Speaker 1: Pushkin last time on Where's Dear?
Speaker 2: I could hear her phone and ringing upstairs that she
Speaker 2: was not anywhere in the house.
Speaker 3: Julie and I have spent hours and hours and hours
Speaker 3: going over every scenario that it could possibly be, and
Speaker 3: we came down to the same thing.
Speaker 2: She did not leave of her own a court. You know, obviously,
Speaker 2: when you're the last person, this always become the suspect.
Speaker 1: Two days after Dea disappeared, Keith Harper, the man who
Speaker 1: says he was DIA's fiance, drives to New Mexico, and
Speaker 1: within a week police in San Juan County obtain a
Speaker 1: warrant and search a lot dodge fenced in storage building
Speaker 1: belonging to Harper. The cops also search Harper's motor home
Speaker 1: on the grounds that it's linked to a missing person
Speaker 1: or possible homicide. They remove a section of the driver's
Speaker 1: seat and sees it as evidence. Several weeks later, Harper
Speaker 1: sues the police to get his RV back. He wins,
Speaker 1: and nothing else comes of it as far as I know.
Speaker 1: Harper eventually returns to the ranch where he and Diana Fedder,
Speaker 1: DEA's close friend from Idlewild, have a showdown with DEA's
Speaker 1: two kids, Clinton and Krossara. I talked to Clinton about
Speaker 1: what went down that day. He's this very tall guy
Speaker 1: with dark cropped hair, green eyes, and a bit of
Speaker 1: a nervous energy about him, although perhaps that's to be
Speaker 1: expected under the circumstances.
Speaker 4: I feel that I have to speak for my mother
Speaker 4: because I don't think anybody else really can.
Speaker 1: Around a month after DEA's disappearance, Clinton says that he
Speaker 1: and his sister drove up to Beneatha Vista Ranch with
Speaker 1: their attorney to take DEA's truck. They didn't want Harper
Speaker 1: having it. But that's when Diana stops them in their tracks.
Speaker 1: She hands them a piece of paper, a legal document
Speaker 1: that has Deer's signature on it.
Speaker 5: She handed us the power of attorney.
Speaker 4: And the power of attorney is shockingly broad if you
Speaker 4: read it. I mean it gives them total control over it,
Speaker 4: whether or not to sell or buy anything. I think
Speaker 4: it even says even while she's alive.
Speaker 1: In other words, DEA's children can't take the truck, and
Speaker 1: they also have to turn over their set of house
Speaker 1: keys to Diana and Harper, the keys to DEA's kingdom.
Speaker 1: DEA's children had only met Harper and Diana a few
Speaker 1: weeks before this encounter. Clinton told me he also had
Speaker 1: no idea that Harper was engaged to their mother. How
Speaker 1: did that feel?
Speaker 5: How did that feel? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Strange, I mean just weird that people I didn't know
Speaker 4: were in our family home that we spent millions of
Speaker 4: dollars building and exerted a lot of effort on designing.
Speaker 4: And I had gone up there ever since I was
Speaker 4: a little kid, and my mother always said, you know,
Speaker 4: she was building it for Grassara and I. And now suddenly,
Speaker 4: you know, other people who I suspect had murdered her
Speaker 4: are moving in.
Speaker 1: Clinton is suspicious of Harper and Diana right off the bat,
Speaker 1: even though he has no evidence that proves they had
Speaker 1: anything to do with DEA's disappearance. This confrontation sets up
Speaker 1: something that will continue to snowball for years, a power
Speaker 1: struggle that will become so big it will consume Clinton
Speaker 1: and Harper's lives. Clinton versus Harper battling it out over
Speaker 1: DEA's estate. The more I've learned about DEA's life, the
Speaker 1: more I've wondered, how did someone who had a family
Speaker 1: and friends and a supposed fiancee end up with all
Speaker 1: these people fighting over her estate. How did this glamorous
Speaker 1: blonde go from living in her mountain paradise in a
Speaker 1: town called Idlewild to completely disappearing. It's been hard to
Speaker 1: understand Dea. I've had to craft a picture of her
Speaker 1: through the people she left behind, even if I'm not
Speaker 1: quite sure I can totally believe what they're telling me.
Speaker 1: It can be a bit of a mind fuck, to
Speaker 1: be honest, it feels like I'm looking at Dea through
Speaker 1: a prism or a warped pair of glasses that distort everything.
Speaker 1: But in this episode, I'm going to tell you about
Speaker 1: how Dea ended up on a huge ranch in the
Speaker 1: mountains at odds with her family living with a man
Speaker 1: who says they were secretly engaged. I'm Lucy Sheriff, and
Speaker 1: this is Where's Dea? Episode two? She built her own prison.
Speaker 1: It took me a while to track Peggy ken Schlow down,
Speaker 1: DEA's younger sister, but I did and eventually met her
Speaker 1: at her studio apartment in the San Diego suburbs. Right away,
Speaker 1: Peggy seemed like the key to unlocking who Dea used
Speaker 1: to be before she got caught up with the idlewild crowd.
Speaker 6: She called me piggy Puff, and I called her I
Speaker 6: think my mom told me I couldn't say Lydia, so
Speaker 6: I called her Gia, and that's how she got Dia.
Speaker 1: Peggy told me that she and Dea grew up with
Speaker 1: their older brother Jim, in a nice house with an
Speaker 1: avocado orchard on a patch of land in La Mesa,
Speaker 1: a small inland community east of San Diego. Even though
Speaker 1: Dea was the middle child, she was the one given
Speaker 1: special treatment.
Speaker 6: I remember my dad bought us all pentos, the cars,
Speaker 6: and my brother and I got these like stripped down pinhos,
Speaker 6: but Dia got a two toned Pinto that had like
Speaker 6: fur like carpet in it. And she even had a radio,
Speaker 6: and so she kind of got, you know, she got
Speaker 6: the perks for being.
Speaker 2: A middle child.
Speaker 6: And she always said, I'm the middle child. I'm gonna
Speaker 6: meat in the sandwich, that's situitious.
Speaker 1: The family had chickens and dogs, and Dia loved her animals.
Speaker 1: Peggy remembers one intense moment in particular that happened after
Speaker 1: DIA's dog died.
Speaker 6: She had a dog one time named Coco that got
Speaker 6: kipped by a truck and she went up there and
Speaker 6: scraped up its blood and stuff and second and baggy,
Speaker 6: and we'll never forget it was a weird that she
Speaker 6: loved her annals.
Speaker 1: Along the way, something changed. Dea became interested in makeup
Speaker 1: and fashion and fancy things. In getting out of Le
Speaker 1: Masa and leaving that version of Dea behind.
Speaker 6: She was funny, she was hilarious. But didn't she get
Speaker 6: this money thing where it was everything everything to her
Speaker 6: and it just created a monster.
Speaker 1: Peggy is honest about her older sister, unflinchingly honest, to
Speaker 1: the point where I felt almost uncomfortable talking this way
Speaker 1: about a woman who's not here to speak for herself.
Speaker 6: You know, she enjoyed money, she wanted more.
Speaker 1: Enter clem Abrams, a much older real estate developer who
Speaker 1: was from the wealthy enclave of La Joya, San Diego.
Speaker 1: Dea found him in a listing of Who's Who, basically
Speaker 1: this old school way of dating where young single ladies
Speaker 1: could find local eligible backs.
Speaker 6: We snagged him. D and I did this together back
Speaker 6: in Jim's old bedroom. I'll never forget doing this.
Speaker 2: It's called Who's Who.
Speaker 6: I'm San Diego and I called and I would like
Speaker 6: flirt with him, and then I'd give the phone to her.
Speaker 6: She would flirt with him and it was hilarious.
Speaker 1: And then they met. Clem was old money. Dea had
Speaker 1: struck gold.
Speaker 6: Everybody loved Clem. Clem was really down to earth. Comb
Speaker 6: used to drive around an old El Camino. No last, no, no,
Speaker 6: you didn't have here.
Speaker 1: They have to be. In nineteen eighty four, Deer got
Speaker 1: pregnant with Clinton, and so Clem and Dea, who was
Speaker 1: four months pregnant, tied the knot in front of a
Speaker 1: hundred guests with a reception at SeaWorld, although not before
Speaker 1: signing a prenup on Clem's insistence. Deer became this socialite
Speaker 1: in San Diego, and her siblings saw her less and
Speaker 1: less until one day Peggy and her brother Jim told
Speaker 1: me she just cut them out, the only ties she
Speaker 1: had left to that life in La Mesa.
Speaker 6: I think what she felt put off by us. We
Speaker 6: liked simple things. She wanted grand things.
Speaker 1: And she had her own family by that point, Clem,
Speaker 1: the husband, and their two children, Clinton and Chrissara. Clinton
Speaker 1: says he was incredibly close to his mum.
Speaker 4: Oh I was a child we were best friends. We
Speaker 4: would go shopping all the time. She loved the shop,
Speaker 4: and she'd take me with her and I'd help her
Speaker 4: pick out clothes and such, and she thought I had
Speaker 4: a good fashion sense for a male.
Speaker 1: When Clinton was around thirteen, Dea lef La Joya. I
Speaker 1: moved to Idlewild to her Benita Vista ranch without Clem,
Speaker 1: though he still supported her financially, and over time cracks
Speaker 1: began to show in Clinton and DEA's relationship.
Speaker 4: It just wasn't a day to day interaction really, and
Speaker 4: so it was, you know, more sporadic. I talked to
Speaker 4: her every couple of weeks or see here, you know,
Speaker 4: every month or two months or so, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: According to her friends, Dea felt the kids didn't make
Speaker 1: an effort to see her, although Clinton says that wasn't
Speaker 1: the case. Regardless, Clinton and DEA's relationship did come under
Speaker 1: strain when Clem's health began deteriorating.
Speaker 4: I didn't feel like she shared the same degree of concern.
Speaker 4: At the time, I thought everybody was being callous because
Speaker 4: I was so sensitive to him dying.
Speaker 1: Clinton also started to take over Clem's businesses, including the
Speaker 1: upkeep of Deer's properties in Idlewild, and he and Dea
Speaker 1: disagreed over how to manage them. Clinton is a real
Speaker 1: estate guy. He loves land, he loves property. He prides
Speaker 1: himself on having good business sense, and he was pushing
Speaker 1: Dear to get rid of one of her proper tees.
Speaker 4: It wasn't really a point of contention, but the interest
Speaker 4: rate on it was just horrific, and nobody living there.
Speaker 5: It was a large monthly nut to cover.
Speaker 1: I asked Clinton's sister Krisara, to do an interview too
Speaker 1: several times, but I didn't hear back from her or
Speaker 1: her lawyer, so I can't tell you much more about
Speaker 1: their relationship. Still, Clinton says that disagreements were never that serious,
Speaker 1: and it was his mother who started pulling away, not
Speaker 1: him or his sister, and he doesn't know why.
Speaker 4: From the outside looking in, she had the perfect life.
Speaker 4: I mean, the best husband. I mean, my dad was
Speaker 4: just so gentle and giving, gave her everything she ever wanted.
Speaker 4: You know, she had multiple properties, horses, all the jewelry
Speaker 4: that she could ever want.
Speaker 5: You know, she went antiquing, she traveled the world.
Speaker 4: I don't know, I can't explain it, but she did
Speaker 4: have a tendency to kind of create her own misery
Speaker 4: in a certain certain way.
Speaker 1: But if DEA's life was that perfect, why did she
Speaker 1: leave everything behind and moved to this remote mountain ranch.
Speaker 1: Maybe her life looked perfect on the outside, but she
Speaker 1: must have had her reasons for leaving Lahoya. Dea seemingly
Speaker 1: had everything that she'd wanted as a child. She lived
Speaker 1: in the glamorous seaside town, so beautiful that it's known
Speaker 1: as San Diego's Jewel by the Sea, but she turned
Speaker 1: her back on it for the craggy San Jacinto Mountains.
Speaker 1: Clinton says she literally locked herself away from the world.
Speaker 4: I would call her paranoid because I always told her that.
Speaker 4: I said, you know, you came out here and we
Speaker 4: built this beautiful mansion, and it's all of all of
Speaker 4: these valuables, because she would have doors that locked from
Speaker 4: the inside, so you had to have a key to
Speaker 4: get out of the house. And so I would always
Speaker 4: kind of say, you know, you have all these guns,
Speaker 4: and it's kind of like you built yourself a little
Speaker 4: bit of your own prison, like you're guarding, you know,
Speaker 4: all these treasures up here in the mountains.
Speaker 1: When I pieced together everyone's different versions of events. I
Speaker 1: can see a pattern of estrangement, Dia distancing herself from
Speaker 1: those closest to her and where her family was moving
Speaker 1: out of the picture. These other characters, her Idol, Wild Crew, Diana,
Speaker 1: and eventually Harper started moving in. That's after the break.
Speaker 1: In October of twenty sixteen, when Dea was sixty two
Speaker 1: years old, something happened that I think shows just how
Speaker 1: isolated she felt. Dea needed major back surgery because she
Speaker 1: suffered from lower back pain after falling off a horse
Speaker 1: years ago. On the day of the procedure, Chrissara went
Speaker 1: with her mother to Script's Memorial Hospital in La Joia.
Speaker 1: Not only was the surgery intense, Dia struggled during her recovery.
Speaker 1: The doctor's notes described Dea as crying, continuously lying on
Speaker 1: her side and sobbing, and saying her pain was an
Speaker 1: eighteen out of ten. The doctor recomoned seeing a psychologist
Speaker 1: for depression. I've looked through the thousand plus pages of
Speaker 1: Deer's medical records from that surgery and reading them was
Speaker 1: pretty heartbreaking, the doctor wrote in his notes. Quote discuss
Speaker 1: discharge plans and having adequate emotional support for her she says,
Speaker 1: everybody in her family is too busy. I really feel
Speaker 1: for Dear here, this woman who is in her sixties
Speaker 1: with a family, feels that she is completely utterly alone
Speaker 1: in the world. And it's also this precious moment where
Speaker 1: I feel I can almost hear Dea in her own words.
Speaker 1: Then there was this other thing that Deer says happened.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, I should make that clear. Harper says that
Speaker 1: Dear says happened. I know, it's confusing. Sometime after Dear
Speaker 1: got out of surgery, Harper says, Dear told him this
Speaker 1: story about Clinton coming to visit her in the hospital.
Speaker 2: And she talked about how she was thirsty, and she
Speaker 2: asked if he could get her something to drink. And
Speaker 2: she said, you know, I was coming out of them,
Speaker 2: of the drugs that they had given me, And she said,
Speaker 2: you know, I was a little disoriented for a while,
Speaker 2: but she said, you know, after I took the drink
Speaker 2: and he gave me, I flipped into a very deep
Speaker 2: coma and I was in that koma for nearly two
Speaker 2: and a half days so far. He came out and
Speaker 2: nearly died. They thought that they were going to lose
Speaker 2: me and she said, I honestly believe that he administered
Speaker 2: me some form drug that was intended to take my life.
Speaker 1: Wow. And did she tell anybody else about that?
Speaker 2: Oh? She told the doctor.
Speaker 1: There was nothing in the medical records about this accusation,
Speaker 1: but there was this note in her chart. Found her
Speaker 1: unresponsive to name and stimuli, unable to wake up, called
Speaker 1: nine one one, and sent to ED for further evaluation.
Speaker 1: I had no luck tracking down dear's doctor to find
Speaker 1: out more. I did ask Diana about the story, though.
Speaker 1: Was she concerned that Clinton may have tried to poison
Speaker 1: her while she was in hospital?
Speaker 3: She was adamant that he did well, that he slipped
Speaker 3: her something while she was there.
Speaker 1: Of course I asked Clinton about this too, What is
Speaker 1: your response to these accusations that you tried to poison
Speaker 1: your mother when she was in hospital?
Speaker 5: Just totally silly and not even worthy of.
Speaker 1: A sad Clinton also disagreed with what Dea had told
Speaker 1: her doctor, that everyone in her family was too busy
Speaker 1: for her.
Speaker 4: I think, unfortunately, she could be mellow, dramane. I don't
Speaker 4: doubt that the doctor made the assessment that she was
Speaker 4: depressed or sad, because I do feel that she had
Speaker 4: some sort of mood disorder.
Speaker 5: But no.
Speaker 4: Both my sister and I am my father visit her
Speaker 4: in the hospital multiple times, and we were always more
Speaker 4: than willing to take care of her.
Speaker 5: She seldom reached out.
Speaker 4: I mean, she never asked me for help, or I
Speaker 4: would have been happy to help her.
Speaker 1: Regardless of what actually happened, the surgery seemed to be
Speaker 1: a significant turning point in Dea and Clinton's relationship. Whether
Speaker 1: she was growing apart from her kids or not, she
Speaker 1: felt like she was. Dea was in a long period
Speaker 1: of recovery from surgery for about two months after being discharged.
Speaker 1: During that time, according to court records, she created her
Speaker 1: own trust, separate from her husband's. In it, she put
Speaker 1: all of her anti Peak's guns, jewelry, and property, including
Speaker 1: the Bonita Vista ranch. Deer was the sole trustee, she
Speaker 1: was in charge, she had control. In the trust agreement,
Speaker 1: she had her attorney include this line trust her leaves
Speaker 1: nothing but her love and affection to her son, Clinton Abrams.
Speaker 1: In the event of Deer's death, Chris Sarah would become
Speaker 1: trustee of the entire estate and inherit everything and that
Speaker 1: might have been the end of it, except Dea wasn't
Speaker 1: finished making changes to her trust more after the break,
Speaker 1: although Dia and Clam were still legally married, they lived
Speaker 1: their separate lives, and, according to Julie Stanford, Dea had
Speaker 1: an active love life.
Speaker 5: She liked cowboys that type.
Speaker 7: Uh, they're mostly pretty boys, you know, and they were useless.
Speaker 1: Julie is the third slice to the Dear Diana Julie Pie,
Speaker 1: this tight knit trio who'd been such good friends before
Speaker 1: Dia disappeared. Julie and Dea had known each other for years.
Speaker 7: Basically, when I needed rescuing, she helped me. When she
Speaker 7: didn't rescue me, that helped her, you know, that kind
Speaker 7: of thing, that kind of good friendship.
Speaker 1: Dea confided her love troubles to Julie. She didn't have
Speaker 1: a lot of luck when it came to finding the
Speaker 1: right guy.
Speaker 7: She would dig guys that were online. And I told her,
Speaker 7: I said, Dia, you did these guys. I said, don't
Speaker 7: bring them here.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 7: It's like, don't show these people you met online what
Speaker 7: you have.
Speaker 1: But that's exactly what Dea did. According to Harper, they
Speaker 1: met some time in the spring of twenty sixteen on
Speaker 1: a dating site called farmers only. Harper told me about
Speaker 1: the first time they met face to face. He had
Speaker 1: flown from Colorado to California after months of talking to
Speaker 1: Dea online.
Speaker 2: She picked me up at the airport. She had Ruby
Speaker 2: in the back, her dog, and I looked at her
Speaker 2: and she had hey in her and I said, boy,
Speaker 2: you are kentry girl, aren't you? And she said, why
Speaker 2: do you ask that? And I you got hey in
Speaker 2: your hair and she laughed and said really, he said,
Speaker 2: I fed the animals before I come, but I thought
Speaker 2: I'd brushed my hair.
Speaker 1: Harper says they spent four blissful days together horseback riding, hiking,
Speaker 1: and then the adventure was over. Harper flew back home
Speaker 1: to Colorado, but they kept in touch, and then he
Speaker 1: decided to come back for another visit, and then another
Speaker 1: until the end of twenty sixteen, a couple of months
Speaker 1: after Deer's surgery. He says he just moved in for good.
Speaker 2: You know, the ranch was pretty overgrow when I first
Speaker 2: came in. You could hardly leave the cabin. But we
Speaker 2: started behinding the place up because you know, her camp
Speaker 2: was to use it as they airbnb, and it just
Speaker 2: needed to work before it done.
Speaker 1: Julie disputes the timeline when Harper moved in, saying it
Speaker 1: was more like twenty eighteen. Regardless, when Julie finally met Harper,
Speaker 1: she approved. Harper owns land and businesses in Arizona, New Mexico,
Speaker 1: and Colorado. He's a soul of the earth kind of guy.
Speaker 1: I like the pretty boys Deer usually went for. He
Speaker 1: gets his hands dirty.
Speaker 7: Harper he had a do thing, do you care things
Speaker 7: work around the match, and that was something she needed
Speaker 7: and someone to kind of lean on.
Speaker 5: She was lonely, and that still that's void.
Speaker 1: Harper and Deer had something else in common too. They
Speaker 1: both loved money. There was one occasion when Julie and
Speaker 1: Deer were showing Harper around Julie's place back then. Julie
Speaker 1: lived in a trailer on a beautiful property that used
Speaker 1: to be a cattle runch.
Speaker 7: We were so on Harper the place, and we took
Speaker 7: them down the road and looked, and he just saw
Speaker 7: dollar signs. He said, well, this splace ought to be developed,
Speaker 7: you know. So you know, he had the thing about money, money,
Speaker 7: money all the time.
Speaker 1: There's this stretch of time where I don't really know
Speaker 1: what's going on.
Speaker 2: Up there at the ranch.
Speaker 1: Harper says that after he moved in, they just lived
Speaker 1: their lives, traveling around the American Worth managing the ranch.
Speaker 1: But then something happened that caused a domino effect of events.
Speaker 1: DEA's husband, Clem died.
Speaker 2: She died on December well, two thousand eight, keen, and
Speaker 2: she said to me, you know, it's Independence Day. It's
Speaker 2: the first day that I actually feel free.
Speaker 1: On that very same day, on DEA's Independence Day, she
Speaker 1: went back to that trust she created after her surgery,
Speaker 1: and she revisited the part that left her entire estate
Speaker 1: to her daughter. I've seen this document. I've seen how
Speaker 1: over the name Chrissara Abrams. Dea scribbled four or five
Speaker 1: lines in black ink. She wrote, denied, dated it twelve twelve,
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, and added her initials.
Speaker 2: D A.
Speaker 1: Few pages later next to that line, which said quote
Speaker 1: trust her leaves nothing but her love and affection to
Speaker 1: her son Clinton Abrams. Dia added in her own handwriting
Speaker 1: and daughter Krissara Abrams. So at this point in time,
Speaker 1: if Dea were to suddenly drop dead, her children would
Speaker 1: get nothing. All these changes to DEA's trust reflect in
Speaker 1: real time changes she wanted, unlike Will's Trust impact your
Speaker 1: life immediately because they dictate how your assets are managed.
Speaker 1: In that same crazy month, December of twenty eighteen, as
Speaker 1: if enough hadn't happened already, Harper says he proposed to
Speaker 1: dea up on a hill overlooking the ranch, on a
Speaker 1: rock formation.
Speaker 8: It was up to the butterfly rock. It's up by
Speaker 8: the waterfl we would get married. The idea was that
Speaker 8: it would be in Jackson, Oul, Wyoming, being.
Speaker 5: There's a little church there. That's where we have identified it.
Speaker 1: He says he gave her a gold engagement ring, but
Speaker 1: Dian never told anyone they were engaged, at least nobody
Speaker 1: I've spoken with, and Harper claims as a reason for that,
Speaker 1: if Dia married Harper, she might lose out on the
Speaker 1: financial support provided by Clem's estate.
Speaker 8: When she brought it up to her attorneys, they said,
Speaker 8: you're foolish idea, because he has written in there that
Speaker 8: if you don't marry, you continue to give benefits. If
Speaker 8: you marry, you would find yourself maybe out.
Speaker 2: Of any recourse anything.
Speaker 5: That's the reason we didn't look forward on it.
Speaker 1: Oh, you weren't going to get married.
Speaker 8: We decided not to get married advice of the attorney.
Speaker 1: And here comes another domino. Remember there are two trusts
Speaker 1: at play, DEA's and Clem's, and after Clem's death, Deer
Speaker 1: doesn't just change her own trust, she takes another look
Speaker 1: at Clem's. The entire time Deer lived in Idlewild, Clem
Speaker 1: was paying the bills. When he was alive, he provided
Speaker 1: for her, made sure she had everything she needed. But
Speaker 1: now their children were left in charge of his trust
Speaker 1: and in charge of how much money she was going
Speaker 1: to get. So although Clem had provided for his wife
Speaker 1: throughout his life, now that he was dead, the money
Speaker 1: didn't seem like it was flowing in Deer's direction like
Speaker 1: it once was. Here's a good example. A couple months
Speaker 1: after Clem died, a once in a generation flood hit Idlewild.
Speaker 1: Harper says it caused intense damage on the ranch, and it.
Speaker 2: Took out the bridge, It took up the dam and
Speaker 2: then left cavities everywhere. And when she had at Clinton
Speaker 2: if he would help make the repairs, he refused. He said,
Speaker 2: you know, if you're eating, that's all you need for
Speaker 2: right down.
Speaker 1: Harper also told me that in January twenty twenty, the
Speaker 1: kids cut Deer off financially. Clinton says this wasn't the
Speaker 1: case at all. He says that he sent his mother
Speaker 1: plenty of money.
Speaker 4: She was never cut off, not even for a second.
Speaker 4: I didn't know about the flood. I don't recall being
Speaker 4: asked to help. I do recall her discussing it as
Speaker 4: a potential reason why she couldn't attend Clem's memorial. And
Speaker 4: I said, you got to find a way. This is
Speaker 4: your husband's and I'm throwing a nice service. That's about
Speaker 4: really the extent.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: They loved to try and make it sound as if
Speaker 4: we were refusing her money or some such.
Speaker 1: Did she make it to your dad's memorial?
Speaker 5: She did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Again, we have these two opposing narratives. Whatever the
Speaker 1: reality of how much money the kids were sending Dea,
Speaker 1: we do know that she felt it wasn't anywhere near
Speaker 1: what she deserved. To make things more complicated, there was
Speaker 1: a change in tax law that affected the amount Dea
Speaker 1: stood to gain from Clem's estate. So, as Clem's legal wife,
Speaker 1: she was expecting to get around half of his estate
Speaker 1: around five million dollars, but after the change, she could
Speaker 1: potentially be left with nothing zero. So six months after
Speaker 1: Clem died, Dea filed a lawsuit against her own children
Speaker 1: to modify Clem's trust and invalidate that prenup she'd sign
Speaker 1: with him all those years ago. Dea felt the prenut
Speaker 1: was unfair and that she'd been pressured into it. She
Speaker 1: wanted six point seven million dollars minimum. Dea and the
Speaker 1: kids vollied objections and amendments back and forth through San
Speaker 1: Diego Superior Court. The kids did not want to comply
Speaker 1: with their mother's demands. Dea was stressed. She texted Diana
Speaker 1: about it in April of twenty twenty. I'll tell you
Speaker 1: everything that's going on with the kids, Dea texted, it's
Speaker 1: anyone's worst nightmare. And Diana remembers another comment Dea made
Speaker 1: again about the kids.
Speaker 3: I had already been aware of the different things that
Speaker 3: the kids were doing to make her life miserable with
Speaker 3: the lawsuit, and she turned to me and she said,
Speaker 3: if anything ever happens to me, Clinton did it.
Speaker 1: So we're almost back to that June of twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: back to the day when Deer disappeared. But there's one
Speaker 1: other thing I've got to tell you. About before we
Speaker 1: can close that loop of time, remember that Deer had
Speaker 1: crossed Chrissara out of her trust and had very specifically
Speaker 1: noted that Clinton would get nothing. Well, Dea made one
Speaker 1: more major move. She changed her trust again. Dea named
Speaker 1: a new beneficiary, Keith Leslie Harper, and as an alternate
Speaker 1: trustee second in command if something happened to Harper was
Speaker 1: Diana Feedder. This meant that if anything happened to Dea,
Speaker 1: Harper would assume control of her trust benefit from her
Speaker 1: entire estate, all her antiques, bank accounts, jewelry, and property
Speaker 1: assets worth potentially millions of dollars. Two weeks after Dea
Speaker 1: made this change to her trust, she disappeared. Coming up
Speaker 1: on Where's Dear, There was.
Speaker 5: A piece of paper that said that she feared for
Speaker 5: her life.
Speaker 3: He would constantly call me, constantly text me is the dead?
Speaker 5: Is Dea alive?
Speaker 2: She stays over and over over and over again to
Speaker 2: me and others that if I disappear, and if my
Speaker 2: son's doing.
Speaker 1: Where's Dear is written and hosted by me Lucy Sheriff.
Speaker 1: Our producer is Daphne Chen, editing by Karen Shakerji. Production
Speaker 1: assistance from Joey Fish, ground fact checking by Lauren Vespoli.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Original score, sound design
Speaker 1: and mastering by Echo Shaw's Where's Deer is a co
Speaker 1: production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. Where's Deer was originally
Speaker 1: developed with Truly*Adventurous.