which is where all these shootings are taking place.
Speaker 1: Malibu Canyon Road is treacherous, looming cliffs on one side,
Speaker 1: deep drop off on the other in every direction, acres
Speaker 1: of wilderness. It gives you a sense of what all
Speaker 1: of southern California must have looked like before Paradise got paved.
Speaker 1: Cars often go off the side into the ravine below,
Speaker 1: a scary thought because Ceci's constantly looking at her phone
Speaker 1: while she drives, and she never stops ranting about the
Speaker 1: lost Hills cops. See. The problem is it's been the
Speaker 1: good old boys forever, okay, Like these guys could get
Speaker 1: away with whatever they wanted to get away with because
Speaker 1: nobody would challenge them. Right now, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people talking about their own personal experiences with law enforcement here,
Speaker 1: and you know what, it a pretty okay, it's not pretty.
Speaker 1: Cecy says that Lost Hill Station has had serious problems
Speaker 1: going back a decade or more. In her opinion, it
Speaker 1: needs a lot more supervision from Sheriff's Department headquarters downtown.
Speaker 1: We need to tear down to rebuild. Let's just put
Speaker 1: it that way. So my big mouth is now shining
Speaker 1: the light on what's going on here. Now, you know what,
Speaker 1: does the city of Malibu really like the fact that
Speaker 1: I'm shining the light on this? Nope? Oh, wait on on.
Speaker 1: She's fixated on the upcoming election for Sheriff of La County.
Speaker 1: A challenger, Alex Vienneueva, is running against the incumbent, Jim McDonnell.
Speaker 1: CC Woods is all in for Vienneueva. If anyone can
Speaker 1: get Lost Hills in line, it's him. And I pray
Speaker 1: that Alex Villeneueva becomes the sheriff because he will clean
Speaker 1: that department up, period and that includes Lost Hills. And
Speaker 1: I'm going to make sure that ship gets straightened up
Speaker 1: out here. It seems like a stretch. If her candidate
Speaker 1: does get elected, is he really going to care about
Speaker 1: a sleepy little beach town full of tourists and celebrities,
Speaker 1: Not to mention it's so far away from the Sheriff's
Speaker 1: department headquarters it might take two hours to get out
Speaker 1: here in La traffic high Hopefully we reach Malibu Creek
Speaker 1: State Park and the road changes names to Las virginas
Speaker 1: we turn off away from the park, heading up to
Speaker 1: a scenic overlook on the opposite ridge. That's where we're
Speaker 1: going to meet this guy who says someone shot at him.
Speaker 1: She hasn't met him in person yet, but a couple
Speaker 1: days earlier, he sent an email to the local hi Cecy.
Speaker 1: He wrote, I hike daily way in the back of
Speaker 1: Carbon Canyon, and yesterday someone fired a single shot at me.
Speaker 1: With the other things I know, I'm betting it's the killer.
Speaker 1: Who's the right cop to talk to if they give
Speaker 1: a shit? I called nine one one Nada. We get
Speaker 1: up to the overlook and it's really spectacular. The Pacific
Speaker 1: spreads out like a blanket on one side, and miles
Speaker 1: of mountainous wilderness and the entire San Fernando Valley are
Speaker 1: on the other. There's a middle aged man waiting beside
Speaker 1: a tricked out jeep with four labradors sticking their heads
Speaker 1: out the windows. Well, he doesn't his name. He's a local,
Speaker 1: let's just put it that way. Yeah, I live down
Speaker 1: on Ramdlet. He's a retired exploration geologist who helped mining
Speaker 1: companies find gold. Somebody shot at me, not to hit me,
Speaker 1: but to tell me to you know, fuck off. But
Speaker 1: you have to understand it's hard to describe without you
Speaker 1: seeing the geometry. How did that person get there? There's
Speaker 1: no tracks on the road I was walking on. It's
Speaker 1: almost inaccessible unless you're like a mountain guy. So who
Speaker 1: would be shooting at somebody literally in the middle of
Speaker 1: nowhere unless it's somehow related to all this other stuff
Speaker 1: that's going on? Bad daylight forty four in the morning.
Speaker 1: One shot was one shot, clearly, if you know, if
Speaker 1: it had been aimed at me, I would have been hit,
Speaker 1: or if it was me and I wasn't hit, there
Speaker 1: would have been follow up, which there was not. But
Speaker 1: one shot, just like so many of the other shootings.
Speaker 1: With everything else that's going on, it's definitely alarming to me.
Speaker 1: It was probably it's a small caliber rifle you can
Speaker 1: kill humans with him like that, but louder, of course,
Speaker 1: and it has a certain amount of base to it
Speaker 1: that I can't do in my hands. What would you
Speaker 1: use a twenty two four other than target shooting? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you shoot a cans. In the old days, we called
Speaker 1: it happy gunfire because people just shot for the hell
Speaker 1: of it. Sean Penn was very frequent. What do you mean.
Speaker 1: I used to hear automatic gunfire from across the canyon.
Speaker 1: You hear Sean Penn's house. It's a fact. But he's
Speaker 1: not harming anyone. He's just shooting. And that's plinking only
Speaker 1: in a sort of a grandiose way celebrity. If one
Speaker 1: of his neighbors called him an, he would have been
Speaker 1: in the poop poop. It's being who he is reporting
Speaker 1: in Malibu. Every story can lead you down a celebrity
Speaker 1: rabbit hole. For the record, although Sean Penn at one
Speaker 1: point had a large and well publicized gun collection, I
Speaker 1: haven't been able to confirm that he's engaged in celebrity plinking.
Speaker 1: But I want to get back to the part where
Speaker 1: the victim called nine one one, Oh. Yeah. I just
Speaker 1: stepped around the corner where I thought I was out
Speaker 1: of sight and dialed nine one one, and shot fired
Speaker 1: way back in the canyon. Can you guys triangulate my position,
Speaker 1: because we can find this guy if you sound up Chopper. Literally,
Speaker 1: the guy could have taken off and been over my
Speaker 1: head in less than two minutes, but nobody called back.
Speaker 1: A man had been killed. There'd been six near misses
Speaker 1: shots in the night all summer long. A potential suspect
Speaker 1: was pinned in the canyon, and no one came to
Speaker 1: check it out. You clearly felt that shot was for you.
Speaker 1: So there was one Lost Hills deputy who was interested
Speaker 1: in a single shot fired deep the canyon. Sergeant Towey Wright,
Speaker 1: the leader of the search and rescue team, the person
Speaker 1: who would later help find Rauda. He called the victim back.
Speaker 1: The sheriffs they're saying one thing, but I could tell
Speaker 1: from his incredibly avid interest in what had happened to
Speaker 1: me that there was something about it that he found
Speaker 1: extremely important. But all this stuff happening, it's people are
Speaker 1: starting to get hysterically. Is it overreacting? Well, I don't
Speaker 1: think so, not. Given a set of events. Two weeks
Speaker 1: after the meeting with CC's source, there are a couple
Speaker 1: of man hunts in Malibu Creek State Park bloodhounds helicopters
Speaker 1: the works. CC's cynical about the display. She thinks it's
Speaker 1: all a big dog and pony show. But then, after
Speaker 1: Sergeant Wright follows a trail of bootprints from a burglary
Speaker 1: behind the Sheriff's station, Anthony Rowda is captured, and somehow
Speaker 1: it doesn't settle anything. Seems like no one in Malibu
Speaker 1: believes the copse. They think it's a setup. That Route
Speaker 1: is taking the fall. The fever gripping Malibu doesn't break,
Speaker 1: it intensifies, and suddenly everyone in Malibu is running for
Speaker 1: their lives. Less than a month after Rout's arrest, the
Speaker 1: Woolsey Fire ravages Malibu. Ninety seven thousand acres burn. It's
Speaker 1: one of the most destructive fires in California history. Seventy
Speaker 1: mile an hour gusts. The devil winds propel the fire
Speaker 1: through the canyons, scorching the wilderness. In and around the
Speaker 1: park route is Camp, the area where the shooter lay
Speaker 1: in wait, shooting at cars, the Camp round where Tristan
Speaker 1: Bodett was killed, the entire killing zone up in smoke.
Speaker 1: We've got our press passes, so we're coming back in
Speaker 1: during the fire. I link up with Cecy Woods, who's
Speaker 1: out reporting for the local. We're press. We have her angle.
Speaker 1: The authorities have abandoned Malibu, left the residence to fend
Speaker 1: for themselves. Park you can't go that, We're press. Ceci
Speaker 1: is driving past burning palm trees and melted telephone poles.
Speaker 1: Her friend ride shotgun. I'm in the back backseat driving.
Speaker 1: I tell her to put on her brides telephone. We
Speaker 1: drive into Point Doom, one of Malibu's most exclusive neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: Point Doom sees some of the most intense destruction. Julia
Speaker 1: Roberts slips here, Geeze Crawford. The sky is filled with
Speaker 1: plumes of gray smoke, and the only other cars out
Speaker 1: on the roads are emergency vehicles going full tilt, sirens blaring,
Speaker 1: coming at us through a fog. I don't know how
Speaker 1: to do that. Jesus Christ. Trying to get out of here. Yeah, powerline,
Speaker 1: whoa whoa, whoa, whoa wa Okay, let's get out of here.
Speaker 1: Try to get out of here. The fire is terrifyingly random.
Speaker 1: A shift of the wind, the difference between existing and not.
Speaker 1: Mayor Mullen, the mayor who's also a fire captain, fights
Speaker 1: the fire NonStop for days. It's harder to begrudge him
Speaker 1: his four hundred thousand. Now, after the apocalypse, when the
Speaker 1: flames are extinguished, I go to see him. From the
Speaker 1: top of the canyon where he'd been on twenty four
Speaker 1: seven duty, I look out over a moonscape. The world
Speaker 1: is a charcoal drawing in the ocean below. A plume
Speaker 1: of ash stains the water. Mullin describes the fire as
Speaker 1: nuclear in scale. Everything vaporized, he says. On my way home,
Speaker 1: I drive past the charred remains of a ranch, identifiable
Speaker 1: by a bunch of rusted horseshoes and an old windmill.
Speaker 1: I recognize this place. This is the place a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago I listened to the owner call for
Speaker 1: vigilante justice against a murderous mountain lion known as P
Speaker 1: forty five. The old ranch is burned to the studs
Speaker 1: as land is your a Sland is my Oswald Rowda
Speaker 1: goes by Ozzie. He's the father of Anthony Rowda, the
Speaker 1: man arrested behind Lost Hill Station, califn New YORKA. He
Speaker 1: sings me a little bit of that song while we're
Speaker 1: sitting on benches outside the courtroom waiting for Anthony to
Speaker 1: show up for his hearing. Fool to go shame, But
Speaker 1: that's not Ozzie singing. Ozzie gets uncomfortable whenever I ask
Speaker 1: about recording him. It's now a week after the Wolsey
Speaker 1: fire ignited, and Malibu is still smoldering. But the cameramen
Speaker 1: for the local news affiliates are here at the Criminal
Speaker 1: Courts building in downtown LA. They're always here for Anthony Rowda.
Speaker 1: He put on a good show that first day in court.
Speaker 1: They're hoping for an outburst to show on the six
Speaker 1: o'clock news. Ozzie is sixty four and planning to retire soon.
Speaker 1: He can't get in to see his son, and he
Speaker 1: thinks the deputies who run the jails might be abusing him.
Speaker 1: His son has never been too good with authority, he says. Still,
Speaker 1: Ozzie is feeling relief, thanking God that Anthony wasn't out there.
Speaker 1: His camp was right in the path of the fire.
Speaker 1: That's not all, though, Ozzie's feeling relief because, as he
Speaker 1: tells me, other fires I used to worry he set them.
Speaker 1: He says that Anthony's got a history, a history of combustion,
Speaker 1: shooting things off, setting things on fire, and he's done
Speaker 1: stints in county jail and state prison. Eventually, Ozzie says,
Speaker 1: Anthony went to Big five Sporting Goods and bought camping supplies.
Speaker 1: He told as he wanted to live in the wild,
Speaker 1: away from everyone. Sometimes Ozzie would go up to Malibu
Speaker 1: to try to find Anthony to check on him. I
Speaker 1: was always worried I would find him dead, he tells me.
Speaker 1: But the camp was neat, no trash. Anthony cleared the
Speaker 1: brush with the machete, he says. One thing Ozzie noticed
Speaker 1: over the years in Malibu, he says, the rich people
Speaker 1: don't lie homeless. I've been sitting there talking to Ozzie
Speaker 1: for a while when I overhear someone talking about Anthony.
Speaker 1: He says, right in front of Ozzie that fucker should
Speaker 1: have burned. A few weeks later, I'm back at court.
Speaker 1: The prosecutor is presenting evidence about the weapon and ammunition
Speaker 1: deputies say they found when they arrested Rauda. It's the
Speaker 1: prosecutor questioning one of the deputies who arrested Rowda. He's
Speaker 1: showing him a photograph that is the same rifle that
Speaker 1: came out of the back back and what kind of rifleness.
Speaker 1: Then it's a nine millimeter carbing rifle. A car being
Speaker 1: is a cheap, lightweight rifle. Not very common. People call
Speaker 1: detective Mark and Donald. Understand Donald is one of the
Speaker 1: major crimes detectives. I noticed in court a few weeks back,
Speaker 1: directing your attention to October ten, twenty and eighteen, at
Speaker 1: sometime around three in the afternoon. Where were you helps
Speaker 1: that the email of the Creech State Park in kel Passes.
Speaker 1: And do you see someone in court today that you
Speaker 1: saw at that location? Yes, I do identify and wear
Speaker 1: that person is seated and what he's wearing the gentleman
Speaker 1: mow behind the glass to mine left. That would be
Speaker 1: Anthony Rowda, who today is in a restraint chair with
Speaker 1: his mouth covered in mass so he can't spit at anyone.
Speaker 1: His hands are tethered, but he still managed to flip
Speaker 1: off the news cruise with his left hand as he
Speaker 1: was wheeled in. Now he's studying his right hand slowly
Speaker 1: clenching it and releasing it, clenching and releasing, as if
Speaker 1: observing a fascinating butterfly beating its wings in the sun.
Speaker 1: The prosecutor shows Detective Donald a photograph. Was this a
Speaker 1: backpack that you saw at that vocation and what if anything,
Speaker 1: did you recover from that backpack? There are multiple items
Speaker 1: and two magazines floated with nine millimeter rounds. Along the day,
Speaker 1: plastic bag continued nine moving around call which were a
Speaker 1: life So at the time of his arrest, Rata had
Speaker 1: a nine millimeter carbing rifle and the ammunition to go
Speaker 1: with it. This gets my attention. So far, there's been
Speaker 1: no official information about what kind of ammunition killed Tristan Bodett,
Speaker 1: but the rumor going around Malibu is that it was
Speaker 1: a nine millimeter round. Routa's public defender starts to argue
Speaker 1: that the whole thing is a setup, a scheme by
Speaker 1: the Sheriff's department to pin the murder on a homeless guy,
Speaker 1: blame him in order to mollify the agitated folks in Malibu.
Speaker 1: I think mister Routa is being skapegoated for something, and
Speaker 1: as a result of that, they've brought all of this
Speaker 1: different evidence in to try and prove something else. The
Speaker 1: reason I was asking, first of all, whether the gun
Speaker 1: had been tested or anything like that, was for the
Speaker 1: reason that I think everybody expects inappropriate. It's interesting about
Speaker 1: that rifle. Ozzie tells me he didn't know Anthony had one.
Speaker 1: Can't imagine how he got it. He doesn't even hunt,
Speaker 1: as he says, he eats from the McDonald's dumpster. Today,
Speaker 1: Anthony Route is sentenced to one hundred and eighty days
Speaker 1: in County jail for the rifle and ammy mission. As
Speaker 1: an ex felon, he's not supposed to have them, but
Speaker 1: he's already been in for a while, so the clock
Speaker 1: is ticking. The prosecutor has told me that the last
Speaker 1: thing the major Crimes and homicide detectives want is for
Speaker 1: Rowda to walk out of jail a freeman. I have
Speaker 1: never been a conspiracy theorist before I started doing this
Speaker 1: for a living, and I only started a few months ago.
Speaker 1: Cc Woods is not feeling Anthony Routa as the cannon shooter,
Speaker 1: the armed burglar, or the killer of Tristan Boudette. She
Speaker 1: calls me to meet her at her home away from home,
Speaker 1: a private club on Pacific Coast Highway. But I'm going
Speaker 1: to tell you what, when things line up too perfectly,
Speaker 1: you can't plan a wedding with these kind of conditions
Speaker 1: and have it just come out flawless. For one thing,
Speaker 1: she tells me before the arrest, the Sheriff's Department had
Speaker 1: said they were looking for a male of slender build
Speaker 1: in connection with the burglaries. Doesn't sound like routed to her.
Speaker 1: Did that guy look like slender? He had a pooch
Speaker 1: like this, he looks like he eats Mexican food with
Speaker 1: the officers over at lapause, this guy did not fit
Speaker 1: the description. And look at this haircut, like that's a
Speaker 1: fashionable haircut. That is not a supercut's cut. Okay, I
Speaker 1: hate to say this, but you know, and my intuition
Speaker 1: is almost never wrong, but I'm gonna go out on
Speaker 1: a limb and say, I mean, this guy looked like
Speaker 1: a cop to me. Sorry. In her view, he's not
Speaker 1: just the wrong guy, a fall guy. He's an undercover cop,
Speaker 1: was suspiciously good hair. Of course they knew who he
Speaker 1: was because he's a plant. She's calling bs on the
Speaker 1: whole routa thing and doesn't care what the Sheriff's Department
Speaker 1: or any of the cops at Lost Hills think. I
Speaker 1: am not your little, quiet, little mousey girl. I'm a
Speaker 1: big mouth, big boobed blonde and that does not work
Speaker 1: for them. Okay, and I'm smart, which is even worse.
Speaker 1: You know, I can't go along with Cecy's idea that
Speaker 1: Rouda is actually an undercover cop. But there is what
Speaker 1: seems like an actual snag in the theory that Routa
Speaker 1: did all these crimes. Rouda was arrested with a nine
Speaker 1: millimeter carbing rifle, but near missus one through five didn't
Speaker 1: use nine millimeter ammunition. They all involved shotgun ammo, a
Speaker 1: metal slug in the case of near miss number three,
Speaker 1: and the rest, as far as I can piece together,
Speaker 1: bird shot small metal pellets kind of like babies that
Speaker 1: are designed to scatter. CEC posted a picture of the
Speaker 1: white BMW near Miss Num five riddled with holes, but
Speaker 1: there was no shotgun found at Roudah's camp, which means
Speaker 1: there's either another weapon or another shooter. But as I
Speaker 1: drive away from CC's club, I'm thinking about Malibu, this
Speaker 1: private paradise that people guard so fiercely. In some ways,
Speaker 1: the shooting's so shocking, don't feel all that out of place.
Speaker 1: This is a place where celebrities have guns and locals
Speaker 1: defend their turf, and the cops might drive by you
Speaker 1: when you call nine one one, and the rangers tell
Speaker 1: victims things like this don't happen here. In just the
Speaker 1: first few months of my reporting, there's been a murder,
Speaker 1: an uproar, accusations of a cover up, man hunts for
Speaker 1: an armed burglar, a suspicious arrest, and a catastrophic fire.
Speaker 1: Malibu doesn't look like a postcard anymore. That pretty surface
Speaker 1: has been seared off, and there's chaos raging underneath.