Latest / Hell and Gone: Murder Line / Murders in the Mountains

Transcript

Murders in the Mountains · Hell and Gone: Murder Line

0:08
Speaker 1: School of Humans. When we talked with Sheriff Alex Ville Nueva,
0:14
Speaker 1: he said this, Yeah, we do get a lot of
0:16
Speaker 1: the Love transience people that wandered different areas throughout that
0:21
Speaker 1: whole corridor there. But so we're still you know, absence
0:25
Speaker 1: somebody coming forward and saying this is what happened, and
0:28
Speaker 1: how we're still going to be left with this unresolved,
0:33
Speaker 1: you know depth Sheriff vill In Nueva says, someone out
0:37
Speaker 1: there knows something, so we need to find and talk
0:40
Speaker 1: to those people. This is a real time investigation and
0:47
Speaker 1: as a pandemic has unfolded, it's had a very real
0:51
Speaker 1: effect on crime. Yeah, I feel like this is really
0:53
Speaker 1: different than season one right now because obviously with season
0:57
Speaker 1: one you were embedded and there and meeting people. But
1:01
Speaker 1: here now it seems kind of impossible with COVID. Well,
1:06
Speaker 1: I think also, like I mean a lot of the
1:08
Speaker 1: people involved in this are in a higher risk group,
1:12
Speaker 1: and some of them are older, Like I mean, Ship
1:15
Speaker 1: said he hasn't left his house in months, and a
1:18
Speaker 1: lot of people are kind of in that same in
1:20
Speaker 1: that same boat. I don't feel okay about going and
1:24
Speaker 1: knocking on doors. I can't go to anything. I mean,
1:27
Speaker 1: and there aren't the kind of things here, like you know,
1:30
Speaker 1: you can't go out and meet people at a restaurant.
1:32
Speaker 1: You can't like go to there, you know, Malibu, that
1:35
Speaker 1: area that When we started this, I thought, Okay, well
1:37
Speaker 1: they have a lot of community meetings and things like
1:39
Speaker 1: that all the time normally, but obviously none of that's
1:43
Speaker 1: happening now. Yeah, and even the police and the fire
1:47
Speaker 1: guys since the summer have been so overstretched. Usually you
1:51
Speaker 1: can find like a friendly source to take you around,
1:54
Speaker 1: but even the people who I have or friendly sources
1:56
Speaker 1: are just you know, kind of overwhelmed right now. And
2:02
Speaker 1: it's just it's been really hard. It's not I mean,
2:04
Speaker 1: you know, look, every every single element of our lives
2:06
Speaker 1: has been changed right now, and it's kind of like,
2:08
Speaker 1: why should investigations be any different? And I'm kind of
2:11
Speaker 1: I mean, it makes me think too that cold case
2:13
Speaker 1: investigations it's going to be tough because it's sort of
2:16
Speaker 1: like pressed us into a world where unless something is
2:19
Speaker 1: an absolute priority right now, it's not gonna get done.
2:24
Speaker 1: And I kind of feel like that's what's happening with investigations.
2:28
Speaker 1: And then there's also all the fires and yeah, I'm
2:32
Speaker 1: about that, like, yes, that made things hard temporarily, that
2:36
Speaker 1: would have been yeah, that made it hard for people
2:39
Speaker 1: to go out to that area. But in a normal
2:42
Speaker 1: year where that was all that was happening, it would
2:45
Speaker 1: have been like, Okay, we wait until fire season's over
2:47
Speaker 1: and then you can go out there. But that's the problems.
2:51
Speaker 1: There's no it seems like there's just kind of no
2:53
Speaker 1: end of this, no immediate endto this until there's a vaccine.
3:04
Speaker 1: We're getting more and more evident that my treece was
3:06
Speaker 1: alive and fully clothed on the morning of September seventeenth,
3:11
Speaker 1: then at some point that day she disappeared. So we
3:15
Speaker 1: need to answer two questions. First, could my Trees have
3:19
Speaker 1: walked to the area where her body was found on
3:22
Speaker 1: her own? And second, who was in the neighborhood that night,
3:27
Speaker 1: Because if my Trees did not walk there on her own,
3:30
Speaker 1: the evidence suggests that she was taken there by someone
3:33
Speaker 1: who had familiarity with the area. I'm Catherine Townsend. This
3:38
Speaker 1: is Helen Gone. In order to figure out who could
4:13
Speaker 1: have been the last person to see my Trees, we
4:16
Speaker 1: wanted to get a better understanding of who lives in
4:19
Speaker 1: the Santa Monica Mountains. The Mountain range covers a massive area.
4:24
Speaker 1: It stretches from the Hollywood Hills all the way to
4:27
Speaker 1: Point Mugu in Ventura County. Montegnito, where Bill Smith lives,
4:32
Speaker 1: is a quiet neighborhood full of people who love hiking
4:35
Speaker 1: and horseback riding. But there's also an underworld in the mountains.
4:40
Speaker 1: There are transient people with no fixed address, cartels who
4:44
Speaker 1: grow pot illegally, and ultra violent gangs. Since the pandemic,
4:50
Speaker 1: a lot of police departments that investigate cold cases have
4:53
Speaker 1: found that they've had to alter their methods. They aren't
4:57
Speaker 1: able to generate tips or to do their usual outreach.
5:01
Speaker 1: I was inspired by one department in Texas I read about,
5:04
Speaker 1: who are basically doing the same thing that we're doing,
5:06
Speaker 1: doubling down on the evidence they already had. They went
5:10
Speaker 1: back to the drawing board and tried to see if
5:12
Speaker 1: there was anything that they missed. Office Campire. Yeah, Hi, Hey,
5:17
Speaker 1: this is a Smith a cold canyon. We had a
5:19
Speaker 1: prowler to walking around through the backyard here, but we
5:22
Speaker 1: don't know what the situation was. I don't know. If
5:24
Speaker 1: you have a unit in there, it might do a
5:25
Speaker 1: little drive buy or somethink. We know that Bill Smith,
5:28
Speaker 1: the former KTLA Channel five reporter who saw my trees
5:32
Speaker 1: sitting on his back steps, called the Lost Hills Sheriff's
5:36
Speaker 1: department in the early morning hours of September seventeenth. And
5:40
Speaker 1: now we just said a strange womanould walk up through
5:42
Speaker 1: the backyard here that this is fairly large properation. She
5:45
Speaker 1: was sitting on the step right on the back of
5:47
Speaker 1: the house. Here, this is kind of a circular. Bill
5:50
Speaker 1: Smith did not speak to anyone about my trees in
5:52
Speaker 1: the last few years of his life. We reached out
5:56
Speaker 1: to his widow several times but did not receive a response. Later,
6:02
Speaker 1: canine dogs were brought to the scene. They found one
6:05
Speaker 1: sneaker prints that they believed were my terces, and the
6:08
Speaker 1: dogs followed My Teresa's scent down the street from Bill
6:11
Speaker 1: Smith's house, then lost the scent. Investigators believed that the
6:16
Speaker 1: footprints pattern showed that my trees had gone from walking
6:20
Speaker 1: to running. Then they disappeared. Now, this could have been
6:25
Speaker 1: because a car drove by and picked my trees up,
6:28
Speaker 1: but she could have also gotten scared. Maybe she saw
6:32
Speaker 1: the police and decided to get off the road and
6:34
Speaker 1: hide in the woods. After all, her earlier interaction with
6:38
Speaker 1: the police had not gone well. There have been other
6:42
Speaker 1: people who came forward and said that they saw my
6:45
Speaker 1: Trees that night. When we talked to cherriffvill Nueva, he
6:49
Speaker 1: said that some one saw my Trees drinking from a
6:52
Speaker 1: garden hose after she was at Bill Smith's house. Then
6:56
Speaker 1: there was another woman, a middle school teacher, who reported
7:00
Speaker 1: that she had seen a woman matching my Trees's description
7:03
Speaker 1: walking south on a road near Malibu Canyon at around
7:07
Speaker 1: seven thirty am. She told the Los Angeles Times that
7:11
Speaker 1: she remembered this because a black woman walking alone through
7:15
Speaker 1: those roads was an unusual sight. Someone else reported seeing
7:21
Speaker 1: my Trees walking down Payuma Road away from Malibuchanan Road,
7:25
Speaker 1: in the direction of Dark Canyon at around one thirty pm.
7:30
Speaker 1: Police pointed to these sightings as evidence that my Trees
7:34
Speaker 1: made it through the night. We can't know for sure
7:37
Speaker 1: what happened, but we have to follow my Trees's route
7:40
Speaker 1: as best we can and try to use the evidence
7:43
Speaker 1: to explore the likeliest possibilities. If my Trese was wandering
7:47
Speaker 1: around during the day, she would have been exhausted, dehydrated,
7:51
Speaker 1: and by all accounts very possibly having some sort of
7:55
Speaker 1: a breakdown. I've spent a lot of time in this area.
7:59
Speaker 1: If she had continued down Malibu Canyon Road, she would
8:03
Speaker 1: have eventually made it to the Pacific Coast Highway back
8:06
Speaker 1: towards Civilization and the mpound yard where her car had
8:10
Speaker 1: been towed. But that road is treacherous. There's no shoulder,
8:15
Speaker 1: you have to walk through the mountains with steep drops
8:18
Speaker 1: on one side, and you have to walk through a
8:21
Speaker 1: tunnel with no pedestrian sideway. The other street she could
8:25
Speaker 1: have taken was Payuma Road, and Payuma Road, as we
8:30
Speaker 1: discovered while driving around, is very misleading. It seems to
8:34
Speaker 1: slope downward, but it's a long winding road that goes
8:38
Speaker 1: from west to east, so you have the sensation of
8:42
Speaker 1: going down the mountain, but really you're going deeper and
8:45
Speaker 1: deeper into the canyon. The evidence points to the fact
8:49
Speaker 1: that my Trees was alive and fully clothed on the
8:52
Speaker 1: morning of September seventeenth, and somehow ended up in that
8:56
Speaker 1: creek bed. So that means that we need to know
8:59
Speaker 1: if she could have fallen or walked down to the
9:02
Speaker 1: creek bed from Montinito, or if someone could have dumped
9:05
Speaker 1: her down that hill. Okay, hi Michael, heay, Catherine, how
9:12
Speaker 1: are you. I'm good? How are you? I'm pretty good? Good. Well,
9:17
Speaker 1: thank you so much for talking to us. We've talked
9:20
Speaker 1: to my Teresa's father, Michael Richardson. She just, you know,
9:26
Speaker 1: it's really hard to put it into words, because she
9:29
Speaker 1: was a good kid. You know, She's just loved to dance,
9:34
Speaker 1: she loved to entertain, she loved to be a comedian,
9:38
Speaker 1: and all her friends loved it. Just the life of
9:43
Speaker 1: the party sort of speak person overall, incredible kid, you know,
9:49
Speaker 1: and was still like that vulnerable. You know, I could
9:57
Speaker 1: see how the wrong people could wind her in or
10:02
Speaker 1: wield her in because you know, as much as I
10:05
Speaker 1: tried to teach her and be you know, aware of
10:10
Speaker 1: people that she was just always too trustworthy of people,
10:15
Speaker 1: which was a problem I had with her, you know, like,
10:19
Speaker 1: always keep your guardage up, and she's like, no, you
10:22
Speaker 1: just you come from that life, so you know, everybody
10:26
Speaker 1: is a suspect to that. But you know, this is
10:30
Speaker 1: one of the main reasons why I always wanted to
10:34
Speaker 1: educate her on mean people, you know, so yeah, to
10:39
Speaker 1: try to prevent something like this from happening. Over the years,
10:43
Speaker 1: he's talked about his suspicions with some of the people
10:46
Speaker 1: in the Montanito area. And the crazy thing about it
10:50
Speaker 1: was for a whole week straight while we were in Malibu,
10:54
Speaker 1: searching and looking and everything like that. We just looked
10:58
Speaker 1: up a week later and there was this white lady
11:01
Speaker 1: there and we were like, okay, and who are you?
11:04
Speaker 1: And she's like, I'm the lady. I'm married to Bill Smith.
11:08
Speaker 1: I owned the property that she was on, and we
11:12
Speaker 1: was like, and now you show up, Like how ironic
11:16
Speaker 1: is that? And so what I was telling Matias was
11:20
Speaker 1: my trees mother. She asked me like, why do you
11:23
Speaker 1: think she showed up? And I'm like, she's probably a
11:26
Speaker 1: spy knowing what's going on, and they had to get
11:29
Speaker 1: their story straight and they were coached, and now she
11:34
Speaker 1: feel comfortable enough to come out and see what we
11:38
Speaker 1: know so she could report it. But after one of
11:43
Speaker 1: his very close colleagues told me that years on, he
11:46
Speaker 1: interviewed me several times it's like, did you get anybody invested?
11:50
Speaker 1: I'm like, nobody will. They don't want to touch him.
11:53
Speaker 1: I even leaned into it more after he raised suspicion
11:58
Speaker 1: because when the dogs went out, they picked up my
12:02
Speaker 1: trees footprints there and on his doorstep, and then all
12:08
Speaker 1: of a sudden, her footprints just vanished. So I'm saying,
12:11
Speaker 1: so she vanished from here, but nobody seeing a car
12:16
Speaker 1: pick her up, nobody seeing her get in a car.
12:20
Speaker 1: The UFO didn't come down low enough. You know. It
12:25
Speaker 1: was just something. But that was the most interesting place
12:30
Speaker 1: that I think they should have started asking questions. Well,
12:35
Speaker 1: here's another strange thing that people keep omni. Before Bill
12:40
Speaker 1: Smith's called, there was another lady which we felt that
12:45
Speaker 1: she would had to be part of it, what have you.
12:48
Speaker 1: But she made the first initial call saying she was
12:51
Speaker 1: driving over there by. It was a cross street Boss
12:57
Speaker 1: Hills and some other street, and they said they saw
13:01
Speaker 1: a black lady looking rather suspicious and you know they're
13:07
Speaker 1: from Malibu, and not to sound racist or whatever, she said,
13:12
Speaker 1: but we just know that this is a person that
13:16
Speaker 1: is not from here, could be lost or whatever. But
13:19
Speaker 1: that was the first call, and they said that call
13:23
Speaker 1: came in at six. Then one of the residents on
13:26
Speaker 1: Bill's Street said, according to one of the reports, the
13:32
Speaker 1: police came around twelve something or whatever, or twelve or
13:39
Speaker 1: three I'm maybe a little off, but one of those timeframes.
13:42
Speaker 1: But they said the police never showed up, right, they
13:48
Speaker 1: never showed up. And of course we're not privy to
13:52
Speaker 1: any traveling records, are logging and stops or anything of
13:58
Speaker 1: that nature, so they wouldn't give us that. Now, we
14:02
Speaker 1: found no evidence that anyone Montinito did anything suspicious, but
14:08
Speaker 1: there are a lot of other people living in those hills.
14:12
Speaker 1: Could my trees have encountered some of them. The Santa
14:15
Speaker 1: Monica Mountains National Recreation Area is known for horse trails
14:19
Speaker 1: and hikes and wine tours, but it also has a
14:22
Speaker 1: dark side. A lot of people use the area to
14:26
Speaker 1: dispose of things they don't want, like trash and bodies.
14:30
Speaker 1: This has been going on for a long time. During
14:33
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, the psychopathic serial killing couple Doug Clark
14:36
Speaker 1: and Carol Bundy, nicknamed the Sunset Strip Killers, dumped one
14:40
Speaker 1: of their many female victims here. Over the years, many
14:45
Speaker 1: other bodies have been found here as well. Some were
14:49
Speaker 1: ruled suicides they wanted to choose a peaceful place in
14:53
Speaker 1: their own lives. Others have been accidents when cars veer
14:58
Speaker 1: off one of the twisted roads, or someone jumps into
15:01
Speaker 1: a dam on a dare. Some are still unsolved, like
15:05
Speaker 1: the of a sixteen year old who was beaten to
15:07
Speaker 1: death and dumped in a canyon. His remains were burned
15:10
Speaker 1: beyond recognition during a wildfire. Some are violent murders, and
15:16
Speaker 1: many are gang related. According to the Los Angeles Times,
15:20
Speaker 1: the MS thirteen Street gang has been active in the area.
15:24
Speaker 1: In twenty nineteen, police arrested several members of the gang
15:28
Speaker 1: and charged them with seven murders in the hills around
15:31
Speaker 1: Malibu in the Angeles National Forest. Federal investigators said that
15:36
Speaker 1: the gang lured their enemies to remote locations, including the canyon,
15:41
Speaker 1: and then killed them using medieval methods, including torture and dismemberment.
15:47
Speaker 1: Federal prosecutors say that the gang used machetes, knives, and
15:51
Speaker 1: baseball bats to kill suspected informants. In one instance, when
15:56
Speaker 1: gang members suspected someone of defacing an M. S thirteen
15:59
Speaker 1: graffiti tag, six of them kidnapped him, took him to
16:03
Speaker 1: the Angelus National Forest, and attacked him with a machete.
16:07
Speaker 1: Prosecutors say they cut his heart out. In May twenty eighteen,
16:13
Speaker 1: the body of a fifty two year old man named
16:15
Speaker 1: Francisco cruise was discovered in a ditch by the side
16:18
Speaker 1: of the road dump near the Malibu Hindu Temple. This
16:22
Speaker 1: is a massive white landmark that people flocked to. It's
16:26
Speaker 1: also very near the area where my Trees's body was found.
16:29
Speaker 1: Francisco reportedly died from sharp fores injuries to the upper
16:33
Speaker 1: body and blunt force injury to the head, and according
16:36
Speaker 1: to a source quoted by The Hollywood Reporter, his body
16:40
Speaker 1: showed signs of torture, possibly with a drill. Two months later,
16:45
Speaker 1: the body of another man was found on Payuma Road,
16:48
Speaker 1: again in the same area. It was later revealed that
16:51
Speaker 1: he died of a gunshot wound. Police say that both
16:55
Speaker 1: murders were gang related, and in at least one case,
16:59
Speaker 1: gang members have inflicted this medieval style violence on an
17:03
Speaker 1: innocent bystander. He was a homeless man who was temporarily
17:07
Speaker 1: living in a park controlled by the gang. But gang
17:10
Speaker 1: killings generally involve very visible trauma like guns or blunt
17:15
Speaker 1: force objects, and they've tended to be dumped near major
17:19
Speaker 1: roads or public sites. These bodies were meant to be
17:23
Speaker 1: found and meant to make a statement to the gang's enemies.
17:26
Speaker 1: Unlike Mitesa's body, which was found in an extremely remote
17:30
Speaker 1: location that could not be accessed by car. There are
17:35
Speaker 1: also drifters and homeless people who live in the hills,
17:38
Speaker 1: like Anthony Rauda, a homeless drifter who was charged with
17:42
Speaker 1: the Malibu Creek State Park shootings. Now many people believe
17:46
Speaker 1: that Rauda wasn't the only person shooting at human targets
17:50
Speaker 1: in the hills over the years. But either way, while
17:53
Speaker 1: the vast majority of transient people in the mountains are harmless,
17:57
Speaker 1: there are violent criminals living up there. Due to COVID,
18:05
Speaker 1: we've been stuck inside, so we've had to look at
18:07
Speaker 1: alternative ways of gathering evidence. During one of those late
18:12
Speaker 1: night sessions, we found another mysterious video that surfaced on
18:16
Speaker 1: YouTube with a man who claims to have seen my
18:19
Speaker 1: trees on the night she disappeared. It was posted by
18:23
Speaker 1: a woman who describes herself as a psychic topless activist.
18:27
Speaker 1: She posts clips on her website. Some are really out
18:31
Speaker 1: there descriptions of lizard people and complex conspiracy theories. But
18:35
Speaker 1: there's one clip that could potentially be very relevant to
18:38
Speaker 1: my Teresa's case. It's from twenty twelve and it's an
18:42
Speaker 1: interview with a local man who claimed that he saw
18:45
Speaker 1: my Trees on the night she disappeared. He said that
18:49
Speaker 1: he was walking down the mountain at around four point
18:51
Speaker 1: thirty in the morning at Woodbluff and Cold Canyon when
18:55
Speaker 1: he saw a house with a horseshoe driveway and a
18:58
Speaker 1: tennis court, presumably Bill Smith's house. He said My Trees
19:03
Speaker 1: was at the front door of the property. He said
19:05
Speaker 1: he couldn't see her because there were park cars blocking
19:08
Speaker 1: his view in the driveway, but he said that he
19:11
Speaker 1: could hear her screaming at something. He couldn't make out
19:14
Speaker 1: what she was saying, but he said that she was
19:16
Speaker 1: angry and cursing. He claimed that police questioned him and
19:22
Speaker 1: he admitted that he had a criminal record, which made
19:24
Speaker 1: him reluctant to talk to police. At first, we wanted
19:28
Speaker 1: to find the man so that we could interview him ourselves,
19:31
Speaker 1: but we learned that sadly he passed away another dead
19:36
Speaker 1: end and there's another group of people who were omnipresent
19:41
Speaker 1: and invisible, the cartel. Remember that on the day that
19:48
Speaker 1: Materesa's body was found, park rangers were looking for the
19:52
Speaker 1: remnants of an illegal marijuana grow the Santa Monica Mountains
19:56
Speaker 1: have many areas that make them ideal for an illegal grow,
20:00
Speaker 1: especially in two thousand and nine in twenty ten, before
20:04
Speaker 1: marijuana was made lead in California. During those years, park
20:09
Speaker 1: rangers and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department deputies confiscated tons
20:13
Speaker 1: of plants, thousands upon thousands of acres of pot worth
20:18
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars. According to sources who spoke
20:22
Speaker 1: to The Hollywood Reporter, Mexican cartels send growers to cultivate
20:26
Speaker 1: marijuana in the mountain near Malibu Creek State Park. This
20:30
Speaker 1: is a massive, multi billion dollar business. They work in
20:34
Speaker 1: pears or sometimes in groups. They hide in the hills
20:37
Speaker 1: and camp near the crop until the plants are ready
20:39
Speaker 1: to harvest. This way, they didn't have to worry about
20:43
Speaker 1: smuggling the product across the border. There have been no
20:46
Speaker 1: official reports of cartel links to the bodies found in
20:50
Speaker 1: Malibu Creek State Park, But unlike the gangs, cartel members
20:55
Speaker 1: are deep in the woods in areas where no one
20:58
Speaker 1: else goes for weeks at a time and there's something else.
21:02
Speaker 1: Cecarios or drug cartel hitmen often slit their victim's throats.
21:08
Speaker 1: When we hiked through dark canyon. We saw irrigation hoses.
21:14
Speaker 1: On the day the park rangers found my Teres's body,
21:17
Speaker 1: they saw irrigation hoses too, but Ronda was clear. She
21:22
Speaker 1: told us that when she and my Teresa's family members
21:25
Speaker 1: hiked up to the site where the remains were found,
21:28
Speaker 1: those hoses had been removed by law enforcement. So it
21:32
Speaker 1: looks like the cartel may have come back at some
21:35
Speaker 1: point other than the creek bed. There is another way
21:39
Speaker 1: to get to the area where my Terrese was found,
21:42
Speaker 1: through the back of a private property that the police
21:46
Speaker 1: used to start their hike. Oh my point is if
21:59
Speaker 1: we scream, either of us screamed really loudly. Right now,
22:02
Speaker 1: there are a bunch of houses right there. Yeah, if
22:06
Speaker 1: you needed help, and we're like, you know, I feel
22:10
Speaker 1: like people would hear you here. We are the only
22:13
Speaker 1: people up here. Remember when my producer, Gabby and I
22:21
Speaker 1: went out into the woods, we found it almost impossible
22:24
Speaker 1: to get to the coordinates where my Trees's body was found.
22:28
Speaker 1: Like this down here is this the creek bed. We
22:30
Speaker 1: agreed that it would have been very difficult for my
22:33
Speaker 1: Trees to have walked that route through the creek bed
22:36
Speaker 1: on her own. We started from the Backbone trail, so
22:39
Speaker 1: we just have to keep hiking down. Veered off that
22:42
Speaker 1: trail and went along the creek bed heading east, so
22:45
Speaker 1: she could have I mean, I get what your thinking.
22:47
Speaker 1: She could have fallen, and again that I would have
22:51
Speaker 1: expected some broken bones, Like if we fell from this height,
22:53
Speaker 1: you would expect there to be some broken bones. There
22:57
Speaker 1: are several ways that my trees could have gone from
22:59
Speaker 1: Bill Smith's house. Behind the house where my Teresa's sneaker
23:03
Speaker 1: print stopped is a horse trail that connects to several
23:07
Speaker 1: more horse trails. They zigzag within Montinito. A couple of
23:12
Speaker 1: branches of these horse trails connect to the Backbone trail.
23:16
Speaker 1: It's like a labyrinth back there. One way puts you
23:19
Speaker 1: back out on Pauma Road before the entrance to Montnito.
23:23
Speaker 1: Another way puts you out on the other side of
23:25
Speaker 1: Payama Road. All of these routes still put you about
23:29
Speaker 1: a mile out from where my Teresa's body was found
23:32
Speaker 1: in the middle of the woods. But the horse trail
23:35
Speaker 1: does connect to one other property. It's called Malibu Canyon Ranch.
23:40
Speaker 1: The property is a large nineteen seventies ranch house. You
23:45
Speaker 1: can actually rent it for one hundred and ninety five
23:47
Speaker 1: dollars an hour for shoots. There's a walk in saltwater
23:51
Speaker 1: pool and a former production house where many types of
23:54
Speaker 1: productions have been shot over the years. If you're walking
23:58
Speaker 1: along Payuma Road, there's a long driveway up to the property.
24:02
Speaker 1: The back of the property runs along a ridge line
24:05
Speaker 1: that descends into the creek bed near the clearing where
24:08
Speaker 1: my Teresa's body was found. It's so close that when
24:11
Speaker 1: we were on our hike in the woods, we could
24:14
Speaker 1: hear the roar of an engine from up on that property.
24:19
Speaker 1: People call this property the Porn Ranch. It's owned by
24:22
Speaker 1: a woman named Sus Randall. A few years ago, Vice
24:27
Speaker 1: UK wrote a profile on Sus Randall. They wrote, quote
24:31
Speaker 1: her name should be one of the most iconic and
24:34
Speaker 1: porn She was the first female playboy photographer to shoot
24:37
Speaker 1: a full frontel, the first woman to sell her nude
24:40
Speaker 1: photographs to the Sun end quote. But Sus Randall is
24:45
Speaker 1: notoriously private, and while a lot of her past has
24:49
Speaker 1: been racy, by her own admission, she's always been known
24:52
Speaker 1: as a consummate professional. Her work focuses on making women
24:56
Speaker 1: feel comfortable during shoots. Her daughter, Holly Randall, followed her
25:01
Speaker 1: mother into the business. Though the women are pretty private,
25:05
Speaker 1: they don't seem to be operating in any type of
25:07
Speaker 1: a shadowy, nefarious underworld. Their work is out in the
25:10
Speaker 1: open and very mainstream. It's like a lot of people
25:15
Speaker 1: who have looked into this case over the years or that,
25:18
Speaker 1: you know, they kind of make reference to this. But
25:20
Speaker 1: then as you were saying, this is it's just kind
25:22
Speaker 1: of like a distraction to the case. And the only
25:23
Speaker 1: thing that's interesting about that property really is its proximity location. Yeah,
25:28
Speaker 1: and I don't think there's anything to that. I YEA.
25:30
Speaker 1: My whole question about them is only literally only because
25:34
Speaker 1: of where it is, because that's a property that given
25:37
Speaker 1: the fact that this is an investigation into a disappearance
25:40
Speaker 1: in that area, that is the property where that can
25:43
Speaker 1: be accessed. Like, that's my question, and it doesn't have
25:45
Speaker 1: anything to do to me with a pornography or anything
25:48
Speaker 1: like that. To me, that's pretty irrelevant. It's literally the
25:54
Speaker 1: fact that it's at that location, Like literally that that
25:57
Speaker 1: house could be anyone in any industry. I feel like, again,
26:00
Speaker 1: like the fact that there's they happen to work in pornography,
26:04
Speaker 1: they have in the industry. I really feel like that's
26:07
Speaker 1: become a distraction to this case. It's one of those
26:10
Speaker 1: things that's like a weird distraction when in reality people
26:13
Speaker 1: should just focus on the fact that the property is
26:16
Speaker 1: in a location where she could have walked through it.
26:19
Speaker 1: And so that's the reason that's interesting to me for
26:21
Speaker 1: the investigation. Again, I think, much like the graffiti that
26:25
Speaker 1: was found, sometimes people can see come up with, you know,
26:29
Speaker 1: in the absence of information, Sometimes people fill in the
26:32
Speaker 1: blanks and I just think that, you know, they're graffiti
26:35
Speaker 1: and the fact that pornography is filmed at that ranch
26:40
Speaker 1: sometimes are both totally irrelevant. But we can't know for
26:46
Speaker 1: sure from looking at a map. Once again, we can't
26:51
Speaker 1: find anyone in authority to go with us, and we
26:54
Speaker 1: don't know for sure that we'll have cooperation from property owners.
26:59
Speaker 1: We need to figure out if my tries could have
27:01
Speaker 1: walked to that location on her own. Pandemic are no pandemic.
27:06
Speaker 1: We're going up that mountain. I'm Katherine Townsend and this
27:10
Speaker 1: is Helen Gone. Helen Gone is a production of School
27:14
Speaker 1: of Humans and iHeartRadio. It's written and narrated by me,
27:18
Speaker 1: Katherine Townsend. Our producers are Gabby Watts, Taylor Church and
27:22
Speaker 1: James Morrison. Music is by Ben Sale, mix is by Tunewelders.
27:27
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Brandon Barr, Else Crowley and Brian Lavin.
27:32
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Chip Croft for use of footage from
27:35
Speaker 1: his documentary Lost Compassion, School of Humans. School of Humans