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Speaker 1: Pushkin. A few months after episode twelve came out, Haley

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Speaker 1: and I found ourselves standing in pretty much the last

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Speaker 1: place we ever expected to be outside the Los Angeles

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Speaker 1: County Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau in Monterey Park. I feel

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Speaker 1: like we're gonna need a selfie.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, right here, right now?

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah?

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Speaker 1: Can we see us in here? Probably?

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Speaker 2: But it's okay.

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Speaker 1: We're excited we're allowed to take a selfie. We've been

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Speaker 1: trying to get the attention of the Sheriff's homicide detectives

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Speaker 1: ever since we started reporting on one of the county's

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Speaker 1: most notorious unsolved cases, the two thousand and nine disappearance

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Speaker 1: and death of my Teres Richardson. We'd appealed to them

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Speaker 1: to share information with us, and when that didn't happen,

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Speaker 1: we tried to provide them with the new information we'd uncovered.

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Speaker 1: But now, after years of avoiding our questions, they want

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Speaker 1: to talk to us.

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Speaker 3: So I'll keep my.

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Speaker 1: Last recordings for a while. Definitely need to turn this

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Speaker 1: off when we go inside, should we? Just ready? I'm

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Speaker 1: Dana Goodyear and this is a Lost Hills bonus episode.

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Speaker 1: After the last episode of Lost Hills, Dark Canyon dropped

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Speaker 1: in July, things went surprisingly quiet. The season had been

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Speaker 1: so intense to make and the material was so urgent.

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Speaker 1: We'd found startling new information potentially connecting a local Malibu man,

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Speaker 1: Rick Forsberg, to the unsolved disappearance and death of my

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Speaker 1: Teres Richardson. I think we were expecting to feel a

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Speaker 1: cosmic shift in the after math of our reporting. Instead,

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Speaker 1: there was silence. But then on a Thursday night in

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Speaker 1: the middle of August, I checked my inbox. There was

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Speaker 1: a new email with the subject line my Terce Richardson.

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Speaker 1: The sender was Detective Sean McCarthy in the Cold Case

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Speaker 1: unit of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. He wanted

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Speaker 1: to talk. He was inviting us to the homicide Bureau

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Speaker 1: to meet with him, another detective and two lieutenants, and

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Speaker 1: he wrote, we should quote feel free to bring anything

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Speaker 1: that you believe may be pertinent to the investigation unquote.

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Speaker 1: In the last episode of the season, we'd listed the

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Speaker 1: actions we hoped the Sheriff's Department would take in light

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Speaker 1: of what we'd discovered. Our number one ask was that

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Speaker 1: they'd take into evidence and test the underwear and other

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Speaker 1: items we'd found at Rick Forsberg's Mountain fort to see

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Speaker 1: if there was a connection to my trees. Now it

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Speaker 1: sounded like they were giving us a green light to

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Speaker 1: bring it all to the station. Oh my god. Also,

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Speaker 1: can you just picture us walking in with a trash

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Speaker 1: bag pull of underwear to the homicide department. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's frightening. Was easy for me to picture that. Uh yeah,

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Speaker 1: So there we were at the homicide bureau with a

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Speaker 1: bag of underwear, which we left in Haley's car. We

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Speaker 1: still had to convince them that they needed to assume

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Speaker 1: custody of it. We rang the bell and got buzzed

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Speaker 1: into a sparse beij lobby. After a few minutes, Detective

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Speaker 1: McCarthy came out to meet us. We followed him down

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Speaker 1: a hallway lined with pictures of historic homicide investigations to

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Speaker 1: a conference room he'd reserved for the afternoon.

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Speaker 2: Haley, we're allowed to record. Amazing.

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Speaker 1: To our total surprise, Detective McCarthy said we could record

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Speaker 1: the meeting. We just fully assumed that we were not

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Speaker 1: going to be doing this, but this is great. The

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Speaker 1: iPhone's pretty much we're going to record too, Apparently our

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Speaker 1: podcast and what if anything the Sheriff's Department should do

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Speaker 1: about it had generated quite a bit of internal discussion, and.

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Speaker 2: I'm going to be honest with you because i want

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Speaker 2: to be transparent.

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Speaker 4: There's a lot of disagreement on whether we should even

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Speaker 4: be here today, a lot of disagreement to the point

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Speaker 4: of people being angry at me for setting up to interview.

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Speaker 4: Some feel that this case is over with, it's come

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Speaker 4: to a conclusion.

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Speaker 2: There was a part of me that wanted to tell

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Speaker 2: you to go pound saying too.

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Speaker 4: But when I listened to your podcast, there are some

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Speaker 4: things in there that I think.

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Speaker 2: We at least need to talk about.

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Speaker 1: Before we got into the details of what we don't.

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Speaker 1: He wanted us to understand a couple things. First, he

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Speaker 1: wasn't quite or wasn't yet the assigned investigator, although he

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Speaker 1: was an investigator and he'd been assigned to hear us out. Second,

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Speaker 1: he didn't want us getting our hopes up that they'd

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Speaker 1: be able to solve my Teres's case.

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Speaker 4: I just want to educate you on the Sheriff's Department, okay,

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Speaker 4: and our unit in particular. We've been in existence for

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Speaker 4: one hundred and two years, the Homicide Bureau. We have

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Speaker 4: over twenty thousand homicides in our library. Of those twenty

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Speaker 4: thousand homicides, over forty five hundred are unsolved cases.

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Speaker 2: Forty five hundred.

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Speaker 4: Right our unsolved unit is made up of about twelve investigators,

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Speaker 4: some who don't investigate cold cases. We have six investigators

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Speaker 4: that are currently investigating cold cases for forty five hundred

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Speaker 4: cases right sticks. Right now, I personally am investigating about

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Speaker 4: thirty five cold cases.

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Speaker 2: Right. Of those thirty five cold cases, there's more.

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Speaker 3: But those are the most solvable cold cases that I

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Speaker 3: feel there's viable information or we have recently received viable

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Speaker 3: information that make that case.

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Speaker 2: Solvable.

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Speaker 1: The first thing detective McCarthy wanted to know from us

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Speaker 1: was how confident were we that Rick Forsberg had played

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Speaker 1: a role in my Teresa's death?

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Speaker 4: In your opinion, based on your entire series of podcasts,

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Speaker 4: is Forsberg the one and only viable suspect in your opinion,

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Speaker 4: if he is.

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Speaker 2: A suspect if she was murdered.

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Speaker 1: Yes, okay, So, which is not to say that there

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Speaker 1: couldn't have been other people. There could be eyewitnesses. This

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Speaker 1: is in essence what we reported the podcast Forstburg had

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Speaker 1: been a person of interest going way back to twenty

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Speaker 1: ten when my truse was still missing. Then her remains

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Speaker 1: were found in Dark Canyon, in the same area where

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Speaker 1: Forstburg was known to grow pot and about a mile

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Speaker 1: from his fort in the brush off Payuma Road. Forstburg

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Speaker 1: was given a polygraph exam in twenty twelve and then

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Speaker 1: for some reason they let him go.

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Speaker 2: We know that he was on the radar, So what

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Speaker 2: happened to him?

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Speaker 1: Like, why didn't why wasn't anything pursued past a point?

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Speaker 2: I mean, that's still one of our biggest questions. We're

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Speaker 2: going to try to answer some of your questions.

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Speaker 1: Detective McCarthy opened a folder that was on the table

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Speaker 1: in front of him.

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Speaker 4: So how do we determine, based on what we have,

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Speaker 4: if Rick Forsburg has anything to do with this. Forsburg,

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Speaker 4: in March of twenty twelve, was interviewed. I know you

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Speaker 4: know that he was interviewed, and I'm going to read

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Speaker 4: I'm going to read a sentence to you. Investigators recalled

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Speaker 4: the name of Rick Forsburg being associated with a clue

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Speaker 4: received in January of twenty ten.

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Speaker 1: That clue was about Rick's fort, where witnesses said there

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Speaker 1: was a ribcage, and there.

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Speaker 4: Was a follow up investigation done. The clue indicated Forsburg

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Speaker 4: lived near tree Fort. In May of twenty ten, tree

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Speaker 4: Fort was located in the immediate search area by deputies.

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Speaker 4: Bones were located which were later identified as animal remains.

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Speaker 4: Does that mean that they couldn't have missed something though,

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Speaker 4: It doesn't mean that one hundred percent sure, but they

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Speaker 4: at least did a search of that area and they

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Speaker 4: found nothing related to my trees Richardson.

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Speaker 1: Then Detective McCarthy said in twenty twelve, a quote citizen

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Speaker 1: informant had tipped the Sheriff's department about Rick. Again, he

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Speaker 1: didn't say her name, but we know this was Lisa Lapour,

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Speaker 1: who we interviewed for the podcast. She told us Rick

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Speaker 1: had tried to take her into Dark Canon, but instead

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Speaker 1: she drove him to Lost Hill Station where he was

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Speaker 1: interviewed by homicide detectives.

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Speaker 2: So they interviewed him.

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Speaker 4: And at least according to the report, and I spoke

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Speaker 4: briefly with the investigator, he was forthcoming. There wasn't any

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Speaker 4: contentiousness that I can tell, And in my conversation with him,

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Speaker 4: he admitted he was a heavy drug user and alcohol user.

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Speaker 4: For thirty years. He admitted he had a tree fort.

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Speaker 4: He called it a cottage in that area. He denied

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Speaker 4: having anything to do with Richard's and or disappearance, and

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Speaker 4: offered an explanation.

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Speaker 1: Rick told the detectives a version of the same story

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Speaker 1: he told his friends.

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Speaker 4: And here's where we get into the information that you

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Speaker 4: already talked about, is that he was in the canyon.

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Speaker 4: He was at his tree fort smoking math or marijuana

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Speaker 4: or whatever he was doing.

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Speaker 2: And once he was done, he was.

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Speaker 4: On his way back to his residence, and on his

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Speaker 4: way back he hears a female voice yelling. And he

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Speaker 4: described it. And I asked rich Tomlin, who's a black man.

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Speaker 4: He described it as an African American voice. I don't

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Speaker 4: know how he determined that, but when I asked Tom

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Speaker 4: and he goes, I can see that. Okay, here's an

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Speaker 4: African America female African American. The logical connection my trees, right.

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Speaker 4: But he said it wasn't a woman yelling for help.

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Speaker 4: It was more of a woman in some sort of

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Speaker 4: confrontation with somebody. And Forsburgh said he went to investigate,

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Speaker 4: but he could not find the source of the yelling.

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Speaker 4: He told investigators this right, couldn't find a source source

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Speaker 4: of the yelling, so he went on his way. He

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Speaker 4: said he didn't come forward because of his contentious relationship

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Speaker 4: with law enforcement.

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Speaker 1: At that point, Detective McCarthy said, the detectives asked Forstburg

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Speaker 1: if he'd be willing to take a polygraph.

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Speaker 4: Polygraphic examinations are not admissible in court, so we only

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Speaker 4: do them under certain circumstances. And in this case, they're

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Speaker 4: trying to find out does he have anything to do

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Speaker 4: with disappearance? Right, And I will read this to you.

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Speaker 4: It's striking to me. You may scoff at it, but

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Speaker 4: it's striking to me. And this is a poly examiner

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Speaker 4: explaining this to the investigator. A score of plus four

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Speaker 4: or higher indicates little or no deception. A score of

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Speaker 4: minus three or below indicates deception. The preliminary scoring for

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Speaker 4: borderbergs indicated a score.

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Speaker 2: Of plus ten.

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Speaker 4: That is passing with flying colors. Okay, now you can

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Speaker 4: say what you want about polygraphic examinations, but that's striking

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Speaker 4: to me, the plus ten that's passing with flying colors.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: So this is why Forstberg walked, not because he had

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Speaker 1: some other alibi that Haley and I didn't know about

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Speaker 1: not because investigators found some other credible reason. If there

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Speaker 1: had been one, I'm sure Detective McCarthy would have been

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Speaker 1: all too delighted to tell us about it. No, the

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Speaker 1: detectives let Forstburg walk because he passed a polygraph with

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Speaker 1: quote unquote flying colors, even though the most superficial googling

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Speaker 1: suggests that if he was high on pot and or

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Speaker 1: meth his drugs of choice, this alone could have thrown

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Speaker 1: off the results. This was depressing as hell the way

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Speaker 1: we saw it. They had my Terce's killer in custody

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Speaker 1: and they let him slip away, and now he was dead.

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Speaker 1: But then Detective McCarthy offered us a tiny fraction of

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Speaker 1: hope that maybe the case can be solved. After all,

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Speaker 1: we've been sitting around the conference table for several hours

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Speaker 1: at this point, explaining what we knew and how, and

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Speaker 1: gleaning what little bits about the investigation Detective McCarthy was

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Speaker 1: willing to let slip. We'd taken coffee breaks and bathroom breaks.

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Speaker 1: The detectives had even ordered pizza. But now it was

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Speaker 1: time to stop asking questions about the past and see

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Speaker 1: what they were willing to do moving forward. We needed

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Speaker 1: to get them to think about Rick's fort. It was

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Speaker 1: potentially a crime scene, maybe still rich in evidence, and

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Speaker 1: some of that potential evidence, what we using shorthand called

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Speaker 1: the bag of underwear, was sitting in the trunk of

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Speaker 1: Haley's car in the parking lot out front.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so probably for us.

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Speaker 1: The biggest question we weren't able to answer, which we

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Speaker 1: believe the Sheriff's department could answer potentially, is is there

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Speaker 1: a connection between I mean the women's undergarments that we

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Speaker 1: found at the site and my trees, or bigger question,

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Speaker 1: is there any physical evidence that could place my rise

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Speaker 1: at the fort? Because I think, look, I don't know

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Speaker 1: yet what your standards are for viability, but to me,

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Speaker 1: that would be viable. There's also another kind of corollary question,

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Speaker 1: which is are any of these items of underwear and

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Speaker 1: lingerie linked to other women who might be victims.

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Speaker 2: They were varied in.

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Speaker 1: Their sizes, styles, One thing clearly belonged to a child,

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Speaker 1: and we think it's quite possible that Forstberg had a

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Speaker 1: much bigger pool of victims than even we know about.

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Speaker 1: So that's why we kept everything and we did bring

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Speaker 1: it today in case you want it. So that you know,

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Speaker 1: there might be something that you could get a signature off,

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Speaker 1: but we ran out a one way with what we

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Speaker 1: could do. Using a private forensic lab, we've been able

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Speaker 1: to test one pair of the underwear we'd found at

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Speaker 1: Rick's fort. We chose a size medium black thong, similar

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Speaker 1: to the style we knew my Trees wore, but the

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Speaker 1: DNA was too degraded. It was possible that the rest

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Speaker 1: of the underwear would be similarly useless, but we didn't know.

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Speaker 1: We were hoping the Sheriff's department would test the rest

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Speaker 1: of it. There was something else we wanted to bring

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Speaker 1: to their attention too. It was probably the biggest long shot,

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Speaker 1: but importantly it would not depend on DNA. It required

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Speaker 1: a little teeing up. When my Teresa's remains were exhumed

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Speaker 1: and re examined in July of twenty eleven, the coroner's

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Speaker 1: criminalist noted the presence of quote, loose green fuzz like

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Speaker 1: hair slash fibers located near the legs unquote. There were

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Speaker 1: some other things that were not clothing that were collected,

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Speaker 1: including this green fuzz like material that was near her

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Speaker 1: legs that when we first read the supplementary autopsy report

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Speaker 1: we thought was so weird, like, what is this green fuzz?

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Speaker 1: We hadn't been able to see a picture of the material,

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Speaker 1: so we didn't know exactly what it looked like. But

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Speaker 1: digging around in Rick's trash heap at the fort, we'd

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Speaker 1: found a swath of bright, kelly green material.

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Speaker 2: And this is the thing that might be nothing, or

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Speaker 2: it might be everything.

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Speaker 1: Is at the fort we found material that looked like

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Speaker 1: it could fit that description. So would they take the

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Speaker 1: bag of underwear and the green fuzz? Detective McCarthy looked

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Speaker 1: over at his supervising lieutenant.

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Speaker 2: I've already made decision. Obviously, you can overwrite it. I say,

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Speaker 2: we just take it and loook it in that that

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Speaker 2: way is.

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Speaker 4: Safe if it does become later on, if it does

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Speaker 4: become something that we want to pursue, we already have it.

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Speaker 4: It's safe if we just let you walk away with it.

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Speaker 4: I don't want to be second guested by somebody higher

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Speaker 4: up the food chain. I say, we just take it

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Speaker 4: into evidence and we'll make decisions later on. By letting

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Speaker 4: you walk away with this suitcase, and then something does

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Speaker 4: come up later, we already have it.

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Speaker 2: Note that there's less.

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Speaker 1: Issue Detective McCarthy cautioned us that there was no guarantee

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Speaker 1: the crime lab would agree to test the items we'd collected.

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Speaker 4: The Sheriff's Department has over eight hundred homicides that have

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Speaker 4: DNA evidence, right, that's not counting other sex crimes and

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Speaker 4: other units.

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Speaker 2: And we're talking into.

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Speaker 4: The thousands of requests to do DNA testing and we

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Speaker 4: get rejected all the time. When we say this need

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Speaker 4: they want to know what link do you have that

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Speaker 4: links this suspect.

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Speaker 2: So the first question they're going to ask is is

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Speaker 2: this murder? And you know what my answer is going

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Speaker 2: to be. I don't know. That's what my answer is

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Speaker 2: going to be. So it's going to drop on the

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Speaker 2: priority list.

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Speaker 1: But by this time I have to admit I was

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Speaker 1: hardly listening to his management of our expectations. I was

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Speaker 1: celebrating the underwear was going into evidence.

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Speaker 4: That's what would I do is slap the evidence figure

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Speaker 4: on it and enter it into.

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Speaker 1: Can I watch that process happen. I don't want to

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Speaker 1: miss the slapping of the evidence on it. That's going

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Speaker 1: to be very satisfying for me. Haley and I left

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Speaker 1: that day feeling triumphant and exhausted. We'd been there for

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Speaker 1: almost five hours and we'd accomplished our most important goal

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Speaker 1: to get that potential evidence safely into the hands of

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Speaker 1: a homicide investigator. But that wasn't the last we heard

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Speaker 1: from Detective McCarthy. Two days after our afternoon at the

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Speaker 1: homicide beer, he sent me another email. I couldn't believe

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Speaker 1: what I was reading. I called Haley right away, Hailey, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I am taping our call. They want us to take

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Speaker 1: them to the fort.

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Speaker 4: Are you serious?

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Speaker 1: Yes?

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Speaker 4: Let's wait. Okay, start from the beginning.

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Speaker 2: Did they call you or what happened?

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Speaker 1: They just emailed me and I just p seed you

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Speaker 1: on the reply, saying and the title of the subject

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Speaker 1: of the email is Rick Forsberg. And those Detective McCarthy

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Speaker 1: believed us enough to drive over an hour to go

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Speaker 1: bushwhacking in Malibu. We were closer than we'd thought possible

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Speaker 1: to some kind of resolution on my Teresa's case. I

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Speaker 1: told him to bring his hiking boots. Lost Hills is

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Speaker 1: written and hosted by Me Dana Goodyear. It was reported

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Speaker 1: by me and Hailey Fox, our senior producer. The show

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Speaker 1: was created by me and Bennadet. Lost Hills is a

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Speaker 1: production of Western sound and Pushkin industries.