Speaker 1: Pushkin. A few months after episode twelve came out, Haley
Speaker 1: and I found ourselves standing in pretty much the last
Speaker 1: place we ever expected to be outside the Los Angeles
Speaker 1: County Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau in Monterey Park. I feel
Speaker 1: like we're gonna need a selfie.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, right here, right now?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah?
Speaker 1: Can we see us in here? Probably?
Speaker 2: But it's okay.
Speaker 1: We're excited we're allowed to take a selfie. We've been
Speaker 1: trying to get the attention of the Sheriff's homicide detectives
Speaker 1: ever since we started reporting on one of the county's
Speaker 1: most notorious unsolved cases, the two thousand and nine disappearance
Speaker 1: and death of my Teres Richardson. We'd appealed to them
Speaker 1: to share information with us, and when that didn't happen,
Speaker 1: we tried to provide them with the new information we'd uncovered.
Speaker 1: But now, after years of avoiding our questions, they want
Speaker 1: to talk to us.
Speaker 3: So I'll keep my.
Speaker 1: Last recordings for a while. Definitely need to turn this
Speaker 1: off when we go inside, should we? Just ready? I'm
Speaker 1: Dana Goodyear and this is a Lost Hills bonus episode.
Speaker 1: After the last episode of Lost Hills, Dark Canyon dropped
Speaker 1: in July, things went surprisingly quiet. The season had been
Speaker 1: so intense to make and the material was so urgent.
Speaker 1: We'd found startling new information potentially connecting a local Malibu man,
Speaker 1: Rick Forsberg, to the unsolved disappearance and death of my
Speaker 1: Teres Richardson. I think we were expecting to feel a
Speaker 1: cosmic shift in the after math of our reporting. Instead,
Speaker 1: there was silence. But then on a Thursday night in
Speaker 1: the middle of August, I checked my inbox. There was
Speaker 1: a new email with the subject line my Terce Richardson.
Speaker 1: The sender was Detective Sean McCarthy in the Cold Case
Speaker 1: unit of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. He wanted
Speaker 1: to talk. He was inviting us to the homicide Bureau
Speaker 1: to meet with him, another detective and two lieutenants, and
Speaker 1: he wrote, we should quote feel free to bring anything
Speaker 1: that you believe may be pertinent to the investigation unquote.
Speaker 1: In the last episode of the season, we'd listed the
Speaker 1: actions we hoped the Sheriff's Department would take in light
Speaker 1: of what we'd discovered. Our number one ask was that
Speaker 1: they'd take into evidence and test the underwear and other
Speaker 1: items we'd found at Rick Forsberg's Mountain fort to see
Speaker 1: if there was a connection to my trees. Now it
Speaker 1: sounded like they were giving us a green light to
Speaker 1: bring it all to the station. Oh my god. Also,
Speaker 1: can you just picture us walking in with a trash
Speaker 1: bag pull of underwear to the homicide department. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's frightening. Was easy for me to picture that. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: So there we were at the homicide bureau with a
Speaker 1: bag of underwear, which we left in Haley's car. We
Speaker 1: still had to convince them that they needed to assume
Speaker 1: custody of it. We rang the bell and got buzzed
Speaker 1: into a sparse beij lobby. After a few minutes, Detective
Speaker 1: McCarthy came out to meet us. We followed him down
Speaker 1: a hallway lined with pictures of historic homicide investigations to
Speaker 1: a conference room he'd reserved for the afternoon.
Speaker 2: Haley, we're allowed to record. Amazing.
Speaker 1: To our total surprise, Detective McCarthy said we could record
Speaker 1: the meeting. We just fully assumed that we were not
Speaker 1: going to be doing this, but this is great. The
Speaker 1: iPhone's pretty much we're going to record too, Apparently our
Speaker 1: podcast and what if anything the Sheriff's Department should do
Speaker 1: about it had generated quite a bit of internal discussion, and.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be honest with you because i want
Speaker 2: to be transparent.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of disagreement on whether we should even
Speaker 4: be here today, a lot of disagreement to the point
Speaker 4: of people being angry at me for setting up to interview.
Speaker 4: Some feel that this case is over with, it's come
Speaker 4: to a conclusion.
Speaker 2: There was a part of me that wanted to tell
Speaker 2: you to go pound saying too.
Speaker 4: But when I listened to your podcast, there are some
Speaker 4: things in there that I think.
Speaker 2: We at least need to talk about.
Speaker 1: Before we got into the details of what we don't.
Speaker 1: He wanted us to understand a couple things. First, he
Speaker 1: wasn't quite or wasn't yet the assigned investigator, although he
Speaker 1: was an investigator and he'd been assigned to hear us out. Second,
Speaker 1: he didn't want us getting our hopes up that they'd
Speaker 1: be able to solve my Teres's case.
Speaker 4: I just want to educate you on the Sheriff's Department, okay,
Speaker 4: and our unit in particular. We've been in existence for
Speaker 4: one hundred and two years, the Homicide Bureau. We have
Speaker 4: over twenty thousand homicides in our library. Of those twenty
Speaker 4: thousand homicides, over forty five hundred are unsolved cases.
Speaker 2: Forty five hundred.
Speaker 4: Right our unsolved unit is made up of about twelve investigators,
Speaker 4: some who don't investigate cold cases. We have six investigators
Speaker 4: that are currently investigating cold cases for forty five hundred
Speaker 4: cases right sticks. Right now, I personally am investigating about
Speaker 4: thirty five cold cases.
Speaker 2: Right. Of those thirty five cold cases, there's more.
Speaker 3: But those are the most solvable cold cases that I
Speaker 3: feel there's viable information or we have recently received viable
Speaker 3: information that make that case.
Speaker 2: Solvable.
Speaker 1: The first thing detective McCarthy wanted to know from us
Speaker 1: was how confident were we that Rick Forsberg had played
Speaker 1: a role in my Teresa's death?
Speaker 4: In your opinion, based on your entire series of podcasts,
Speaker 4: is Forsberg the one and only viable suspect in your opinion,
Speaker 4: if he is.
Speaker 2: A suspect if she was murdered.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, So, which is not to say that there
Speaker 1: couldn't have been other people. There could be eyewitnesses. This
Speaker 1: is in essence what we reported the podcast Forstburg had
Speaker 1: been a person of interest going way back to twenty
Speaker 1: ten when my truse was still missing. Then her remains
Speaker 1: were found in Dark Canyon, in the same area where
Speaker 1: Forstburg was known to grow pot and about a mile
Speaker 1: from his fort in the brush off Payuma Road. Forstburg
Speaker 1: was given a polygraph exam in twenty twelve and then
Speaker 1: for some reason they let him go.
Speaker 2: We know that he was on the radar, So what
Speaker 2: happened to him?
Speaker 1: Like, why didn't why wasn't anything pursued past a point?
Speaker 2: I mean, that's still one of our biggest questions. We're
Speaker 2: going to try to answer some of your questions.
Speaker 1: Detective McCarthy opened a folder that was on the table
Speaker 1: in front of him.
Speaker 4: So how do we determine, based on what we have,
Speaker 4: if Rick Forsburg has anything to do with this. Forsburg,
Speaker 4: in March of twenty twelve, was interviewed. I know you
Speaker 4: know that he was interviewed, and I'm going to read
Speaker 4: I'm going to read a sentence to you. Investigators recalled
Speaker 4: the name of Rick Forsburg being associated with a clue
Speaker 4: received in January of twenty ten.
Speaker 1: That clue was about Rick's fort, where witnesses said there
Speaker 1: was a ribcage, and there.
Speaker 4: Was a follow up investigation done. The clue indicated Forsburg
Speaker 4: lived near tree Fort. In May of twenty ten, tree
Speaker 4: Fort was located in the immediate search area by deputies.
Speaker 4: Bones were located which were later identified as animal remains.
Speaker 4: Does that mean that they couldn't have missed something though,
Speaker 4: It doesn't mean that one hundred percent sure, but they
Speaker 4: at least did a search of that area and they
Speaker 4: found nothing related to my trees Richardson.
Speaker 1: Then Detective McCarthy said in twenty twelve, a quote citizen
Speaker 1: informant had tipped the Sheriff's department about Rick. Again, he
Speaker 1: didn't say her name, but we know this was Lisa Lapour,
Speaker 1: who we interviewed for the podcast. She told us Rick
Speaker 1: had tried to take her into Dark Canon, but instead
Speaker 1: she drove him to Lost Hill Station where he was
Speaker 1: interviewed by homicide detectives.
Speaker 2: So they interviewed him.
Speaker 4: And at least according to the report, and I spoke
Speaker 4: briefly with the investigator, he was forthcoming. There wasn't any
Speaker 4: contentiousness that I can tell, And in my conversation with him,
Speaker 4: he admitted he was a heavy drug user and alcohol user.
Speaker 4: For thirty years. He admitted he had a tree fort.
Speaker 4: He called it a cottage in that area. He denied
Speaker 4: having anything to do with Richard's and or disappearance, and
Speaker 4: offered an explanation.
Speaker 1: Rick told the detectives a version of the same story
Speaker 1: he told his friends.
Speaker 4: And here's where we get into the information that you
Speaker 4: already talked about, is that he was in the canyon.
Speaker 4: He was at his tree fort smoking math or marijuana
Speaker 4: or whatever he was doing.
Speaker 2: And once he was done, he was.
Speaker 4: On his way back to his residence, and on his
Speaker 4: way back he hears a female voice yelling. And he
Speaker 4: described it. And I asked rich Tomlin, who's a black man.
Speaker 4: He described it as an African American voice. I don't
Speaker 4: know how he determined that, but when I asked Tom
Speaker 4: and he goes, I can see that. Okay, here's an
Speaker 4: African America female African American. The logical connection my trees, right.
Speaker 4: But he said it wasn't a woman yelling for help.
Speaker 4: It was more of a woman in some sort of
Speaker 4: confrontation with somebody. And Forsburgh said he went to investigate,
Speaker 4: but he could not find the source of the yelling.
Speaker 4: He told investigators this right, couldn't find a source source
Speaker 4: of the yelling, so he went on his way. He
Speaker 4: said he didn't come forward because of his contentious relationship
Speaker 4: with law enforcement.
Speaker 1: At that point, Detective McCarthy said, the detectives asked Forstburg
Speaker 1: if he'd be willing to take a polygraph.
Speaker 4: Polygraphic examinations are not admissible in court, so we only
Speaker 4: do them under certain circumstances. And in this case, they're
Speaker 4: trying to find out does he have anything to do
Speaker 4: with disappearance? Right, And I will read this to you.
Speaker 4: It's striking to me. You may scoff at it, but
Speaker 4: it's striking to me. And this is a poly examiner
Speaker 4: explaining this to the investigator. A score of plus four
Speaker 4: or higher indicates little or no deception. A score of
Speaker 4: minus three or below indicates deception. The preliminary scoring for
Speaker 4: borderbergs indicated a score.
Speaker 2: Of plus ten.
Speaker 4: That is passing with flying colors. Okay, now you can
Speaker 4: say what you want about polygraphic examinations, but that's striking
Speaker 4: to me, the plus ten that's passing with flying colors.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So this is why Forstberg walked, not because he had
Speaker 1: some other alibi that Haley and I didn't know about
Speaker 1: not because investigators found some other credible reason. If there
Speaker 1: had been one, I'm sure Detective McCarthy would have been
Speaker 1: all too delighted to tell us about it. No, the
Speaker 1: detectives let Forstburg walk because he passed a polygraph with
Speaker 1: quote unquote flying colors, even though the most superficial googling
Speaker 1: suggests that if he was high on pot and or
Speaker 1: meth his drugs of choice, this alone could have thrown
Speaker 1: off the results. This was depressing as hell the way
Speaker 1: we saw it. They had my Terce's killer in custody
Speaker 1: and they let him slip away, and now he was dead.
Speaker 1: But then Detective McCarthy offered us a tiny fraction of
Speaker 1: hope that maybe the case can be solved. After all,
Speaker 1: we've been sitting around the conference table for several hours
Speaker 1: at this point, explaining what we knew and how, and
Speaker 1: gleaning what little bits about the investigation Detective McCarthy was
Speaker 1: willing to let slip. We'd taken coffee breaks and bathroom breaks.
Speaker 1: The detectives had even ordered pizza. But now it was
Speaker 1: time to stop asking questions about the past and see
Speaker 1: what they were willing to do moving forward. We needed
Speaker 1: to get them to think about Rick's fort. It was
Speaker 1: potentially a crime scene, maybe still rich in evidence, and
Speaker 1: some of that potential evidence, what we using shorthand called
Speaker 1: the bag of underwear, was sitting in the trunk of
Speaker 1: Haley's car in the parking lot out front.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so probably for us.
Speaker 1: The biggest question we weren't able to answer, which we
Speaker 1: believe the Sheriff's department could answer potentially, is is there
Speaker 1: a connection between I mean the women's undergarments that we
Speaker 1: found at the site and my trees, or bigger question,
Speaker 1: is there any physical evidence that could place my rise
Speaker 1: at the fort? Because I think, look, I don't know
Speaker 1: yet what your standards are for viability, but to me,
Speaker 1: that would be viable. There's also another kind of corollary question,
Speaker 1: which is are any of these items of underwear and
Speaker 1: lingerie linked to other women who might be victims.
Speaker 2: They were varied in.
Speaker 1: Their sizes, styles, One thing clearly belonged to a child,
Speaker 1: and we think it's quite possible that Forstberg had a
Speaker 1: much bigger pool of victims than even we know about.
Speaker 1: So that's why we kept everything and we did bring
Speaker 1: it today in case you want it. So that you know,
Speaker 1: there might be something that you could get a signature off,
Speaker 1: but we ran out a one way with what we
Speaker 1: could do. Using a private forensic lab, we've been able
Speaker 1: to test one pair of the underwear we'd found at
Speaker 1: Rick's fort. We chose a size medium black thong, similar
Speaker 1: to the style we knew my Trees wore, but the
Speaker 1: DNA was too degraded. It was possible that the rest
Speaker 1: of the underwear would be similarly useless, but we didn't know.
Speaker 1: We were hoping the Sheriff's department would test the rest
Speaker 1: of it. There was something else we wanted to bring
Speaker 1: to their attention too. It was probably the biggest long shot,
Speaker 1: but importantly it would not depend on DNA. It required
Speaker 1: a little teeing up. When my Teresa's remains were exhumed
Speaker 1: and re examined in July of twenty eleven, the coroner's
Speaker 1: criminalist noted the presence of quote, loose green fuzz like
Speaker 1: hair slash fibers located near the legs unquote. There were
Speaker 1: some other things that were not clothing that were collected,
Speaker 1: including this green fuzz like material that was near her
Speaker 1: legs that when we first read the supplementary autopsy report
Speaker 1: we thought was so weird, like, what is this green fuzz?
Speaker 1: We hadn't been able to see a picture of the material,
Speaker 1: so we didn't know exactly what it looked like. But
Speaker 1: digging around in Rick's trash heap at the fort, we'd
Speaker 1: found a swath of bright, kelly green material.
Speaker 2: And this is the thing that might be nothing, or
Speaker 2: it might be everything.
Speaker 1: Is at the fort we found material that looked like
Speaker 1: it could fit that description. So would they take the
Speaker 1: bag of underwear and the green fuzz? Detective McCarthy looked
Speaker 1: over at his supervising lieutenant.
Speaker 2: I've already made decision. Obviously, you can overwrite it. I say,
Speaker 2: we just take it and loook it in that that
Speaker 2: way is.
Speaker 4: Safe if it does become later on, if it does
Speaker 4: become something that we want to pursue, we already have it.
Speaker 4: It's safe if we just let you walk away with it.
Speaker 4: I don't want to be second guested by somebody higher
Speaker 4: up the food chain. I say, we just take it
Speaker 4: into evidence and we'll make decisions later on. By letting
Speaker 4: you walk away with this suitcase, and then something does
Speaker 4: come up later, we already have it.
Speaker 2: Note that there's less.
Speaker 1: Issue Detective McCarthy cautioned us that there was no guarantee
Speaker 1: the crime lab would agree to test the items we'd collected.
Speaker 4: The Sheriff's Department has over eight hundred homicides that have
Speaker 4: DNA evidence, right, that's not counting other sex crimes and
Speaker 4: other units.
Speaker 2: And we're talking into.
Speaker 4: The thousands of requests to do DNA testing and we
Speaker 4: get rejected all the time. When we say this need
Speaker 4: they want to know what link do you have that
Speaker 4: links this suspect.
Speaker 2: So the first question they're going to ask is is
Speaker 2: this murder? And you know what my answer is going
Speaker 2: to be. I don't know. That's what my answer is
Speaker 2: going to be. So it's going to drop on the
Speaker 2: priority list.
Speaker 1: But by this time I have to admit I was
Speaker 1: hardly listening to his management of our expectations. I was
Speaker 1: celebrating the underwear was going into evidence.
Speaker 4: That's what would I do is slap the evidence figure
Speaker 4: on it and enter it into.
Speaker 1: Can I watch that process happen. I don't want to
Speaker 1: miss the slapping of the evidence on it. That's going
Speaker 1: to be very satisfying for me. Haley and I left
Speaker 1: that day feeling triumphant and exhausted. We'd been there for
Speaker 1: almost five hours and we'd accomplished our most important goal
Speaker 1: to get that potential evidence safely into the hands of
Speaker 1: a homicide investigator. But that wasn't the last we heard
Speaker 1: from Detective McCarthy. Two days after our afternoon at the
Speaker 1: homicide beer, he sent me another email. I couldn't believe
Speaker 1: what I was reading. I called Haley right away, Hailey, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I am taping our call. They want us to take
Speaker 1: them to the fort.
Speaker 4: Are you serious?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 4: Let's wait. Okay, start from the beginning.
Speaker 2: Did they call you or what happened?
Speaker 1: They just emailed me and I just p seed you
Speaker 1: on the reply, saying and the title of the subject
Speaker 1: of the email is Rick Forsberg. And those Detective McCarthy
Speaker 1: believed us enough to drive over an hour to go
Speaker 1: bushwhacking in Malibu. We were closer than we'd thought possible
Speaker 1: to some kind of resolution on my Teresa's case. I
Speaker 1: told him to bring his hiking boots. Lost Hills is
Speaker 1: written and hosted by Me Dana Goodyear. It was reported
Speaker 1: by me and Hailey Fox, our senior producer. The show
Speaker 1: was created by me and Bennadet. Lost Hills is a
Speaker 1: production of Western sound and Pushkin industries.