Speaker 1: A school of humans. What one technological advancement do you
Speaker 1: wish had never been invented? Cell phones. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, my Teres Richardson participated in the Miss Fullerton
Speaker 1: Beauty pageant. That's Fullerton, California, just south of Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: Although when you're stranded, they help contact your family and
Speaker 1: the need of a spare tire or just in any
Speaker 1: need of emergency, but they also cause a lot of accidents,
Speaker 1: and they cause a lot of friendships from forming, because
Speaker 1: as soon as people get out of class, the first
Speaker 1: thing they want to do is talk on their cell phones.
Speaker 1: So I just wish that cell phones would be limited
Speaker 1: to just emergencies only. She's wearing a dazzling beige ball
Speaker 1: gown and glides across the stage to Frank Sinatra's The
Speaker 1: Way You Look Tonight. She's funny, beautiful, and has an
Speaker 1: electric smile. Two years later, her family released this pageant
Speaker 1: video to show the public what my Terse looks like,
Speaker 1: how she talks, how she walks. Because my Terse is missing,
Speaker 1: desperate for answers, friends and family had begun to retrace
Speaker 1: my Teresa's steps. I'm Catherine Townsend and this is hell
Speaker 1: and gone. It's five thirty five am on September seventeenth,
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine, and Teresa's mother, Latisse, is terrified.
Speaker 1: She called the Lost Hills Sheriff station at around four
Speaker 1: thirty am to ask about my Teresa's bail and to
Speaker 1: make arrangements to pick up her daughter, only for the
Speaker 1: jailer to tell her that my Teres had been released
Speaker 1: hours earlier laus Hield Station bomb gardener. So Latis called
Speaker 1: back and was connected to another officer. Yes, hi, my
Speaker 1: name is Latista, and I called not too long ago
Speaker 1: regarding my daughter. My Trees rook at this Latista's telling
Speaker 1: him that her daughter was forty miles from home and
Speaker 1: depressed and had no way home and no knowledge of
Speaker 1: the area. She doesn't know the area. She's never been
Speaker 1: in your area. Where does she live? He is unfamiliar
Speaker 1: with that area. Do you think that possibly could have
Speaker 1: gotten a bus home? And oh, listen, my Chad has
Speaker 1: never ridden a bus. No, she would not know how
Speaker 1: to ride a bus. I would probably wait till, you know,
Speaker 1: early this morning, and if she doesn't turn up, you
Speaker 1: can certainly call. I don't suspect anything bad happened. The
Speaker 1: officer she was on the phone with said she should
Speaker 1: wait a few hours before filing a missing person's report.
Speaker 1: We heard part of that phone call at the end
Speaker 1: of the last episode, but the rest of it is
Speaker 1: even more heartbreaking. I'm concerned because, well, first of all,
Speaker 1: I thought they were going to keep her overnight because
Speaker 1: she was highly intoxicated. Something, something is obviously going on
Speaker 1: with her. Have you tried to the jailer and yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: yes I have. He said he tried to get her
Speaker 1: to stable. Because she was an adult, they had to
Speaker 1: let her go. I believe that she is highly depressed,
Speaker 1: and she she's in a depressive state. You know, it
Speaker 1: could be possible that maybe she I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of options and a lot of possibilities, and I
Speaker 1: don't think all of them would be, you know, something dire.
Speaker 1: But I can certainly understand and your fears, you know,
Speaker 1: being your daughter and all that. Well, I think she's suppressed.
Speaker 1: That's what happens. That's worth than just okay. That and
Speaker 1: the fact that she's in an area where she doesn't
Speaker 1: know where she's at. It doesn't take medication at all. No,
Speaker 1: I believe it's a state that she's in, right now
Speaker 1: because of just the weird activities to speaking what's name
Speaker 1: her name is, Latise is growing more and more alarmed
Speaker 1: that the police don't seem to be doing more. Her
Speaker 1: daughter had been out of jail for hours and no
Speaker 1: one had heard from her. Why didn't they seem to care?
Speaker 1: By Friday morning, she was getting desperate. That's when Latis
Speaker 1: called doctor Ronda Hampton. So she went missing, you know,
Speaker 1: technically at twelve twenty eighth on Thursday. And her mom
Speaker 1: called me on Friday and she was just asking me
Speaker 1: if my Trees had contacted me or if she had
Speaker 1: seen by the office or something like that, and then
Speaker 1: she kind of explained to me what was going on.
Speaker 1: Ronda and Latisse had gone through my Teresa's social media
Speaker 1: and what they found was disturbing. Ronda called the police
Speaker 1: and insisted that the situation was urgent. Latis and Ronda
Speaker 1: re emphasized to the police that they believed my Trees
Speaker 1: may be experiencing some sort of mental health issue. They
Speaker 1: couldn't wait any longer. They needed to look for my trees. Now,
Speaker 1: did they start searching right away or how long did
Speaker 1: it take them to start searching? So what happened was,
Speaker 1: and they claim that they searched that same day, although
Speaker 1: none of the neighbors would call that happening at all.
Speaker 1: So I when I talked to it was LAPD of
Speaker 1: a case at this time. When I talked to the LAPD,
Speaker 1: they weren't planning on doing a search. Basically, she told
Speaker 1: me that we needed to have some compelling information to
Speaker 1: secure the funds to do a search. So, you know,
Speaker 1: I went back and forth with the detective from LAPD
Speaker 1: and then eventually, I guess I was able to give
Speaker 1: her enough information that she said that okay, fine. They
Speaker 1: finally agreed to do a search, and that would have
Speaker 1: been on Saturday. And I think it was that Friday
Speaker 1: that we learned about the Montanino phone call. The night
Speaker 1: my tse went missing, the Lost Hills Sheriff's Department got
Speaker 1: another call from a retired KATV Los Angeles local news
Speaker 1: reporter named Bill Smith well Saffa office CAMPI yeah, Hi, Hey,
Speaker 1: this is a smith a Cold Canyon. We had a
Speaker 1: prowler walking around through the backyard here, but we don't
Speaker 1: know what the situation was. I've going not here a
Speaker 1: unit in the area might do a little drive buy
Speaker 1: or something. Bill said that he had seen someone on
Speaker 1: his property in the early morning hours of September seventeenth,
Speaker 1: an African America, matching my Teresa's description. We talked about
Speaker 1: this in the last episode. If you don't live in
Speaker 1: the LA area, you might think of it and the
Speaker 1: surrounding areas as a sprawling city or Malibu as a
Speaker 1: star studded beach front crowded with surfers. But up in
Speaker 1: the mountains, it's a different story. It would have been
Speaker 1: absolutely deserted at night, and a young woman walking alone
Speaker 1: would have stood out, and it goes from neighborhood to
Speaker 1: woods in the blink of an eye. You're absolutely correct,
Speaker 1: because I remember when I was still living up in
Speaker 1: Seattle and I was thinking about moving to LA I
Speaker 1: read about somebody, just in a line of I think
Speaker 1: it was outside magazines. Somebody said the mountains of Los
Speaker 1: Angeles and I went, what, There's no mountains in the
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. Come on, and it's what you're talking about
Speaker 1: is absolutely true. Unless you're here, you don't realize that
Speaker 1: there is a mountain range. Brian Rooney literally wrote the
Speaker 1: book about Malibu Creek State Park because it's home to
Speaker 1: biologically diverse landscape that made it right for the movies.
Speaker 1: Paramount and twentieth Century Fox use the landscape, which included
Speaker 1: Malibu Creek State Park, to shoot dozens of movies and
Speaker 1: TV shows, including the TV series Mash But for park
Speaker 1: visitors it's also dangerous. Malibu Search and Rescue are busy
Speaker 1: year round rescuing hikers from around the park. Hazard's for sure,
Speaker 1: like you mentioned, rattlesnakes, for sure. It's remarkable how many
Speaker 1: people come to the very popular Malibu Creek State Park
Speaker 1: and do not have a map with them and have
Speaker 1: no idea where they're going. They just arrive. It is
Speaker 1: so close to the city that people come out under
Speaker 1: prepared and they don't think about the dangers of that
Speaker 1: They're going into a backcountry area where there is you know,
Speaker 1: bad cell service, no running water, basically very few bathrooms,
Speaker 1: all that type of stuff, and they come out underprepared
Speaker 1: and they don't understand that this is not a shopping mall.
Speaker 1: And dangers if you're talking natural dangers, of course, you know,
Speaker 1: like I said, getting lost, getting hurt, falling down a canyon,
Speaker 1: falling down off a ridge line, or something like that. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the animals are here. It might help too. That one
Speaker 1: of the most interesting things about these mountains is because
Speaker 1: there is Pacific Coast Highway on one side and the
Speaker 1: one to one Freeway on the other side. If you're
Speaker 1: ever actually lost, all you have to do is walk
Speaker 1: downhill and you will hit one of those major arteries.
Speaker 1: So as long as you're walking downhill, you'll hit civilization.
Speaker 1: But if you're walking across and not going downhill, then
Speaker 1: you can be in trouble because you could go on.
Speaker 1: It's a fifty mile long range and you could theoretically
Speaker 1: walk for a long way and not hit anything. Montegnito
Speaker 1: is a neighborhood that's about six miles from the Lost
Speaker 1: Hills Sheriff Station. It backs onto the Santa Monica Mountains.
Speaker 1: It's quiet up there. There are horse trails and private
Speaker 1: hiking trails that cut through the back of several residential
Speaker 1: properties and lead up into the mountains. Bill Smith was
Speaker 1: a retired TV reporter in two thousand and nine when
Speaker 1: he called the police that night, he said that he
Speaker 1: spotted a prowler sitting on his back porch. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you have a unit in the area, might
Speaker 1: do a little drive buy or something Okay, where's this it?
Speaker 1: This is Cold Canyon and we just said a strange
Speaker 1: woman walk up through the back gyard here. There's fairly
Speaker 1: large property and she was sitting on the steps right
Speaker 1: right on the back of the house. Here. This is
Speaker 1: kind of a circular driveway and the big gates were closed,
Speaker 1: so we don't know where this woman came from. There's
Speaker 1: a horse trail, hiking trail accessed through here, but we've
Speaker 1: never had this kind of thing happen before. Once she
Speaker 1: looked like white black as you know, a tall, slim
Speaker 1: black woman with afro hair. I thought she was sitting
Speaker 1: down stretched out on the wooden steps in the back
Speaker 1: of the house. Hard to tell, but does she look
Speaker 1: like she'd have been medium too, slightly tall with a
Speaker 1: big aprol hair, very skinny, and I think she was
Speaker 1: wearing maybe jeans or tight pants with a T shirt.
Speaker 1: Do you think you've never seen her there before? No? Never,
Speaker 1: nobody's ever does that. I mean, the people hike on
Speaker 1: the trail all the time. We you know, the trail
Speaker 1: goes through our property, but we leave it open on
Speaker 1: purpose because it's kind of a nice thing for horses
Speaker 1: and people. And said she's laying across me. She was
Speaker 1: laying across the steps or but she was sitting kind
Speaker 1: of sprawled out on the wooden steps in the back
Speaker 1: of the house, right against the back of the house.
Speaker 1: She since got up and left. She since gone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's been gone about five minutes now. But as we
Speaker 1: follow it over, we thought maybe a little drive by
Speaker 1: wouldn't be a bad idea. And what direction was she
Speaker 1: did she last seen him? He never saw her. She
Speaker 1: once she left, she just disappeared. I moved from one
Speaker 1: wind to another. I said to her, I hollered down.
Speaker 1: Are you all right? She said, I'm just resting or
Speaker 1: something like that. But she's certainly gone out of her
Speaker 1: way to get to that close to the house because
Speaker 1: the hiking trail is not that close down the ridge.
Speaker 1: A great listen to me, I haven't checked the area
Speaker 1: for I appreciate that very much. Now the problems, thank you.
Speaker 1: Here the timeline gets a little fuzzy. We ask for
Speaker 1: the audio of the phone calls and the call logs
Speaker 1: from the LASD, but we're told that call logs are
Speaker 1: usually destroyed after two years. Lost hill sheriffs say they
Speaker 1: got the call at six thirty am, but Bill Smith
Speaker 1: keeps saying it's dark and he can't see the woman clearly.
Speaker 1: But according to records, the sun rose over the Santa
Speaker 1: Monica Mountains at six forty am on Thursday, September seventeenth,
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine, so it was already getting light out.
Speaker 1: But if she was in a man a state because
Speaker 1: she had walked all the way from Lost Hills to
Speaker 1: Bill Smith's home, I mean, rare, but it's possible. But
Speaker 1: it's just almighty strange. This is to Shaka Starwell. He
Speaker 1: works at react La react as a volunteer organization that
Speaker 1: acts as a liaison between families and police and also
Speaker 1: helps organize searches and missing persons cases for families. Tshaka
Speaker 1: says the same thing that the family was feeling. They
Speaker 1: didn't understand how my trees could have walked the six
Speaker 1: miles from the Lost Hill Sheriff station to Montanito in
Speaker 1: the pitch black without even a cell phone light to
Speaker 1: illuminate the way, because if it was six she would
Speaker 1: at least a blue skylight there, So I thought it
Speaker 1: was in the wee hours. There's no way that she walked.
Speaker 1: She can't even walk and get there in two hours.
Speaker 1: I just don't see it. There's no way she can
Speaker 1: drive from the freeway and get to Bill Smith's house
Speaker 1: without a map. And there are a lot of other
Speaker 1: places between Loss Hills the station and Bill Smith's home.
Speaker 1: There's a equestering yard, there's a state park all to
Speaker 1: the side around that road, and I mean, I'm just
Speaker 1: told them when we get down down and there, of
Speaker 1: course there's a gas station other things right there in
Speaker 1: the middle area. How does she just skip all of that?
Speaker 1: It is possible to walk to Monteanito from the Lost
Speaker 1: Hill Sheriff's apartment, but how she got to Monteannito and
Speaker 1: why comes central questions of the investigation. I drove up
Speaker 1: to the station to try to piece together the route. Okay,
Speaker 1: so as you can see, look how the road is already.
Speaker 1: Imagine trying to walk down this at night. There's no side,
Speaker 1: there's no no shoulder. The Lost Hills Sheriff station is
Speaker 1: about a fifteen minute drive from Joffrey's, the restaurant where
Speaker 1: the police picked up my trees. But in the tunnel
Speaker 1: there's not even like one of those little walkway things.
Speaker 1: So like literally if you're going through that tunnel and
Speaker 1: there's a car it's going to hit you in this
Speaker 1: right here. You would just never imagine three minutes ago.
Speaker 1: The drive from Jeoffreys to the station is treacherous. There
Speaker 1: are tons of hairpin turns, no shoulder and no sidewalk.
Speaker 1: The road is surrounded by mountains. One side of the
Speaker 1: road has a guardrail before a long fall into a
Speaker 1: canyon and left onto a door road. You drive through
Speaker 1: a tunnel and there's no pedestrian shoulder, so anyone trying
Speaker 1: to walk through could not make it through that tunnel
Speaker 1: with any traffic, especially at night when it's dark. So
Speaker 1: it should be right up here. Yeah, I kind of.
Speaker 1: I'm going to think I recognized this. Let's see turning raft.
Speaker 1: Then you will arrive at your destinations over here. I
Speaker 1: was on the right in it. That's right, it's on
Speaker 1: the left here it is, that's right here. The Lost
Speaker 1: Hills Sheriff Station is situated between a few neighborhoods that
Speaker 1: are gated with brick walls and large commercial and industrial
Speaker 1: buildings that are closed at night. There are no open
Speaker 1: businesses around you can't go in, i think, and no
Speaker 1: public transportation. The last buses would have stopped running hours
Speaker 1: before My Trees was released. You all right, So here
Speaker 1: it is. There's the front door. I'm just going to
Speaker 1: drive around to the so you see if there's a
Speaker 1: side door. My Trees was released at twelve fifteen am
Speaker 1: and left the building at twelve thirty eight. SHARONN. Cummings,
Speaker 1: the jailer on duty that night, said she'd offered My
Speaker 1: Trees the chance to use the phone, but My Trees
Speaker 1: turned the offer down. Cummings also said she told My
Speaker 1: Trees she could wait into the lobby until someone came
Speaker 1: and got her. So, yeah, this is it. And when
Speaker 1: she left here she went back that way. My triest
Speaker 1: left through the side door of the station. She had
Speaker 1: two options, go back down the winding path toward Jeoffrey's
Speaker 1: and the Pacific Coast Highway, or she could go the
Speaker 1: other way, the way that had a sidewalk at least
Speaker 1: for a few miles along Los Virgins Road, which turns
Speaker 1: into Malibu Canyon Road. If I was trying to get
Speaker 1: back to the beach, I would have gone this way, honestly,
Speaker 1: And that is where it gets treacherous. But again it's
Speaker 1: very misleading. You feel like you're going down toward the beach.
Speaker 1: Montenito is like the first like once you get out
Speaker 1: and you rouzer in the middle of nowhere, it's like
Speaker 1: the next neighborhood along Bill Smith's house in Monteennito is
Speaker 1: right off Malibu Canyon Road, but the neighborhood is nestled
Speaker 1: between hiking trails and rugged wilderness. So it's odd that
Speaker 1: she would have walked there in the pitch blackness. So
Speaker 1: that was Bill Smiths and then from there, it's really
Speaker 1: confusing around here, like her family started to wonder, could
Speaker 1: my trees have been driven to Montenito Number one. I
Speaker 1: don't buy for one minute that she walked, but let
Speaker 1: me just go with that. I'll let's just I'll go
Speaker 1: with it. If she did walk, it would make sense
Speaker 1: to me that she would make a right hand turn. Okay, fine,
Speaker 1: gotta walk one direction. Okay, that makes sense. It would
Speaker 1: even make sense to me that she would stay on
Speaker 1: the main road, you know, because at least it's paved,
Speaker 1: right And it also would make sense to me that
Speaker 1: she would make a right because when you go down
Speaker 1: nothing's open. The Albertson's is closed. Everything is closed at
Speaker 1: that time. Okay, so she'll make a right. Well, if
Speaker 1: she was if she If if she was the person
Speaker 1: who was seen at six thirty in the morning, then
Speaker 1: there was light, right, so there's some there had to
Speaker 1: be some light. Well, if so. Number one, we think
Speaker 1: she was there closer to four thirty in the morning, okay,
Speaker 1: but but even or five thirty, but they keep We're
Speaker 1: not really sure on the time, but neighbors were hearing
Speaker 1: her well before sixth thirty in the morning. On Saturday,
Speaker 1: September nineteenth, police began their search for my trees. When
Speaker 1: investigators looked outside Bill Smith's house, they found tracks that
Speaker 1: they believed came from my teresa sneakers. According to Los
Speaker 1: Angeles Magazine, the sneaker prints were found out front. They
Speaker 1: followed the prince but lost them before they went down
Speaker 1: into the canyon called Dark Creek. My Teresa's family says
Speaker 1: that police told them to avoid the area to not
Speaker 1: contaminate it. I wonder why they told you guys that
Speaker 1: I don't know, And you know, thank goodness for reporters.
Speaker 1: I have to tell you, because there was a reporter
Speaker 1: as we were patching out flyers who told us basically
Speaker 1: to get our asses up to the canyon, right, you know,
Speaker 1: and kind of told us, this is what you need
Speaker 1: to do, and and you know, thank goodness for time
Speaker 1: because we did. We didn't know exactly where we were going,
Speaker 1: but we kind of drove around the canyon and then
Speaker 1: I you know, we didn't We still didn't know exactly
Speaker 1: where we're going. They had found footprints, and they really
Speaker 1: played me. You know, I was very naive back then,
Speaker 1: and so they told me that they had found footprints
Speaker 1: and that it looked like my truth was walking and
Speaker 1: then she was running, and then like and where she
Speaker 1: was running. They were concerned that she may have jumped,
Speaker 1: and so they didn't say this, but they intimated that, like,
Speaker 1: look if they were gonna fight, like as if it
Speaker 1: was suicide, and so we wouldn't want to be We
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to find that my Treesa's friends and family
Speaker 1: also questioned the police's decision to start the search in
Speaker 1: Monteanito rather than the Lost Hill Sheriff station. If the
Speaker 1: search of dogs had been deployed near the station, they wondered,
Speaker 1: could they have figured out if my Trees got into
Speaker 1: a vehicle. They used dogs, but they only used them
Speaker 1: from Where did they start from? Did they start from
Speaker 1: Bill Smith's house? Or did they start from the station.
Speaker 1: So they did not start from the station at all,
Speaker 1: and they started I mean, I guess we would have
Speaker 1: to believe that they started in Montanaedo, because I remember
Speaker 1: we weren't allowed to be there when that was happening, right,
Speaker 1: So whether they were, I believe that they were in
Speaker 1: the Bill Smith's area and in the houses in that area,
Speaker 1: because some of the neighbors have told me that they,
Speaker 1: you know, that they saw, you know, the police out
Speaker 1: there on that day. That part only lasted four or
Speaker 1: five hours though, and then they were out. It was
Speaker 1: supposed to be a two day, all day search, right,
Speaker 1: but it literally was four hours and that was it.
Speaker 1: Ronda said that when she was told by police that
Speaker 1: they were calling office search at four point thirty Saturday afternoon,
Speaker 1: she was shocked and angry. In the week after my
Speaker 1: Terse went missing, friends and family began flooding into the
Speaker 1: area around Lost Hills and Antito and posting flyers with
Speaker 1: photos of Matreesa's face everywhere. There were several photos of
Speaker 1: my trees on the flyer, and the contrast between the
Speaker 1: glamour shot was smooth hair and a dazzling smile and
Speaker 1: the one of her police mugshot is stark. In the
Speaker 1: second photo, my Treece has a faint smile on her face,
Speaker 1: but she has bags under her eyes. Chipcroft is a
Speaker 1: documentary filmmaker who lives in the area. It was I
Speaker 1: had moved to LA on September one, two thousand and nine,
Speaker 1: and I was settling in and it was about three
Speaker 1: weeks later that I was looking at the La Times
Speaker 1: online and I saw an article, a picture actually of
Speaker 1: a young African American woman holding a sign saying find
Speaker 1: my trees. And she was INVALIDU obviously along the highway
Speaker 1: and they were. It was during the one, I think
Speaker 1: the first Saturday after My Trees went missing. Chip was
Speaker 1: unsettled by the sheriff's cavalier attitude towards my Teresa's disappearance
Speaker 1: when this When I saw this article, it just didn't
Speaker 1: ring true to me that she went missing with you know,
Speaker 1: no phone, no no nothing, no car, no way home,
Speaker 1: no money or anything. And so I immediately felt this
Speaker 1: was based on obfuly a racist situation, and I think
Speaker 1: I still think it is, and I think she was
Speaker 1: considered to be an expendable young black woman from South
Speaker 1: LA that they probably might not even miss the people
Speaker 1: wouldn't care about so much. But it turned out not
Speaker 1: to be the case. So anyway, So I there was
Speaker 1: an email address in the article for Ronda, and I
Speaker 1: emailed Ronda about the about the case, and she said
Speaker 1: that they were having a press conference coming up in
Speaker 1: the following week at the Sheriff's headquarters. And I said, well, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll come by and maybe I can meet you all,
Speaker 1: and I'll bring my camera. This is my daughter, My
Speaker 1: Richardson Chip headed to the Lost Hill Sheriff's department and
Speaker 1: recorded Latis as she made a passionate plea to police
Speaker 1: to search harder for my trees. They failed her. She
Speaker 1: is suffering somewhere because we believe she is still alive,
Speaker 1: but they're not doing enough to search for her. We
Speaker 1: are suffering every day, not knowing what to do to
Speaker 1: find my daughter. They know this area, they have the
Speaker 1: means to daily search for her. I believe they have
Speaker 1: an obligation and a duty to continue to find look
Speaker 1: for her until they rescue her. She can be hurt somewhere,
Speaker 1: my understanding. The last place she was seen was in
Speaker 1: a community off of Tiruma by the Saddleback lodge, which
Speaker 1: is very steep, very terraneous, very seclusive. Someone heard voices,
Speaker 1: no not voices, a voice of a woman talking to
Speaker 1: herself in a vacant house, and apparently there's many vacant
Speaker 1: houses in that area. The community has been unaware until
Speaker 1: they got wind of our efforts, not the Sheriff's Department's efforts,
Speaker 1: but our efforts putting flyers out there, making contact with
Speaker 1: the neighborhood, just really trying to find my daughter. They
Speaker 1: knew none of this from the police department, and the
Speaker 1: community is outrage. Chip and Ronda started canvassing the neighbors
Speaker 1: in Monteennito themselves and followed every lead they could find.
Speaker 1: Most of the neighbors in Montinita were very cooperative and
Speaker 1: wanted to help them, and now they're the CDA eight
Speaker 1: mil racism and laws or anything. Their role was quite
Speaker 1: helpful and a you know, they didn't know the cheffs
Speaker 1: that claimed they'd gone around knocked on everybody's door and
Speaker 1: questioned everybody. And we could barely find anybody that the
Speaker 1: sheriffs had ever knocked on anybody's door or question Chip
Speaker 1: heard a number of theories. One neighbor told Ship that
Speaker 1: they heard a scream at around eleven pm the following
Speaker 1: Tuesday after my trees went missing. The neighbor didn't even
Speaker 1: know that there was a missing person at that point
Speaker 1: and never figured out the source of the scream. Chip
Speaker 1: talked to another neighbor as well, who said they discovered
Speaker 1: what appeared to be a shallow grave on a neighbor's property.
Speaker 1: We had the sheriffs come and investigate that that it
Speaker 1: was a like a sand pit, but it threw a
Speaker 1: lot of rains in October. In the sand pits had sunk,
Speaker 1: as if somebody had dug in there or had removed
Speaker 1: somebody out of there, and it had sunk, and there
Speaker 1: was a breath that she noticed. She walked by there
Speaker 1: every day, and she noticed some things had been moved
Speaker 1: and tampered in that sand pit area, So that whole
Speaker 1: thing was very suspicious. Ship and the sheriffs went to
Speaker 1: check out the property with the shallow grave and said
Speaker 1: that the owner of the home screamed at the sheriff
Speaker 1: to get off her property. Since she lived in South
Speaker 1: LA when she went missing. My Teresa's case was given
Speaker 1: to the LAPDS Missing Person's Unit, then the case was
Speaker 1: reassigned again, this time to the LAPD's Robbery Homicide Division.
Speaker 1: Officials said this was because the Robbery Homicide Division had
Speaker 1: more resources, but a lot of people over the years
Speaker 1: have commented that this move was one of many that
Speaker 1: made it seem like Lost Hills wanted to get rid
Speaker 1: of this case as fast as they could. Don't forget
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles Police Department is involved in this as well.
Speaker 1: It is their investigation in fact, because she her residence
Speaker 1: is Los Angeles. But that's a kind of a technical
Speaker 1: thing because everybody's looking for The Los Angeles Police Department
Speaker 1: has two detectives that are just they're assigned to this case.
Speaker 1: This is what they're doing. This is Steve Whitmore, a
Speaker 1: Community Information officer for the LASD, being interviewed in early
Speaker 1: October two thousand and nine, three weeks after my Terse
Speaker 1: went missing. Say, there has been three massive searches. The
Speaker 1: Saturday immediately following the disappearance, then the next Saturday where
Speaker 1: there was two hundred people. Now this is by air,
Speaker 1: this is by foot, and what is known are door knocks.
Speaker 1: Where that fourteen square mile of houses doors were each
Speaker 1: one and if the house was empty, we would contact
Speaker 1: the owner and that we would go in and search
Speaker 1: those facilities with their permission. But it's important to note
Speaker 1: that we do not believe this to be any wrongdoing
Speaker 1: involved here at all. This is a missing person. Well,
Speaker 1: I would refer you to the Los Angeles Police Department
Speaker 1: on that, yes, but they have publicly said they do
Speaker 1: not believe this to be have anything to do with wrongdoing,
Speaker 1: that this is a missing person, and what the La
Speaker 1: County Sheriff's Department is trying to do every day is
Speaker 1: to find this young twenty four year old woman. Four
Speaker 1: months after my trees went missing, on January ninth, twenty ten,
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department conducted a massive search.
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure, just because it's been changing every day.
Speaker 1: There's probably about fifty horses, there's about forty to fifty
Speaker 1: dogs that are going to be out here as well.
Speaker 1: We have Air Rescue five coming in, which are our
Speaker 1: rescue helicopter. It involved hundreds of volunteers covering an eighteen
Speaker 1: square mile area. They used drones to conduct air searches,
Speaker 1: They did ground searches of creeks, trails, and ridges, but
Speaker 1: no trace of my trees was found. The plan is
Speaker 1: to put people really deep into the hills. A lot
Speaker 1: of the areas have been checked already, but we're going
Speaker 1: to really saturated, so Malibu Canyon will have people literally
Speaker 1: getting airlifted down into the canyon, dropping people all the
Speaker 1: way along the canyon. It's going to be a very slow,
Speaker 1: methodical search. And Ronda was shocked to discover that even
Speaker 1: though the police were doing massive searches, they had not
Speaker 1: actually searched the area right next to Montenedo. And so
Speaker 1: they showed us the big map of the area that
Speaker 1: they were going to search, and so we were saying,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, why are you if you're using all
Speaker 1: this puns and all these people, why are you not
Speaker 1: searching Montnito and in particular the creek bit because at
Speaker 1: that point we learned about it. And then too Right
Speaker 1: told us to be right. Was one of the officers
Speaker 1: working on the case. Too We Right told us, well,
Speaker 1: we're eventually going to cover one hundred percent of that area,
Speaker 1: but we're not going to do that now. And I
Speaker 1: was like, Chuy, I have read that when you're searching
Speaker 1: for a missing person, they're more likely to be found
Speaker 1: within the three mile radius of where they were lost
Speaker 1: be so why not start in mont Needo and work
Speaker 1: your way out. Tashaka worked with Rohnda Chip and Latis
Speaker 1: to search the area in the woods right next to Montinito.
Speaker 1: That's pretty much what got us into the and to
Speaker 1: the old river bed that was down there, and how
Speaker 1: we started to hike in to that area. I think
Speaker 1: it was over in three separate times that we really
Speaker 1: got in there. And I remember that hike because we
Speaker 1: were going in and I started to get dark, so
Speaker 1: I was worried about wildlife, and so we ended up
Speaker 1: coming back. There was some folks who was stopped by
Speaker 1: at the command center and would give these different stories
Speaker 1: that of course interested our guys a lot, and it
Speaker 1: was just very bizarre for the neighborhood. And I guess
Speaker 1: that she wasn't the only one who had kind of
Speaker 1: went missing where things had happened to other females in
Speaker 1: that area, which made even more concerning. So just the
Speaker 1: things that we found along the way, like we found
Speaker 1: how many could be kids playing and doing other crazy
Speaker 1: naughty things there, But we had found underwear, brawls and
Speaker 1: things like that there did not belong to her at all.
Speaker 1: But these are just some of the items that we found.
Speaker 1: The searchers did find some things that struck them as odd.
Speaker 1: This included a newly painted graffiti mural on a culvert
Speaker 1: in the canyon of approximately thirteen African American women with
Speaker 1: afros who were nude and very graphic sexually provocative positions.
Speaker 1: Ronda said that she was spooked by the fact that
Speaker 1: the mural portrayed a woman with the same hairstyle as
Speaker 1: My Trees and said, la as a psychologist, there are
Speaker 1: certain images within that mural that are quite telling. Very
Speaker 1: often people who have some type of psychopathology will draw
Speaker 1: images with big eyes, and there were two images that
Speaker 1: had really big eyes, and one of them appeared to
Speaker 1: Police said that they got into contact with the young
Speaker 1: people who painted the mural. They said that the taggers
Speaker 1: were fans of the pop artist Keith Herring and had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with My Trees or the case. Okay,
Speaker 1: here and near the trailer. In late June, nine months
Speaker 1: after My Trese went missing, a search team with the
Speaker 1: help of REACT, located a trailer that had been seen
Speaker 1: around the area. It had a no trespassing sign in
Speaker 1: the window. I mean didn't say no solicitation. Simon go ahead.
Speaker 1: They also determined that the culvert where the graffiti was
Speaker 1: tagged dropped down a cliff and into some bushes. Now watch,
Speaker 1: it might drop off steeply if you very turbaned. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so if he killed somebody here, he could drag him
Speaker 1: through and shove him out the other side right the
Speaker 1: bushes down there. Volunteers crawled inside with flashlights, but all
Speaker 1: they found at the bottom were a couple of spray cans.
Speaker 1: Tashaka and his team weren't giving up. They continued to
Speaker 1: search the Monteenito area, and then there was hope. A
Speaker 1: high school friend of my Teresa's was in Las Vegas
Speaker 1: and he swore that he saw her. At a news
Speaker 1: conference in Las Vegas, Los Angeles Police Captain Kevin McClure
Speaker 1: said they'd followed up on leeds and conducted around one
Speaker 1: hundred interviews in the area. We've located witnesses that are
Speaker 1: positively seen her. We located all the way from waitresses, bartenders,
Speaker 1: security officers, record citizens. We have talked to more than
Speaker 1: seventy individuals who believe they have seen her. That's based
Speaker 1: on a photograph and some passage of time in most instances,
Speaker 1: but that volume causes us to believe we're on the
Speaker 1: right track. It's been eleven months since my trese went
Speaker 1: missing and nothing. On August ninth, twenty ten, California State
Speaker 1: Park rangers were inspecting parts of the Santa Monica Recreation
Speaker 1: Area for marijuana cultivation. They were deep in the woods
Speaker 1: of Dark Canyon, near the creek bed that's dried up
Speaker 1: in the summer months, scouting for irrigation lines when they
Speaker 1: stumbled across scattered clothing and then human remains. Yeah, as
Speaker 1: I put the people for sure, it's dry. My producer,
Speaker 1: Gabby and I are hiking in the woods in what
Speaker 1: feels like the middle of nowhere. I guess the rainy
Speaker 1: time starts in late November and it floods, but then
Speaker 1: the rest of the time it's dry as it is
Speaker 1: now and like it was when my tree is wellnessing.
Speaker 1: We started at the Backbone Trail in Malibu Creek State Park,
Speaker 1: but we're going off trail now, following the creek bed.
Speaker 1: We first started up the Backbone trail because we had
Speaker 1: sort of a lot of people had told us that
Speaker 1: the spot was accessible from there, but we and the
Speaker 1: Backbone Trail looked walkable, like it looked like something that
Speaker 1: you could potentially if you're on the road, turn down
Speaker 1: and walk down. But once we got off of that
Speaker 1: into the creek bad and started heading toward the back
Speaker 1: of the house where the GPS coordinates start, it's really
Speaker 1: it's very rocky. I wouldn't say, I mean, look, we're
Speaker 1: both really out of breath, but we're very amateur hikers.
Speaker 1: We were able to do it, so in no way dangerous,
Speaker 1: but it's also absolutely not something that you could do
Speaker 1: at night in the dark. The creek bed takes us
Speaker 1: to Dark Canyon. As we get further and further into
Speaker 1: the dense forest, the creek bed becomes more treacherous. Cliffs, rocks,
Speaker 1: poison oak, and overgrown ivy also, and I've gotten stung
Speaker 1: by everything down here. When we're almost to our destination,
Speaker 1: we see irrigation pipes, we're seeing the irrigation We're seeing
Speaker 1: some sort of irrigation system, which could be the irrigation
Speaker 1: system that the guys from Alvy Search and Rescue found
Speaker 1: that day. On the day they found the remains, the
Speaker 1: ranger's job was to make sure that the marijuana growers
Speaker 1: had not come back. Then one of the searchers saw
Speaker 1: something among the leaves, a red leather strap, then a
Speaker 1: black bra partially covered with debris, and finally a pair
Speaker 1: of blue jeans. Then the supervising ranger saw a human
Speaker 1: skull and a leg bone. The ranger could not get
Speaker 1: a signal on his cell phone, so he notified his
Speaker 1: dispatcher by radio. Tshaka just happened to be monitoring the
Speaker 1: radio that day. So part of what we do at
Speaker 1: La Ni React is that we monitor police fire frequencies.
Speaker 1: So that day I just remember, I don't even know
Speaker 1: why and how, but I was working and I was listening,
Speaker 1: and I just tuned into the radio call, and so
Speaker 1: from knowing that they found something too, we don't know
Speaker 1: what it is. It could be an animal, it could
Speaker 1: be this, you know. Tshaka called Ronda and the family
Speaker 1: hustled to the edge of the canyon to wait for news.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, I got a phone call from
Speaker 1: to Shaka star Well from the reacting So he said, Rhonda,
Speaker 1: he said me, remains have been found in that general
Speaker 1: area where my trees was, and he's it was the
Speaker 1: way that it was a partly partially mummified skeletal remains,
Speaker 1: and they believe it's my trees. I called Latis, cancel
Speaker 1: my day, cancel her day. We jumped in the car
Speaker 1: and we headed out there. They kept waiting. Tshaka went
Speaker 1: to the Lost Hill Sheriff's department to get more information.
Speaker 1: He kept calling the Lost Hill station to try and
Speaker 1: get updates. Then in the meantime, Lauren called the detective saying, hey,
Speaker 1: we got word that there's remains found. Lauren is Latis's sister,
Speaker 1: my Terce's aunt. He's like, what are you talking about? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? And then oh, when there
Speaker 1: was just a couple of bones, it was we're like, well, no,
Speaker 1: we have for that. It is partially mummified remains. So
Speaker 1: even then and you guys don't need to come. Of course,
Speaker 1: we headed out there. So it was right there, and
Speaker 1: so we just waited there for ever, and they were
Speaker 1: trying to get us go home. And we went and
Speaker 1: go home and they're like, well, nothing's going to happen
Speaker 1: until morning. Way out, we'll stay posted. I was said,
Speaker 1: oh my car, okay, yeah, And so we wouldn't go.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't go, And so then it started getting like
Speaker 1: later and I just so eventually we saw the helicopter
Speaker 1: and then to shock up because he's very aware. He goes,
Speaker 1: I bet she's in there. I bet they air lifted
Speaker 1: her out right. But they told us that they were
Speaker 1: going to do it in the morning, is what they
Speaker 1: told us, Like, well, we'll sit here till the morning. There.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until the following day that it was officially
Speaker 1: confirmed that there were remains that were extracted from the
Speaker 1: middle of Dark Canyon in the creek bed, and that
Speaker 1: they were my Terce's. She was found partially mummified, naked,
Speaker 1: with her clothing several feet away from her where she
Speaker 1: was fat. There's no way that she could get down there.
Speaker 1: I just I just remember Bill Smith's home and we're
Speaker 1: walking on a trail. There's a trail, and then the
Speaker 1: trail kind of ends itself, but if you kind of
Speaker 1: go through some rough terrain, you can kind of make
Speaker 1: it through to the ravine, which is on a cliff side.
Speaker 1: So I mean, the way that it looks like her
Speaker 1: body was found, it was if you look down on
Speaker 1: the side of a cliff, kind of like she was
Speaker 1: pushed her or was thrown over downside this cliff side
Speaker 1: into that ravine. I very seriously doubt that anything or
Speaker 1: something put her deep down in that ravine. We've asked
Speaker 1: almost everyone this question, and it's hard to get a
Speaker 1: clear answer. Could my trees have gotten in there herself?
Speaker 1: Most of them say no. First an anyone who knows
Speaker 1: my trees says that she hated the woods. And second,
Speaker 1: where she was found is miles from any access point.
Speaker 1: So while the road and civilization border interner weave the
Speaker 1: state parks, one wrong turn and you could be lost
Speaker 1: deep in the woods. But why would my trees have
Speaker 1: kept walking? I just don't see her hiking that deep.
Speaker 1: We checked all the ways into where she was found
Speaker 1: and there was no way. I mean, it was rough
Speaker 1: for us. I mean I remember climbing through water tubes,
Speaker 1: sliding down I'm sure to see some of to get
Speaker 1: down to the point where we absolutely could not go
Speaker 1: anywhere and anymore, and that was only due to the sunlight,
Speaker 1: and then getting back to where we needed originally started from.
Speaker 1: It's just very, very very I mean, it's we were men.
Speaker 1: I can't We did walk. We did hike with the family.
Speaker 1: Family did hike with us. It was daylight, so it
Speaker 1: wasn't that difficult. But at night there's no way I
Speaker 1: could see it at any type of state the moonlight,
Speaker 1: because I went out there one night. Now I wanted
Speaker 1: to see, and we were right in front of Bill
Speaker 1: Smith's house, and I wanted to see what does it
Speaker 1: look like that night there? And the moonlight is the
Speaker 1: only light that you actually just see. But when you're
Speaker 1: down in the grove, the grove, the ravine area, it's
Speaker 1: so shaded, it's shaded by the trees that the moonlight,
Speaker 1: it just no justice didn't help at all. Is it
Speaker 1: really plausible that my trees could have walked down here
Speaker 1: herself hiked for hours through sharp thorns and trees and
Speaker 1: climbed up boulders, and then for some reason decided to
Speaker 1: take her clothes off and keep walking into danger. When
Speaker 1: we went on our hike, it was nearly impossible to
Speaker 1: walk along the creek bed. It started out almost like
Speaker 1: a normal hike. I mean, it was a narrow trail,
Speaker 1: it was somewhat steep, but you could see, you could
Speaker 1: see houses, you could see the sides of the mountain.
Speaker 1: It just felt like an omal height. But once we
Speaker 1: got on the creek bed, it started to be just
Speaker 1: like we're climbing over giant boulders and under logs, and
Speaker 1: now it's really impossible to get off of this trail
Speaker 1: because both sides were down in a valley, and so
Speaker 1: each side going up is very steep, so there's really
Speaker 1: no way to climb out of here. You kind of
Speaker 1: have to just go forward or backward. I don't think that.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're going to walk out toward the road
Speaker 1: and we're going to see if there's any like obvious
Speaker 1: way she could have made it down here from the
Speaker 1: road the other way. But as of right now, if
Speaker 1: it continues like this, I'm gonna go ahead and say
Speaker 1: there's no way she walked to herself, I'm now more
Speaker 1: convinced that she did not walk here. Next time on
Speaker 1: Helen Gone, it is the confirmed remains of why Trees Richardson.
Speaker 1: Would we bury her? We're going to have to fight
Speaker 1: for exhamation. Yeah, this situation is is really unfortunate and
Speaker 1: would have made it very difficult to determine the cause
Speaker 1: of death. This is not closed. This is still open,
Speaker 1: and that's what they're going to do. Now. If you
Speaker 1: object to that, that's your I'm just asking you, is
Speaker 1: that proper? What do you think of my going different?
Speaker 1: Is this circumstance, everything about it is a screaming red flag.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever seen a case where that happened.
Speaker 1: I'm Katherine Townsend and this is Helen Gone. Helen Gone
Speaker 1: is a production of School of Humans and iHeartRadio. It's
Speaker 1: written and narrated by me, Katherine Townsend. Our producers are
Speaker 1: Gabby Watts, Taylor Church and James Morrison. Music is by
Speaker 1: Ben Sale. Mix is by Tunewelders. Our executive producers are
Speaker 1: Brandon Barr, Elsie Crowley and Brian Lavin. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Chipcroft for use of footage from his documentary Boss Compassion
Speaker 1: m HM School of Humans m M School of Humans