Latest / Crime Night / How a bloody bra identified Reit Jurvetson

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How a bloody bra identified Reit Jurvetson · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Imagine you are standing deep inside the Los Angeles Police
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Department's archive unit. Oh wow, okay, yeah, picture it. The
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: year is two thousand and three, and the air in
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: there is just stagnant, right, smelling faintly of decaying paper
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: and floor wax.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: I can practically smell it. It's that very specific bureaucratic
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: basement smell exactly.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: So you are surrounded by these rows upon rows of
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: industrial metal shelving and they stretch all the way up
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: into this harsh fluorescent light, right, and all these cardboard
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: boxes are just sagging under the weight of decades old
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: police reports. So there's a veteran homicide detective named Cliff Shepherd,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: and he's standing in the middle of this.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Maze, just surrounded by cold cases.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's tasked with digging through cold cases from the
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: late nineteen sixties. So he reaches up, pulls this mislabeled
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: yellowing box off a shelf, and he lifts the lid.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Okay, what does he find?
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Well, shoved haphazardly among all these typed carbon copy reports,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: he finds something that absolutely should not be there. Oh boy,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: it's a tan lace bra and it's stiffened and stained
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: with dark dried blood.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: Seriously, yeah, just loose in the box.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Just loose. It isn't sealed in a plastic evidence bag,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: it isn't tagged with a case number. It is literally
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: just sitting there completely unprotected.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, in the rigid world of criminal investigation, finding
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: unsecured biological evidence like that is well, it's a staggering
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: breach of protocol, right.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: It's basically the worst thing a clerk could do.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Chain of custody is everything. If evidence isn't logged,
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: it essentially ceases to exist in the eyes of the court.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: But the crazy thing is this failure, this terrible mistake
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: by an anonymous clerk decades ago, is actually the catalyst
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: for the entire story you are about to hear.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: It's wild how that works out.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: It really is so Welcome to today's deep dive. Our
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: sources for this one are a stack of investigative reports,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: cold case files, and true crime journalism, all centered around
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: too brutal, unsolved murders in Los Angeles in nineteen sixty nine.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: In our mission today is to explore how that forgotten
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: bloody bra and a random footnote and a famous true
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: crime book ended up linking two young women's tragic fates.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a story about the extreme danger of
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: investigative tunnel vision, the forensic realities of the nineteen sixties,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: and just the agonizing lengths it takes to give a
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Jane Doe her name back.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, So, to grasp the gravity of this investigation, you
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: really need to transport yourself to November sixteenth, nineteen sixty nine.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Right, set the scene for us.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: The location is Mulholland Drive, you know, that winding, iconic
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: two lane road that traces the ridge line of the
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: Santa Monica Mountains.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: It's beautiful but eerie up there.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: Very it is an area defined by sharp contrasts. You
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: got these stretches of opulent gated homes and they're just
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: interspersed with stretches of isolated, brush tangled ravines that drops
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: deeply into the canyons below.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Just pitching off into the darkness exactly.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: And it was in one of those secluded ravines, about
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: fifteen feet down a hillside choked with dry California scrub,
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: that a fifteen year old boy out bird watching made
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: a horrific discovery.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Oh man, a kid.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was the body of a young white woman
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: police estimated she was around twenty three years old. And
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: look the brutality of this crime scene. It defies simple categorization.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: It really does. I mean, the reports say she had
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: been stabbed in the neck over one hundred and fifty times.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: Over one hundred and fifty Forensically speaking, that isn't just
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: a murder, it's well, it's an erasure.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: An erasure, that's a good way to put it.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: It indicates a deeply personal, intimate partner rage where the
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: goal is complete destruction. I mean, to inflict that much
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: damage requires immense physical exertion, and this profound, blinding anger.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: It's the furthest thing from a clinical or organized killing exactly.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Investigators determined she was likely lying on her back when
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: it happened. Her killer probably pinned her down with their
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: body weight to subdue her.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Because they forced her head to one side, right.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: Right, which explains why the vast majority of those punctures
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: were concentrated on just the side of her neck.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: But the thing is, she didn't just passively accept this
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: defensive wounds on her hands proved she was conscious. She
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: was actively trying to block the blade, fighting for her
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: life against overwhelming force.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: Which is just heartbreaking.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: The thing about Yeah, it really is.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: And the environment itself tells another crucial part of the story.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: The murder did not happen down.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: In that ravine, right because of the drag marks.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Right. Investigators found bloody drag marks smeared across the asphalt
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: of Mulholland Drive. The killer had parked, dragged her body
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: across the road, and heaved her over the edge.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: And there were faint tire tracks visible in the crime
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: scene photos too.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, suggesting a vehicle had pulled over in the quiet
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: over nine hours to dispose of the body when traffic
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: was non existent and the canyon was pitch black.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: But here's the thing that really gets me. Despite all
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: these physical clues, and there are a lot of them,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: her identity was a total.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: Ghost, complete mystery.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: She was tagged simply as Jane Doe fifty nine, literally
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: the fifty ninth unidentified body processed in La County that.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: Year alone, which is staggering number for one year.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: It's insane, and they had so much to go on.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: She was wearing this heavy corduroy jacket, jeans, boots, and
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: of course that Tanla Spra.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: And some of the clothing labels showed they were manufactured
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: outside the US.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Right exactly. Plus the autopsy revealed she had eaten a
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: meal just two hours before she died. But every avenue
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: just closed a total brick wall. Yeah, Interpol queries yielded nothing.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Fingerprint databases turned up empty. They checked missing persons reports
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: in Canada and nothing.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: Well, the investigative landscape of nineteen sixty nine was notoriously limited.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: Forensic science was not focused on DNA. Genetic profiling wouldn't
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: exist as a law enforcement tool.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: For decades, so they could only test that bloody bra
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: for basic blood type.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: Right, but there was other evidence initially.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Oh, this part makes me so angry. So a few
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: days after her body was found, a road worker actually
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: turned in a pair of men's prescription glasses found near
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: the drop site, a huge lead massive They were thick
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: lenses for a very near sighted man, set in relatively
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: common frames.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: And let me guess when Detective Shepherd finds out about
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: these glasses in two thousand and three, they are.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: Gone, vanished from the evidence room without a trace.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: It's like finding a winning lottery ticket in the trash,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: only to realize half of it is torn off, and
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: to make it worse, nobody bothered to scrape under Jane
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: of fifty nine fingernails back in nineteen sixty nine.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: Even though we know she fought back viciously.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Exactly she almost certainly had her killer's skin cells trapped
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: under them. So finding that bloody bra in a cardboard
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: box is a statistical miracle.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: It really is, especially because Jane do fifty nine's body
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: was cremated by the county when she went unclaimed.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that unlogged bra was the absolute only physical link
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: left to her existence on Earth.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: When you review cold cases from this era, you are
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: basically staring at a graveyard of missed opportunities. But finding
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: the bra gave Shephard a forensic north Star. He immediately
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: submitted it to the state's Missing Person's DNA program.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Laboratory results they take years to process, so Shephard just
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: has this file sitting on his desk. Fast forward to
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: two thousand and five and he casually decides to reread
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Helter Skelter.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: The famous true crime book by Vincent Bugliosi.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Right the one detailing the Charles Manson murders.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: I mean, Boogliosi was the lead prosecutor in the Manson
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: family trials. His book serves as the definitive account of
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: that terrifying era in Los Angeles history.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: It really documents how that charismatic cult leader convinced his
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: followers to commit those savage home invasions.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so Shephard is reading through this dense material, and
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: he gets to the epilogue.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: And there, buried in a tiny footnote is a mention
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: of Jane Doe fifty nine.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: Just a footnote, just a footnote.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Bugliosi floats the speculative theory. He asks, what if she
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: was killed by the Manson.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: Family because her body was found just a week and
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: a half after a Manson follower died under highly suspicious circumstances.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Exactly, Bougliosi wondered if Jane Do fifty nine witnessed that
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: death and was silenced to protect the cult.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: I mean, the savagery of one hundred and fifty stab
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: wounds definitely echoes the overkill scene in the Manson murders.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: It is an easy parallel.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: To draw, it is, but Bougliosi admits in the text
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: he has no hard evidence. The Manson connection is merely
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: a provocative thought, but what actually Hook's detective Shepherd isn't
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Manson at all.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: No, it's not.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: It's another name mentioned in that exact same paragraph, Marina
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Hobe Right.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: She was a seventeen year old girl who was brutally
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: stabbed to death ten months before Jane Do.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: Fifty nine, and her body was found in a remarkably
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: similar brush tangled ravine off maulhalland Drive barely two miles
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: away from our Jane Doe.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: That geographical and circumstantial overlap. It forces an investigator to pause.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, so Shepherd starts pulling Marina Hayes case files. And
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: to understand the significance here, you really have to look
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: at the timeline of Marina's disappearance.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: Okay, take us through it.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: It is December twenty ninth, nineteen sixty eight. Marina is
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: a college freshman. She's home for winter break, and she's
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: staying at her mother's house in this quiet, wealthy neighborhood
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: right where West Hollywood meets Beverly Hills. Okay, the scene
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: her mother describes is the stuff of absolute nightmares. It's
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: three a lesson in the morning. Marina has been out
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: celebrating in early New Years at a popular music club
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: called the Troubadour.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, very famous spot, very so.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Her mom is awake, waiting up. She hears the familiar
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: sound of Marina's small sports car pull into the driveway.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: Relief, Right, She's home exactly. But seconds later she hears
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: the aggressive roar of a loud exhaust like an older
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: model muscle car.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Oh.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: The mom rushes to the window, and in the glow
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: of the street lights, she sees a young man standing
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: next to Marina's car and a black sedan idling aggressively
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: in the driveway. She's sitting there waiting, yeah, and the
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: abduction happens with terrifying speed and plain sight. The black
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: sedan throws it in reverse, The young man on the
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: driveway sprints toward it, yells something that sounds like the
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: command go, dives into the passenger seat, and the speed
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: off into the night.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Just like that. Her mom runs outside into the driveway
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: and Marina is gone, gone.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: Her car keys are still dangling in the ignition. Her
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: driving glasses are missing.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: And this detail always gets me. The emergency brake is
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: yanked up with immense desperate force.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: Right so hard that police mechanics later noted it took
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: more strength than a small seventeen year old girl would physically.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: Possess, which means someone else was in that car exactly.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: The mechanics of that emergency brake imply someone else was
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: in the driver's seat wrestling for control, or someone reached
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: in through the window to stop the car violently while
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: she was trying to escape.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's terrifying. And Marina's body was discovered two days
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: later on New Year's Day, discarded down another steep embankment.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: She had been severely beaten, strangled, and stabbed multiple times
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: in the neck and torso.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: And she also had a deliberate cigarette burn on her skin.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but the autopsy is where these two cases really
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: begin to weave together biologically.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Right, because if you look closely at the biological timeline,
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: the similarities are impossible to ignore. First, just like Jando
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: fifty nine, Marina had eaten a meal shortly before her death.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: The undigested food in her small intestine narrowed her time
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: of death down to just a few hours after eating.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: But the most disturbing forensic detail involves the post mortem
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: changes to her body.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: When Marina was found on January first, rigor mortis was
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: still actively setting in and the fresh blood in her
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: lungs hadn't yet clawted.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: Which is crazy because rigor mortis is caused by a
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: chemical change in the muscles after death, starting within just
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: a few hours.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Right. Because her muscles were still actively stiffening and her
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: blood hadn't yet settled and congealed, the coroner knew her
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: biological clock had just recently stopped ticking.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: Meaning she did not die on December twenty ninth when
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: she was abducted from.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Her driveway exactly. The biology proved she was killed just
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: eight to twelve hours before she was found on New
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: Year's Day. She was kept alive for days in an
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: unknown location.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: That is horrifying to think about, it really is.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: The coroner also made a critical observation about the trauma itself.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: The stab wounds on Marina had completely different shapes.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Oh right. Some incisions had two sharp edges, while others
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: had one sharp edge and one blunt rounded edge.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: Which is the biological signature of multiple weapons and therefore
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: multiple attackers.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Which perfectly aligns with the mother's eyewitness account of the
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: two men coordinating the abduction in the driveway exactly.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: So you have two brutal stabbings of young women dumped
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: off Mulhall and drive, both with undigested food in their stomachs,
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: both involving overkill.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: Right, you would think the police would immediately pool their
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: resources and create a joint task force. I mean, you
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: have a potential serial operation targeting young women in the
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Hollywood Hills.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: You would think so.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: But when you examine the suspect pool from Marina Habe,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: it is incredibly broad. I mean, first, you have a
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: violent criminal named Kirk Smith known as Spanky, Right.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: He later became an armed bank robber and a member
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: of the Aryan Brotherhood.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and police actually found an entire abandoned motorcycle frame
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: belonging to his associates right at Marina's crime.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: Scene, which is a massive clue. But then you also
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: have this wild international espionage angle.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: Wait, really, tell me about that.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: Marina's father was a high level operative in the OSS,
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: the precursor to the CIA during World War Two.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: Oh wow.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: His specialty was psychological warfare. He interrogated German prisoners of
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: war for days on end and designed complex Allied propaganda
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: to demoralize the enemy.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, that is intense.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: It is the kind of shadow world background that generates
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: powerful lifelong enemies, leading some investigators to theorize Marina was
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: the victim of a targeted revenge kidnapping meant to send
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: a message.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: That sounds like a movie plot, and you cannot ignore
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: the date she was on. Marina was out that night
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: with a twenty three year old family friend named John.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: They took a rendered limo to the Troubadoura.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he claimed he drove her back to her car
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: at his house around three point fifteen am, which lines
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: up perfectly with her arriving home at three thirty am.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Seems solid, but investigative reporting decades later confirmed a rumor
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: swirling at the club that night. John was secretly married
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: with a child in nineteen sixty seven, divorced shortly after
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: Marina's murder, remarried his wife, and then divorced again. Wow,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: it paints a very deceptive picture of the man she
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: spent her final hours with.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: So you have a violent biker gang, a CIA revenge plot,
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: and a highly deceptive date.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: Yes, these are incredibly specific, distinct, and highly credible motives
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: for Marina's murder. So my question is why would law
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: enforcement or an expert like Vincent Buglosi, for that matter,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: look past all this mundane, highly plausible domestic violence and
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: try to lump her in with Jane Doe fifty nine, right, a.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Woman who was stabbed one hundred and fifty times by
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: someone who seemed entirely focused on her.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Exactly why connect them?
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: Well, the answer lies in the psychological grip of Los
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: Angeles in nineteen sixty nine. You really have to understand
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: the mechanics of the Manson panic. The panic. Yeah, in
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: August of that year, the Tate Labian commerders absolutely terrified
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: the city. The sheer randomness and savagery of the Manson
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: family crimes broke the public's sense of security, but he
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: felt safe nobody because the killers weren't immediately caught. This creeping,
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: pervasive paranoia set in completely, rewriting standard homicide protocol.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: So instead of looking at statistically likely suspects like a
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: jealous partner or a violent criminal, detectives were suddenly hunting
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: ghosts in the hills.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Bureaucracy institutionalized this panic. The state sent out internal
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: memos commanding local departments to look for Manson connections in
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: their cult cases. Oh I see Suddenly every unsolved violent
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: stabbing involving young people was viewed exclusively through the lens
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: of Charles Manson. Detectives abandoned fundamental investigative work, ignoring strong
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: domestic motives in favor of elaborate satanic cult theories.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: And because the jurisdictional walls were so thick, the police
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: were never going to solve this anyway. The LAPD had
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: jurisdiction over Jane fifty nine. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Department had jurisdiction over Marina.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: Habe, and they weren't sharing files.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: No Detective Shepherd couldn't even walk over and demand to
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: see Marina's file because he lacked the authority.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: It's like two people working on the exact same jigsaw puzzle,
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: but they're in completely different buildings and one of them
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: just let a pipe burst over all.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Their pieces, which actually happened.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: It did because of that silient information, physical evidence literally rotted.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: We know Marina was sexually assaulted, and a physical kit
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: was likely collected during the autopsy.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: But decades later, nobody knows where it is.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: Right. There are documented reports of a pipe bursting in
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: a county storage facility meaning critical DNA evidence that could
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: identify her multiple attackers was destroyed by water damage while
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: the two departments were busy not talking to each other.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: It is so incredibly frustrating. Ultimately, it took an outsider,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: a woman with a laptop and a blog, to bypass
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: the LAPD entirely.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: Yes. Fast forward to twenty fifth fifteen.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Jane Doe fifty nine doesn't get her name back through
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: a brilliant police interrogation or a courtroom confession. She gets
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: it back because of Michelle McNamara.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: The incredible true crime journalist who later wrote I'll Be
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: Gone in the Dark right.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: McNamara took an intense interest in Jane Doe fifty nine's
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: cold case and posted a post mortem autopsy photo on
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: her website, hoping to crowdsource leads.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: And it worked.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: It did. Up in Canada, a woman is scrolling through
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: her computer screen and her heart stops. She sees that
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: autopsy photo and instantly recognizes her sister.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But when the sister contacted the LAPD, the cold
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: case detective asked for identifying unreleased details before even discussing
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: a DNA.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: Swab, which is standard. You have to verify, right.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: So the sister described a highly unique piece of custom jewelry.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Their father had taken an old pair of his own
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: cuff links and had a jeweler fashioned them into two
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: distinct rings, one for each daughter. And let me guess,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: the police had that exact cufflink ring sitting in evidence.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: Chills. Yeah.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Forty six years the DNA from the bloody bra finally
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: confirmed it. Jane Doe fifty nine was right.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: Jervetsen right, Dervetsen. Giving a name to the victim completely
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: upends the investigation, providing the context that was missing for decades.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Who was she?
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: Wright was a nineteen year old free spirit from Montreal.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: Her family was prominent. Her great uncle had actually been
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: the last president of Estonia before the Soviet occupation, and
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: the family had fled to Canada as refugees.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: Wow, so a lot of history there.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Right was artistic. She spoke three languages and worked
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: a steady job at a post office in Toronto.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: But then she met a French Canadian man in a
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: cafe and in the late summer of nineteen sixty nine,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: she packed up and followed him to Los Angeles.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: And this is where the sheer coincidence of the names
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: is maddening.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: It makes my head spin. Right's boyfriend was named Jehan,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: which translates to John in English. When she got to La,
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: they supposedly stayed in an apartment with his roommate, who
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: was also named Gene. All Right, and Marina Habbey was
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: out with a guy named John. So Rit Jervetsen moved
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: across the continent for a guy named Jean and lived
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: with another guy named Jean.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: I mean it forces you to question if a phantom
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: John connects these two.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: Women, doesn't it? Does it prove they are connected?
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: Well, you have to look at the physical descriptions the
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: police compiled. Marina's John was clean cut with lighter hair,
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: fitting into that upscale Beverly Hill scene.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: Okay, very polished.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: Right Rate's boyfriend, Jean was described as tall with dark
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: eyes and long feathered rocker hair.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: Total opposite exactly.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: And the roommate, Jane, was short, about five foot six,
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: with short black hair and piercing blue eyes.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: So they are three completely distinct individuals.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: They are as tempting as it is to tie a
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: neat bow around both tragedies. The physical descriptions dismantled the
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: theory of a single shared predator.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense, So Rate is in La. She
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: sends a cheerful postcard home to her family on Halloween nineteen.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: Sixty nine, Right, saying she's happy.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah. She writes that she's going to the the people
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: are welcoming, and then absolute silence. Sixteen days later, the
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: boy bird watching finds her body in the ravine. But
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: here's what people don't get. Her family never filed a
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: missing person's.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: Report, which sounds suspicious today, but you have to understand
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: the family dynamics and the mechanics of missing persons cases
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: in that era. Her family was quite strict and deeply religious.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: Rite was fiercely independent and rebellious. When the letters abruptly stopped,
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: they assumed she was intentionally cutting ties to live her
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: own life in the counterculture.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Which was so common in the late sixties.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: Exactly, They did send a family friend to physically check
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: the address written on her postcard, but a building caretaker
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: said Right had moved out and left no forwarding address.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: So the family hired a private investigator. But because they
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: assumed she was just hiding out and avoiding them, they
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: never engaged law enforcement.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: Right, and the police sketches of Jane Doe fifty nine
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: that circulated in the local California media looked absolutely nothing
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: like Right.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: I've seen them. The artists rendering and her real photograph
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: look like entirely different human beings, and.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: The family in Montreal never saw it anyway.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: True, So synthesizing all the forensic data and suspect files,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: modern detectives have reached a final assessment.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: Yes, Despite the overlapping geography of Moholland Drive and the
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: tight time frame, these are fundamentally separate tragedies. The psychology
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: of the crime scenes points in entirely different directions Because.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: Right Jervetsen's murder with those one hundred and fifty stab
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: wounds is an act of intimate partner rage. It is personal,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: sustained and furious.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: Whereas Marina habes murder is mechanical. By comparison, the abduction
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: was swift and organized, the loud car, the getaway driver's
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: shouting commands, the yanked emergency break.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: It was either a highly targeted abduction, perhaps related to
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: her date or her father's espionage background, or it was
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: a sexually motivated crime of opportunity committed by multiple predators
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: roaming the area.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: Exactly, and sadly, both of these cases are technically still open.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Marina's entire chance at justice relies on a clerk
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: someday digging through a county warehouse and miraculously finding an
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: intact water damage sexual assault.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: Kit, while Read's case hinges on finding two French Canadian
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: men named Jane who were in La in late nineteen
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: sixty nine, men who would be in their late seventies today.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: It just emphasizes the devastating human cost of disorganized evidence
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: rooms and investigative tunnel vision. When jurisdictions refuse to talk
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: and when evidence isn't logged correctly, you lose decades of momentum.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: It really does, but I will say it also highlights
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: the monumental shift brought about by modern citizens, louthing and
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: DNA technology. Michelle McNamara. Bypassing the bureaucracy entirely is a
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: testament to the power of the public.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Which leaves you with a deeply unsettling modern paradox to
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: think about. Oh with that, Well, we focus so much
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: on the miracle of Rate's sisters seeing that blog post
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: and connecting the DNA, but think about the sheer mechanics
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: of genetic genealogy. Today, millions of people have voluntarily uploaded
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: their DNA to commercial ancestry databases. Law enforcement now routinely
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: uses these open source databases to solve decades old cold
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: cases in a matter of hours, entirely bypassing the broken
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: police archive systems that plagued cases like Rights and Marinas.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: It effectively crowdsources the detective work it does.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: But it also means that right now, sitting in leaky
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: county warehouses and mislabeled cardboard boxes across the country, there
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: are thousands of other accidental time capsules.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: Wow. Unlike blood samples forgotten.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: The sell kids, misplaced clothing, the DNA required to solve
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: them already exists on a server somewhere, legally volunteered by
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: a distant cousin trying to build a family tree. The
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: only thing standing between a Jane Doe and her real
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: name isn't a lack of science, and it isn't a
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: criminal mastermind. It's just a warehouse clerk waiting to open
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: the right cardboard box.