Speaker 1: Pushkin. A week after his arrest in early April nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one, Fred took a polygraph exam. Surprisingly, it wasn't
Speaker 1: ordered by law enforcement. It was ordered by Fred's defense team.
Speaker 1: Polygraph tests are notoriously unreliable, but Fred's lawyers were hoping
Speaker 1: that a successful polygraph would help prove his innocence. There
Speaker 1: was a lot to go over. Fred had entered a
Speaker 1: plea of not guilty, but the second autopsy showed trauma
Speaker 1: to Verna and Doug, bruises and marks that seemed to
Speaker 1: bolster the CoP's working theory that Fred had killed them violently.
Speaker 1: The polygraph was meant to bring clarity. It was a
Speaker 1: past failed test. Fred was either a liar or he wasn't.
Speaker 1: If you didn't have any connection with their death other
Speaker 1: than accidental, the believing you pass a pot. This is
Speaker 1: the polygraph examiner explaining the process to Fred. I had
Speaker 1: no idea if you're going to be lying to me
Speaker 1: or tell me the truth. But after we get into
Speaker 1: this for a couple of hours, you're going to find out.
Speaker 1: I can tell when you lie, if you're responsible doing that,
Speaker 1: or you tell a movie water or anyway. So of course,
Speaker 1: and here by my way, and you will fail the polygraph.
Speaker 1: After the examiner had established Fred's baseline how he reacted
Speaker 1: to questions of various kinds, he started asking him about Verna,
Speaker 1: Doug and what happened on January second, nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: the day they drowned. Then I have lunch luncher? Did
Speaker 1: you have on one? Because I was, as Fred this, No,
Speaker 1: that's a bunch of bullshit. That's a bunch of bullshit.
Speaker 1: How about Doug? Was he doing some time? That Vernon
Speaker 1: has been swimming since we bought the boat and bought
Speaker 1: our house and Malda. I think when we went to
Speaker 1: my parents' house she went in the pool, but she
Speaker 1: was really not a good swimmer. How did you get along?
Speaker 1: There was everything okay in the bedroom. It was actually
Speaker 1: a social Actually everything was terrific in the room. And
Speaker 1: how about between the three that you had done yourself
Speaker 1: and burn up? How was publish relationship that good? Bad?
Speaker 1: Or very different? Yeah? I would say it would be
Speaker 1: good with the qualification. The qualification was that they disagreed
Speaker 1: about how to handle Doug. If there were going to
Speaker 1: be points of concern between Burnie and I about the children,
Speaker 1: that's working on my king. The examiner flipped the tape
Speaker 1: over to the other side, then continue asking Fred about
Speaker 1: the day of the drownings. Well, then you were tired
Speaker 1: of how worn it so? Then forty fives two bodies
Speaker 1: on worn? Yeah? Did you almost die? But keep you going, Fred,
Speaker 1: that's okay. Just I realized were you a frame of diing?
Speaker 1: He just couldn't stop, could you? Fred had started getting emotional.
Speaker 1: Did you think he stopped, you would have died. I
Speaker 1: just knew that I was wearing down. I didn't die
Speaker 1: for for a long time. I know when I'm tired underwater.
Speaker 1: I know when my breathing he screwed up and I
Speaker 1: can't get my breath, and all those things were going on.
Speaker 1: I was taken on water just at all turned to ship.
Speaker 1: The exam lasted over an hour. Near the end, Fred
Speaker 1: told the examiner he wasn't feeling so good. I'll see
Speaker 1: how you do it first? Can pretty gooey? Oh you
Speaker 1: are a sweaty answer? Is this normal? Abnormal? How awful?
Speaker 1: Fred said? A few minutes later, the tape ends. When
Speaker 1: I asked Fred the result of the polygraph, he told
Speaker 1: me it was inconclusive. He didn't pass or fail, he said,
Speaker 1: and the polygraph was never a factor in the trial.
Speaker 1: But there was one question the examiner asked that seemed
Speaker 1: to come almost out of the blue. It was abstract
Speaker 1: and vague, and yet it drove right to the heart
Speaker 1: of the investigation, right to the heart of Fred's motive.
Speaker 1: Vaitions in life quest you loved the most? Love or Money?
Speaker 1: That one. Fred didn't answer right away, and when he did,
Speaker 1: his voice had the controlled, deliberate quality of a valedictorian
Speaker 1: on graduation day. I think is most important. Okay, now,
Speaker 1: you guys. But the question of money and how badly
Speaker 1: Fred needed it, that was exactly what law enforcement had
Speaker 1: been trying to figure out. I'm Dana Goodyear and this
Speaker 1: is Lost Hells Episode seven, Love or Money. Fred and
Speaker 1: Verna were supposed to be a love story. They'd both
Speaker 1: overcome the tragic, untimely deaths of their first spouses to
Speaker 1: find love again. But there were some irregularities in the
Speaker 1: origin story. One it seemed like maybe they'd gotten together
Speaker 1: before Jean died. When the Santa Barbara detectives asked around
Speaker 1: about Fred and Verna, they heard one thing loud and clear.
Speaker 1: Whether you approved or you didn't, It had been a
Speaker 1: whirlwind romance. In handwritten notes Fred made around the time
Speaker 1: of his trial, he laid out the way in which
Speaker 1: his relationship with Verna changed babysitter, friend, lover wife. At
Speaker 1: the line for lover, he writes da dates as if
Speaker 1: he's trying to get a handle on what law enforcement knew.
Speaker 1: That's because the detectives had started to suspect that Fred
Speaker 1: and Verna were having an affair before Jean died. Verna's
Speaker 1: friend and confidant, Patty Lytell, had told them as much,
Speaker 1: and when Fred's investigator went to talk to her, she
Speaker 1: doubled down. Here she is talking to the investigator. I
Speaker 1: didn't ask this. She's having an affair with him. She
Speaker 1: told me too. I realize Verna and I were very close,
Speaker 1: leaving it close together. True, that would be a problem
Speaker 1: were it ever to come out in court. Questioned by
Speaker 1: the detectives, Fred's sailing buddy, Dick Felfoean admitted to his
Speaker 1: affair with Jean, but Fred always denied knowing about it.
Speaker 1: Even to this day, he denies it, and he denies
Speaker 1: he and Verna got together before Jean's death, because if
Speaker 1: he knew Jean was cheating and he wanted to be
Speaker 1: with Verna. Those affairs would establish a powerful motive, not
Speaker 1: just for him to kill Jean, but who knows, maybe
Speaker 1: for him to kill Vernah's first husband too. So they
Speaker 1: might have been together before they were together. But then
Speaker 1: there was something else the detectives uncovered even more shocking
Speaker 1: to their church friends. When they got married, they weren't
Speaker 1: really married. Do you recall the married ceremony on the beach.
Speaker 1: This is a private investigator hired by Fred's defense talking
Speaker 1: to Verna's good friend Michelle Williams and her husband Dick.
Speaker 1: Were you aware when that ceremony was held that they
Speaker 1: were not legally married? That moving ceremony Christmas of nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven, when Fred and Verna dressed, the kids been
Speaker 1: matching outfits and they all exchanged rings, it wasn't actually
Speaker 1: a wedding. Did that make any difference to you finding
Speaker 1: that out two weeks ago they were not legally married
Speaker 1: during this ceremony, that it was a religious ceremony. Where
Speaker 1: I don't really understand the little thing. I just love
Speaker 1: that out two weeks ago, a little late games. You know,
Speaker 1: John Hagar, the minister from the Methodist Church, had performed
Speaker 1: the ceremony, so the guests had assumed it was legit. Well,
Speaker 1: John Hagar, it was the guy that was there on
Speaker 1: the beach that day, and he's the guy who married him.
Speaker 1: So I don't know what the difference is. But apparently
Speaker 1: some of the people who have, you know, said some
Speaker 1: bad things about Fred and Verna, thought that that was
Speaker 1: just awful, that they had been deceived and sewing and
Speaker 1: so forth. So I don't well, had had they not
Speaker 1: applied for mary license, They don't know what the circumstances were.
Speaker 1: I'm just asking the questions to try and find out.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly what it means either, because he's
Speaker 1: an ordained instrum. You know what it could have been financial,
Speaker 1: That's all I could think. That was exactly it. Fred
Speaker 1: later wrote that the reason he and Verna hadn't married
Speaker 1: then was economic, because if she remarried, Verna would stop
Speaker 1: getting pension and social security benefits from her deceased husband Bill.
Speaker 1: Fred and Verna kept it quiet, but in a handwritten will,
Speaker 1: Verna spelled it all out. While I am not legally
Speaker 1: married to Frederick George Riller the second because of financial
Speaker 1: and tax purposes, she wrote, we are married in the
Speaker 1: eyes of God, and that is what really counts. If
Speaker 1: she died, she continued, she intended for Fred to raise
Speaker 1: her children, Kim and Doug, and quote continue the finances
Speaker 1: of my estate with no other appointed trustee or executor.
Speaker 1: The wedding that wasn't raised a red flag for the
Speaker 1: Santa Barbara detectives, and Verna's will was one of the
Speaker 1: many items listed on the warrant they got in order
Speaker 1: to search the house on Sea Level Drive. But in
Speaker 1: that search they also found another suspicious document in a
Speaker 1: desk drawer, a confidential record of another wedding, this one legal.
Speaker 1: Fred and Verna had been married secretly by the same minister,
Speaker 1: but it was more than two years after the wedding
Speaker 1: on the beach. Their actual marriage date was July twelfth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty, just five months before Verna's death. By the
Speaker 1: time Verna died, the couple's assets had been transferred to
Speaker 1: a trust they'd set up with help from Fred's old
Speaker 1: friend and lawyer, Bill Fairfield. The purpose of the Johnson
Speaker 1: Railer Trust, Fred said, was to prevent any gossip that
Speaker 1: might arise about financial gain should he or Verna die.
Speaker 1: The detectives found the flow chart for the trust in
Speaker 1: the silver case underneath a desk in the living room,
Speaker 1: along with a guide book for widows and what appeared
Speaker 1: to be Fred's diary of the day that Verna and
Speaker 1: Doug drowned. The Santa Barbara detectives, Fred Ray and Claude
Speaker 1: Toller were talking to everyone in Malibu about every aspect
Speaker 1: of Fred's life with Verna. Verna's old friend Patty Lytell,
Speaker 1: told them that back when Fred and Verna first got together,
Speaker 1: Fred had pressured Verna to get married right away. Patty
Speaker 1: said Fred was trying to marry Verna just a couple
Speaker 1: months after Jean died, but Verna seemed to worry what
Speaker 1: people would think. Patty had advised Verna to take it slow,
Speaker 1: maybe live with Fred. Awhile before deciding, and she told
Speaker 1: Verna what she was really worried about. She didn't think
Speaker 1: Fred loved her. She thought he was after her property
Speaker 1: on Broadbeach. Even though they hadn't gotten married right away,
Speaker 1: Fred did figure out a financially beneficial solution. While he
Speaker 1: and Verna remained officially unmarried. She could continue to collect
Speaker 1: her first husband's benefits, and then once they did marry officially,
Speaker 1: their assets, including her house, would go into the trust
Speaker 1: of which Fred and Verna were co trustees, of which
Speaker 1: Fred became the sole trustee once she died. When the
Speaker 1: detectives had interviewed Fred back in January, they'd asked a
Speaker 1: lot of questions about his finances that before a year
Speaker 1: and Verna gotten very pictured network before we gotten there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm probably in the order of half a million dollars
Speaker 1: a piece. Hires her if in you work or with
Speaker 1: her money real estate? Two? What rules too? Was it right?
Speaker 1: She had some houses? There's a housing broad Beach or
Speaker 1: any other houses that shield you know the lands? I
Speaker 1: have two other houses. I have a house and on Calpine,
Speaker 1: and then I have one I'm sorry, caliplines round here
Speaker 1: somewhere Pacific coast. Timer. If you own any other houses?
Speaker 1: Have you heard? Brighten this one? Fred's relationship with Verna,
Speaker 1: their merger, he sometimes called it, began at a moment
Speaker 1: when they had each inherited a modest fortune in real estate,
Speaker 1: insurance money, and other benefits from their first spouses. When
Speaker 1: Jean died, Fred received about seventy five thousand dollars in
Speaker 1: insurance money. That's about three hundred and sixty thousand into
Speaker 1: day's dollars. Her social security benefits threw off the equivalent
Speaker 1: of another thirty eight thousand in today's money every year
Speaker 1: when she was alive and talking about divorce. Jean and
Speaker 1: Fred owned two properties, a house in Oxnard and the
Speaker 1: Kalpine House in Malibu, but with Jeanne gone, Fred became
Speaker 1: the sole owner at a time when Malibu home values
Speaker 1: were spiking. The Oxnard house was also on the coast,
Speaker 1: in an up and coming neighborhood called the Silver Strand.
Speaker 1: He ended up turning both houses into income properties. The
Speaker 1: insurance policy on Verna's first husband, Bill Johnson, paid Verna
Speaker 1: a substantial sum, about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in today's money. She also got his generous pension and
Speaker 1: social security benefits, and she became the sole owner of
Speaker 1: the property on Broad Beach Road, a duplex with a
Speaker 1: garage apartment right on the beach in a neighborhood Allie
Speaker 1: mcgrawl would soon be priced out of. Outside of the
Speaker 1: rental properties, the family's income was a hodgepodge. Fred only
Speaker 1: earned about thirty thousand dollars a year from his job
Speaker 1: as an underwater engineer at Point Magoo. That's just over
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand in today's money. And according to his
Speaker 1: colleague Denis O'Gorman, Fred's ambition had been in freefall ever
Speaker 1: since Jean died. Here's O'Gorman talking to an investigator. He
Speaker 1: very seemed very despondent about things. It was philosophizing. For instance,
Speaker 1: he started talking about how, really, you know, it should
Speaker 1: be a socialistic society. Anybody, everybody ought to be allowed
Speaker 1: to do whatever it is that they want to do.
Speaker 1: So if you decide you want to be a beach bump,
Speaker 1: you get the same number of bucks as some guy
Speaker 1: who wants to sit in office and do calculations all day. Okay,
Speaker 1: no matter what you want to do, you ought to
Speaker 1: be able to do it. I means your life, and
Speaker 1: it is so short. Want un enjoyed to the utmost.
Speaker 1: You know, the perfect world if you have it on earth,
Speaker 1: and that's basically stopped working about it. And it seemed
Speaker 1: like the more he got away with, the more he
Speaker 1: wanted to get away with. And very job that Fred
Speaker 1: had was given to somebody else, which really ticked us off.
Speaker 1: I mean, we liked the work but now we're carrying
Speaker 1: a hell of a workload, okay, more than our share.
Speaker 1: And here's one man who's making more money than any
Speaker 1: one of us because he's been there longer, and he's
Speaker 1: higher up on the scale, and he's not doing anything.
Speaker 1: And not only is he not doing anything, but he's
Speaker 1: tying up the phones on personal calls. He's now dating
Speaker 1: Verna and he's making personal calls with his girlfriends to
Speaker 1: his liars for proper investments or whatever the hailop days,
Speaker 1: you know, anywhere, their personal calls. And he has a
Speaker 1: smirk on his face like he knows that we know
Speaker 1: what's going on, and there's nothing anybody can do or
Speaker 1: wants to do about it. And by god, it's just
Speaker 1: kissed my ass, you know, that kind of attitude, and
Speaker 1: it's infuriating. Then, from nineteen seventy eight to nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: Fred really stopped working. He'd injured his back, or so
Speaker 1: he said. On the polygraph, he admitted to fudging that
Speaker 1: a bit. Fred did have a little side business building
Speaker 1: redwood hot tubs. Here he is talking to an investigator
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty one. You've actually blacked him, black him
Speaker 1: out of wood Jimmy is an installed for people who
Speaker 1: are mostly friends. It was not a lucratic situation. There
Speaker 1: was Verna's pay from her teaching job, which amounted to
Speaker 1: just a couple grand a year. They had the benefits
Speaker 1: from their first spouses and the income from their various properties.
Speaker 1: They're houses might have been worth a lot, but cash flow,
Speaker 1: how is this all working. In the spring of nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: about nine months before Verna and dug drown, Fred and
Speaker 1: Verna bought Perseverance, their fifty foot sailboat. The price tag
Speaker 1: around one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, five times Fred's
Speaker 1: annual salary at Point Magoo back when he was working
Speaker 1: Perseverance was fancy. This is Dempsey Billy, an investigator for
Speaker 1: the Santa Barbara Day's office. I talked to him recently.
Speaker 1: He remembered Perseverance very well. The sailboat that was there
Speaker 1: in the venture at Harbor, and a really nice boat.
Speaker 1: They have a fireplace in it. Not too many sailboats
Speaker 1: that I've been around a fireplace in them. Fred's salvency
Speaker 1: was of great interest to the detectives. How was this
Speaker 1: guy who made so little money leveling up in Malibu.
Speaker 1: By the time they went back and questioned Fred a
Speaker 1: second time on January twentieth, nineteen eighty one, they learned
Speaker 1: a lot about his tumultuous relationship with Jean and that
Speaker 1: he'd improved his financial position and certainly his real estate
Speaker 1: holdings upon her death. So they had a few more
Speaker 1: questions for Fred. Did you and bury Heaven? Maridle from Yeah,
Speaker 1: how would you describe your relationship? You're very days, I
Speaker 1: would say, because good a relationship. Overall, anybody I've known
Speaker 1: them shared the same aspirations, gone through really a learning
Speaker 1: process for deciding what we really wanted to do with
Speaker 1: the children and in buying both and all the things.
Speaker 1: We shared interests in the children and shared interest and
Speaker 1: thinks I would like to do friends with find families.
Speaker 1: I don't know what else. Were you having any financial
Speaker 1: fund or are you having the financial funds today? Friend
Speaker 1: says he wasn't underwater. Quite the contrary. When they were
Speaker 1: saying that, oh you're you know I was broke, I said, well,
Speaker 1: the thing you didn't search when you tore up my
Speaker 1: house was you didn't go into the deep freeze. I
Speaker 1: had a faith in there. With thirty grand cash and
Speaker 1: about five thousand and travelers checks in it, and they
Speaker 1: were sort of stunned. And then they asked the detectively
Speaker 1: he had looked in this in the deep greeze, and
Speaker 1: he said, of course he hadn't. What was that for?
Speaker 1: And where did it come from? Ever since? I had
Speaker 1: been making payments on different things, and when I no
Speaker 1: longer made payments on them, I basically put some money
Speaker 1: aside in a safe, and I put it in our chest,
Speaker 1: deep freeze, under a bunch of frozen crates of orange juice.
Speaker 1: And that's where I kept our passports and you know,
Speaker 1: our papers and everything else in there. It was in
Speaker 1: the garage, and the prosecution went nuts when they found
Speaker 1: out that their super detectives hadn't found it. Thirty five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars is a hefty chunk of change. It's equivalent
Speaker 1: to about one hundred and ten thousand today. Fred basically
Speaker 1: had a year's salary and his freezer underneath the orange juice.
Speaker 1: Why would anyone keep that much cash just lying around
Speaker 1: his house? To own a sailboat one as stunning as perseverance.
Speaker 1: It was Fred's dream come true. She was brand new
Speaker 1: and sleek toothpaste white with teak decks and trim. Everything
Speaker 1: about her down to the name was perfect. Her did
Speaker 1: not look at it. I don't think we could think
Speaker 1: of anything more apropos than that for us, for all
Speaker 1: the stuff we had gone through. You know, both of
Speaker 1: our lives were not not the not smooth. They had
Speaker 1: bumps all over them. So we both sort of felt that,
Speaker 1: having persevered, we were very fortunate to have found each other.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'll be doing well with our family.
Speaker 1: No longer would Fred be cleaning the bottom of Dick
Speaker 1: Felfoen's boat. He would take his boat and go anywhere
Speaker 1: he pleased. In fact, when detectives Ray and Tuller first
Speaker 1: came to see him, Fred dropped a big piece of
Speaker 1: news on them. He and Vernon and the kids had
Speaker 1: been about to set sail on a long track. They'd
Speaker 1: planned to be gone for months, maybe a year. We
Speaker 1: were leaving in a smart We have been getting provisions,
Speaker 1: medical thing just just literally everything to get ready to go.
Speaker 1: We're going to Mexican, and we were trying to do
Speaker 1: a lot of documentation and the children each had a
Speaker 1: log book writing down all the things that they were
Speaker 1: feeling and seeing. Fun things right, there. The kids were
Speaker 1: going to journal and Fred would take photos and film.
Speaker 1: They were thinking about writing a book or making a
Speaker 1: movie about their adventure, the story of their trip told
Speaker 1: through the children's eyes. Aren't your Mexico crews or were
Speaker 1: you headed for to replays? No? Not really. We have
Speaker 1: picked up a bunch of charts and talked to them
Speaker 1: of people and our intensions were amazing. Just pop all along,
Speaker 1: keen some of them come back up into the golf
Speaker 1: and Californias and con. I'd read Steinbeck's book See Portez,
Speaker 1: and I gave her a copy of that. Did she
Speaker 1: have any particular theories or anything. Boy, Yeah, she really
Speaker 1: didn't like the shipping lands and didn't like fog very much.
Speaker 1: That was really, that was some big thing. Later Fred
Speaker 1: made some notes about how the Mexico plan had come
Speaker 1: to be quote sitting in hot tub September nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: concern about raising the children in Malibu, dope peer groups, solution,
Speaker 1: pack up and go cruising. According to Fred, the trip
Speaker 1: to Mexico had motivated him and Verna to get organized.
Speaker 1: In the fall of nineteen eighty, right after he and
Speaker 1: Verna were legally married, they began some vigorous estate planning,
Speaker 1: they started buying insurance. Detective Ray asked Fred about this
Speaker 1: when questioning him about Verna and Doug. Were the birds insured, Yeah,
Speaker 1: our family was insure good company. Are they insured travelers?
Speaker 1: Was that in her name or your name or mousson?
Speaker 1: We had just set up a trust and gone through
Speaker 1: a state planning thing the policy route. I think that's
Speaker 1: probably in the safety deposit box. I'm not sure, okay,
Speaker 1: h M. How much was the policy spot? I think
Speaker 1: there's four hundred thousand on myself and Vernon and sixty
Speaker 1: thousand on each of the four children. That was almost it.
Speaker 1: There were also accidental death riders, worth an additional three
Speaker 1: hundred thousand for each of the adults and an additional
Speaker 1: sixty thousand for each of the kids. Doug's policy named
Speaker 1: his surviving siblings. Fred was the beneficiary of Vernas policy.
Speaker 1: That meant the payout from her death was seven hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in nineteen eighty one, money, which is about
Speaker 1: two point two five million today. The detectives wanted more
Speaker 1: details because they said the insurance company would be calling
Speaker 1: them in the course of processing the claims. They're pretty
Speaker 1: patient for a few works for two words. Want. They
Speaker 1: started they started getting pressure from me to settle in
Speaker 1: and then or your family or whoever your beneficiary at
Speaker 1: the trust I take would be you and the kids.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I think somehow the trust it is,
Speaker 1: but I don't I don't recall the mechanics today you
Speaker 1: take the trust to all the new I think that
Speaker 1: the trust is a beneficiary as opposed to either of
Speaker 1: us or in other words, if something happens, everything goes
Speaker 1: into the trust. Fred said he and the kids weren't
Speaker 1: the beneficiaries the Johnson Railer Trust was that was a
Speaker 1: little slippery. The funds from the insurance would maybe end
Speaker 1: up in the trust like any other family asset, but
Speaker 1: Fred was named. On Verna's policy, the money would be his.
Speaker 1: Fred also didn't say that he was the trustee. If
Speaker 1: the insurance money flowed into the trust, he would control it.
Speaker 1: It was right around then that Fred decided he had
Speaker 1: said enough. He needed to talk to his friend Bill Fairfield,
Speaker 1: the lawyer who'd advised him and Verna on the trust.
Speaker 1: I guess I want everything to be said. I guess
Speaker 1: it's settled. As much information as I can give you
Speaker 1: and at the same time, I know he's going to
Speaker 1: breaking my arm. If I the qube just do everything
Speaker 1: about talking to him, I'm not spoken. The detectives weren't
Speaker 1: buying the Mexico trip as a reason for taking out
Speaker 1: huge insurance policies. It reeked of planning, like Fred was
Speaker 1: thinking about the murders and the ways he'd cover them up,
Speaker 1: and the insurance. Well, that looked like another pattern in
Speaker 1: his life. Because Fred, the detectives were learning, knew a
Speaker 1: thing or two about insurance. Lighting his car on fire
Speaker 1: to get an insurance settlement back is a down payment
Speaker 1: on a new car terance. But they burned down a
Speaker 1: farmhouse to collect the insurances. I understand fires, bike accidents,
Speaker 1: car accidents, tractor accidents, a houseboat on fire, tapap's barn
Speaker 1: on fire. If it's true, and I say, if it
Speaker 1: showed early on the ability to conceive of insurance from
Speaker 1: just all of the horrible accidents that can happen to
Speaker 1: one family. The detectives had found a motive to hand
Speaker 1: to the district attorney. It was the Malibu lifestyle. Fred,
Speaker 1: they thought, wanted to live a life of leisure like
Speaker 1: so many of the ritzy folks. Buying up all the
Speaker 1: beach houses in Malibu. To accomplish this, the detective surmised
Speaker 1: Fred would need a big windfall, say seven hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in insurance money from an accident with no witnesses.
Speaker 1: Coming up on the next episode of Lost tells what
Speaker 1: was Verna worth to Fred? She was his life In fact,
Speaker 1: just showed him the way that life could be. I'm
Speaker 1: saying Verna ment to him, something that money could buy.
Speaker 1: That's next in episode eight three. Fred's Lost Tails is
Speaker 1: written and reported by Me Dana Goodyear. It's created by
Speaker 1: me and Ben Adair and produced by Western Sound and
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus and you can hear
Speaker 1: the whole season add free and get early access to
Speaker 1: the final two episodes. Find Pushkin Plus on the Lost
Speaker 1: Tails show page in Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin dot Fm.