Latest / True Crime California / TCC #6 Polly Klaas

Transcript

TCC #6 Polly Klaas · True Crime California

0:04
Speaker 1: Dark Cast Network. Out of the shadows come the best
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indie podcasts. Hey everyone, welcome to True Crime California. I'm
0:17
your host, Cindy, and I'm glad you're here. Welcome back
0:31
to True Crime California. This is our next episode, episode six.
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Sorry I'm a couple of days late on it. You
0:38
know how it goes with the holidays. But we're here.
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We're ready to get into a new case, and it's
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a horrifying one, if I do say so. This week
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I am covering the kidnapping and murder of poly Class. Now,
0:52
this is a really famous case in California. I just
0:56
thought it would be a good one to do because
0:58
apparently I like to torture myself and talk about children
1:01
being murdered. So hope you guys are with me. Let's
1:04
ring in the new year with some some fucked up shit,
1:07
shall we. So I'm just gonna get right into it here.
1:11
This story starts October first, nineteen ninety three, when twelve
1:14
year old poly Class decided to have a sleepover with
1:17
two of her friends. I think she played with them
1:20
in band. I know she played clarinet. I believe they
1:22
did as well. So these are her two friends Kate
1:25
and Jillian. Now. At the time, Paulie lived in Petaluma, California,
1:29
which is adjacent to the Bay Area. She lived in
1:32
a three bedroom house with her mother and younger sister, Annie,
1:35
who is six years old now. Petaluma, like I said,
1:38
it's like Bay Area, but it's Sonoma County, which Sonoma
1:41
is famous for their wines, so is Napa. There's a
1:44
lot of wine wars up in the central northern California area.
1:49
And basically this is like about forty miles north of
1:52
San Francisco. A lot of people actually live in Petaluma
1:55
even now and just commute to the city for work.
1:59
So that's what are Pollie's living at the time this
2:01
story takes place. She was born January third, nineteen eighty one,
2:05
in Fairfax, California, which is yet another city. It's another
2:11
it's in another county, but it's actually closer to San Francisco,
2:15
so kind of up there, the county is all sort
2:17
of run into each other. Like when I'm driving through
2:20
California on my way to Oregon, I'll go through like
2:22
multiple counties like very in quick succession because of the
2:26
way that they're sort of split up. So Fairfax is
2:29
sort of almost in between Petaluma and San Francisco, so
2:34
keeping local to like the city, you know, and and
2:38
her father actually I believe, commuted to San Francisco from
2:42
Fairfax when she was born. Speaking of her father, her
2:46
mother and father had split up when Polly was pretty young,
2:49
but they were very good at co parenting. I believe
2:52
she was only two years old when they split up,
2:54
so by the time she was twelve, you know, they'd
2:56
got into a rhythm. Her mother, Eve Nickel, had already
3:01
remarried once and was unfortunately in the middle of her
3:03
second divorce when this story takes place. Polly's father, Mark Class,
3:08
ran a Hurtz truck rental company, and I believe he
3:10
did pretty well for himself. He and Polly were super,
3:14
super close. They spoke every single day, They saw each
3:17
other every weekend, you know, even though she lived with
3:20
her mother, the two of them spent a lot of
3:22
time together. And you know, while Mark was maybe doing
3:26
pretty well, I think Polly's mom was doing the best
3:29
that she could. I think it was a much more
3:31
modest lifestyle that she, you know, could provide for Polly.
3:35
But it certainly wasn't bad By any means. You know,
3:37
she's essentially a single mother of two young girls at
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this point, at least two young girls. And I say
3:43
at least too because I'll later talk about Polly's sisters.
3:46
But often when the story is told, there's only mention
3:49
of one sister, and I believe this is because the
3:52
other sister was the same age as Pollie and was
3:55
the daughter of her at that point nearly former stepfather
3:59
and his former wife. So I don't know that there's
4:03
any blood relation between the second sister, but they were
4:06
raised together. Pollie's mom was married to this man for
4:09
ten years of Polly's life and ten years of this
4:12
other girl's life, so it was like they were very
4:14
much raised together, even if there wasn't like a blood relation.
4:18
So when you know, when Annie, her younger sister, and
4:22
Jess talk about Polly, they both refer to her as
4:25
their sister because that's what she is. So blood relation
4:29
or not, Polly had two sisters, and often there's only
4:33
the talk of the one Annie, because that's who they
4:35
were living with. But I'm going to talk about these
4:37
sisters later, so I wanted to add some context. So Pollie,
4:42
you know, she's a popular girl, super outgoing, pretty lot
4:46
of personality, very very nice, very happy, just a normal
4:50
twelve year old girl growing up in Petaluma in the
4:55
early nineties. And I want to mention just really quickly
4:58
that I remember this story clearly because I was two
5:02
years younger than her, almost exactly two years younger than her. Sure, sure,
5:06
she's born January third, I was born January twenty ninth.
5:10
She's nineteen eighty one. I was nineteen eighty three. So
5:13
I remember this these stories. I was also living in Davis,
5:18
which is, you know, fifty miles well maybe like one
5:21
hundred miles away from San Francisco, just directly east at
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the time this took place. So this was a really
5:27
really big story, and I remember it really really well,
5:30
which is another reason I wanted to cover it because
5:32
I again the reason I chose to do California stories
5:35
is because they interest me. They're personal to me because
5:37
it's where I grew up, it's where I live. So anyway,
5:41
getting more into the story, so you know, she's growing
5:43
up in the nineties, normal girl, popular, happy, and like
5:48
I said, she and her mom and little sister live
5:49
in this house in Petaluma. It's not in the greatest area.
5:53
It's Pedaluma generally is not like a bad city, but
5:58
you know, it has its spots like anywhere else. I
6:00
would say, Like I looked it up and like it's
6:03
kind of in the middle of like the national average
6:05
for crime. So it's not particularly safe. It's not particularly dangerous.
6:09
It's sort of just a city. Right this place now,
6:12
I looked it up. It's four twenty seven East Fourth Street.
6:16
It's worth over a million dollars, Like, welcome to California
6:18
real estate. Right, But at the time, it was not
6:21
the best area. And in fact, it was almost exactly
6:24
between two parks that were pretty well known for having
6:27
like a large amount of drug users and other sort
6:30
of like shady people around. So it wasn't a great
6:33
area to be kind of stuck between. So one park,
6:36
Walnut Park, had a Greyhound bus stop next to it,
6:40
and I don't know if you all know, but the
6:41
greyhound stations are like super sketchy, just traditionally any city
6:46
where the Greyhound station is, like it's not going to
6:48
be a great area. And that being said, you know,
6:51
like I said, Petaluma isn't known for being super scary,
6:54
but you know, there's better areas and worse areas, and
6:57
they're in this sort of in between the area, right.
7:00
So anyway, it's October first, nineteen ninety three. She's having
7:02
her friends sleep over and Jillian shows up around seven pm.
7:07
Now the time hasn't changed yet, so around seven it's
7:10
still light out, so the girls go to get popsicles
7:13
at the local convenience store and they walk by one
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of the other or the other park I should say,
7:17
which is called Wickersham Park. It's not super late, but
7:21
it's getting dark. Starts to get a little sketchy, so
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the girls hurry back to Polly's house. Her friend Kate
7:26
then shows up sometime just after eight pm, and the
7:29
three go to her room to do makeup, hang out.
7:32
They're you know, talking about their Halloween costumes. One of
7:35
them does Polly's make up to make her look dead,
7:38
which I fucking hate that detail. It's just fucked up.
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Her mom is obviously home, Eva's home, and around ten
7:44
o'clock she says, you know, don't stay up too late,
7:46
have fun, but keep it down. Me and Annie are
7:49
going to bed in the next room. Now that it
7:51
was a three bedroom, but her little sister was only
7:54
six years old, so it would often sleep with her mother.
7:56
So the two of them are going to bed in
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the room literally next door to Polly's. The girls keep
8:01
playing for a short while, then they decide to go
8:04
get like pillows and blankets or sleeping bags and go
8:06
to sleep on the floor in Polly's room. So Polly's like,
8:09
I'll get him. She opens the door of her bedroom
8:12
to go get the sleeping stuff and there is a
8:15
grizzled man standing in the hallway facing her, holding a
8:20
knife and a duffel bag. The man says to her,
8:29
don't scream or I'll slit your throat, then forces Polly
8:34
back into her room with Kate and Jillian. He then
8:37
tells the girls not to look at him and to
8:40
lay on their stomachs on the floor. He said, I
8:43
won't hurt you. I'm only here for money. Paully says,
8:46
please don't hurt my mom or sister there in the
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next room. And apparently this kind of freaked him out
8:51
because I don't know that he knew the other people
8:53
were home, and this knowledge may have contributed him getting
8:57
more panicked as time went on, because the girls later said,
9:00
you know, he started out kind of calm and then
9:02
got like more and more frantic, more and more like
9:05
hurry up kind of deal, you know. And I should
9:07
also note that at first the girls thought this was
9:10
a prank because apparently Polly was like a big prankster,
9:14
so like to this point, I guess at twelve years old,
9:16
pulling pranks like this would be kind of crazy. But
9:19
they were almost like laughing at this situation. But after
9:21
they were like tied with random silk and cords that
9:25
he cut from Polly's Nintendo, like, they started to realize, like,
9:28
this isn't a joke. Also, Polly was terrified. She began crying.
9:32
She said, you know, I'll take you to the money,
9:34
like just please don't hurt my family. So the man
9:37
puts pillowcases over the girl's heads. He's you know, tells
9:40
him lay on their stomachs, and he gags all three
9:42
of them with this like weird silky fabric that he
9:45
brought with him. And that's a point to note later
9:47
he brought fabric with him. He then said to the girls,
9:51
I'm gonna take Polly. He asked him, you know who
9:53
lives here, and Polly was like, it's me. That's another
9:56
thing to note. He asked which girl lived in the house.
10:00
She said I did I do. So he takes her
10:02
with and he says, you know, she's going to show
10:04
me where the valuables are. I'm not going to hurt her.
10:07
I'm not going to touch her. Count to one thousand
10:10
and I will. She'll be back by then, like I'll
10:12
bring her back within a thousand counts. He makes a
10:14
note to say he's not going to hurt her, which
10:17
to me is suspicious because it's one of those things
10:21
like you know when somebody will say something and it's like, well,
10:24
why do you say that? Like I wasn't even thinking that,
10:26
but now I am. But I also, I mean obviously
10:28
in this context, like they might think he's going to
10:30
hurt her. But it's just interesting how adamant he was
10:32
that he wasn't going to hurt her. So he and
10:35
Polly leave the room, and the girls count for a while,
10:38
and they wait for just a couple of minutes, and
10:40
then they are able to untie each other and they
10:43
go and get Polly's mom, Eve. Eve searches the house
10:47
really quickly and then immediately calls police. Now this time
10:50
it's about eleven pm. The man broke in just after
10:53
ten thirty, so it's been a you know, pretty quick turnaround.
10:56
He was only in the house for about ten minutes
10:59
and police immediately take action. So like, the turnaround time
11:03
for this is not long. It's like less than a
11:05
half an hour from the time she was taken until
11:07
the time police were actually looking for her, which is great.
11:11
The response time is wonderful. And they put out an
11:14
APB and all points bulletin for police to know to
11:18
be on the lookout for this man. Now the girl's
11:20
got to look at him, so they have like a
11:23
description of at least what he looks like. They don't
11:25
know if he's on foot, if he's in a car,
11:26
but they know what he looks like. So the APB
11:29
goes out it has this information. However, here's the part
11:33
where the cops fuck it all up, which I swear
11:35
is the centerpiece of like every true crime story. Apparently,
11:39
when they set out the APB, they didn't want the
11:41
media to know about the kidnapping, so they marked it
11:43
as not for the media, and for whatever reason, this
11:47
meant that it only went out on certain police channels
11:50
and not all police channels, which, as you can imagine,
11:53
poses a huge risk for a multitude of reasons. So
11:57
not every police unit, not every you know, it would
12:01
be like the local police know, but like the CHP
12:03
don't know, for instance, And I think that's actually how
12:06
it happened here, Like the local police get the APB,
12:09
but the state police do not, which is a fucking problem. Right.
12:15
So the police, you know, they're searching day and night,
12:18
they pronounce, immediately call the FBI, which is a very
12:20
smart thing to do. And the FBI takes action immediately,
12:23
which is great, And of course they then alert the media.
12:27
So it's like a difference of like twelve hours before
12:29
the media is alerted anyway, which is why it's such
12:32
a bummer that they didn't just put it out from
12:34
the beginning. The FBI immediately bring in a sketch artist
12:40
to get a sketch together of this man. And I
12:44
have to tell you the man gets caught, just in
12:46
case anybody doesn't know the story. He does get caught.
12:48
I don't feel like it's ruining it to tell you.
12:51
And the rendering is like spot on. The picture of
12:55
this man looks like a fucking photograph. It's insane. And
12:59
to get this from two twelve year old girls. Is
13:01
so impressive to me. Sketch artists are incredible. Like to
13:05
be able to just visualize what somebody is telling you
13:07
when the information can be so vague and make it
13:10
so accurate is unbelievable. Like it's just amazing. Those people
13:14
are so good at their jobs. So anyway, as many
13:18
as fifty Pedaluma police and seventy five FBI agents began
13:22
interviewing people in the area. They found a ton of
13:24
witnesses to this kidnapping. Now this is in the subsequent
13:29
days after she goes missing. There is no sign of Polly.
13:32
There is no sign of this man. They have no
13:34
idea where she is, but they are working their asses
13:36
off to figure it out. Now, some of the witnesses
13:40
that they find are including and this is wild Polly's neighbors. Now,
13:45
these are not nextdoor neighbors. These are people that live
13:49
in the back house behind Polly's house, so like the
13:53
same yard, Like they have to walk past her house
13:55
to get to theirs. Now, I don't know, Like in
13:58
the Midwest, basements are normal. In California, backhouses are normal.
14:02
I've lived in. The only other state I've ever lived
14:05
in is Oregon, back houses are not normal there, so
14:07
I don't know if this is a normal thing in
14:09
other states. But essentially, in California, a lot of people
14:13
will like convert their garage or take up part of
14:16
their lot to put a smaller house in the backyard,
14:19
and it can be called a granny unit, an adu,
14:21
something like that, but essentially it's a smaller house behind
14:26
the main house where tenants live. Now, whoever owned Polly's
14:31
mom's house was renting to Polly's mother Eve and was
14:33
also renting to these people in the backhouse. But essentially
14:36
they share a yard. It's like a small area that
14:40
is shared. And these neighbors saw the man saw the abductor. Now,
14:46
one of these neighbors had a friend over that night
14:48
to watch a movie, and that friend went out to
14:50
smoke a cigarette on the porch. At some point while
14:53
he was out there, he saw a man with thick,
14:55
wiry hair slipped back on his head walking around in
14:58
the yard and act actually walking up towards the bathroom
15:01
for the back house, because the bathroom was not attached
15:04
to the house, which is another thing that I've seen
15:07
in California. Like, my friend lived in a converted garage
15:11
and it didn't have a bathroom, so she would use
15:13
the bathroom in the main house. But she had her
15:15
own kitchen, she had everything else was her own, so
15:17
she only had to share a bathroom. And so I
15:20
think it was kind of that kind of thing where
15:21
where this three bedroom, three bath house, one of the
15:24
bathrooms was given to the granny unit. So this person
15:28
sees this man going into the bathroom that belongs to
15:32
this bath house, uh, and doesn't say anything about it,
15:38
which is so weird to me. But it could have
15:41
been a friend of Eaves. Right, They're like, this man
15:43
might be in the front house, like hanging out, you
15:46
know whatever, So they don't say anything, which is such
15:49
a bummer because it's a missed opportunity, and this case
15:52
is so many missed opportunities. We have the eyewitness of
15:56
this person who doesn't say anything, we have the APB
15:59
who doesn't go out and going to see how that
16:00
affects the case anyway, such a bummer. Now, about thirty
16:05
minutes prior to this, a little girl was getting out
16:07
of her uncle's car to go home after he took
16:09
her to see a movie. She noticed a disheveled looking
16:13
man with a duffel bag walking towards her uncle's car.
16:18
She said to her uncle, I want to wait to
16:19
get out until this man walks by, because again, she
16:21
lives in this area. She's afraid of all the people
16:24
in the parks, and she, you know, she knows better,
16:27
so she's like, can I just wait a minute. Now?
16:29
This man does walk past, and not only does he
16:32
look past or walk past, but he actually looks into
16:35
their car to see who they are. And as he's
16:37
doing this, he puts his own hand up to cover
16:40
his face so that they can't see him. So he
16:43
can see them, but they can't see him, so he's
16:45
trying to cover himself so people don't see him. Now,
16:49
this is another important thing. We have him asking who's
16:52
in the house, we have him coming with cloth, and
16:56
we have him hiding his face from people, which to
16:59
me means that this man knew what he was looking
17:02
to do. But I'm getting ahead of myself, but I
17:04
just want to keep calling this out. So anyway, these
17:07
witnesses all kind of helped put the sketch together, and
17:10
they also create something of a timeline and gave cops
17:13
to go more or more to go on sadly, this
17:16
doesn't really amount to much. Well maybe a little bit later,
17:20
but not at the time. And meanwhile, the media is
17:22
going wild with this. This is national news. Like I said,
17:26
you know, I lived in California, so it made sense
17:27
that I would know it. But this was one of
17:30
those cases. It was like John Bennet, everybody knows it.
17:33
Poly Class is like a household name for anybody around
17:36
my age. Anybody around my age. You say poly class
17:39
and they're like a terrible case, terrible story. So anyway,
17:46
the media is going nuts and Winona Writer Okay, So
17:49
Winona Writer was born and raised in Petaluma, and so
17:53
she offered two hundred thousand dollars for any information leading
17:59
to or for the safe return of Paul. That's what
18:01
it was, not information. She said, if somebody returns her safely,
18:04
I will personally give them two hundred thousand dollars out
18:07
of my own money. That's how dedicated she was to
18:11
finding this person and how close it was to her right. However,
18:15
even with this reward, nobody came forward with anything concrete,
18:20
despite the police an FBI getting over I think it
18:22
was like three thousand tips over the span of only
18:25
eight weeks. So there's a lot of tips that come in,
18:30
but nothing really concrete, nothing that police can really go on.
18:34
They have a really good sketch of this guy, they
18:36
have a timeline, but he seems to have just disappeared
18:39
into thin air. And now it's been sixty something days
18:45
and they are just as far as they were on
18:47
night one. Luckily, finally, on November twenty seventh, nineteen ninety three,
18:53
Dana Jaffy called police with some very disturbing information. Now,
18:59
first I want to say that when Eve first spoke
19:01
with police, she said nothing was taken from the home,
19:03
which is interesting because he said he wanted to rob it,
19:06
but he didn't take anything. However, after a time, it
19:09
was discovered that a single pair of knitted red tights
19:12
were taken from Polly's drawer, which is so fucking creepy
19:16
and horrifying. Now, while out hiking on her land between
19:20
Sonoma and San Rafel, Dana Jaffey stumbled upon some items
19:24
that made her think that she had found a crime scene.
19:27
These items included an adult sized dark sweatshirt turned inside out,
19:33
a knotted piece of white silky cloth shaped like a hood,
19:38
and a pair of child sized red knitted tights which
19:43
were knotted at the knee. They also found a condom
19:47
and a condom wrapper, which is just fucking beyond Now.
19:51
Police come the next day. I don't know why they
19:54
didn't come the same day, but on November twenty eighth,
19:56
they arrive, They find these items and pretty much immediately
19:59
tie them to Paully. Now, of course, they searched the
20:02
area very carefully, as they figured, you know, they might
20:05
find her body if she was in fact dead, which
20:08
I hate to say, but I think at this point
20:09
everybody was expecting that, especially after finding these items. However,
20:13
they did not find her body, but they did get
20:17
information that blew the case wide open finally, and this
20:21
is the ultimate story of a missed opportunity. If I've
20:25
ever heard one, this is it. But I also, and
20:29
again I'm getting ahead of myself, I don't know that
20:31
it matters, and I'll explain. So. When talking to Dana,
20:34
the property owner, she told them, you know, this is
20:37
the second time I've called you guys in about two months,
20:40
she said. On October first, the night of October first,
20:44
I had police on my property because I found a
20:47
man trespassing here. Now, Dana had been at work. She
20:52
was a chef, and so she'd been at work, and
20:54
she had a woman babysitting her twelve year old daughter,
20:57
which I love that she had someone looking after her
20:59
twelve year old daughter. I think that is very smart.
21:02
They live alone in a secluded area. People think, you know,
21:06
twelve years old, you can take care of yourself. No
21:08
you can't, No, you can't. Poly Class was twelve years old.
21:11
So I love that she had a babysitter. So Dana
21:14
drives up her long, you know, secluded driveway to her home,
21:18
has a brief conversation with the babysitter in the babysitter
21:22
then drives down that same driveway. Now, by the time
21:26
the babysitter drives down that driveway, she pulls up on
21:29
a man whose car is stuck in a ditch on
21:33
the side of that road. She kind of rolls her
21:35
window down and she's like, hey, this is private property,
21:37
Like what are you doing here? And the man, who
21:40
is disheveled, has black, wiry hair that's going gray, slipped back,
21:45
he's sweaty, he's covered in leaves. He seems completely wild,
21:51
you know, he's just freaking out. He essentially attacks her
21:54
and it's like get out of your car and help
21:56
me move my car, and is like really scaring her.
22:00
So this babysitter speeds away as fast as she could
22:02
away from the house. She goes to a payphone and
22:05
she calls Dana, because there weren't cell phones back then,
22:08
so she tells Dana, Hey, there's some weird fucking dude
22:10
like the bottom of your driveway, like his car seems
22:13
to be stuck. Whatever. Dana, instead of calling the police,
22:16
gets a baseball bat and drives down there, which like, Okay,
22:21
I get it, I might do that too. Don't do
22:24
that if this ever happens to you, Just call the cops.
22:27
She sees the man stuck on the side of the road.
22:29
He's asking for help. She drives back up. She calls police,
22:32
and police come down and they meet with this man. Now,
22:35
everybody who saw him that night commented on how he
22:37
was like profusely sweating, he was dirty, he had leaves
22:40
in his hair. He smelled so super strongly of alcohol,
22:44
which really really bothers me. That that point bothers me
22:48
because he's driving a car and he smells like alcohol.
22:52
I mean, that's all you need. Detain him something right.
22:54
So police arrive, they ask him what happened. He said, oh,
22:57
I was outsight seeing and ended up stuck. And it's like,
23:01
why are you sightseeing in the middle of the night,
23:03
It's like eleven thirty twelve in the morning, Why are
23:06
you on private property? But police are kind of like, okay,
23:09
you know whatever. They get his name, and his name
23:13
is Richard Allen Davis. Now they run his car and
23:15
they realize it's not in his name, and it actually
23:18
is in his brother in law's name. He says, oh,
23:20
I recently bought it from him. We haven't done the
23:22
paperwork yet, and they're like, all right, there's another like
23:25
kinky thing. That's another like red flag. Police ask if
23:29
he has a record, and he says no, so they go, okay, cool.
23:33
They run his name for warrants and nothing comes back.
23:36
So even though this guy smells like alcohol, has a
23:39
car not in his name, is on private property, stuck
23:41
in a ditch, they run his name for warrants, and
23:44
because he doesn't have any, they decide to let him go.
23:47
This is despite all of these things I'm talking about,
23:50
and the fact that he had beer like unopened in
23:54
the front seat of his car. And the cops are like,
23:56
what's up with that alcohol? He grabs a beer crack
24:00
sit open and starts chugging it in front of him,
24:02
in front of the cops, and they don't arrest him.
24:06
They just say, pour that out, knock it off, what
24:09
are you doing? And they help him out of the
24:13
ditch and they let him go. So again, obviously we're
24:19
dealing with yet another missed opportunity, which is just it's
24:25
so horrible when you think about this and what could
24:28
have been and what could have happened, and how many
24:30
chances there were and how they were all missed. But
24:33
I don't necessarily think that had they arrested him in
24:37
this moment that it would have changed the outcome. It
24:40
just the parents wouldn't have had to wait for so
24:42
long to know what happened. And we'll talk more about
24:45
the specifics. I think now might be a good time
24:51
to talk about Richard Allen Davis. Let's just talk about
24:55
this man. Richard was born in June second, nineteen fifty
24:58
four to Robert and Evelyn Davis, two violent alcoholics who
25:03
regularly assaulted Richard and his three siblings. It was so
25:07
bad that by the time Richard was three years old,
25:10
his mother had already held his hand over an open
25:12
flame as punishment for misbehaving, and in fact, over time
25:16
this became such a constant punishment that Richard wouldn't even
25:19
react when his hand would start to blister from the flames.
25:23
So this is a very, very tough childhood. His parents
25:28
divorced when he was eleven, and he actually was sent
25:30
to live with his father, with all but one sibling
25:33
joining him. Now, his dad was as bad as his mom,
25:37
regularly beating the children whenever he was around, and often
25:41
leaving them with family or even like random people while
25:44
he was working or doing whatever, mostly drinking. By the
25:48
time he was twelve, Richard was already a criminal, with
25:51
a record for burglary and forgery, and this type of
25:54
behavior continued until he was seventeen, when a judge gave
25:57
him a choice go to jail or join the army.
26:02
He chose the army, but was discharged after only thirteen months.
26:07
By this time, he was eighteen and had a group
26:10
of friends sort of, and he went to a party
26:13
hosted by one of them, a girl named Marlene Voris.
26:17
By the end of the party, Marlene was dead. Now
26:20
in the house police found seven suicide notes, which to
26:23
me feels a little much, but they determined that she'd
26:27
killed herself, which is interesting because all of her friends
26:31
and especially those who were at the party, believed that
26:34
Richard had killed her. Now, he was never charged, and
26:37
there's not a lot of information about this, so it's
26:38
hard to draw conclusion on our own, but it's definitely
26:42
worth mentioning, especially as he later told a psychologist or
26:46
sorry a psychiatrist that he would hear her voice in
26:48
his head after her death, saying that she wanted to die,
26:53
So that to me feels a little telling. After this,
26:57
he ended up in and out of jail for many years,
27:00
about four years time, just you know, violent crimes, robbery, intimidation,
27:06
really shitty stuff. And in nineteen seventy six, at only
27:09
twenty two years old, he kidnapped twenty six year old
27:13
Francis Mays, who he attempted to sexually assault while she
27:17
was in his car. Now, Francis was bold, and she
27:21
jumped out of the vehicle at great personal risk while
27:24
it was moving, flagged down a car, which happened to
27:28
be a cop car. So that's pretty lucky because he
27:31
definitely wasn't on, like, you know, a well traveled road,
27:34
so the fact that the next car driving by was
27:37
a cop was very, very lucky for Francis. Richard was
27:40
arrested that night and he was sent to a mental hospital,
27:43
from which he escaped and went on a four day
27:46
crime spree. Now, this spree included breaking into the home
27:49
of a woman and beating her on the head with
27:51
a fire poker, breaking into an animal shelter, and stealing
27:54
a shotgun, which I guess if it's animal control it
27:57
would make sense they would have it in there, but
27:59
also kind of weird. He also attempted to kidnap another
28:02
woman named Hazel Frost, who also escaped by diving out
28:06
of his car. And also I read somewhere that she
28:09
shot at him with a gun as he was like
28:12
getting away, which is incredible. I read she was like
28:15
a bartender. I don't know if that's true, but I
28:17
like that part of the story so I wanted to
28:18
add it. And finally, he broke into the home of
28:21
yet another woman and then waited for her outside of
28:25
her house for her to come home so that he
28:27
could attack her. I'm not sure how he's found out
28:30
That night but the cops got there and arrested him
28:33
while he hid in the bushes, So absolutely fucking terrifying.
28:36
That's some like BTK shit, you know, like lying in wait,
28:41
like who knows what he was going to do this woman. Now,
28:43
for these crimes, he was sentenced to one to twenty
28:47
five years. This is one of those things. He's like
28:50
a very seventies sentence, like somewhere between one and twenty
28:53
five years. We saw that with Bill Bonnen he had
28:55
a sentence that was I think one to fifteen so
28:58
fucking crazy. And Richard here was paroled five years later.
29:05
They just straight up let him out after all the
29:08
shit I just told you about. He then got a
29:11
girlfriend somehow and went on yet another crime spree, including
29:15
robbing a woman of six thousand dollars after breaking into
29:17
her home and I guess not kidnapping her, but holding
29:20
her hostage. So we're seeing a little bit more of
29:23
a pattern emerging here. He ended up getting arrested and
29:27
was giving given sixteen years, of which he served eight
29:31
before being released just five months before Paully's abduction and
29:36
subsequent murder. So that's a little bit about this motherfucker,
29:42
Like he just he just fucking sucks. Now, back at
29:45
Dana's on November twenty eighth, police start to put things
29:48
together and they figure out who the man was that night.
29:50
They also noted the date October first, so their wheels
29:54
are turning. They also then actually look at his criminal record,
29:58
which they should have fucking done that night, looking for warrants.
30:01
And now they're worried because this seemed to be their guy,
30:05
and damn if they didn't let him go that night, right,
30:07
So they're realizing, oh, we fucked up. They go to
30:11
find Richard and luckily he had a warrant out for
30:13
his arrest as he was picked up for drunk driving
30:15
on October nineteenth, only eighteen days after Polly was taken. Now, somehow,
30:20
at this time he still wasn't in prison for this,
30:23
but he did have a warrant and that was enough
30:26
to bring him in. I had mentioned Richard's sister or
30:31
maybe just brother in law, where he bought his car
30:33
while he was also staying with her at this time,
30:35
and so police just went and picked him up at
30:38
her place in Yukiyah, which is like northern California. They
30:42
took him in for the warrant, where the FBI then
30:44
confronted him about Polly's disappearance. He of course immediately denied
30:49
any involvement, but police had also they noticed that he
30:52
shaved off his beard to like change the way he looked,
30:54
which is always a little suspicious. Now, during the search
30:57
of Polly's home after she went missing, police did find
31:01
a palm print on the wall near her door. This
31:05
wasn't a smoking gun by any means, but it was
31:07
enough that if matched to Richard, it could lead to
31:09
him being charged, which was great because they had it.
31:13
Two days after he was arrested, police confronted him with
31:16
the palm print, along with proof that it did in
31:19
fact match his hand. A very shaken Richard decided to
31:24
call one of the detectives with whom he had something
31:26
of a rapport, and told him, quote, I fucked up
31:30
big time. He then admitted to killing Polly and agreed
31:34
to take the police to her body. Before they went
31:38
to get her body, police interviewed Richard for hours, and
31:42
during this time he gave them a lot of information,
31:44
but I don't know how much of it I believe. Now.
31:47
This is kind of going back to what I was
31:49
talking about, the timeline. The missed opportunities where they let
31:52
him go that night. I'm going to tell you what
31:55
he said, and then you'll kind of understand why I
31:58
say missed opportunity. But then I'm going to talk about
32:01
what I really think happened. So he said that the
32:05
night of October first, he'd gone to Petaluma to find
32:07
his mother, which is weird. He couldn't find her. But
32:11
when he wasn't able to find her, he went to
32:12
a park and drank beer and smoked a joint that
32:16
could have had PCP on it. Now, I think this
32:19
is the very first thing he said to absolve himself
32:22
of some of the guilt, you know, kind of take
32:24
him away from the behavior. He is a victim. PCP
32:27
makes people act in crazy ways, so would already you know,
32:31
quote unquote excuse his behavior. He also said that after
32:34
smoking the joint, this is gonna shock anybody who knows
32:37
anything about true crime. He doesn't remember too much of
32:40
the night. Of course, he said he remembers going into
32:44
a house to rob it. Remember he says that, to
32:48
rob it, and hearing voices in one of the rooms.
32:51
He was standing outside the room when a girl came out.
32:54
This is obviously Polly. Richard said he remembers tying the
32:58
girls up, but the next thing he remembered was driving
33:02
with Polly in the car, because of course he doesn't
33:03
remember the horrific shit he did that night, just like
33:06
he didn't remember the myriad other assaults, robberies and other
33:09
things he did his whole life. And it would also
33:11
make sense if he's so fucked up on this supposed
33:14
PCP that he didn't take anything from the house, even
33:19
though according to him, the whole point of going was
33:20
to rob it, and all he ended up taking was
33:22
a little girl and her stockings. So he then said,
33:27
you know, he remembered a little bit about being in
33:29
the car with Polly, including that she had said her
33:31
bindings were too tight and her hands were going numb.
33:34
And I want to point out that he didn't say
33:36
that he loosened the bindings. He just remembers her asking
33:39
him to This guy's a fucking monster. He also said
33:42
that she repeatedly asked to go home. He said, you know,
33:46
he drove around for a little while until he became
33:48
stuck on Pithian Road, which is where Dana lived. He
33:51
said that while he was trying to get his car unstuck,
33:54
he hid Polly in the trees, leaving her alone. He
33:59
also said that he untied her before doing this, So
34:05
he left this twelve year old who wanted to get
34:08
away from him more than anything, alone and untied, just
34:14
on a hillside, surrounded by trees, while he then gets
34:18
tries to unstick his car. You know, he's one hundred
34:21
feet away from her with cops, and she doesn't come out.
34:25
This is the story. This is like the official story.
34:29
He said, I just left her on the hillside, you know,
34:31
left her sitting in the grass, went and tried to
34:34
unstick my car, talked to the cops. He then said
34:39
that after the cops helped him unstick his car, he
34:43
drove away and came back thirty minutes later, and she
34:48
was still there waiting for him. Now, this is so
34:52
much bullshit. It's unreal how ridiculous the story is. But
34:58
he didn't. He never changed. He was like, no, that's
35:00
what happened. That's what happened. She sat and waited for me.
35:02
It's like an unrestrained kidnapping victim who's twelve years old,
35:08
who can hear police, sat there and let them leave
35:13
and then watched or heard you drive away, continued to
35:17
wait for you. No fucking way anyway, This is what
35:20
he says. So he said he then went back and
35:22
got Polly, got her in the car, took her to
35:25
a gas station to pee, and that after she went pee,
35:28
which also there's no record of this. Nobody ever saw
35:30
them at a gas station. There's no proof of this
35:32
at all. He said after she went pee, he decided
35:36
that he had to kill her because he didn't want
35:38
to go back to prison for kidnapping. And it's like,
35:43
this is such a pot like the only thing he
35:45
did in that house was take the little girl, So
35:48
why why would he take her if he was trying
35:51
to rob the house, Like it's obvious that his whole plan,
35:54
in my opinion, was to take her and probably sexually
35:58
assault her and kill her. The fact that he asked
36:01
who lives here, the fact that he's walking around the house,
36:05
the fact that when other witnesses saw him, he hid
36:07
his face, like this man knows what he was doing.
36:10
He tried to play this off like, oh, I got high,
36:14
randomly tried to rob a house and ended up with
36:16
a little girl and didn't know what to do, and
36:18
It's like, who on earth is going to believe that?
36:21
And there's other things that this man does later on
36:23
that let you know what like an immature idiot he is,
36:27
and it makes sense that he would think he would
36:28
get away with that story. I'm sorry, the story makes
36:31
me really angry, so I'm getting like real sassy, but
36:33
I just I fucking hate this. So he then said,
36:37
you know, I strangled her to death, presumably in his car,
36:41
I don't really know. He then made sure to note
36:44
that he dragged her by her neck into the bushes somewhere. So, again,
36:49
according to his story, if police had arrested him in
36:52
that moment when they saw him, Polly would still be alive,
36:55
which is absolutely not true in my opinion. Why would
36:59
he have been in leaves and sweating profusely if he
37:02
had simply walked her into the woods, you know, like
37:06
maybe he's trying to get his car out of the ditch,
37:07
but you don't get leaves in your hair doing that.
37:10
It's just insane to me that this is what he
37:12
tried to say. Anyway, I think what happened is that
37:17
he took her out onto this private property strangled her
37:21
to death there After, either raping her or attempting to
37:24
rape her, and we'll get into that. And as he
37:27
was leaving, his car was stuck. He's panicking, sweating, freaking
37:31
out because he's gonna get caught, and then somehow doesn't
37:34
get fucking caught. And I think when he says he
37:37
went back to get her, he isn't lying. He drove
37:40
away and came back thirty minutes later and got her
37:43
body because now he knew he was tied to that scene,
37:47
and he couldn't leave her body there because that would
37:49
tie him to her murder, and they had his name.
37:53
So it's like he's telling this weird partial truth, like
37:56
he did go back and get her, but he didn't
37:57
go back and get her while she was alive, went
38:00
back and got her body. And that's truly what I think.
38:03
This is also partially supported by the fact that they
38:07
found this man's adult sweatshirt, they found the silky cloth,
38:14
they found you know, the condom, they found her stockings.
38:19
Why would all of those things just be discarded on
38:22
that property in that way if he then took her
38:27
somewhere else and strangled her, right, it doesn't make sense anyway.
38:34
It's just like ridiculous that this is what this guy
38:36
is trying to peddle. So after admitting to strangling to death,
38:39
Richard took police to her body, which was fifty miles
38:42
from Dana's property, so another thing showing he was just
38:45
trying to get her away from the location where he
38:48
was found, you know, because he didn't want to get caught.
38:51
Although he did admit to murdering Polly, he denied sexually
38:55
assaulting her or even attempting to do so, despite there
38:59
being a condom nearby. Police told him they found semen
39:03
on her body and his response was, at least it
39:07
wasn't in her. During this interview, it became abundantly clear
39:12
that Richard was very concerned with being accused of raping
39:15
Polly because he was afraid of what would happen to
39:18
him while in prison, because nobody likes a child rapist
39:21
and prison is not safe for them, and I kind
39:23
of love that. At no point did he admit to
39:26
sexually assaulting Polly, but his past record indicated it was
39:29
a strong possibility that he had tried to do so,
39:33
And when police told him there was semen, it wasn't
39:36
a lie. They just it wasn't for sure, they sort of,
39:41
I mean it was kind of a lie. They said,
39:42
you know, we think we or they said we found
39:44
semen on her. At the time, I believe they maybe
39:46
thought that they had, but they certainly hadn't proven it.
39:49
But who cares. Like they threw a hail Mary and
39:52
he still denied it. When her body was found, it
39:56
was partially mummified and partially decomposed, and it also showed
40:02
signs of animal activity. I'm not going to get into
40:05
the details. There's one hundred podcasts that say this part,
40:07
I'm not going to do it. So it was bad
40:10
and they couldn't determine the cause of death, so they
40:12
kind of had to go with what Richard said, at
40:14
least in that regard. But they did test the items found.
40:18
Not a lot turned up to prove sexual assault. The
40:20
condom had no semen in it, didn't have fingerprints on it,
40:23
and it wasn't found exactly at the crime scene, more
40:26
like nearby, which I still think that he attempted to
40:30
assault her. I think that was the whole point of
40:32
what he did, but they couldn't really prove it. However,
40:37
the cloth found on Polly's body was also found in
40:40
Richard's car, as were two of Pollie's hairs. Some of
40:43
Richard's hair was found in Polly's room, and there were
40:46
fibers on Polly's body that matched his car, so all
40:50
in all, this is a slam dunk case. They also
40:51
said like the silky hood that they found at the
40:55
supposed not crimes scene was probably what he used to
40:58
strangle her. As for the sexual assault, which was less
41:01
of a slam dunk, the prosecution wanted to prove this
41:04
so that he would get the death sentence, but it
41:06
was a little bit harder. So prosecutors told a story
41:09
wherein Richard had scouted Polly's home before abducting her, which
41:13
I believe completely feasible, you know, given he'd already been
41:17
caught lying in wait previously, so he definitely stakes out
41:20
homes of women. They said he had planned to take
41:22
her all along, as evidenced by the lack of missing
41:25
items in the house, which yes, one hundred percent agree.
41:28
And while he said he was only there for money,
41:30
you know, no, maney, your valuables were touched only Polly
41:33
and her stockings, which is fucking horrifying. And also, like, dude,
41:37
you could have if you wanted to sell the story.
41:39
You could have at least taken something, but I'm fucking
41:41
glad he didn't. The guy's a moron. As for the
41:44
sexual assault, prosecutors said that even if he wasn't able
41:47
to do so, he had attempted to rape Polly, hence
41:50
the condom and the possible semen on her body. And
41:52
the reason they couldn't prove it with semen is it
41:54
was just too degraded because she had been in the
41:57
you know, exposed to the elements for too long, that
42:00
there was some sort of fluid on her and when
42:02
put under you know, particular light, it did shine, so
42:06
they thought it definitely could be Also, you know, he
42:09
has this pattern, he has a way of behaving criminally,
42:11
why would this be any different now. In the end,
42:15
he was found guilty on all charges, including I think
42:18
like attempted sexual assault, and given a sentence of death.
42:23
Before he was sentenced, he was able to make a
42:26
statement this this just like this like boils my blood.
42:31
Like the first time I read this, I cheered up
42:33
because I just felt horrible for this family. And now
42:37
I'm just in a place of like I hate him
42:39
so much. So before when he before he was sentenced,
42:46
he got to make this statement. He used, oh sorry,
42:49
before he was sentenced. When he was found guilty, he
42:52
used the opportunity to flip off the news cameras in
42:54
the courtroom, as well as wink at them and blow
42:57
them a kiss, which is just like cool guy behavior,
43:00
like he's so cool, he's so edgy. It's like you're
43:02
a fucking child murderer, Like fuck you, I'm so sorry.
43:06
I'm getting really heated here anyway, just very immature behavior.
43:10
When it came time for him to make a statement,
43:14
this dog turd of a human did nothing to show
43:18
even a hint of remorse. Instead, he complained that he
43:23
was quote tricked into confessing that his Miranda rights weren't
43:27
read to him, and that just before killing Polly, this
43:30
is the part that boils my blood and makes me
43:32
want to like rip all my hair out. He said
43:38
that she said to him, quote, just don't do me
43:43
like my dad, implying that her father sexually assaulted her.
43:50
And I mean, you, guys, I'm against the death penalty,
43:53
but sometimes these people make it real hard to keep
43:56
that opinion. The judge actually said something similar while and
44:00
seeing Richard. He said mister Davis, this is always a
44:02
traumatic and emotional decision for a judge. You've made it
44:06
very easy today by your conduct. And like I hear
44:09
that Paully's father, Mark attempted to attack Richard after he
44:13
made the statement, but was held back by guards who
44:16
probably felt really terrible having to stop him. I bet
44:19
they would have loved to let him go. Meanwhile, Paully's
44:22
grandmother sobbed in the background. I mean, this guy, he's
44:25
just hell bent on ruining these people's lives, and for
44:29
no fucking reason, for no reason, it's so insane to me.
44:34
Richard Alan Davis is still on death row to this
44:37
day and will likely die there despite multiple appeals, all
44:41
of which have been denied. Even though he has not
44:44
won any appeals and he hasn't been taken off of
44:47
death row, he very likely won't be put to death,
44:50
as Gavin Newsom has put a moratorium on the death
44:52
penalty in California since I believe twenty nineteen, and the
44:56
last prisoner to be executed in California was in two
44:59
tho thousand and six, when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor, which
45:02
is why you shouldn't have actors be governors but whatever.
45:07
So Mark Class is very upset by this. He really
45:10
does not like the moratorium. He is very very much
45:14
for like, no, I don't want to say revenge, like
45:17
I can't speak for him, but he's very much he
45:20
wants this man to be put to death. He wants
45:22
to see it, he wants to be there. And I
45:24
can't fault him for that. I mean, it's his little
45:27
girl and she died a really terrible tragic death, so
45:31
I do not fault him. Speaking of Mark, he did
45:36
put some of his anger and some of his energy
45:38
into good. He set up the poly Class Foundation, which
45:41
is formally Class Kids, which helps a lot of It
45:45
helps keep kids safe essentially, like broadly, they do things
45:48
like fingerprinting kids, you know, setting up databases, providing support
45:53
for families of missing children. It's a very like like
45:57
wonderful organization. Does also do a lot of work with
46:02
legislation to try to help keep kids safe. But a
46:05
lot of people see it as being too conservative in
46:07
its approach and what it stands for, which I think
46:09
is tied to the death penalty. You know, Mark is
46:12
very like pro that, and I think the organization sort
46:15
of reflects his feelings. Now, as we all know, or
46:20
maybe not in California and actually across the nation in
46:23
many states. Now there's something called the three strikes and
46:25
You're out law. And now this law was passed in
46:28
March of nineteen ninety four in large part because of
46:32
what happened to Paulie. So politicians saw this cute let's
46:36
just say, a middle class white girl get abducted from
46:40
her home by a man with a very lengthy criminal record,
46:44
and they jumped on the opportunity to turn this into
46:48
a political situation. When Paully's younger sister, Annie was only
46:54
six years old, she was invited to meet President Bill
46:56
Clinton and was interviewed on television, and I think she
47:01
later kind of indicated that she was sort of like
47:02
fed lines in a way. She told him she was
47:05
afraid of a man coming in and taking her from
47:07
her room. She said that she booby trapped her room
47:09
with bells and ropes to keep people out. And she
47:13
looked Bill Clinton in the face and asked him, quote,
47:15
do you think I'm going to grow up? Or do
47:17
you think I'm going to get to grow up? So
47:20
this cute scared younger sister of you know, this horrible crime.
47:27
You know, victim of a crime was the perfect like
47:31
poster child for these laws, this three strikes in your outlaw,
47:36
and this was used to put criminals away. And she,
47:39
I'm going to tell you right now, she does not
47:41
love it. She has come out in her later life.
47:44
I mean she's like younger than me, but in her
47:46
life I think she's like maybe thirty something at this point,
47:49
she has come out and been against the death penalty
47:52
and been four prison reform. And we'll talk about why.
47:55
So essentially, the three strikes law is meant to be
47:58
for It was to be for violent crimes. So you
48:02
do three violent felonies by the third one year twenty
48:05
five to life right the other the problem, the problem
48:09
is when they put this law together, they slipped in
48:12
another word there serious or violent crimes. So if you're
48:16
convicted of three serious felonies, even if they're nonviolent, you
48:20
can be put to put away for life. Now, as
48:24
you can imagine, especially it was co signed by Joe Biden,
48:27
you can imagine, especially back then, this was used to
48:31
disproportionately jail and put in prison in prison people of color,
48:39
people you know who, the working poor people who didn't
48:43
have money, people who weren't from good areas. I mean,
48:46
it was a racist, classiest bill from the start, and
48:49
it was absolutely used that way. Now, very unfortunately, versions
48:55
of this law, which you know also doubled the sentence
48:58
length for second strike, were adopted in twenty three other states,
49:03
and in September of nineteen ninety four, Congress passed the
49:06
notorious Federal Crime Bill, which is the one that Joe
49:09
Biden sponsored, and that has a three strikes sentencing provision.
49:14
So it's just nationwide like racism, classism. It's like, oh,
49:19
they're violent crimes or just like what we consider serious.
49:22
Do you know how many people are in prison for
49:23
the rest of their lives for smoking weed. It's unreal
49:28
now about this law, Annie said, quote A lot of
49:31
people see this history as something that is separate from themselves,
49:34
but in our case, we have a really deep connection
49:36
to this crisis. It's such an injustice that the sum
49:40
of Paully's life was turned into this harm for others.
49:43
The story that was told about Paully was used to
49:46
pass these incredibly terrible laws, and it always felt like
49:49
a distortion of the truth. Now, Annie and her sister
49:53
Jess who, like I said, maybe wasn't blood related to Paully,
49:55
but definitely grew up as her sister. They contacted the
49:58
ACLU in California in twenty nineteen and said, you know,
50:03
we want to fight against these laws that were passing
50:05
our family's names, like, how can we help repeal it.
50:08
What they've done is they've started foundations. You can look
50:10
them up online. They started speaking publicly about these laws.
50:15
They started talking about how harmful these are to people.
50:18
And I want to take this. I'm pretty sure they've
50:20
talked about this as well, but I want to take
50:22
this a step further and say that we are starting
50:25
a very dangerous trend of privatizing prisons in our nation.
50:29
Now we are a capitalist nation. If anybody knows anything
50:32
about this, that means that if something is privatized, it
50:37
is for profit. The only way that a capitalist society
50:41
can grow, or a business within a capitalist society can grow,
50:45
is by continuing to add to their numbers. So private
50:49
prisons want more prisoners. So we are allowing our country
50:55
to be taken over by private prisons who have a
51:00
in more and more people going to prison every year.
51:03
And then we have laws like this that come out
51:06
and make it so so easy to imprison people for
51:09
the rest of their lives for things that shouldn't maybe
51:12
even be illegal, nonviolent drug crimes, things of that nature.
51:16
It's absolutely terrifying, and I just want to say that
51:21
while I absolutely see where Mark Class is coming from,
51:25
I am so proud. I don't know them, but I'm
51:29
so proud of Paully's sisters for taking the stand that
51:32
they are because they were so hurt by this. They
51:35
were so hurt by this murder. They were so scared,
51:38
their family was destroyed, but they chose to see through
51:42
that and understand the broader implications of our justice system
51:46
and how their sister's name was being used to wrong people.
51:52
I don't know that anybody, myself included, realized how much
51:55
of my personality was going to come out in this case.
51:59
But this case, this is really emotional. It's personal to
52:02
me because I grew up in the area. At this time,
52:04
she's only two years older than me, and I've seen
52:07
the way that privatizing prisons, that these three strikes laws
52:11
have really harmed the greater community. And we're all members
52:15
of this community, you know, all of us, and I
52:17
understand that on its face, it seems like a good idea, like, yeah,
52:20
Richard Allen Davis shouldn't have been out of prison at
52:22
that time. It's horrifying that he was. But what it
52:25
comes down to is, instead of continuing to focus on,
52:30
you know, putting people in prison who are actually dangers,
52:34
like dangers to children, we're using it to put away
52:36
like drug users. We're using it to put away people
52:39
that really shouldn't be a part of that conversation. And
52:42
it's really a bummer. So anyway, that's kind of the case.
52:47
It's a really sad, horrible case. You know. I feel
52:51
for the family. It's just terrible. But I wanted to
52:56
mention Polly's sisters. I wanted to mention this other side
53:01
of this story because I feel like so many of
53:05
the people that cover this case they kind of end
53:09
it on this very like pro conservative prison forward kind
53:13
of note. And I don't want to do that because
53:16
I think that her sisters would know what she wanted,
53:19
and I really appreciate what they're doing with their voices.
53:23
And so if anybody's interested in learning more about it,
53:26
you can just look up Jess and Annie Nicol and
53:28
I see hol they're doing. Really great work. They're still
53:31
in California, you know, and they're honoring their sister's life
53:35
and legacy in a way that I think is really beautiful.
53:38
So that's the story, guys. Thanks everybody for listening. Sorry
53:41
I got so like hyped up. The story really gets
53:43
to me. I'm glad I did it, although I mean
53:46
all these stories are terrible. Let's wash this out of
53:49
our brains now and come back next week for another case,
53:53
another conversation. Thank you everybody for listening. It's been really
53:57
great watching the numbers grow, being in you know, podcast communities,
54:01
and having people give me really great feedback. I appreciate
54:03
you guys so much. I really you know, it's a
54:07
lot of work, but it's so so worth it. I'm
54:09
so excited to be doing this. So thanks everybody for listening.
54:12
Please like, rate, review, share with your friends and family,
54:15
Tell everybody you know to come listen to True Crime California.
54:19
And until next week, everybody, stay safe.