Speaker 1: The following podcast contains explicit descriptions of violence, including sexual violence,
Speaker 1: that some listeners may find upsetting. Continue at your own risk.
Speaker 1: My name might have been, my name has never was.
Speaker 1: That's a lyric from the nineteen ninety eight Whole song
Speaker 1: Celebrity Skin. It's also the opening line of a letter
Speaker 1: I recently received in the mail. Here it is in
Speaker 1: its entirety, My dearest Courtney, my name is might have
Speaker 1: been ben My name is never name as never was?
Speaker 2: Why because you stole my name and leave it to
Speaker 2: someone else? Oh, Courtney, it's been so long. I saw
Speaker 2: a video of one of your most recent lectures online,
Speaker 2: and time has not been kind to you, is it?
Speaker 2: You're one school to name, air is now gray. You're
Speaker 2: once kerky breasts now sag almost to your navel, and
Speaker 2: you must now hide those pretty blue eyes behind horn
Speaker 2: rimmed glasses.
Speaker 3: But you're not alone.
Speaker 2: When I look in the mirror, I almost don't recognize
Speaker 2: the old man looking think at me, what has become
Speaker 2: of us? I was inspired to reach out to you
Speaker 2: one more time for reasons of my own that I
Speaker 2: will not disclose to you, but suffice to say I
Speaker 2: miss you. I miss you so much, but I am
Speaker 2: also angry with you. You profited off my work while I
Speaker 2: never got.
Speaker 3: Any recognition at all.
Speaker 2: I suppose there is solace in the fact that another
Speaker 2: man is in prison for my so called crimes, but
Speaker 2: there's an unsatisfying element to it, like fucking without rusting
Speaker 2: a nut.
Speaker 3: Fun sure, but incomplete. Maybe, my dear Courtney, We're not
Speaker 3: done after all.
Speaker 2: Maybe you can bring anything this full circle. Who knows,
Speaker 2: you might even get another book out of it. Come
Speaker 2: back to Domino Beach, Courtney, come home.
Speaker 3: I'll be waiting for you with love.
Speaker 1: DBK the real Domino Beach Killer. I'm Courtney Barnes and
Speaker 1: this is the Murder Years, Episode eight, Celebrity skin. Okay,
Speaker 1: so there's a lot to unpack there. This letter came
Speaker 1: to me in the mail in the fall of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three. I read it once, then again, then a
Speaker 1: third and fourth time. I compared it to the original
Speaker 1: letters I received in fall of nineteen ninety four and
Speaker 1: spring of nineteen ninety five. Style is the same, the
Speaker 1: handwriting is the same. All three letters could easily have
Speaker 1: been written by the same person, but scans of the
Speaker 1: original letters have been online for years, often in side
Speaker 1: by side comparisons to the Zodiac Killers letters to police
Speaker 1: or the Unibomber's manifesto, they wouldn't be hard to copy.
Speaker 1: It's not the first time someone has tried to scare me.
Speaker 1: When your name is forever linked to a serial killers,
Speaker 1: you're an easy target for disturbed minds with twisted senses
Speaker 1: of humor. My initial reaction was to dismiss this letter
Speaker 1: as some sick bastard's idea of a joke, But lying
Speaker 1: awake in bed night after night, some just kept needling
Speaker 1: at me. First of all, the author's choice of song
Speaker 1: lyrics and the lead singer of the band Hole was
Speaker 1: Courtney Love. Not only do I share a first name
Speaker 1: with her, but she was married to Kurt Cobain, who
Speaker 1: wrote the lyrics Polly Wants a Cracker that were painted
Speaker 1: near the body of the first victim via Kendrick in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two. I tried, but I couldn't shake the
Speaker 1: feeling that there might be something to this. That's why
Speaker 1: I decided to do this podcast. My book All Fall Down,
Speaker 1: The Story of the Domino Beach Murders, was published in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine. For over a year, I traveled the country,
Speaker 1: doing book signings, sitting on panels, and appearing on talk shows.
Speaker 1: When things settled down, I chose not to return to
Speaker 1: Domino Beach or even California. Instead, I bounced around the
Speaker 1: Northeast for a while before settling in Connecticut, where I
Speaker 1: eventually quit writing and started teaching journalism at a community college.
Speaker 1: I hadn't set foot in Domino Beach in twenty five years.
Speaker 1: A few months ago, two weeks after I received that letter,
Speaker 1: I flew into Lax, rented a car, and made the
Speaker 1: hour long drive south to the place where my career
Speaker 1: began and so many lives ended. It's weird being back here.
Speaker 1: Fuels abandoned, the ferris wheel and roller coaster on the
Speaker 1: boardwalk are quiet and rusted. The once pristine beaches are
Speaker 1: littered with trash and homeless encampments, hotels and resorts have closed,
Speaker 1: and the multimillion dollar homes have fallen into disrepair. Surfers
Speaker 1: still come here because one thing that hasn't changed is
Speaker 1: the waves, but it's no longer a tourist destination, sparely
Speaker 1: even a town anymore. As I was prepping for the
Speaker 1: interviews I wanted to do for this podcast, I looked
Speaker 1: everyone up for the first time in ages. Connor Langford
Speaker 1: was easy to find, Still serving two consecutive life sentences
Speaker 1: in California State Prison in Los Angeles County, the prison
Speaker 1: van Connor made it easy for me to interview him
Speaker 1: over the phone several times. Connor's father, former Domino Beach
Speaker 1: City councilman, Greg Langford, lost his bid for reelection the
Speaker 1: year after his son was convicted. He and his wife
Speaker 1: sold their home and moved to Texas, where he served
Speaker 1: as a campaign advisor to various politicians until he died
Speaker 1: of a heart attack in twenty eleven. Damon Stokes was
Speaker 1: re elected sheriff of Del Soul County every cycle until
Speaker 1: he retired in twenty fifteen and moved to nearby La Joya.
Speaker 1: I did my interview with him in his home over
Speaker 1: the course of two afternoons. Only Maya Morales still lives
Speaker 1: in Domino Beach, where she cares for her invalid mother.
Speaker 1: I did my interview with her at her office. She's
Speaker 1: a broker in the last real estate agency still operating
Speaker 1: in Domino Beach. In the four hours I spent with her,
Speaker 1: not one client came in and the phone owned rang twice.
Speaker 1: Here's Maya now with more on the evidence that proved
Speaker 1: critical in sealing Connor Langford's fate.
Speaker 4: I mean, I get why he was so easy to convict.
Speaker 4: The letters you got from the killer were written on
Speaker 4: the paper.
Speaker 1: I bought myself, identified by the faulty watermark and stored
Speaker 1: at Connor's band's rehearsal space, which.
Speaker 4: By the way, a lot of people had access to,
Speaker 4: not just Connor, who else, well a lot of Okay,
Speaker 4: here's what I think. And at the time I told
Speaker 4: Sheriff Stokes and anyone else who would listen what I'm
Speaker 4: about to tell you, but I always got waved off.
Speaker 4: Go way, stupid girl, know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, yes I do. Go on.
Speaker 4: Okay, First, the door to the rehearsal space was locked
Speaker 4: by one of those number thingies, you know, like the
Speaker 4: little metal buttons right under the knob and you have
Speaker 4: to press in the right code.
Speaker 1: Well, they they weren't exactly.
Speaker 4: Super careful with who they gave that code to, and
Speaker 4: it wasn't hard to guess either.
Speaker 1: What was it? Four twenty?
Speaker 4: Of course it was easy to remember, though, right.
Speaker 1: So you're suggesting someone else use that code to get
Speaker 1: to the paper and what frame Connor.
Speaker 4: I'm just saying there were like at least a dozen
Speaker 4: or so other guys who had access to the rehearsal space,
Speaker 4: and anyone who went in there used that paper to
Speaker 4: work out said lists, write songs, sketch out tattoos they
Speaker 4: wanted to get it, roll joints, whatever. People grab stocks
Speaker 4: of it.
Speaker 1: No one cared.
Speaker 4: So sometime in it must have been late nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 4: Connor and Brody started looking for a new bass player
Speaker 4: because the guy that they'd been using went off to college.
Speaker 4: And I bought that paper in like January or February
Speaker 4: of nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 1: Okay, do you know what a pain.
Speaker 5: In the ass?
Speaker 4: Con was?
Speaker 1: Back then?
Speaker 4: They went through at least seven or eight bass players
Speaker 4: before Brody decided to move to Seattle and kill the
Speaker 4: band off for good.
Speaker 1: And you think one of these bass players.
Speaker 4: I think it's way more likely it was one of
Speaker 4: them than Connor.
Speaker 1: Do you know their names?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 4: Connor and I started having our troubles early on in
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety four, and I wasn't coming around so much.
Speaker 1: But you didn't break up until February of nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 1: A year later.
Speaker 4: Well that was when I caught him cheating and ended it,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 1: For real real.
Speaker 4: But Connor and I had broken up and gotten back
Speaker 4: together like a million times over the years. It was
Speaker 4: kind of like our thing anyway. I'm telling you, if
Speaker 4: you want to find out anything new, you got to
Speaker 4: go look into those bass players. If you want to
Speaker 4: find out anything new, you gotta go look into those
Speaker 4: bass players.
Speaker 7: We did.
Speaker 1: You probably know by now. That's Damon Stokes, retired sheriff
Speaker 1: of Delsaul County and the lead law enforcement official in
Speaker 1: the investigation of the Domino Beach killer.
Speaker 5: It turned up nothing. You have to understand. Maya Morales
Speaker 5: is just as much a victim of Connor Langford as
Speaker 5: any of the people he killed. He used her, he
Speaker 5: manipulated her.
Speaker 4: I stood by someone I cared for. I chose not
Speaker 4: to believe all the lies that were being said about him.
Speaker 4: That makes me a victim.
Speaker 1: Fuck him.
Speaker 4: I am nobody's victim. And maybe he called the couple
Speaker 4: of those bass players, but I know for a fact
Speaker 4: that he did not look into them hard. By that time.
Speaker 4: He was all in on Connor. And if it turned
Speaker 4: out to be so someone else, it just would have
Speaker 4: made him look stupid.
Speaker 5: I would have been thrilled if the killer was anyone
Speaker 5: other than Connor Langford. I was risking my livelihood by
Speaker 5: charging him. But all the evidence pointed to Connor. I
Speaker 5: know it's difficult for Miss Morales to accept, but you
Speaker 5: know it's true.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Maya's whole the bass player did it. Theory never
Speaker 8: really gained much traction. Even my own lawyer didn't buy
Speaker 8: into it.
Speaker 1: That's Connor Langford talking to me from California State Prison.
Speaker 8: The thing was in ninety four. I was starting to
Speaker 8: use drugs pretty heavily, and Maya and I were fighting
Speaker 8: all the time. I just didn't pay much attention to
Speaker 8: the guys coming in and out of.
Speaker 7: The rehearsal space. That was Brodie's thing. He was more
Speaker 7: on top of it than I was.
Speaker 1: Brody Hanigan, your friend and the drummer in your band.
Speaker 7: By then, friend was stretching it.
Speaker 8: He was already starting to get fed up with me,
Speaker 8: and he moved to Seattle in October that year.
Speaker 1: In court, Brody leaving Domino Beach was cited as a
Speaker 1: reason why you became sloppy, like in the failed abduction
Speaker 1: of Angela Bowers.
Speaker 8: And if I really was the killer, that would have
Speaker 8: been true. I was really bummed when he left.
Speaker 1: I have to tell you, Brody never wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to me about you. I tried to interview him back
Speaker 1: when I was writing my book.
Speaker 8: Which is complete bullshit by the way, covered a fucking cover. Sorry,
Speaker 8: but it has to be said, even if you'll probably
Speaker 8: edit this out.
Speaker 7: Okay.
Speaker 1: I also tried to get Brody to take part in
Speaker 1: this podcast, but he never returned any of my calls.
Speaker 8: Look, Brody, like I said, we weren't on the best
Speaker 8: of terms when he quit the band and left town.
Speaker 7: And then he believed it.
Speaker 8: Okay, he believed everything they said about me, and I
Speaker 8: bet he still does. He thinks I killed Vera, and look,
Speaker 8: he had a thing for her when they accused me
Speaker 8: of her murder. Maya tried contacting him up in Seattle,
Speaker 8: trying to convince him to come be a character witness
Speaker 8: in my defense.
Speaker 7: You know, he told her to tell me to rotten hell.
Speaker 1: That must have been hard being abandoned by a friend
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 7: He had his reasons to hate me.
Speaker 8: I mean, he may be the one who left town,
Speaker 8: but I was the one who really broke up the band.
Speaker 7: I was a dick.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was really sad when all this started. They
Speaker 4: were like best friends.
Speaker 1: Have you talked to him since m not in a
Speaker 1: long long time. You should, though I tried. You won't
Speaker 1: talk to me.
Speaker 9: You mean he won't take your calls or return them exactly.
Speaker 9: Look way back when I was trying to get him
Speaker 9: to come testify for Connor, he was doing the.
Speaker 4: Same thing to me. So you know what I did.
Speaker 4: I flew up there and I kind of ambushed him.
Speaker 1: Did it work?
Speaker 4: Well, he didn't come testify at the trial, but at
Speaker 4: least he talked to me. He sat down, explained where
Speaker 4: he was coming from. I mean that's all I could
Speaker 4: really ask for.
Speaker 1: Right, you're saying I should just go to Seattle and
Speaker 1: just knock on his door.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, look, I haven't spoken to him in
Speaker 4: at least ten years, but he's a nice guy. If
Speaker 4: you show up, he's not gonna slam the door in
Speaker 4: your face. I mean, I don't know that he'll agree
Speaker 4: to be interviewed for your podcast, bye.
Speaker 1: But it it's worth a try. Yeah, I decided Maya's right.
Speaker 1: Brody Hanigan is still living in Seattle, still working in music, apparently,
Speaker 1: he has his own business where he designs and hooks
Speaker 1: up sound systems at clubs and small venues in support
Speaker 1: of the latest crop of aspiring rock stars. I've been
Speaker 1: back in Domino Beach for months now working on this podcast,
Speaker 1: and I'm almost ready to get it out there, done
Speaker 1: with my interviews recorded, my narration, and well, Brody seems
Speaker 1: like he's the last thread there is to pull. So
Speaker 1: I've booked a ticket to Seattle out of Lax for
Speaker 1: tomorrow morning, and I'm going to take a page from
Speaker 1: Maya's book and ambush him. I used to do this
Speaker 1: sort of thing with difficult interview subjects back in the day,
Speaker 1: but it's been a while though, so wish me luck. Okay,
Speaker 1: check check check, check, okay, okay, you guys. So I'm
Speaker 1: in a rental car parked at the curb on a
Speaker 1: street in what appears to be pretty much a lower
Speaker 1: middle class neighborhood in the suburbs of Seattle. I am
Speaker 1: right outside the house of Broderick Brody Hanigan, which he's
Speaker 1: been renting for the last sixteen years. Oh okay, no
Speaker 1: time like the present. Oh okay. I'm putting my phone
Speaker 1: in my purse with the voice memo app running. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I can convince Brody to give me
Speaker 1: an interview, but I want to be able to prove
Speaker 1: to Maya that at least I tried. Okay, I am
Speaker 1: walking down the driveway, passed a van with a microphone
Speaker 1: logo and the words Hannigan's sound design stenciled on the side,
Speaker 1: and I am up on the front porch ringing the
Speaker 1: bell and okay, one more time, Brody Hanigan, Hello, anyone home?
Speaker 1: Who is it, mister Hannigan. Hi, It's Courtney Barnes. I
Speaker 1: contacted you a couple of weeks ago about a possible
Speaker 1: interview with Connor Langford.
Speaker 3: I said, I wasn't interested.
Speaker 1: Well, actually you never responded to my calls or emails,
Speaker 1: so I wasn't sure you got them. I'm sorry, but
Speaker 1: I'm I guess you did. I don't know if you remember,
Speaker 1: but I was also living in Domino Beach at the
Speaker 1: time of the murders. I was writing for the.
Speaker 3: I remember you newspaper reporter.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, that's me.
Speaker 3: You wrote a book too, write a long time ago.
Speaker 1: Write again, and well, I'm I guess you could call
Speaker 1: I'm doing like a follow up kind of revisiting the
Speaker 1: whole thing, checking in with all the players after all.
Speaker 3: These years, and I'm one of the players.
Speaker 1: Well, you were there at the start, weren't you. You
Speaker 1: were with Connor when the body of the first victim vire. Uh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know. It was bad enough to see her
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 1: She was.
Speaker 3: I cared about her, and the.
Speaker 10: Fact that Connor used me the way he did made
Speaker 10: sure I was with him when we found her body.
Speaker 3: I'll never forgive him.
Speaker 1: I understand, and I can only imagine how traumatic look.
Speaker 3: I have no interest in whatever this is.
Speaker 10: I know Connor's always maintained his innocence and all, but
Speaker 10: he's a fucking liar.
Speaker 3: I know he did it.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, Well maybe we can talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about what makes you so sure. I promise I will
Speaker 1: not take up too much of your time, all right,
Speaker 1: fuck it, come on in, Okay, great? Thank you?
Speaker 6: Is it?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 10: If I record this and rather you didn't, I'll give
Speaker 10: you a few minutes. But I don't want this on
Speaker 10: the record or anything.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I understand.
Speaker 3: Have a seat.
Speaker 1: Thanks, So if you don't mind, can I ask you
Speaker 1: why you were so hesitant about speaking with me?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I recently got diagnosed with lung cancer stage three.
Speaker 1: Oh, I am so sorry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I'm probably not going to be around much longer.
Speaker 10: So living in the past, digging up these bad memories
Speaker 10: talking about them just feels like a waste of time.
Speaker 1: I don't have, I understand. And again, I'm really sorry
Speaker 1: to hear that. I'll be quick.
Speaker 3: I already said, okay.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, okay. The main thing I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: you about is the period of time between say, April
Speaker 1: and October nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 3: October ninety four, that's when I moved up here.
Speaker 1: And why did you leave Domino Beach.
Speaker 10: Well, it was the nineties and I was a musician.
Speaker 10: Seattle was the place to be. The band was going nowhere.
Speaker 10: Connor's heart wasn't in it anymore at the time. I
Speaker 10: didn't know he had, you know, other interests taking priority. Besides,
Speaker 10: that wasn't long after those spring Break Girls got hacked up.
Speaker 10: I had plenty of reasons to leave Domino Beach. What
Speaker 10: I didn't have was a reason to stay.
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about your last few months there. You
Speaker 1: and Connor were looking for a new bass player, right, yeah, yeah, we.
Speaker 3: Were, man. We went through a ton of them.
Speaker 10: Some were in a good fit, some didn't like the
Speaker 10: way Connor was half assing the whole thing.
Speaker 3: Some just, I don't know, just didn't work out for
Speaker 3: whatever reason.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, I'm sure you remember. One of the key
Speaker 1: pieces of evidence used against Connor was the paper mya
Speaker 1: kept in your rehearsal space. It had a faulty watermark.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so.
Speaker 1: I was hoping to track down some or all of
Speaker 1: the musicians who had access to your rehearsal space during
Speaker 1: that time period.
Speaker 10: Why, oh no, wait, let me guess Connor convinced you
Speaker 10: the real killer is one of those guys, and he's
Speaker 10: still out there right.
Speaker 1: No, he didn't convince me. I just think it's worth
Speaker 1: looking into.
Speaker 10: But that's been this story for damn near thirty years.
Speaker 10: Why did you suddenly decide it's worth looking into?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: Well, let's just say new information has come to light.
Speaker 3: What kind of new information?
Speaker 1: I don't think that I can hold on.
Speaker 10: You come to my home, uninvited, unannounced. I answer your questions.
Speaker 10: You say you have new information that can mean the
Speaker 10: guy who used to be my best friend isn't a
Speaker 10: murderer after all, And you won't tell me.
Speaker 3: What it is.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, mister Hanigan, but.
Speaker 3: Don't call me that. That's not my name.
Speaker 1: Excuse me.
Speaker 6: My name is might have been. My name is might
Speaker 6: have been.
Speaker 3: Wait, don't my name is never lost. You still getting
Speaker 3: right fucking to me? This feels right, doesn't it. I'm
Speaker 3: not the only one dying of.
Speaker 6: Cancer, am I?
Speaker 3: I'm your cancer? Did you thirty years taking you over?
Speaker 3: Killing me?
Speaker 1: It's good about you get off me.
Speaker 3: No, it had to end this way. We both knew
Speaker 3: it all along. That's say look at me. I want
Speaker 3: to see the light go out in those pretty eyes
Speaker 3: of yours. It's okay.
Speaker 6: Wherever you're going, I'll be following you there soon. And
Speaker 6: it happened.
Speaker 3: You had your moment, Courtney. It's my turn.
Speaker 2: You are always going to be my last.
Speaker 3: Goodbye, Courtney.
Speaker 4: Hello, my name is Maya Morales.
Speaker 2: What you just.
Speaker 4: Heard was the final moment of Courtney Barnes's life. Apparently
Speaker 4: she had set her phone up to automatically email her
Speaker 4: voice memos to herself, which is how we were able
Speaker 4: to hear that recording. It has been three months since
Speaker 4: her brutal death, and after talking to everyone involved in
Speaker 4: this podcast, it was decided that I should be the
Speaker 4: one to finish it. So here we go. Welcome to
Speaker 4: the epilogue.
Speaker 1: The Ending.
Speaker 4: After the Ending, Brody Hannigan was arrested two days later
Speaker 4: outside of Vancouver, Canada. A motel clerk recognized him from
Speaker 4: a news report and called the Mounties. He's currently being
Speaker 4: extradited to the United States and has confessed to all
Speaker 4: seven of the Domino Beach murders between nineteen ninety two
Speaker 4: and nineteen ninety five, as well as the attempted abduction
Speaker 4: of Angela Bauers in nineteen ninety four. He also confessed
Speaker 4: to the murder of Courtney Barnes and sadly eight other
Speaker 4: murders across the Pacific Northwest between nineteen ninety eight and
Speaker 4: twenty seventeen. Based on Brodie's confession, the police and the
Speaker 4: lawyers turned out to be right about almost everything except
Speaker 4: for who the actual killer was. It all began one
Speaker 4: night in nineteen ninety two, when Vera Kendrick rejected Brodie's advances.
Speaker 4: He took by force which she wouldn't give him freely,
Speaker 4: and then silenced her to protect himself. It was a horrible,
Speaker 4: violent impulse that unfortunately awakens something inside of him. He
Speaker 4: claims he tried to suppress it, but eventually it got
Speaker 4: the better of him, so he went downtown and picked
Speaker 4: up teenage hustler Billy Boyreeves, plied him with drugs, then
Speaker 4: slit his throat. After that, he fell ready for what
Speaker 4: would be the most ambitious crime yet, the murders of
Speaker 4: Holly Blake and Sandra Gerard and the rape, murder and
Speaker 4: mutilation of Mary Crouch. In April nineteen ninety four, things
Speaker 4: got a little hot around here, so he decided it
Speaker 4: was time to move on. But he didn't want the
Speaker 4: murders to end with his departure from Domino Beach, so
Speaker 4: he crept back a month later and attempted to abduct
Speaker 4: Angela Bowers, who, as we know, managed to escape. He
Speaker 4: came back two more times over the next year. On
Speaker 4: his first visit, he saw what a mess Connor was
Speaker 4: becoming and decided to try to set him up to
Speaker 4: take the fall. He of course, knew the code to
Speaker 4: the rehearsal space, which Connor was now using with his
Speaker 4: new band.
Speaker 6: In fact, the.
Speaker 4: Second letter he sent to Courtney was written in the
Speaker 4: rehearsal space. He saw they had black hole sun on
Speaker 4: their set list, which inspired him to quote the lyrics.
Speaker 4: A few days later, he killed my friend, my little brother,
Speaker 4: Juan Gosas, hoping everyone would tie Connor to him through me,
Speaker 4: and it worked. That was when Courtney said she started
Speaker 4: to believe Connor was the killer. Brody made one more
Speaker 4: trip to Domino Beach a few months later, in late
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety five. He stole Connor's van, which was easy
Speaker 4: since he knew Connor kept the keys in the visor,
Speaker 4: then chose his final victim, Trudy Masterson. He had planned
Speaker 4: to kill Courtney too, but after being spotted by homeless
Speaker 4: woman Henrietta Jones, he abandoned that plan and left town.
Speaker 4: But when Courtney showed up at his door thirty years later,
Speaker 4: he finished the job. According to his oncologist, Brody Hannigan
Speaker 4: has about two to three more months left to live.
Speaker 4: I hope his death is long, slow, and painful.
Speaker 1: As for the rest of us.
Speaker 4: Damon Stokes, former sheriff of Del Soul County and lead
Speaker 4: investigator in the Domino Beach murders, ended his involvement with
Speaker 4: his podcast and issued a very lawyered statement about Courtney, Connor,
Speaker 4: and Brody. It's kind of apologetic without admitting any fault
Speaker 4: or taking any blame. Reading it here is not worth
Speaker 4: my time or yours, but I understand his need to
Speaker 4: express regret. After all, I'm the one who encouraged Courtney
Speaker 4: to go to Brodie's house, and I'll have to live
Speaker 4: with that for the rest of my life. Connor has
Speaker 4: been released from prison, where he spent the last twenty
Speaker 4: eight years. I suspect he will have a long adjustment
Speaker 4: period ahead of him, and I plan to help him
Speaker 4: in any way I can. Have you ever seen a
Speaker 4: movie or read a story about like a dragon or
Speaker 4: a monster that's terrorizing a medieval village and they have
Speaker 4: to sacrifice people to keep the rest of the villager safe. Well,
Speaker 4: Domino Beach had a monster like that, and it demanded
Speaker 4: a hell of a sacrifice. Connor Langford had to give
Speaker 4: up twenty eight years of his life and Courtney Barnes
Speaker 4: had to make the ultimate sacrifice. But it worked. The
Speaker 4: monster who terrorized our town has finally finally been vanquished.
Speaker 4: The Murder Years in Domino Beach are over.
Speaker 1: The Murder Years is a production of AYR Media and iHeartMedia.
Speaker 1: Executive producer Elisa Rosen for AYR Media. Written by Tim Huddleston,
Speaker 1: directed by Elisa Rosen. Editing and sound designed by Tristan Bankston.
Speaker 1: Consulting producer Jean Chandil coordinator Olive Goldberg. Audio engineering and
Speaker 1: mastering by Justin Longerbean studio engineer Josh Hook. Original concept
Speaker 1: developed in partnership with Anne Margaret Johns and Greg Spring.
Speaker 1: Executive producer for iHeartMedia. Maya Howard. Performances for this episode
Speaker 1: by Erica Leniac as Courtney Barnes, Tom Virtue as Sheriff,
Speaker 1: Damon Stokes, Alex Salem as Connor Langford Melon Faxis as
Speaker 1: Maya Morales, John Ralston Craig as Brodie Hannigan