0:15

Pushkin Hello,

0:18

Hello Revision's history listeners. Today

0:21

we're taking you to Malibu to

0:23

explore one of the city's greatest

0:25

unsolved mysteries. In

0:28

two thousand and nine, a woman named

0:30

Matrice Richardson was released

0:32

from the Malibu Lost Hills Sheriff's Station,

0:35

and she never made it home. Nearly

0:37

a year later, Patrees's remains

0:40

were discovered in a canyon six miles

0:42

from the station. Everyone knows something

0:44

horrible happened to Mctries, and

0:46

for fifteen years, the Sheriff's department

0:49

has failed to solve her case. In

0:51

the latest season out of Pushkin Industries,

0:54

host Dana Goodyear is investigating what

0:56

happened to Matries in Lost

0:59

Hills Dark Canyon. Today

1:02

you'll hear the first episode of the season.

1:05

If you want to hear more, you can find a show

1:07

in your favorite podcast player. And

1:09

if you want to hear the entire season right

1:11

now at free, you can

1:14

subscribe to Pushkin Plus on

1:16

the Lost Hills Dark Canyon Apple

1:18

podcast show page or at

1:21

pushkin dot fm, slash

1:23

Plus. Here's Dana.

1:52

A couple of years ago, I found a video

1:54

buried on the Internet, deep in the

1:56

metadata behind the four or four error

1:59

codes. In it, a young

2:01

black woman is questioning a middle aged

2:03

white guy who's sitting on the edge of his bed

2:05

drinking a beer.

2:06

Did you hear Bena on the door talking the

2:09

door like they just shut it on her or something

2:11

on.

2:12

The person they're talking about is

2:14

my Teres Richardson, a twenty

2:16

four year old black woman who disappeared

2:18

in Malibu in two thousand and nine and

2:21

whose remains were discovered there eleven

2:23

months later. They're talking

2:25

about the day of her disappearance.

2:27

And was above when I first hearted to void

2:29

him by the time I got down with love and kind

2:32

of curiosity kind of drugged me closer.

2:35

In the Facebook, the interview is being shot

2:37

vertical, seemingly on a cell phone, with

2:39

the guy taking up the whole frame. He

2:41

looks like an aging California golden

2:44

boy with gray and blonde hair, a

2:46

tan and a barrel chest. He's

2:48

relaxed, wearing a sky blue Henley shirt

2:51

tucked into a pair of camouflage shorts.

2:53

So I really couldn't see her face, but I could see her shadow.

2:56

That's While he says this,

2:58

he gestures broadly, waving

3:01

his big paws around in the air.

3:03

In the light of the knife, you know, with the light of the front

3:05

porch, and she was screaming at

3:07

something.

3:07

Yeah, it was pretty loud. I'm thinking, God damn's

3:10

forth, three of them morn What was she saying?

3:12

She was saying, God damn, buddy. Still,

3:15

you know, she was pit

3:17

or something, you know, something that he was.

3:19

The people at the house, she

3:22

was angry and maybe they told her she had to read get

3:24

a call at police, and she was telling him miss

3:27

you sun him whatever.

3:29

But he got curious. The

3:32

scene was so out of place in this

3:34

quiet neighborhood, a young

3:36

woman alone in the early morning

3:38

hours, shouting she

3:41

might be in trouble.

3:42

Because I think, well, if there's some dude there, I'm not going

3:44

to let some dudy here her.

3:45

You know, I would have hesitated

3:47

to walk on that property.

3:49

But since I wasn't, you

3:51

know, and I couldn't see anybody

3:53

else except for her, or not really

3:55

even her, just she was she

3:58

was angry something.

3:59

I mean, I'm kind of that would have been right there.

4:02

I would donald protected.

4:05

The interviewer her name's Raven Masterson.

4:08

She made the video so sometime after my Terce's

4:10

remains were found, like so many

4:13

people she wanted to figure out what happened

4:15

to my trees because

4:17

the death of my Teres Richardson is

4:19

Malibu's most horrifying, notorious,

4:22

and scandalous unsolved case. For

4:26

fifteen years, my Teresa's story has

4:28

been shrouded in mystery. The

4:31

scant clues have been worked over a

4:33

thousand times to no end. There's

4:36

no resolution, no satisfying

4:38

explanation, and no one has been

4:40

held accountable. Many

4:42

people blame the Los Angeles County Sheriff's

4:45

Department for her death. Some take

4:47

it farther, and this is how Ravenlean's

4:49

in the video. They even think a

4:51

deputy may have killed my Teres. My

4:55

Terrese was arrested at Geoffrey's Restaurant on Pacific

4:57

Coast Highway on September sixteenth, two

4:59

thousand and nine. She was

5:01

released from Lost Hill Station at

5:04

twelve twenty five am on the seventeenth.

5:07

After that, there was one official

5:09

sighting of her at six thirty am

5:11

in the backyard of a house in Montanito, a

5:14

secluded neighborhood off Malibu Canyon

5:17

that's about six miles from the Lost

5:19

Hill Sheriff Station. But

5:21

the guy in the video he says

5:24

he saw her too, two hours

5:26

earlier, at four thirty am,

5:29

making a commotion in the front

5:31

yard of that same house. Montaneito

5:38

Mountain Nest. It's

5:40

a tight knit community in the shadow of

5:42

the Santa Monica Mountains. Most

5:45

people in La don't even know it

5:47

exists. It's got creeks

5:49

and horses and neighbors that have known each

5:51

other in some cases for generations.

5:54

Kids run around barefoot. There's a big

5:57

Fourth of July parade and an annual

5:59

square dance. It's

6:02

a place out of time. It

6:04

feels like the rustic horsey

6:06

California of the nineteen forties mixed

6:09

with the free wheeling party culture of

6:11

the nineteen seventies. And it's

6:14

got none of the flash of coastal Malibu

6:16

or the nearby gated communities of Calabasas.

6:20

This is California, so of course there

6:22

have been a couple of waves of gentrifiers. But

6:25

among the old timers, the people who

6:27

practically homesteaded there in the fifties,

6:30

there's a distinct backwoods ingrown

6:33

feeling, and it

6:35

bears mentioning. The whole place is

6:37

extremely white, with one

6:39

notable exception, Will

6:41

Smith, one of the most famous black

6:44

men in America owns an estate in

6:46

Montanito, but I don't

6:48

think he frequents the Square Dance or the Fourth

6:50

of July parade. It's

6:53

hard to express how unlikely it is

6:55

that my trace would end up in this isolated

6:57

community. There isn't

6:59

even a sign for Montanito on Malibu

7:01

Canyon. How would she even

7:04

have known it was there. Eleven

7:18

months after my Terce Richardson disappeared,

7:20

park rangers checking a known illegal

7:23

pot grow found her remains in

7:25

a treacherous canyon above Montanito

7:27

called Dark Canyon. During

7:30

this time, the Santa Monica Mountains were notorious

7:32

for harboring large marijuana operations

7:35

run by organized crime syndicates. These

7:38

massive grows were often protected with armed

7:40

guards who would camp out in the canyons for extended

7:43

periods. The rangers

7:45

had disrupted a Dark Canyon grow in

7:47

July two thousand and nine, two months

7:49

before my Teresa's disappearance. When

7:52

they returned in August of twenty

7:54

ten, they didn't report any fresh

7:56

signs of pot growing activity. But

7:59

there in the dormant grow were the remains

8:02

of a black woman. She

8:05

was mostly bones, a

8:07

skeleton with small flats as of mummified

8:10

skin remaining, and she

8:13

was naked. From

8:15

the beginning, every aspect of the case

8:17

seemed off. What

8:20

was wrong, how she was arrested,

8:22

how she was released, how she was searched

8:25

for, how her remains were discovered, how

8:27

her remains were recovered, and how

8:29

her death was investigated. All

8:32

of it looked like a colossal screw up

8:34

on the part of law enforcement, starting

8:37

with the Lost Hills cops and

8:39

what the Sheriff's Department has said about the case over

8:41

the years, it just makes no sense.

8:45

Their refrain, essentially is some

8:48

cases can't be solved. This

8:51

is a Sheriff's spokesman three days

8:53

after my Teres's body was found.

8:56

Homicide will continue their investigation.

8:58

It's likely that we can never find out exactly

9:01

how she got there, but they're going to do their

9:03

very best to.

9:04

Figure And they're still saying

9:06

my Teres's death will always be a mystery.

9:10

But I don't accept that. It's

9:13

a stubborn, strange, problematic

9:15

case. But I do think

9:18

it's solvable because

9:20

someone in that secluded,

9:23

tight knit community of Montanito

9:26

knows what happened to her. I'm

9:32

Dana Goodyear and this is

9:34

lost Hills Season four,

9:37

Dark Canyon, Episode

10:04

one, Vultures. Right

10:13

off Pacific Coast Highway, across from

10:15

the Malibu Lagoon and next to the gas station,

10:17

there's a small memorial. It's

10:19

a rock with a plaque on it, commemorating

10:22

the life of a man who was known as Malibu

10:24

Jo. Malibujo

10:27

was Joe Costello. He was originally

10:30

from Genoa, Italy, but starting

10:32

in the mid nineteen fifties, he became a beloved

10:34

Malibu figure, riding his bike

10:37

slowly up and down pH in a

10:39

fedora and a baggy overcoat. In

10:42

the summer of nineteen eighty eight, he was beaten

10:44

and left for dead in the only under bushes

10:46

where he lived, where the memorial is today.

10:49

He died a few days later. He

10:52

was ninety six years old. The

10:55

Sheriff's department investigated, but the killing

10:57

was never solved, so no one was

10:59

ever punished. Malibu

11:03

Jo died two decades before my Terce

11:05

Richardson. The cases have nothing

11:07

to do with one another except

11:10

this. Both Joe

11:12

and My Trees show moments of rupture.

11:15

They're both signals that Malibu

11:17

isn't what it seems. Malibu

11:21

is not paradise sunshine,

11:24

nature, beauty, health, wealth,

11:27

and eternal youth. That's the myth.

11:30

But if I've learned one thing reporting here, it's

11:33

that every seductive surface has

11:35

its dark side. The

11:38

beauty is the danger. It

11:40

makes you let down your guard and believe

11:42

in the fantasy. The

11:44

unspoiled wilderness hides unspeakable

11:47

crimes, and a place

11:50

like that, a place like

11:52

that breeds monsters. In

11:58

the fall of two thousand and nine, my Teresa's

12:00

disappearance was all over the local

12:02

news.

12:03

The mystery unraveled on a September night

12:05

in two thousand and nine, right where the Pacific

12:08

reached the shore of Malibu.

12:10

It all started when my Teres tried

12:12

to leave Jeffrey's, a pricey restaurant

12:15

on Pacific Coast Highway, without paying

12:17

her bill. She was arrested

12:19

and taken to Lost Hill station, about

12:21

thirteen miles away.

12:23

They contacted her mother, who said that she

12:25

will pick her up in the morning if you will keep

12:27

her there.

12:28

Deputy said we will.

12:30

But instead of staying at the station, my

12:32

Teres walked out into the Malibu night.

12:35

Her car was at a towyard near pch

12:38

with her belongings inside.

12:40

She was released at twelve thirty a m

12:42

no wallet, no cell phone, no credit

12:44

cards, no car.

12:46

She was gorgeous and charismatic, and

12:49

as would later come out, she was in the midst

12:51

of a mental health crisis.

12:54

A beauty contestant and honor student,

12:56

and now a missing person.

12:58

According to her mom, she had no street

13:01

savvy whatsoever, and she didn't

13:03

know Malibu at all.

13:04

My Terce Richardson walked out of a Los Angeles

13:06

County Sheriff's office and into a miss

13:09

that continues to baffle investigators.

13:12

And then the mystery became

13:14

a horror.

13:15

Eleven months later, the twenty four

13:17

year old college graduates.

13:19

Remains were found here in Dark Canyon.

13:21

She was naked and partially mummified.

13:24

They discovered a skull, They discovered

13:27

a pelvis, and they discovered a.

13:28

Leg, just bones.

13:31

They determined officially, unequivocally,

13:35

and unfortunately it was my Terce

13:37

Richardson.

13:38

Corners.

13:38

Officials haven't determined the cause of death,

13:41

and they say Richardson's body was in

13:43

the canyon for more than six months.

13:46

Whatever happened in Dark Canyon remains

13:49

from the moment a dark secret.

13:54

It's been fifteen years since my trace

13:56

disappeared, fourteen years since

13:58

her remains were found, and there's been

14:00

no progress on her case. There's

14:03

no sign that law enforcement is actively

14:05

working on it. But it's not a cold case.

14:08

It's a quote active criminal investigation,

14:11

which means the Sheriff's department doesn't

14:13

have to share information. And believe

14:16

me, they take that very seriously. They

14:18

do not like to talk about this case. In

14:22

the midst of their silence, a sinister

14:24

narrative has taken hold in the public imagination

14:28

that the La County Sheriff's Department, specifically

14:31

the Lost Heils cops, are behind

14:33

my Teres's death. They deny

14:35

this, but the idea lives on in

14:38

a new generation of true crime TikTokers

14:41

and YouTubers.

14:42

Welcome to another episode of Murder, Mystery

14:44

and Makeup Monday. Today's story

14:46

was about Matrise Richardson.

14:48

Kind of feels like that they were hiding

14:51

something.

14:51

The police work in this case was off long. Is this

14:53

incompetence or cover up?

14:55

I mean they originally were trying to hide

14:57

the fact that they had security footage.

15:00

The previous captain was in on it and

15:03

promoted for his cover up job.

15:05

I believe that matterse Richardson was murdered and

15:07

it was covered up by the La County Sheriff.

15:13

We know the cops took My Trees to the station,

15:16

and the cops let her go in the dark. This

15:19

part is true, undisputed

15:21

fact. And then what

15:25

how did she get from the station to Montanito

15:27

six miles away? How did

15:30

she end up in dark Canyon? Why

15:33

was she naked? And what

15:35

happened to her missing bones? Oh

15:38

yeah, that's one more

15:41

undisputed fact. While

15:43

most of my Trees's bones were eventually

15:45

accounted for, discovered in the

15:47

canyon's heavy leaf litter, an

15:49

important one has not

15:52

been found, the

15:54

fragile bone above the larynx that

15:56

often breaks when a person is

15:59

strangled. My

16:16

Terce Richardson's death is not officially

16:19

a homicide. The

16:21

autopsy reads, quote, while

16:24

there is no evidence of antimortem trauma

16:26

to the bones or the limited amount of tissue

16:28

accompanying them, in the absence of

16:30

internal viscera, internal injury

16:33

cannot be completely ruled out and

16:36

quote, in the absence of suitable

16:39

specimens for toxicology testing,

16:41

the possibility of fatal substance

16:43

abuse cannot be ruled out, and

16:46

quote death due to exposure

16:49

snake bite, pneumonia, or other natural

16:52

diseases also cannot be

16:54

ruled out. Therefore, quote

16:57

both cause and manner of death remain

17:00

undetermined. Unquote

17:04

Hello, how are you.

17:06

I'm Dana, Dana. Hi, nice

17:08

to meet.

17:09

Yes, I'm at the home of Lisa

17:11

Shinen. She's the forensic pathologist

17:13

who conducted the autopsy of my Teresa's remains.

17:16

She's also one of the world's foremost authorities

17:20

on roller coasters.

17:21

That is my big hobby, that collecting

17:24

butterflies.

17:25

Her house, a normal looking suburban house

17:27

in Redondo Beach, is basically

17:29

a natural history museum. So do

17:32

you capture them in

17:34

a net?

17:34

And then uh tick

17:37

a look.

17:38

Shadow box frames filled with specimens

17:40

are stacked in every corner.

17:43

There's something called a killing jar which you can

17:45

make. It's a jar that

17:47

has a plaster of Paris base and

17:49

then you pour in. You can

17:52

use cyanide when you screw the

17:54

cap on. It's a closed environment and it makes

17:56

fumes that kill the butterfly, basically put it

17:58

to sleep in seconds.

18:00

Doctor Shinen worked for the La County

18:02

Coroner's Office for twenty four years

18:06

or.

18:06

I was a deputy medical

18:08

examiner at the La County Coroner's

18:11

Office.

18:11

Now retired, she

18:14

worked on a lot of high profile cases. She

18:16

did the autopsies on the musicians Elliott

18:19

Smith, a notorious big.

18:22

My autopsyed Steve Allen, Doctor

18:25

Nor from the Killing Fields, Brittany

18:28

Murphy, Brian

18:30

Keith. That goes back.

18:31

But my Terce's case stands out.

18:34

There are, over the years

18:37

some cases that do stick

18:39

with me because of the

18:42

circumstances of the case. There were so

18:44

many unknowns. I mean, every time

18:47

I've been near Malibu, I'd start thinking

18:49

of oll, geez, this is where my trace

18:51

was, and this is just

18:54

such a tragic case.

18:57

But she knew at the start was very basic.

18:59

A few scattered pieces of clothing and

19:01

a human skeleton had been found in

19:04

an inaccessible canyon in Malibu. The

19:07

autopsy report details the pie of

19:09

my Teresa's clothing that were recovered from

19:11

the remain site. One navy

19:14

blue or black padded bra two

19:17

pink narrow belt, medium large

19:19

alligator skin pattern, three

19:22

blue jeans US size twenty

19:24

nine, dirty, empty pockets.

19:28

She'd been wearing a Bob Marley T shirt and a pair

19:30

of vans when she left Lost Hill Station.

19:33

She also had her California driver's license

19:35

on her. Those items, along

19:38

with her hat and her keys, were missing.

19:41

I had the investigator's report. This

19:44

particular investigator's

19:46

report was very straightforward. It said

19:49

somebody from law enforcement was checking

19:51

an area in a remote canyon

19:54

and found the bones and the

19:57

clothing, and the clothing was about

19:59

one hundred feet away from the skeleton.

20:03

You know, that's very limited information.

20:05

Sometimes we have two or three pages

20:08

of information, but some in this case.

20:12

So the first thing you do is you lay everything

20:15

out in anatomical

20:17

order and count what you've got.

20:20

It was a nearly complete

20:23

skeleton. It wasn't in

20:26

an intact skeleton, and that everything was

20:28

connected. There were a lot

20:30

of disarticulated bones,

20:33

but there were some areas or

20:35

certain blocks, like some parts of the lower extremities,

20:38

parts of some of the upper extremities were

20:40

held together by a minimal

20:42

amount of soft tissue.

20:44

The soft tissue was mostly skin

20:46

that had been mummified.

20:48

Yeah, mummification is

20:51

a process. It can be accidental.

20:53

If you have a body in a very dry,

20:56

hot environment, the liquid

20:58

essentially disappears and what

21:01

you get is this very

21:04

leathery, rigid skin.

21:07

Sometimes some soft tissue. Usually

21:09

the internal organs

21:12

don't mummify, so it's

21:14

mostly the skin muscle tendons

21:17

at that type of thing.

21:19

There were a few small marks on some of the

21:21

bones the work. Doctor

21:23

Shinen thought of animals scavenging

21:26

the remains.

21:27

The toes of the left foot were

21:30

missing, and that was consistent

21:33

with animal activity.

21:36

But otherwise the bones were intact.

21:38

We look for things like fractures,

21:41

which would usually mean some

21:43

sort of a blunt force impact. We

21:45

would look for any evidence of a gunshot

21:48

wound, or a stabbing.

21:51

I didn't see any evidence of a physical

21:53

traumatic injury.

21:56

There was also no way to tell if my

21:58

Trees had been sexually assaulted.

22:00

Without soft tissue, there's

22:02

really nothing that you can do or

22:04

see, and sperm doesn't last.

22:07

Without internal organs. There was no way

22:09

to tell if she had overdosed.

22:11

She wasn't found with cocaine, with amphetamine,

22:14

heroin, anything like that. I didn't really

22:16

have a history of that type of thing, But

22:18

again without being able to do

22:20

an accurate test, we don't know.

22:23

There was a small amount of leg muscle.

22:26

Doctor Schinen sent it in for toxicology,

22:29

and that report came back inconclusive.

22:37

As soon as my Trees's remains were discovered.

22:39

Law enforcement began suggesting that my Trees,

22:42

experiencing a mental health episode, had

22:44

probably wandered into Dark Canyon by

22:47

herself and died from exposure,

22:49

dehydration, venom, or

22:52

something. Her death,

22:54

they implied, was tragic but natural.

22:58

I asked doctor Shinin about the natural

23:00

causes theory.

23:01

In this particular case. There's several possibilities.

23:05

There are rattlesnakes there. She could have been bitten

23:07

by a rattlesnakes fire.

23:10

Ants, she could have had a severe

23:12

allergic reaction to something. There's

23:14

poison oak there. That's horrible.

23:18

It's everywhere, and some people

23:20

are more sensitive than others.

23:23

But why would the skeleton be naked. My

23:26

Trees's broad belt and jeans

23:28

were found hundreds of feet from the skeleton,

23:31

and the belt was no longer on the jeans.

23:34

A seasonal stream, Dark Creek

23:37

runs through the canyon, and cops

23:39

suggested that a flash flood could

23:41

have removed her clothes, carrying them downstream.

23:45

The winter my Trese was missing was a

23:47

rainy one, but even so, it

23:49

takes a real contortion of logic

23:52

to imagine a flood could strip

23:54

a body naked and remove a

23:56

belt from a pair of pants.

23:58

Usually, when we have a person who's

24:00

dead with their clothes on, the clothes will

24:03

stay on. Even if the body mummifies,

24:05

the clothes are going to stay on. Water

24:08

might wash all socks or something like

24:10

that, but it's not going to completely undress

24:12

a body.

24:15

Doctor Shinen raised a different natural

24:17

explanation for my Teresa's nudity

24:20

hypothermia.

24:21

There's something that happens with extreme

24:23

cold cold, paradoxical undressing.

24:26

Normally, when you're cold, your blood vessels

24:28

will constrict to try to keep the

24:31

blood more central in the body. Well,

24:33

what happens with paradoxical undressing

24:35

is there is a reflex

24:38

dilatation of these blood vessels.

24:41

So all of a sudden, you get this rush of

24:43

nice warm blood into these

24:45

areas that were previously cold, and

24:48

people who were probably a

24:50

little bit out of it by this point think,

24:53

oh my gosh, it's so warm, I'm too hot,

24:56

and they take their clothes off. However,

24:58

that tends to happen more

25:01

often in extreme cold

25:03

where there's snow.

25:05

In mid September two thousand and nine, the

25:07

average overnight low at the weather recording

25:10

station nearest to Dark Canyon was in the

25:12

mid sixties, and.

25:13

I'm not sure it would get cold enough up

25:15

in the canyon for that to happen,

25:19

But it's just something to think about.

25:21

Obviously, there's another possible

25:24

explanation foul

25:26

play.

25:27

There are sinister reasons for the person

25:30

not having their clothes on. I

25:32

mean, could she have been sexually

25:34

assaulted and they

25:37

just took her clothes off and left

25:39

them off. Who knows.

25:42

It's certainly

25:44

a real possibility.

25:47

And what about the missing clothing, and

25:50

also the.

25:50

Fact that it was an incomplete set of clothes

25:53

and none of the additional items

25:55

of clothing were ever found, and including

25:58

shoes, which I think have a little more weight

26:01

than other clothing.

26:03

As with everything about my Teresa's case,

26:06

the story of her remains is a story

26:08

of absence, gaps, and guesses.

26:12

A forensic pathologist works by process

26:14

of elimination, but with so little

26:16

hard evidence, it was difficult to

26:18

rule out anything.

26:20

So the fact that I didn't see any

26:24

trauma in the bones doesn't

26:26

mean trauma didn't happen. It's

26:29

always possible that a

26:32

gunshot wound can go through and through

26:34

a body without hitting bone,

26:36

same thing for a stab wound. What's

26:39

also possible is asphyxia

26:42

or a manual strangulation, or

26:45

maybe you know, choked with a rope.

26:48

The reason people die when

26:51

they're strangled is you're

26:54

cutting off the blood flow to

26:56

the brain. We're

26:58

looking for things that reflect the fact

27:00

that you are compressing neck structures.

27:05

In the autopsy report, there's a list of missing

27:07

bones from the hand,

27:10

the left toes presumably scavenged

27:12

by animals, the tailbone, the

27:14

zyphoid process at the bottom of the sternum,

27:18

and a thin, fragile neck bone

27:20

called the hyoid.

27:23

The hyoid bone is the

27:25

only floating bone in the body. It's

27:27

not attached to any other bone. It

27:30

sits a little bit above the thyroid

27:33

cartilage, and it's essentially

27:36

there as a base of muscle

27:38

attachment.

27:40

Because of its shape and position in the body,

27:43

a broken hyoid can provide clear

27:45

evidence of strangulation for

27:47

a forensic pathologist. It's a very

27:49

significant bone.

27:51

And what's important about it is

27:54

it's a U shaped bone with the projections

27:57

heading towards the back of

28:00

the neck. So if it's compressed

28:02

from both sides, which is what happens when

28:05

you have a strangulation case.

28:07

With the manual strangulate is

28:10

that you're putting pressure on the wings

28:13

of the hyoid bone and a can

28:15

fracture. The

28:17

thing with the hyoid is if you found it and it

28:20

was broken, you could say, aha, this person

28:22

was strangled.

28:24

But like the missing clothing and her

28:27

id, my Teresa's hyoid bone

28:29

was never found. Doctor

28:32

Shinen says my Teresa's case could

28:34

still be resolved with new

28:36

evidence. The coroner could change

28:39

the cause of death from undetermined.

28:42

If there was foul play

28:44

involved, someone could confess. You

28:47

never know, it could be deathbed confession.

28:51

Maybe they'll raid somewhere

28:53

someplace and they'll find

28:55

pictures of her. Anything is possible.

28:58

They could just investigate

29:01

the right person at the right time. Sometimes

29:05

killers will save souvenirs that

29:07

can be recognized as something from the person. Anything

29:10

like that could happen.

29:12

Anything could happen, including

29:15

this. Someone

29:17

who knows something could

29:19

decide they've kept the secret for

29:22

too long. My

29:44

Teresa's movements on September seventeenth,

29:46

two thousand and nine, are mostly unknown.

29:49

After she was released from Lost Hil Station

29:51

at twelve twenty five am, she somehow

29:54

made her way six miles to Montanito

29:56

in the dark. The next

29:58

morning, around six thirty am. She

30:01

was spotted there in the backyard of a house

30:03

at the bottom of Cold Canyon Road, and.

30:05

I saw somebody sitting on the top step

30:08

of the sixt railroad ties that we have

30:10

in the backyard.

30:11

I called David, said are you okay?

30:14

And the answer was yes, I'm just

30:16

resting, And by the time we were around to the

30:19

other window, she was gone.

30:22

That's Karen Smith speaking in an ABC

30:24

seven documentary about my Teres's disappearance.

30:28

Karen's house is kind of a landmark in the neighborhood

30:30

because it has a tennis court out front. Her

30:33

husband, Bill Smith, who died in twenty

30:35

seventeen, was a reporter on KTLA,

30:38

a local TV news station. The

30:41

Smith's called the cops, and later deputies

30:43

confirmed that the woman who'd been in the backyard

30:46

was my Terce. That's

30:48

the one official sighting of my Terce

30:50

Richardson after she left Lost

30:52

Hill Station. But

30:55

then there's the other story, the

30:57

unofficial story, the one the

30:59

guy on the edge of his bed told Raven in

31:02

the Lost interview.

31:04

It was four thirty in the morning. I'm coming down off

31:06

my mountain a little higher.

31:08

So what do you lose?

31:09

Right? I lived therese, Yeah, right

31:12

down the street. I've lived in want and you know, all my life,

31:15

so my folks lived here early.

31:16

And so he says he was heading

31:18

down into the neighborhood from his spot

31:20

on the mountain in the early morning hours.

31:23

Come down four to thirty in the morning.

31:26

And because I left about four fifteen for my

31:28

spot, tax by that ten minutes certateen minutes.

31:30

See down and I'm coming

31:32

down.

31:33

There's that well almost step with bluff and Cold

31:35

Canyon, and there was a right

31:37

with Cold Canyon. There's a house with

31:40

a tennis court right there, and

31:42

as a as a big horseshoe driveway.

31:45

That's the Smith's house.

31:46

Are you looking up on the internet, because the

31:49

guy gave a.

31:50

Statement, but his story and

31:52

the Smith's story they're really different.

31:55

The time where my terrace was

31:57

on the property, they don't line

31:59

up.

32:00

He found her in the backyard talking

32:02

to herself, but you know when she wasn't in the backyard

32:05

and I she was in the front door, but

32:07

I couldn't.

32:08

And in his count, she wasn't

32:10

quietly resting. She was

32:13

audibly distressed.

32:15

But I could hear the scream.

32:16

I can tell you the blacks by her draw yeah,

32:18

the intonation in your voice.

32:20

I didn't know that black people lived in want to Neo.

32:24

So he says he decided to hang

32:26

out just to make sure she was safe.

32:29

Stayed there for about thirty seconds,

32:31

and I said, come

32:33

a little bit five of this right now.

32:35

But when she didn't seem to be in danger, he

32:38

figured he should move along.

32:41

She was scream about enough did I go in the couse's

32:43

going to be here. I

32:45

got to get out of here. So I was at home.

32:48

The woman, he says, was a total

32:50

stranger to him at the time. He

32:54

didn't know she was about to become a household

32:57

name.

32:58

And so I

33:02

just I didn't think much of it, you

33:04

know, I didn't know that she did be harassed.

33:06

It was the same night, you know, certain

33:09

stay ex of the situation.

33:11

He didn't know that deputies and search parties

33:14

with horses, drones and dogs were

33:16

going to be pouring into sleepy little Montanito

33:19

looking for her, this young woman

33:21

who was not from Malibu, who

33:24

he thought didn't really fit in there.

33:27

There.

33:27

I go, huh, Yeah,

33:30

I didn't think much about it until like two

33:32

days later when all.

33:33

This came on the news.

33:34

You know, even

33:37

though he didn't know any of that. He

33:40

knew something out of the ordinary had happened.

33:43

I told my land on the next morning, I said, what

33:46

adline should be able to vound?

33:47

Last night, the next thing that

33:49

happened, he saw the vultures,

33:52

so many vultures. Vultures

33:55

are a fact of life in Montanito, but

33:58

this was more than he'd ever seen before, more

34:00

than he could count.

34:02

But so I just.

34:06

Leaves later, you know, I hear

34:08

that she's missing and that, you know, I walked through

34:10

all this stuff's going on, like.

34:13

Sorry, I'm up at

34:15

my spot like two days

34:18

later, and I see

34:20

And I've seen a lot of vultures in my life.

34:22

I've lived after in fifty years, right right, never

34:25

seen one hundred vultures they

34:28

swoo. That's that

34:30

seemed like a thousand of them, you know what I mean. I've

34:32

never seen that many. So when did

34:34

you see this?

34:36

I saw this like two

34:38

days after she was missing. I maybe four

34:40

days after she was missing. You

34:42

know, I thought to myself, you know, because

34:45

I lived.

34:45

At through all my life. Now I'm kind of like a trapper o'co

34:48

mountain man, right like that. I

34:51

wondered what they

34:53

doing up there? You know there's something dead out there. You

34:55

know, obviously there's that many cultures.

35:01

This story of the Montanito lifer

35:03

who saw my trees the morning of her disappearance,

35:07

it's not out there. The

35:09

recording and all the new information

35:11

in it got buried under so much

35:13

other information, so much misinformation,

35:17

conspiracy theories, dead ends lies.

35:21

It was lost in the leaf litter,

35:24

detritus of the Internet. But

35:26

it's kind of like that hyoid bone, tiny

35:30

and super significant because

35:32

this ordinary guy, sitting on the edge

35:34

of his bed, drinking a beer, telling

35:37

a story, he makes what

35:39

is probably the single most important

35:41

statement of any witness in this

35:44

case.

35:46

I don't know any

35:49

of the facts except for that the constant

35:51

eye was the last one to see her. Lie.

35:57

If he was the last one to see her

35:59

alive, did he know something

36:02

about her death? This

36:05

season on Lost Hills, I

36:08

know one.

36:08

Of them all officers, I had something to do with it. It's

36:10

like when I seen a move, it was like, damn,

36:13

that's crazy, because I was like in a sale with this woman.

36:15

Somebody said they actually followed

36:17

her after she left.

36:19

Do you think you heard someone talking about how the deputy

36:21

could give her a ride somewhere.

36:23

Yes, I was a male deputy.

36:24

I'm getting murdered anybody it's going to be a cop.

36:27

I mean I had to sleep in front of my kid's store because

36:29

of people coming to kill my kids.

36:31

I was dating her at the time, and she ended up

36:33

going missing, and I was questioned by LA Homicide

36:35

as a possible suspect.

36:37

For her disappearance, and one of the other guys came in

36:39

and said, what do you know about my trees?

36:41

He knew exactly where she was, which

36:44

gives me the chills.

36:45

Imagine if this was your kid that

36:48

was swept up and put in a box like this.

36:54

Lost Tails Season four, Dark Canyon

36:56

is written and hosted by Me Dana

36:59

Goodyear. It was reported by

37:01

me and Hailey Fox, our senior producer.

37:04

The show was created by me and Ben

37:06

Adare. Lost Tails is a production

37:08

of Eastern Sound and Pushkin Industries.

37:18

Subscribe to Pushkin Plus and you can binge

37:20

the whole season right now ad free.

37:23

Find Pushkin Plus on the Lost Hill

37:25

Show page in Apple Podcasts, or

37:27

at pushkin dot Fm, slash

37:29

plus