Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: A couple of years ago, I found a video buried
Speaker 2: on the Internet, deep in the metadata behind the four
Speaker 2: or four error codes. In it, a young black woman
Speaker 2: is questioning a middle aged white guy who's sitting on
Speaker 2: the edge of his bed drinking a beer.
Speaker 1: Did you hear baiting on the door?
Speaker 3: Talking at the door like they just shut it on
Speaker 3: it or something.
Speaker 2: The person they're talking about is my Teres Richardson, a
Speaker 2: twenty four year old black woman who disappeared in Malibu
Speaker 2: in two thousand and nine and whose remains were discovered
Speaker 2: there eleven months later. They're talking about the day of
Speaker 2: her disappearance and.
Speaker 3: Was above when I first started voice him.
Speaker 4: By the time I got down, the love and kind
Speaker 4: of curiosity kind of drugged me closer to the Facebook.
Speaker 2: The interview is being shot vertical, seemingly on a cell phone,
Speaker 2: with the guy taking up the whole frame. He looks
Speaker 2: like an aging California golden boy with gray and blonde hair,
Speaker 2: a tan and a barrel chest. He's relaxed, wearing a
Speaker 2: sky blue Henley shirt tucked into a pair of camouflage shorts.
Speaker 3: So I really couldn't see her face, but I could
Speaker 3: see her shadow. It's.
Speaker 2: While he says this, he gestures broadly, waving his big
Speaker 2: paws around in the air.
Speaker 4: The light of the knife, you know, with the light
Speaker 4: of the front porch. She was screaming at something. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it was pretty loud, and I'm thinking, God, damn's.
Speaker 3: For three of them. Mort What was she saying? She
Speaker 3: was saying, God damn buddy.
Speaker 4: Oh yo, she was pitt or something, you know, something
Speaker 4: to be with the people at the house. She was
Speaker 4: angry and maybe they told her she had to read
Speaker 4: get a call at police, and she was telling.
Speaker 3: Him, you shun.
Speaker 4: What he got.
Speaker 2: Curious the scene was so out of place in this
Speaker 2: quiet neighborhood, a young woman alone in the early morning hours,
Speaker 2: shouting she might be in trouble, because I think.
Speaker 4: Well, if there's some dude there, I'm not gonna let
Speaker 4: some dody here, you know, right, I wouldn't have hesitated
Speaker 4: to walk on that property.
Speaker 3: But since there wasn't, you.
Speaker 4: Know, and I couldn't see anybody else except for her,
Speaker 4: or not really even her. Just she was angry something.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm kind of that would have been right there.
Speaker 4: I have a good donald protected.
Speaker 2: The interviewer. Her name's Raven Masterson. She made the video
Speaker 2: sometime after my Terce's remains were found. Like so many people,
Speaker 2: she wanted to figure out what happened to my trees
Speaker 2: because the death of my Teres Richardson is Malibu's most horrifying, notorious,
Speaker 2: and scandalous unsolved case. For fifteen years, my Teresa's story
Speaker 2: has been shrouded in mystery. The scant clues have been
Speaker 2: worked over a thousand times to no end. There's no resolution,
Speaker 2: no satisfying explanation, and no one has been held accountable.
Speaker 2: Many people blame the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department for
Speaker 2: her death. Some take it farther, and this is how
Speaker 2: Ravenlean's in the video. They even think a deputy may
Speaker 2: have killed my Teres. My Rise was arrested at Jeoffrey's
Speaker 2: Restaurant on Pacific Coast Highway on September sixteenth, two thousand
Speaker 2: and nine. She was released from Lost Hill Station at
Speaker 2: twelve twenty five am on the seventeenth. After that, there
Speaker 2: was one official sighting of her at six thirty am
Speaker 2: in the backyard of a house in Montanito, a secluded
Speaker 2: neighborhood off Malibuqion. That's about six miles from the Lost
Speaker 2: Hill Sheriff station. But the guy in the video, he
Speaker 2: says he saw her too, two hours earlier at four
Speaker 2: thirty am, making a commotion in the front yard of
Speaker 2: that same house. Montaneito Mountain Nest. It's a tight knit
Speaker 2: community in the shadow of the Santa Monica Mountains. Most
Speaker 2: people in La don't even know it exists. It's got
Speaker 2: creeks and horses and neighbors that have known each other
Speaker 2: in some cases for generations. Kids run around barefoot. There's
Speaker 2: a big Fourth of July parade and an annual square dance.
Speaker 2: It's a place out of time. It feels like the
Speaker 2: rustic Horsey California of the nineteen forties mixed with the
Speaker 2: freewheeling party culture of the nineteen seventies. And it's got
Speaker 2: none of the flash of coastal Malibise or the nearby
Speaker 2: gated communities of Calabasas. This is California, so of course
Speaker 2: there have been a couple of waves of gentrifiers. But
Speaker 2: among the old timers, the people who practically homesteaded there
Speaker 2: in the fifties, there's a distinct backwoods ingrown feeling, and
Speaker 2: it bears mentioning The whole place is extremely white, with
Speaker 2: one notable exception. Will Smith, one of the most famous
Speaker 2: black men in America, owns an estate in Montanito. But
Speaker 2: I don't think he frequents the Square Dance or the
Speaker 2: Fourth of July parade. It's hard to express how unlikely
Speaker 2: it is that my trace would end up in this
Speaker 2: isolated community. There isn't even a sign for Montanito on
Speaker 2: Malibu Canyon. How would she even have known it was there.
Speaker 2: Eleven months after my Teres Richardson disappeared, park rangers checking
Speaker 2: a known illegal pot grow found her remains in a
Speaker 2: treacherous canyon above Montanito called Dark Canyon. During this time,
Speaker 2: the Santa Monica Mountains were notorious for harboring large marijuana
Speaker 2: operations run by organized crime syndicates. These massive grows were
Speaker 2: often protected with armed guards who would camp out in
Speaker 2: the canyons for extended periods. The rangers had disrupted a
Speaker 2: Dark Canyon grow in July two thousand and nine, two
Speaker 2: months before my Teres's disappearance. When they returned in August
Speaker 2: of twenty ten, they didn't report any fresh signs of
Speaker 2: pot growing activity, but there in the dormant grow were
Speaker 2: the remains of a black woman. She was mostly bones,
Speaker 2: a skeleton with small flaps of mummified skin remaining, and
Speaker 2: she was naked. From the beginning, every aspect of the
Speaker 2: case seemed off. What was wrong, how she was arrested,
Speaker 2: how she was released, how she was searched for, how
Speaker 2: her remains were discovered, how her remains were recovered, and
Speaker 2: how her death was investigated. All of it looked like
Speaker 2: a colossal screw up on the part of law enforcement,
Speaker 2: starting with the Lost Hills cops and what the Sheriff's
Speaker 2: department has said about the case over the years, it
Speaker 2: just makes no sense. Their refrain, essentially is some cases
Speaker 2: can't be solved. This is a Sheriff's spokesman three days
Speaker 2: after my Teresa's body was found.
Speaker 5: Homicide will continue their investigation. It's likely that we can
Speaker 5: never find out exactly how she got there, but they're
Speaker 5: going to do their very best to figure that.
Speaker 2: And they're still saying my Teresa's death will always be
Speaker 2: a mystery. But I don't accept that it's a stubborn, strange,
Speaker 2: problematic case. But I do think it's solvable because someone
Speaker 2: in that secluded, tight knit community of Montanito knows what
Speaker 2: happened to her. I'm Dana Goodyear and this is Lost
Speaker 2: Hills Season four, Dark Canyon, Episode one, Vultures. Right off
Speaker 2: Pacific Coast Highway, across from the Malibu Lagoon, next to
Speaker 2: the gas station, there's a small memorial. It's a rock
Speaker 2: with a plaque on it, commemorating the life of a
Speaker 2: man who was known as Malibu Jo. Malibujo was Jo Costello.
Speaker 2: He was originally from Genoa, Italy, but starting in the
Speaker 2: mid nineteen fifties, he became a beloved Malibu figure, riding
Speaker 2: his bike slowly up and down pH in a fedora
Speaker 2: and a baggy overcoat. In the summer of nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 2: he was beaten and left for dead in the only
Speaker 2: under bushes where he lived, where the memorial is today.
Speaker 2: He died a few days later. He was ninety six
Speaker 2: years old. The Sheriff's department investigated, but the killing was
Speaker 2: never solved, so no one was ever punished. Malibu Jo
Speaker 2: died two decades before my Terse Richardson. The cases have
Speaker 2: nothing to do with one another except this. Both Joe
Speaker 2: and my Trees show moments of rupture. They're both signs
Speaker 2: that Malibu isn't what it seems. Malibu is not paradise, sunshine, nature, beauty, health, wealth,
Speaker 2: and eternal youth. That's the myth. But if I've learned
Speaker 2: one thing reporting here, it's that every seductive surface has
Speaker 2: its dark side. The beauty is the danger. It makes
Speaker 2: you let down your guard and believe in the fantasy.
Speaker 2: The unspoiled wilderness hides unspeakable crimes, and a place like that,
Speaker 2: a place like that breeds monsters. In the fall of
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine, my Teresa's disappearance was all over
Speaker 2: the local news.
Speaker 6: The mystery unraveled on a September night in two thousand
Speaker 6: and nine, right where the Pacific reached the shores of Malibu.
Speaker 2: It all started when my Teres tried to leave Jeoffrey's,
Speaker 2: a pricey restaurant on Pacific Coast high without paying her bill.
Speaker 2: She was arrested and taken to Lost Hill station, about
Speaker 2: thirteen miles away.
Speaker 5: They contacted her mother, who said that she will pick
Speaker 5: her up in the morning.
Speaker 7: If you will keep her there. Deputy said, we will.
Speaker 2: But instead of staying at the station, my Teres walked
Speaker 2: out into the Malibu night. Her car was at a
Speaker 2: tow yard near pch with her belongings inside.
Speaker 4: She was released at twelve thirty a m no wallet,
Speaker 4: no cell phone, no credit cards, no car.
Speaker 2: She was gorgeous and charismatic, and as would later come out,
Speaker 2: she was in the midst of a mental health crisis.
Speaker 7: A beauty contestant and honor student, and now a missing person.
Speaker 2: According to her mom, she had no street savvy whatsoever,
Speaker 2: and she didn't know Malibu at all.
Speaker 7: My Teres Richardson walked out of a Los Angeles County
Speaker 7: Sheriff's office and into a mystery that continues to baffle investigators.
Speaker 2: And then the mystery became a horror.
Speaker 4: Eleven months later, the twenty four year old college graduates.
Speaker 5: Remains were found here in Dark Canyon. She was naked
Speaker 5: and partially mummified. They discovered a skull, they discovered a pelvis,
Speaker 5: and they discovered a lake on just bones. They determined officially, unequivocally,
Speaker 5: and unfortunately, it was my Terce Richardson.
Speaker 1: Corners Officials haven't determined the cause of death, and they
Speaker 1: say Richardson's body was in the canyon for more than
Speaker 1: six months.
Speaker 4: Whatever happened in Dark Canyon remains in the moment a
Speaker 4: dark secret.
Speaker 2: It's been fifteen years since my trace disappeared, fourteen years
Speaker 2: since her remains were found, and there's been no progress
Speaker 2: on her case. There's no sign that law enforcement is
Speaker 2: actively working on it. But it's not a cold case.
Speaker 2: It's a quote active criminal investigation, which means the Sheriff's
Speaker 2: department doesn't have to share information. And believe me, they
Speaker 2: take that very seriously. They do not like to talk
Speaker 2: about this case. In the midst of their silence, a
Speaker 2: sinister narrative has taken hold in the public imagination that
Speaker 2: the La County Sheriff's Department, specifically the Lost Heils cops,
Speaker 2: are behind my Teres's death. They deny this, but the
Speaker 2: idea lives on in a new generation of true crime
Speaker 2: TikTokers and YouTubers. Welcome to another episode of Murder, Mystery
Speaker 2: and Makeup Monday.
Speaker 6: Today's story was about Matrise Richardson.
Speaker 3: Kind of feels like that they were hiding something.
Speaker 6: The police work in this case was off long.
Speaker 4: Is this incompetence or cover up?
Speaker 6: I mean they originally were trying to hide the fact
Speaker 6: that they had security footage.
Speaker 5: The previous captain was in on it and promoted for
Speaker 5: his cover up job.
Speaker 7: I believe that Maturse Richardson was murdered and it was
Speaker 7: covered up by the La County Sheriff's office.
Speaker 2: We know the cops took my trees to the station,
Speaker 2: and the cops let her go in the dark. This
Speaker 2: part is true, undisputed fact. And then what how did
Speaker 2: she get from the station to Montanito six miles away?
Speaker 2: How did she end up in dark canyon? Why was
Speaker 2: she naked? And what happened to her missing bones?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's one more undisputed fact. While most of my
Speaker 2: Teresa's bones were eventually accounted for, discovered in the canyon's
Speaker 2: heavy leaf litter, an important one has not been found,
Speaker 2: the fragile bone above the larynx that often breaks when
Speaker 2: a person is strangled. My Terce Richardson's death is not
Speaker 2: officially a homicide. The autopsy reads, quote, while there is
Speaker 2: no evidence of antimortem trauma to the bones or the
Speaker 2: limited amount of tissue accompanying them, in the absence of
Speaker 2: internal viscera, internal injury cannot be completely ruled out and quote,
Speaker 2: in the absence of suitable specimens for toxicology testing, the
Speaker 2: possibility of fatal substance abuse cannot be ruled out, and
Speaker 2: quote death due to exposure, snake bite, pneumonia, or other
Speaker 2: natural diseases also cannot be ruled out. Therefore, quote both
Speaker 2: cause and manner of death remain undetermined. Unquote Hello, I'm
Speaker 2: Dana Danah, nice to meet to meet. I'm at the
Speaker 2: home of Lisa Shinan. She's the forensic pathologist who conducted
Speaker 2: the autopsy of my Terce's remains. She's also one of
Speaker 2: the world's foremost authorities on roller coasters.
Speaker 6: That is my big hobby, that collecting butterflies.
Speaker 2: Her house, a normal looking suburban house in Redondo Beach,
Speaker 2: is basically a natural history museum. So do you capture
Speaker 2: them in a net and then pick a loup shadow box?
Speaker 2: Frames filled with specimens are stacked in every corner.
Speaker 6: There's something called a killing jar which you can make.
Speaker 6: It's a jar that has a plaster of Paris base
Speaker 6: and then you pour in. You can use cyanide when
Speaker 6: you screw the cap on. It's a closed environment and
Speaker 6: it makes fumes that kill the butterfly, basically put it
Speaker 6: to sleep in seconds.
Speaker 2: Doctor Shinen worked for the La County Coroner's Office for
Speaker 2: twenty four years or I was.
Speaker 6: A deputy medical examiner at the La County Coroner's Office,
Speaker 6: now retired.
Speaker 2: She worked on a lot of high profile cases. She
Speaker 2: did the autopsies on the musicians Elliott Smith, a notorious big.
Speaker 6: My autopsied Steve Allen, Doctor nor from the Killing Fields,
Speaker 6: Brittany Murphy, Brian Keith.
Speaker 2: That goes back away, but my Teresa's case stands out.
Speaker 6: There are over the years some cases that do stick
Speaker 6: with me because of the circumstances of the case. There
Speaker 6: were so many unknowns. I mean, every time I've been
Speaker 6: near Malibu, I'd start thinking of, oh, geez, this is
Speaker 6: where my race was, and this is just such a
Speaker 6: tragic case.
Speaker 2: But she knew at the start was very basic. A
Speaker 2: few scattered pieces of clothing and a human skeleton had
Speaker 2: been found in an inaccessible canyon in Malibu. The autopsy
Speaker 2: report details the pieces of my Teresa's clothing that were
Speaker 2: recovered from their remain site. One navy blue or black
Speaker 2: padded bra two pink narrow belt, medium large alligator skin pattern,
Speaker 2: three blue jeans US size twenty nine, dirty empty pockets.
Speaker 2: She'd been wearing a bob Marley T shirt and a
Speaker 2: pair of vans when she left Lost Hill station. She
Speaker 2: also had her California driver's license on her. Those items,
Speaker 2: along with her hat and her keys, were missing.
Speaker 6: I had the investigator's report. This particular investigator's report was
Speaker 6: very straightforward. It said somebody from law enforcement was checking
Speaker 6: an area in a remote canyon and found the bones
Speaker 6: and the clothing, and the clothing was about one hundred
Speaker 6: feet away from the skeleton. You know, that's very limited information,
Speaker 6: and sometimes we have two or three pages of information,
Speaker 6: but not so in this case. So the first thing
Speaker 6: you do is you lay everything out in anatomical order
Speaker 6: and count what you've got. It was a nearly complete skeleton.
Speaker 6: It wasn't in an intact skeleton, and that everything was connected.
Speaker 6: There were a lot of disarticulated bones, but there were
Speaker 6: some areas or certain blocks, like some parts of the
Speaker 6: lower extremities parts of some of the upper extremities were
Speaker 6: held together by a minimal amount of soft tissue.
Speaker 2: The soft tissue was mostly skin that had been mummified.
Speaker 6: Yeah, mummification is a process. It can be accidental. If
Speaker 6: you have a body in a very dry, hot environment,
Speaker 6: the liquid essentially disappears, and what you get is this
Speaker 6: very leathery, rigid skin, sometimes some soft tissue. Usually the
Speaker 6: internal organs don't mummify, so it's mostly the skin muscle
Speaker 6: tendons at that type of thing.
Speaker 2: There were a few small marks on some of the
Speaker 2: bones the work. Doctor Shinen thought of animals scavenging the remains.
Speaker 6: The toes of the left foot were missing, and that
Speaker 6: was consistent with animal activity.
Speaker 2: But otherwise the bones were intact.
Speaker 6: We look for things like fractures, which would usually mean
Speaker 6: some sort of a blunt force impact. We would look
Speaker 6: for any evidence of a gunshot wound, or a stabbing.
Speaker 6: I didn't see any evidence of a physical traumatic injury.
Speaker 2: There was also no way to tell if my trees
Speaker 2: had been sexually assaulted.
Speaker 6: Without soft tissue, there's really nothing that you can do
Speaker 6: or see, and sperm doesn't last.
Speaker 2: Without internal organs. There was no way to tell if
Speaker 2: she had overdosed.
Speaker 6: She wasn't found with cocaine, with amphetamine, heroin, anything like that.
Speaker 6: Shouldn't really have a history of that type of thing,
Speaker 6: But again without being able to do an accurate test,
Speaker 6: we don't know.
Speaker 2: There was a small amount of leg muscle. Doctor Shinan
Speaker 2: sent it in for toxicology, and that report came back inconclusive.
Speaker 2: As soon as my Trees's remains were discovered, law enforcement
Speaker 2: began suggesting that my Trees, experiencing a mental health episode,
Speaker 2: had probably wandered into Dark Canyon by herself and died
Speaker 2: from exposure, dehydration, venom, or something. Her death, they implied,
Speaker 2: was tragic but natural. I asked doctor Shinen about the
Speaker 2: natural causes theory.
Speaker 6: In this particular case. There's several possibilities. There are rattlesnakes there.
Speaker 6: She could have been bitten by a rattlesnake. There's also
Speaker 6: a fire ants. She could have had a severe allergic
Speaker 6: reaction to something. There's poison oak there. That's horrible. It's everywhere,
Speaker 6: and some people are more sensitive than others.
Speaker 2: But why would the skeleton be naked. My Trees's broad
Speaker 2: belt and jeans were found hundreds of feet from the skeleton,
Speaker 2: and the belt was no longer on the jeans. A
Speaker 2: seasonal stream, Dark Creek runs through the canyon, and cops
Speaker 2: suggested that a flashed flood could have removed her clothes,
Speaker 2: carrying them downstream. The winter my Trese was missing was
Speaker 2: a rainy one. But even so, it takes a real
Speaker 2: contortion of logic to imagine a flood could strip a
Speaker 2: body naked and remove a belt from a pair of pants.
Speaker 6: Usually, when we have a person who's dead with their
Speaker 6: clothes on, the clothes will stay on. Even if the
Speaker 6: body mummifies, the clothes are going to stay on. Water
Speaker 6: might wash off socks or something like that, but it's
Speaker 6: not going to completely undress a body.
Speaker 2: Doctor Shinen raised different natural explanation for my Trees's nudity hypothermia.
Speaker 6: There's something that happens with extreme cold cold, paradoxical undressing. Normally,
Speaker 6: when you're cold, your blood vessels will constrict to try
Speaker 6: to keep the blood more central in the body. Well,
Speaker 6: what happens with paradoxical undressing is there is a reflex
Speaker 6: dilatation of these blood vessels. So all of a sudden,
Speaker 6: you get this rush of nice, warm blood into these
Speaker 6: areas that were previously cold, and people who were probably
Speaker 6: a little bit out of it by this point think,
Speaker 6: oh my gosh, it's so warm, I'm too hot, and
Speaker 6: they take their clothes off. However, that tends to happen
Speaker 6: more often in extreme cold, where there's snow.
Speaker 2: In mid September two thousand and nine, the average overnight
Speaker 2: low at the weather recording station nearest to Dark Canyon
Speaker 2: was in the mid sixties, and.
Speaker 6: I'm not sure it would get cold enough up in
Speaker 6: the Care Canyon for that to happen, But it's just
Speaker 6: something to think about.
Speaker 2: Obviously, there's another possible explanation, foul play.
Speaker 6: There are sinister reasons for the person not having their
Speaker 6: their clothes on. I mean, could she have been sexually
Speaker 6: assaulted and they just took her clothes off and left
Speaker 6: them off. Who knows. It's certainly a real possibility.
Speaker 2: And what about the missing clothing.
Speaker 6: And also the fact that it was an incomplete set
Speaker 6: of clothes and none of the additional items of clothing
Speaker 6: were ever found, and including shoes, which I think have
Speaker 6: a little more weight than other clothing.
Speaker 2: As with everything about my Teresa's case, the story of
Speaker 2: her remains is a story of absences, gaps, and guesses.
Speaker 2: A forensic pathologist works by process of elimination, but was
Speaker 2: so little hard evidence it was difficult to rule out anything.
Speaker 6: So the fact that I didn't see any trauma in
Speaker 6: the bones doesn't mean trauma didn't happen. It's always possible
Speaker 6: that a gunshot wound can go through and through a
Speaker 6: body without hitting bone, same thing for a stab wound.
Speaker 6: What's also possible is asphyxia or a manual strangulation or
Speaker 6: maybe you know, choked with a rope. The reason people
Speaker 6: die when they're strangled is you're cutting off the blood
Speaker 6: flow to the brain. We're looking for things that reflect
Speaker 6: the fact that you are compressing neck structures.
Speaker 2: In the autopsy report, there's a list of missing bones.
Speaker 2: Some bones from the hand, the left toes, presumably scavenged
Speaker 2: by animals, the tailbone, the zyphoid process at the bottom
Speaker 2: of the sternum, and a thin, fragile neck bone called
Speaker 2: the hyoid.
Speaker 6: The hyoid bone is the only floating bone in the body.
Speaker 6: It's not attached to any other bone. It sits a
Speaker 6: little bit above the thyroid cartilage, and it's essentially there
Speaker 6: as a base of muscle attachment.
Speaker 2: Because of its shape and position in the body, a
Speaker 2: broken hyoid can provide clear evidence of strangulation for a
Speaker 2: forensic pathologist. It's a very significant bone.
Speaker 6: And what's important about it is it's a U shaped
Speaker 6: bone with the projections heading towards the back of the neck.
Speaker 6: So if it's compressed from both sides, which is what
Speaker 6: happens when you have a strangulation. Case with manual strangulation
Speaker 6: is that you're putting pressure on the wings of the
Speaker 6: hyoid bone and a can fracture. The thing with the
Speaker 6: hyoid is if you found it and it was broken,
Speaker 6: you could say, aha, this person was strangled.
Speaker 2: But like the missing clothing and her id, my Teresa's
Speaker 2: hyoid bone was never found. Doctor Shinen says my Teresa's
Speaker 2: case could still be resolved with new evidence. The coroner
Speaker 2: could change the cause of death from undetermined.
Speaker 6: If there was foul play involved, someone could confess. You
Speaker 6: never know, could be deathbed confession. Maybe they'll raid somewhere
Speaker 6: someplace and they'll find pictures of her. Anything is possible.
Speaker 6: They could just investigate the right person at the right time.
Speaker 6: Sometimes killers will save souvenirs that can be recognized as
Speaker 6: something from the person. Anything like that could happen.
Speaker 2: Anything could happen, including this. Someone who knows something could
Speaker 2: decide they've kept the secret for too long. My Teresa's
Speaker 2: movements on September seventeenth, two thousand and nine, are mostly unknown.
Speaker 2: After she was released from Lost Hil Station at twelve
Speaker 2: twenty five am. She somehow made her way six miles
Speaker 2: to Montanito in the dark. The next morning, around six
Speaker 2: thirty am, she was spotted there in the backyard of
Speaker 2: a house at the bottom of Cold Canyon Road.
Speaker 1: And I saw somebody sitting on the top step of
Speaker 1: the six railroad ties that we have in the backyard.
Speaker 1: I called David, said are you okay? And the answer
Speaker 1: was I thought yes, resting on And by the time
Speaker 1: we were around to the other window.
Speaker 2: He was gone. That's Karen Smith speaking in an ABC
Speaker 2: seven documentary about my Teres's disappearance. Karen's house is kind
Speaker 2: of a landmark in the neighborhood because it has a
Speaker 2: tennis court out front. Her husband, Bill Smith, who died
Speaker 2: in twenty seventeen, was a reporter on KTLA, a local
Speaker 2: TV news station. The Smith's called the cops, and later
Speaker 2: deputies confirmed that the woman who'd been in the backyard
Speaker 2: was my Terce. That's the one official sighting of my
Speaker 2: Terce Richardson after she left Lost Hill Station. But then
Speaker 2: there's the other story, the unofficial story, the one the
Speaker 2: guy on the edge of his bed told Raven in
Speaker 2: the lost interview.
Speaker 3: It was four thirty in the morning. I'm coming down
Speaker 3: off my mountain, my little higher. So where do you live? Yeah,
Speaker 3: right down the street. I've lived in Lonlino all my life.
Speaker 3: It's my folks live here.
Speaker 2: So he says he was heading down into the neighborhood
Speaker 2: from his spot on the mountain in the early morning hours.
Speaker 3: Come down four to thirty in the morning.
Speaker 4: And because I left about four fifteen for my spot,
Speaker 4: tis by that ten minutes seventeen minutes seat down and
Speaker 4: I'm coming down and there's that well almost step with
Speaker 4: bluff in Cold Canyon, and it was a right with
Speaker 4: bluff and Cold Canyon, and there's a house with a
Speaker 4: tennis court right there and as a as a big
Speaker 4: horseshoe driveway.
Speaker 2: That's the Smith's house.
Speaker 3: Looking up on the internet because the guy gave a statement, but.
Speaker 2: His story and the Smith's story they're really different. The
Speaker 2: time where my Trase was on the property, they don't
Speaker 2: line up.
Speaker 4: They found her in the backyard talking to herself, but
Speaker 4: you know when she wasn't in the backyard, and I
Speaker 4: thought she was in the front door, but I couldn't.
Speaker 2: And in his account, she wasn't quietly resting. She was
Speaker 2: audibly distressed.
Speaker 3: But I could hear his scream. I could teuch you
Speaker 3: black is by her withdraw Yeah.
Speaker 6: The intonation in your voice.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that black people lived in want Neo.
Speaker 2: So he says he decided to hang out just to
Speaker 2: make sure she was safe.
Speaker 4: Stayed there for about thirty seconds, and I said, come
Speaker 4: a little bit of fight of this right now.
Speaker 2: But when she didn't seem to be in danger, he
Speaker 2: figured he should move along.
Speaker 3: She was scaraming enough, did I go over the couse
Speaker 3: going to be here? I better get out of here.
Speaker 3: So I wasn't home.
Speaker 2: The woman, he says, was a total stranger to him
Speaker 2: at the time. He didn't know she was about to
Speaker 2: become a household name.
Speaker 3: And uh so.
Speaker 4: I just I didn't think much of it, you know,
Speaker 4: I didn't know that she did be harassed. Oh it
Speaker 4: was the same night, you know, a certain stance of
Speaker 4: the situation.
Speaker 2: He didn't know that deputies and search parties with horses,
Speaker 2: drones and dogs, we're going to be pouring into sleepy
Speaker 2: little Montanito looking for her, This young woman who was
Speaker 2: not from Malibu, who he thought didn't really fit in
Speaker 2: there there.
Speaker 3: I go, huh, yeah.
Speaker 4: I didn't think much about it until like two leagues later,
Speaker 4: when all this came on my news.
Speaker 3: You know why worked the wood.
Speaker 2: Even though he didn't know any of that, he knew
Speaker 2: something out of the ordinary had happened.
Speaker 3: I told my land on the next morning, I said,
Speaker 3: what I like to be able to vouad last night.
Speaker 2: The next thing that happened, he saw the vultures, so
Speaker 2: many vultures. Vultures are a fact of life in Montanito,
Speaker 2: but this was more than he'd ever seen before, more
Speaker 2: than he could count.
Speaker 4: But so I just hear this a couple days later,
Speaker 4: you know, I hear that she's missing and that worked
Speaker 4: the wood. All this stuff's going on, like sorry, I'm
Speaker 4: hing my Like two days later, I see and I've
Speaker 4: seen a lot of vultures in my life. I lived
Speaker 4: after fifty years, right right, never.
Speaker 3: Seen one hundred vultures it swoop, that's I seem like
Speaker 3: a thousand of them, you know what I mean. I've
Speaker 3: never seen that.
Speaker 4: Mean, So when did you see this? I saw this
Speaker 4: like two days after she was missing, maybe four days
Speaker 4: after she was missing.
Speaker 3: You know, I thought to myself, you know, because i.
Speaker 4: Haven't got through all my life, and I'm kind of
Speaker 4: like a trapper, okay, a mountain right like that.
Speaker 3: I wondered what they doing up there.
Speaker 4: You know there's something dead out there, you know, obviously
Speaker 4: there's that many poultures.
Speaker 2: This story of the Montanito lifer who saw my trees
Speaker 2: the morning of her disappearance, it's not out there. The
Speaker 2: recording and all the new information in it got buried
Speaker 2: under so much other information, so much missing conspiracy theories,
Speaker 2: dead ends lies. It was lost in the leaf litter
Speaker 2: detritus of the internet. But it's kind of like that
Speaker 2: hyoid bone, tiny and super significant because this ordinary guy,
Speaker 2: sitting on the edge of his bed, drinking a beer,
Speaker 2: telling a story, he makes what is probably the single
Speaker 2: most important statement of any witness in this case.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: Any of the facts except for that the constant eye
Speaker 4: was the last one to see her lie.
Speaker 2: If he was the last one to see her alive,
Speaker 2: did he know something about her death? This season on
Speaker 2: Lost Hills, I know.
Speaker 5: One of them officers had something to do with it.
Speaker 4: It's like when I've seen a nose.
Speaker 1: It was like, damn, that's crazy, because I was like
Speaker 1: in a sale with this woman.
Speaker 6: She said they actually followed her after she left.
Speaker 2: You think you heard someone talking about how the deputy
Speaker 2: could give her a ride somewhere.
Speaker 1: Yes, I was a male deputy.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna murder anybody. It's going to be a cop.
Speaker 5: I mean, I had to sleep in front of my
Speaker 5: kid's door because of people coming to kill my kids.
Speaker 2: I was dating her at the time, and she ended
Speaker 2: up going missing, and I was questioned.
Speaker 4: By LA Homicide as a possible suspect for her disappearance.
Speaker 4: And then one of the other guys came in and said,
Speaker 4: what do you know about my trees? He knew exactly
Speaker 4: where she was, which gives me the chills.
Speaker 5: Imagine if this was your kid that was swept up
Speaker 5: and put in.
Speaker 3: A box like this.
Speaker 2: Lost Tails Season four, Dark Canyon is written and hosted
Speaker 2: by Me Dana Goodyear. It was reported by me and
Speaker 2: Haley Fox, our senior producer. The show was created by
Speaker 2: me and Ben Adair. Lost Tails is a production of
Speaker 2: Western Sound and Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus and
Speaker 2: you can binge the whole season right now. Add free
Speaker 2: find Pushkin Plus on the Lost Hill Show page in
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot Fm, slash plus,