Speaker 1: Pushkin, you know, rolling to the call, I didn't know
Speaker 1: what the circumstances were. Your train is a cop to
Speaker 1: kind of envision what you're going to deal with when
Speaker 1: you get there. This is Phil Reeves. He's a retired
Speaker 1: deputy who serves as a chaplain for Lost Hills Sheriff Station.
Speaker 1: So I figured on the way over there, this is
Speaker 1: probably like a domestic violence thing or something that happened
Speaker 1: in a big house, you know, in one of these
Speaker 1: mansions or whatever. And it turned out to be in
Speaker 1: the park, and that the folks there are not from here,
Speaker 1: so they had no place, you know, they were local.
Speaker 1: We're at his house in a nice suburban neighborhood not
Speaker 1: far from the station. We're talking about that day June
Speaker 1: twenty second, twenty eighteen, when he responded to a shooting
Speaker 1: at Malibu Creek State Park. One of our deput female
Speaker 1: deputy was close by and was there. No. I don't
Speaker 1: know whether there was a ranger there prior or not,
Speaker 1: but it was still dark and crazy in there. When
Speaker 1: Pastor Phil got to the station, he found Tristan Boudette's
Speaker 1: family totally distraught. You know, you can imagine what state
Speaker 1: of mind that they were in. He started talking to
Speaker 1: Scott McCurdy, Tristan's brother in law, who'd been sleeping in
Speaker 1: the next tent over. He was actually the one who
Speaker 1: discovered Tristan's body. Erica Wu, Tristan's wife, had been at
Speaker 1: home in Orange County getting ready to take a medical
Speaker 1: board exam when she got the news that her husband
Speaker 1: had been killed. Now she was inside the station, Erica
Speaker 1: was still being interviewed by the homicide guys. Eventually Erica
Speaker 1: came out. She was focused on one thing only. Erica
Speaker 1: was adamant about it, and she wanted to see the body.
Speaker 1: She wanted to see Tristan's body. And I knew it
Speaker 1: was probably going to be like hours and hours and hours.
Speaker 1: Pastor Phil brought everyone back here to his house to wait.
Speaker 1: Erica is you know? She went up and just kind
Speaker 1: of curled up in the fetal position on the bad upstairs.
Speaker 1: On some level, he says, she didn't believe that Tristan
Speaker 1: had died. She needed to make it real. Five or
Speaker 1: six o'clock, I forget when it was. We got a call.
Speaker 1: I got a call from the homicide guys. Hey, the
Speaker 1: corner's done. You gotta get over here right away. Everyone
Speaker 1: piled into his car, and the press was there. They
Speaker 1: were all gathered around the gate. And then I got
Speaker 1: a call saying the corner doesn't want them to see
Speaker 1: the body. I got that call just as a corner's
Speaker 1: van was coming out of the park and Erica said,
Speaker 1: is that him? Is he in there? They jumped out
Speaker 1: of the car and they ran over and to intercept
Speaker 1: the van as it was leaving, and I'm like, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, and it was getting to be a cluster,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, and they were really upset obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, wailing and sobbing, and they stopped the van.
Speaker 1: And the Corners assistant was this young lady and she
Speaker 1: had already she was already affected by this whole thing.
Speaker 1: She was just in tears driving the Corners van, you know,
Speaker 1: and there the family saying open the game van. You
Speaker 1: got to open the van and let us look at him.
Speaker 1: And she said, I can't do that, you know. I was,
Speaker 1: you know, the corner said I can't. They've got to go.
Speaker 1: I was able to kind of say, hey, look we can't,
Speaker 1: we can't see him now, let's get back in the car.
Speaker 1: And the corner and the homicide guys came out and
Speaker 1: they did something unusual, which they said, come on, let's
Speaker 1: go in the park so that the family could ask
Speaker 1: the corner and the homicide people. You know what was
Speaker 1: questions about what they knew at that point. So I
Speaker 1: felt there was at least some closure there for them.
Speaker 1: I sense that maybe they have a different opinion. When
Speaker 1: I started investigating this murder, everything about it seemed completely random.
Speaker 1: But then I found out about Anthony Rowda and his
Speaker 1: long history with law enforcement, with the Lost Hills cops,
Speaker 1: and the violence he says they did to him, which
Speaker 1: might have set him on his path, you know. And
Speaker 1: these things, these things are these affect lifetimes, these are generational.
Speaker 1: Pastor Phil is a pastor, so he's been going to
Speaker 1: the Bible, to the first murder to try to understand
Speaker 1: how violence reverberates, like what seems to have happened to Routa,
Speaker 1: like what happened to Tristan Boudette. I just read about
Speaker 1: Cane and Abel, and after Cane slew Abel, God says,
Speaker 1: I can hear your brother's blood from the ground, but
Speaker 1: the Hebrew for blood is plural bloods. I can hear
Speaker 1: your brother's bloods from the ground and why is that? Why?
Speaker 1: Why plural? And the implication is that when you take
Speaker 1: somebody's life, you affect all their potentiality, all the things
Speaker 1: that they could be, you know, you affect the children
Speaker 1: that they might have had, the grandchildren that they might
Speaker 1: have had. I mean, it's just you just can't even
Speaker 1: begin to measure. He's saying that Tristan Bodette's murder will
Speaker 1: affect his children, and his children's children and their children too.
Speaker 1: I know that Erica, in her own way, has arrived
Speaker 1: at this same idea. When I call her to check
Speaker 1: in and ask about the girls, she says, they're amazing, happy,
Speaker 1: resilient little people, but they're not the people they would
Speaker 1: have been. Then she adds, I guess neither am I anymore.
Speaker 1: Cain and Abel are the first two sons of Adam
Speaker 1: and Eve. In the Caine Enabel story, Caine is jealous
Speaker 1: of Able and murders him, so God exiles Caine, sending
Speaker 1: him east to the land of Nod, a place of wandering,
Speaker 1: a place for fugitives. How could I not think about Rauda,
Speaker 1: his restless wandering, and also his camp in the desolate
Speaker 1: hills at the edge of Malibu and how this story,
Speaker 1: which is about violence and its echoes, is also about knowledge,
Speaker 1: How just a little bit of knowledge could have changed everything.
Speaker 1: I'm Dana Goodyear and this is Lost Hills, EPI, so
Speaker 1: to eight east of Eden. Several months before Tristan Bodatt
Speaker 1: was killed, a couple of hikers found route as camp.
Speaker 1: My name is Hunter Smith, my name's Kara Hartley. They'd
Speaker 1: followed a deer trail up into the hills north of
Speaker 1: the Hairpin turn on Mulholland Highway. When they realized they'd
Speaker 1: stumbled into someone's home, it didn't look very habitable or
Speaker 1: like it had been habitable for a while. It seemed abandoned,
Speaker 1: with trash spilling down the steep slopes. They looked around
Speaker 1: for stuff to scavenge. They liked bringing souvenirs home from
Speaker 1: their hikes. I found this hot pink machete and it
Speaker 1: did have a carving on the side like somebody had
Speaker 1: scratched into the blade, and it said queues machette on it,
Speaker 1: see you apostrophea. It became a part of you know,
Speaker 1: just my camping box that we would take camping and
Speaker 1: we used to make funny stories up about this mythological
Speaker 1: character that owned this machete. They were there for ten
Speaker 1: minutes at the most. I did start feeling a little
Speaker 1: creeped out, like, hey, this definitely was like where somebody
Speaker 1: was living or whatever, And we both kind of felt
Speaker 1: the same way at the same time and felt an
Speaker 1: urgency to leave. Before they left, Kara grabbed one more souvenir.
Speaker 1: The other thing that caught our eye was this like
Speaker 1: a small box of what we're unfired twelve gage shotgun shells.
Speaker 1: The box was caked in mud with only a few
Speaker 1: shells left. We just stuffed that in her backpack. Too
Speaker 1: months passed, the Tesla got shot, Tristan Bodett was killed,
Speaker 1: and Malibu went crazy trying to figure out who had
Speaker 1: done it. Kara and Hunter broke up, and they forgot
Speaker 1: all about the hike to the abandoned camp. In fact,
Speaker 1: I don't think we really thought about it until I
Speaker 1: drove by one day on Mahornd and saw a bunch
Speaker 1: of cop cars on that turn. When he saw that,
Speaker 1: Hunter immediately called Kara and he was like, Kara, do
Speaker 1: you think that possibly that camp that we found back
Speaker 1: in January February, like could be the same guy. They
Speaker 1: couldn't find the box of shotgun shells, but they decided
Speaker 1: to turn qu'es machete in at Lost Hill station. They
Speaker 1: brought it in in a paper trader Joe's bag, and
Speaker 1: the detectives flipped out. I mean it was intimidating because
Speaker 1: we were just immediately kind of surrounded by a bunch
Speaker 1: of cops wanting to get like us, repeat the facts
Speaker 1: over and over. They even wanted us to hike them
Speaker 1: to the camp immediately, even though it was like dark outside.
Speaker 1: And they even asked us if we were homeless and
Speaker 1: living in our car in the canyon, and maybe I
Speaker 1: just shouldn't warn my birken Stocks in that day or something.
Speaker 1: But the deputies were intent on finding the shotgun shells.
Speaker 1: They asked over and over what type of shells they were,
Speaker 1: how big, what collar were they? Solid slugs, bird shop what?
Speaker 1: They probably called me like every other day for that
Speaker 1: whole two weeks, and I just kind of was at
Speaker 1: a loss of what to do. So I did a
Speaker 1: really good clean out of my truck and I had
Speaker 1: found one of the twelve gage shotgun shells rolling around
Speaker 1: in my car, you know, So I had immediately went
Speaker 1: down to the station at that point, and I had
Speaker 1: it in a little pouch and came in like, hey,
Speaker 1: I just so you know, I did find one of
Speaker 1: those shells in my car. Like Kara's evidence turned out
Speaker 1: to be so important that the prosecutor asked her to
Speaker 1: testify before the grand jury. Still she's not entirely comfortable
Speaker 1: with the CoP's narrative or her role in it. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's kind of like been the problem the whole time,
Speaker 1: is just like there just has been such a lack
Speaker 1: of transparency and information being released to the public or
Speaker 1: alerting to the public about any of these things happening.
Speaker 1: Had Karen Hunter known that there were unsolved shootings when
Speaker 1: they came across an abandoned camp and found a box
Speaker 1: of shotgun shells, it's easy to imagine that they would
Speaker 1: have turned those in, you know. And I think that's
Speaker 1: where PEP the communities, like distrust in that system is
Speaker 1: spawning too, because it wasn't like widely known information that
Speaker 1: there was a so called sniper in the hills. And
Speaker 1: had Hunter and I know that we might have been
Speaker 1: more apt to alert the authorities about the camp back
Speaker 1: in February, and if they turned in the shotgun shells
Speaker 1: back then, it's easy to imagine that the Sheriff's department
Speaker 1: might have searched the camp and found something, or maybe
Speaker 1: they would have put up some cameras, and then when
Speaker 1: Router returned with a carbing they could have arrested him.
Speaker 1: All before Tristan Boudette even planned his camping trip to
Speaker 1: Malibu Creek State Park. Had they known, they think they
Speaker 1: could have saved Death's life. For a long time, I
Speaker 1: couldn't figure out what happened at Lost Hills Station. No
Speaker 1: one would tell me what Sergeant Right and Lieutenant Royal
Speaker 1: had done wrong in the route investigation, why they've been disciplined.
Speaker 1: I still haven't seen the confidential internal affairs reports into
Speaker 1: their police work on the Routa case. There's only one
Speaker 1: person I can think of who definitely knows what happened
Speaker 1: and can talk about it. In fact, she has to.
Speaker 1: It's the prosecutor seeking to convict Routa. She's obligated to
Speaker 1: tell the grand jury anything that could potentially be exculpatory
Speaker 1: help to the defense. So she had to tell the
Speaker 1: grand jury about the two dirty cops, the homicide detective
Speaker 1: Daniel Morris and the Major Crimes Detective ty Berry. She
Speaker 1: didn't call them to testify, citing their histories of misconduct.
Speaker 1: She also talked to the grand jury at length about
Speaker 1: Sergeant Wright and Lieutenant Royal. The reason the Sheriff's Department
Speaker 1: disciplined them, she said, is that they conducted unauthorized investigations
Speaker 1: and reenactments. When Sergeant Wright used a dowel to estimate
Speaker 1: the trajectory of the bullet that hit Ian Kincaid's tesla,
Speaker 1: and that time he went to the campground and pointed
Speaker 1: a laser at Bodet's campsite to figure out where the
Speaker 1: other bullet had gone. So what if he found a
Speaker 1: nine millimeter bullet? It wasn't his job, she said, and
Speaker 1: he didn't do it right. And Royal, she sums up
Speaker 1: his work as a quote personal investigation into the Charged
Speaker 1: Times ouch, it seems like Captain Bassah was right. Tweedledee
Speaker 1: and Tweedledum gave the defense a defense. But what if
Speaker 1: going rogue isn't the real reason Sergeant Right and Lieutenant
Speaker 1: Royal were disciplined. A few weeks ago, I had a
Speaker 1: conversation that changed my view of the whole story. My
Speaker 1: name is Jeremy Lippmann. I am a reserve Sheriff's deputy
Speaker 1: and a member of the Malibu Search and Rescue Team.
Speaker 1: Lippmann is part of Sergeant Wright's old team. He's been
Speaker 1: disturbed to see what his old boss has been going
Speaker 1: through and he wants to set the record straight. He says,
Speaker 1: what happened to Sergeant Right and Lieutenant Royal is about jealousy,
Speaker 1: ego and wounded pride. It has nothing to do with
Speaker 1: right and wrong or facts. Just has to do with
Speaker 1: politics and my perception. And I've said this before, is
Speaker 1: no good deed goes unpunished, so he says. The detectives
Speaker 1: from Homicide and Major Crimes elite free ranging units that
Speaker 1: tackle the most serious crimes, were upstaged by the local
Speaker 1: Lost Hills detectives and the volunteers from Sergeant Right Search
Speaker 1: and Rescue Team. It started with the nine millimeters shell
Speaker 1: casings at the murder scene. After Bodette was killed. Homicide
Speaker 1: searched the campground and didn't come up with anything. Homicide,
Speaker 1: having not located any shell casings in their search, Malbou
Speaker 1: Fish and Rescue was tasked and the team was tasked
Speaker 1: to go and conduct a secondary search, which we did.
Speaker 1: Sergeant Wright, he says, told the team to look in
Speaker 1: the grass to the east of Bodette's tent. He had
Speaker 1: a hunch that that's where the shooter had fired from.
Speaker 1: Very quickly, Search and Rescue found five nine millimeter shell casings.
Speaker 1: Sergeant Wright called Hamis side. Do you remember what Homicide's
Speaker 1: reaction was when they arrived. I think they were a
Speaker 1: little surprised that we found the shell casings. It was awkward,
Speaker 1: But the next thing that happened was worse. It involved
Speaker 1: the Major Crimes Bureau. In the fall of twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: they took over the investigation into the armed burglaries. The
Speaker 1: lead investigator was ty Berry, mister ship Kickers himself. The
Speaker 1: attitude towards Lost Hills station was very, very negative and
Speaker 1: in fact derogatory, that deputies were leaking information, that deputies
Speaker 1: didn't know what they were doing. Then what I mean
Speaker 1: by that was this is all your guy's fault and
Speaker 1: now we have to clean up your mess. Whitman says.
Speaker 1: It all came to a head on the day of
Speaker 1: Routis capture. Sergeant Wright had followed that trail of bootprints
Speaker 1: from the site of the last break in into the
Speaker 1: hills behind the Sheriff's station. He argued with ty Berry,
Speaker 1: now one of the official leads on the case, to
Speaker 1: go back and search the hills again, and that's what
Speaker 1: precipitated what became a pretty heated conversation between Sergeant Wright
Speaker 1: and ty Berry, as well as Lieutenant Royal and another
Speaker 1: Major Crimes detective who I don't know. So Barry didn't
Speaker 1: want to go look there. He didn't want to go
Speaker 1: look there. He had to be convinced. Royal was trying
Speaker 1: to make the argument. Chargeant Wright was trying to make
Speaker 1: the argument. They did have a pretty heated exchange about
Speaker 1: whether there was any reason to go back there, and
Speaker 1: ultimately ty Berry capitulated and said, fine, let's just go.
Speaker 1: It turned out that Sergeant Wright and Lieutenant Royal were right.
Speaker 1: The team arrested Router with a car being a nine
Speaker 1: millimeter ammunition, exactly where Sergeant Wright thought he would be
Speaker 1: and the Lost Hills. Captain bought everyone Denno to celebrate.
Speaker 1: My impression of Tye Berry and the other detectives from
Speaker 1: Major Crimes who were eating dinner with us downstairs, was
Speaker 1: they weren't very happy about things that had gone down
Speaker 1: that day. I think it was unset that they were
Speaker 1: embarrassed that Lieutenant Royal and Sergeant Wright had been correct
Speaker 1: about the area of where the suspect might be found,
Speaker 1: and that the suspect was found. Sergeant Right's position was,
Speaker 1: We're just going to keep our head down. We're going
Speaker 1: to do everything that we're supposed to do, and we're
Speaker 1: going to do it by the book, and we're not
Speaker 1: going to play any games, and just whatever happens happens.
Speaker 1: After the capture, he says, the tensions between Sergeant Right
Speaker 1: and Detective Barry intensified, and suddenly Sergeant Wright's work on
Speaker 1: the router A case was falling under suspicion. This is
Speaker 1: where I believe, and I don't know how quickly, that
Speaker 1: they attempted to create a narrative that he was acting rogue,
Speaker 1: which in my opinion would be a falsehood. I asked
Speaker 1: Littman what he thought when Sergeant Wright and Lieutenant Royal
Speaker 1: were transferred out of Lastel station and ultimately disciplined for
Speaker 1: their work on the case. This is payback to me.
Speaker 1: It was just just sheerly punitive to punish them for succeeding. Yes,
Speaker 1: and by extension. I'll make the extension, in my personal opinion,
Speaker 1: by making major crimes look bad. This is more than
Speaker 1: just office politics, and it's more than straightforward retaliation. There's
Speaker 1: another layer to it. It could serve a larger purpose
Speaker 1: for the Sheriff's department. Sergeant Wright tells me to meet
Speaker 1: him at an old stucco house with a drained swimming
Speaker 1: pool across from some box stores in the valley. It's
Speaker 1: his lawyer's office. Do you want to get you guys
Speaker 1: to get the real reason the department punished him and
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Royal, he says, is that they saw a pattern
Speaker 1: in the shootings and they tried to do something about it.
Speaker 1: They begged their bosses to warn the public before Tristan
Speaker 1: Bodatt was killed, and the department said no. It was
Speaker 1: my opinion and Lieutenant Royal's opinion, that there was a
Speaker 1: clear pattern and a clear m to indicate that we
Speaker 1: had a serial shooter and that the public should be warned.
Speaker 1: There was no reason not to warn the public. We
Speaker 1: could shall investigate the crime, but by warning the public,
Speaker 1: people could choose to stay away. Sergeant Wright says he
Speaker 1: and Lieutenant Royal first asked the then captain of Lost
Speaker 1: Hill Station to issue a public warning, but he turned
Speaker 1: them down. So Lieutenant Royal took his concerns downtown. That
Speaker 1: was in the summer of twenty seventeen, after the fifth
Speaker 1: near miss the teenagers in the BMW, he met with
Speaker 1: his division chief and his commander. That's as high up
Speaker 1: in the command structure as you can go without meeting
Speaker 1: the actual sheriff or his cabinet. Lieutenant Royal asked for
Speaker 1: help and again requested that the department issue a warning,
Speaker 1: but Sergeant Wright says Royal was turned down again. Sergeant
Speaker 1: Wright was baffled. The bosses said they didn't have enough
Speaker 1: to go on. What were they not seeing? It just
Speaker 1: seemed like the most obvious common sense thing to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, you hear about law enforcement all the time
Speaker 1: warning the public when there's a Syro rapist in a
Speaker 1: particular neighborhood. It comes out on the news, they put
Speaker 1: out flyers, they have sometimes town hall meetings about it.
Speaker 1: The bottom line is people that were driving through Malibu
Speaker 1: Canyon in our eyes, were at risk being shot at
Speaker 1: or camping in the campground. And it's quite simple. If
Speaker 1: we had done a public safety message telling people what
Speaker 1: was going on. People could have chosen not to drive
Speaker 1: by there or not to go camping there, and basically
Speaker 1: saw I was a taking time bomb. Someone was going
Speaker 1: to get killed. Absolutely wasn't worn Royland I both agreed
Speaker 1: to that this was a very bad call. That the
Speaker 1: Sheriff's department chose to ignore our request to provide a
Speaker 1: public safety message because Tristan Boudette didn't know about the
Speaker 1: history of shootings in the park, he decided to go
Speaker 1: camping there and he got killed. Can you talk about
Speaker 1: how you felt when you got that call and I
Speaker 1: know you responded to the scene. Yes, Lieutenant Roll called
Speaker 1: me in and we both felt second because we talked
Speaker 1: about this happening. We'd talked about that, we thought, we
Speaker 1: both agreed that at some point, if you shoot it
Speaker 1: enough tents or cars or campsite's chances are somebody, some
Speaker 1: person inside of a car or a tent, it's going
Speaker 1: to be had. And when he called me and told me,
Speaker 1: it was surreal because again we wanted to warn the
Speaker 1: public to prevent this, that was shut down and now
Speaker 1: it was happening. He says that if the Sheriff's department
Speaker 1: had listened to him and Lieutenant Royal and made a
Speaker 1: public safety announcement. Tristan Boudette would still be alive. So
Speaker 1: whatever the prosecutor or the Sheriff's Department says about Sergeant
Speaker 1: Right and Lieutenant Royal's police work, it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1: It seems like they're the heroes here, or at least
Speaker 1: they tried to be. We worked for a great law
Speaker 1: enforcement agency and I never experienced anything like this before,
Speaker 1: where it seemed things seemed to be out of control
Speaker 1: at higher levels as far as common sense. None of
Speaker 1: this stuff happened under Alex Vieneueva's leadership of the Sheriff's Department,
Speaker 1: but it also didn't go away when he was elected.
Speaker 1: Far from it. Six weeks after Vienneueva, one Erica WU
Speaker 1: filed her ninety million dollar claim citing law enforcements failure
Speaker 1: to warn about a series of shootings in the park,
Speaker 1: and the whole thing became vien Aueva's problem. Then Sergeant
Speaker 1: Wright and Lieutenant Royal sued the department as whistleblowers. In
Speaker 1: his suit, Sergeant Wright says the department smeared him and
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Royal, placing them under investigation and working up false
Speaker 1: internal affairs reports. Why to discredit them before they can
Speaker 1: take the stand for Erica Wu and the alleged source
Speaker 1: of those reports, Ty Berry, the detective with the history
Speaker 1: of lying and a grudge against Sergeant Wright and Lieutenant
Speaker 1: Royal for solving the case. Sergeant Wright settled his suit
Speaker 1: so he can't talk to me anymore. Lieutenant Royals may
Speaker 1: be heading to trial, but it doesn't stop there. There
Speaker 1: may be one other potential victim of all this maneuvering
Speaker 1: the criminal case against Anthony Rowda by making Sergeant Right
Speaker 1: and Lieutenant Royal look bad, two figures so deeply entwined
Speaker 1: in the case, the Sheriff's department risks damaging the prosecution.
Speaker 1: Rowda's lawyers have already seized on this, So maybe it's
Speaker 1: not Tweedledee and Tweedledum but the Sheriff's depart that's given
Speaker 1: the defense a defense. Finally, I make a plan to
Speaker 1: hike to route his camp with Lou Johnson. He's the
Speaker 1: guy I met with his landlady's son on the Planet
Speaker 1: of the Ape's tour at Malibu Creek State Park. He
Speaker 1: sent me those pictures of Route his camp right before
Speaker 1: it burned, and that suspicious piece of wood I think
Speaker 1: could be part of a zip gun. He promised to
Speaker 1: show me the way. It's in a forgotten wild patch
Speaker 1: of the park. I've seen it from the air on
Speaker 1: that helicopter ride with Sergeant Wright, but didn't be impossible
Speaker 1: to find it on foot without a guide, Lue said,
Speaker 1: is to meet him and Hudson at the hairpin turn,
Speaker 1: the sharp bend in Mulholland Highway. See that point right there.
Speaker 1: It's that hill right over there and round the side.
Speaker 1: The sky is overcast and moody, but the hills are lush,
Speaker 1: a supersaturated storybook spring green, and they're covered with patches
Speaker 1: of orange poppies and purple wildflowers. You've probably seen some
Speaker 1: of the orange California poppies up there. They're popping out
Speaker 1: where we've never seen them before. I don't remember. We
Speaker 1: follow a dry creek bed to a deer trail, which
Speaker 1: turns sharply uphill and takes us into a small grove
Speaker 1: of oak trees. Their trunks are burned, ink black stark
Speaker 1: against the green grass, still healing from the fire that
Speaker 1: passed through here back in the fall of twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: It was right here This is it the place that
Speaker 1: Rahda spent so many nights alone in a tarp covered
Speaker 1: dugout on a forty five degree pitch, hidden in a
Speaker 1: crease in the hills, where he watched the fog rise
Speaker 1: off Mulholland and listened to the whale of the Sheriff's
Speaker 1: patrol cars as they sped through the canyon. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I recognize this, and this is the tree that used
Speaker 1: to be standing that it was hollow and there was
Speaker 1: like stuff in their head. I asked lou about the
Speaker 1: day he took those pictures he sent me. He says
Speaker 1: he was looking for clues he could turn into the
Speaker 1: Lost Hills Deputies, a real life Hardy Boys adventure for Hudson.
Speaker 1: You know, we had thoughts that if we found anything, Hudson,
Speaker 1: I said, well, we'll take pictures of where it is,
Speaker 1: market get a GPS. We won't touch anything. We'll just
Speaker 1: get it to the sheriff and they can come out
Speaker 1: and get it. And it'd be kind of cool to
Speaker 1: maybe help out a little bit if they missed something.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about that carved up piece of wood with
Speaker 1: the grip and the notches and the place where a
Speaker 1: barrel made from pipe could go. The cops and their
Speaker 1: metal detectors left it behind. Loose spotted it and took
Speaker 1: a picture of it, but it doesn't seem to have
Speaker 1: recognized it for what it was, potentially part of a
Speaker 1: zip gun. You know, it's such a strange thing to
Speaker 1: descend on a community. It's like out of a fiction story,
Speaker 1: some crazy living up in the mountains shooting at people.
Speaker 1: You know, that's just movies, it's not off in real life.
Speaker 1: We sit awkwardly on the steep slope looking at the
Speaker 1: canyon road where the three white cars were shot. The
Speaker 1: road is easily visible from here. To my left, a
Speaker 1: couple ridges away is Lost Hill Station. It's kind of
Speaker 1: the perfect hiding place. This is it, And if you
Speaker 1: sit here for long enough you realize two things. You
Speaker 1: can see people coming from all directions. You can hear
Speaker 1: people talking because this is shaped like a megaphone, so
Speaker 1: you will be able to hear people coming long before
Speaker 1: you can see them even And I think that's probably
Speaker 1: why he picked this position. This, I guess was rout
Speaker 1: as personal eden, or his private hell. The fire that
Speaker 1: tore through here made it an actual hell, a fiery inferno.
Speaker 1: It burned everything. Then the rains came and everything's exploded,
Speaker 1: and it's green again, and it's more beautiful than I
Speaker 1: remember it. Actually, it's been like this rebirth, like this phoenix.
Speaker 1: Like as much as we might even want to come
Speaker 1: back and visit this site and show you where this was,
Speaker 1: nature has moved on. It's like we're not allowed to
Speaker 1: visit that anymore. Move on, you know. When we leave,
Speaker 1: it feels settled, like peace has been restored to this place.
Speaker 1: I don't think I'll ever understand why the Sheriff's Department
Speaker 1: in the Parks Department didn't issue a warning after a
Speaker 1: bunch of shootings in the area. Image protection denial laziness
Speaker 1: rangers at Malibu Creek State Park repeatedly told victims in
Speaker 1: their families things like this don't happen out here. When
Speaker 1: I asked California State Parks one last time for comment,
Speaker 1: they called it quote a terrible tragedy without precedent in
Speaker 1: the state parks system. In other words, things like this
Speaker 1: don't happen out here. They directed me to the Sheriff's Department,
Speaker 1: who sent me two sentences quote. At this time, many
Speaker 1: of these assertions are unsupported and appear to have been
Speaker 1: made by a retired employee who is not part of
Speaker 1: the investigative team. This is an act of criminal investigation
Speaker 1: with pending litigation, and we cannot provide further comment. So
Speaker 1: all I can do is guess. Maybe they didn't want
Speaker 1: to start a panic in Malibu that didn't go so well.
Speaker 1: Maybe they wanted to protect the reputation of this mythically
Speaker 1: beautiful safe place that didn't go so well either. So
Speaker 1: how did Malibu turn into the killing zone? Shooting started
Speaker 1: in a state park and park officials hushed the problem up.
Speaker 1: The shooting spread to the nearby canyon Road, and the
Speaker 1: Sheriff's department ignored the local deputies, who said the public
Speaker 1: needed to be warned. Then a man was killed. A
Speaker 1: suspect was taken into custody, but the public no longer
Speaker 1: trusted the authorities. The case was full of holes and
Speaker 1: missed opportunities. Potential evidence was overlooked, burned up. The crime's
Speaker 1: route is accused of have a random quality, but once
Speaker 1: they started, they were also highly predictable, like the wild
Speaker 1: fires that ravage Malibou every several years and the mountain
Speaker 1: lions that once in a while prey upon a household pet.
Speaker 1: The sheriff's department chose not to issue a warning, but
Speaker 1: they did send a clear message to the public. The
Speaker 1: message was, Malibou is full of mysteries. The roads are dark,
Speaker 1: cell phones never work, sound echoes in the canyon. It's
Speaker 1: a mountain lion, not a woman screaming for her life.
Speaker 1: To their deputies, the message was if you do your job,
Speaker 1: if you try to stop a murder, you'll get punished,
Speaker 1: run out of the department, smeared to the criminals out here,
Speaker 1: some things don't get solved, so if you want to
Speaker 1: commit a crime, you might get away with it. And
Speaker 1: to Erica Wu, we didn't owe you a warning before
Speaker 1: your husband died, and we still don't owe you anything.
Speaker 1: When I first met Erica, she told me something about
Speaker 1: her husband. He had a really sort of keen sense
Speaker 1: about what he could control and what he couldn't. When
Speaker 1: I would get upset about things, like when I would
Speaker 1: have a bad day at work or something and I'd
Speaker 1: be dwelling on something or some interaction I had, you know,
Speaker 1: he would always listen to me talk about it, and
Speaker 1: he would he would be like, right, Erica, you get
Speaker 1: you know, he'd look at his watch and would be like,
Speaker 1: you get two more hours to be upset about this.
Speaker 1: You know, you can be as upset as you want
Speaker 1: to be, you know, for that amount of time, and
Speaker 1: then after that we're going to figure out, you know,
Speaker 1: what you're gonna do differently next time or whatever, and
Speaker 1: we're just gonna move on. I asked her if she
Speaker 1: could still hear that voice in her ear, Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, because you know, I feel like if you
Speaker 1: were here, if you could see us now, he would
Speaker 1: be like, Yeah, that's you know, unbelievably awful and tragic
Speaker 1: and horrible would happened. But you have to you have
Speaker 1: to move on, you know. So that's what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to do. At the end of February twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: I have a surprising call with Erica. Surprising because she
Speaker 1: sounds lighter, more optimistic than I've ever heard her. She
Speaker 1: tells me she is moving on to another place, a
Speaker 1: bigger unit in the same complex. The girls are excited,
Speaker 1: you know, any kind of change like that is exciting
Speaker 1: for them. So they're trying to decide right now whether
Speaker 1: or not they're going to be in the same room
Speaker 1: still or still be in a bunk bed or have
Speaker 1: separate beds, but we haven't quite figured that out yet.
Speaker 1: Her own feelings, she says, are more complicated. When I
Speaker 1: sort of was starting to think about moving and packing
Speaker 1: everything up again, it's sort of brought up a lot
Speaker 1: from our last move, which was, you know, right after
Speaker 1: Tristan died, and that was really you know, I remember
Speaker 1: very little of it because it was such a big fog.
Speaker 1: You know. It's bringing up a lot of that, and
Speaker 1: then also the feeling that it is a change. You know.
Speaker 1: That was the first time that I'm actually doing a
Speaker 1: move on my own and setting up, you know, a
Speaker 1: new place on my own, which I haven't done without Tristan.
Speaker 1: Sort of ever, she's been confronting the past, all the
Speaker 1: stuff she shoved into boxes in the garage when her
Speaker 1: sisters moved her up here right after Tristan died. Over
Speaker 1: the weekend, I finally opened these boxes from Tristan's like office,
Speaker 1: and it was all of his like textbooks and papers
Speaker 1: that he had written, and like notebooks where he had
Speaker 1: jotted down notes, and I was just flipping through it
Speaker 1: and just just to read things that he had written,
Speaker 1: you know, like with his hands, or thoughts that he
Speaker 1: was having that day, or you know, putting jotting down
Speaker 1: notes about his next project, and I mean things like that.
Speaker 1: I just I don't know, you can't throw those away yet.
Speaker 1: Erica says that she tries hard to keep Tristan present
Speaker 1: for the girls. You know, they were so young when
Speaker 1: he died, you know, he was only two. She wasn't
Speaker 1: even talking, I think for a long time, just because
Speaker 1: of what happened, Clara had a really hard time with it.
Speaker 1: You know, she draws, she does a lot of art,
Speaker 1: and I noticed that in the past, like six months
Speaker 1: or so, when she draws pictures of the family, he's
Speaker 1: back in the pictures again. And for a long time
Speaker 1: he wasn't. And then just sort of one day, and
Speaker 1: I can't remember what holiday it was, she was drawing something.
Speaker 1: Either it was like a birthday card for her sister,
Speaker 1: or maybe it was like around Christmas time that she
Speaker 1: was she was doing it, and suddenly he was just yeah,
Speaker 1: just like back in the pictures, and it's sort of
Speaker 1: I don't know, it seemed very like, you know, I
Speaker 1: could have was like, oh, you drew everybody, and she
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, you know, it's just sort of a
Speaker 1: natural thing for her. Tristan's birthday was in November. There
Speaker 1: have been three already since he died. It's a day
Speaker 1: Erica says that she and the girls always spend together
Speaker 1: doing things Tristan loved. The week leading up to it,
Speaker 1: we'll sort of talk about the fact that his birthday
Speaker 1: is coming up and go, you know, make a list
Speaker 1: sort of like what would what would he want us
Speaker 1: to do, you know, since he's not here, and what
Speaker 1: were the things that he loved to do. It could
Speaker 1: be like, you know, drink coffee, eat broccoli, go hiking,
Speaker 1: be in nature, be kind, be with each other, read
Speaker 1: a book, you know, like just anything that comes to mind.
Speaker 1: I would make this. I made this huge list, and
Speaker 1: then on that day we would like pick one or
Speaker 1: two of them or whatever we thought was manageable. So
Speaker 1: this last time, we went up to you know, north
Speaker 1: of the city, there's a Redwood State Park that actually
Speaker 1: Tristan and I used to go hiking out a lot
Speaker 1: and that we loved. So I took them there and
Speaker 1: we went on a unintentionally we went on like a
Speaker 1: six and a half mile hike. I got kind of lost.
Speaker 1: They got lost, but they found their way back, and
Speaker 1: then on the way home they stopped at the beach.
Speaker 1: She had Tristan's ashes with her. I mean, that's been
Speaker 1: another thing that I've sort of struggled with ever since
Speaker 1: he passed, was what what to do with the ashes
Speaker 1: and where to spread them where it hadn't really nothing
Speaker 1: has sort of felt right to me until that day.
Speaker 1: I actually felt, you know, like it just felt right
Speaker 1: to bring some of them with us to a place
Speaker 1: that he loved and would have loved to be there
Speaker 1: with them, And we took them and spread them on
Speaker 1: the beach. And now when Tristan's daughters play on the beach,
Speaker 1: running in and out of the waves, they'll be remembering
Speaker 1: their father, and he'll still be the one chasing after them.
Speaker 1: Lost Hills is reported, written, and hosted by me Dana Goodyear.
Speaker 1: It was edited by Ben Adair Hailey. Fox produced the
Speaker 1: show and also contributed a ton of additional reporting. Dan
Speaker 1: Leone is our comp poser and sound designer. Alex McGinnis
Speaker 1: is our mix engineer. Additional producers are Cameron Kell, Laurie Gallaretta,
Speaker 1: Annette Renhell, and Sabrina Fang. Mica Hauser is our fact checker.
Speaker 1: Anthony Rowda's writings were performed by Nick brain Our cover
Speaker 1: art was made by Francesca Gabiani. Executive producers are Ben
Speaker 1: Adair for Western Sound and Jacob Weisberg and Leetal Malad
Speaker 1: for Pushkin Industries. Thanks also to the Pushkin team, Mia Lobell,
Speaker 1: Heather Fain, John Schnars, Carly Mgliori, Eric Sandler, Maggie Taylor,
Speaker 1: and Daniello Lacan Special thanks to Julia Barton and Kate
Speaker 1: Parkinson Morgan. Lost Hills is a production of Western Sound
Speaker 1: and Pushkin Industries. Follow at Lost Hills pod on social
Speaker 1: media to find out about bonus episodes and stay up
Speaker 1: to date as Anthony Rowda heads to trial. To find
Speaker 1: more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio, rapp, Apple podcast US,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to podcasts. Season two of Lost
Speaker 1: Hills is coming soon. N One, What is your emergency?
Speaker 1: I'm just a shot fired in how many shots did
Speaker 1: you hear? Just one? Huge loud one. I was not
Speaker 1: a bad fire because I hear those from the highway.
Speaker 1: It was so it seemed to be in Are you
Speaker 1: familiar with what a gun sounds like? Oh? Yeah? On
Speaker 1: what street. It's not in the street, it's sin the
Speaker 1: canyon in the wilderness. Okay, did it sound like a pistol? Shotgun? Shotgun?
Speaker 1: Like a rifle of Since Anthony rout is arrest, I
Speaker 1: haven't heard any new reports of pre dawn sniper style
Speaker 1: shootings in the area, but there are still shots in
Speaker 1: the night, and very likely this will be a plank
Speaker 1: of his defense when his trial finally begins. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like there's a lot of mystery still in there.
Speaker 1: That's Kara Hartley again, the hiker who found a box
Speaker 1: of shotgun shells at Rowda's camp. And there's been a
Speaker 1: lot of unexplained oddities that have happened up here in
Speaker 1: the Hills, in several murders and several bodies found that
Speaker 1: are really that are unsolved, people that are still missing
Speaker 1: that haven't been found, very odd accounts of their disappearances,
Speaker 1: and so I mean, this just kind of is one
Speaker 1: of them and one of many. To her, the six
Speaker 1: year misses and the Bodete murder don't feel like an aberration.
Speaker 1: They represent the real Malibu, the Malibu No one talks
Speaker 1: about Anthony Rowda maybe in custody, but Malibu is still
Speaker 1: the killing Zone, and what happened out there in that
Speaker 1: no man's land could easily happen again. I'm ding a
Speaker 1: good year and this is Lost Hills