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David Carpenter: The Trailside Killer Who Haunted the Woods · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Picture this okay it's uh it's the fall of 1980
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: right you are in the california bay area the weather
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: is crisp you know the fog is rolling in off
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: the pacific and you decide to take a weekend hike
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: to clear your.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Head it sounds perfect.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: It really does because the trails out there places like
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: mount tamilpais or uh point reyes they are just breathtaking
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: yeah they really are they are literal sanctuaries i mean
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: they are where you go to get away from the
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: noise the traffic just the sheer crushing stress.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Of the city. Right. It's a total escape.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Out there it is just you, the towering ancient redwoods,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: and the quiet.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: So you pull up to the trailhead, you lace up
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: your boots, you take a deep breath of that cold,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: pine-scented air, and then you walk up to the wooden
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: trail map to plan your route.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Okay. I'm with you.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: But right there, nailed aggressively over the map, is this Stark,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: jarring piece of cardboard. Wow. Yeah. And it reads, in bold,
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: undeniable lettering, do not hike alone.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: God.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: And right beneath that, there is a chilling, super specific addendum.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: It says, women should be especially cautious.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: That is just, that completely ruins the vibe instantly.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: In an instant. Yeah.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: That peaceful image completely shatters. The sanctuary is just gone.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: You suddenly realize you are not stepping into nature. You
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: are stepping into a hunting ground.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: It is a terrifying paradigm shift.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: And, you know, that is not a hypothetical scenario for
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: our listeners. That was the grim, inescapable reality for residents
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: of the Bay Area during that specific horrifying window of time.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: The woods were just no longer safe.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: They really weren't. Today on this deep dive, we are
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: looking at the terrifying reign of a man named David Carpenter.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: He became known in the press and obviously to a
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: very terrified public as the Trailside Killer.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: Such a chilling moniker.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: It really is. And between 1979 and 1981, he turned
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: some of the most beautiful natural landscapes in California into
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: just scenes of unimaginable horror.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he really did.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: But here is the thing, and this is what we
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: are really going to tear apart today. This didn't just
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: come out of nowhere.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Far from it. I mean, for this deep dive, we
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: are synthesizing research that's really anchored by a brilliant investigative
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: historical piece by Genevieve Carlton.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, published in All That's Interesting.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Along with historical case files and psychological profiles from
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: the era. And our goal here today is not just
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: to recount a true crime narrative.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Right, we're going deeper.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: We have to. We want to perform a systemic autopsy
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: of this case.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: I like that phrasing.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Well, we need to understand the profound, catastrophic blind spots
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: that allowed a deeply documented violent predator to essentially hide
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: in plain sight. Right. We have to analyze the psychology
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: of his escalation, the mechanics of how he weaponized the
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: geography of the Bay Area, and ultimately, the specific scientific
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: and investigative mechanics of his eventual downfall.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. Because to understand how someone becomes
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: the trailside killer, to understand how those terrifying signs ended
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: up at the trailheads in 1980, we cannot start in 1980.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: No, we have to go way back.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Way, way back.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: We have to look at the timeline of David Carpenter's
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: early life to understand how a violent pattern was established.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: And subsequently ignored. Yes. Because if you are listening to
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: this and you think serial predators just, you know, snap
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: one day out of the blue, this case is the
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: ultimate proof that the warning signs are usually flashing red
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: for decades.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: The red flags in this case were not just waving.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: They were practically on fire.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Seriously.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: Let's look at the foundational history. David Carpenter was born
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: on May 6, 1930. Okay. And the timeline of his
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: offenses begins at an incredibly young age. By the time
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: he was 17 years old. So we are talking about
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: 1947 here. He's already fully in the criminal justice system.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: He was charged with a horrific sex crime. He molested
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: a three-year-old girl.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: 17 years old attacking a three-year-old. It's just stomach turning.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: It's awful.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: That is not teenage rebellion. You know, that is a
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: fundamental deep-seated pathology right out of the gate.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: And what was the consequence for that?
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: Well, the historical record shows he was briefly institutionalized. Briefly.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: The exact duration isn't deeply detailed in the primary sources,
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: but The word briefly is doing an enormous amount of
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: heavy lifting there.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: I have to pause you there. Briefly institutionalized in 1947?
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, what does that even look like mechanically?
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: We aren't talking about modern juvenile rehabilitation centers with like
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: cognitive behavioral therapy, right?
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: Not at all. I mean, in the late 1940s, the
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: understanding of juvenile psychology, specifically regarding sexual predators, was rudimentary
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: at best.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: The prevailing mindset was often punitive rather than rehabilitative, or
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: it relied on archaic psychiatric models that believed these urges
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: were phases that could just be disciplined or medicated away.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Wow. So they just locked him up and hoped for
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: the best.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: Pretty much. He was put into an institutional system that
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: essentially warehoused him. And then inexplicably, he was released back
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: into society without any meaningful mechanism to monitor his underlying
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: violent compulsions.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: It is staggering. But even with the limited understanding of
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: the 1940s, a 17-year-old crossing that massive, unthinkable line should
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: have marked him for life.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: You would think so.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Instead, he becomes an adult, and those violent tendencies do
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: not vanish. They fester. They incubate, and the violence takes
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: a massive leap forward. Because by 1960, Carpenter is 30
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: years old, and he targets a young woman named Lois D'Andre.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: And the mechanics of this 1960 attack are critical to
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: understanding his eventual M.O. as the trailside killer. Right. He
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: didn't just attempt to rape her. He attacked her on
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: a deserted road with a knife and a hammer.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: A knife and a hammer. Yes.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: This is a profound escalation in violence and intent from
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: his teenage crime.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: I have to inject a wild pop culture footnote here
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: that just completely threw me when I was reviewing the research.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. This is crazy.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Lois D'Andre is actually the mother of Lisa Winna, the
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: star from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: It's so strange how those worlds collide.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: It is. It is one of those bizarre, jarring moments
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: where dark history intersects with modern pop culture in a
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: way you never, ever expect. Right. But looking at the
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: reality of that day in 1960, a knife and a hammer.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: That is visceral, close quarters brutality.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: Very personal.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: It is deeply personal and incredibly lethal. And the only
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: reason Lois DeAndre survived, the only reason she didn't become
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: a murder statistic in 1960, was pure, sheer, unbelievable luck.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: Pure chance. A military policeman just happened to be driving
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: down this deserted stretch of road.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Thank God.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: He noticed the struggle, and he physically interrupted the attack.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: If we look at the trajectory of Carpenter's violence, if
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: that MP had been a minute later or had taken
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: a different route, the outcome would almost certainly have been
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: a homicide.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: So let's look at the math here. He is caught
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: red-handed in 1960 attempting a brutally violent sexual assault with
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: deadly weapons. He goes to prison, but he only serves
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: seven and a half years.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: Which is nothing.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: Seven and a half years for an attack with a
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: knife and a hammer.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: He gets paroled. And the moment he is released, he
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: is almost immediately arrested again for robbery, kidnapping, and rape.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: The speed of his recidivism is what we call in
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: criminology a short cooling off period. Okay. Though in Carpenter's case,
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: it barely existed at all. He gets out and he
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: goes right back to hunting. Yeah. The institutional deterrent had
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: zero effect on his behavior.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: It's like watching a pressure cooker with a broken release valve.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: And the authorities just keep putting it back on the stove.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: That is a very apt analogy.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: You have a guy who offended at 17, escalated to
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: hammers and knives at 30... gets let out, and instantly
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: kidnaps and rapes someone. If you are listening to this
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: right now, you are probably screaming the same thing I am.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: How on earth is someone with this track record ever
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: let out again?
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: It defies logic.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: How does the system look at this man and say, yes,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: let's give him another try?
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: That tension you are feeling, that disbelief, is really the
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: crux of this entire tragedy. To understand how that happens...
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: We have to look at the mechanics of the parole
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: system in the 1970s.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's get into that.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: Parole boards were, and in many ways still are, operating
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: on a complex calculus of prison overcrowding, statutory guidelines, and
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: good behavior behind bars. Carpenter was notoriously adept at navigating
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: the prison system. He was a model inmate.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: Oh, of course he was.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: He knew how to play the game, how to present
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: a facade of rehabilitation to administrators and who were desperately
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: looking for reasons to clear out cell space.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: But wait, facade is one thing. The paper trail is
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: another entirely.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: True.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: What makes this so utterly damning is that they knew
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: exactly what he was. They had the literal blueprint of
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: his pathology.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: They absolutely did.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Because around the time of that arrest for kidnapping and rape,
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: a psychiatrist actually profiled Carpenter.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: And the conclusion the psychiatrist reached wasn't some vague, he
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: might be a danger to the community, boilerplate warning. It
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: was chilling. accurate and incredibly specific.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: I know the exact evaluation you are referring to. The
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: psychiatrist fundamentally understood the mechanics of Carpenter's brain.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: I have the quote right here from the source, and
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: I want to read it verbatim because it is just staggering.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Go ahead. The psychiatrist warned, ever since the age of eight,
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: whenever he was under significant stress, he will commit a
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: sex offense.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: Just, wow.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: It goes on. The only way he can think straight
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: is to rape the nearest female.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: I really want to break down the psychological mechanics of
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: that statement because it is the Rosetta Stone for the
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: trailside killer.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, please do.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: The only way he can think straight. What the psychiatrist
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: is identifying here is that for Carpenter, sexual violence is
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: not just about lust.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: It is a regulatory mechanism. When he feels internal chaos, stress,
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: or a loss of control in his daily life, he
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: doesn't go for a run, he doesn't drink, he doesn't
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: talk to a therapist.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: He regulates his internal emotional state by completely dominating and
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: destroying another human being.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It centers him.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: This raises an important question, though. How does any parole board,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: any justice system, Look at that psychiatric evaluation, an evaluation
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: that explicitly states the subject uses rape as a biological
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: coping mechanism for everyday stress and weigh it against standard
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: parole guidelines and decide in favor of release.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: It's infuriating. But the mechanism of that failure usually comes
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: down to siloed decision-making.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: Siloed decision-making. Okay.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: You have a psychiatric evaluation sitting in a medical file,
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: and then you have a parole board looking at behavioral
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: compliance in a prison setting. In a controlled environment like
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: a prison, his stress is managed. His routine is dictated.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: So he looks fine on paper.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: He looks cured. The board fundamentally failed to understand that
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: the moment he was introduced to the uncontrolled variable of
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: the free world, you know, paying bills, navigating relationships, dealing
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: with rejection, that stress would trigger the exact violent mechanism
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: the psychiatrist warned about.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: I want you listening right now to just sit with
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: that for a second. Imagine the sheer terror of knowing
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: that this document, this perfectly clear neon flashing light of
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: an evaluation, existed before he was ever let out on
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: parole in May of 1979.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: It is deeply haunting.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: It is a dark, heavy foreshadowing. The system had the
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: instruction manual for David Carpenter's brain.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: They did.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: They knew that the moment he felt stressed in the
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: outside world, he was going to attack a woman. And
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: they opened the door anyway.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: And that catastrophic systemic failure is the direct bridge between
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: the David Carpenter of the 1960s and the trailside killer
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: of the late 1970s. Yeah. When he is paroled in
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: May of 1979, the psychiatric evaluation is almost immediately proven right.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: It doesn't take long at all.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: He is out in the world, the stress of life
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: outside prison hits him, and he defaults to the only
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: coping mechanism he knows.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: But the way he executes it changes, which brings us
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: to the geography of his crimes. Because the timeline moves
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: incredibly fast here.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: It does.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: He is paroled in May 1979. By August of 1979,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: just three months later, the murders begin.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: Three months.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: But he doesn't go back to deserted roads in a
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: car like he did with Lois D'Andregy. He doesn't go
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: to city streets. He shifts his hunting grounds entirely. He
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: moves into the woods.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: The shift in topography is a massive evolution in his
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: modus operandi. Okay. Between August 1979 and October 1980, Carpenter
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: begins utilizing the Bay Area nature trails as his specific
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: hunting grounds.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Like we mentioned at the start.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: Exactly. We are talking about locations like the Mount Tamalpais
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: Trail and Land's End. And we really need to talk
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: about why these locations are tactically significant for a predator.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Right, because these aren't just patches of grass in a city.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: These are sprawling, rugged, isolating environments.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: Precisely. A city street has variables a predator cannot control.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: Street lights, passing cars... People looking out their windows.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Too much risk.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: But the topography of a trail like Mount Tamalpais offers
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: natural camouflage. The dense canopy blocks line of sight.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: The winding trails ensure that you can be completely isolated
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: from another hiker just 50 yards away.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Wow, that's a chilling thought.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: And the acoustic properties of a dense forest actually absorb sound,
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: meaning a scream doesn't travel as far.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: Jesus.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: Carpenter selected these environments because they provided him with an
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: arena where he could exercise total uninterrupted control over his victims.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: These are iconic, beautiful places. And suddenly they become the
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: scenes of just brutal, senseless violence. So we have the
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: victims from this first wave. Etta Kane, who is 44,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Barbara Schwartz, 23, Anne Evelyn Alderson, 26, and Mary Frances Bennett,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: who is 23.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: Such young lives.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: But here's where it gets really interesting. And by interesting,
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: I mean deeply unsettling. Look at the inconsistency in his methods.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: Yes, the weapons.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: Kane and Alderson were shot. Schwartz and Bennett were stabbed.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: The weapon variation is a crucial piece of the psychological
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: puzzle here.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: I am struggling to understand the logic behind that. Why
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: switch weapons?
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: It's a good question.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: Is it just about convenience, like whatever he happened to
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: have in his jacket that day? Or does it reflect
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: that psychological stress the psychiatrist mentioned?
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: I think it leans heavily towards the latter.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Because shooting someone from a distance feels entirely different from
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: the source material's description of Mary Frances Bennett. whose body
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: was found at land's end, stabbed 25 times.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: It's a staggering level of violence.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: A stabbing with 25 wounds feels so much more frenzied, sweaty,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: and personal than pulling a trigger.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: Your instinct on the frenzy is completely accurate. Switching weapons
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: in that manner, especially toggling between the mechanical distance of
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: a firearm and the intimate visceral exertion of a knife,
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: often points to a killer who is experimenting with the
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: power dynamics of the kill. Or one whose internal state
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: is wildly fluctuating. When we look at the brutality of
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: 25 stab wounds, we are seeing a physical manifestation of
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: that psychological pressure cooker blowing its lid. A gun is
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: about efficiency. 25 stab wounds are about rage and total
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: physical domination.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: It feels like He is chasing a specific feeling, trying
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: to find the exact method that regulates his internal chaos
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: the best.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: That is a very astute way to frame it. And
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: as we move into the fall of 1980, it becomes
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: clear that whatever he was chasing, the threshold required to
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: satisfy it was increasing.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: He escalates massively.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: He does.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: He moves his operations to Point Reyes, specifically the Sky Trail.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: And in that one season, you have four young people murdered.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: 18-year-old Cynthia Moreland and her 19-year-old fiancé, Richard Stowers, 22-year-old
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: Diane O'Connell, and 23-year-old Shauna May. All of them were
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: found shot and killed.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: It's just devastating.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: At this point, the sheer volume of bodies and the
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: geographic clustering forced law enforcement into a corner. They couldn't
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: keep this quiet anymore.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: They had to address the public.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: In November of 1980, Sheriff Al Hauenstein holds a major
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: press conference. And the language he uses is incredibly revealing,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: especially when you overlay it with that old psychiatric file.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: Right. Sheriff Hauenstein described a ritualistic killer who possessed a
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: severe psychological problem.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: Which we know is true.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: But the specific details he released about the crime scenes
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: are what truly bridge the gap back to Carpenter's core pathology.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: He mentioned that the killer was motivated to put the
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: victims through a significant degree of discomfort prior to the killings, right? Yes.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: That they were found in what he called submissive positions.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: The psychological torture, making the victims beg, forcing them to
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: their knees, physically placing them in submissive postures before ultimately
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: killing them, that is the key.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: It aligns flawlessly with the psychiatric assessment from years earlier.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: This was a man who used extreme physical and emotional
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: dominance to think straight. Wow. For Carpenter, the murder wasn't
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: just about ending a life. It was the horrific climax
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: of an act of total godlike control.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: He needed that power.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: He needed them submissive. He needed them terrified. That terror
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: was the fuel he used to regulate his own broken psychology.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: I want you to picture the reality of the Bay
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Area at this exact moment in time.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: It was a nightmare.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: The news is everywhere. The sheriff is on television talking
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: about a ritualistic killer making young people beg for their
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: lives in the woods. The signs go up. Do not
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: hike alone.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: The signs we talked about. Yeah.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: The trails, which were once bustling with joggers, hikers, and
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: families looking for a weekend escape, just completely emptied out.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: People were terrified.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: People locked their doors. Imagine your favorite local park. The
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: place you go to decompress after a long week, suddenly
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: transforming into a literal hunting ground.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: It changes everything.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: It completely altered the entire community's relationship with nature. The woods,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: literally overnight, became synonymous with death.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: It is a profound psychological trauma for a community. The
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: wilderness is supposed to be our refuge from the dangers
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: of society.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: Right, our safe space.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: It is the one place we go to be safe
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: from human malice. Carpenter inverted that. He weaponized the isolation
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: of nature.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: And for nearly two years, he operated in this environment
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: with absolute impunity. He was a phantom moving through the trees,
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: striking and vanishing back into the fog.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: But the thing about these types of offenders, and we
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: see this over and over again in the history of
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: true crime, is that they rarely stop on their own.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: Very true.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: They keep pushing the envelope. Their confidence grows. They start
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: feeling invincible. And inevitably, they make a fatal mistake.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: They get sloppy.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: Phantom steps out into the light and trips over his
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: own ego.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: The breakdown of operational discipline is almost a universal law
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: with serial offenders. We move into the spring of 1981,
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: and the paradigm shifts again.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: What happens?
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: On March 29, 1981, Carpenter attacks 20-year-old Ellen Hansen and
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: her boyfriend, 20-year-old Steve Hartle. in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: Right. He kills Ellen Hansen. But, incredibly, miraculously, Steve Hartle survives.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: He is shot in the neck, but he fights. And
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: he lives. And because he survives, he is able to
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: give police something they desperately needed. A physical description of
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: the Trailside Killer.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: That survival is the first major structural crack in Carpenter's armor.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Finally a break.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: The police finally have a composite sketch of They have
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: a face to put on the phantom. But the fatal error,
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: the mistake that truly unravels his anonymity and brings his
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: entire operation crashing down, happens in May of 1981.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's hear it.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: He kills 20-year-old Heather Skaggs.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: This is where the whole case breaks wide open.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Because up until now, his victims were strangers, right? Crimes
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: of opportunity in the woods.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: People he just happened upon while stalking the trails. But
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: Heather Skaggs was different. She didn't just stumble across him
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: on a hike. The investigation revealed she disappeared right after
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: she was supposed to meet with David Carpenter to buy
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: a car or discuss a job. The pretenses varied in
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: the initial reports, but the core fact remained. She was
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: going to meet him.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: Let's analyze why that is such a catastrophic error for
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: a predator.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Please.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: This is a textbook example of a serial offender's hubris
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: overriding their survival instincts.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: For two years, His entire success relied on anonymity and randomness.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: Moving from anonymous victims in isolated wilderness areas to targeting
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: someone directly connected to his personal or professional life, someone
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: whose calendar would literally point investigators in his direction, that
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: is a massive, inexplicable deviation from the disciplined M.O. that
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: had kept him hidden.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: He got arrogant.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: He brought the crime out of the abstract woods and
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: into his own backyard.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: And once that connection is made, the dominoes start falling fast.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: They really do.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: A special trailside killer hotline had been set up. The L.A.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Times reported that three different tipsters called in to point
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: the finger at Carpenter.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: Three of them.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: One of them was even an ex-girlfriend who saw the
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: composite sketch derived from Steve Hartle's description, recognized his distinct features,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: and immediately called it in.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: You have the triangulation of evidence happening in real time.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: The physical description matches the composite sketch. The direct social
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: link to the final victim establishes opportunity, and the tips
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: from his inner circle provide the identity.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: But wait, hold on. I need to stop you there
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: and push back on the timeline of this investigation.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Because reading through the source material, this is the part
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: that genuinely infuriates me.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: I think I know what you're going to say.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: The police had a list of over 160 suspects for
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: the Trailside Killer. They were scouring the state.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: And David Carpenter, a man with a massive, extensively documented
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: history of brutal acts escalating violent sex crimes. A man
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: who had attacked a woman with a hammer and a knife.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: A man who a psychiatrist explicitly said would rape whenever
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: he was stressed. He was not on that list of
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: 160 people.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: No, he was not.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: The research even notes he wasn't listed as a sex offender.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: How does that happen?
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: It's hard to grasp.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: I am struggling to understand the logic here. How is
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: he living a quiet life on parole, totally off the
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: radar of a massive multi-agency task force hunting a serial
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: killer in his literal jurisdiction.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: Well, if we kind of connect this up to the
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: bigger picture, it is incredibly difficult to reconcile from a
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: modern perspective where everything is just connected by fiber optics
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: and everything. But we really do have to fundamentally understand
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: the bureaucratic realities or rather the bureaucratic nightmare of of
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: law enforcement in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Okay, set the scene for us.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: So basically, there were no centralized, kind of instantly accessible
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: digital databases.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: Right. No one is pulling up an iPad in their
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: cruiser and typing in, like, you know, violent parolees near
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Mount Tam.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The communication between state parole boards, state prisons, and
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: local county sheriffs or municipal police departments was notoriously, tragically poor.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: It's almost unbelievable.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: Imagine trying to put together a million-piece puzzle, but four
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: different people hold the pieces in different rooms, and none
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: of them are allowed to use a telephone.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: What a mess.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: The parole board in one office knew he was a monster.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: The local cops in another office were investigating the trail murders.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: But there was no mechanism to force those two offices
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: to talk to each other.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: So it was just physical silos of information, literally paper
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: file sitting in manila folders and different filing cabinets across
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: the state.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: Precisely. Carpenter was essentially camouflaged by bureaucracy. Wow. He was
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: checking the boxes of a quiet parolee, holding down a job,
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: keeping his head down in his day-to-day life. That compliant
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: behavior kept him off the local radar.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: That's terrifying.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: And the mechanism of the sex offender registry as we
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: understand it today, with strict address verification, GPS monitoring, and
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: interagency public notification, was not robust or integrated in the
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: same way.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they just didn't have the tools.
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: The system relied on paper trails, index cards, and teletype machines.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: And paper trails in the 1980s often led to dead
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: ends or sat unread on a desk.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: It is a terrifying realization that the only thing protecting
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: this predator, the only reason he was able to hunt
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: for two years, was a lack of a shared filing system.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: It really was.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: But thankfully, the human element overrode the bureaucratic failure.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: The tips saved the case.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: The tipsters came forward. The connection to Heather Skaggs was
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: made and the police finally zero in on him. In
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: July of 1981, they arrest him.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: Finally.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: And they don't just get him on suspicion. They get
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: the physical evidence. They execute a search and find a
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: gun that Ballistics definitively links to Carpenter and to seven
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: of the Trailside Killer victims.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: The recovery of that firearm is the mechanical nail in
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: the coffin. Absolutely. You have the surviving witness description. the
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: direct social connection to the final victim, the tips from
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: people who intimately knew him, and now you have the
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: actual murder weapon in his physical possession.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: Ballistics back then, even without modern computer imaging, was still
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: incredibly precise, right?
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: Oh, yes.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: They are looking at the literal striations on the bullets
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: recovered from the victims and matching them to test fires
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: from his gun.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, the foundational science of ballistics, matching the unique microscopic
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: scratches left on a bullet by the rifling of a
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: specific gun barrel, was very well established and highly reliable
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: in a courtroom setting.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: The state brings him to trial armed with this mountain
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: of evidence. And the outcome is decisive. He is found
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: guilty of murder, attempted murder, rape, and attempted rape across
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: the majority of the suspected attacks.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? The guy is caught.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: The gun is in his hand. The surviving witness points
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: him out in court. The jury convicts him. The system,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: after failing so miserably for decades, finally works.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: It finally caught up to him.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: And yet, decades later, the psychology of this man is just,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: it is a study in profound, baffling delusion.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Genevieve Carlton's piece brings up this 2013 interview he gave.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: This is over 30 years after his arrest. He is
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: an old man in prison, and he is still vehemently
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: claiming innocence.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: The language he uses in that interview is fascinating.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: He says, I was the logical suspect. Everyone was convinced
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: I was the trailside killer long before I was charged.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: He even says, even the investigators knew I was innocent.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, the sheer audacity. The gun was linked to
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: seven bodies.
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: When you analyze that 2013 interview from a psychological standpoint,
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: You have to ask the core question. Is it genuine
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: delusion where his brain has completely rewritten his own reality
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: to protect his fragile ego? Or is it a calculated,
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: manipulative posture? Think back to the psychiatrist's profile from the 1960s.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: What is Carpenter's entire pathology based on?
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: Dominance. Control. Putting people in submissive positions. Exactly.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: Exactly. So even in a prison cell, even on death row,
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: where he has been stripped of every physical freedom, denying
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: the facts is his final mechanism of control.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: Oh, that makes so much sense.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: Admitting guilt means surrendering to the state's narrative. It means
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: admitting he was caught and defeated.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: By denying it, by claiming the investigators knew he was
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: innocent and that he was framed as the logical suspect—
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: He positions himself as the mastermind, the victim of a
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: grand conspiracy.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: He's still playing the game.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: It is. the final, pathetic attempt of a control freak
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: predator trying to maintain dominance over his own story. He's
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: still trying to manipulate the interviewer, the public, and history itself.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: But the beautiful thing about modern science is that it
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: does not care about a serial killer's narrative.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: No, it doesn't.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: Science doesn't negotiate with delusions. And this is where the
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: story gets a modern conclusion that completely shreds his final
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: attempts at control.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: Because back in 1981, the case relied heavily on circumstantial connections,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: witness testimony, and ballistics, which are incredibly strong but can
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: sometimes be attacked by defense attorneys in the court of
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: public opinion.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: But then we fast forward to 2010.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: The advent and refinement of advanced DNA technology.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Explain to me how that actually works in a cold
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: case context. How do they get DNA from a crime
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: scene in 1980 and test it 30 years later?
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: It is a marvel of forensic science and evidence preservation.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: Back in 1979 and 1980, investigators didn't know what DNA
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: testing would become.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Right. It was practically sci-fi back then.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: But standard operating procedure for major crime scenes dictated that
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: biological evidence, blood, semen, skin cells under fingernails, hair, was collected, dried,
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: and stored in climate-controlled evidence lockers. Wow. They were preserving
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: the physical material in the hopes that future science would
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: figure out what to do with it.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: So it's just sitting in a cardboard box in a
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: warehouse for three decades.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: Essentially, yes, but carefully cataloged and kept dry to prevent degradation.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: By 2010, the science of DNA extraction and amplification, specifically
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: PCR or polymerase chain reaction, which can take tiny degraded
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: fragments of DNA and multiply them until they are readable,
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: had advanced exponentially.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: That's incredible.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: Authorities pulled the preserved evidence from the 1980 crime scenes,
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: tested it against Carpenter's known DNA profile, and the match
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: was definitive. It linked Carpenter absolutely to the murder of
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: Mary Frances Bennett.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: That is the 23-year-old victim who was stabbed 25 times
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: at Land's End.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: Correct. The DNA evidence closed a massive, albeit theoretical, loophole.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: It provided absolute, irrefutable biological proof connecting him to the
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: sheer brutality of that specific crime scene.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: It's undeniable now.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: Now, interestingly, the research notes he still remains officially only
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: a suspect in the murders of Etta Kane and Barbara Schwartz.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Why is that? If they matched him to Bennett, why
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: not the others?
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: Usually in these cold cases, it comes down to the
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: physical viability of the evidence. There likely wasn't enough testable
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: DNA remaining from those specific scenes, or The biological material
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: had degraded beyond the point of amplification.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: Ah, I see.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: But from a legal and historical standpoint, it doesn't change
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: the outcome. The Bennett match cements his identity as the
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: Triosite killer beyond any shadow of a doubt.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: It is a grim, heavy sort of victory. It silences
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: his claims of innocence forever. The science spoke for the
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: victims when he tried to rewrite history.
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: Beautifully said.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: And it leads us to where he is right now, today.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: David Carpenter is currently the oldest prisoner on death row
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: in the state of California.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: Which presents a very complex legacy regarding justice.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's touch on that.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: California is currently in the long, complicated, politically fraught process
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: of dismantling its capital punishment system. There is an ongoing
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: executive moratorium on executions. So practically speaking, despite the multiple
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: death sentences handed down to him by juries, David Carpenter
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: will almost certainly die a natural death behind bars.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: He lived a long life, far longer than the bright,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: young futures he brutally snuffed out on those trails.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: Yes, he did.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: We've covered an immense amount of ground today on this
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: deep dive. We started with a chilling piece of cardboard
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: nailed to a redwood tree in 1980. Yeah. We looked
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: way back to a juvenile offense in 1947 that a
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: primitive system essentially warehoused and ignored. We traced his horrifying escalation,
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: aided by the bureaucratic blinders of the 1970s, to the
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: violence of the trailside murders.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: The timeline is just devastating.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: We saw a man who used the physical isolation of
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: nature to exercise his twisted, desperate need for psychological control.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: And we saw how his own arrogance, surviving witnesses, and
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: eventually the irrefutable truth of modern DNA science finally locked
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: him away on death row.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: It is a historical record that forces us to critically
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: examine the cracks in our societal safety nets, both the
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: legal frameworks meant to monitor predators and the physical environments
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: we inhabit. But there is a lingering, unsettling thought drawn
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: from the legacy of this case that I think is
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: deeply worth reflecting on. What's that? We universally view nature,
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: the deep woods, the winding trails, the remote mountains, as
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: an escape. We go there to detox from the dangers,
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: the stresses, and the chaos of human society. We view
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: it as our ultimate sanctuary.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: Right. It's where we go to feel grounded, to feel
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: safe from the modern world.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: But David Carpenter fundamentally inverted that reality. He turned that
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: exact sanctuary into a trap.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: He weaponized it.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: And his crimes challenge you to ask a very uncomfortable
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: question about our relationship with the wild. When you walk
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: deep into the wilderness to escape the world, are you
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: actually finding safety?
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: Or are you, by seeking isolation... intentionally walking away from
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: the very safety nets, the crowds, the witnesses, the streetlights,
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: the immediate access to authorities that protect us from the
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: monsters who are already out there waiting in the quiet.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: That is a profoundly chilling thought to take with you
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: the next time you lace up your hiking boots and
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: look at a map. Yeah. Thank you so much for
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: joining us on this deep dive. We hope it gave
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: you some clarity on the mechanics, the psychology, and the
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: history of a very dark chapter. Stay curious. Keep asking
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: the hard questions and echoing the trailhead signs of 1980.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: Stay safe out there.