Speaker 1: Pushkin. Mountain lions do their hunting in the dark after
Speaker 1: dusk and in the early morning hours, right before the
Speaker 1: sun comes up. The hills above Malibu, California, are full
Speaker 1: of them. They're vicious predators, but they're so shy that
Speaker 1: the wildlife biologists who study them call them ghost cats.
Speaker 1: If you hike in the hills surrounding Malibu, you probably
Speaker 1: haven't seen a mountain lion, but one has almost certainly
Speaker 1: seen you. Hemmed in by freeways and in ever expanding suburbia,
Speaker 1: the mountain lions are stressed half crazy. A few years ago,
Speaker 1: I wrote a story about them for The New Yorker,
Speaker 1: where I work. The people in Malibu were really upset,
Speaker 1: especially about a rogue lion known as P forty five,
Speaker 1: which was slaughtering pet alpacas and mini horses seemingly for sport.
Speaker 1: There was a huge debate over who was to blame
Speaker 1: for these deaths, a murderous lion or the people who
Speaker 1: had left their pets unprotected in lion country. One morning,
Speaker 1: I went out searching for evidence of lions in the
Speaker 1: mountains near Malibu Creek State Park. I was with one
Speaker 1: of the wildlife biologists, and we were in a tangle
Speaker 1: of branches and bushes, looking at a dried out deer carcass,
Speaker 1: a month old lion kill. This question just popped into
Speaker 1: my head, so I asked him, Hey, do you ever
Speaker 1: find a dead body out here? He turned and looked
Speaker 1: at me so strangely he was going to stick to
Speaker 1: talking about lions, no comment on what humans might do
Speaker 1: in these hills. In my fifteen years living in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: I've logged a decent amount of time in Malibu, sometimes reporting,
Speaker 1: but mostly just taking my kids for afternoons at the beach.
Speaker 1: You know, Malibu, It's paradise, the ocean, the mountains, the
Speaker 1: honeycolored light, celebrities and surf bums, and laid back billionaires,
Speaker 1: people with prayer beads and private security. It's like a
Speaker 1: postcard of itself. The real gidget is a hostess at
Speaker 1: a local restaurant, and you could easily run into Kim
Speaker 1: Kardashian at the sushi bar. But often in Malibu I
Speaker 1: get this unsettling sensation that there's something else there underneath
Speaker 1: that pretty surface, something elusive and slightly menacing, a riptide
Speaker 1: an undertow, and I can never quite shake the feeling.
Speaker 1: That the place is warning me to go away. Here's
Speaker 1: what I know when I start all this. It's not
Speaker 1: a lot. It was before sunrise June twenty second, eighteen,
Speaker 1: and the campground at Malibu Creek State Park was packed.
Speaker 1: It's an idyllic spot. Campsites are arranged in a ring
Speaker 1: around a large meadow dotted with oak trees. Jagged peaks
Speaker 1: zigzag across the open sky. It was four in the morning,
Speaker 1: still dark. Everyone was inside their nylon tents and RVs,
Speaker 1: cozy in their sleeping bags for a couple more hours.
Speaker 1: But someone was awake, watching, silent, undetected, slipping shadow like
Speaker 1: around the sleeping campground. He had a gun and he
Speaker 1: fired it directly into one family's tent. Inside the tent
Speaker 1: was a man named Tristan Bodette, a brilliant young research
Speaker 1: scientist thirty five years old. He was sleeping beside his
Speaker 1: two little girls. The bullet struck his forehead, killing him,
Speaker 1: and whoever did it slipped away into the darkness. It's
Speaker 1: like a story that's meant to terrify you, playing on
Speaker 1: your deepest fears. A story you'd tell around a campfire
Speaker 1: with ghosts and murderers and things you can't explain except
Speaker 1: that this story is true. And once I heard it,
Speaker 1: I couldn't stop thinking about it. How did this happen?
Speaker 1: How does anything like this happen in Malibu, of all places?
Speaker 1: But it did happen in Malibu, And as I'd come
Speaker 1: to find out, inexplicable, nightmarish things happen in Malibu all
Speaker 1: the time. Tonight, a mystery in Malibu. The driver found
Speaker 1: a man dead in a ditch along Lost Versus Canyon Road.
Speaker 1: There have also been nine additional calls for shots fire.
Speaker 1: I just don't feel safe anymore. Breaking now a homicide investigation.
Speaker 1: We do have a nude body and it's still unclear
Speaker 1: exactly how it got here. It is a suspicious death.
Speaker 1: The human bones were just a half mile from the trailhead.
Speaker 1: We possibly said somebody screaming for help. Detectives and I
Speaker 1: trying to figure out who he is and who killed him.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what. They'll be standing with pitchforks outside
Speaker 1: Lost til Sheriff's department. I said to holler down, are
Speaker 1: you all right? She said, I'm just resting or something
Speaker 1: like that. Once she left, she just disappeared. I'm doing
Speaker 1: a goodyear and This is Lost Hells episode one, the
Speaker 1: Killing Zone. Would you guys start by just saying your
Speaker 1: names and what your relationship is to Tristan. My name
Speaker 1: is Scott McCurdy. I'm Tristan's brother in law, and this
Speaker 1: is my wife. My name's Pamela wo I'm at Tristan's
Speaker 1: sister in law and married to Scott McCurdy. I want
Speaker 1: to talk to Scott because he was with Tristan on
Speaker 1: the camping trip. He was in the next tent over
Speaker 1: with his own young boys. He's the closest person to
Speaker 1: the story. Tristan's little girls were two and four. The
Speaker 1: younger one could barely talk. Scott is the closest thing
Speaker 1: to a witness. Tristan always has this bucket list of
Speaker 1: things that he wants to do, and camping in Malibu
Speaker 1: State Park was on the bucket list. Years ago, before
Speaker 1: we had kids, he and I went up to Malibu
Speaker 1: Creek State Park and he and I always wanted to
Speaker 1: go back and camp there. Scott tells me that Tristan,
Speaker 1: his wife, Erica, and their kids were about to move
Speaker 1: from Orange County up to the Bay Area. I feel
Speaker 1: like he knew that I was a little bit sad
Speaker 1: that he was going to be leaving Southern California. Erica
Speaker 1: is an obgyn and had a medical exam to study for.
Speaker 1: So Tristan proposed a trip something he and Scott had
Speaker 1: been wanting to do for a long time, camping just
Speaker 1: the dads with the kids in Malibu Creek State Park,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to have kind of one last camping
Speaker 1: trip while he was down here and we were all together,
Speaker 1: and so it was meant to be this bonding, really
Speaker 1: fun experience. The caravan up to Malibu, we're driving up
Speaker 1: and we pull in and Tristan was first, and we
Speaker 1: passed the ranger booth where you get your site, and
Speaker 1: I follow Tristan in and we'd go down the long
Speaker 1: winding road and he makes a wrong turn and off
Speaker 1: the asphalt road onto this gravel dirt road, which later
Speaker 1: he commented he was so excited that he got to
Speaker 1: take his forest or off roading. It was such a funny, dude.
Speaker 1: The campground is basically a large oak meadow. There's a
Speaker 1: one way asphalt road that goes around it with campsites
Speaker 1: offset on either side. You know, we found our campsite,
Speaker 1: we got the kids out, and we all walked around
Speaker 1: and the campsite was was a little bit angled, and
Speaker 1: so Tristan really didn't like it because, you know, there
Speaker 1: wasn't a good spot to pitch the tent where you
Speaker 1: wouldn't be leaning one way or the other, and so
Speaker 1: it just wasn't wasn't the ideal camp site. So we decided,
Speaker 1: and we were early enough not all the sites were full,
Speaker 1: that we decided we'd, you know, one of us would
Speaker 1: go back and bargain with the rain to get another site.
Speaker 1: They moved to a different spot, Site forty nine, in
Speaker 1: a nice flat area on the northern end of the meadow,
Speaker 1: and then they noticed that the guy in the next
Speaker 1: site over was leaving. They asked him if they could
Speaker 1: use his site too spread out a little. He said, sure,
Speaker 1: no problem. Tristan set up his tent there in Site
Speaker 1: fifty one. Then he and Scott and all the kids
Speaker 1: spent the day at Surfrider Beach, that famous stretch along
Speaker 1: Pacific Coast Highway right by the Malibu Pier. At the
Speaker 1: end of the day, they headed back to the park
Speaker 1: and got ready for a night around the campfire. Scott
Speaker 1: says that Tristan could be counted on to bring delicious
Speaker 1: food and pre mixed cocktails when they camped. He was
Speaker 1: the kind of person who optimized everything. And so did you.
Speaker 1: And Tristan get to stay up drinking Manhattan's or something
Speaker 1: out of a flask after the kids finally went to bed.
Speaker 1: Tristan had pre mixed Manhattan's for that trip, that last
Speaker 1: conversation we had. We you know, we stayed up and
Speaker 1: we were just talking about families for hours and hours
Speaker 1: and um and I told him how much I was
Speaker 1: gonna miss him. I'm like, I kind of guilted him
Speaker 1: a little bit, like, you know, well we had a
Speaker 1: good run, buddy, you know, we had a good run.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'll miss you. You know. I remember at
Speaker 1: the end of the night, we decided, you know, okay,
Speaker 1: well it's it's late, let's go to bed. It was
Speaker 1: probably I don't know, I don't know what time it was.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was one o'clock or something. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: And you know, we put out the camp fire, and
Speaker 1: you know, we I gave him a big hug, and
Speaker 1: you know, I told him I loved him, and I
Speaker 1: told him I did I told him again that I
Speaker 1: was gonna miss him, and It makes me sad but
Speaker 1: so happy at the same time, because at least I
Speaker 1: got that. A few hours later, Scott says he was
Speaker 1: awakened by a loud noise like fireworks and the sound
Speaker 1: of one of his nieces crying. He couldn't figure out
Speaker 1: why Tristan wasn't helping her. He knew that something must
Speaker 1: be wrong. He got up, leaving his own young children,
Speaker 1: and hurried over to Tristen's tent. He opened the flap.
Speaker 1: In the dark, he could see the girls kneeling beside
Speaker 1: their dad. One of them kept saying, wet, wet. He
Speaker 1: dug around for a phone, and when he found it,
Speaker 1: used it as a flashlight. He rolled Tristan over and
Speaker 1: saw that his face was drenched in blood. The girls
Speaker 1: were kneeling in a pool of it. That's what was wet.
Speaker 1: He pulled the girls out of the tent into the
Speaker 1: chilly early morning air and began to scream for help.
Speaker 1: I've never investigated a murder before, but I'm assuming the
Speaker 1: autopsy will be filled with information. You know, leads I
Speaker 1: can follow that will get me started in the right direction.
Speaker 1: When the coroner releases it, I scour it for details.
Speaker 1: At the time of his death, It says Tristan Bodatt
Speaker 1: was wearing a gray tshirt, blue shorts, and white socks.
Speaker 1: His face was unshaven. He had a little alcohol in
Speaker 1: his system, probably the Manhattan's, and a little THHC. Above
Speaker 1: his right eye, just below the hairline, but pretty close
Speaker 1: to dead center was an oval hole where a full
Speaker 1: copper jacketed lead bullet had entered, piercing his brain. That
Speaker 1: bullet was excavated from his right shoulder blade. Included with
Speaker 1: the autopsy is something called a GSR data sheet. It
Speaker 1: stands for Gunshot Residue. I had to look that up.
Speaker 1: The box for homicide is checked, but everything else about
Speaker 1: Tristan Bodat's case and how he died can only be
Speaker 1: learned from the omissions gaps in the narrative of facts.
Speaker 1: The weapon is described as outstanding make a model, unknown, ammunition,
Speaker 1: brand and caliber. Unknown. Number of shots fired is left blank.
Speaker 1: How did the injury occur? The autopsy simply bopaquely says
Speaker 1: shot by another. When Tristan Bodett was killed, rumors started
Speaker 1: flying around Malibu. Bodette worked at a pharmaceutical company and
Speaker 1: had published research on vaccines, probably he'd been targeted, assassinated
Speaker 1: by Big pharma or the government, or the perpetrator was
Speaker 1: a disgruntled park worker, possibly ex military, or maybe it
Speaker 1: had something to do with the elite go marijuana grows
Speaker 1: that everyone knows, or a problem in Malibu Creek State Park.
Speaker 1: But what Scott says that they moved spots twice and
Speaker 1: ended up in a third spot given by a nameless stranger,
Speaker 1: it just makes me think about how random the killing was.
Speaker 1: Scott was there, he was with Tristan the whole time,
Speaker 1: right up until they zipped into their separate tents, and
Speaker 1: he's baffled. For me, and I think for Tristan, campgrounds
Speaker 1: or a sanctuary, there were a place that you could
Speaker 1: go and you could let your guard down a little bit,
Speaker 1: the kids could play, you'd have fun setting up your
Speaker 1: camp and making dinner and just hanging out with the
Speaker 1: people you love. Do you think about Malibu differently now? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I definitely do. I mean, I think you've
Speaker 1: got just this really great spot in the world where
Speaker 1: you should be able to go and enjoy nature, And
Speaker 1: you just don't think that in a place so beautiful
Speaker 1: that you're going to experience something so evil. When I
Speaker 1: think about what happened to Tristan Boudet, I always think
Speaker 1: about the thin wall of his tent. He probably felt
Speaker 1: so safe nestled in beside his girls. He trusted nature,
Speaker 1: He wasn't scared. He had no idea what was out
Speaker 1: there or how vulnerable he was going camping anywhere. Um,
Speaker 1: something could happen. You know, there could be there could
Speaker 1: be a bear, there could be a mountain lion. Those
Speaker 1: are kind of inherent risks in nature that you know
Speaker 1: they could be present, and you know if it happens,
Speaker 1: you know, if if there's if there's a bear, you know,
Speaker 1: it's the idea of that is really scary, right. But
Speaker 1: usually when there's something like that, I mean, it's posted,
Speaker 1: you know, you know what, you know that there's there
Speaker 1: are predators out there lurking, and so maybe you keep
Speaker 1: your kids a little bit closer and you keep your
Speaker 1: kids a little bit safer that day. But you would
Speaker 1: never go to a campground where there was a known
Speaker 1: human predator. No, no one whatever did that. We did
Speaker 1: not know that there was this danger at this park,
Speaker 1: and had we known, we would never have put our
Speaker 1: children in danger. Never. It was only after Tristan's death
Speaker 1: that he and everyone in Malibu found out there was
Speaker 1: a real danger. People were being targeted in Malibu Creek
Speaker 1: State Park. Law enforcement knew and Tristan Boudette was not
Speaker 1: the first victim. From twenty sixteen to twenty eighteen, there
Speaker 1: was a series of shootings in and around Malibu Creek
Speaker 1: State Park. One person was injured, but no one died.
Speaker 1: These were near misses, six of them. I'm a thousand
Speaker 1: feet above Malibu in a helicopter with the Twoey Write,
Speaker 1: a retired sergeant detective from Lost Hills Station. That's a
Speaker 1: small outpost of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, and it
Speaker 1: covers law enforcement for this whole area from coastal Malibu
Speaker 1: to Calabasas and the miles and miles of wilderness in between.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful areas, are a wild area with some
Speaker 1: rugged terrain. The sun such a beautiful out There's pointdo
Speaker 1: over by the beach. I can see a line of
Speaker 1: houses shoulder to shoulder on the sand. They look like toys.
Speaker 1: From here. It's some of the most expensive real estate
Speaker 1: in the world. You can see down there. That's Malibu Colony.
Speaker 1: That little Peninsula of Holmes. There quite a few rich
Speaker 1: and famous folks live there. We head inland over the mountains,
Speaker 1: following Malibu Canyon Road. This should Malibu Canyon going in Here,
Speaker 1: the highway goes along the canyon. It's a major road
Speaker 1: connecting the beach and the valley. Something like twenty thousand
Speaker 1: cars travel on it every day. Over and here is
Speaker 1: some of the areas where like the Kardashians live and
Speaker 1: all of that kind of And there's Malibu Creek State Park.
Speaker 1: It's wild and pristine, volcanic rocks, oak savannah's undulating grasslands.
Speaker 1: If you remember the opening sequence to the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: TV show Mash where the helicopter flies past craggy green peaks,
Speaker 1: that's Malibu Creek State Park. But Sergeant Twey Wright see
Speaker 1: something different. He sees the killing zone. Hey, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: you might just to keep it simple. We might start
Speaker 1: with the shootings and then moved to the burglaries and
Speaker 1: then moved to the capture since it happened that way
Speaker 1: and the capture route in the camp. That sounds like
Speaker 1: a great sequence. Sergeant Wright was in charge of search
Speaker 1: and rescue, finding hikers lost in the mountains below. His
Speaker 1: knowledge of this terrain put him right in the center
Speaker 1: of the investigation into Tristan Bodat's death and everything that
Speaker 1: happened before and after it. Sergeant Wright asks the pilot
Speaker 1: Pete to take a lap over the park. Pete, maybe
Speaker 1: a left bank there, and we'll go back over towards Tapia.
Speaker 1: Below us is a picnic spot, Tapia Park, at the
Speaker 1: edge of Malibu Creek State Park. That's where in November
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, a backpacker named Jimmy Rogers was shot hurt
Speaker 1: but not killed. We'll see being in a hammock slung
Speaker 1: between two trees near Miss number one. Over here in
Speaker 1: the park. Down in the campground there is where the
Speaker 1: next two incidents occurred. Less than a week later, and
Speaker 1: about a mile away, in the campground where Bodat was
Speaker 1: later killed, a man was shot at while inside his
Speaker 1: camper near Miss number two. Two months later, in January
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, there was another shooting in the same campground,
Speaker 1: this time at a couple sleeping in their car near
Speaker 1: Miss number Three's talking about the highway shootings. Then, in
Speaker 1: the summer of twenty seventeen, the targets seemed to change
Speaker 1: to moving cars driving along the canyon Road. In the
Speaker 1: span of a few weeks, first a white Porsche and
Speaker 1: then a white BMW were hit with gunfire near misses
Speaker 1: four and five. Below us on the park side of
Speaker 1: the canyon Road, there's a hill well concealed by bushes
Speaker 1: and trees. You can see the hill and the brush
Speaker 1: and the canopy trees come right up to the edge
Speaker 1: of the highway YEP. Sergeant Rights theory is that a
Speaker 1: shooter lay in wait, firing on approaching cars. It's a
Speaker 1: good elevated position where you have immediate cover and an
Speaker 1: immediate escape direction. The shootings in the park and on
Speaker 1: the canyon Road were totally bizarre events rhymes with no reason.
Speaker 1: They all happened at the same time around three four am.
Speaker 1: Each one involved a single shot, but after near miss
Speaker 1: number five things went quiet. Eleven months passed without another
Speaker 1: shooting until June eighteenth, twenty eighteen. Early that morning, around
Speaker 1: four am, in the same area, a Tesla, a white one,
Speaker 1: was hit in the hood near miss number six. Even then,
Speaker 1: after twenty months of unsolved shootings, law enforcement didn't alert
Speaker 1: the public. The Sheriff's department stayed silent. And so did
Speaker 1: California State Parks. There was no press conference, nothing was
Speaker 1: posted at the park, no information wanted flier, not even
Speaker 1: a suggestion to remain vigilant. And four days after the
Speaker 1: Tesla was shot, Tristan Boudette was killed in the campground.
Speaker 1: When you got the call that there had been a
Speaker 1: shooting at the campground, it wasn't out of the blue
Speaker 1: for you. I'm just putting myself in your shoes and
Speaker 1: thinking you must have had a sinking feeling because there
Speaker 1: had been a series of incidents leading up to that moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is true, and this was our greatest fear that
Speaker 1: this was a serial shooter and that eventually he would
Speaker 1: hit somebody and or kill them. He'd already hit somebody
Speaker 1: in the beginning. So he's saying that privately, law enforcement
Speaker 1: worried there was a potential serial killer at large. They
Speaker 1: thought he was looking for victims and that Malibu Creek
Speaker 1: State Park and the Canyon Road were his hunting ground.
Speaker 1: While millions of people, oblivious of the danger, continued to
Speaker 1: visit the trails, spend the night in the campground, and
Speaker 1: travel on the Canyon Road. Even me, I took my
Speaker 1: kids to Malibu Creek State Park in early twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: we walked the three mile loop to the rock pool.
Speaker 1: It's a famous swimming spot, and we checked out the
Speaker 1: teenagers jumping from the ledges. We talked about camping in
Speaker 1: the campground when it got warm enough. It's hard not
Speaker 1: to look back and wonder what if we had. After
Speaker 1: the Bodat murder, the earlier victims the near misses went
Speaker 1: to the media. There was an outcry in Malibu as
Speaker 1: people began to panic about the canyon shooter. The campground
Speaker 1: was temporarily closed, but though no one was in custody,
Speaker 1: the rest of the park remained open, and there was
Speaker 1: still no sign posted about anything that had transpired there. Then,
Speaker 1: about a month after the murder, there was a rash
Speaker 1: of mysterious burglaries from commercial buildings near the periphery of
Speaker 1: the park. You wanna talk about the burgerschure, okay, scroungey
Speaker 1: desperate stuff, Not laptops or cell phones, but sandwiches from
Speaker 1: the fridge, seize candy, cinnamon rolls, junk food from the
Speaker 1: front of a vending machine, smashed out with a rock.
Speaker 1: A couple of these places had video surveillance and a
Speaker 1: guy was caught on camera masked and wearing a headlamp
Speaker 1: with a backpack what appeared to be a rifle sticking
Speaker 1: out of it. The next place we're going to go
Speaker 1: to is called the Calabasas Recreation Center, just so happens
Speaker 1: to be directly next door to Malboy last tools sheriff station.
Speaker 1: The area where all these crimes took place is essentially
Speaker 1: the backyard of the sheriff station and one burglary. The
Speaker 1: last one was literally next door, so he came within
Speaker 1: what would you say, a hundred yards of the sheriff station.
Speaker 1: I would say maybe even closer to the parking lot.
Speaker 1: Sergeant Wright says he followed bootprints from the rec center's
Speaker 1: parking lot up into the dusty, desolate hills behind the
Speaker 1: Sheriff's station. Do you see that big oak tree down
Speaker 1: at the bottom. Yep, we're looking at a fold in
Speaker 1: the hills where a gnarled oak clings to the side
Speaker 1: of a steep slope. The one furthest back towards the hill,
Speaker 1: the big one. YEA. I figured there was a up here. Following,
Speaker 1: Sergeant writes hunch half a dozen Sheriff's deputies returned to
Speaker 1: the site of the last bootprint. As they trudged up
Speaker 1: and down hills in the bright sun, the only sound
Speaker 1: was a Sheriff's Department helicopter chuffing in the distance. But
Speaker 1: then a deputy heard a strange, clanging noise echoing through
Speaker 1: the canyon. It seemed to be coming from a ridge
Speaker 1: to the west. Already steeped in shadow, the deputy dropped
Speaker 1: to his knee and looked through the optic on his rifle.
Speaker 1: Zooming in, he saw a man saw the whites of
Speaker 1: his eyes, as he would later testify, clean cut, early forties,
Speaker 1: wearing all black and a backpack with a rifle sticking
Speaker 1: out the top. The deputies jumped him right outside his camp.
Speaker 1: Of course, he tried to flee, but deputies were on
Speaker 1: him real quick search and rescue and lost Hill's patrol
Speaker 1: immediately got their guns on him, and at some point
Speaker 1: he tossed the pack and you could see the rifle
Speaker 1: sticking out of the pack. The man with the gun
Speaker 1: was Anthony Routa, a loaner who'd been living in the
Speaker 1: hills on and off for years. The cops celebrated was
Speaker 1: the mystery of the canyon shooter. All wrapped up. Sergeant Wright,
Speaker 1: who helped track Routa to his camp, admits that it
Speaker 1: all seems a little neat the drifter living behind the station,
Speaker 1: hiding in plain view. That guy's responsible for what may
Speaker 1: be the most violent crime wave in Malibu history. I
Speaker 1: would think it would take some nerve to commit a
Speaker 1: burglary direct next door to the station. I mean, why
Speaker 1: would somebody commit a murder and then hold on to
Speaker 1: the same weapon and then do burglaries on videotape and
Speaker 1: making no very little effort to hide other than putting
Speaker 1: a mask on part of your face. There's an assumption
Speaker 1: that most criminals would think, if their picture was captured
Speaker 1: on camera with a weapon, that there's going to be
Speaker 1: a heightened law enforcement effort to engage them. And that's
Speaker 1: exactly what happened. Okay number four and number five one calendar, Anthony,
Speaker 1: It's been a long morning. In a cold court room
Speaker 1: near the County Jail in downtown Los Angeles, Anthony Rawda
Speaker 1: is late for his hearing. Officially, at this stage, the
Speaker 1: charges have nothing to do with murder. Rauda is in
Speaker 1: violation of the terms of his post release community supervision,
Speaker 1: meaning he's an ex felon. He hasn't shown up to
Speaker 1: meet with his probation officer for two years, and he's
Speaker 1: not supposed to have weapons or ammunition. The deputies who
Speaker 1: arrested him at his campsite say he had both unofficially,
Speaker 1: though the charges seem to have everything to do with
Speaker 1: the killing in Malibu Creek State Park. Only a few
Speaker 1: hours after Roudah's arrest, the sheriff himself had a press
Speaker 1: conference at the Hall of Justice, that's department headquarters downtown,
Speaker 1: and while they didn't quite say that Roudah was the
Speaker 1: suspect in the shootings or the murder, it was a
Speaker 1: big show. The captain of the Major Crimes Bureau, the
Speaker 1: Lost Hills Captain, a top official from California State Parks.
Speaker 1: And now Roudah's being held without bail. And there are
Speaker 1: two plain closed detectives in the front row of the
Speaker 1: courtroom talking loudly about a fishing cabin. One of the
Speaker 1: detectives has long gray hair and a beard, and is
Speaker 1: wearing ship kickers and jeans. The other, lean, with sunken cheeks,
Speaker 1: sneers at me when I try to say hello. Later,
Speaker 1: I'll find out that the lean one is Detective Mark Donnell,
Speaker 1: and that the one with the ship kickers is a
Speaker 1: detective named Tye Barry, complicated guy a long and twisted
Speaker 1: history with the Sheriff's Department. Donald and Barry are both
Speaker 1: part of the Major Crimes Bureau and worked the Malibu case. Finally,
Speaker 1: Rouda enters with a deputy in blue latex gloves gripping
Speaker 1: his arm, guiding him to his seat. My first impression
Speaker 1: of Anthony Rowta is he's pale, library pale an indoorsman,
Speaker 1: not the weather beaten, leather skinned survivalist I'd been expecting.
Speaker 1: His hair is dark and slicked back in individual lines
Speaker 1: that look pencil drawn, a little goatee, blue jumpsuit, wrists
Speaker 1: cuffed behind his back. He's separated from the rest of
Speaker 1: the courtroom by a plexiglass partition. But he has something
Speaker 1: he wants to say to the judge. Welcome to speed,
Speaker 1: over defense objection, and I would ask if anything to
Speaker 1: be off the record. That's Rounda's public defender attempting to intervene,
Speaker 1: and that's the judge who looks exceptionally annoyed. I I
Speaker 1: want to speak. You don't have rights to speed, but
Speaker 1: he's seeking through your return No I'm not going to speak.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to cooperate with the pub defenders opposee
Speaker 1: anymore's thousand okason. On that one, Rowdah hurls himself against
Speaker 1: the plexiglass piece of ship. You're a piece of ship,
Speaker 1: bitch sharks that motherfucker. The bailiff calls for help and
Speaker 1: a bunch of deputies appear. They kick all the reporters out,
Speaker 1: but they forget about the microphones that have been placed
Speaker 1: on a podium at the front of the courtroom. And
Speaker 1: that's when Rowdah tells the judge to go fuck himself.
Speaker 1: I think my client is a little over brought, having
Speaker 1: been in custody. Fuck you. He seems mad at everyone,
Speaker 1: the judge, the DA, the bailiff, even as public defender
Speaker 1: the one person who wants to help him. Roudah appears desperate, furious, trapped,
Speaker 1: He's thrashing about in the fluorescent light of this dingy,
Speaker 1: cold courtroom. He reminds me of the mountain lions hemmed
Speaker 1: in stressed out. A dangerous ghost is a gaining session.
Speaker 1: Several weeks later, when I see route end coourt, he's
Speaker 1: undergone a disturbing transformation. He's strapped to a restraint chair,
Speaker 1: his face covered by a mesh mask to stop him
Speaker 1: from spitting at the deputies. His head laws to one
Speaker 1: side as if he's under heavy sedation. I noticed that
Speaker 1: the public defender who Route has been trying to fire,
Speaker 1: is gesturing to me. He wants me to come talk
Speaker 1: to him in a quiet corner at the back of
Speaker 1: the courtroom. I got the information, unfortunately under sealed, and
Speaker 1: so I can't He's talking about the discovery, the evidence
Speaker 1: provided by the Sheriff's department about the weapon and ammunition
Speaker 1: that Routa was arrested with. I don't think they've got
Speaker 1: the ballistics or anything. In other words, he doesn't think
Speaker 1: they have enough to charge Routo with murder. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what direction you're going in there checked
Speaker 1: any others. I don't know any It means to be
Speaker 1: ricky okay, because I don't think this killer is the shooter.
Speaker 1: There's a killer out there, and I don't know if
Speaker 1: they shouldn't even be guessing. I don't know what his
Speaker 1: family situation was. I don't know if there was any arrivals.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's anything else something wrong Skid
Speaker 1: didn't do. He's crazy. That was so much pressure that
Speaker 1: they had to arrest somebody. I think they got the
Speaker 1: crisy guy. They probably want him in custody so that
Speaker 1: that they can get the sky interest or somebody doctor him,
Speaker 1: get him corminating stuff. It's the only thing I can
Speaker 1: figure because of these knots. It's unfair. He believes that
Speaker 1: route is a sacrificial lamb, meant to appease the agitated
Speaker 1: Malibu community. Anyway, just between him and when Tristan Boudett
Speaker 1: was killed shot in Malibu Creek State Park in the
Speaker 1: hour before dawn, I couldn't stop thinking about it. Then
Speaker 1: I found out about all the other shootings too. Now
Speaker 1: the cops have arrested Anthony Rowda, a homeless guy living
Speaker 1: behind the station, and they seem to want everyone to
Speaker 1: think that it's all his fault, that he's the perfect
Speaker 1: bad guy, a single efficient explanation for everything that's been
Speaker 1: going on. I don't know what to believe, but I
Speaker 1: know that's not the whole story. Could Anthony Rowda have
Speaker 1: committed all these crimes? What was law enforcement doing this
Speaker 1: whole time? How did Malibu turn into the killing zone