Speaker 1: Pushkin. I found out about the missing women through a
Speaker 1: Facebook post. I hike a lot, mostly around Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: and always alone. I don't like to talk where my
Speaker 1: heavy boots are rhythmically pounding the switchback trails. I use
Speaker 1: Facebook groups called things like Girls who Hike and Ladies
Speaker 1: who Hike LA for trail recommendations and safety tips. Sometime
Speaker 1: in the summer of twenty twenty, someone shared a news
Speaker 1: article in one of these groups and warned us all
Speaker 1: against hiking alone. In Idlewild, a mountain town about one
Speaker 1: hundred miles from me, five women had gone missing in
Speaker 1: the past two months.
Speaker 2: Idlewild is a really small community and a lot of
Speaker 2: people know each other there, so when people ended up
Speaker 2: going missing, it was this kind of it was odd.
Speaker 1: This is Diana Fettter. She knows a thing or two
Speaker 1: about crime. She worked as a secret service agent for
Speaker 1: twenty three years investigating financial fraud. Diana was living in
Speaker 1: the Idleworld area when the disappearances began.
Speaker 2: So when that started happening, you know, all of us
Speaker 2: girls were kind of saying, Okay, well, we're not going
Speaker 2: to go anywhere without somebody else if it's dark outside,
Speaker 2: just you know, bring somebody with you.
Speaker 1: Idlewild is nothing like La. The town is tucked away
Speaker 1: in the San Jacinto Mountains. Its official mayor is a
Speaker 1: golden retriever named Maximus Mighty Dog Mulla third. Really that's
Speaker 1: the kind of town. It is a tourist playground, a
Speaker 1: mile high paradise offering an a dilic escape from the city.
Speaker 1: Its main street is lined by ice cream shops, kitch
Speaker 1: gift stores, and cute carved wood and bears. So all
Speaker 1: these women disappearing was pretty big news. And because I'm
Speaker 1: a journalist, and because I just really wanted to know
Speaker 1: what happened, I figured I'd just start making some calls.
Speaker 1: It took me months, but eventually I managed to track
Speaker 1: down a friend, a granddaughter, a mother of every single
Speaker 1: missing woman, and I've found out what happened to them.
Speaker 1: One woman was elderly with dementia. She got a loss
Speaker 1: and her car was found abandoned on a steep mountain side.
Speaker 1: Her remains were later discovered nearby. Three women were battling
Speaker 1: meth addictions. They'd run away from trouble, just packed up
Speaker 1: and left. There was an explanation for all of them
Speaker 1: except for one, a woman named Lydia Kenchilo Abrams, who
Speaker 1: was known as Dia.
Speaker 2: When Dia went missing, it was a whole nother ballgame.
Speaker 2: I'm like, this is one of our own.
Speaker 1: Dia was a woman whose story refused to be tied
Speaker 1: up in this neat little ending. She was a glamorous,
Speaker 1: sixty five year old widow of a millionaire with two
Speaker 1: kids in San Diego, horses and a ton of property.
Speaker 2: Oh. I admired the heck out of her. Let me
Speaker 2: tell you. She's a woman who was confident about herself,
Speaker 2: always giving compliments to others, always telling other people they
Speaker 2: were beautiful and how wonderful they were. But at the
Speaker 2: same time, this petite woman could open up a can
Speaker 2: of wood bass like no one I've ever seen. She
Speaker 2: had no problem calling people out if she felt they
Speaker 2: were lying to her, or they were doing something wrong
Speaker 2: or not being good people, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1: They seemed an unlikely pair. Diana is a motorbike riding,
Speaker 1: leather wearing Southerner who also calls herself Lady Fed and
Speaker 1: Dia the blonde, blue eyed Californian. But when they met,
Speaker 1: Diana says, they clicked immediately.
Speaker 3: She was a private person and she wasn't one to
Speaker 3: make friends with a lot of people easily, so if
Speaker 3: she allowed you in her little circle, then she felt
Speaker 3: that you were worthy.
Speaker 1: You know, when Dia went missing, idle world wasn't the same,
Speaker 1: not for Diana or another woman in town, Julie Stamford,
Speaker 1: along with Dea, they've made this little trio, this sort
Speaker 1: of girl gang, like the kind you'd see at high school.
Speaker 2: Julie and I have spent hours and hours and hours
Speaker 2: going over every scenario that it could possibly be, and
Speaker 2: we came down to the same thing.
Speaker 4: She did not leave ever on a court.
Speaker 1: I've spent the past four years investigating what happened to Dea,
Speaker 1: and if there's one thing I've learned, it's this, we
Speaker 1: don't like unanswered questions. When someone goes missing, they leave
Speaker 1: a vacuum, and everyone left behind scrambles to fill that
Speaker 1: space with reasons why, or explanations of how to make
Speaker 1: sense of things, anything to achieve that neat little ending
Speaker 1: that I too was looking for when Dia went missing.
Speaker 1: She didn't get to tell her own story. Her narrative
Speaker 1: has been crafted by friends, family, lovers, and yes, even enemies,
Speaker 1: and it's left to us to decide whose version of
Speaker 1: events we believe. This isn't just a story about Dea.
Speaker 1: It's also a story about everyone she left behind. I'm
Speaker 1: Lucy Sheriff, and this is Where's Dea? Episode one? You
Speaker 1: Cannot save me from all things? That wasn't much about
Speaker 1: Dea Abrams out there, Like her friend Diana said, she
Speaker 1: seemed to be a private person. But I did come
Speaker 1: across a video by a local CBS reporter, David Godfredson.
Speaker 1: He'd interviewed a man named Keith Harper, who said he
Speaker 1: was DIA's fiance. It's a bit hard to make out
Speaker 1: David's questions in the video. It was twenty twenty, after all,
Speaker 1: so he was wearing a mask. But Keith diligently responds
Speaker 1: with short to the point answers, and you had plans
Speaker 1: to marry her?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 6: Twenty fourth of July, then, where Jackson hole lie on me.
Speaker 1: Keith and the reporter were sitting across from each other
Speaker 1: at Bonita Vista Ranch, DEA's sprawling home. Bright green trees
Speaker 1: and sunshine filled the frame around Keith. He had a craggy,
Speaker 1: rugged face, the face of someone who's been out in
Speaker 1: the sun his whole life. Why do you want to Marryer?
Speaker 5: She's an awesome person. She's the person that I have
Speaker 5: looked for all my life.
Speaker 1: I watched his body language. His right blue eyes flitted
Speaker 1: around as he described his efforts to look for Deer.
Speaker 1: The interview was posted on YouTube. There were a lot
Speaker 1: of comments, and many of them were not sympathetic. Here's
Speaker 1: a couple. He knows way more than he's letting up.
Speaker 1: I don't trust that old man, and even this guy
Speaker 1: has the perfect opportunity to get away with murder. The
Speaker 1: reporter asked Keith if he had anything to do with
Speaker 1: DEA's disappearance.
Speaker 5: Absolutely not.
Speaker 6: How can you prove that? I can prove that because
Speaker 6: I love the woman, I have no reason to bring
Speaker 6: harm to her.
Speaker 5: I love that woman.
Speaker 1: I had to speak with Keith Harper myself. I struggled
Speaker 1: to find his contact details online and eventually I went
Speaker 1: up to Idleworld and asked around. There were a bunch
Speaker 1: of missing persons posters on wooden notice boards around the town.
Speaker 1: One of them had DEA's face on it. There were
Speaker 1: two numbers listed, one for a Julia and the other
Speaker 1: one for A Harper. Oh, hi, is that mister Harper? Yeah, Hi,
Speaker 1: my name's Lucy Sheriff. So I called him and I wondered,
Speaker 1: if you would be willing to talk.
Speaker 6: To me quickly, What questions do you have?
Speaker 1: Obviously I had a lot. We talked for almost an hour.
Speaker 1: I found out he likes to be known as Harper,
Speaker 1: and so from now on, that's what I'll call him.
Speaker 1: He told me he was still searching for Dea, and
Speaker 1: he was worried that she was going to be forgotten
Speaker 1: by the police, that she'd just become another cold case.
Speaker 1: The hardest part, he said, was not knowing.
Speaker 5: You can deal with, yeah, if there is a death,
Speaker 5: or you can deal with she left on her own.
Speaker 7: Cord is her choice.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: I can deal with that.
Speaker 5: I can deal with all of that, But not knowing.
Speaker 7: The hollow.
Speaker 6: You have a heart blind.
Speaker 1: Harper was an open book. He didn't seem to be
Speaker 1: anything like the guy who'd appeared on the CBS interview.
Speaker 1: I remember feeling this immense sympathy for him. He sounded
Speaker 1: so heartbroken. I can't imagine how difficult it must be
Speaker 1: to not know.
Speaker 5: And unless you've been here's something like that, you'll know her. Know,
Speaker 5: you'll never ever ever now because it leaves tip genyrk
Speaker 5: stomach and in your heart that never gets healed.
Speaker 1: Harper told me, do you knew how to use a gun?
Speaker 5: I keep going back. This was independent, she.
Speaker 3: Was capable.
Speaker 5: You know, I've watched her kill rattlers. I watched her
Speaker 5: kill five rattlers one day, and she has no clear
Speaker 5: now I mean the girl and next to one NA
Speaker 5: shoot it.
Speaker 1: A glamorous blonde who carried a gun shot at Rattlesnake's
Speaker 1: and ran a sprawling ranch. I mean Dea kind of
Speaker 1: sounded like a badass. But over these years I've peeled
Speaker 1: back these layers, and she was a complicated character. Even now,
Speaker 1: it's like Dea refuses to be summed up in one
Speaker 1: neat sentence. She doesn't fit into any classic archetypes or
Speaker 1: tidy cliches. Every new person I've spoken to opened another
Speaker 1: door to another possibility about what might have happened. Every
Speaker 1: conversation raised another version of events that didn't quite add up,
Speaker 1: another puzzle piece that didn't seem to fit. Deer disappeared
Speaker 1: on Saturday, June sixth, twenty twenty. I've revisited that one
Speaker 1: weekend over and over because everyone has their own account
Speaker 1: of how things went down at beneath a Vista Ranch,
Speaker 1: DEA's one hundred and fifteen acre gated mountain Paradise. I'm
Speaker 1: going to come back to these couple of days a
Speaker 1: lot throughout the season, so pay close attention. The timeline
Speaker 1: of the day Deer went missing is spotty, to say
Speaker 1: the least, but there's one thing we know for sure.
Speaker 1: Around nine am on Saturday, June sixth, Dea went over
Speaker 1: to a neighbor's house to deliver cinnamon rolls. The door
Speaker 1: cam footage was later leaked to CBS.
Speaker 5: Now, for the first time, we are seeing video of
Speaker 5: the former La Joya resident, recorded just hours before she vanished.
Speaker 1: I watched the grainy picture in its eerie silence. Deer
Speaker 1: wearing an oversized, chunky black shirt, her long blonde hair loose,
Speaker 1: ringing on the doorbell, a box of rolls in hand.
Speaker 1: When Dea realizes her neighbor isn't going to answer, she
Speaker 1: puts the box on some kind of ledge next to
Speaker 1: the door. The whole scene is ringed with a black
Speaker 1: circular border, like I'm looking through a fish eye lens
Speaker 1: watching DEA's final known movements. Dea walks away, and that's it.
Speaker 1: The one other thing I know for sure from that
Speaker 1: day is at around two thirty pm, Deer texted Diana,
Speaker 1: her motorcycle riding friend, about window cleaner recommendations because she
Speaker 1: was renting out some of her properties.
Speaker 4: She was happy as heck.
Speaker 2: We had her house lined up for Airbnb and we
Speaker 2: were getting hits on it.
Speaker 1: You might be wondering why would the widow of a
Speaker 1: millionaire be doing the airbnb hustle, And that's a great
Speaker 1: question with a pretty complex answer that I'll fully get
Speaker 1: into later. All you need to know for now is
Speaker 1: that Dea felt she was not in a good place
Speaker 1: financially or by some accounts, emotionally. She was in a
Speaker 1: dispute with her children over the estate of her husband,
Speaker 1: who had died a few years prior. So on June sixth,
Speaker 1: Dea texted Diana, and I've seen those messages, and then
Speaker 1: it all goes dark. That's the last evidence I have
Speaker 1: of what Dea did that day, because everything that happened
Speaker 1: on Saturday after that string of texts is according to Harper.
Speaker 7: Hey, you know, it seemed to be a typical day,
Speaker 7: but I was pushing hard to get ready to go
Speaker 7: to Colorado. And so you know, we we were making
Speaker 7: sure that everything was being prepared. And I remember I
Speaker 7: was down in the meadal morning the metal, and it lunchtime,
Speaker 7: which was two o'clock for us because we didn't need breakfast.
Speaker 7: Health probably around Ken picking in it too. We had lunch,
Speaker 7: and she did it. Have you got a minute, I
Speaker 7: can talk to you. And I wish that I had listened,
Speaker 7: because you know, she had talked about how she felt
Speaker 7: there was a risk with her children.
Speaker 1: According to Harper and Diana, Deer was scared of her children.
Speaker 1: It was all to do with this battle over her
Speaker 1: late husband's estate. The kids wanted it all, and they
Speaker 1: might go to extreme lengths to keep not only all
Speaker 1: of their father's money, but Deer's multimillion dollar ranch. Two
Speaker 1: Also her friends told me.
Speaker 7: And if anything, I can't pass that off, thinking that
Speaker 7: her children would not do anything to her. And she said,
Speaker 7: you have a minute, I can talk with you. And
Speaker 7: I said, hone can the cock to see me? I said,
Speaker 7: I've got the medal to do, and it's going to
Speaker 7: take me till dark. I find you're done. I leave
Speaker 7: go back to the metal at four thirty. I did
Speaker 7: not get this text because I was on the tractor
Speaker 7: and I did not hear it, but she texted me
Speaker 7: at four point thirty and what she said is, Harper,
Speaker 7: you cannot save me from all thinges even if you
Speaker 7: believe you can you can.
Speaker 1: You cannot save me from all things. Even if you
Speaker 1: believe you can, you can't. I've never seen this text.
Speaker 1: I've asked, but Harper told me the police took his
Speaker 1: phone and won't give it back. According to his version
Speaker 1: of events, he came in from mowing the meadow at
Speaker 1: seven fifteen pm and dere was nowhere to be seen.
Speaker 1: He thought she was out exercising her horses.
Speaker 6: You know, I got well.
Speaker 3: Call her, seeing what it tells you it.
Speaker 7: I called and that I could hear her phone ringing upstairs.
Speaker 7: So I go upstairs, thinking she was up there because
Speaker 7: sometimes she gets migraines and she'll lay down. But she
Speaker 7: was not anywhere in the house, but her phone was
Speaker 7: plugged in, her purse was sitting on the kitchen counter.
Speaker 1: He says. He then went to see if DEA's truck
Speaker 1: was outside.
Speaker 7: And when the truck was still parked where it was,
Speaker 7: then I started the new a search of the properties.
Speaker 1: Harper told me he searched other cabins and various sheds
Speaker 1: and storage units on the property, and that in the
Speaker 1: early hours of the morning, he stopped searching and went
Speaker 1: to bed. The next day, Deer was still nowhere to
Speaker 1: be found, making Harper the last person to see her alive.
Speaker 5: You know, obviously, when you're the last person, I've always
Speaker 5: become the suster.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Early on Sunday morning, when Harper
Speaker 1: woke up, Deer was still missing. Her phone, purse, and
Speaker 1: truck were all at the ranch. Harper says he continued
Speaker 1: his search immediately.
Speaker 7: And that's when I went. I talked to the highway
Speaker 7: control and he said, harpe Gee, call the sheriff. And
Speaker 7: he said, I'll tell you what. They don't have to
Speaker 7: do anything for her. I'll be seventy hours before they act.
Speaker 7: Because people show up, they just disappear, and many of
Speaker 7: them come back within that timeframe, so they don't get
Speaker 7: really excited.
Speaker 1: Before we get into what happened next, I want to
Speaker 1: take a minute to address the idea that you have
Speaker 1: to wait a certain amount of time to report someone missing.
Speaker 1: You've probably heard of it on a TV show or
Speaker 1: in a movie, but it's complete rubbish. You can report
Speaker 1: someone missing right away. After Harper spoke to the California
Speaker 1: Highway Patrol officer, news began to spread. Diana Fetta, DEA's friend,
Speaker 1: got wind that Harper was trying to get in touch
Speaker 1: with her.
Speaker 2: So I was able to call him and I said,
Speaker 2: what's going on, because well, she didn't come home last night.
Speaker 4: Is she with you? I said, no, she's not with me.
Speaker 4: But that's typical of Dea.
Speaker 2: If she didn't want to go home, she'd either spend
Speaker 2: the night with a friend or she'd spent the night
Speaker 2: at her corner valley house.
Speaker 1: At eight twenty four am on Sunday, a call was
Speaker 1: made from the ranch to the cops to report a
Speaker 1: missing person. I'm not sure him made that call, but
Speaker 1: the cops don't show until later the following day. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Diana rallied a search party, army veterans who belonged to
Speaker 1: her motorcycle club, DEA's Idlewild friends, and neighbors from a
Speaker 1: Christian youth camp across the road.
Speaker 2: So it was pretty quick when people all started showing up.
Speaker 2: We all started making phone calls trying to get people
Speaker 2: to come over and help.
Speaker 1: Some of the people who were searching, assumed Deer had
Speaker 1: gone off hiking and just hurt herself.
Speaker 2: She's either up the hill, you know, walking up the
Speaker 2: hill and she got lot, or she could hurt herself
Speaker 2: and she can't come down.
Speaker 1: But there was a growing list of clues that made
Speaker 1: this seem unlikely. Her phone and her guns were at
Speaker 1: the house, things she always took hiking, and there was
Speaker 1: something else that was very off. Deer's dog, Ruby was
Speaker 1: still there. Ruby was a mixed mutt white with black spots,
Speaker 1: colgy sized. She was ill too, on a very specific
Speaker 1: diet and lots of medication.
Speaker 2: And that was the number one thing. She would never
Speaker 2: have left Ruby at all. She always took Ruby everywhere.
Speaker 2: I don't care where she went, even to her attorney's office,
Speaker 2: she brought Ruby. If she went to the store, she
Speaker 2: brought Ruby. If she was going to low she brought Ruby.
Speaker 1: The search was well underway when DEA's thirty year old son,
Speaker 1: Clinton Abrams, showed up at the ranch with some friends.
Speaker 4: And I had never met him before, and.
Speaker 2: All I could think about is, I'm looking at this
Speaker 2: young guy that you know, looks like a college frat boy.
Speaker 2: He's not crying, He's not like overly emotional. Everybody went
Speaker 2: searching for Dia, he didn't do anything. He just stood there.
Speaker 2: So it was it was like, well, if my mom
Speaker 2: or my dad or my child or whoever was missing,
Speaker 2: I'd be out there. I'm not going to just stand
Speaker 2: here and wait for somebody to bring me news. But
Speaker 2: he just stood there like he wanted people to pity him.
Speaker 2: You know, he didn't act like an individual who was
Speaker 2: worried about their mother's welfare.
Speaker 4: Period.
Speaker 1: I've spoken with Clinton, by the way, he described his
Speaker 1: actions that day very differently. You'll hear from him later on.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, the search party had no luck
Speaker 1: finding any trace of Dea. Soon people began to disperse.
Speaker 1: Later that night, Diana says she got another call.
Speaker 2: I had gone home and Harper was calling and he
Speaker 2: was upset, and I said, are you going to be okay?
Speaker 2: And he's like no. I said, do you need me
Speaker 2: to come out there? And he goes, do you mind?
Speaker 2: I said, no, that's fine. So I came out and
Speaker 2: I sat at the house and he was kind of
Speaker 2: like a zombie, you know, like acted the part of
Speaker 2: like something's long.
Speaker 1: That night, Diana stayed over at the ranch. It's now Monday,
Speaker 1: June eighth, two days since Deer was last seen, and
Speaker 1: there was no sign of the cops. Any officer will
Speaker 1: tell you that the first forty eight hours is crucial
Speaker 1: in a missing person's case. It's when investigators have the
Speaker 1: best chance of following up on leeds because the information
Speaker 1: is fresh in everyone's minds. It's the best chance you
Speaker 1: have of finding somebody. And yet the cops wait until
Speaker 1: Monday afternoon to arrive on the scene. And before they
Speaker 1: even get to the ranch, Harper says, they called him
Speaker 1: to say they were coming.
Speaker 7: They call me and they tell me that they are
Speaker 7: gonna be there at age thirty in the morning. When
Speaker 7: they get there, they said, we will were shutting the
Speaker 7: lanes down and we will take over the church. If
Speaker 7: you got anything, you may want to get it mo
Speaker 7: because anything that's on the property will stay there.
Speaker 1: I talked to three people who were there that day
Speaker 1: who all said the cops didn't show up until the afternoon,
Speaker 1: and when they finally did show, Diana says, they made
Speaker 1: some frustrating decisions.
Speaker 2: Well, they immediately came onto the property and kicked everybody off.
Speaker 4: You know, didn't look.
Speaker 2: Around at anybody or say, okay, well who's the person
Speaker 2: that contacted the Sheriff's department, or Hey, who's Diana, or hey,
Speaker 2: who's this person?
Speaker 4: They didn't even take my name.
Speaker 1: Diana was especially upset because people started leaving without being
Speaker 1: questioned by the police.
Speaker 4: What you know.
Speaker 2: Yes, I was never a police officer, but I was.
Speaker 2: I'm a federal agent for twenty three beers, and I
Speaker 2: felt that the investigation could have been handled.
Speaker 4: Better by the way.
Speaker 1: I've spoken with other people who were on the ranch
Speaker 1: the day of the search and who said it took
Speaker 1: the Riverside sheriff Department three years to get in touch
Speaker 1: and ask them what they saw. Anyways, when the cops
Speaker 1: called off their search that night at ten thirty five pm,
Speaker 1: they handed over the keys to the entire ranch to
Speaker 1: Clinton and Chrissara, DIA's children. The cops left behind an
Speaker 1: affidavit and a search warrant for the ranch. I found
Speaker 1: something surprising in those documents. A second address was listed
Speaker 1: Diana Fedder's house. I haven't been able to confirm with
Speaker 1: the cops whether they searched her property, she says they didn't.
Speaker 1: It did make me wonder why would they want to
Speaker 1: search her house. I also read through the list of
Speaker 1: all the items the potential evidence that the cops had confiscated.
Speaker 1: There was a netgear router, which, among other things, would
Speaker 1: have info about which cell phones were connected to the
Speaker 1: Wi Fi and any activity from security cameras. There was
Speaker 1: a piece of toilet paper, a band aid, and tan
Speaker 1: bed sheets which the cops noted might have bloodstains on them.
Speaker 1: There were spent bullet shell casings, and lastly, two handwritten notes.
Speaker 1: I was desperate to know more about this evidence. Spent
Speaker 1: bullet casings, handwritten notes. It felt tantalizing to be this
Speaker 1: close and yet not know the significance of it all.
Speaker 1: But the police won't share any more information. In fact,
Speaker 1: I've had little luck getting much of the cops at all.
Speaker 1: I've emailed, called, texted, and they've been so tight lipped
Speaker 1: about what happened that weekend and their investigation at large.
Speaker 1: It's been incredibly frustrating. You'd think the first person the
Speaker 1: cops would question would be Harper. After all, as he
Speaker 1: said himself, the last person to see a missing person
Speaker 1: alive is usually a suspect. But they didn't actually let
Speaker 1: me make that clear. They couldn't question Harper because sometime
Speaker 1: on Monday morning, before the cops show up, Harper left.
Speaker 1: He took off for New Mexico in his white Ford
Speaker 1: motor home with Deer's dog, Ruby, who, according to DEA's friends,
Speaker 1: Harper didn't even like. I asked Harper about this.
Speaker 7: Well, well, I had a cash bill I had to
Speaker 7: take care of. It was totally to be taken care
Speaker 7: of the week before, and we were going to do
Speaker 7: that when we were heading to Colorado in Arizona if
Speaker 7: I have a ranch there as well.
Speaker 1: So to reiterate, he says he had a tax bill
Speaker 1: to take care of in Arizona and that's why he
Speaker 1: left two days after his fiance disappeared. But Harper gave
Speaker 1: Diana an entirely different reason. The morning that he left.
Speaker 4: We were having coffee and.
Speaker 2: We went over to the trail to take a look
Speaker 2: again to see if she could be over there, and
Speaker 2: he told me he had to go back. I think
Speaker 2: you said Arizona, New Mexico. I can't remember which state
Speaker 2: it was that he had to go back to. That
Speaker 2: part on blogging on but he told me about his probation.
Speaker 1: Probation, Diana says, Harper told her he had to go
Speaker 1: and check in with a parole officer. I asked Harper
Speaker 1: about this too.
Speaker 6: No, I heard that too, and I don't know where
Speaker 6: the hell she got that. I don't know where from when.
Speaker 6: When I was in Arizona, I was talking with the
Speaker 6: sheriff's office all the time until I was told by
Speaker 6: Diana that they had come and the ranch was closed.
Speaker 1: He said he took his RV so he'd have somewhere
Speaker 1: to stay when he came back to California because the
Speaker 1: cops told him they were shutting up the ranch. I've
Speaker 1: done a lot of research, and I can't find anything
Speaker 1: that Harper would have been on probation for at that time,
Speaker 1: so that doesn't add up. That leaves the tax bill story,
Speaker 1: which is a little odd. Why would you have to
Speaker 1: drive hundreds of miles to go take care of a
Speaker 1: tax bill? And why would it be so urgent that
Speaker 1: you have to leave two days after your fiancee Go's missing.
Speaker 1: As I waded into this story, I found that getting
Speaker 1: clarity on what might have happened to Dea that day
Speaker 1: was not so straightforward. Over the past few years, I've
Speaker 1: been down endless rabbit holes that have led nowhere and
Speaker 1: hit countless brick walls. They have been many times where
Speaker 1: I've been close to walking away from this story. But
Speaker 1: What's kept me coming back to this, like some bad
Speaker 1: habit I can't quite kick, is the ridiculous amount of
Speaker 1: times I've shouted wait what out loud in my living
Speaker 1: room to myself after finding out some insane new piece
Speaker 1: of information. It's so hard to know who to trust
Speaker 1: because almost everyone I speak to seems to have something
Speaker 1: to gain from Deer's disappearance. Everyone wants their version of
Speaker 1: events to be believed to go down as the truth.
Speaker 1: What happened to Dea has become one of those Internet
Speaker 1: who'd done it yarns that attracts armchair sleuths, a strange
Speaker 1: chorus of anonymous people on Reddit and YouTube, all obsessing
Speaker 1: over the evidence. I mean, I guess I've become one
Speaker 1: of them too. The theories of what happened range from
Speaker 1: plausible to wild speculation. I listened to all of them,
Speaker 1: hoping that somewhere in that pile of theories lies the truth,
Speaker 1: and knowing that very likely one of the people I'm
Speaker 1: speaking to is lying. Coming up this season on Wednesday, people.
Speaker 6: I didn't know were in our family home.
Speaker 5: I had gone up there ever since I was a
Speaker 5: little kid, and now suddenly, you know, other people who
Speaker 5: I suspect had murdered her are moving in.
Speaker 2: I said, well, this guy's acting really suspicious, and I
Speaker 2: have all kinds about where I's going off in my head.
Speaker 4: There's something out right. We were showing Harbor the place,
Speaker 4: and we took them.
Speaker 1: Down the road and looked, and you just.
Speaker 7: Thought were every reason to harm her, But so did
Speaker 7: Hersara and Clinton.
Speaker 3: Just because so much money's involved.
Speaker 4: You can't trust anything, the man says at all.
Speaker 3: Lake literally, he just he's allergic to the truth.
Speaker 5: This story is getting ready to blow wide open. If
Speaker 5: you want some information, we can talk.
Speaker 1: Where's Dear is written and hosted by me Lucy Sheriff.
Speaker 1: Our producer is Daphne Chen. Editing by Karen Shakerji, Production
Speaker 1: assistance from Joey Fish, ground fact checking by Lauren Vespoli.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Original score, sound design
Speaker 1: and mastering by Echo Shores. Where's Deer is a co
Speaker 1: production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. Where's Deer was originally
Speaker 1: developed with Truly*Adventurous.