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 is Courtney Barnes and I'm the author of
Speaker 1: All Fall Down, the Story of the Domino Beach Murders.
Speaker 1: With this podcast, I've decided to revisit the murders of
Speaker 1: the serial killer who terrorized the small southern California beach
Speaker 1: community I called home back in the nineteen nineties. As
Speaker 1: I mentioned in episode one, I followed the case from
Speaker 1: the very beginning, from the rape and strangulation of nineteen
Speaker 1: year old Via Kendrick in nineteen ninety two, to the
Speaker 1: discovery of the body of young heroin attic Billy Boy
Speaker 1: Reeves about ten months later, to the absolute horror show
Speaker 1: that was the murders of three college students during spring
Speaker 1: break nineteen ninety four. I've talked about how Gregg Langford,
Speaker 1: a powerful city councilman back in those days, sought to
Speaker 1: sweep it all under the rug so that Domino Beach
Speaker 1: is tourism industry wouldn't suffer. And I've told you how
Speaker 1: Stan Major's, an ex COHN and registered sex offender, was
Speaker 1: deemed guilty for at least some of the murders in
Speaker 1: the court of public opinion, and as a result, ended
Speaker 1: up taking his own life. And in our last episode,
Speaker 1: you heard the story of Angela Bowers, the first victim
Speaker 1: to escape from the Domino Beach Killer with her life,
Speaker 1: and you heard it directly from her, in her own words.
Speaker 1: So then then he presses my body up against the car,
Speaker 1: the door of the back seat, I mean, and he
Speaker 1: presses it up even harder against me, and I feel
Speaker 1: this hot breath in my ear, and he says, oh,
Speaker 1: and he's doing this thing with his voice, like you
Speaker 1: know how everyone who plays Batman, how they make their
Speaker 1: voice all low and gravelly like that. Anyway, he says,
Speaker 1: and these are his exact words, green, and you die
Speaker 1: right here. And now, finally I told you how after
Speaker 1: I wrote about Angela's harrowing ordeal in the SoCal Journal,
Speaker 1: the newspaper I had been working for since pretty much
Speaker 1: the moment I graduated college, I received a letter in
Speaker 1: the mail from someone claiming to be the killer himself.
Speaker 2: Rangel may have flewn away, but I think I like
Speaker 2: you better anyhow.
Speaker 3: One day I think i'd like for you to meet me.
Speaker 1: It was because of that letter that authorities, led by
Speaker 1: Delsoul County Sheriff Damon Stokes, were finally able to link
Speaker 1: all five murders and the attempted abduction of Angela Bauers
Speaker 1: to one person, one person whose identity at the beginning
Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety five was still a mystery. I'm Courtney
Speaker 1: Barnes and this is the Murder Years, Episode five, Black
Speaker 1: Hole Sun. I turned twenty four in January of nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety five, around the same time that Glenn Sherman, the
Speaker 1: so CAW Journal's crime and politics reporter, officially left Domino
Speaker 1: Beach for the greener pastures of the La Times. The
Speaker 1: story I had written about Angela Bowers in November nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four had gotten me some attention, and not just
Speaker 1: from the Domino Beach killer who had sent me his
Speaker 1: first yes, first letter, but also from some national publications
Speaker 1: who picked up the story. I was far from a
Speaker 1: household name and no one was asking me to appear
Speaker 1: on talk shows yet, but in certain circles I was
Speaker 1: being hailed as a rising voice of feminism and victim advocacy,
Speaker 1: which I have to say I thought was pretty cool
Speaker 1: at the time. But that article had also got me
Speaker 1: back on the radar of Domino Beach City Councilman Greg Langford,
Speaker 1: who was decidedly less of a fan, which was almost
Speaker 1: certainly why I was not named Glenn Sherman's replacement as
Speaker 1: the new crime in politics reporter when he left the
Speaker 1: so Cal Journal. Greg Langford made it clear that the
Speaker 1: council had it in its power to make things difficult
Speaker 1: for the paper if I was given that role. For example,
Speaker 1: he made a veiled threat that we could be denied
Speaker 1: press credentials to certain events, that city employees would be
Speaker 1: told never to talk to us, you know, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. However, Lauren Redman, the so Cal Journal's editor
Speaker 1: in chief, figured out a loophole. She made the decision
Speaker 1: to not name anyone as Sherman's replacement, which gave her
Speaker 1: the freedom to assign crime and politics articles to any
Speaker 1: reporter she chose on a story by story basis. She
Speaker 1: kept me as far away from Greg Langford as possible,
Speaker 1: which meant I wouldn't cover any stories dealing with local
Speaker 1: politics and I'd no longer have to attend and take
Speaker 1: notes on city council meetings, which suited me just fine.
Speaker 1: So even though I was still on lifestyle entertainment, I
Speaker 1: was also assigned some stories dealing with especially when those
Speaker 1: crimes involved women.
Speaker 3: Got to admit I didn't like you for the longest time.
Speaker 1: That's former del Soul County Sheriff Damon Stokes never won
Speaker 1: to sugarcoat his feelings.
Speaker 3: And not because of all the things you said about
Speaker 3: me in the paper.
Speaker 1: I never said anything that wasn't supported by facts.
Speaker 3: Well maybe that's technically true. But you had a way
Speaker 3: with words, Courtney.
Speaker 1: Well, some would say I still do.
Speaker 3: I don't doubt it. You were a master of subtexts.
Speaker 3: If you wanted folks to feel a certain way about
Speaker 3: a certain subject, you knew all the tricks.
Speaker 1: Men. I'll take that as a compliment.
Speaker 3: Take it however you like. Some may take it as
Speaker 3: leading or even manipulative.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's fair. I was just trying to
Speaker 1: be as honest as I could. I wanted to be.
Speaker 3: A champion of truth. Yeah, something along those sides, right.
Speaker 3: I read you book, Courtney. I know how you see yourself.
Speaker 3: We're all heroes in our own stories.
Speaker 1: Are I never saw myself as a hero? Are you
Speaker 1: telling me you saw yourself.
Speaker 3: That way I saw myself as sheriff of a county
Speaker 3: that was living in fear, and there were times I
Speaker 3: thought you were fanning the flames of that fear. I
Speaker 3: was only what when you brought me that letter, I
Speaker 3: started to see your potential, Your potential become part of
Speaker 3: the solution instead of, you know, someone who was shining
Speaker 3: a bright light on the problem. And then when you
Speaker 3: brought me that second letter.
Speaker 1: Okay, wait a second, let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Speaker 1: The second letter Stokes just mentioned was delivered to me
Speaker 1: at the offices of the SoCal Journal on the last
Speaker 1: day of March nineteen ninety five. I remember it clearly
Speaker 1: because when the letter was dropped on my desk, I
Speaker 1: was working on a piece about the Mexican American pop
Speaker 1: star Selena, who had been shot and killed by the
Speaker 1: president of her own fan club earlier that day. I
Speaker 1: could tell by the block letters on the end envelope
Speaker 1: and lack of return address it was from the person
Speaker 1: claiming to be the Domino Beach killer, the same person
Speaker 1: who'd sent me that first letter. After the Angeli Bauers
Speaker 1: piece was published about four and a half months earlier,
Speaker 1: I probably should have taken it directly to Sheriff Stokes,
Speaker 1: but instead I opened it.
Speaker 2: Media staked out this spot in your Kazinski's cabin all day.
Speaker 3: The suspect apparently lives up this road, but FBI agents
Speaker 3: won't let anyone throw and we'll make no comments.
Speaker 1: If you're old enough, you might remember the release of
Speaker 1: the Unibomber's Manifesto, which happened in September of nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: little less than six months after I received the second
Speaker 1: letter from the Domino Beach Killer. Well, let me tell
Speaker 1: you our guy could give Ted Kazinski a run for
Speaker 1: his money. In the long winded, rambling, crazy bastard department.
Speaker 1: The second letter was much longer and harder to follow
Speaker 1: than the first, so I'm not going to read it
Speaker 1: all here, but I will share some highlights with you.
Speaker 1: He was much more explicit about his beliefs that I
Speaker 1: was born to be one of his victims. He writes, you.
Speaker 3: Know I could clean eminem. I can't decide if I
Speaker 3: should eat you first or last.
Speaker 1: Notice the way he tried to dehumanize me, the same
Speaker 1: way he compared Verak Kendrick to a parrot with the
Speaker 1: whole Polly wants a cracker thing, or the way he
Speaker 1: dumped the body of Billy Boy Reeves in the garbage
Speaker 1: is if he weren't even a real person. He goes
Speaker 1: on to say that he liked my writing, so it
Speaker 1: would probably be most poetic if I were his final victim.
Speaker 1: Then seemed to delight in telling me that I would
Speaker 1: never know when he was wrapping things up and when
Speaker 1: my time would come. He jumps back and forth between
Speaker 1: discussing me his other victims, the incompetence of Sheriff Stokes
Speaker 1: and the rest of the police, and of course the
Speaker 1: approaching turn of the millennium, and how God was going
Speaker 1: to rain destruction down on us all and blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: It was somehow both incredibly tedious and extremely terrifying at
Speaker 1: the same time.
Speaker 3: I always thought that was intentional on his part. What
Speaker 3: do you mean, Well, he was trying to sound crazy.
Speaker 3: I think he regretted sending you that first letter. Maybe
Speaker 3: he felt like he was giving you too much about himself.
Speaker 3: I mean, the second one was like performative, almost, or
Speaker 3: maybe like he was just throwing a bunch of stuff
Speaker 3: against the wall to see if it would stick.
Speaker 1: The last third or so of the letter was almost
Speaker 1: all incoherent rambling, eventually and mercifully concluding with a lyric
Speaker 1: from black Hole Sun, a song by the grunge band Soundgarden.
Speaker 1: One of Stokes's deputies recognized.
Speaker 3: It call my name through the cream and I'll hear
Speaker 3: you scream again. I mean, what kind of messed up
Speaker 3: shit is that?
Speaker 1: Chris Cornell, the lead singer and songwriter for Soundgarden, would
Speaker 1: later that the song's lyrics have little, if any literal meaning.
Speaker 1: He claims to have just been playing around with the
Speaker 1: words just for the sake of playing around with them,
Speaker 1: and that if you really listen or just read the lyrics,
Speaker 1: it's hard to make much sense out of them. But
Speaker 1: the song is undeniably bleak, and it's not hard to
Speaker 1: see how a twisted mind might choose to interpret it,
Speaker 1: kind of like how Charles Manson formed his own interpretation
Speaker 1: of the songs from the Beatles White Album, leading him
Speaker 1: to direct his followers to commit a slew of murders.
Speaker 1: In the late nineteen sixties, Dark Stuff.
Speaker 3: It was almost a year since the murders of the
Speaker 3: ASU students, and we were all worried, especially after that
Speaker 3: whole Angela Bauers thing. What spring Break nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 3: What happens to her? That second letter, you know, made
Speaker 3: us worry a hell of a lot more. Anyway, I
Speaker 3: sent both letters up to the FBI for analysis, hoping
Speaker 3: they could give us, you know, I don't know, something
Speaker 3: to help us, you know, name a new suspect.
Speaker 1: And then well, three days after I received the killer's
Speaker 1: second letter in the mail, eighteen year old Juan Costas
Speaker 1: was found dead under the Domino Beach boardwalk. It was
Speaker 1: less than a week before the first crop of spring
Speaker 1: Breakers were set to arrive. Juan had been stabbed in
Speaker 1: the torso and neck over forty times.
Speaker 4: That one.
Speaker 3: That one hit hard.
Speaker 1: Maya Morales resident of Domino Beach at the time of
Speaker 1: the murders.
Speaker 4: Juan was a friend more than a friend. He was
Speaker 4: like family to me. His mother and my mother were friends.
Speaker 4: There weren't a lot of Latino people living in the
Speaker 4: city of Domino Beach back then, and we all kind
Speaker 4: of stuck together, you know, looked out for each other.
Speaker 4: So Juan's mother died when he was in middle school,
Speaker 4: and his dad worked all the time. So my mom
Speaker 4: kind of took Juan in and she gave him me,
Speaker 4: she helped out with his homework. She sometimes let him
Speaker 4: sleep on the couch. Seemed like he was almost always
Speaker 4: over at my place, and he became like a little
Speaker 4: brother to me. But by the time he was like
Speaker 4: sixteen or seventeen, he stopped coming around so much, but
Speaker 4: I still saw him all the time. Where would you
Speaker 4: see him, I don't know around. You'd come to the
Speaker 4: record store and hang out and talk music. Some days
Speaker 4: I'd see him on the skateboard in the parking lot
Speaker 4: near the boardwalk, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And what was he like?
Speaker 4: Funny funny in a kind of goofy way, you know,
Speaker 4: always making dumb jokes, trying to do impressions of Red
Speaker 4: and Stimpy or Beavis and butt Head. He was so
Speaker 4: terrible at it, but somehow you could always.
Speaker 1: Tell who he was trying to do.
Speaker 4: And he was small for his age, skinny and shorter
Speaker 4: than most of the other kids. He got down a
Speaker 4: little bit at school, but I don't think it was
Speaker 4: too bad. Of course. One way he got the bullying
Speaker 4: to slow down was by telling everyone he was ganged up.
Speaker 1: One was in a gang.
Speaker 4: Hell no, he just said that so he could get people.
Speaker 1: To leave him alone.
Speaker 4: He didn't have a violent phone in his body. He
Speaker 4: was a good kid.
Speaker 3: Well that's a pretty charitable assessment of mister Costas.
Speaker 1: Again, former Sheriff Damon Stokes.
Speaker 3: I'd busted him for selling heroin when he was still
Speaker 3: young enough to duck the charge. I knew it wasn't his,
Speaker 3: but he never gave up who he was selling for.
Speaker 3: I don't know, you know, I think he was doing
Speaker 3: more than pretending to be in a gang. I mean,
Speaker 3: it was southern California in the mid nineteen nineties. Gangs
Speaker 3: were everywhere back then, especially places that had a drug trade,
Speaker 3: even places like Domino Beach.
Speaker 1: So even with the timing of the letter and everything,
Speaker 1: you didn't think one's death was the work of the
Speaker 1: Domino Beach killer. You thought it was a gang thing.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, the Domino Beach killer wasn't off the
Speaker 3: table or anything. But with the exception of Billy Boy Reeves,
Speaker 3: who we figured was practice for him, our guy seemed
Speaker 3: to be targeting young women and his crimes almost always
Speaker 3: had a sexual component to him. If Juan Costas was
Speaker 3: one of his victims, then that meant the killer was
Speaker 3: branching out, you know, trying something new.
Speaker 1: What evidence did you have that it was a gang issue.
Speaker 3: Well, nothing concrete, but like the Domino Beach Killer, gangs
Speaker 3: like to send messages. A lot of times those messages
Speaker 3: are left where the right people we'll see them, like
Speaker 3: under the boardwalk where a lot of drugs happened to
Speaker 3: be sold.
Speaker 1: You thought something similar about the murder of Billy Boy Reeves.
Speaker 1: You thought he was a victim of the drug trade too,
Speaker 1: and you were wrong.
Speaker 3: But I couldn't pin every violent crime we came across
Speaker 3: on a serial killer we couldn't find.
Speaker 1: I wrote the article covering the death of Juan Costas,
Speaker 1: and while I included Sheriff stokes take, I offered a
Speaker 1: little speculation that it could have just has easily been
Speaker 1: the work of the Domino Beach Killer. In my opinion,
Speaker 1: Stokes was too focused on the sexual nature of the
Speaker 1: previous crimes. It seemed to me that the killer strangled
Speaker 1: the victims he raped. Those two things seemed to go
Speaker 1: hand in hand. But he wasn't afraid to use a knife.
Speaker 1: He'd used one on Billy Boy Reeves when he slid
Speaker 1: his throat, and he'd stabbed the ASU students. He didn't
Speaker 1: sexually assault to death with a kitchen knife, and both
Speaker 1: of them had dozens of stab wounds, just like Jan
Speaker 1: cost Us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, poor Wan.
Speaker 5: I always like that kid.
Speaker 1: That's Connor Langford, son of Domino Beach City councilman Greg Langford,
Speaker 1: on again off again boyfriend to Maya Morales and the
Speaker 1: person who discovered the body of the killer's first victim,
Speaker 1: Vera Hendrick.
Speaker 2: But Maya and I weren't really on the best of
Speaker 2: terms when he was killed a couple months earlier, she
Speaker 2: found out I was sleeping with this girl from San
Speaker 2: Diego and called it quits this time for good. I
Speaker 2: was fucking stupid that girl, Sure as hell wasn't worth
Speaker 2: losing Maya over, but I was making all kinds of
Speaker 2: really bad decisions that wasn't exactly in the best head
Speaker 2: space back then. Why not, Well, my band broke up
Speaker 2: for one thing. There was in the fall of ninety
Speaker 2: four when Brody Brody was the drummer.
Speaker 1: Brody Hanigan, your friend who was with you when you
Speaker 1: found Vera's body.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the band was really just me and him, Me
Speaker 2: on guitar and vocals, Brody on drums. I can't even
Speaker 2: tell you how many bass players we went through but
Speaker 2: it was a lot anyways. Brody was always a little
Speaker 2: more serious than me about, you know, the whole rock
Speaker 2: star thing. He wanted to move to Seattle, because if
Speaker 2: you were trying to be in a rock band in
Speaker 2: the nineties, Seattle was the place to be, but I
Speaker 2: wouldn't go. I wanted to stay in Domino Beach. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's no surfing in Seattle, right. So after a while
Speaker 2: of him asking and me saying no, he was like,
Speaker 2: fuck it, bro see you later, and he bounced out
Speaker 2: of town. So I had no band and no girl.
Speaker 2: The only thing I did have was a fucking drug
Speaker 2: problem that was getting worse and worse by the day.
Speaker 2: So at least I had something to spend all my
Speaker 2: time and money on. I knew Maya was hurting over
Speaker 2: Wan's murder, and I wanted to comfort her so bad.
Speaker 2: I guess I was hoping she'd want to lean on me,
Speaker 2: a familiar shoulder to cry on, you know, But she
Speaker 2: wouldn't even take my calls.
Speaker 1: How did that make you feel?
Speaker 5: How the fuck you think?
Speaker 2: It made me feel bad, real fucking bad.
Speaker 5: But that doesn't mean.
Speaker 3: Fuck it.
Speaker 2: What's the matter now?
Speaker 1: By the spring of nineteen ninety five. All of us
Speaker 1: in Domino Beach were well aware of Connor Langford's downward spiral.
Speaker 1: Just a few short years ago, he had been the
Speaker 1: perfect representation of Domino Beach, the easy going surfer dude,
Speaker 1: want to be rock star with an easy smile, who
Speaker 1: is everyone's friend, and the complete opposite of his conservative,
Speaker 1: politically ambitious father. Connor would turn your head when he
Speaker 1: walked into a room. He had charisma for days and
Speaker 1: didn't seem to have a care in the world. But
Speaker 1: that had changed.
Speaker 4: I never thought he was a bad.
Speaker 1: Guy again, Maya Morales.
Speaker 4: He was just going through a really rough time without
Speaker 4: Brody in the band, and okay.
Speaker 1: Without me.
Speaker 4: Connor did not know who he was anymore. I mean
Speaker 4: there he was closing it on thirty years old, and
Speaker 4: I think he started to realize that he was passing
Speaker 4: his life away. Everyone around him was growing up and
Speaker 4: either leaving town or getting a job or trying new things,
Speaker 4: and he was just same old Connor. Well that's not true.
Speaker 4: He was trying to be the same old Connor, but
Speaker 4: that guy was long gone.
Speaker 1: The murder of Juan Costas didn't land the way some
Speaker 1: of the others had. Maybe because Stokes didn't push that
Speaker 1: it was the work of our serial killer, or maybe
Speaker 1: we were all just jaded by what had happened the
Speaker 1: year before. In a is that all you got kind
Speaker 1: of way, when you stacked it up against the murders
Speaker 1: of spring Break nineteen ninety four, it didn't compare. I
Speaker 1: know that sounds suppressingly cynical, but look, as a culture,
Speaker 1: America gets really upset when bad things happen to pretty
Speaker 1: white girls like Collie Blake, Sandra Gerard, Mary Crouch, Angela Bauers,
Speaker 1: even homeless bohemian Vera Hendrick. But a teenage junkie like
Speaker 1: Billy Boy Reeves, or a Hispanic kid with suspected gang
Speaker 1: ties like Jan Costas, they just didn't rate. But that
Speaker 1: being said, spring Break nineteen ninety five was pretty slow
Speaker 1: by Domino Beach standards. By then, the murders of the
Speaker 1: ASU students the year before had become almost the stuff
Speaker 1: of legend. And after the failed abduction of Angela Bauers
Speaker 1: in November and the two letters I received, the first
Speaker 1: of which was published in the paper, it seemed pretty
Speaker 1: clear to everyone that Domino Beach a serial killer problem
Speaker 1: was far from over. And then finally a break in
Speaker 1: the case.
Speaker 3: It was mid April, I think with me got the
Speaker 3: analysis of the two letters back from the FBI. There
Speaker 3: was some profiling stuff based on handwriting, but even the
Speaker 3: FBI admitted it was pure speculation since they were written
Speaker 3: in block letters, I mean, white male, mid twenties to
Speaker 3: mid thirties, et cetera. But the gold nugget and all
Speaker 3: that turned out to have nothing to do with psychology.
Speaker 3: It was the paper the letters were written on.
Speaker 1: Stokes didn't release this information publicly, so I didn't find
Speaker 1: out about it until much later. The FBI analyzed the
Speaker 1: paper and found that it was actually somewhat new. Apparently
Speaker 1: there was a faulty watermark on both sheets of paper
Speaker 1: used to write the letters. The paper company's name had
Speaker 1: been misspelled, and most of the reams of that paper
Speaker 1: had been recalled. Most but not all, at least two
Speaker 1: hundred reams were sold around southern California.
Speaker 3: It wasn't exactly a smoking gun, but you know, it
Speaker 3: was something. If we could find where the paper was sold,
Speaker 3: which was pretty big, if we could find the killer,
Speaker 3: or at least whoever sent the letters, it would just.
Speaker 1: Take time, and time was something Domino Beach was running
Speaker 1: short on in spring and summer of nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 1: Tourism had fallen by fifty percent over the previous year,
Speaker 1: and Councilman Langford was not happy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my dad was tough to be around back then,
Speaker 2: not that I was any picnic either. We fought all
Speaker 2: the fucking time. He told me to get the hell
Speaker 2: out and find my own place, but I wouldn't. I
Speaker 2: just stayed in the poolhouse. One time he changed the
Speaker 2: locks and I just broke a window. It wasn't like
Speaker 2: he was ever gonna call the cops on me.
Speaker 5: Can you imagine?
Speaker 2: I bet you would have written a hell of a
Speaker 2: story about the councilman having his own son rested.
Speaker 1: I don't think I would have gotten that assignment, but
Speaker 1: I sure would have gone after it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess I did go a little extra hard
Speaker 2: on him. I was dealing with a lot of shit,
Speaker 2: and I don't know he was an easy target for me.
Speaker 1: Connor was indeed going hard on his dad back in
Speaker 1: spring of nineteen ninety five. Since his band had broken up,
Speaker 1: he had joined a local cover band that played at
Speaker 1: Triple B's three nights a week. Now. I've never claimed
Speaker 1: to know much about music, But one thing I know
Speaker 1: is that cover bands don't usually have to be all
Speaker 1: that good. As long as they've got the right tune
Speaker 1: and know most of the words, people will dance and
Speaker 1: sing along. And the cover band Connor was playing guitar
Speaker 1: and singing for in April of nineteen ninety five was deaf,
Speaker 1: not good even for a cover band. But in spite
Speaker 1: of their questionable quality, and in spite of the decrease
Speaker 1: in tourists, they played to a full house pretty much
Speaker 1: every night, mostly because it was a spectacle. Connor was
Speaker 1: always drunk or stoned out of his mind when he
Speaker 1: was performing, and was known to spit beer on the crowd,
Speaker 1: or moon them or curse them out, which the visiting
Speaker 1: college kids found absolutely hysterical. The locals came to watch
Speaker 1: him for a different reason. In between songs, Connor was
Speaker 1: prone to ranting about his father, mostly just complaining about
Speaker 1: what a terrible dad he was, but sometimes airing dirty
Speaker 1: laundry or accusing him of corruption. I went to see
Speaker 1: the band play one Friday night in late April, hoping
Speaker 1: to write a piece that would infuriate Councilman Langford if
Speaker 1: I could convince Lauren Redman to publish it. As it
Speaker 1: turned out, I got a lot more than I bargained for.
Speaker 1: It was about six or seven songs deep in the
Speaker 1: set when Connor brought the show to a screeching halt
Speaker 1: and started mumbling incoherently into the microphone. In the moments
Speaker 1: when you could actually understand what he was saying, he
Speaker 1: called out his dad for his conservative politics and how
Speaker 1: in his mind they conflicted with the whole vibe of
Speaker 1: Domino Beach. Then he was ranting about arguments with his
Speaker 1: father and arguments his mother had with his father.
Speaker 5: I don't need to do anything, you race piece.
Speaker 1: Yet he called his father out as being verbally abusive
Speaker 1: and implied he hit him and his mother.
Speaker 5: You're a fucking joke. God damn it, Connor, what are
Speaker 5: you gonna do? Hit me again? Come on then, bitch.
Speaker 1: And of course he blamed his father for the fact
Speaker 1: that the Domino Beach killer was still at large.
Speaker 5: This is your fault.
Speaker 1: During the nearly five minute rants, the other members of
Speaker 1: the band tried at least three times to start playing
Speaker 1: hope and Connor would drop his ranting and go along
Speaker 1: with them, but it didn't work. Connor would just wave
Speaker 1: them off and then go back to whatever it was
Speaker 1: he was complaining about, until finally Connor put his hands
Speaker 1: on his guitar again and started playing. He was so
Speaker 1: drunk it took the rest of the band a few
Speaker 1: bars to even work out what he had started to play.
Speaker 1: But when they did figure it out and joined in,
Speaker 1: my heart sank. It was a very sloppy, off key
Speaker 1: rendition of Soundgarden's black Hole Sun And as he sang
Speaker 1: that line, call my name through the cream and I'll
Speaker 1: hear you scream again. I don't think he was actually
Speaker 1: looking at me, but somehow I felt his eyes. I
Speaker 1: couldn't explain it then and I still can't, but that
Speaker 1: is the moment, the moment I decided that the killer
Speaker 1: plaguing Domino Beach was none other than Connor Langford. The
Speaker 1: 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 Alisa 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 Longerbeam Studio engineer Josh Hook. Original music
Speaker 1: by Nathan Bankston. Original concept developed in partnership with Anne,
Speaker 1: Margaret Johns and Greg Spring, Executive producer for iHeartMedia. Maya Howard.
Speaker 1: Performances for this episode by Erica Leniac as Courtney Barnes,
Speaker 1: Tom Virtue as Sheriff Damon Stokes, Alex Salem as Connor Langford,
Speaker 1: Melon Faxis as Maya Morales, Amy Phillips as Angela Bowers