Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Haley and I have been operating under an assumption that
Speaker 2: if Rick was involved with my Teresa's death, he would
Speaker 2: have told someone. We've reconstructed his universe person by person,
Speaker 2: cold calling and emailing something like one hundred people, and
Speaker 2: when that didn't work, driving to their last known address
Speaker 2: in burned out mobile homes and tidy trailer parks and
Speaker 2: remote stretches of the suburban desert where they were hoping
Speaker 2: never to be found. And that's how we found Jill Walski,
Speaker 2: sitting outside her double wide in Oxnard, surrounded by plants
Speaker 2: and antiques from her parents' old home in Montanito.
Speaker 3: I know God, all right, honey, Well I got company,
Speaker 3: so I'll call you later, all right, Shooter, love me,
Speaker 3: thank you, Bye bye, any poor guy, tuck.
Speaker 2: Jill's the den mother of the Montanito Boys.
Speaker 4: But excuse me.
Speaker 5: The thing is me I might have straight here. I'll
Speaker 5: just put it here. I see there's this crystal ashtray
Speaker 5: on the oh.
Speaker 6: Thanks.
Speaker 2: Jill is a straight shooter, totally unclouded by visions of
Speaker 2: Rick in all his blonde water skiing glory. Of all
Speaker 2: the Montanito boys. She says Rick had fallen the farthest
Speaker 2: from Golden Boys status to addiction, prison and homelessness.
Speaker 5: He had been arrested several times. And he also wasn't
Speaker 5: mentally there because he had you know, head on into
Speaker 5: a tree, hit by a car on a motorcycle.
Speaker 2: Jill is the person the Montanito Boys go to with
Speaker 2: their problems, and in twenty twelve, Rick came to her
Speaker 2: with a very big problem. The police were after him again.
Speaker 2: She was at home in Montanito.
Speaker 5: Knocks on the door, comes in. He says, Jill, do
Speaker 5: you have a beer or something or shot of something?
Speaker 5: And so I gave him something to drink and sitting
Speaker 5: outside and he's just like, I just got interrogated by
Speaker 5: the police. I did a light detective test.
Speaker 2: The police had asked him what he knew about the
Speaker 2: death of my Trees Richardson, and.
Speaker 5: He's like, yeah, I don't know how they got my name.
Speaker 5: And he just kept putting his head down, and he
Speaker 5: just sat there probably for about forty five minutes and
Speaker 5: just kept pacing and putting his head down.
Speaker 2: By the time Rick left her house that day, Jill
Speaker 2: had no doubt that Rick had information about my Trees's death.
Speaker 5: He knows something and I think I don't think it
Speaker 5: was on purpose, but he knew he knows something and
Speaker 5: he had something to do with it.
Speaker 2: I'm Dana Goodyear and this is Lost Hills, episode eleven,
Speaker 2: The Suitcase. Jill says when Rick arrived at her house
Speaker 2: after his polygraph, he was anxious and sweaty, and he
Speaker 2: kept asking for more alcohol. She could tell he needed
Speaker 2: to get something off his chest.
Speaker 5: Because he had his head down and he kept rubbing
Speaker 5: through his hair. He wanted to tell me something, and
Speaker 5: I'm like, Rick, please, I really don't want to hear
Speaker 5: this because then I would feel obligated to have to
Speaker 5: say something.
Speaker 2: But before she shut him down completely, Rick did manage
Speaker 2: to tell her something crucial, something that has never been
Speaker 2: reported before.
Speaker 5: And he said, he goes, I picked her up, but
Speaker 5: I didn't do anything to her.
Speaker 2: This is a bombshell piece of information. Rick didn't just
Speaker 2: see or hear my Trees on the day of her disappearance,
Speaker 2: as he says in the video.
Speaker 1: He picked her up.
Speaker 2: Jill says, from the way Rick was acting at her house,
Speaker 2: she strongly believes something else happened between him and my Trees,
Speaker 2: something Rick couldn't tell the cops.
Speaker 5: But why Rick doesn't say, yes, I picked her up.
Speaker 5: I brought her up. He was afraid of going back
Speaker 5: to prison. Bottom line, he had.
Speaker 3: Just gotten out.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so you know, and he just his mannerisms at
Speaker 5: the house. I know he brought her up to his place.
Speaker 2: She would like to think my Teresa's death was unintentional.
Speaker 5: And that's my belief, is that it was an accident.
Speaker 5: But in my opinion, according to him, and he was
Speaker 5: sweating bullets, is that I think that she either slipped
Speaker 5: and fell and he freaked out or I cannot see
Speaker 5: Rick raping to somebody. Did they ever do a kit?
Speaker 2: It was too long after she disappeared. She'd been up
Speaker 2: in that canyon for eleven months and there was no
Speaker 2: soft tissue left. It was bones, So you can't do
Speaker 2: a rape kit on bones. I tell her what we've
Speaker 2: heard from other friends of X, that he wouldn't have
Speaker 2: been sexually interested in my trees because she was black.
Speaker 5: Meth changes people's minds, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 5: if you're up for a few days. Look, I don't
Speaker 5: think I don't think he'd even think that way. I
Speaker 5: know he made the comment I was surprised that the
Speaker 5: black person in Mortnito. I didn't know they lived there,
Speaker 5: you know, you know, I hate to use the term,
Speaker 5: but pussy's pussy, you know, and I don't know she
Speaker 5: He may have given her drugs too, and then she
Speaker 5: started to wander, and then he didn't want her to
Speaker 5: tell anybody anything.
Speaker 2: Jill knows Rerick's violent history and his drug has and
Speaker 2: she's no fool. As we talk, she starts to wrestle
Speaker 2: with the possibility that Rick could have harmed my.
Speaker 5: Trees, so he then may have gone after her. I
Speaker 5: don't think he was strong. I don't think that he
Speaker 5: in his right mind would ever kill somebody. But when
Speaker 5: you're on that drug and you've been up for a
Speaker 5: few days and you go off and say, if she
Speaker 5: tried to take something of his, you know, he may
Speaker 5: have pushed her. He may have grabbed her by her
Speaker 5: neck and realized, oh shit.
Speaker 2: Jill brings up the video of Rick talking about his
Speaker 2: encounter with My trees. She's especially unnerved by the part
Speaker 2: about the vultures circling over Dark Canyon.
Speaker 5: And then when I watched the video, the thing with
Speaker 5: the birds and the way he was laughing, you know,
Speaker 5: kind of like, oh, you know, just his manner. He
Speaker 5: knew exactly where she was, which gives me the chills.
Speaker 5: But if he pushed her, she hid her head. He
Speaker 5: panicked she didn't wake up. He would move that body.
Speaker 5: And in the video he said, you know, he had
Speaker 5: heard about it and saw the vultures there. He had
Speaker 5: seen them before. You know, remember he said like three
Speaker 5: days after so, and he knew exactly where the spot was.
Speaker 2: Jill is filled with regret when she thinks back to
Speaker 2: that conversation with Rick after the polygraph. She wishes she
Speaker 2: hadn't stopped him from saying whatever was on his mind.
Speaker 5: But he did pick her up, and he wanted to
Speaker 5: tell me something. I mean, if he was still alive,
Speaker 5: I would go visit him and ask him flat out.
Speaker 5: So unfortunately, yeah, I think it was Rick Well, which sucks.
Speaker 2: Jill's given us new information. Rick admitted to her that
Speaker 2: he picked my trees up on his motorcycle, and for
Speaker 2: what it's worth, Jill feels sure he took her to
Speaker 2: his spot on the mountain. It feels like all the
Speaker 2: scattered fragments of this story are finally starting to come together.
Speaker 2: Jill refused to hear a full confession from Rick, but
Speaker 2: she did hear and share with us a crucial piece.
Speaker 2: Leaving Jill's place, Haley and I.
Speaker 1: Decide we need to go back to Rick's fort.
Speaker 2: Rick took a lot of women to his fort. He
Speaker 2: took care Aaron McKellar there. He took Lisa Lapour there,
Speaker 2: he took Raven there. Did he take my tries there too?
Speaker 2: Rick had a special name for his fort. He called
Speaker 2: it Chateau shangri La. It was a spooky place with
Speaker 2: animal bones and carcasses from Rick's mountain man activities. There
Speaker 2: was a big old oak tree from its branches. Rick
Speaker 2: hung Ladies Lingerie. After months of playing hard to get
Speaker 2: Rick's friend, Art Davis calls me up totally unexpectedly. He's
Speaker 2: the guy we met by surprise at Cheri's house when
Speaker 2: we knocked on the door there. One day, Art invites
Speaker 2: us to his friend's place, just down the street from
Speaker 2: the house Rick grew up in, in the lower part
Speaker 2: of Montanito that's known as Malibu Meadows. We sit in
Speaker 2: a grove of oak trees by a rushing creek.
Speaker 7: You try to figure out what went awri Art's.
Speaker 2: Been thinking a lot about Rick, pretty much NonStop since
Speaker 2: we last met, and.
Speaker 7: All of a sudden, you show up, Hannah. When you
Speaker 7: show up, I'm going like, Wow, there's a conduit to
Speaker 7: connecting the dots.
Speaker 2: He tells us people in Montanito are afraid of the
Speaker 2: questions we're asking about Rick.
Speaker 7: They're afraid of you because they're kind of like letting
Speaker 7: them go. You know, I just don't want to say
Speaker 7: anything really, you know, bad about Rick, because I mean,
Speaker 7: there's so many memories when I come down this creek
Speaker 7: going to the bus stop. There's so many memories walking
Speaker 7: through this yard, you know, on early growth of these trees.
Speaker 7: And then when you come back to this place is
Speaker 7: like the paradise that you left behind. You took it
Speaker 7: for granted back then.
Speaker 2: Art wants to help us get to the bottom of what,
Speaker 2: if anything, happened between Rick and my trees, but he
Speaker 2: always emphasizes that his intention is to persuade us that Rick,
Speaker 2: the Rick he knew, is innocent.
Speaker 7: I'm going to give you bread crumbs, you know.
Speaker 2: Art tells us he never went to Rick's fort. It
Speaker 2: kind of depressed him that his friend was living like that.
Speaker 2: He just remembers seeing a photo of Rick at the fort,
Speaker 2: sitting on his motorcycle.
Speaker 7: He was always telling me about it.
Speaker 6: Come up there.
Speaker 7: No, I don't want to do that because I don't
Speaker 7: want to identify with the fact that you want to
Speaker 7: live off the grid. I just don't want to go
Speaker 7: ahead and do that. But I'll hook up with you
Speaker 7: somewhere else, like at work, and then we'll go out
Speaker 7: to eat and we'll be civilized.
Speaker 2: Haley and I had been planning to head to the
Speaker 2: fort after our visit with Art. Haley's never seen it,
Speaker 2: but Art isn't ready to say goodbye. He wants to
Speaker 2: show us all these other spots up Payuma Road, his
Speaker 2: little breadcrumbs, I guess. So we make a split second
Speaker 2: decision and invite him to come with us to ricks
Speaker 2: for it all right here for that?
Speaker 7: Do you like windy roads?
Speaker 3: No? No, but I brought my sour patch kids.
Speaker 7: I'm the one who gets carsick.
Speaker 2: We all pile into my car.
Speaker 7: You're driving just fine, thank you. What will happen to
Speaker 7: Dana and Art in the next exciting adventure?
Speaker 2: We pull the car over in a turnout and head
Speaker 2: into the brush. So I'm gonna pull vegetation now because
Speaker 2: of all the rain. We get to a marker, I
Speaker 2: remember from when I was here three years ago. Think
Speaker 2: we can do it and make a sharp left.
Speaker 7: I could have brought a machete.
Speaker 8: Okay, so this is so overgrown, but.
Speaker 2: We got to get crouched down. As we move deeper
Speaker 2: into the woods, Art starts to hesitate.
Speaker 7: You don't have to do this, you know, we can
Speaker 7: do it in another time. We're here.
Speaker 8: We're here, let's do it.
Speaker 2: After a couple of minutes, we see the trash. First,
Speaker 2: it's just a little pile of sun faded bludweiser cans.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well that's Bloodweiser's Rick.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say, is that is?
Speaker 6: Is that his?
Speaker 7: Your choice?
Speaker 5: Yep.
Speaker 2: Then as we get closer to the big tree that
Speaker 2: mark's Rick's camp, we see more trash mixed into a
Speaker 2: mound of loose, churned up leafy soil. There's an empty
Speaker 2: jug of Sunny Delight, red bags, yogurt cups, a sharpie,
Speaker 2: a toothbrush, a blue plastic razor.
Speaker 7: That that would have been DNA at the wing wearing
Speaker 7: right there. Razor Eli like to keep itself clean, He
Speaker 7: like to keep knees and tiety. But he's hiding here.
Speaker 2: I'm so confused by what I'm seeing I was here
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty one and none of this was here.
Speaker 2: Then we've had two seasons of historic rainfall in Los
Speaker 2: Angeles County. Is it possible that all this stuff was
Speaker 2: buried underground and the flash floods and storms and atmospheric
Speaker 2: rivers unearthed up. If this is Rick's garbage heap, that
Speaker 2: means there could be something of my Teresa's here. We
Speaker 2: don't say that out loud. We don't have to. Haley
Speaker 2: and I start poking through the trash with sticks and
Speaker 2: a blue plastic hangar we find lying in the dart.
Speaker 2: We're not touching anything with our bare hands. It's disgusting,
Speaker 2: but also who knows. We could find something that has
Speaker 2: value as evidence, something that would link my trees to
Speaker 2: this site and finally get the attention of law enforcement.
Speaker 2: Several pieces of my Teresa's clothing were not found at
Speaker 2: the remain site in Dark Canyon, her vans, her Bob
Speaker 2: Marley T shirt, the brown hat she had with her
Speaker 2: when she left the station, and then there's her id.
Speaker 2: They're all I can think of while we dig.
Speaker 5: What's the What is that?
Speaker 7: That's a gas line?
Speaker 2: Art looks like he wishes he'd stayed back in Montanito,
Speaker 2: and he is actively trying to manage us. He thinks
Speaker 2: we're being hysterical.
Speaker 3: Look look in that hole, Art in there. Yeah, what's
Speaker 3: that thing for the right thing?
Speaker 7: Is that a pipe?
Speaker 3: That big thing is that a pipe? It's this that thing?
Speaker 7: Oh, come on, overreactact you're overreact?
Speaker 6: What is that like?
Speaker 2: And then we see it.
Speaker 7: It's stuff his stuff right here.
Speaker 2: It's a suitcase, plain black carry on size with a
Speaker 2: brand tag on it.
Speaker 7: See that name Embark or whatever is it Embark.
Speaker 2: The suitcase is stained with mud and mold. Little bright
Speaker 2: green plants are growing through it. But Art recognizes it.
Speaker 2: He says it's the kind Rick would use. So this
Speaker 2: looks familiar.
Speaker 7: This looks like.
Speaker 6: Art.
Speaker 2: Prize. Open the main compartment. It's empty, but there are pockets.
Speaker 7: Art.
Speaker 3: If you're feeling continually brave, will you just unzip that
Speaker 3: front bucket?
Speaker 2: Oh lucky you are, there's two pockets.
Speaker 7: Oh my god, Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Inside is a mass of disintegrating women's lingerie, bras thongs, stockings,
Speaker 2: a small black nightie with spaghetti straps, a mesh romper.
Speaker 2: I catch Haley's eye. I can tell we're thinking the
Speaker 2: same thing.
Speaker 6: We know.
Speaker 2: The bras don't belong to my trees. Her bra was
Speaker 2: found in Dark Canyon, but her underpants were never found.
Speaker 6: Is that ladies underwear?
Speaker 2: Lady bra with roses on it. It's a surreal experience.
Speaker 2: It's like this stuff just materialized, a whole suitcase of it.
Speaker 2: And just to add to the bizarreness, while we're trying
Speaker 2: to process what's happening, Art is frantically downplaying the whole thing.
Speaker 6: These are tights. Those are those? Are his?
Speaker 2: Are those tights?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 6: These are tights.
Speaker 7: It's like to stay warm.
Speaker 2: Well maybe at friends. They're small.
Speaker 1: I don't think these would fit him.
Speaker 2: Let's do a little inventory. Ladies, small stockings, black underpants,
Speaker 2: age underpants. Art starts making noises like he wants to
Speaker 2: get out of the woods, which is great because we
Speaker 2: want him out of our hair. We need to get
Speaker 2: some gloves and some garbage bags and remove as much
Speaker 2: of this stuff as we can before the sun goes down.
Speaker 2: It's a long shot, but we're wondering if there could
Speaker 2: be DNA evidence that would definitively connect Rick and my trees.
Speaker 2: We drop Art in Montanito, drive to the nearest grocery
Speaker 2: store and fill a shopping cart with supplies. We settle
Speaker 2: for a box cutter instead of a knife, and a
Speaker 2: kitty litter scooper for a shovel. They'll have to do.
Speaker 2: We return to the fort with one goal to bring
Speaker 2: back the contents of that suitcase and any other potential
Speaker 2: evidence we can find. Back at the fort, the suitcase
Speaker 2: is just where we left it. And now we notice
Speaker 2: there's another pocket which we didn't open with art.
Speaker 6: The zippers jimned.
Speaker 2: Okay, so now we've got a oh, purple like string bra.
Speaker 6: What do you call that? Oh?
Speaker 3: My god, I don't know what.
Speaker 6: This is, just some massive Ladies garments.
Speaker 2: The underwear is wet and moldy and falling apart. I
Speaker 2: hold open a garbage bag and Hayley deposits it piece
Speaker 2: by piece.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's just start here.
Speaker 2: Let's just bag let's bag up the.
Speaker 1: Ladies underwear first.
Speaker 2: We'll do a full accounting later. But even now, in
Speaker 2: the moment, it's obvious that this collection does not connect
Speaker 2: to just one woman. There are all different sizes small, medium,
Speaker 2: extra large, and the styles are eclectic, solid black patterns, thongs,
Speaker 2: granny panties, like girls T shirt. It makes sense that
Speaker 2: some of these things would have belonged to Darien. She's
Speaker 2: the dead girlfriend whose thong ricked like to put on,
Speaker 2: and we've heard he kept a lot of her undergarments here.
Speaker 2: But still it's pretty obvious that they are not all
Speaker 2: hers a mouse. Now that we have gloves, we dig
Speaker 2: through the mound of dirt around the suitcase a bit more.
Speaker 2: Haley pulls up Rick's headlamp. It's bright yellow, and I
Speaker 2: don't know why, but it feels so personal, like a
Speaker 2: representation of Rick. It makes me think of him up
Speaker 2: here in the dark. It's not an image. I want
Speaker 2: to sit with.
Speaker 6: You. Here's some more clothing.
Speaker 2: We find more pieces of fabric in the mound, long
Speaker 2: lacy strands that disappear deep into the earth, intertwining.
Speaker 1: With the roots.
Speaker 2: We pull on them, and I feel my guts turn
Speaker 2: over nauseatingly, like I'm tugging on my own entrails.
Speaker 6: This looks like a little kids lee hard.
Speaker 2: I spot something bright, purply pink and shiny. It's a
Speaker 2: kid's nightgown, like a toddler would wear. It's a Barbie princess.
Speaker 2: It's crust or I mean, dizzy princess. That's what I mean,
Speaker 2: I have no clue what to make of that it
Speaker 2: goes in the bag. All I can think about are
Speaker 2: my Teresa's missing things, her shoes, her T shirt, her
Speaker 2: underpants if she was wearing them.
Speaker 6: To find one little sign of her, if.
Speaker 2: She was here, she was here for like.
Speaker 3: One day, I know, or you just brought back something,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2: I look over the mound of dirt again and notice
Speaker 2: a long, narrow piece of green net like fabric. I've
Speaker 2: always been stumped by the description of the material that
Speaker 2: was found during my Teresa's second autopsy. The criminalists who
Speaker 2: collected it described it as quote loose green fuzz like
Speaker 2: hair slash fibers located near the legs. Could this green
Speaker 2: fabric at the fort be connected to that green fuzz
Speaker 2: found near my Teresa's legs? Hey, I think we should
Speaker 2: get out of here. We put it in the bag,
Speaker 2: and then we get out of there with a big
Speaker 2: garbage bag full of molding underwear.
Speaker 7: Well, what are we going to do with it?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: So we don't feel like the beleving. We can't leave it.
Speaker 1: I think we have to figure out what we're going
Speaker 1: to do with them.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and maybe like talk to some other people about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't know exactly what to do with this stuff.
Speaker 2: We just know we can't leave it out here. There's
Speaker 2: some friend of Rick's who gets wind of it, could
Speaker 2: come and move it. It might be our only potential
Speaker 2: way of connecting my trees to the fort through physical evidence.
Speaker 2: That night, it pours rain again and there's another flash flood. Warning.
Speaker 2: My mind goes to Rick's fort. Maybe it would all
Speaker 2: be gone, buried again or washed away except for what
Speaker 2: we rescued in a garbage bag that's now locked in
Speaker 2: Haley's office while we formulate a plan. We don't know
Speaker 2: why law enforcements stopped pursuing Rick after the polygraph. Maybe
Speaker 2: they learned something that excluded him, but we asked and
Speaker 2: not one of the detectives we spoke to said Rick
Speaker 2: had definitively been ruled out. Maybe it was just he
Speaker 2: passed the polygraph. But even if law enforcement had wanted
Speaker 2: to keep interrogating him, it would have been extremely difficult
Speaker 2: because not long after he was interviewed, he sustained yet
Speaker 2: another traumatic brain injury. He had a long history of those.
Speaker 2: Art Davis again.
Speaker 7: I mean he ran right into an eighty year old
Speaker 7: eucalyptus tree like that.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and one, Rick, driving drunk, had smashed
Speaker 2: into a tree onto Pega Canyon Boulevard.
Speaker 7: Exploded his you know, all his teeth and they put
Speaker 7: all his teeth back in. He busted both knees, broke
Speaker 7: his neck, you know, his back, his leg, all kinds
Speaker 7: of stuff. I mean, they took the jaws alive man
Speaker 7: and got him out of there.
Speaker 2: Then, in the fall of twenty twelve, not long after
Speaker 2: he took the polygraph and beat up Lisa Lapour, Rick
Speaker 2: was riding his motorcycle down Payuma when he collided with
Speaker 2: the Toyota Highlander at the intersection with Cold Canyon Road.
Speaker 6: So he was on a motorcycle and he told my mom, Okay,
Speaker 6: I'm going to go feed the dogs really fast at
Speaker 6: his mom's house.
Speaker 2: This is Shari Amic again. When the accident happened, Rick
Speaker 2: was back living at Schari's parents' house.
Speaker 6: And when I pulled up, my mom was standing outside,
Speaker 6: and I knew there was something wrong. I just knew
Speaker 6: right away because there was a chopper.
Speaker 2: Rick wasn't wearing a helmet.
Speaker 6: Rick was in a coma again, and this time you know,
Speaker 6: everyone just said Rick's gonna die, and I was like, no,
Speaker 6: he's not, No, he's not.
Speaker 2: Rick didn't die. He emerged from his coma and the
Speaker 2: first thing he did was to attack the hospital staff.
Speaker 2: But he was probably no longer mentally capable of being interrogated,
Speaker 2: and the detectives may have had no new leads to
Speaker 2: pursue about him anyway. Over the next decade, Rick had
Speaker 2: more accidents as his cognitive abilities declined.
Speaker 6: So his heart is telling him, like, you know, he
Speaker 6: always used to be, you know, very athletic and could
Speaker 6: do anything, superman. I'm making it up those chairs well,
Speaker 6: you know, off balance, No you're not.
Speaker 2: He spent his final years in a nursing home.
Speaker 6: I went to go see Rick. Rick couldn't talk, he
Speaker 6: couldn't speak. He could understand me, he understood everything. And
Speaker 6: they had him heavily drugged, very heavily sedated, you know,
Speaker 6: because he's going to try to get up. He's just
Speaker 6: going to try to get up and do things his
Speaker 6: body can't do anymore.
Speaker 2: Most of Rick's old friends stayed away. Even Cherie found
Speaker 2: it almost intolerable to see him so diminished. He was
Speaker 2: only in his sixties, but he was unable to speak
Speaker 2: or walk. It felt to her like everything was catching
Speaker 2: up with Rick.
Speaker 6: Rick is alive, but this is like, oh shit, now
Speaker 6: he's going to pay for all you know, the times
Speaker 6: he didn't listen, you know, like a little kid just
Speaker 6: didn't listen, did what he wanted to do, reckless fun Rick.
Speaker 2: When Rick died in December twenty nineteen, he had a
Speaker 2: picture of his son, Ricky taped above his bed. No
Speaker 2: one had told him Ricky had died two years earlier,
Speaker 2: at the age of twenty two. Rick didn't make formal
Speaker 2: amends for his mistakes in life. That person. Haley and
Speaker 2: I were hoping to find someone he might have confessed
Speaker 2: to about my Terse, what he knew, or what he
Speaker 2: may have done. We never found that person, but we
Speaker 2: did find Rick's poems. Yes, it turns out Rick wrote poetry.
Speaker 2: In the fall of twenty ten, about two months after
Speaker 2: my Terce's remains were found, Rick started a blog, Prose
Speaker 2: of a Khan. He published a number of poems, most
Speaker 2: of them centered on themes of drug addiction, deception, regret,
Speaker 2: and the hope for forgiveness in the afterlife. For example,
Speaker 2: quote as I lost my integrity the truth all but dies,
Speaker 2: and when it all comes forth, I'm caught in my
Speaker 2: lies unquote. In the poems, Rick writes a lot about
Speaker 2: finding salvation through God, and for spiritual guidance, he turned
Speaker 2: to his former girlfriend Karen McKellar. She'd gotten away from
Speaker 2: drugs and into God and spent her adult life counseling
Speaker 2: female addicts as part of a Christian ministry. Karen says
Speaker 2: that for about a year after Rick took her up
Speaker 2: to the fort and put on the thong, he reached
Speaker 2: out to her obsessively and it was always about the
Speaker 2: same thing.
Speaker 4: He called me and and he was asking me questions
Speaker 4: about Christ.
Speaker 2: It seemed like Rick was seeking absolution for the life
Speaker 2: he lived.
Speaker 4: And then I told him, you know, Jesus is the
Speaker 4: only way, Rick, you know, you really need to surrender
Speaker 4: to him. And so I was trying to, you know,
Speaker 4: help him, and on the phone only because I would
Speaker 4: not come back there, but he always would call me,
Speaker 4: you know, interrupt me in my life. And so then
Speaker 4: it was kind of like a client and a sad
Speaker 4: soul that I was trying to help get saved. And
Speaker 4: he told me, he goes, yeah, Well, I prayed to
Speaker 4: the tree, and I said, Rick, the tree isn't going
Speaker 4: to save you.
Speaker 2: Rick was praying to the big tree at his fort,
Speaker 2: the one where he hung the bras.
Speaker 4: I told him, you need to confess all your whatever
Speaker 4: it is that you're going through, because he was so troubled.
Speaker 4: So when he told me that he prayed to the tree,
Speaker 4: I was like, I'm this is just a waste of time.
Speaker 4: And I ended up blocking them off my phone because
Speaker 4: I couldn't take the you know calls. All the time
Speaker 4: I was praying for him, you know, because it was sad,
Speaker 4: very he was not mentally stable. So yes, I think
Speaker 4: for sure he was looking for salvation and I prayed
Speaker 4: found it.
Speaker 2: Back at the office, Haley goes through the contents of
Speaker 2: the garbage bag. She makes a catalog and we go
Speaker 2: through it, marking the items that seem like they could
Speaker 2: potentially connect to my trees. Black thong with lace down
Speaker 2: the front, rampage, size medium black thong, badly degraded Zanana outfitters,
Speaker 2: size medium, two black thongs, no labels, and the piece
Speaker 2: of green net fabric. We contact a private forensic lab.
Speaker 2: The DNA expert there tells us that even though these
Speaker 2: items have been moldering, possibly underground for more than a decade.
Speaker 2: It's entirely possible they'll be able to identify a DNA signature.
Speaker 2: This clothing might have nothing to do with my trees,
Speaker 2: but we've got to see this through before we send
Speaker 2: it to a lab. Though. We have to go see
Speaker 2: her dad, Michael. We need to return my Teres's journals
Speaker 2: and we're hoping he might have something more to share
Speaker 2: with us. Next time on Lost Hills.
Speaker 8: It's in a ziplock bag and some just told me
Speaker 8: never get rid of and I couldn't do it if
Speaker 8: I wanted to, you know, So I just always felt
Speaker 8: like someday somehow we got to need him, We got
Speaker 8: to need him. Yeah, So let me know when you're ready.
Speaker 2: That's next in episode twelve, Dig two Graves, the final
Speaker 2: episode of season four of Lost Hills. Lost Hills is
Speaker 2: written and hosted by Me Dana Goodyear. It was reported
Speaker 2: by Me and Hailey Fox, our senior producer. The show
Speaker 2: was created by Me and Benedere. Lost Hills is a
Speaker 2: production of Western Sound and Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to Pushkin
Speaker 2: Plus and you can binge the whole season right now.
Speaker 2: Ad free find Pushkin plus on the Lost Hills show
Speaker 2: page in Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin dot fm, slash
Speaker 2: plus