Speaker 1: Pushkin. Sergeant Towey Wright told me about the guy with
Speaker 1: the fort in the spring of twenty twenty one. It
Speaker 1: was about to be my birthday, and I felt like
Speaker 1: I'd just gotten the gift of a lifetime. I texted
Speaker 1: Haley right away. I told her the cops had suspected
Speaker 1: foul play. They had investigated someone there was a person
Speaker 1: of interest. His name was Richard Wayne Forsburg. Some googling
Speaker 1: pulled up an obituary from a funeral home in Westlake Village,
Speaker 1: a valley community not far from Montanito. Forsburg had died
Speaker 1: a year and a half earlier, at the age of
Speaker 1: sixty four. The picture on the website wasn't a middle
Speaker 1: aged man, though, it was a strapping, blonde California kid
Speaker 1: circa nineteen seventy three, blue eyes, bullneck, stuffed into a
Speaker 1: brown suit, probably for a high school photo. The guest
Speaker 1: book was filled with comments from his neighborhood friends and
Speaker 1: former classmates at a Gurra High. Guys revered him. Quote Wow,
Speaker 1: rick we had so many adventures. Yahoo. Women adored him.
Speaker 1: Quote Ricky was a talented athlete, handsome as hell, always
Speaker 1: the life of the party, and just a wonderful guy,
Speaker 1: one of the loves of my early years. This wasn't
Speaker 1: the profile I'd been expecting. He sounded like a bit
Speaker 1: of a charmer, a bit of a hell raiser, definitely
Speaker 1: a bro, but not on the surface anyway a monster
Speaker 1: in any case. He wasn't reviled, rejected, or an outcast
Speaker 1: of his former world. He was a golden child.
Speaker 2: I don't care now, yeah, right down the street. I've
Speaker 2: lived in Montana all my life.
Speaker 1: Six weeks after Sergeant Wright told me about Rick, I
Speaker 1: saw the video that Raven Masterson had made of the
Speaker 1: Montanito lifer.
Speaker 2: But so I just heard this a couple weeks later,
Speaker 2: you know, I hear that she's missing, and then you know,
Speaker 2: I walk through all this stuff's going on like sorry,
Speaker 2: I'm up with my spot, like two days later, and
Speaker 2: I see And I've seen a lot of vultures in
Speaker 2: my life. I lived after fifty years, right right, I've
Speaker 2: never seen one hundred vultures just swoom. I seem like
Speaker 2: a thousand of them, you know, I mean, I've never
Speaker 2: seen that many, you.
Speaker 3: Know, So when did you see this?
Speaker 2: I saw this like two days after she was missing,
Speaker 2: maybe four days after she was Missing.
Speaker 1: Raven titled her video the fall Guy because she thought
Speaker 1: he was a scapegoat. She doesn't say his name, but
Speaker 1: I recognized him though he'd aged and faded.
Speaker 2: Zucka. I don't know any of the facts except for
Speaker 2: that the constant Eye was the last one to see
Speaker 2: her live.
Speaker 1: It was Rick Forstberg. I'm Dana Goodyear and this is
Speaker 1: Lost Hills episode eight, Rick Trouble. As soon as we
Speaker 1: got Rick's name, we started hunting for information about him.
Speaker 1: Who was he? We found a Facebook group called Once
Speaker 1: Upon a Time in Montanito. Skimming through it was like
Speaker 1: reading an old timey California fairy tale, full of images
Speaker 1: of picnics, parties, motorcycle rallies, horseback rides, and sun struck
Speaker 1: days at Surfrider Beach and Corr's beer. A lot of
Speaker 1: Corr's beer. We found pictures of Rick back in the
Speaker 1: day in bell bottoms or short shorts and tearing around
Speaker 1: a track on his motorcycle. One commenter on the page
Speaker 1: calls him the Montanito nick Nolty, and in general, the
Speaker 1: page seemed like an informal memorial to the community's boys,
Speaker 1: boys who played rough, partied hard, and died before their time.
Speaker 1: They called themselves the Montanito Boys, and Rick was their ringleader.
Speaker 4: He's tall, handsome, He's got a really good vibe, bright
Speaker 4: blue eyes, tan, just gorgeous. He was just beautiful to me,
Speaker 4: absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 1: This is Sharie Ameck. After many failed attempts to set
Speaker 1: up an interview, we dropped by our house one day unannounced,
Speaker 1: and to our surprise, she invites us into her backyard.
Speaker 1: It's the house she grew up in and the yard
Speaker 1: she got married in.
Speaker 5: Rick did everything like for my wedding I had here
Speaker 5: with my dad.
Speaker 4: He was always down to help and he knew what
Speaker 4: he was doing.
Speaker 1: Her parents were half a generation older than Rick and
Speaker 1: extremely close to him, and Rick was like a big
Speaker 1: brother to her. He lived with them off and on,
Speaker 1: and she worshiped him.
Speaker 4: And Rick was always just loud and I'm loud. He's loud,
Speaker 4: and he's loves loves you. He just loves you and
Speaker 4: he loves live. Excuse me, that's my phone. It never rings.
Speaker 1: It's someone named Art Davis on the phone. We've actually
Speaker 1: been trying to reach Art for months. Two His stepdad
Speaker 1: and Rick's dad owned an HVAC business with Scherie's grandfather,
Speaker 1: and Art and Rick were childhood best friends.
Speaker 4: Arty, come over, just come back, just come home home. See,
Speaker 4: isn't that fucking crazy?
Speaker 1: Something's never changed.
Speaker 4: My god, we're family. We're family.
Speaker 1: A few minutes later, Art walks into the yard and
Speaker 1: joins us on the patio. He's lanky and weathered, a
Speaker 1: former basketball player who's been working as a roofer for decades.
Speaker 1: And that's how we end up doing an impromptu interview
Speaker 1: with two of Rick's most loyal, longtime friends.
Speaker 6: Okay, and I met Rick in nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 2: Just shut up and show her. No, just kind of just.
Speaker 6: Building up a little story here, right, Okay, look at
Speaker 6: this picture. This is Rick and his sister.
Speaker 1: Art shows us a picture on his phone of two
Speaker 1: little white, blonde kids back in the days when his
Speaker 1: family and the Forestburgs were neighbors in Malibu Meadows, a
Speaker 1: private area in Lower Montanito. Art says, whatever was going on,
Speaker 1: Rick was always at the center of it.
Speaker 6: Rick he was known good, bad or otherwise he was known.
Speaker 6: He could just be sitting in his dad's boat in
Speaker 6: the garage, put that hot engine in the back man,
Speaker 6: and all the kids in the neighborhood. We'd all go
Speaker 6: down there and we'd sit around. You know, Rick, what's
Speaker 6: Rick doing?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 6: Rick was always the guy.
Speaker 1: Rick was an adrenaline junkie, dirt bikes, motorcycles, cars, boats.
Speaker 1: If it could go, he wanted it to go faster.
Speaker 1: His family spent time at Lake Havasu and he became
Speaker 1: an ex optional water skier. He had no fear and
Speaker 1: no internal monitor.
Speaker 6: He could barefoot water ski any circle raced. And those guys,
Speaker 6: the boats that he was behind there, It's the scariest
Speaker 6: thing that I ever did, just being an observer for
Speaker 6: one of the races that they were in. You know,
Speaker 6: like you get like fifteen boats going into one turn
Speaker 6: and the wake behind the boats is so high you
Speaker 6: can't even see the skier and the skis that they're
Speaker 6: in are so thick so that they can go right
Speaker 6: through that stuff, you know, and they were just like
Speaker 6: thumbs up. Thumbs up means faster, faster.
Speaker 1: So Art and Sharie hold a candle for the heroic
Speaker 1: side of wreck. But I wondered what some of the
Speaker 1: other surviving Montinito boys would say. So Haley and I
Speaker 1: head to an assisted living facility in Long Beach an
Speaker 1: hour and a half down the coast from Malibu.
Speaker 7: Names William English Hall, and we had oatmeal and fried
Speaker 7: egg and sausage and biscuit for breakfast.
Speaker 1: Were set up in the employee breakroom where there's a
Speaker 1: handyman repairing the ceiling. Bill that's what he goes by.
Speaker 1: Knew Rick his whole life.
Speaker 7: My dad called him Tricky Ricky, which is kind of
Speaker 7: a good nickname for him.
Speaker 1: Bill and his brothers were part of the Montanito Boys.
Speaker 1: And were they in addition to being like Rick, like
Speaker 1: handsome and athletic and the ladies like them, were they
Speaker 1: also kind of bad boys?
Speaker 7: You know, I wouldn't say real bad boys, but yeah,
Speaker 7: in the drugs and whatever. You know, we all kind
Speaker 7: of dallied with drugs.
Speaker 1: Though it was the times right ye. The Montanito Boys
Speaker 1: spent their days playing in the creek and exploring the
Speaker 1: canyons and riding motorcycle on a course they built at
Speaker 1: the Triangle that was a patch of undeveloped land formed
Speaker 1: by Payuma, Cold Canyon and wood Bluff Roads.
Speaker 3: My first memory of Rick, I was probably about eight
Speaker 3: years old, and I was down the street from my parents'
Speaker 3: house and he ran up to my bike and grabbed
Speaker 3: my bike and stole my bike.
Speaker 1: This is Jay Engelshall. He's one of Bill's brothers, a skinny,
Speaker 1: self effacing guy who's clearly still living hard. We met
Speaker 1: him in the parking lot of a sporting goods store
Speaker 1: near his brother's nursing home and sat in my car
Speaker 1: to talk. Jay remembers Rick as rowdy and fun when
Speaker 1: they were younger. One time, after Rick crashed his corvat,
Speaker 1: he was fixing it up in the Engelshall's driveway.
Speaker 3: He was working on the fenders and stuff, but us,
Speaker 3: being kids, we jumped in the front of it, like
Speaker 3: five of us, and he starts it up, and he
Speaker 3: took us around the circle down the down below my parents' house.
Speaker 3: There's a big circle with gravel and dirt roads. He
Speaker 3: was pretty much just sideways around every turn, gravels shooting
Speaker 3: up and dust and oh the neighbors should be coming
Speaker 3: out shaking their finger on them. The dangerous. We had
Speaker 3: kids in the rood, but it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: There was quite a few times he gave us rides
Speaker 3: like that, just either crying, laughing or peeing in our
Speaker 3: pants or Yeah, it was pretty insane, pretty crazy.
Speaker 1: But it was not all fun and games. The Montanito
Speaker 1: Boys had enemies, the Malibu cops who hunted the boys
Speaker 1: from the air.
Speaker 3: They were pretty very I would just say aggressive with
Speaker 3: the helicopter. I mean, I remember I thought it was
Speaker 3: a little too much at the time, chasing them with
Speaker 3: helicopters on the dirt bikes.
Speaker 1: As they got older, the trouble got deeper. There was
Speaker 1: one wild party that has become part of the community's
Speaker 1: collective memory, not because it was so crazy, there were
Speaker 1: a lot of wild parties back then, because of what
Speaker 1: happened after the cops showed up.
Speaker 3: They broke it up and they told us, you know,
Speaker 3: wrap it up in the night or whatever. But there
Speaker 3: was still a bunch of beer left in the kegs.
Speaker 3: So the older brothers took the keg to Lust Canyon.
Speaker 1: That was one of the Montonito Boys hideouts.
Speaker 3: When the cops got there, I guess, a couple of
Speaker 3: guys just ran off in the hills and they you know,
Speaker 3: basically taunting and you know, flipping them off or whatever,
Speaker 3: yelling back at him, you know, leave us alone.
Speaker 1: The cops pursued them and they ended up attacking a
Speaker 1: kid called Glen.
Speaker 3: They beat him with the flash light and it almost
Speaker 3: cut his era off. But he had stitches everywhere, I
Speaker 3: mean all over his heads, forehead and all that.
Speaker 1: Jay says, the cops were always focused on Rick. It
Speaker 1: was pretty obvious that he was a problem.
Speaker 3: Rick was playing one of the worst kids in that neighborhood,
Speaker 3: you know, with them, so that he was well known
Speaker 3: in that regard.
Speaker 1: And one of the worst beatings the Malibu cops ever
Speaker 1: doled out was to none other than Rick Forsberg. Some
Speaker 1: people said it changed him forever.
Speaker 8: Okay, Hi, I'm Neil Samuelson, author of malbou Up the Grid,
Speaker 8: a book about the Malibu area and all that has
Speaker 8: transpired here in the years past. How's that.
Speaker 1: After Rick died in twenty nineteen, his family put up
Speaker 1: the obituary site. That's how we found his old friend Neil.
Speaker 1: In the comments section, there was a plug for his book,
Speaker 1: a self published memoir of growing up on the margins
Speaker 1: of Malibu.
Speaker 8: It was the best place in the world to grow up.
Speaker 8: And eventually, you know, it all kind of caught up
Speaker 8: to us. You know, some of us were real successful,
Speaker 8: and some of us stayed around here and we were
Speaker 8: caught in this you know, little world that we couldn't
Speaker 8: get out of. The parents were pretty well off, and
Speaker 8: you know, although Rick never lived off this folks, he
Speaker 8: was bounding a demined to make it on his own. So,
Speaker 8: I mean he was you know, I mean, he was
Speaker 8: a good guy, but the alcohol kind of brought him
Speaker 8: down a little bit.
Speaker 1: Neil was several years younger than Rick, and he lived
Speaker 1: in a different neighborhood, but they hung out together, and
Speaker 1: he knows a lot about Rick's history. He's even given
Speaker 1: Rick a special pseudonym in the.
Speaker 8: Book, Oh Trouble, Rick Trouble.
Speaker 1: A lot of Rick's personality, Neil says, can be explained
Speaker 1: by what happened to him as a kid at the
Speaker 1: hands of the Malibu cops. He says, the Malibu cops
Speaker 1: were notorious and vindictive, and they absolutely despised the spoiled
Speaker 1: kids in the area.
Speaker 8: Oh, they were the roughest of the budge. You know,
Speaker 8: you didn't want to mess with the Malbouy sheriffs, especially
Speaker 8: as poked you know, rich kids. You know that we
Speaker 8: were like the pray for them home host. A lot
Speaker 8: of kids got beaten up by those guys. But you know,
Speaker 8: as you If you run, you've got to pay the consequences.
Speaker 1: Rick would always run, but one night in the spring
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy seven he got caught.
Speaker 8: This was my grad night, and I was supposed to
Speaker 8: be graduated, and you know, and I'm messing around with
Speaker 8: the older kids.
Speaker 1: Banded up at the old missile site at the top
Speaker 1: of Payuma Road, where obviously they weren't supposed to be
Speaker 1: the nuclear missiles were gone, but it was government property.
Speaker 8: We you know, found a spot and we're up there
Speaker 8: hanging out, and you know, we had a little pod,
Speaker 8: but nothing, you know, big, and then all of a sudden, boom,
Speaker 8: out of the blue, there's cops there, you know. So
Speaker 8: two of the guys ran, and then Rick tried to run,
Speaker 8: and he was the last guy to run, so they
Speaker 8: ran him down and he tried to get away and
Speaker 8: they cornered him, and the guy just really hammered him.
Speaker 8: They really just beat him to a pulp and they
Speaker 8: dragged him up to the police car.
Speaker 1: Neil's watching all this from the back of a cop car.
Speaker 1: He's been arrested and is about to be taken to
Speaker 1: the place the kids call the Malibu Hilton, a facetious
Speaker 1: nickname for the local jail.
Speaker 8: We watched Rick just get clubbed. The guy just kept
Speaker 8: beating on him, hitting his legs. Finally he crumbled to
Speaker 8: the ground and that's when they took off and they
Speaker 8: wouldn't allow us to see the rest of it. So
Speaker 8: they took us down to jail, and we didn't know
Speaker 8: what happened to Rick. And four or five hours went by.
Speaker 8: Rick came back to the jail and he was his
Speaker 8: head was shaved and he had stitches all over his head,
Speaker 8: and he was very defiant and it's like very mad.
Speaker 1: After the beating, Rick's golden boy glamour began to tarnish.
Speaker 1: He got wilder and meaner, and his relationship with law
Speaker 1: enforcement grew more combative. In the years that followed, Rick
Speaker 1: was in and out of police custody and did time
Speaker 1: in state prison.
Speaker 8: Rick was always one of those guys that was going
Speaker 8: to conquer the world. Man, he had it in him,
Speaker 8: you know, and little by little, you know, he kept
Speaker 8: getting in these situations where he would, you know, run
Speaker 8: from the police and something would happen. I mean, I
Speaker 8: could think of five different incidentss just off the top
Speaker 8: of my head, where he would run and have police contact, you.
Speaker 1: Know, and he would right back to wouldn't he One.
Speaker 8: Time he did, Yeah, And that's the one that got
Speaker 8: him in the most trouble. He ended up hurting a
Speaker 8: couple of police officers. I think it was the way
Speaker 8: the story goes. But you know, he he was kind
Speaker 8: of a mystery. After a couple of years, you'd see him,
Speaker 8: he tell us his story, and uh, he was living
Speaker 8: all over the place. Most of the time. He lived
Speaker 8: a very suffered life.
Speaker 1: Rick's family continued living in Montanito. His father died a
Speaker 1: few years ago, but his mother and one of his
Speaker 1: two sisters are still there today, respected and beloved members
Speaker 1: of the community. As an adult, Rick lived in various
Speaker 1: places around southern California and spent some time in Hawaii,
Speaker 1: but he always gravitated back to the area he was from,
Speaker 1: and in July of two thousand and nine, when he
Speaker 1: was released from prison for the last time, he came
Speaker 1: back to Montanito. This was two months before My Trees disappeared.
Speaker 1: Friends say by the time Rick returned from prison, he
Speaker 1: was no longer welcome at the house he grew up in,
Speaker 1: but Rick had been building forts in growing pots since
Speaker 1: he was a kid, he was at home in the woods,
Speaker 1: so he built himself a hide out at the base
Speaker 1: of a large tree in the woods off Payuma Road,
Speaker 1: and he retreated there to hang out and tend his
Speaker 1: plants in peace. Neil says he thinks he knows where
Speaker 1: Rick's spot was. He remembers going there a few times.
Speaker 8: Okay, so you guys follow me and I'll drive real slow.
Speaker 1: We follow him up Payuma Road, past the entrance to
Speaker 1: the Porn Ranch and around another bend or two. We
Speaker 1: park in a turnout and get out of the cars.
Speaker 1: He points down into the dense brush below.
Speaker 8: Well, this is his spot that I knew, where he
Speaker 8: grew a couple of plants.
Speaker 2: It's right here.
Speaker 1: Was he a physically fit guy, because getting down there
Speaker 1: looks like a giant pain.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, Well, like I said, yeah, it's rough walking
Speaker 8: down there. That's why it's so secluded. That's why it's
Speaker 8: a perfect spot for somebody to hide out in. I'm
Speaker 8: sure there was a little trail here ten years ago. Though.
Speaker 1: Right before leaving, I want to run one more thing
Speaker 1: by him. I just want to verify that the fort
Speaker 1: Sergeant Wright told me about is the same one Neil visited.
Speaker 1: So what I was going to tell you is that
Speaker 1: I heard that there was like a tip that, oh
Speaker 1: my god, this guy has a little structure and there's
Speaker 1: somebody had seen it and said there's a rib cage
Speaker 1: in there, and they came and looked and it was
Speaker 1: a deer rib cage and ricked.
Speaker 8: Eight and deer. You know, he's he was a he
Speaker 8: kind of went into you know, wild boat. I think,
Speaker 8: you know.
Speaker 1: A few days after Neil shows me the general area
Speaker 1: of rick Spot, I meet up with Sergeant Wright. He's
Speaker 1: got something for me. It's the coordinates for Rix Fort.
Speaker 1: I punched them into Google Maps. There off to the
Speaker 1: side of Payuma Road is a skeletal tree right in
Speaker 1: the area Neil had showed me, and there's a trail
Speaker 1: running by it, a section of the Backbone Trail. I
Speaker 1: decide to go check it out. I'm thinking maybe I'll
Speaker 1: find something, some remnant of wreck. I picked my way
Speaker 1: through overgrown dry brush. The brush forms tunnels and you
Speaker 1: have to crouch low to get through. Is that an
Speaker 1: access trail? Where does that one go from? On the ground,
Speaker 1: I spot a plastic water bottle and some black irrigation
Speaker 1: tubes and other items that look like detritus from growing pot.
Speaker 1: I remember the thing that I was told is that
Speaker 1: there were four trees that, in not a perfect square,
Speaker 1: had been kind of bound together and topped over. I
Speaker 1: find the big dead tree pushed up against a smaller tree.
Speaker 1: Nearby is a decaying mattress, the fabrics caving in and torn.
Speaker 1: It looks like a home for rats. Nothing else. That's
Speaker 1: all that was left of Rick's old fort. But I've
Speaker 1: learned the fort wasn't the only place Rick was hanging out.
Speaker 1: He was down in the neighborhood too, partying with old friends,
Speaker 1: and back in two thousand and nine when my trise
Speaker 1: went missing, some of them immediately thought of Rick. Laura
Speaker 1: and Ray Robbins Shari Ameck's parents were like a surrogate
Speaker 1: family for Rick. Over the years, the Robins would be
Speaker 1: a refuge for him when he wore out his welcome
Speaker 1: at home, and in two thousand and nine, after he
Speaker 1: got out of prison, when he wasn't at his fort,
Speaker 1: he was spending a lot of time there. He'd use
Speaker 1: the shower or sleep on the couch, and sometimes he'd
Speaker 1: live in the basement. Rick's parents would give the Robins
Speaker 1: money for his room and board. Rick was middle aged,
Speaker 1: fifty four years old in the summer of two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine, but he was kind of like a kid
Speaker 1: who refused to grow up, and even though he had
Speaker 1: the Robin's house to stay at, he generally preferred to
Speaker 1: be up at his spot. He'd walk or ride his
Speaker 1: motorcycle up Payuma Road at dusk and head back down
Speaker 1: to the neighborhood at dawn. Back on the patio with
Speaker 1: Shari and Art, I ask about Rick's spot, did you
Speaker 1: ever go up to the fort?
Speaker 4: I did not not your scene up there. You know,
Speaker 4: I didn't want to go. I didn't want to know.
Speaker 4: I didn't want to know. He was so proud of
Speaker 4: it too, it was hilarious. He took my ex husband
Speaker 4: up there and he went up there, and my ex
Speaker 4: was like, oh my god, like it's so awesome. He's
Speaker 4: got it all set up like a tent and it's
Speaker 4: all He's got a chair and a couch and the
Speaker 4: light and this and the that. I'm like, oh my godness,
Speaker 4: why is he doing that. He doesn't need to do that.
Speaker 4: But he was growing pot up there, so you know,
Speaker 4: he was protecting his plants and at that time it
Speaker 4: was still illegal.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: Also, I was like, oh my god, you're growing plants. Ah,
Speaker 4: you're gonna get busted. My mom, be careful, Rick, Rick,
Speaker 4: be careful.
Speaker 1: Rick had been drinking and smoking pot and using PCP
Speaker 1: since the seventies. He'd also done a lot of coke
Speaker 1: and heroine, and by the two thousands he discovered math.
Speaker 1: It had a very noticeable effect on him.
Speaker 4: That was always something that was being passed around, for sure.
Speaker 4: And he wasn't you know, he was the type that
Speaker 4: would disappear. You know, he wasn't. He wasn't. He wasn't Rick.
Speaker 4: He wasn't out in the open right up in your
Speaker 4: face and everything else and how a good time?
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 4: He was like are they here? You know, he's all
Speaker 4: paranoid and freaking peeking out the door. I'm like, oh
Speaker 4: my god, okay, so no, no, no, no, I'll see
Speaker 4: you later.
Speaker 1: Even as he aged and people around him changed their ways,
Speaker 1: Rick didn't seem capable of toning it down.
Speaker 8: You either died or got sober.
Speaker 1: You know, he did do was driving that insatiable desire
Speaker 1: to go to oblivion.
Speaker 5: I work in mental health, well not currently, and I
Speaker 5: really wanted to ask him, like why, like why are
Speaker 5: you like this? Why are you so we were like
Speaker 5: you know, running or getting in trouble or hurting yourself
Speaker 5: or you know, continues like doing the same thing over
Speaker 5: and over.
Speaker 1: On the day of my Teresa's disappearance, Rick told the
Speaker 1: Robins that he'd heard her at the tennis courthouse. He
Speaker 1: says this in the video, and Laura Robbins confirmed it
Speaker 1: to me when I spoke to her on the phone,
Speaker 1: though she emphasized that her goal was to protect Rick.
Speaker 1: I don't want anything said other than that he was
Speaker 1: the best guy in the world. She said, he's not
Speaker 1: your man's sweetheart. He's not but CHERI says. Laura was
Speaker 1: deeply concerned that Rick was involved with my Teresa's death,
Speaker 1: and she confronted him with her suspicions.
Speaker 4: I was here when my mom was like, Rick, do
Speaker 4: you know anything about that girl? He was saying right
Speaker 4: there then we had a couchhare. I remember the whole thing.
Speaker 4: Do you know anything about that girl? Rick? And He's like,
Speaker 4: what girl, Laura, what girl?
Speaker 7: You know?
Speaker 4: He had that raspy boy. She's like the girl, the girl,
Speaker 4: you know, the girl, that fucking the girl is dead,
Speaker 4: the girl that they found. And he goes and he
Speaker 4: looked at her like, are you fucking serious?
Speaker 1: CHERI didn't think Rick would lie to her mom or
Speaker 1: to her.
Speaker 4: Would he tell me?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I think he would. I think he would. He just
Speaker 4: trust to me that way.
Speaker 1: And if he had lied, she would have seen right
Speaker 1: through him. He was guileless.
Speaker 4: And I know, I mean, I have a really good
Speaker 4: sense of intuition, and if I thought Rick did that,
Speaker 4: I would know. I would be able to see it.
Speaker 4: He couldn't hide it. He was like a little kid.
Speaker 4: He couldn't hide. He couldn't He wasn't a liar. He
Speaker 4: wasn't a liar, and he wasn't a killer. He never
Speaker 4: killed anybody to my knowledge.
Speaker 1: In the video, Rick proposes that my Trees fell down
Speaker 1: in a ditch. My Trees didn't use hard drugs, just pot.
Speaker 1: But she also wasn't in a normal state of mind
Speaker 1: on September seventeenth, two thousand and nine, so she might
Speaker 1: have been more open to trying something, or she could
Speaker 1: have been tricked into accepting what she thought was a
Speaker 1: joint when it may have been laced with meth or
Speaker 1: cocaine or something else. The toxicology from her autopsy was inconclusive,
Speaker 1: so it's impossible to say if rugs were in her
Speaker 1: system at the time of her death. But there says
Speaker 1: she just can't picture Rick seeking out my Teresa's company.
Speaker 5: And I'm just being completely honest. I don't want to
Speaker 5: say that he was, you know, racist, but I don't
Speaker 5: think that he would have any interest in even especially
Speaker 5: on a tennis.
Speaker 4: Court at night. He's already like Rick would have.
Speaker 1: Nah, it takes me a second to believe what I'm hearing.
Speaker 1: You think he wouldn't be attracted to a black woman
Speaker 1: like that when she was too young for him. First
Speaker 1: of all, let's just say that. But that is not
Speaker 1: many people have not been stopped by that.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean for the most part.
Speaker 1: No, she says, it's not the age. My Teres wasn't
Speaker 1: his type. She turns to art for confirmation.
Speaker 5: Seek about it being a black woman's think about that.
Speaker 5: Do you see Rick going to have an engagement time
Speaker 5: and get wasted with a black girl at four thirty
Speaker 5: in the morning on Payuma coming down when she's yelling
Speaker 5: and somewhat disoriented, or you know, he sees there's an issue.
Speaker 5: What he says jump on the back of my bike.
Speaker 4: Let's go get high. I'll help you. Yeah, I think
Speaker 4: you do that.
Speaker 9: I do.
Speaker 1: My Trice was a stunningly beautiful twenty four year old dancer.
Speaker 1: Rick was a fifty four year old ex con methaddict.
Speaker 1: The idea that his racism could be exculpatory proof that
Speaker 1: he wouldn't want to get involved with her. It's not
Speaker 1: just deeply offensive, it's illogical. To my mind. Racism could
Speaker 1: easily explain a crime against my teres, not make it
Speaker 1: inconceivable her freedom, her life, it might have seemed expendable. Also,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering how much Cheri really knows about what Rick
Speaker 1: was into. I'm thinking of the Raven video. He does
Speaker 1: not seem at all off by or uncomfortable with the
Speaker 1: attractive young black woman he's being interviewed by. Quite the contrary,
Speaker 1: he invites her up to his fort. Sheree is clearly
Speaker 1: troubled by this whole conversation. She loves Rick, but she
Speaker 1: also feels for my trees.
Speaker 4: How do we figure out what happened to my trees?
Speaker 7: How do we figure this out?
Speaker 1: I feel like her brain is kind of melting down.
Speaker 1: She just can't believe Rick would have killed someone. She
Speaker 1: addresses art again, Rick wasn't that brutal or that calculating?
Speaker 9: Was he?
Speaker 4: Do you think that he would have the ability to
Speaker 4: keep that as alive? Do you think, really think you've
Speaker 4: known him your entire life? Could Ricky get away with that?
Speaker 6: I have no idea thought that.
Speaker 1: We turn off the mic and are pa backing up
Speaker 1: to leave. When Cherie looks up at the cloudless blue
Speaker 1: sky and starts to freak out. There are vultures, dozens
Speaker 1: of them, spiraling overhead. I grabbed my phone to record
Speaker 1: a video.
Speaker 9: Oh my god, you guys, No, arety come here? No,
Speaker 9: it's not normal. Oh my god, Artie, look how many?
Speaker 9: There's like thirty of them. That is so crazy. I
Speaker 9: haven't seen them in so long.
Speaker 1: She thinks the vultures are a sign, a sign of Rick.
Speaker 1: Rick's childhood friend Jay Engelshall, says he and Rick were
Speaker 1: together a lot around the time of my Teres's disappearance,
Speaker 1: but Rick didn't tell him about hearing my Teres that
Speaker 1: morning at the Tennis court house. This was the biggest
Speaker 1: thing that had happened in Monte maybe ever, a woman
Speaker 1: going missing. Cops everywhere, helicopter searches dogs flyers, So why
Speaker 1: didn't Rick tell him about his encounter with my trees.
Speaker 3: It's just I never heard of doing that happening, and
Speaker 3: it's like, wow, I never heard him talk like that
Speaker 3: before about it, and I think I would have. You know,
Speaker 3: it's weird.
Speaker 1: Jay says he and Rick would hang out at the fort.
Speaker 3: That's one of the reasons why. I guess he built
Speaker 3: a fort so you'd have somewhere to go. And when
Speaker 3: he did, he was sort of like, you know, watcho
Speaker 3: Mountain Ran. In a way, it was he was proud
Speaker 3: of it, trying to make the best of it, I guess,
Speaker 3: but he was also just I don't know. It seemed
Speaker 3: like he was doing his own thing and doing it
Speaker 3: and whichever way he wanted.
Speaker 1: To Rick's fort and the remains spot in Dark Canyon,
Speaker 1: we're very close to each other. As the crow flies,
Speaker 1: all you'd have to do is cross Payuma Road and
Speaker 1: find a place to drop over the side. Not that
Speaker 1: it would be easy. You'd be trespassing and it would
Speaker 1: be steep and treacherous, but Jay's sure Rick would have
Speaker 1: known how to get in there. He tells me Rick
Speaker 1: had been growing pot in Dark Canyon since the seventies.
Speaker 3: You know, he knew almost every trail up there, probably
Speaker 3: you know, and places where there were no trails.
Speaker 1: And sure he can only think of one reason for
Speaker 1: my trees to be in Dark Canyon.
Speaker 3: I don't think she'd have any interest to go up
Speaker 3: in their.
Speaker 2: Head at all.
Speaker 7: Why would you?
Speaker 3: And somebody's luring her off, you know, hum or she's unconscious.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: And he can really only think of one person who
Speaker 1: would have taken her there.
Speaker 3: I think morrow morning you might have something to do
Speaker 3: with the tony truth.
Speaker 1: Two days after our meeting, in the parking lot of
Speaker 1: the sporting goods store, I get a call from Jay.
Speaker 1: It's a Saturday night, and I met a friend's art show.
Speaker 1: I go outside so I can hear him better. His
Speaker 1: voice comes frail and ready through the phone that's pressed
Speaker 1: up against my ear. Jay says he just remembered something
Speaker 1: and he wanted to tell me because he thinks it
Speaker 1: might be important. He says, around the time of my
Speaker 1: Teresa's disappearance, Rick had started growing weed in Dark Canyon. Again,
Speaker 1: Haley and I are learning Rick wasn't just a charming rogue.
Speaker 1: He wasn't just a danger to himself. He had a
Speaker 1: lengthy criminal history going back to the eighties, and as
Speaker 1: we start sifting through it, we notice a clear trajectory
Speaker 1: increasingly reckless behavior with drugs and alcohol, punctuated by increasing
Speaker 1: violent attacks on women. He was extremely incorrigibly abusive, and
Speaker 1: the women in his life bore the brunt of his rage.
Speaker 1: Next time on Lost.
Speaker 7: Hills, he used to beat her. When they'd argue, he'd
Speaker 7: punch her, she'd take off running. Sometimes she'd run to
Speaker 7: my house and hide, you know, and he'd come over
Speaker 7: and I'd stand up to. He could kick my ass,
Speaker 7: but I'd stand up to.
Speaker 1: That's next in episode nine, Fearful Witness. Lost Hills is
Speaker 1: written and hosted by Me Dana Goodyear. It was reported
Speaker 1: by me and Hayley Fox, our senior producer. The show
Speaker 1: was created by me and Benadere. Lost Hills is a
Speaker 1: production of Western Sound and Putushkin Industries. Subscribe to Pushkin
Speaker 1: Plus and you can binge the whole season right now
Speaker 1: ad free. Find Pushkin Plus on the Lost Tail show
Speaker 1: page in Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin dot fm, slash
Speaker 1: plus