Speaker 1: The Red Weather is a work of fiction. Any resemblance
Speaker 1: to actual persons or events reflects the adaptation of real,
Speaker 1: publicly available materials for creative and legal reasons. The content
Speaker 1: of this podcast is the sole responsibility of Red Weather
Speaker 1: LLC and does not reflect the views of responsibilities of
Speaker 1: iHeartMedia or its affiliates. Previously on The Red Weather, in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five, my neighbor and a trainer disappeared from
Speaker 1: a commune, and back then I lied to everybody.
Speaker 2: An a trainer was at a party in downtown Sebasketball.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of witnesses that said Anna she
Speaker 2: had a fight with her boyfriend.
Speaker 1: I was with Anna's sister Willow that night, but we
Speaker 1: were actually in the woods. We were on the Tender Hearts.
Speaker 3: Property, the most weed I've ever seen in my life,
Speaker 3: and Willow burned it down to the ground intentional.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure does that answer things or does that
Speaker 2: does create more questions?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: I mean, that's kind of my whole with this podcast,
Speaker 1: That's what I want to find out. My dad has
Speaker 1: this story he tells from when he was a teenager.
Speaker 1: One night, his friends told him to get in the car.
Speaker 5: Friends of mine that I grew up with.
Speaker 6: Said, hey, we have a girl that's living away from
Speaker 6: here who.
Speaker 5: Is willing to take us on.
Speaker 6: And said, oh, yeah, yeah, come on, let's go. And
Speaker 6: I said, oh, well sure, you know, I jumped in
Speaker 6: the car and there were three or four of us.
Speaker 1: They were all going to see Sally Chase, an older
Speaker 1: married woman who wanted to party with him while her
Speaker 1: husband was out of town. They parked the car and
Speaker 1: walked through the woods to go to a farmhouse.
Speaker 6: It was raining, started raining real light.
Speaker 5: But this house is up on the top of the hill.
Speaker 1: And side note, even though this really happened, this story
Speaker 1: in my imagination is animated. Specifically, it looks like the
Speaker 1: cover of a Hardy Boys novel or any old timey
Speaker 1: book or movie poster with a haunted house or a
Speaker 1: spooky farmhouse. Anyway, when my dad and his past and
Speaker 1: they definitely called each other pal got close to Sally
Speaker 1: Chase's porch, gunshots rang out.
Speaker 6: You're just one of light and window, and all of
Speaker 6: a sudden, this guy yells out, oh.
Speaker 5: Did you should it bit you to come around her?
Speaker 1: In my wife boom boom. Sally's husband was there yelling
Speaker 1: and brandishing a shotgun, so one of my dad's friends
Speaker 1: falls to the ground, screaming in pain. The shots kept coming,
Speaker 1: and understandably, my dad panicked.
Speaker 6: And I turned and I ran as fast as I
Speaker 6: could out of there, not thinking of anybody else but surviving.
Speaker 6: As I'm running, I come up to his.
Speaker 5: Field on ahead of me and said, okay, right through there,
Speaker 5: and I run.
Speaker 1: He ran headlong into a fence in the dark, cut
Speaker 1: up his forehead.
Speaker 6: I jump over the fence and they finally found a
Speaker 6: place in another road that I could come out one.
Speaker 1: Blood was dripping down his face. He made it to
Speaker 1: the road. He flagged down a car as soon as
Speaker 1: he got in. The man who picked him up was concerned.
Speaker 1: My dad was embarrassed, scared and didn't know what to say.
Speaker 1: But the driver had a very important, very telling question.
Speaker 6: They said, you haven't worn up see Sally Chase for it.
Speaker 6: I said not, I'm talking about man.
Speaker 1: My dad denied it, but the guy persisted, you were
Speaker 1: up season Sally Chase.
Speaker 5: Vers goes, damn man, that guy up.
Speaker 6: There's crazy. He shot to my buddies. At least and
Speaker 6: he said, no, no, that's a joke, is what It was.
Speaker 1: A setup, a prank, one of these small town rituals
Speaker 1: that had been going on for years. So the guy
Speaker 1: gave my dad a ride into town where all his
Speaker 1: friends were waiting for him, laughing and welcoming him to
Speaker 1: the club of Sally Chase Survivors, which was always this
Speaker 1: kind of funny story straight out of something like the
Speaker 1: movie Porky's Some nineteen fifties Boys Will Be Boys romp.
Speaker 1: But when I consider this story now, this memory, I
Speaker 1: have a hard time wrapping my head around what my
Speaker 1: dad was thinking. He was going to sleep with some
Speaker 1: random married woman in a farmhouse. Did he believe this
Speaker 1: woman was so excited to cheat on her husband that
Speaker 1: she just invited a group of teenage boys sight unseen
Speaker 1: to her house. Was going to be some kind of orgy?
Speaker 1: Were they going to take turns? Did he really think
Speaker 1: this through? No, of course not. He just went along
Speaker 1: with his friends, because when you're a teenager, you don't
Speaker 1: think these things through. You're caught up in a moment
Speaker 1: in your age, in your friend group. You're completely in
Speaker 1: a bubble. Your hormones are going crazy, your priorities are
Speaker 1: completely messed up. It's not that different from what my
Speaker 1: friends and I were doing the night that Anna Trainer disappeared,
Speaker 1: just like my dad's story. When I think back and
Speaker 1: I try and remember my worldview, it just doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense. We were out there for some kind of revenge,
Speaker 1: and there was a sex and porn element that is
Speaker 1: super fuzzy and makes me uncomfortable to even think about,
Speaker 1: let alone talk about into a microphone. It was just
Speaker 1: like my dad, this adolescent misadventure that if you look
Speaker 1: back with any perspective, you can't help but question your motivations,
Speaker 1: your intelligence, and even maybe your moral compass. The difference is,
Speaker 1: of course, that for my dad it all worked out.
Speaker 1: His crazy Night in the Woods was a joke and
Speaker 1: he was fine. They could laugh about it. They even
Speaker 1: went on to play the same prank on my dad's
Speaker 1: brother and other friends. But my Crazy Night in the
Speaker 1: Woods ended with a fire that burned four houses and
Speaker 1: one hundred acres, And after that night, Willow's sister Anna
Speaker 1: was never seen again. I am actor and filmmaker writer
Speaker 1: Strong This is the Red Weather. Before she killed herself,
Speaker 1: my friend Willow had let me out of a promise
Speaker 1: to keep a secret about the night her sister Anna disappeared.
Speaker 1: I'd gone back to my hometown to talk with reporters, police, family,
Speaker 1: and other people from our lives. My friend Chris joined me.
Speaker 1: He was also in on the promise, but I had
Speaker 1: barely begun the process when Chris and I discovered that
Speaker 1: our versions of this promise were pretty different. Why would
Speaker 1: we be arrested because Willow accidentally started the fire?
Speaker 3: Accidentally started a fire that that is not at all
Speaker 3: would happen?
Speaker 4: What are you talking about?
Speaker 1: What are you talking? I'm talking with the pinkiesware. Turns
Speaker 1: out Chris was with her, and she'd started the fire
Speaker 1: intentionally to burn down a barn full of cannabis, which
Speaker 1: back then we would have called pot or marijuana or
Speaker 1: if you're my parents.
Speaker 5: Grass that's what you called it. So I still call it, yes,
Speaker 5: I don't.
Speaker 1: Know, Yeah, I feel like growing up, you guys always
Speaker 1: called it grass or dope, called a magic plants, magic plants.
Speaker 7: Well, we just called it magic plants for you guys,
Speaker 7: you little guys.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 1: In any event, coming forward to the cops suddenly felt
Speaker 1: like a bigger deal. I'd already scheduled to sit down
Speaker 1: with Sheriff Maldonado, the lead investigator from Anna's case, I
Speaker 1: was set to meet him at his house.
Speaker 4: Would you be willing to sit down with me?
Speaker 9: Uh?
Speaker 4: Sure, I can come to you.
Speaker 1: It's just a couple of microphones and a recorder, you know.
Speaker 10: Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, that sounds good.
Speaker 5: I'll try to find what notes I might have.
Speaker 1: Chris and I took the time to walk the woods
Speaker 1: behind my parents' house where we were the knight that
Speaker 1: Anna disappeared, yeh, finding out we had different versions of
Speaker 1: that night. It seemed important to retrace our steps, all right.
Speaker 1: So the rat hole used to be Yeah, there see
Speaker 1: the bones of it. Yeah, the rat hole was a
Speaker 1: for it. My brother and I made, well, really, my
Speaker 1: dad made it and we helped. I probably nailed a
Speaker 1: couple of boards. But it was every kid's dream come true.
Speaker 11: Which was a two story building that had no windows
Speaker 11: or doors, but the only way you get in was
Speaker 11: through a trapdoor underneath.
Speaker 5: It took me a long time to knock it down.
Speaker 1: When did your dad take it down? I actually don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean it was after we moved.
Speaker 6: Out, probably ten to fifteen years ago. I don't remember.
Speaker 6: Just in fact, the parts are still there. I never
Speaker 6: took them away. I didn't what to do with it,
Speaker 6: because when they had the septic redone, they just took
Speaker 6: all the old sheptic concrete threw it down there too.
Speaker 1: It was this crumbling molding mess. But when we were kids,
Speaker 1: it was the best. We put a carpet inside, we
Speaker 1: spray painted the walls, and it was where we set
Speaker 1: the stage for our knight. Didn't consult us, just took
Speaker 1: it down. It's like, what was our plan? It was
Speaker 1: Halloween nineteen ninety five. I was with Chris, our friends Connor,
Speaker 1: Ryan and Willow. We were fifteen. We didn't have cars,
Speaker 1: didn't have good flashlights, we didn't have a clue, but
Speaker 1: we had the rat hole, some rope, a fake dead body,
Speaker 1: and maybe the worst idea in the world. At the time,
Speaker 1: we thought we were doing the right thing, something noble.
Speaker 1: We were trying to save Anna's reputation. And the interesting
Speaker 1: thing about that is I didn't even really know Anna
Speaker 1: that well. I mean, I was intimidated by Anna. She
Speaker 1: was older man, she was the coolest. When Chilo knew
Speaker 1: her a little bit better. I think she just was
Speaker 1: kind of lost at that time, and I.
Speaker 11: Regret looking back on it, my lack of understanding what
Speaker 11: she was going through and.
Speaker 1: You were in love with her. We all had a
Speaker 1: massive crush on Rose and I barely even talked to her.
Speaker 3: But whatever, I was anything with a pulse and boob Okay,
Speaker 3: fuck off, I wasn't in teen magazines and on television.
Speaker 1: At fall. Anna was going through a rough time. Likes.
Speaker 1: She and Willow grew up in the Tender Hearts, the
Speaker 1: collective through the woods from Me, so they were homeschooled
Speaker 1: up until high school, and then she wanted to go
Speaker 1: to the same high school as everyone in Sebastopol, the
Speaker 1: public school. Anily, she went from being a commune kid
Speaker 1: out in the sticks to suddenly having this much more regular,
Speaker 1: all American high school experience, and by all accounts, it
Speaker 1: didn't go well.
Speaker 11: You know, I think she at that time was going
Speaker 11: through a lot of stuff that.
Speaker 5: I don't think we could really relate.
Speaker 1: To or understand. You know, my brother tried to go
Speaker 1: to Annilie's freshman year.
Speaker 11: He only lasted two weeks after coming off of being homeschooled.
Speaker 5: Yeah, walking into.
Speaker 11: That was yeah awful.
Speaker 5: Yeah, God, I don't know. I still have nightmares about it.
Speaker 1: This was a girl who never set foot in the classroom.
Speaker 1: She'd never done a book report, let alone dealt with
Speaker 1: the kind of social pressure of a typical American high school.
Speaker 1: You have to remember this was the nineteen nineties. No
Speaker 1: one wanted to actually be weird, to actually be different.
Speaker 1: If you didn't shop at Hot Topic, listen to Tupac
Speaker 1: and Nirvana, you probably weren't going to be popular. And
Speaker 1: I know there are a lot of hippie kids everywhere,
Speaker 1: but that usually meant kids who smoked pot and listened
Speaker 1: to the Grateful Dead. It did not mean kids who
Speaker 1: would say, find roadkill, skin it and eat it. Ryan
Speaker 1: remembers that I remember.
Speaker 12: Her actually bringing that to school and it being cooked,
Speaker 12: and like people trying it.
Speaker 4: I think I might have tried.
Speaker 9: A little bit of it. Actually, well yeah, she never.
Speaker 1: Tried something, but it was I thought it was either
Speaker 1: possum or squirrel.
Speaker 9: Okay, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: But Anna wanted a more normal life. She wanted to
Speaker 1: be in town, so even though rough, she stuck it
Speaker 1: out and things did get better for a time. She
Speaker 1: made friends. For better or worse, she discovered drinking and drugs,
Speaker 1: and by her junior year she had a boyfriend, Mick Bowden.
Speaker 1: He was the ultimate town kit. He got good grades,
Speaker 1: had money, He had his own car and Acura Integra.
Speaker 2: Look, my understanding was that Anna and Mick were a
Speaker 2: little star crossed.
Speaker 1: This is Monica Tremblaine. She's the local reporter who covered
Speaker 1: the case originally and was helping me connect the dots.
Speaker 2: Definitely, it was surprising that they dated it in the
Speaker 2: first place.
Speaker 1: Huck, I'm hated me too, hated. Mick and Anna were
Speaker 1: together for a year or so, and after they broke up,
Speaker 1: Anna got a reputation she was well, now you say
Speaker 1: sex positive, but that wasn't really a thing.
Speaker 13: Yeah, there was some she gave head to some guy
Speaker 13: in the dark room or a couple guys in the dark.
Speaker 1: Room or something, and the fact that she had done
Speaker 1: that was.
Speaker 5: Enough of a story to tell to everybody, I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 11: She had a reputation of being very sexually open, which
Speaker 11: I remember was unjustified.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, it just always annoyed me.
Speaker 11: Because it was only because she was a woman, and
Speaker 11: that whole idea, the concept of somebody being a slut only.
Speaker 5: Applies to a woman.
Speaker 1: And eventually there was a tape Shiloh had actually seen.
Speaker 5: It was it a VHS No, I think it was on.
Speaker 5: It was like one of those little tiny.
Speaker 1: D mini DV things. This is the infamous yurt party tape.
Speaker 1: And if you don't know what a yurt is, you've
Speaker 1: clearly never been on an Iowasco retreat or been a
Speaker 1: teenager in northern California. They're semi permanent tents.
Speaker 13: It starts out and everybody's dancing. There's like music playing.
Speaker 13: She was there with a couple guys and it started
Speaker 13: getting you know, more like sexy dancing. And I remember
Speaker 13: like she had this like like one piece on, and
Speaker 13: I remember what I can see in the video that
Speaker 13: you know, he's trying to like take her shirt off.
Speaker 13: Like they started kissing and making out and grinding and yeah.
Speaker 11: And they were all making out in the bed together.
Speaker 11: It was like, yeah, the two guys and her.
Speaker 1: As you can imagine, like most small towns, if something
Speaker 1: scandalous went down at a party, everyone knew about it.
Speaker 1: And somehow apparently Mick got a hold of this tape.
Speaker 1: What's he gonna do because there was no online couldn't download.
Speaker 1: Is he gonna make copies of the tape?
Speaker 4: I guess?
Speaker 1: Or just show people in them out a screening today?
Speaker 1: This would be called revenge porn, but back then it
Speaker 1: didn't have a name. It was just ruining Anna's life.
Speaker 1: And Willow wanted us to protect her sister. She wanted
Speaker 1: us to help, so we got our little trip together. Okay,
Speaker 1: but this is where I remember ducking down from the headlights, right,
Speaker 1: and I had the Louisville Slugger. I had a baseball bat.
Speaker 1: Wait we had a bat?
Speaker 4: Yeah, for pure defense.
Speaker 1: I know we had fireworks, but not a bat. Definitely,
Speaker 1: you were on the path. No, No, because I remember
Speaker 1: me and Connor we were ducking down. Do you remember
Speaker 1: there used to be like a huge fern right here.
Speaker 1: We were behind that. No, no, you were definitely on
Speaker 1: the path. How much you want to bet? I don't
Speaker 1: need to remember.
Speaker 3: Connor will back me up on this. I'm not because
Speaker 3: you're scared you're gonna lose the bet.
Speaker 1: No, let's just bet on it. Okay, fine, Connor lives
Speaker 1: in England now, he's a professor of sociology.
Speaker 9: No, Chris is right.
Speaker 14: Really, Yeah, you were dealing with rigging up the dummy
Speaker 14: Bucky Bucky.
Speaker 9: Yes, that's right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Our idea was to get Mick out to the woods
Speaker 1: and distract him long enough to grab the yurt tape
Speaker 1: from his car. But in order to do that, and
Speaker 1: here's where fifteen year old logic takes over, we decided
Speaker 1: to not only lure him out, but also to scare
Speaker 1: the crap out of him. Because it was Halloween. My
Speaker 1: family was really big into Halloween, so we threw parties
Speaker 1: with Haunted Walks of the Woods, and we were the
Speaker 1: family that did the Haunted House at our grade school.
Speaker 1: We used to make our own masks and creatures, and
Speaker 1: we had a lot of props, including a fake dead
Speaker 1: body we called Bucky.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 11: But then we had it on a noose I think,
Speaker 11: and then it was like, you know, you could swing
Speaker 11: it down, so when people walked by, we would drop
Speaker 11: it in front of them, right, and that would scare people.
Speaker 1: Is that body still up in the pony house?
Speaker 5: I see, I just came across the gams.
Speaker 1: So we made our plan to get the your tape
Speaker 1: exactly the way you would plan a haunted maze. Nick
Speaker 1: ideally pulls up, gets out of the car, sees the
Speaker 1: light on in the rat hole. Oh what's that? I
Speaker 1: must go over towards there, walk down this path.
Speaker 4: How did we get it?
Speaker 1: Even get him out here in the first place.
Speaker 14: WILLI set it up? Yeah, she told Mick to meet
Speaker 14: him there. Well, do you remember what she told him? No,
Speaker 14: but I know we put hay bails.
Speaker 1: That was to divert Mick from the Tender Hearts driveway.
Speaker 1: We knew he'd dead end by the rat hole where
Speaker 1: Willow was waiting, So she gets him in the rat
Speaker 1: hole and she lights off. The eighties, sixties m sixties
Speaker 1: were loud, completely illegal fireworks someone had procured from Chinatown.
Speaker 14: So we would go into Chinatown and we would stock
Speaker 14: up on firecrackers with different sizes and power. It was
Speaker 14: the sixties and the eights, and these were like the
Speaker 14: big daddies, right, These are the ones that would make
Speaker 14: a really big.
Speaker 1: Boom, basically cherry bombs, pop pop, douchebag Nick pieces pants.
Speaker 3: Okay, hopefully comes back down this path where you and
Speaker 3: O'Ryan have bucket.
Speaker 1: Once Mick came back out of the rat hole, Oriyan
Speaker 1: and I would drop Bucky, scaring the crap out of
Speaker 1: him and buying more time for Connor and Chris to
Speaker 1: rifle through his car and hopefully find the tape. The tape,
Speaker 1: the YRT tape that was the play that was That's
Speaker 1: not what happened. As much as our friend Connor helped
Speaker 1: us remember some things, I wish we hadn't called him
Speaker 1: because after we talked, Chris refused to meet Sheriff Maldonado
Speaker 1: with me.
Speaker 9: Do you know the actual like legal technicalities.
Speaker 1: I've looked up as much as I can. I asked
Speaker 1: chat GPT. But you know, look, we didn't start the fire.
Speaker 14: Wait, so you're planning to sit down with the sheriff.
Speaker 14: He's a retired sheriff whatever, an officer of the law. Yeah,
Speaker 14: and tell him that you lied to him thirty years ago.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think we even committed a crime.
Speaker 1: I'm still going to talk to him. There's zero chance
Speaker 1: that this isn't beyond the statute delimitration.
Speaker 9: That's what I'm man.
Speaker 1: Just come with me. We just tell him the truth.
Speaker 1: We've already made progress.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: The moldy old pager, the dog dug up and your
Speaker 3: parents kept in a garage.
Speaker 5: It's something, It is something, but.
Speaker 1: I'm not going Chris was talking about a pager weed
Speaker 1: found After we walk the property, Chris and I went
Speaker 1: through some of the stuff in my parents' garage.
Speaker 4: I swear my.
Speaker 8: Parents have been throwing anything away for fifty years.
Speaker 3: What is this creepy boxing, dirty children?
Speaker 5: This is Cookie's collection.
Speaker 1: We had a golden Retriever named Cookie. She's somewhat of
Speaker 1: a legend. According to family lore. The only thing that
Speaker 1: Cookie ever did wrong was she would steal kids' shoes
Speaker 1: and bury them.
Speaker 7: You guys could take your shoes off to go on
Speaker 7: the trampoline and after having a lot of fun, coming
Speaker 7: back and you don't have your shoes, or you're missing.
Speaker 1: One, and many a kid went home without a shoe.
Speaker 7: I don't know how many years later you finally followed her.
Speaker 5: While there was still follows her.
Speaker 1: She went all the way down in the meadow. I
Speaker 1: had she dug up.
Speaker 3: Old Jordan, British la gear.
Speaker 4: Is this the Patriot?
Speaker 1: It was green? Of course it didn't turn on.
Speaker 5: Look is that yours?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: I never had a colored one pager of color colored Patriot?
Speaker 9: Karen, So, I mean that could be anybody's.
Speaker 1: I know, it's kind of crazy. Just find it a
Speaker 1: pager when we know Anna had one out here. I
Speaker 1: was so excited by the prospect of finding a clue
Speaker 1: that I was making this random object fit the story,
Speaker 1: but regardless, it was a cool relic of the time.
Speaker 5: It's bigger than I remember them being. Wow, look at that.
Speaker 1: I hadn't seen a pager in thirty years, let alone
Speaker 1: held one. I told Chris he didn't have to come
Speaker 1: with me, and that I wouldn't say his name. Hi,
Speaker 1: Sheriff Maldonado.
Speaker 5: Hey, yeah, come on it. Hi.
Speaker 1: He lives in Katti about thirty five minutes away.
Speaker 4: Is it?
Speaker 1: Is it Sheriff Still?
Speaker 15: I don't know if it was one of those those
Speaker 15: titles like president or yeah, it's Sheriff's.
Speaker 1: Maldonado's in his seventies, but he looks younger. We took
Speaker 1: a seat at his dining room table while his two cats,
Speaker 1: both of them long haired and silver, roamed around us.
Speaker 1: I felt like I had a lot to film in
Speaker 1: on who I was, what I was doing, why, But
Speaker 1: then I also had some more basic questions, do you
Speaker 1: remember me at all?
Speaker 5: Kind of just remembered your kids in general. You know,
Speaker 5: we knew one of you was an actor. You're part
Speaker 5: of the younger.
Speaker 10: Crowd, I think the sister right, yeah, Willow. And there
Speaker 10: was something because it was Halloween.
Speaker 1: It was a scarecrow yeah, we had this dead.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, exactly, that was us.
Speaker 1: I actually can't remember what I told the Sheriff's department
Speaker 1: back in nineteen ninety five, and I wasn't sure what
Speaker 1: Mick told him at the time.
Speaker 10: A few younger guys all that seemed like what high Town,
Speaker 10: My old partner, Fred.
Speaker 5: High Tower, I'd call Tom Shannigans.
Speaker 1: What's that like Shenanigans.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but Fred, he wasn't. He was.
Speaker 9: It was.
Speaker 10: It's not a stutter, it's a he mixed the words up.
Speaker 10: He blend him together, you know, like pursuitable. He said
Speaker 10: once suspectful.
Speaker 5: Was a classic.
Speaker 10: Red was trying for Tomfoolery and Shenanigan's.
Speaker 5: But you know, just never came out right.
Speaker 10: A lot of our job in a situation like this
Speaker 10: with juveniles, a lot of the job is pulling out
Speaker 10: the kid's stuff.
Speaker 1: It didn't feel like that to us at the time.
Speaker 1: It felt like life or death.
Speaker 9: I remember hearing screams from the car.
Speaker 1: We never considered that Mick might have a friend with him,
Speaker 1: So when his accurate pulled in, Travis Washman was with him,
Speaker 1: and while Mick did get out and walked to the
Speaker 1: rat hole, Travis waited in the car.
Speaker 9: And then Chris ran at him. He was trying to
Speaker 9: get him out.
Speaker 1: Oh the dude, kill me, nick. I remember actually being
Speaker 1: really scared, thinking these older guys were gonna beat us
Speaker 1: up or kill us if they got us. Pure chaos
Speaker 1: and mayhem. I was with O'Ryan and someone was dressed
Speaker 1: as a mine. Ryan and me, we were both mines.
Speaker 1: Part of the confusion was the costume factor. Before we
Speaker 1: enacted this whole plan, we'd gotten dressed up in costume
Speaker 1: and walked around downtown Sebastopol. Connor's costume was an easy joke.
Speaker 9: He said he was going to be the scariest thing
Speaker 9: in the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah, what was it? A lawyer?
Speaker 9: That's right. So he just he just wore like a
Speaker 9: suit and die, right right right.
Speaker 1: Ryan and I cobbled together some makeup and hair gel
Speaker 1: that my parents had. We had white faces and mohawks.
Speaker 1: We called ourselves psycho mimes, and you were like, what
Speaker 1: the Phantom of the Opera, Phantom.
Speaker 4: Of the Coffee Chapera had.
Speaker 3: I had a Starbucks barised that green apron, and then
Speaker 3: I had a phantom mask.
Speaker 1: I feel you're judging eyes, Yeah, I'm not quite getting
Speaker 1: Starbucks was a new exciting thing. It was the go
Speaker 1: go nineties.
Speaker 3: We all had more hair and it was fine.
Speaker 1: Willa wore the same thing she always did, a pair
Speaker 1: of fairy wings, right, because she was a nymph, no,
Speaker 1: a dryad. Is there a difference.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, they're tree spirits like a or river spirits.
Speaker 1: That is next level.
Speaker 4: Whatever she had made.
Speaker 1: Regardless, Willow was a flying pixie thing with wings. And yes,
Speaker 1: I'm aware that the one girl and our group of friends,
Speaker 1: the muse of this podcast with a fantasy sounding name,
Speaker 1: was quite literally dressed as a manic pixie dream girl.
Speaker 4: But it's the truth.
Speaker 3: She wore wings even later in life.
Speaker 1: And it was like her go to so in costume.
Speaker 1: In the dark, we were scattered, separated in the woods,
Speaker 1: no light. Travis and Mick looking for us.
Speaker 3: Willow and I ended up in that barn at the
Speaker 3: Tender Hearts property.
Speaker 1: When I talked to Maldonatto, I relayed Chris's story as
Speaker 1: if it was my own.
Speaker 5: There was weed in the bar.
Speaker 3: I mean, this wasn't just a shit, my friend.
Speaker 1: This was a barn, right, so you're done with weed?
Speaker 1: And it was hanging.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they were drying it out. Oh yeah, I guess yeah.
Speaker 3: So Willow like gets to her feet and she's like
Speaker 3: freaking out, but she's not crying. She's syperventilating. She's breathing
Speaker 3: in and out, trying to almost catch her breath, like
Speaker 3: she was having a panic attack or something it was.
Speaker 1: And she started gathering hay into a pile, and I'm like.
Speaker 10: Willa, Willo, woo woo, Willow, Willow, Willow, what.
Speaker 3: Are you doing. We wouldn't stop.
Speaker 1: Calmed down, calm down, Let's get out of here. And
Speaker 1: she pulls out her lighter that we had for the fireworks.
Speaker 5: Swoosh.
Speaker 3: Immediately the thing goes up, and then seconds later all
Speaker 3: of the weed is up in flames, and we get
Speaker 3: them get the hell out of there, because we're lucky
Speaker 3: to not burn to death.
Speaker 1: But we never told you, any of you any of
Speaker 1: that we at the time, we just said that we
Speaker 1: were at my friend's house and we watched the shining
Speaker 1: and we went to bed. So I'm hoping that some
Speaker 1: of this, any of this might be helpful, you know,
Speaker 1: at least if I'm coming forward, at least then you'll
Speaker 1: know you'll have part of the truth.
Speaker 5: Are you expecting applause.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, I'm I'm just trying to.
Speaker 10: Because I'm not sure what you I'm not sure what
Speaker 10: you want to do here. If this is about you
Speaker 10: getting something off your chest, I don't know, honoring your
Speaker 10: dead girlfriend. If you really want to get into this,
Speaker 10: if you want to really get into this thing, then
Speaker 10: you got to do it right.
Speaker 1: Got to call Lachlan Grace. Lachlan is the current Sonoma
Speaker 1: County sheriff.
Speaker 10: Get her on board, you get her to sign off,
Speaker 10: then we're really talking here.
Speaker 1: Admitting I lie to the current sheriff felt like a
Speaker 1: bigger risk.
Speaker 10: I spent over a year on and a trainer, interviews, photos,
Speaker 10: we had clothing, her mom had letters, books, and you
Speaker 10: don't want to see all that, all of it. If
Speaker 10: you want to move past, you want to get beyond
Speaker 10: the Tom Shannigans and let's go.
Speaker 5: But you've got to talk to Lucky.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, I guess, I'm I guess My question is
Speaker 1: could I be charged with the client.
Speaker 5: You gotta talk to Luckily?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 9: Did you even know about the your tape?
Speaker 1: After I talked to Maldonado, I called Monica to catch up.
Speaker 9: No, I mean I knew there were rumors about Anna.
Speaker 9: I knew about a mixtape, a mixtape, a haunted tape.
Speaker 2: This was over at Annaly and there was this mixtape
Speaker 2: with songs. But then the story was it was a
Speaker 2: ghost tape and her voice by her voice beyond the grave.
Speaker 1: I never heard about that, all right, But let's just
Speaker 1: for a second, if Mick did have video, if he
Speaker 1: was trying to blackmail Anna.
Speaker 9: Or wait, writer, do you want it to be here?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 9: Okay, they looked at Mick.
Speaker 2: He had somebody with them every step of the way
Speaker 2: the party, driving Travis home, he was looking for Anna,
Speaker 2: but he dropped Travis off at his house. He got
Speaker 2: the patremna, he drove try to pick her up from
Speaker 2: Jennifer Street payphone, and she never showed.
Speaker 4: And the fire started.
Speaker 1: Do you do you think, like I really really think
Speaker 1: that Mick couldn't kill there.
Speaker 15: It's stretch, I guess, but like, isn't it a stretch
Speaker 15: to think.
Speaker 3: Anyone could kill anyone?
Speaker 1: Monica asked me if I wanted it to be Mick,
Speaker 1: and I realized I kind of do, oh me, Jill.
Speaker 2: Even if Mick managed to meet up with Anna then
Speaker 2: murder her in twenty minutes, couldn't have getten rid of
Speaker 2: the body and driven her car all the way to SFO.
Speaker 9: Not without help, right, not without help. And we know
Speaker 9: he was with the rest of the night.
Speaker 1: Out of respect for privacy and legal reasons, we've had
Speaker 1: to edit one of the names that came up in
Speaker 1: some interviews.
Speaker 2: Really, look, the only time that it didn't make sense
Speaker 2: was the time that he was with us, So in anything,
Speaker 2: you just helped to clear his name.
Speaker 1: I never heard make drive away, So I stayed alone
Speaker 1: in the woods for a while, I mean maybe an hour,
Speaker 1: it felt like forever, and finally I heard Oryan calling
Speaker 1: out and we found each other. And then we found Willow.
Speaker 4: On the road.
Speaker 9: How did you get to kind of Drakes? We walked
Speaker 9: that's like four.
Speaker 1: Yeah, four miles maybe maybe even five.
Speaker 9: Yeah, And Chris and I were on the road too.
Speaker 4: Oh really, you guys.
Speaker 1: I thought you guys were still in the woods.
Speaker 3: No, we met back up with you guys, walked back
Speaker 3: and we.
Speaker 1: Watched the sunrise and Connors we did. Yeah, we heard
Speaker 1: science and we hid in the bushes whenever a car
Speaker 1: went by. We knew there might still be a fire going,
Speaker 1: but we had no idea how big it was.
Speaker 14: I do remember that that's where we stopped and watched
Speaker 14: the sunrise come up, and we were just I just
Speaker 14: the we were so emotionally charged.
Speaker 9: It was like we were doing amphetamines.
Speaker 14: We basically had that level of sort of insane energy.
Speaker 9: And then there was just this pause on the side
Speaker 9: of the road after an intense night like that.
Speaker 12: It's just kind of like, you know, I'll sing this
Speaker 12: song and it kind of like lightens the mood a
Speaker 12: little bit, you know, Revity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, A cool part about being friends with Oryan is
Speaker 1: that whenever we hike and we've gone on backpacking trips
Speaker 1: together since we were ten years old.
Speaker 9: He sings, Yeah.
Speaker 12: Challa Days was a rare Counting Crows song off of
Speaker 12: a demo tape.
Speaker 1: I think it also like because it was like this
Speaker 1: deep cut, you know, it was like it wasn't oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it was initially released, so it felt like sort of
Speaker 1: a secret that only we knew, you know, Like it
Speaker 1: was like it was kind of like this our song.
Speaker 9: And then it's also I guess about a small town
Speaker 9: in the.
Speaker 1: Vein of like round here, and a lot of this
Speaker 1: where is about like a girl in a small town
Speaker 1: and it feels like it.
Speaker 9: Could be about Sebastopol. It does, right, Yeah, totally all right?
Speaker 9: Could you sing it the whole thing?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 9: For the podcast? Yeah, like you're gonna put this on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 9: Oh my god, that's gould be good. It just has
Speaker 9: to be you.
Speaker 8: Mary Jane says, it's all right. She's just around the
Speaker 8: corner from the main line and any Dane Now, it's
Speaker 8: all Rightey standing on the precipice of big.
Speaker 1: Time not Willow didn't talk almost the whole time until
Speaker 1: she stopped and made us all promise to stick to
Speaker 1: the same story. It was cold, I remember shivering, and
Speaker 1: the sun took forever to come on.
Speaker 5: But it was beautiful for.
Speaker 1: All the insanity of that night. It's it's weirdly a positive.
Speaker 5: Memory, falling falling down.
Speaker 9: This is Lachlan.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Hi, Sheriff Lachlin. This is right or strong.
Speaker 1: I got in touch with Grace Lachlin. You know, since
Speaker 1: my goal is to like document this entire process from
Speaker 1: start to finish.
Speaker 4: I I'm actually.
Speaker 1: Recording this call right now, which I hope is okay,
Speaker 1: and I'm happy to stop if you no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you know what I want you?
Speaker 9: I want you to record it.
Speaker 16: I want actually, I want you to be sure to
Speaker 16: include this in your podcast.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, okay.
Speaker 16: The Trainer case was wobble for my time, but you know,
Speaker 16: I looked into it, spoke with Sheriff Maldonado, and he
Speaker 16: let me know that you had information right, right right.
Speaker 1: And now you're coming into this.
Speaker 16: With microphones and a whole news story like some night
Speaker 16: on a horse.
Speaker 4: Oh no, I don't think I'm going to. Actually I'm
Speaker 4: just trying to.
Speaker 16: But the thing is, you are on record you made
Speaker 16: false statements. That's documented in nineteen ninety five. That's obstruction
Speaker 16: of justice. I can warrant charges. I'm lucky for you,
Speaker 16: frankly lucky for me because I don't want the hassle.
Speaker 16: It's wall past the statute of limitations.
Speaker 4: Okay, okay, yeah, I mean okay.
Speaker 16: And most importantly this is there's what we call good
Speaker 16: faith in mitigation. So you come clean, now, you come forward,
Speaker 16: no bullshit, no lying, and you want to help that
Speaker 16: goes along way. So if you want, I can. Oh,
Speaker 16: I'll take a look see what I can pull from
Speaker 16: this file. Is there something you want in particular?
Speaker 5: All of it?
Speaker 1: Of course, that was my real answer. I wanted to
Speaker 1: see all the evidence, but I knew I should be specific,
Speaker 1: precise if I was ever going to get the Sheriff's
Speaker 1: department on my side, I had to start slow. Maldonado
Speaker 1: and Monica changed perspective.
Speaker 5: Wheat isn't news.
Speaker 10: Even with a fire that big, we could we could
Speaker 10: smell it. But knowing it was the sister. When I
Speaker 10: hear that, now, all I can think about is that
Speaker 10: she was protecting her Maybe she was protecting her parents
Speaker 10: or whatever you want to call them. When she keeps
Speaker 10: that a secret, she's protecting her mom, And no, I
Speaker 10: think I mean, I think.
Speaker 1: She was protecting us or protecting herself. Well for notting
Speaker 1: a bunch of wheat on fire.
Speaker 5: What's worse.
Speaker 10: Your sister has gone missing, and you're a fifteen year
Speaker 10: old kid who get a barn on fire.
Speaker 5: You're worried about that.
Speaker 10: Now you're worried about your mom, who's been out here
Speaker 10: in the woods worshiping trees, singing the demons and dancing
Speaker 10: in the circles.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't think that's what they were doing.
Speaker 5: You know what I mean? We knew they weren't on
Speaker 5: Kum Bay.
Speaker 15: Butterflies out there Wow, we went back for years, but
Speaker 15: they had an alibi.
Speaker 1: I mean they were for that night.
Speaker 4: They were at the seance.
Speaker 5: That's what we thought too at first.
Speaker 1: Yeah, god, I'd love to Maldonado said that there were
Speaker 1: there are that There are transcripts in the file of
Speaker 1: his interviews with el Rick Light and Mick Bowden.
Speaker 9: Yeah all right, yeah, I'll take a look. See if easy.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Thank you so much, I really do it.
Speaker 1: Nostalgia is such a trap. It's so powerful. It can
Speaker 1: make your eyes well up just from holding a pager.
Speaker 1: It can make songs from your teens sound better. The
Speaker 1: more nostalgia draws you in, the more it just warps
Speaker 1: your perception of reality. It can replace reality. Hey, how's
Speaker 1: it going that night? I call my wife Alex back
Speaker 1: in La.
Speaker 7: Well, I'm definitely not very good at this kind of
Speaker 7: annoying everybody, like you know, I'm just I'm so attached
Speaker 7: to this thing, this.
Speaker 9: Night for you.
Speaker 1: When I went into this, I knew I needed to
Speaker 1: stop thinking like a fifty But I also need to
Speaker 1: stop thinking like a forty five year old high on nostalgia.
Speaker 14: As my wife put it right, So you don't want
Speaker 14: your mid life crisis to be a podcast.
Speaker 4: No, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1: Not every little thing from back then has big important meaning.
Speaker 1: Even if I have big important feelings, Sometimes kid stuff
Speaker 1: is just kid stuff. I needed to come at this
Speaker 1: as objectively as possible. I needed to cut off nostalgia,
Speaker 1: let go of expectations, my ego, and try and learn
Speaker 1: as much as I could, and for now that man,
Speaker 1: ignoring my personal feelings for someone like Mick, even Willow,
Speaker 1: and just listening to someone like Maldonado.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it was only a few days before their TenderHearts
Speaker 10: alibi Philip Art came crashing all the wind him.
Speaker 1: What are you saying that they weren't at the sounds.
Speaker 5: Well, not all of them. We got to get you
Speaker 5: up to speed, man, We got to get you up speed.
Speaker 1: If some are all all of the Tender Hearts had lied,
Speaker 1: if their alibi had come crashing down. This was actually
Speaker 1: exactly what I wanted to hear, because it meant that
Speaker 1: staying with this project, staying with Anna's case, was finally
Speaker 1: going to move beyond me, my Tom Shanigans, and my nostalgia.
Speaker 1: It meant it was time to confront one of the
Speaker 1: most intriguing and mysterious aspects of Anna and Willow's life.
Speaker 1: It was time for me to look into the tender hearts.
Speaker 1: The Red Weather is an iHeart podcast hosted by writer Straw,
Speaker 1: sound engineering, editing and mixing by Bo Milkins, Produced by
Speaker 1: Tess Bartholomey. Executive producers at iHeartRadio Trevor Young and Matt Frederick,
Speaker 1: Associate producer Bo milkis Original score by Kyle Morgan.
Speaker 4: If you're enjoying the.
Speaker 1: Show, please remember to leave a review and rating.
Speaker 4: Thanks for listening.