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Speaker 7: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 7: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 7: written about them.
Speaker 8: Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK.
Speaker 7: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 7: and infamous killers in true crime history True Murder with
Speaker 7: your host, journalist and author Dan.
Speaker 9: Zupanski, good Evening.
Speaker 8: Ventura County is famous for its beautiful weather and its
Speaker 8: pristine coastline, not its grisly murders. That all changed on
Speaker 8: the night of May twentieth, two thousand and nine, when
Speaker 8: three members of a wealthy Ventura County family were slaughtered
Speaker 8: inside their luxurious beachfront home. The father was a successful businessman,
Speaker 8: the pregnant mother was a former beauty queen. Their unborn
Speaker 8: son was waiting to take his first breath of life.
Speaker 8: For nearly a year, detectives were unable to solve the
Speaker 8: bizarre beach house slayings. Finally, in the spring of twenty ten,
Speaker 8: a DNA database broke the case wide open. Filled with
Speaker 8: stirring interviews, historic context, and never before released details about
Speaker 8: the Fariah murders, Black Knight, Gold Coast tells the story
Speaker 8: of an American tragedy that is at once shocking, timely,
Speaker 8: and haunting. The book that we're featuring this evening is
Speaker 8: Black Night, Gold Coast with my special guest, journalist and
Speaker 8: author Gray George welcome to the program, and thank you
Speaker 8: for agreeing in this interview.
Speaker 10: Great George, good evening, Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 8: Thank you very much. Interesting, very interesting book, to say
Speaker 8: the least. Let's talk about set the stage with you.
Speaker 8: Explain a little bit about Ventura County, and for those
Speaker 8: people that don't know, which probably most people, tell us
Speaker 8: about the breakdown with the smaller cities of Ventura and
Speaker 8: ox nerd and Thousand Oaks in Simi Valley, and then
Speaker 8: talk about Ventura itself. So tell us a little bit
Speaker 8: about this beautiful, tranquil place before we talk about Brock
Speaker 8: and Divina Husteds.
Speaker 10: Ventura County is just northeast of Los Angeles, excuse me,
Speaker 10: just northwest of Los Angeles. It hugs the Pacific Coast,
Speaker 10: and it's known for several things. As you read at
Speaker 10: the beginning, it's known for its beautiful coastline, it's nearly
Speaker 10: perfect year, and the county is, believe it or not,
Speaker 10: largely agricultural. There are several larger cities in the county, though,
Speaker 10: and that's where most of the population is based. The
Speaker 10: largest city is Oxnard, and then there are at least
Speaker 10: three other cities I know of in the county that
Speaker 10: have populations that exceed one hundred thousand, those being Thousand Oaks,
Speaker 10: Semi Valley, and the city of Ventura itself, which is
Speaker 10: the county seat Ventura County. Unlike Los Angeles, Ventura County
Speaker 10: is known for low crime rates for affluent citizens, for
Speaker 10: people who essentially want to get away from the crime
Speaker 10: of the larger cities and the bigger metropolitan areas. So
Speaker 10: when it comes to crime, typically people at least in
Speaker 10: this region don't think of Ventura County as being a
Speaker 10: hotbed of violent sensational crime.
Speaker 8: Now, let's talk about a couple people that are very
Speaker 8: central to this case, of course, And we talked about
Speaker 8: the husband and the pregnant wife, and in this beautiful
Speaker 8: home on this beach front. Let's talk about brock Edward
Speaker 8: And if I mispronounced the name, please correct me. The
Speaker 8: Husted and Houston, Okay, and Devona and the former Debony.
Speaker 8: So tell us about this couple that's both forty two
Speaker 8: years of age when this story begins, when we are
Speaker 8: looking at this couple, tell us about them and their children,
Speaker 8: and tell us a little bit about what they do
Speaker 8: and who they really are. And especially in this community.
Speaker 10: Brock and Divini Houstad were a very affluent couple. They
Speaker 10: lived in a community at the time of their murders
Speaker 10: called Faria, which is just a few miles up the
Speaker 10: coast from the city of Ventura. Faria is an extremely
Speaker 10: upscale community. Only a few people live there in several
Speaker 10: oceanfront homes. Brock Housteed was born in Hidden Hills, which
Speaker 10: is a community in Los Angeles County that is one
Speaker 10: of the most affluent in the entire country. As I
Speaker 10: point out in the book Bloomberg Business listed in two
Speaker 10: thousand and nine, the year of this crime, listed Hidden
Speaker 10: Hills as being one of the wealthiest towns in America.
Speaker 10: So Brock Housted grew up in relative affluence. When he
Speaker 10: was a child, his family moved to a city called
Speaker 10: Moore Park, which is in Ventura County, and for high
Speaker 10: school he attended a very exclusive private school in Ohi
Speaker 10: called Villanova Preparatory Academy. After high school, Brock's brother Scott,
Speaker 10: went to work at a local bank, and while he
Speaker 10: was working at the bank, he met a young woman
Speaker 10: who was one of his coworkers named Divina Deboni. She
Speaker 10: was a tall, statuesque blonde absolutely gorgeous. In fact, when
Speaker 10: she was nineteen years old, she had won the Miss
Speaker 10: Oxnard pageant, and then she'd gone on to compete in
Speaker 10: the Miss California pageant, which I'm sure most of your
Speaker 10: audience members know is the last step before one enters
Speaker 10: the Miss America pageant. So Divina de Boni was absolutely gorgeous,
Speaker 10: and at least it's my understanding that when Scott Husted
Speaker 10: first met her, he thought that she might be a
Speaker 10: good match for his younger brother Brock. So, to make
Speaker 10: a long story short, in nineteen ninety Brock and Divina
Speaker 10: Houstead were introduced to one another, and as the story goes,
Speaker 10: they were immediate There were immediate sparks between them. Within
Speaker 10: the next couple of years they were engaged and finally
Speaker 10: in nineteen ninety five they married. They initially lived after
Speaker 10: their marriage in a very exclusive neighborhood in the city
Speaker 10: of Ventura called Ventura Keys, which is nestled right along
Speaker 10: the coast. There are mooring areas, there are boat docks
Speaker 10: within the neighborhood, and then after their children were born,
Speaker 10: they moved up the coast to the Faria home at
Speaker 10: the at the time of the crimes. Brock Housteed operated
Speaker 10: a business called Cotur Concepts. He provided custom metal work
Speaker 10: for high end clients. Some of his celebrity clients here
Speaker 10: in this region included Suzanne Summers, Mel Gibson, Oprah Winfrey,
Speaker 10: who owns a large spread up in the Montecito area
Speaker 10: in Santa Barbara County. He had done work for all
Speaker 10: of them. Brockhusted's work his metal work had appeared in magazines.
Speaker 10: And at the same time Brock Houstead was getting his
Speaker 10: metal business up and running, Divina was establishing herself as
Speaker 10: a major player in the local charity world of Ventura County.
Speaker 10: She was the president of the national charity Junior League
Speaker 10: of Ventura. She made enormous strides in terms of fundraising
Speaker 10: for that particular charity as well as others. In fact,
Speaker 10: one week before the tragic crimes that I detail in
Speaker 10: the book, she had given a check for almost eighty
Speaker 10: five thousand dollars to the local hospital. So both brock
Speaker 10: and Divini Houstad were enormously active people. They were involved
Speaker 10: in their community, They were deeply involved in the lives
Speaker 10: of their children, Brocky and Isabella, and from all outward
Speaker 10: appearances they had almost the perfect life, living in their beautiful,
Speaker 10: multimillion dollar oceanfront home in Pharrea.
Speaker 8: Now tell us a little bit about the ages. Tell
Speaker 8: us the ages of the two children, Brocki the boy
Speaker 8: and Isabella the girl, and just tell us a little
Speaker 8: bit about the children that they had. Now you talked
Speaker 8: about the idyllic life that they must have had. But
Speaker 8: tell us us a little bit about the characters of
Speaker 8: these two children at that age nine and eleven.
Speaker 10: At the time of the crimes, Isabella was eleven years old,
Speaker 10: Brocki was nine years old. It's my understanding that they
Speaker 10: attended Pierpoint Elementary School in Ventura. Brocky and Isabella were
Speaker 10: extremely close based on everything I've been able to glean
Speaker 10: about this case, and they were very close with their parents.
Speaker 10: When they weren't in school, they took cotillion classes, which
Speaker 10: it's my understanding those are manners based classes. They also
Speaker 10: spent a lot of time with their family members, with
Speaker 10: their father out fishing, surfing, boating. Their mother was actively
Speaker 10: involved at their school where she was involved in volunteer work,
Speaker 10: and from all accounts, they were completely normal, well adjusted
Speaker 10: children who came from a very large Ventura County background.
Speaker 10: Like I pointed out before both of their parents had
Speaker 10: grown up in Ventura County, so they had a large
Speaker 10: network of family members who lived nearby, and they were
Speaker 10: very well supported for after the tragedy occurred.
Speaker 8: Now, this idyllic life is obviously shattered. May twentieth, two
Speaker 8: thousand and nine. But you did mentioned you talk about
Speaker 8: their their comfort, their their affluence, and and I guess
Speaker 8: their relative security living in this gated community. So what
Speaker 8: was their practice in terms of security with this house.
Speaker 8: What was their real day to day practice, and also
Speaker 8: tell us set the stage for what they were doing
Speaker 8: as a family that evening on May twentieth, two thousand
Speaker 8: and nine.
Speaker 10: So, unfortunately, and it's one of the great ironies of
Speaker 10: this story, I think the Housteads, because I think they
Speaker 10: lived in a very safe, comfortable, gated community. They took
Speaker 10: their security, their home security for granted a little bit,
Speaker 10: at least on the night of the track. On the
Speaker 10: night of the murders, the family was sitting in their
Speaker 10: living room at their beachfront property and they were watching television.
Speaker 10: They were watching American Idol, and that was the season
Speaker 10: finale actually on May twenty, two thousand and nine, of
Speaker 10: the season when Chris Allen and Adam Lambert squared off
Speaker 10: on American Idol. Well at about ten pm, the winner
Speaker 10: of American Idol was announced, and at the time, Brocky,
Speaker 10: his mother Divina, and his father Brock were sitting in
Speaker 10: the living room of their home. Isabella was asleep in
Speaker 10: her bedroom toward the front end, the north end of
Speaker 10: their home, and it was just a very normal, typical
Speaker 10: night for them. Just after the winner was announced, just
Speaker 10: after Chris Allen was announced as the victor in that
Speaker 10: year's American Idol, Brock Houstad rose off the couch and
Speaker 10: he walked into the kitchen of their home, which was
Speaker 10: attached to the living room area as sort of one
Speaker 10: large great room. Now, as I mentioned before, it appears
Speaker 10: that the Housteds were at least on this evening somewhat
Speaker 10: lacks about their home security, and both the back door
Speaker 10: and the side door of their home had been left unlocked.
Speaker 10: So as brochu Stead was walking around the kitchen and
Speaker 10: his wife and his young son Brocki were sitting in
Speaker 10: the living room watching the confetti fall on the stage
Speaker 10: at the Nokia Theater in Hollywood, a man bursts through
Speaker 10: the back door of their home. And it was from
Speaker 10: there that the tragic events in May twentieth really began
Speaker 10: to take shape.
Speaker 8: Now, where was Isabella at this time? And he burst through?
Speaker 8: And so what was number one? Everybody saw him, but
Speaker 8: we're going to be talking about that. It was only
Speaker 8: really one witness. So tell us what this intruder looked
Speaker 8: like and how he was dressed, and if he was
Speaker 8: armed or not.
Speaker 10: So at the time, Brocky and his mother were sitting
Speaker 10: on the sofa in their living room. His father Brock
Speaker 10: was in the kitchen area. His sister Isabella was asleep
Speaker 10: in her bedroom at the front of the house. The
Speaker 10: intruder who burst through the door was dressed head to
Speaker 10: toe in black. He was wearing black boots, a black jumpsuit,
Speaker 10: black gloves, and a black motorcycle helmet that completely covered
Speaker 10: his face. As soon as he charged through the door,
Speaker 10: According to the statement that was later given to detectives,
Speaker 10: he immediately told all of the family members, Brock, Divina,
Speaker 10: and Brocki to get on the floor. They did is
Speaker 10: they were instructed. They all immediately got on the floor
Speaker 10: and as soon as they were down, the intruder, who
Speaker 10: was holding blacks what appeared to be a black semi
Speaker 10: automatic pistol, got on brock hu Stead's back and immediately
Speaker 10: pointed his gun at the back of the father's head
Speaker 10: and began demanding money from the family. It was impossible
Speaker 10: for the three members of the family who saw the
Speaker 10: suspect enter the home to get a clear view of
Speaker 10: his face because there was a face There was a
Speaker 10: visor on the face mask that actually obscured the portion
Speaker 10: of the face that would otherwise be visible. So all
Speaker 10: they knew is that this armed, violent individual had entered
Speaker 10: their home. He had ordered them to the floor, he
Speaker 10: had jumped on the father's back, he had grabbed the
Speaker 10: father's care in his hands, smashed the father's face into
Speaker 10: the floor, leaving a puddle of blood on the wooden
Speaker 10: kitchen floor, and he had started demanding the family's money
Speaker 10: from them. It was we can only imagine it must
Speaker 10: have been an absolutely terrifying experience.
Speaker 8: Now, how pregnant was the vina and what was her state,
Speaker 8: how her what was her reaction to this intruder, How
Speaker 8: hysterical was she or not.
Speaker 10: Here's that she maintained an extremely level head. I think
Speaker 10: I forgot to mention that she was five months pregnant
Speaker 10: when all of this occurred, she was five months pregnant
Speaker 10: with her third child. Based on the crime scene photos
Speaker 10: I was able to observe during my research for the book,
Speaker 10: she was clearly pregnant. Her abdomen was very convex, so
Speaker 10: we know with absolute certainty that the suspect must have
Speaker 10: known that she was pregnant at the time of the crimes.
Speaker 10: She apparently kept an extremely level head during the crime,
Speaker 10: as did her husband, as did Brocky, the son, who
Speaker 10: was nine years old at the time and witnessing all
Speaker 10: of this inside of his home. And as soon as
Speaker 10: the intruder began making demands for money, Devina instructed her son,
Speaker 10: in what was reported as a calm voice, or at
Speaker 10: least as calm as one could reasonably expect for a
Speaker 10: situation like this, She instructed her son to go back
Speaker 10: to the bed room and get the money from her purse.
Speaker 10: And at almost exactly the same time, the father, who
Speaker 10: again is being pinned to the floor of the kitchen
Speaker 10: by the intruder, asked his son to go into the
Speaker 10: kitchen and or as his son to go into the
Speaker 10: bedroom and get his money clip as well. So as
Speaker 10: soon as Brocki was instructed to go get his parents' money.
Speaker 10: He got off the floor, walked into the bedroom, retrieved
Speaker 10: the money, and brought it back into the main room
Speaker 10: to give to the intruder.
Speaker 8: Brocki heard something very profound uttered from his father or
Speaker 8: his mother or both regarding him and his sister. What
Speaker 8: did he hear? His parents say?
Speaker 10: That's absolutely right, as Brocki. After Brocki gave the money
Speaker 10: to the intruder, he went back into the living room area,
Speaker 10: where his mother was still on the floor, And it
Speaker 10: was at about that time that the intruder started demanding
Speaker 10: jewelry while a parent, I guess, assuming that her son
Speaker 10: didn't know where a jewelry was. Divina Houstad struggled up
Speaker 10: from the floor, and again, she was five months pregnant
Speaker 10: at the time, so we can only imagine it must
Speaker 10: have been quite more deal for her to elevate herself
Speaker 10: to her feet. She got up off the floor and
Speaker 10: attempted to go get jewelry for the intruder. Well, at
Speaker 10: this point, Brocky is standing over in the living room
Speaker 10: area and his perception of the event starts to break
Speaker 10: down a little bit. Of course, he's a traumatized nine
Speaker 10: year old boy, so I suppose that's to be expected.
Speaker 10: But he hears both of his parents begging the intruder
Speaker 10: not to murder their children. And it was at about
Speaker 10: this time that his mother and father were both herded
Speaker 10: out of the kitchen area and into the back bedroom
Speaker 10: of the home.
Speaker 8: Now, what could Brocky hear? And not that he could
Speaker 8: tell everything that went on, but from his discernment, what
Speaker 8: could he did conclusively be able to tell that was
Speaker 8: going on, at least in his mind, from the noises
Speaker 8: that he heard.
Speaker 10: There was slamming, there was banging, there was thrashing coming
Speaker 10: from the back bedroom where his parents had been herded
Speaker 10: with the intruder. There's no report that he was able
Speaker 10: to hear muffled voices, but of course there was a
Speaker 10: short hallway between Brocky's location in the living room and
Speaker 10: the back bedroom where his parents had been herded by
Speaker 10: this armed intruder. After about three minutes, about three minutes
Speaker 10: after the initial thrashing and banging in the back bedroom,
Speaker 10: Brocki hears this blood curdling scream coming from his mother
Speaker 10: in the back bedroom, and after just a couple of seconds,
Speaker 10: the screaming stopped, and it was at that point that
Speaker 10: Brocky finally scampers from where he had been kneeling standing
Speaker 10: next to the living room coffee table to a position
Speaker 10: behind find the far end of the living room sofa,
Speaker 10: where he was at least partially concealed from anyone who
Speaker 10: might be looking for him. And after he heard his
Speaker 10: mother's scream, he didn't hear anything else until he started
Speaker 10: to hear heavy, the heavy fall of boots walking through
Speaker 10: his house.
Speaker 8: Now what he did see, though, was a gun outside
Speaker 8: of the bedroom. And then he thought, and then he
Speaker 8: heard those footsteps back in the building again. Because if
Speaker 8: I'm not getting events correctly, he did see something happen
Speaker 8: when in terms of the gun, and then something else
Speaker 8: happened regarding the gun. So tell us what he did see,
Speaker 8: and then that turn of events rights.
Speaker 10: That's more or less correct. So, as Brockie is hiding
Speaker 10: behind the far end of the living room sofa, he
Speaker 10: hears bootsteps coming down the wall, obviously the intruder's heavy
Speaker 10: footsteps coming down the hallway. He sees the intruder, still
Speaker 10: in his motorcycle helmet, still in his black jumpsuit, walk
Speaker 10: through the living room of his house and moved to
Speaker 10: the back door. Now this is the door that opens
Speaker 10: onto the ocean front deck above the Pacific. It's the
Speaker 10: same door that the intruder had burst through just minutes earlier.
Speaker 10: Brocki notices that the intruder is rubbing together the thumb
Speaker 10: and fingers of his right hand. Brocki didn't think too
Speaker 10: much of it at the time, but he did recall
Speaker 10: that detail later. After the intruder walks out the door,
Speaker 10: Brocky immediately sprints back down the hallway of his home,
Speaker 10: and as he's going down the hallway, he notices the
Speaker 10: intruders what appears to be a black stainless nine millimeter
Speaker 10: semi automatic pistol lying on the lying on the floor
Speaker 10: of the hallway. Well. Brocky walks into his parents' room
Speaker 10: and it's an absolute slaughter. His parents are both on
Speaker 10: the floor, either of them removing. There's no sign of respiration.
Speaker 10: There's blood everywhere. There's blood on the ceiling, there's blood
Speaker 10: on the walls. There's a huge puddle of bright red
Speaker 10: blood on the floor. So, fearing for his sister's safety,
Speaker 10: Rocky immediately makes his way back to his sister Isabella's room,
Speaker 10: which is beside his parents' bedroom. He walks in and
Speaker 10: fortunately he finds that she has not been murdered as well.
Speaker 10: He wakes Isabella up, and at first, as you can imagine,
Speaker 10: she's an absolute disbelief. Here's an eleven year old girl
Speaker 10: who one minute she's sound asleep in her own bed.
Speaker 10: The next moment, she's being shaken awake by her brother,
Speaker 10: who is telling her that both of their parents have
Speaker 10: been eviscerated in their bedroom. Well, at first, Isabella encourages
Speaker 10: Brocky to get into bed with her to calm down.
Speaker 10: Everything will be okay, you were just having a bad dream.
Speaker 10: But after a minute or two, Isabella begins to realize
Speaker 10: that Brocky is deeply distraught, so she finally relents and
Speaker 10: gets out of bed and follows him into their parents' bedroom.
Speaker 10: And that's when she sees the carnage for herself. And
Speaker 10: that's when both children's terrors ratcheted up, ratcheted up to
Speaker 10: an entirely new level. After Isabella and Brocky view their
Speaker 10: parents dead, she immediately grabs him by the hand and
Speaker 10: pulls him into the bathroom. She closes the door, they
Speaker 10: lock the door, and as they're standing there, shivering shaking
Speaker 10: on the bathroom floor, they hear the pounding of bootsteps
Speaker 10: re entering the home, and both children were absolutely frightened.
Speaker 10: They immediately took refuge in the shower. They closed the
Speaker 10: door as silently as they could, and they sat there
Speaker 10: in the cold, dark bathroom with only a flimsy knob
Speaker 10: lock on the door between them and the intruder who
Speaker 10: had re entered the home.
Speaker 8: And to their surprise, he doesn't come looking for them.
Speaker 10: And what happens that is one of the most miraculous
Speaker 10: parts of this whole story. As they're sitting in there,
Speaker 10: As the children are sitting in the shower, shivering, having
Speaker 10: just seen both of their parents brutally slaughtered on the
Speaker 10: floor of their bedroom, they can hear the intruder walking
Speaker 10: around the bedroom. They can't tell exactly how he's moving,
Speaker 10: It sounds like he's moving in sort of an erratic manner,
Speaker 10: as if he's looking for something in the bedroom. Well,
Speaker 10: after a few minutes of pounding footsteps, minutes that must
Speaker 10: have seemed like hours to these poor children, they finally
Speaker 10: hear the bootsteps getting softer and softer and softer as
Speaker 10: they move away from the bedroom. So unsure exactly what
Speaker 10: to do, the children finally decide that they need to
Speaker 10: call nine to one one that they need to summon help.
Speaker 10: So the children exit the shower, they ease the bathroom
Speaker 10: door open. They look out, and they can't tell that
Speaker 10: anyone's in the house. Brocky looks out into the hallway
Speaker 10: and he notices two really important details. He notices a
Speaker 10: that the back door to the house, the door to
Speaker 10: the ocean front deck that the intruder had come through,
Speaker 10: is standing wide open. He also notices the deep step.
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Speaker 10: the terms conditions eighteen plus the handgun. What appeared to
Speaker 10: be a nine millimeter handgun that was on the floor
Speaker 10: of the hallway just a few moments earlier when he
Speaker 10: and Isabella had entered the bedroom is now is now gone.
Speaker 10: So since the children are confident that there's no one
Speaker 10: in the bedroom, they immediately locked the bedroom door to
Speaker 10: the hallway and they begin looking at their parents. They
Speaker 10: finally determined that both of their parents are in fact deceased,
Speaker 10: so Brocky attempts to retrieve the phone. The cordless phone
Speaker 10: in the bedroom had been knocked to the floor. He
Speaker 10: and Isabella look over in the corner of the room
Speaker 10: and they can see their father's outstretched hand, and this
Speaker 10: is obvious in the crime scene photos as well. Their
Speaker 10: father's outstretched hand was sort of pointed toward the bed,
Speaker 10: and evidently the cordless phone was just beyond his reach.
Speaker 10: So Brocky has to walk through the pool of blood,
Speaker 10: the huge pool of blood around his mother's body. He
Speaker 10: has to get up on their bed, and he has
Speaker 10: to sort of crawl across the bed in order to
Speaker 10: retrieve the phone in the corner of the room. And
Speaker 10: as he goes across the bed, and it's really a
Speaker 10: chilling detail of the story that you can see in
Speaker 10: the crime scene photos. You can see his little bloody
Speaker 10: footprints on this pure snow white comforter the parents had
Speaker 10: on their bed. He retrieves the phone, he can't get
Speaker 10: a dial tone on it, so he and Isabella decide
Speaker 10: we have to get out of the house. We need
Speaker 10: to get help. The phone isn't working. This all seems
Speaker 10: like a nightmare come to life. So the children re
Speaker 10: enter the bathroom. They lock the door behind them, and
Speaker 10: then by getting on top of the toilet, they're able
Speaker 10: to slide the bathroom window open, wriggle through the window,
Speaker 10: and run from the home.
Speaker 8: So now police are involved. The neighbor call nine to
Speaker 8: one one and so we have the police involved. What
Speaker 8: do police find in terms of how they were killed
Speaker 8: and how many times they were stabbed? Tell us about
Speaker 8: those kinds of details and what the police can surmise
Speaker 8: with just initially from looking at this crime scene, and
Speaker 8: what they do surmise from just looking at that crime scene.
Speaker 10: As soon as Ventura County Sheriffs Deputies made it to
Speaker 10: the home, they immediately rushed through the house and they
Speaker 10: saw signs of a struggle everywhere they looked. There was
Speaker 10: blood behind the island in the kitchen, which is where
Speaker 10: the intruder had smashed rock Ustead's face into the floor
Speaker 10: after he had attempt after he had initially made entry
Speaker 10: into the home. There were also two women's shirts, one
Speaker 10: of which was on top of the kitchen island, the
Speaker 10: other was beside the was in the hallway of the home,
Speaker 10: beside the spilt contents of a Louis Vautromp purse. So
Speaker 10: the deputies make their way down the hallway of the home.
Speaker 10: They find the bedroom door locked. It was still locked
Speaker 10: from where Isabella and Brocky had locked it when they
Speaker 10: were attempting to retrieve the cordless phone. The deputies kicked
Speaker 10: down the door to the bedroom. They enter the bedroom
Speaker 10: and they find the parents slaughtered. They can obviously tell
Speaker 10: that the parents were victims of a violent homicide, and
Speaker 10: so they immediately called detectives who come out to the
Speaker 10: crime scene and begin assessing the elements of it. Now,
Speaker 10: in the course of investigating the crime, it should be
Speaker 10: pointed out that, as I'm sure most of your listeners know,
Speaker 10: most murders are predicated on fairly conventional motives like anger, jealousy, revenge,
Speaker 10: that sort of thing. These crimes were unusual, not only
Speaker 10: in the sense that they happened this very low crime upscale,
Speaker 10: gated community, but also because there appeared to be absolutely
Speaker 10: no motive to the crime. The detectives looked into Brocken
Speaker 10: Divina Houstad's backgrounds early on, and they couldn't find any
Speaker 10: links to known criminals, to any kind of problems in
Speaker 10: their background that might point at a suspect in the case.
Speaker 10: So the upshot was they had no leads in the case. Now,
Speaker 10: if we look at the evidence in the bedroom in retrospect,
Speaker 10: I think that there are some reasonable conclusions that we
Speaker 10: can draw. For example, the murders were not the result
Speaker 10: of a highly planned crime by some skilled master criminal.
Speaker 10: These were very impulsive murders. These were opportunistic murders. These
Speaker 10: were murders that were committed by a disorganized individual who
Speaker 10: had no understanding of how evidence works. Just as an
Speaker 10: example of that, the murder weapon, which was a huge
Speaker 10: butcher knife that had been taken from the cutlery block
Speaker 10: in the houst Husted's kitchen, it had been left at
Speaker 10: the crime scene. So not only had the murderer in
Speaker 10: this case left the butcher knife he'd used to murder
Speaker 10: the victims lying on the floor behind them, literally with
Speaker 10: their blood and flesh all over it, he'd also left
Speaker 10: a living witness to the crime. I should also point
Speaker 10: out that when the detectives initially entered the bedroom, they
Speaker 10: saw blood droplets leading from the victims into the master bathroom,
Speaker 10: and they noticed that the same blood droplets were around
Speaker 10: the kitchen of the bathroom sink area. So the detective
Speaker 10: started to surmise that somehow, in the commission of the crimes,
Speaker 10: the offender's hand had gotten slippery with the blood of
Speaker 10: his victims, it had slipped off the knife he had
Speaker 10: cut himself on the knife's blade, and then he had
Speaker 10: rushed into the bathroom to wash his hands. And as
Speaker 10: it turns out that that conjecture turned out to be
Speaker 10: right on the money.
Speaker 8: The other thing that we didn't mention was that there's
Speaker 8: a sexual component to this, and I will ask if
Speaker 8: police were sidetracked by that even for a moment or
Speaker 8: at all. But the white's top was off, and then
Speaker 8: they did find a green hand towel in the washroom
Speaker 8: that had semen and some other blood as well. So
Speaker 8: tell us about the state of her, and also tell
Speaker 8: us about how many stab wounds between the two.
Speaker 10: More than there were more than sixty stab wounds inflicted
Speaker 10: on the victims. Brocustead was stabbed no less than twenty
Speaker 10: five times, mostly in the abdomen. Davina Hustad was stabbed
Speaker 10: nearly fifty times, and her stab wounds ranged from her
Speaker 10: abdomen to her neck, to her throat to her head.
Speaker 10: They were grizzly wounds. One of the stab wounds went
Speaker 10: through her ear. Another stab wound went through her cheek
Speaker 10: and actually opened up a really sickening gash inside her mouth.
Speaker 10: Other stab wounds were delivered to her neck area. Now,
Speaker 10: you're right, there was a definite sexual component to this crime,
Speaker 10: and the detectives were sensitive to that as soon as
Speaker 10: they walked into the bedroom that night Divina Houstad. Prior
Speaker 10: to the murders, she'd been sitting in her living room
Speaker 10: and she'd been wearing sort of two layers of tank tops,
Speaker 10: and as I pointed out before, those tank tops had
Speaker 10: been left on the kitchen island and in the hallway
Speaker 10: of the hallway of the home.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 10: When detectives entered the bedroom, they noticed that she was
Speaker 10: totally topless, which of course revealed her pregnancy in very
Speaker 10: obvious detail. And so when Divina and brock Eustad were
Speaker 10: removed from the home and taken to the County Morgue,
Speaker 10: they were swabbed as homicide victims usually are in the
Speaker 10: course of autopsies, and the medical examiner found a quantity
Speaker 10: of seamen inside Divina Hustead's mouth, which sealed the deal
Speaker 10: on the fact that she had been sexually assaulted in
Speaker 10: the commission of the tragic murders and as far as
Speaker 10: the towel is concerned. When detectives entered the bedroom, they
Speaker 10: noticed that there was a towel that had been left
Speaker 10: on Divina Husteed's shoulder. So, if you can imagine, Brock
Speaker 10: Hustead is dead, flat on his back in the corner
Speaker 10: of the bedroom, his hand is stretched out to the
Speaker 10: right toward his bed. His wife was literally slaughtered right
Speaker 10: on top of him. In crime scene photos, you can
Speaker 10: tell that she had fallen on her left side, so
Speaker 10: that her torso was basically covering her husband's outstretched right foot.
Speaker 10: Well in leaving the home, it appears that the murderer
Speaker 10: in this case had dried his hands after he'd cut
Speaker 10: himself on the knife while stabbing Divina Hustead, and he'd
Speaker 10: also dried himself after committing his sexual assault. So when
Speaker 10: detectives found this green hand towel on Divini Houstead's back,
Speaker 10: they found not only her blood in significant quantities, they
Speaker 10: also found the unknown offender's blood in significant quantities and
Speaker 10: seamen down along the bottom fringe of the towel, And
Speaker 10: so that provided some extremely incriminating forensic evidence for detectives
Speaker 10: to work with.
Speaker 8: Now, with that forensic evidence, they have CODIS, and so
Speaker 8: they were anxious to see what could happen in putting
Speaker 8: it into CODIS what happened when they first put it
Speaker 8: into codis.
Speaker 10: When the detectives sent the DNA samples to the California
Speaker 10: Department of Justice and those DNA samples were entered into COTIS,
Speaker 10: there was no hit in the system. And it should
Speaker 10: be pointed out that since two thousand and nine, California
Speaker 10: has expanded its forensic database to the third largest in
Speaker 10: the world. It's a very comprehensive database at this point,
Speaker 10: and at the time there were a lot of reference
Speaker 10: samples in it of known felons, convicted sex offenders, and
Speaker 10: so forth. But when the forensic example from the Faria
Speaker 10: murders was sent to the California Department of Justice lab,
Speaker 10: it did not register quote unquote hit in the system.
Speaker 8: Now, how do police proceed with this? Because, as you
Speaker 8: mentioned briefly, it didn't look like there was any leads
Speaker 8: in terms of the lifestyle that both of these people
Speaker 8: led as exemplary lives and very low, low risk lifestyles
Speaker 8: that would not invite anything like this. So how do
Speaker 8: police proceed after this very mysterious, high profile and fear
Speaker 8: inducing murder in this very tranquil community.
Speaker 10: And you're absolutely right, these crimes did strike fear in
Speaker 10: the hearts of community members. People were restless, they were
Speaker 10: on edge, they were terrified. They were barricading their homes
Speaker 10: in the aftermath of this crime. Detectives in cases like
Speaker 10: this go out. They candice neighborhood. They look for anyone
Speaker 10: in the area who might not have belonged there. They
Speaker 10: look for suspicious persons reports, they look for prowler reports.
Speaker 10: They look into the victims' backgrounds to determine whether or
Speaker 10: not there could be any connection between victim and killer.
Speaker 10: And I should point out as you as I'm sure
Speaker 10: you know, there are. In almost in the overwhelming majority
Speaker 10: of cases, there is some sort of link between the
Speaker 10: victim and his or her murderer, and that makes it
Speaker 10: easier for detectives to narrow down the suspect pool. As
Speaker 10: detectives worked through this case, it became increasingly apparent that
Speaker 10: they were working what's called what's known as a stranger murder,
Speaker 10: and that is a case in which someone unknown to
Speaker 10: the victims murders them. Stranger murders are notoriously difficult to solve,
Speaker 10: even in our even in our current era of advanced
Speaker 10: forensic techniques DNA and so forth, it's still extremely difficult
Speaker 10: for detectives to work stranger murders and produce results. It's
Speaker 10: in a timely manner. So in the course of investigating
Speaker 10: the Paria murders, the detectives started looking at whether or
Speaker 10: not a drifter along the highway near their home might
Speaker 10: have broken into the Housted home and murdered them. On
Speaker 10: a whim. It's worth pointing out that the socioeconomic demographics
Speaker 10: of the Frea area are a little bit unusual and
Speaker 10: a little bit unique. I've i mentioned before that Faria
Speaker 10: Beach Colony is the gated neighborhood where the Housteads lived
Speaker 10: at the time of their murder. It's an extremely upscale community.
Speaker 10: The homes in their range and price I would say
Speaker 10: from probably the low millions to the you know, to
Speaker 10: maybe up to ten million dollars. But just outside Faria
Speaker 10: Beach Colony, outside this gated community is Pacific Coast Highway,
Speaker 10: and there are big empty stretches of Pacific Coast Highways
Speaker 10: run along the Pacific Coast, and people who live in
Speaker 10: RVs or vans or other vehicles that have been converted
Speaker 10: for nomadic living live along the coast during the year.
Speaker 10: It's a fairly popular thing to do. It's completely legal,
Speaker 10: and there are little RV lots along the coast as
Speaker 10: well that allow nomadic travelers with no connection to the
Speaker 10: local area to live there. So the fact that you
Speaker 10: had this large migratory population constantly moving through Farrea just
Speaker 10: compounded the difficulties Ventura County Sheriff's detectives were already facing
Speaker 10: in trying to resolve this murder. They looked at whether
Speaker 10: or not anyone in an RV or anyone who was
Speaker 10: coming through the area temporarily might have been responsible for
Speaker 10: the murders. They couldn't make any progress in that direction.
Speaker 10: They looked, as I said before, into the backgrounds and
Speaker 10: brought into being Houston. They couldn't find anything there. And
Speaker 10: as the days and weeks and months dragged on, the
Speaker 10: tension in the community and the frustration of the family
Speaker 10: members was just compounded.
Speaker 8: Now tell us about things being compounded. When Wendy the
Speaker 8: Rodeo is killed in what some people thought might be
Speaker 8: similar circumstances in the same area. And this is in June,
Speaker 8: So tell us what happens with Wendy de Rodeo.
Speaker 10: So the Faria murders happen on May twentieth, two thousand
Speaker 10: and nine, at some time between ten pm and ten
Speaker 10: thirty pm, in the aftermath of the crime. Like I
Speaker 10: said before, the community is completely on edge. There's a
Speaker 10: high degree of anxiety in the community. People are frightened,
Speaker 10: people are terrified. So, in an attempt to assuage some
Speaker 10: of the community fear, the Venture County Sheriff's Department organizes
Speaker 10: a community meeting at this fire station in Rencon Beach,
Speaker 10: which is just up the coast from Faria. It's just
Speaker 10: a few miles up the coast from Farrea. At the
Speaker 10: firehouse community meeting, the sheriff's detectives tell the community members,
Speaker 10: we're really sorry. We don't have any leads in the case.
Speaker 10: We can't tell you all that much about it because
Speaker 10: it's obviously it's an ongoing, active investigation, and we don't
Speaker 10: want to divulge too many details lest we compromise the
Speaker 10: integrity of the investigation. But they said, we don't have
Speaker 10: any reason to believe that anyone else is in danger.
Speaker 10: If you keep an eye out on your property, if
Speaker 10: you keep your doors locked, if you're aware of your surroundings,
Speaker 10: we believe that this was an isolated event. You have
Speaker 10: nothing to fear well, as you pointed out a moment ago.
Speaker 10: On June third, two thousand and nine, just a couple
Speaker 10: of days after this firehouse community meeting takes place, Venturrea
Speaker 10: County residents wake up to news that a woman named
Speaker 10: Wendy de Rodeo, who was a forty something year old
Speaker 10: licensed therapist and author, had been slaughtered by knife in
Speaker 10: her bedroom in Venture Keys, which is exactly the same
Speaker 10: neighborhood where the Huestads lived. Now as a really eerie coincidence,
Speaker 10: the Derodeo home was only about fifty yards as the
Speaker 10: crow flies from the former Housted residents. So of course
Speaker 10: this plunges the entire community back into a state of
Speaker 10: high anxiety. People are worried, and as I learned through
Speaker 10: sources in the course of my investigation, police were extremely
Speaker 10: worried at this time too. Here they had two bedroom
Speaker 10: knife murders, they had no suspects. The police had reason
Speaker 10: to believe that the Derodeo murder was not connected to
Speaker 10: the Faria homicide. However, at the time they couldn't go
Speaker 10: into a lot of details because neither case had been solved.
Speaker 10: They couldn't go into a lot of details about why
Speaker 10: they believed that was the case. So, between the multiple
Speaker 10: violent crimes that had happened in this otherwise tranquil County
Speaker 10: and the lack of good information that was coming out
Speaker 10: of local law enforcement agencies, the community was on edge.
Speaker 10: People were frightened. People were buying guns, people were buying
Speaker 10: burglar alarm systems, people were putting motion sensors on the
Speaker 10: lights around their homes, they were barricading themselves in at night.
Speaker 10: And it's quite a contrast from what Ventura County had
Speaker 10: experienced prior to that, where literally people in this world
Speaker 10: of worlds felt comfortable leaving their doors unlocked at night.
Speaker 8: Now, so to compound again, what's going on, we have
Speaker 8: a series of a bandit robbing people in the area,
Speaker 8: terrorizing the area, and you bring this and you tell
Speaker 8: this story because there's a description of the person doing
Speaker 8: these robberies, and tell us what that description is.
Speaker 10: So, after Wendy de Rodeo was murdered on June third,
Speaker 10: two thousand and nine, there appears to be no progress
Speaker 10: being made into investigation of her murder. Her murder was
Speaker 10: investigated by the Ventura Police Department because she lived within
Speaker 10: the city limits of Ventura. The Ventura County Sheriff's Department,
Speaker 10: who is investigating the Housteed homicide just a few miles
Speaker 10: up the coast, is making no progress with their case.
Speaker 10: So skip ahead a couple of months to September twenty third.
Speaker 10: Excuse me to September of two thousand and nine. Cashier
Speaker 10: working at a Shell gas station on Harbor Boulevard in
Speaker 10: the city of Ventura is manning his post. It's mid evening,
Speaker 10: I would say, probably around eight or nine o'clock at night.
Speaker 10: Out of nowhere, this robber barrels through the door, brandishing
Speaker 10: a black semi automatic can gun, orders the gas station
Speaker 10: cashier to the floor, cleans out the register, and sprints
Speaker 10: back through the doors and disappears into the night. And
Speaker 10: over the coming weeks in September, this bandit strikes no
Speaker 10: less than four more times. He hits three more small
Speaker 10: businesses in Ventura, and he's finally suspected of committing another
Speaker 10: gas station robbery in the city in Santa Barbara County,
Speaker 10: just outside the Santa Barbara city limits. In all of
Speaker 10: the cases, the suspect and the robberies is described to
Speaker 10: detectives the same way. He's described as a white male
Speaker 10: approximately five feet nine five feet ten inches in height,
Speaker 10: athletic build, wearing dark clothing, wearing gloves, usually wearing some
Speaker 10: kind of face covering, speaking in sort of an angry
Speaker 10: to monotone voice, brandishing a black handgun. These aren't highly
Speaker 10: sophisticated robberies. He's not able to access any of the
Speaker 10: safes in these businesses. He just cleans out the cash register,
Speaker 10: stuffs the money in his pocket, sprints through the doors.
Speaker 10: The Ventura Police Department, who has jurisdiction and all all
Speaker 10: of the cases in their city, investigates the robberies thoroughly,
Speaker 10: and they can't make any progress. Finally, on the evening
Speaker 10: of September twenty third, two thousand and nine, a gas
Speaker 10: station attendant is working in Santa Barbara County on State Street, which,
Speaker 10: for people who are in who know the area at all,
Speaker 10: it's one of the main drags that runs north south
Speaker 10: through the city of Santa Barbara. He's out on a
Speaker 10: relatively isolated stretch of north State Street, and just before
Speaker 10: he's ready to end his shift, a black clad, bankrupt
Speaker 10: black clad robber with a mask with a bandana mask
Speaker 10: tied around his face accosts him in the parking lot,
Speaker 10: accosts this gas station attendant in the parking lot, orders
Speaker 10: him back into the business, orders him to the floor,
Speaker 10: cleans out the cash register, and sprints from the business.
Speaker 10: It was ultimately that crime that ended up making progress
Speaker 10: in a lot of a lot of local investigations.
Speaker 8: At the time. Too. They saw a Chevy trailblazer, but
Speaker 8: the one thing that was interesting it had no license plate.
Speaker 10: Right as after the gas station attendant in Santa Barbara
Speaker 10: calls the Sheriff's department calls nine to one one. There
Speaker 10: are customers pulling into the gas station to get fuel
Speaker 10: and they notice a light colored Chevy trailblazer pulling out
Speaker 10: of the parking lot turning west on State Street, and
Speaker 10: they noticed that it doesn't have any license plates attached
Speaker 10: to it. And this is later confirmed when Santa Barbara
Speaker 10: County Sheriff's detectives go down to Ventura and they're able
Speaker 10: to pull surveillance footage from an in and out burger
Speaker 10: in that city. It's worth noting that in the course
Speaker 10: of robbing the Santa Barbara gas station, the robber ended
Speaker 10: up stealing the gas station attendant's wallet and then in
Speaker 10: the hours after the crime. That night, on September twenty third,
Speaker 10: two thousand and nine, the Santa Barbara gas station robber
Speaker 10: went to an in and out Burger in the city
Speaker 10: of Ventura and used the gas station attendants credit card
Speaker 10: to buy a meal. Well, as soon as that fact
Speaker 10: came to light, the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Department, who were
Speaker 10: investigating the robbery, went down to Ventura. They pulled the
Speaker 10: surveillance tapes and they noticed that the Chevy Trailblazer indeed
Speaker 10: did not have any license plates affixed to its front
Speaker 10: or rear bumpers.
Speaker 8: Now, they just as you're say in the book, they
Speaker 8: still hit a dead end despite these sort of leads.
Speaker 8: They still hit a dead end in both of these
Speaker 8: murders or all of these murders, don't they.
Speaker 10: That's exactly right.
Speaker 8: Now, let's talk about introduce Josh Packer, talk about Randy Packer.
Speaker 8: Is we won't talk about the whole incredible tragedy that
Speaker 8: was Josh's life, but let's talk about some of the
Speaker 8: beginning of it with his father, Randy Packer and his
Speaker 8: mother Terry Williamson. And this is a person that you
Speaker 8: interviewed at length and the access that you have and
Speaker 8: provide in this book is incredible. So tell us about
Speaker 8: Terry Williamson and Jack Packer and basically Josh Packer's early
Speaker 8: life and his not so auspicious beginnings.
Speaker 10: Right. So, as you pointed out a second ago, the
Speaker 10: Ventura County Sheriff's Department is completely baffled by the Paria
Speaker 10: murders in late two thousand and nine. The Ventura Police Department,
Speaker 10: the homicide unit, is completely baffled as to Wendy de
Speaker 10: Rodeo's murder in the fall of two thousand and nine.
Speaker 10: The Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department and the robbery detail
Speaker 10: of the Ventura Pede are completely at a loss as
Speaker 10: to who their serial robber is, who's been robbing all
Speaker 10: of these small businesses, But they do have one clue.
Speaker 10: In addition to the eyewitnesses who had seen the robber
Speaker 10: in his disguise, they know that the suspect was driving
Speaker 10: this light colored Chevy trailblazer that didn't have any license
Speaker 10: plates attached to it. So one night, as these two
Speaker 10: Ventura police officers are patrolling their beat, they notice this
Speaker 10: trailblazer literally blazing along one of the streets in Ventura.
Speaker 10: So they decide to execute a vehicle stop and pull
Speaker 10: it over, and as they're pulling the vehicle over, one
Speaker 10: of the officers remembers an attempt to identify poster, which,
Speaker 10: for those who may not know, an attempt to identify
Speaker 10: poster is a poster that's compiled by one law enforcement
Speaker 10: agency who's seeking an outstanding suspect, and it's disseminated to
Speaker 10: other law enforcement agencies throughout the state. And the hope
Speaker 10: is that by broadcasting this attempt identify poster far and wide,
Speaker 10: another officer, another member of the law enforcement community, will
Speaker 10: recognize something about the suspect and be able to provide
Speaker 10: a tip that will ultimately lead to the apprehension of
Speaker 10: that suspec. So these two Ventura police officers, after they've
Speaker 10: stopped the Chevy Trailblazer, they remember this, this attempt identify
Speaker 10: poster that had been sent down a couple of days
Speaker 10: earlier by the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department. And in
Speaker 10: that attempt identify poster, the Santa Barbara detectives indicated that
Speaker 10: they were looking for a white male suspect who was
Speaker 10: driving a Chevy trailblazer. Now, when the Venturipede officers stop
Speaker 10: the speeding trailblazer, they noticed that it does have it
Speaker 10: does have license plates affixed to its bumpers, so it's
Speaker 10: in compliance in that regard. But when they get up
Speaker 10: to the window, they look down at the driver and
Speaker 10: they noticed that he is a young white male. He
Speaker 10: has kind of a stocky build. He's about five feet
Speaker 10: eight five feet nine inches tall, and in fact, he
Speaker 10: had been a former football star for the Ventura High
Speaker 10: School Cougar's football team just a couple of years earlier.
Speaker 10: When they grab his driver's license and they run it,
Speaker 10: they can't find any outstanding warrants on him, but they
Speaker 10: do make note of the fact that he had turned
Speaker 10: I'm twenty years old, just a couple of days prior
Speaker 10: to the stop. So, doing their due diligence, the officers,
Speaker 10: after they write a citation for the speeding driver and
Speaker 10: turn him loose, they contact the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's
Speaker 10: Department and they say, listen, this may be nothing, but
Speaker 10: we pulled over a guy a couple of days ago
Speaker 10: for speeding down here. He drives trailblazer, and he's known
Speaker 10: as kind of a local ruffian. He's had some brushes
Speaker 10: with the law, nothing extremely serious, but we just wanted
Speaker 10: to pass this along to you to see if it
Speaker 10: might aid you in your robbery investigation. Santa Barbara County
Speaker 10: detectives say thank you, and they do begin investigating the driver. Now,
Speaker 10: the driver's name is Joshua. What is a Joshua Graham Packer?
Speaker 10: And as you mentioned a second ago, his beginnings were
Speaker 10: extremely inauspicious, to say the least. His parents met in
Speaker 10: a psyche patric hospital when they were teenagers. They both
Speaker 10: grew up in the Cincinnati, Ohio area, and both of
Speaker 10: his parents were committed for one reason or another to
Speaker 10: a Cincinnati psychiatric hospital. His mother was fifteen at the time,
Speaker 10: his father was seventeen, and they were both locked up
Speaker 10: for I think I think his father was in for
Speaker 10: schizophrenia treatment. His mother was in because she just couldn't
Speaker 10: get along at home with her father and stepmother. So eventually,
Speaker 10: after a long series of events that I leigh out
Speaker 10: in very meticulous detail in the book, his mother and
Speaker 10: father decided to get married. His mother was in a
Speaker 10: very abusive situation prior to that, his father and I
Speaker 10: suppose needed someone to help give his life some ballast,
Speaker 10: and so, in an attempt to provide some stability for
Speaker 10: each other, his mother, Terry Williamson, and Josh Packer's father,
Speaker 10: Randy Packer, decided to get married. Terry Williamson married Randy
Speaker 10: Packer two days after her seventeenth birthday, and as she
Speaker 10: explained to me during our many, many many hours of interviews,
Speaker 10: she was actually married with bruises on her wrist. She
Speaker 10: told me that Randy Packer was very abusive to her. So, anyway,
Speaker 10: to make a long story short, eventually the Packers decide
Speaker 10: to leave Cincinnati. Both of them had many bad memories there.
Speaker 10: By this time, they have a baby, Josh's older sister, Shauna,
Speaker 10: and they decide, like so many people before them, to
Speaker 10: seek their manifest destiny out here on the West coast.
Speaker 10: So they pack up their aging car, they bundle up
Speaker 10: their baby, They get on the freeway and they start
Speaker 10: making their way west, and about three weeks later, they
Speaker 10: end up in Ventura, completely random. They had no intention
Speaker 10: of ever visiting Ventura. They didn't know anything about the place,
Speaker 10: but that's where their car broke down. So they were
Speaker 10: taken into a homeless shelter along with their daughter Shauna,
Speaker 10: and from there they began to build a live for
Speaker 10: a life for themselves in the city of Ventura, and
Speaker 10: that was pretty much. That was where Josh Packer was
Speaker 10: born on September in September of two thousand and September
Speaker 10: of nineteen eighty nine, and that was ultimately where he
Speaker 10: was identified as a suspect in the Santa Barbara County
Speaker 10: robbery twenty years later.
Speaker 8: Now, part of his life is characterized by what happens
Speaker 8: with his mother, and his mother is a crack addict
Speaker 8: and methamphetamine addict and can't take care of him. At
Speaker 8: different times, she foolishly meets people like Robert Miller who
Speaker 8: claimed to want to mentor Josh. Again, we can't go
Speaker 8: into all of it, but suffice to say that there
Speaker 8: are major incidents that I don't care. I'm very skeptical,
Speaker 8: skeptical when I hear some of the reported abuse from
Speaker 8: some of these people at trial. But in this particular case,
Speaker 8: based on your research, these are some incidents that you
Speaker 8: can't put aside and not factor in to the bigger picture.
Speaker 8: So tell us some of the major incidents that must
Speaker 8: have had something to do with shaping this guy's psyche.
Speaker 10: I couldn't agree with you more, Dan. When I hear
Speaker 10: so many of these psychopaths in court attempting to excuse
Speaker 10: their homicidal behavior through childhood sob stories, I'm always repulsed
Speaker 10: by it. But as you pointed out a second ago,
Speaker 10: in this case, these events are well documented and they
Speaker 10: really do suggest that Josh Packer was on a one
Speaker 10: way track to oblivion from a very young age. When
Speaker 10: Josh was still just a toddler, his parents broke up.
Speaker 10: By the time Josh was five years old, his parents
Speaker 10: had completely divorced, his father had abandoned the family in Ventura,
Speaker 10: and Randy Packer had moved back to the Cincinnati Cincinnati area.
Speaker 10: At the same time, his mother is becoming deeply involved
Speaker 10: in the local drug culture of Ventura. She, as you
Speaker 10: pointed out a second ago, she got hooked on meth amphetamine.
Speaker 10: She was absent for much of Josh's young life. So
Speaker 10: Josh was growing up around very disreputable characters in the
Speaker 10: Ventura area, And in the course of growing up around
Speaker 10: drugs and crime and criminals and degenerates in the seedier
Speaker 10: areas of Ventura, Josh Packer came into contact with hardcore
Speaker 10: sex offenders, and just to give your listeners a thumbnail
Speaker 10: sketch of some of some of the things he experienced
Speaker 10: as a young child. I remember when I was talking
Speaker 10: to Terry one night, one of the more chilling incidents
Speaker 10: she described to me was the first time she tried
Speaker 10: crystal meth. At the time, she, Shauna and Josh were
Speaker 10: living with this hardcore drug addict criminal at a small
Speaker 10: motel in Ventura. Cherry said that as soon as the
Speaker 10: crystal meth, which was injected into her arm, as soon
Speaker 10: as it hit her system, she said she felt her
Speaker 10: brain just explode with this electric current like she'd never
Speaker 10: experienced before. And she said that she basically locked the
Speaker 10: kids in the little kitchenette they had in this hotel room,
Speaker 10: and then she in this degenerate with whom she was
Speaker 10: living at the time, just using her own words, quote unquote,
Speaker 10: just had sex for days. And of course at the time,
Speaker 10: Josh and Shauna are about six or seven years old.
Speaker 10: They get hungry, so these small children have to climb
Speaker 10: out the window of the motel and go to an
Speaker 10: old woman's home who's in the neighborhood, and the old
Speaker 10: woman would feed the children she would play with them,
Speaker 10: she'd look after them. But her son, this old woman
Speaker 10: whom Josh and SHAWNA. Packer would see out in order
Speaker 10: to have their basic needs met, she was being looked
Speaker 10: after by her her son, who was in his sixties
Speaker 10: at the time. Well, as it turns out, he ended
Speaker 10: up sexually assaulting Josh Packer when he was about six
Speaker 10: years old, six or seven years old, and obviously that
Speaker 10: set Josh on a very bad course. Now added to this,
Speaker 10: Terry becomes absent. Not long after it, Josh is sent
Speaker 10: to live with one of Terry's former husbands, who assumes
Speaker 10: custody of Josh and Shauna. I lay out in the
Speaker 10: book exactly what occurred with him, which was no picnic
Speaker 10: for Josh, a lot more abuse, a lot more exposure
Speaker 10: to criminals, disfiguring injuries that he suffered in the quote
Speaker 10: unquote care of this this former husband of Terry's, and
Speaker 10: finally Terry does get off drugs. Terry told me that
Speaker 10: she used drugs consistently for about three years. She was
Speaker 10: largely absent from Josh's life during that period of time,
Speaker 10: But finally, in nineteen ninety eight, Terry is able to
Speaker 10: pull her life together, Terry saw someone murdered right in
Speaker 10: front of her. Terry's explanation of that to me was
Speaker 10: absolutely chilling, but she said that it did compel her
Speaker 10: to get off drugs. So Terry gets off drugs. In
Speaker 10: nineteen ninety eight, she goes back to her children in Ventura,
Speaker 10: and not long after she moves back in with her
Speaker 10: children and her former husband, Josh is attacked in his
Speaker 10: bedroom by a wanted sex offender, which is just another
Speaker 10: surreal aside. Here is a child who has already been
Speaker 10: sexually molested on multiple occasions, he suffered disfiguring injuries on
Speaker 10: multiple occasions, and then he's attacked in his own bed
Speaker 10: at the age of I think it was ten or
Speaker 10: eleven years old at the time. The suspect in that
Speaker 10: case was finally caught after he tried to break into
Speaker 10: another home on a different ninth but the damage had
Speaker 10: been done. And one of the things I was able
Speaker 10: to get access to in this case, which was enormously
Speaker 10: helpful in terms of compiling a comprehensive portrait of Josh Packer,
Speaker 10: was I was able to get access to his full
Speaker 10: permanent record from the Ventura Unified School District and it's
Speaker 10: so obvious. I mean, Josh's school record is almost a
Speaker 10: perfect mirror of the traumas he was experiencing at home.
Speaker 10: During childhood, there were no severe behavioral issues, even during
Speaker 10: the time when you know, Terry was still marginally involved
Speaker 10: with her son's life. But after Josh was attacked in
Speaker 10: that bedroom, he began to exhibit really, really violent a
Speaker 10: tendencies at school. When he was in fifth grade, he
Speaker 10: was suspended for stabbing another child in the neck with
Speaker 10: a pencil. Throughout middle school, Josh had a lot of problems,
Speaker 10: and those problems actually ended up persisting into high school. Now,
Speaker 10: you mentioned the character whom I identify in the book
Speaker 10: as Robert Miller. That's not the man's real name, but
Speaker 10: that is the name I used for him in the book.
Speaker 10: Robert Miller was a youth worker in Ventura. He worked
Speaker 10: with the Boys and Girls Club of Ventura. So after
Speaker 10: Terry re entered Josh's life in nineteen ninety eight, Josh
Speaker 10: started spending time at the Ventura Boys and Girls Club. Well,
Speaker 10: this man, Robert Miller, approaches Terry and he says, listen,
Speaker 10: you know, I've been getting to know Josh throughout the
Speaker 10: time you know, he's been here at the Boys and
Speaker 10: Girls Club. It would really be my honor to serve
Speaker 10: as Josh's mentor. Now Here's Terry at the time, she's
Speaker 10: trying to recover from her narcotics addiction. She's trying to
Speaker 10: surmout at least in some way, you know, the terrible
Speaker 10: decisions she'd been making for several years up to that point.
Speaker 10: She has no education, she's on welfare, she's living in
Speaker 10: a very unstable situation. She has these two young children. Terry,
Speaker 10: in her own words, as she explained to me, said
Speaker 10: that Miller's offer of assistance seemed like an absolute godsend.
Speaker 10: You know, here was an upstanding member of the community,
Speaker 10: a college graduate. She was blown away by his offer
Speaker 10: of assistance. And in fact, during his middle school and
Speaker 10: early high school years, Josh went and lived with Miller
Speaker 10: for a while, and as I explained in the book,
Speaker 10: there is extremely compelling evidence that Miller was less than
Speaker 10: a shall we say, less than savory, less than positive
Speaker 10: influence on Josh's life.
Speaker 8: You also talk about an injury, a head injury, and
Speaker 8: again we talk about some things that might contribute to
Speaker 8: someone's behavior. Tell us a little bit about this head injury.
Speaker 10: So, when Josh was about eight years old, he was
Speaker 10: living with Terry's former husband in a converted garage in Ventura,
Speaker 10: and this converted garage had a wooden loft that was
Speaker 10: elevated about twenty feet above a hard concrete floor. So
Speaker 10: one night Josh, as Josh is sleeping on the floor
Speaker 10: of this elevated loft. Again, Terry is off using drugs,
Speaker 10: running with this wild criminal crowd. Her former husband is
Speaker 10: looking out for Josh's best Supposedly, as Josh is pausing
Speaker 10: and turning up there, he rolls to the edge of
Speaker 10: this loft and then tumbles more than twenty feet to
Speaker 10: the floor below. When he lands on the floor, he
Speaker 10: ends up cracking his skull open, and so the stepfather
Speaker 10: immediately bundles Josh up and rushes him to the emergency
Speaker 10: room at Venturre County Medical Center. Well, Josh actually experienced
Speaker 10: not only a fractured skull, but a very very severe
Speaker 10: concussion during the fall, and his stepfather was encouraged to
Speaker 10: bring Josh back for after care. Now, according to Terry,
Speaker 10: that after care never occurred. Josh has never given any
Speaker 10: further treatment after that one examination at the medical Center,
Speaker 10: And that is a very compelling detail of this story.
Speaker 10: I mean, we never know exactly why criminals commit offense
Speaker 10: as they do. I think we can probably agree that
Speaker 10: crimes happen for for a large number of reasons. But
Speaker 10: you know, some of the research that's been done by
Speaker 10: people like Jonathan Pinkas wrote the book Base Instincts, an
Speaker 10: absolutely fabulous read. John Pincus is the head of neurology
Speaker 10: at the VA Hospital in Washington, d C. He's a
Speaker 10: professor of neurology at Georgetown University Med School. Pincus's research suggests,
Speaker 10: and know uncertain terms, that there is a causal link
Speaker 10: between childhood head injuries and violent behavior later in life.
Speaker 10: So in the course of reading about Josh Packer, it's
Speaker 10: worth keeping in mind that he did experience an extremely
Speaker 10: serious head injury after falling from that that converted garage loft.
Speaker 8: And as you explained too, I do believe that there's
Speaker 8: such a thing as a confluence of influences. So many
Speaker 8: things in conjunction, and who knows how much they factor,
Speaker 8: but in this deadly combination, we'll say, you do have
Speaker 8: some incredible stories about how Josh seems to have it
Speaker 8: all together despite this incredibly dysfunctional life. But then he's
Speaker 8: a football player, he excels in athletics. There are some
Speaker 8: attributes that he has that are to his benefit. But
Speaker 8: then everything falls apart and you talk about a girlfriend
Speaker 8: named Jennifer and when he tries to break off this relationship,
Speaker 8: where she tries to break off the relationship, and his
Speaker 8: experimentation with fentanyl. So tell us a little bit about
Speaker 8: this story, and because it's very demonstrative of many things.
Speaker 10: It definitely is so. As I mentioned a moment ago,
Speaker 10: Josh had extreme behavioral problems all the way through middle school.
Speaker 10: Finally he ends up in a Ventura High school, and
Speaker 10: he's not an outstanding student. Josh Josh Packer is not
Speaker 10: an unintelligent person. Based on everything I've seen. He possesses
Speaker 10: at least average slightly above average intelligence at the very least.
Speaker 10: But when he goes to vent A High school, he's
Speaker 10: not much of a He's not much of an academic.
Speaker 10: He's interested in athletics, and that's fortunate for him because
Speaker 10: he is an outstanding athlete. Everyone with whom I spoke
Speaker 10: described Josh as perhaps one of the best athletes they've
Speaker 10: ever had in that area. He was a terrific varsity wrestler.
Speaker 10: He made the varsity wrestling team his freshman year. He
Speaker 10: also made the varsity football team his freshman year. And
Speaker 10: I have to say that, in looking at his life
Speaker 10: in total, Josh Packer's ability to overcome his childhood traumas
Speaker 10: in high school was very very impressive, and to his credit,
Speaker 10: he did take what appeared to be very substantive steps
Speaker 10: to try and come to terms of some of his demons.
Speaker 10: For example, during high school, Josh became involved in this
Speaker 10: Christian youth group called Young Life, and it appears that
Speaker 10: he flourished in that group. He never had any behavioral problems,
Speaker 10: He never had any violent outbursts. He really tended to
Speaker 10: study scripture very heavily, and then of course when he
Speaker 10: would go to school, he would you know, be involved
Speaker 10: with the football team, the wrestling team, his classes. He
Speaker 10: was never an extraordinary student, but he did do well
Speaker 10: enough to get by in his classes and maintain his
Speaker 10: eligibility for athletics. Well, like you said, that all came
Speaker 10: to a very tragic end during Josh's senior year of
Speaker 10: high school. Like most students, Josh was during his senior year,
Speaker 10: he was looking toward college. He wanted to try and
Speaker 10: get an athletics scholarship to attend college to try and
Speaker 10: apparently better his life. But Josh made a very very
Speaker 10: bad decision during his senior year. So during his senior year,
Speaker 10: Josh is working as a TA for one of the
Speaker 10: one of the coaches at the school, and on the
Speaker 10: way to his TA assignment, his teacher's assistant I'm at
Speaker 10: that day, Josh is approached in the hallways of Ventura
Speaker 10: High School by one of his friends and the friend says, hey, listen,
Speaker 10: you know I have this new drug. You want to
Speaker 10: give it a shot or something to that effect. And
Speaker 10: Josh asks what it is and the friend explains it's
Speaker 10: a time release narcotics patch that's given to cancer patients
Speaker 10: to help control their pain. Well, as it turns out,
Speaker 10: it was a drug called fentanyl. And for those who
Speaker 10: don't know, finanela is about one hundred times more potent
Speaker 10: than heroin. It's sort of a pharmaceutical grade synthetic opiate
Speaker 10: that's used to treat severe pain and cancer patients. Well,
Speaker 10: when Josh has offered this drug fintonyl, he thinks nothing
Speaker 10: of it. I mean, there's a little bit of evidence
Speaker 10: to suggest that Josh might have been experimenting with drugs
Speaker 10: prior to that. But anyway, he takes the spin mil
Speaker 10: patch from his friend, He pops it in his mouth,
Speaker 10: he chews it up, he sucks down the medication, spits
Speaker 10: out the patch, and then walks to his TA assignment. Well,
Speaker 10: when he gets to that TA assignment, he can barely
Speaker 10: stand up. Time has slowed down, the walls are blurring,
Speaker 10: the room is dissolving around him. So Josh asks his teacher, listen,
Speaker 10: can I go to the back of the room and
Speaker 10: just put my head down for a couple of minutes.
Speaker 10: I'm not really feeling very well. So the teacher, you know, obviously,
Speaker 10: who's preoccupied with teaching the class and doing other things, says, yeah,
Speaker 10: no problem, So Josh. Josh staggers to the back of
Speaker 10: the room, takes a seat, puts his head down, and
Speaker 10: several minutes later, the teacher goes to check on Josh. Well,
Speaker 10: as I explained in the book, Josh has stopped breathing.
Speaker 10: He's overdosed on fentanyl in the classroom at Ventura High
Speaker 10: and paramedics are called. They rush him to the hospital.
Speaker 10: Josh is a young, strong, healthy athlete, so he's able
Speaker 10: to make a full recovery in terms of his physical health. Unfortunately,
Speaker 10: in terms of his status at Ventura High School, Josh's
Speaker 10: days were done. He was immediately ousted from the football team,
Speaker 10: and I think as the school gave more and more
Speaker 10: thought to the agnominous circumstances of Josh's overdose, he was
Speaker 10: asked to leave school, and he was asked to finish
Speaker 10: his high school graduation credits to local adult learning center.
Speaker 10: So here in one fell swoop, Josh has lost the
Speaker 10: social network that he was part of. He was a
Speaker 10: very popular student according to what I've been told at
Speaker 10: Dura High School, he was known to have a volatile personality,
Speaker 10: but again that was sort of aligned with his public
Speaker 10: persona as an athlete and as a sort of jock.
Speaker 10: And Josh has also lost his eligibility for getting a
Speaker 10: college scholarship. Josh's grades aren't good enough to get an
Speaker 10: academic scholarship to college. Now he's been kicked off the team,
Speaker 10: he's been asked to leave school, He's in an adult
Speaker 10: learning center, and Josh's Josh's horizons have just narrowed significantly.
Speaker 8: What's his relationship with Jennifer characterized, especially when she rebuffs him.
Speaker 10: Right so around this same time, I do use a
Speaker 10: pseudonym for the girl in the book. Josh has has
Speaker 10: a main squeeze and she is the daughter of a
Speaker 10: local law enforcement sergeant, a very good guy from everything
Speaker 10: I've been able to gather, and that, in fact, is
Speaker 10: the reason I changed the name of the book, was
Speaker 10: to help protect him. She is an extremely attractive girl,
Speaker 10: very very good looking, and apparently Josh is hit over
Speaker 10: heels about her. They dated for several years. She's two
Speaker 10: years older than he was than he is, and she
Speaker 10: lives in a really affluent section on the east side
Speaker 10: of Ventura. When I first visited that neighborhood just to
Speaker 10: check out where she lived, I noticed that, you know,
Speaker 10: not only was her house one of the nicest, nicest
Speaker 10: on the street, her her lawn was by far the
Speaker 10: greenest in the neighborhood, and I thought that that was
Speaker 10: sort of a perfect metaphor for how he must have
Speaker 10: viewed her. You know, she stood out even from all
Speaker 10: of the splendor around her. Apparently she really stood out
Speaker 10: to Josh. So anyway, after they begin dating, Josh immediately
Speaker 10: becomes very protective. Every time another guy will come up
Speaker 10: and talk to this girl, Josh will attack him, often physically. Also,
Speaker 10: around the same time, this girl's parents begin to notice
Speaker 10: that Josh is sitting outside their home or just down
Speaker 10: the street from their home in his car, watching their house,
Speaker 10: or he appears to be watching their house. He just
Speaker 10: sits there for hours on end and stairs and apparently
Speaker 10: the parents didn't quite know how to broach that subject
Speaker 10: with Josh. They from everything I've been told, they didn't
Speaker 10: have any major problems with him. But finally, at the
Speaker 10: end of the day, this girl decides that she and
Speaker 10: Josh need a little time apart. And according to what's
Speaker 10: on the permanent record here, when that happened, Josh threatened suicide.
Speaker 10: He threatened to kill himself, threatened to overdose on tills,
Speaker 10: and the girl was taken aback. She didn't know quite
Speaker 10: what to do. She was like a lot of women
Speaker 10: are when they're trapped in situations like that where their
Speaker 10: significant other is threatening to harm himself, yet she wants
Speaker 10: to break off the relationship because he's becoming overly possessive.
Speaker 10: She didn't know quite how to handle it, so they
Speaker 10: did break off their relationship. They did start to distance
Speaker 10: themselves distance, take a little bit of space from each other,
Speaker 10: but they did remain in slight contact with one another.
Speaker 8: One of the most interesting thing is that she gave
Speaker 8: him two and very important parting gifts. Tell us what
Speaker 8: those two very important and cherished parting gifts were to him.
Speaker 10: So after high school, Josh takes a job at a
Speaker 10: business called Baxter Pharmaceuticals. He's working as a security guard,
Speaker 10: and with his college dreams crushed, Josh is thinking about
Speaker 10: potentially inner the Marine Corps. He's expressed an interest in
Speaker 10: the military. Well, after he and this girl had broken
Speaker 10: up in high school, she decided to stay in Ventura
Speaker 10: after graduating fro High School as well, so they start
Speaker 10: to revive their relationship. Well, eventually they move into an
Speaker 10: apartment with Josh's old quote unquote mentor from the Boys
Speaker 10: and Girls Club of Ventura, Robert Miller. So here is
Speaker 10: this forty something year old man living in an apartment
Speaker 10: with you know, two kids, one of whom is nineteen
Speaker 10: years old Josh, and then his girlfriend is twenty one
Speaker 10: years old. I'm sure it probably sounded like a good
Speaker 10: idea at the time for these three people to live
Speaker 10: together in a two bedroom apartment in Ventura and split costs.
Speaker 10: But you know, I think, as most of us have
Speaker 10: realized over the years, roommate situations don't always work out
Speaker 10: as we would envision them. And so after about six
Speaker 10: weeks of living together, the girlfriend is to me to bail.
Speaker 10: They moved into the apartment together over there on the
Speaker 10: east side of Ventura in mid March of two thousand
Speaker 10: and nine. By April of two thousand and nine, the
Speaker 10: girlfriend is ready to take off, but in an attempt
Speaker 10: to calm some of Josh's agres surrounding her decision to leave,
Speaker 10: she decides to buy him two parting gifts. One was
Speaker 10: a motorcycle, the other was a black motorcycle helmet. And
Speaker 10: according to all of the witness statements that I was
Speaker 10: given access to in the course of my research, Josh
Speaker 10: was extremely disturbed by this girl's decision to leave him.
Speaker 10: He wanted them to remain together. He had very intense
Speaker 10: feelings for her. They'd been through a lot of things together,
Speaker 10: and she was frightened according to other statements I've been given. Now,
Speaker 10: these were statements that were given directly to law enforcement,
Speaker 10: and I read them in the course of reports, so
Speaker 10: I tend to think that they're very, very accurate. But
Speaker 10: before she left him, she gave him this motorcycle and
Speaker 10: this helmet. And in the weeks after she left, Josh's
Speaker 10: situation really started to go down. She left in April
Speaker 10: two thousand and nine. By the end of a in
Speaker 10: late April two thousand and nine, Josh was implicated. He
Speaker 10: was positively idd as the suspect and of interest street robbery.
Speaker 10: And and then of course.
Speaker 8: After that, tell us how fast forward to how we
Speaker 8: talked about the original DNA sample. There was the DNA
Speaker 8: sample under the fingernails, and we talked about on the
Speaker 8: on the hand towel, and was blood droplets, and there
Speaker 8: was a and you talk about very very much, and
Speaker 8: we'll talk we'll touch on this too, about a very
Speaker 8: important part of your book is talking about DNA and
Speaker 8: DNA legislation potentially, and then the science of DNA and
Speaker 8: its advances. So tell us about how he is finally
Speaker 8: linked through DNA, and tell us the process and the
Speaker 8: turn of events that happened that finally get him to
Speaker 8: be the suspect, and tell us about the whole process.
Speaker 10: So I mentioned earlier about the two Ventura Patrol officers
Speaker 10: who pulled over the speeding trail blazer on September thirtieth,
Speaker 10: two thousand and nine, they saw that Josh Packer was
Speaker 10: the driver. They thought that he matched the suspect description
Speaker 10: from the Santa Barbara gas station robbery. They knew that
Speaker 10: his vehicle matched the description of the vehicle scene at
Speaker 10: the crime at the robbery scene, so they turned his
Speaker 10: name over to to Santa Barbara County robbery detectives. Well,
Speaker 10: those detectives began looking at a couple of very compelling clues.
Speaker 10: I mentioned earlier that in the course of the Santa
Speaker 10: Barbara robbery, the robber stole both the gas station attendants wallet,
Speaker 10: and I may or may not have mentioned that he
Speaker 10: stole the gas station attendant's cell phone as well. In
Speaker 10: the hours after the gas station robbery, the robber called
Speaker 10: one of the one of the gas station attendant's friends
Speaker 10: and threatened him about contact police. Well, to make a
Speaker 10: long story short, after, the Ventura Patrol officers forwarded Josh
Speaker 10: Packer's name to the Santa Barbara County detectives. The detectives
Speaker 10: in Santa Barbara County started looking at phone number where
Speaker 10: the phone calls had originated that had gone to the
Speaker 10: gas station attendant's friend, while those phone calls originated in
Speaker 10: Josh Packer's neighborhood in Ventura. So here Josh Packer matches
Speaker 10: the physical description of the physical description of the Santa
Speaker 10: Barbara County robbert. He drives the exact same type of vehicle,
Speaker 10: and now the victim's phone has been used in Josh
Speaker 10: Packer's neighborhoods. So the list of suspects is narrowing in
Speaker 10: that Santa Barbara case, and detectives are looking at Josh
Speaker 10: Moore and more carefully. Well, as they're looking at Josh
Speaker 10: Moore carefully, a couple of other very compelling pieces of
Speaker 10: evidence come to light. It turns out that Josh was
Speaker 10: in a habit in September of two thousand and nine
Speaker 10: of going to the Chumash Casino, which is a huge
Speaker 10: Native American casino in Santa Barbara County. Josh liked to
Speaker 10: gamble up there. Defectives in Santa Barbara started looking at
Speaker 10: Josh's gaming activity at the Chewmash Casino around the time
Speaker 10: of the gas station robbery, and what they ultimately found
Speaker 10: was that Josh lost two hundred and sixty eight dollars
Speaker 10: I believe on the night of the gas station robbery.
Speaker 10: The detectives were also able to pull surveillance footage from
Speaker 10: September twenty third, two thousand and nine, which was the
Speaker 10: night of the gas station robbery, and they were able
Speaker 10: to tell that Josh Packers trailblazer didn't have any license
Speaker 10: plates on it that night. Finally, the detectives were able
Speaker 10: to trace Josh's personal cell phone to within just a
Speaker 10: couple of blocks of that State Street gas station in
Speaker 10: Santa Barbara around the time of the robbery. And so
Speaker 10: with all of that circumstantial evidence in place, detectives were
Speaker 10: finally able in early twenty ten and January twenty ten
Speaker 10: to arrest Josh for the Santa Barbara County gas station robbery.
Speaker 10: So they went down to Ventura. They went to Terry
Speaker 10: Williamson's Hall, which at the time was on Ocean Avenue
Speaker 10: in Ventura. They arrested Josh and they transported him up
Speaker 10: the coast to Santa Barbara County and booked him into
Speaker 10: the county jail. And I should point out that at
Speaker 10: the time California, a new California law had just gone
Speaker 10: into effect in January of two thousand and nine. That
Speaker 10: mandated the extraction and cataloging of all felony arrestees in
Speaker 10: our state. So the net effect of that was when
Speaker 10: Josh was arrested for the Santa Barbara County robbery and
Speaker 10: dripped to the Santa Barbara County Jail to be booked,
Speaker 10: he had his mugshot taken, he had his fingerprints taken,
Speaker 10: he had all of his vital information recorded, and most importantly,
Speaker 10: he had a buckle swab, which is like a large
Speaker 10: Q tip taken from his mouth. So the law enforcement
Speaker 10: officer would just stick this Q tip inside Josh's mouth,
Speaker 10: scrape some cheek cells, and then the officer throws it
Speaker 10: into a bag. That bag is sent to the California
Speaker 10: Department of Justice in Richmond, and then Josh's full DNA
Speaker 10: profile was developed, it was amplified, it was developed, and
Speaker 10: it was entered into the system. And three months later,
Speaker 10: as Josh is a waiting trial on his Santa Barbara
Speaker 10: County robbery charge, that's when the hit is made in
Speaker 10: CODIS and that is when Josh is finally linked to
Speaker 10: the Faria homicide which had happened in May of two
Speaker 10: thousand and nine.
Speaker 8: Now from there, again, we've only about nine minutes, so
Speaker 8: we won't be able to go into the rest of
Speaker 8: this incredible story, which because that concerns the trial. But
Speaker 8: suffice to say that this is a death penalty case potentially,
Speaker 8: and he has lawyers that are basically their role is
Speaker 8: to save his life. Part of that is obviously to
Speaker 8: be able to have mitigating factors that would prevent somebody
Speaker 8: from being put to death. We talked a lot about,
Speaker 8: you know, about him being a victim in his early
Speaker 8: life and not contributing to this homicidal rage. But with
Speaker 8: this non death penalty and with them, with this fight
Speaker 8: to not have the death penalty, there is a reason
Speaker 8: to not have a trial. And tell us about the
Speaker 8: fight of his attorneys to not have a death penalty
Speaker 8: and what is the alternative if they don't have a
Speaker 8: death penalty, and tell us a little bit about that
Speaker 8: fight by his lawyers.
Speaker 10: Sure well, the Ventura County District Attorney's office. As soon
Speaker 10: as Josh Packer was identified as the suspect in the
Speaker 10: Fariah homicide, he was arrested and taken into custody and
Speaker 10: his case was forward to the Ventura County DA's office
Speaker 10: because of the sensational, gruesome nature of the case, because
Speaker 10: the Faria homicide had struck such fear in the community,
Speaker 10: the DA's office was steadfast and pursuing the death penalty
Speaker 10: against Josh Packer. Now, of course, the DA's office had
Speaker 10: him dead to rights. I was able to meet with
Speaker 10: the Chief Deputy Prosecutor of Ventura County, Mike Frawley, who
Speaker 10: handled the case. I was actually able to meet with
Speaker 10: him just after packer sentencing. But you know, he was
Speaker 10: He was of the belief that there was only one
Speaker 10: appropriate sanction for this horrible murder that Josh had committed.
Speaker 10: Josh's defense attorneys, I think, although I was not able
Speaker 10: to interview them in the course of preparing the book,
Speaker 10: I think they recognized very reasonably that the state had
Speaker 10: Josh dead to right. Josh's DNA was all over the
Speaker 10: crime scene, Josh, you know was There were there were
Speaker 10: a million inculpatory pieces of evidence that linked Josh in
Speaker 10: no uncertain terms to the crime scene, and I want
Speaker 10: to enumerate those. Now, leave those for your readers read
Speaker 10: your listeners to read on their own. But suffice it
Speaker 10: to say that Josh's defense team recognized that he would
Speaker 10: be convicted if he went to trial, and that he
Speaker 10: would be given the death penally if he were convicted.
Speaker 10: So eventually they were able to appeal a motion they
Speaker 10: had filed to have Mike Frawley removed from the case.
Speaker 10: That the appeal of that motion went all the way
Speaker 10: to the California Supreme Court, and finally, at the end
Speaker 10: of the day, when both sides were getting ready to
Speaker 10: have an evidentiary hearing on Mike Frawley's fitness to serve
Speaker 10: as the prosecutor in the case, the District Attorney's office
Speaker 10: agreed to a plea bargain and that plea bargain allowed
Speaker 10: Josh to avoid the death penalty and receive a sentence
Speaker 10: of life without parole for the Housted murders. And so
Speaker 10: that's where Josh is now. He was originally sent to
Speaker 10: Alasco State Prisons reception Area and now he is at
Speaker 10: the California Medical Center in Stockton.
Speaker 8: Now, you talk about reaching out to him for an
Speaker 8: interview and not getting a response, but the interview, the
Speaker 8: key interview that you did get was with Terry Williams
Speaker 8: and his mother tell our audience what she had to
Speaker 8: say about her couple of the and overall just her
Speaker 8: take on this incredible case that her son and ultimately
Speaker 8: she was involved with.
Speaker 10: I am a major fan of true crime, and I
Speaker 10: would say if there's one aspect of Black Knight, Gold
Speaker 10: Coast that distinguishes it from virtually any other work of
Speaker 10: true crime I've ever read, it's the perspective I'm able
Speaker 10: to give readers on how the a Thinders family feels
Speaker 10: after their relative has been taken into custody for a
Speaker 10: high profile and notorious violent crime. I think we're in
Speaker 10: the habit as we should be of identifying with the
Speaker 10: victims' families the victims themselves, and that should be done. However,
Speaker 10: I contacted Josh for an interview after he was sent
Speaker 10: to Waco State Prison. He never got back to me.
Speaker 10: As I came to find out later, he was really traumatized.
Speaker 10: He's been struggling with a lot of mental health issues
Speaker 10: since since he was arrested for the Faria murders. But
Speaker 10: I was able to make contact and actually strike up
Speaker 10: a friendship of sorts with his mother, whom I actually
Speaker 10: came to admire in kind of a strange way. Like
Speaker 10: I pointed out, earlier. She by her own admission, made
Speaker 10: a million and one mistakes when Josh was growing up.
Speaker 10: She abandoned them. She allowed him to be abused, she
Speaker 10: provided unsavory individuals access to him, and so forth. But
Speaker 10: she's really done an amazing job of pulling her life together. So,
Speaker 10: in the course of interviewing her for what must have
Speaker 10: been dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens
Speaker 10: of hours, it was interesting to see what her perspective
Speaker 10: was on having her son arrested, jailed, facing a possible
Speaker 10: death sentence for these crimes, and how tragic it was
Speaker 10: that because Josh was eighteen at the time he was
Speaker 10: arrested for the free and murders, his mother was not
Speaker 10: able to ask his attorneys for any information about the case.
Speaker 10: She was not able to ask Josh Forerney information about
Speaker 10: the case because Josh was being held at Ventura County Jail.
Speaker 10: He was in solitary confinement. Obviously terry over the phones
Speaker 10: between the plexiglass and the jail. She didn't want to
Speaker 10: ask her son any information about his case. So she
Speaker 10: really had absolutely no insight into these crimes whatsoever. All
Speaker 10: she knew is that her son was facing a death penalty,
Speaker 10: the death penalty, there was extremely compelling evidence against him,
Speaker 10: and that's where I entered the picture. When I started
Speaker 10: interviewing her, I let her know that in the course
Speaker 10: of my research, I had obtained access to a huge
Speaker 10: amount of information on the case reports, police reports, crime
Speaker 10: scene photos, everything pretty much, and so I forwarded those
Speaker 10: and really talking those through with her and getting her
Speaker 10: reaction to those and to her son's predicament in general,
Speaker 10: without a doubt, one of the most memorable experiences of
Speaker 10: my life, and that's what I try to bring to
Speaker 10: life for readers in Black Knight, Gold Coast.
Speaker 8: I wanted to say too that what we haven't spoken about,
Speaker 8: and we can talk about this briefly, is that they
Speaker 8: avoided a death penalty trial, and they also avoided having
Speaker 8: a nine year old, still a child, having to testify
Speaker 8: at court being further traumatized. But what did happen with
Speaker 8: and what is the state as far as you know,
Speaker 8: of the nine year old and the eleven year old
Speaker 8: that will be ever fairly scarred for life from what
Speaker 8: they saw and what they experienced. We haven't spoken about
Speaker 8: their welfare. What has happened to the two children?
Speaker 10: I don't know specifics. I should be honest about that
Speaker 10: right after bat. But what I can say is this.
Speaker 10: The run up to Josh Packer's trial lasted for several years.
Speaker 10: The murders happened in two thousand and nine, he was
Speaker 10: arrested in the spring of two thousand and ten. He
Speaker 10: finally pled guilty in December twenty fourteen, and he was
Speaker 10: actually sentenced all almost exactly a year ago. You sentenced
Speaker 10: to life without parole on February sixth, twenty fifteen. In
Speaker 10: the years since the murders, Isabella and Brocky have grown
Speaker 10: into teenagers. I know that they were. The last I heard,
Speaker 10: they were living with family members in the More Park area,
Speaker 10: and I can only hope and I can only pray
Speaker 10: that they are living slightly well adjusted lives. I think
Speaker 10: the fact that they had such loving, conscientious, stable family
Speaker 10: members probably gave them a very good shot at leading
Speaker 10: normal lives after this horrible tragedy they experienced as children.
Speaker 8: You talked about one word, trying to encompass all the
Speaker 8: experience that you had in researching this book, and I've
Speaker 8: spoken to other true crime authors. It takes a toll
Speaker 8: to get this close to the flame, to get this
Speaker 8: close to people and then have to report on such
Speaker 8: a tragedy. What was that one word that you did
Speaker 8: use and explain what you mean by that one word
Speaker 8: sort of encompassing your experience.
Speaker 10: Sure, I tried to find a word that sort of
Speaker 10: summed up the really toxic breadth of the Pharia case,
Speaker 10: and the word I finally settled on was paradox. The
Speaker 10: reason I settled on paradox is the whole case really
Speaker 10: in so many ways as a contradiction. Brock and Divina
Speaker 10: houstaid were very affluent people. They were people living the
Speaker 10: American dream. They were people who had it all. And
Speaker 10: I think because they were so safe and they were
Speaker 10: so secure, and they were so comfortable in their daily lives,
Speaker 10: that contributed to them to letting their guard down for
Speaker 10: just a moment. And when they let their guard down,
Speaker 10: of course, that's when Josh Packer struck, and that's when
Speaker 10: he claimed their lives and forever altered their lives and
Speaker 10: the lives of their children. So in that sense, the
Speaker 10: fact that comfort and safety actually contributed to a relaxing
Speaker 10: of safety conscientiousness, that is a tremendous paradox. It's also
Speaker 10: a real paradox in my mind that you know, California
Speaker 10: taxpayers are now saddled with keeping Josh Packer in prison
Speaker 10: for the rest of his life. It's not as expensive
Speaker 10: to keep an inmate in regular prison as it is
Speaker 10: to execute a prisoner and send him through his entire
Speaker 10: appellate process, but it's still very expensive. And it's really
Speaker 10: paradoxical to me at least that California taxpayers will spend
Speaker 10: sixty seventy eighty thousand dollars a year to keep Josh
Speaker 10: Packer in state prison. Yet when he was a child,
Speaker 10: there wasn't one dime invested in finding out what his
Speaker 10: mental health issues were helping him overcome what we can
Speaker 10: only assume was malignant trauma of being molested and abused
Speaker 10: on so many occasions, of the head injuries, of the neglect,
Speaker 10: of the abandoned, and so forth. In Josh's entire school record,
Speaker 10: there's not one indication that he was ever given any
Speaker 10: sort of substantive psychological counseling. So I find it paradoxical
Speaker 10: that will spend all this money on him now that
Speaker 10: he's an adult who's committed heinous murders. But we as
Speaker 10: a society wouldn't spend anything on this kid when he
Speaker 10: was so young. And I think ultimately the greatest paradox
Speaker 10: of the Ventura tragedy is that this is a case
Speaker 10: that has devastated so many families. This is a case
Speaker 10: that devastated the Deboney family, the Houstead family, Josh's family.
Speaker 10: But at the same time, this case points out why
Speaker 10: arrest d DNA collection is so important. There is not
Speaker 10: a doubt in my mind that if Josh Backer had
Speaker 10: been left on the streets, if he had never been
Speaker 10: identified as a suspect in this case, he would have
Speaker 10: claimed other lives. It might not have been two years
Speaker 10: from now, it might not have been three years from now,
Speaker 10: but it would have happened again. And by collecting his
Speaker 10: DNA at the time of his arrest on that Santa
Speaker 10: Barbara robbery case, we were able to prevent that from happening.
Speaker 10: So the paradox there is a case that he has
Speaker 10: been so deeply traumatizing to so many families, can actually
Speaker 10: spare more families pain by putting reasonable DNA arrest d
Speaker 10: DNA collection laws on the books. That's not an uncontroversial position.
Speaker 10: I have come under some fire for taking that position,
Speaker 10: but based on the vitality of my research, based on
Speaker 10: all the work I did on this book, I have
Speaker 10: to say that it is it's bordering on negligence for
Speaker 10: any law enforcement jurisdiction in the United States, Canada, or
Speaker 10: any other country that has a modern law enforcement apparatus
Speaker 10: not to take arrest d DNA at the time of booking.
Speaker 8: Yes, and you cite another really dramatic example with the
Speaker 8: Green River killer that you show that if DNA testing
Speaker 8: were mandatory, as you suggest, that maybe sixty women could
Speaker 8: have been spared. I did take a lie detector test.
Speaker 8: He was cleared as a suspect. You do put a
Speaker 8: big practical what if and to demonstrate again what could
Speaker 8: have been.
Speaker 10: I think I think your your listeners should keep in
Speaker 10: mind too, that two weeks after Josh Packer pled guilty
Speaker 10: to the Faria murders, the First Appellate District of the
Speaker 10: California Court of Appeals ruled on a case called People
Speaker 10: Versus Buza, And in that case, this man, this convicted
Speaker 10: arsonist named Mark Buza, had challenged the statute that actually
Speaker 10: allowed law enforcement agencies to collect arrestee from felony from
Speaker 10: felony arrestees collect DNA from felony arrestees. So the bottom
Speaker 10: line there is, if Josh Packer was arrested in California
Speaker 10: today for the Santa Barbara robbery, his DNA would not
Speaker 10: be collected, it would not be sent to CODIS, and
Speaker 10: it would not be linked to the Faria murders. He'd
Speaker 10: still be out walking the streets. That idea is something
Speaker 10: that should resonate very strongly with all of us.
Speaker 8: Absolutely, I think it's a very very important part of
Speaker 8: your book. You make a great argument for this, and
Speaker 8: I think it's an important component of your book, and
Speaker 8: I'm glad that we could speak about it because I
Speaker 8: think it's very very important being DNA has been a
Speaker 8: fantastic boom for law enforcement like no other, and especially
Speaker 8: in light of all the discreditation of things that we
Speaker 8: thought were really consistent and worthwhile at court and trial.
Speaker 8: So DNA has very little controversy except in the area
Speaker 8: that you're bringing up in this book in terms of
Speaker 8: when it can be collected and why and what is
Speaker 8: the trade off in terms of people's privacy. But you
Speaker 8: stay to make a great argument for the necessity and
Speaker 8: the importance of DNA collection. So I want to congratulate
Speaker 8: you on that. I want to thank you very much
Speaker 8: much for coming on and talking about Black Night Gold Coast.
Speaker 8: For those that may want to contact you or keep
Speaker 8: in touch, do have a website? Facebook? How can people
Speaker 8: contact you so desired?
Speaker 10: I don't have a website or Facebook, but if people
Speaker 10: want to contact me they can they can send me
Speaker 10: an email. My email address is Gray G R A
Speaker 10: Y dot Colint C A L E N t at
Speaker 10: gmail dot com. And also, if anyone's interested in seeing
Speaker 10: actual video footage of Josh Packer in the Ventura County jail,
Speaker 10: you can also check out my YouTube page I have
Speaker 10: I believe I sent you the link, Dan, I have
Speaker 10: video footage of Josh Packer brawling with eight deputies during
Speaker 10: his confinement in the Ventura County jail. So all you
Speaker 10: should do is go to YouTube and you can either
Speaker 10: enter my name or you can enter inmate brawls with
Speaker 10: deputies or fights with deputies or something to that effect,
Speaker 10: and that video should I'm up.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's very interesting. Again, thank you very much for
Speaker 8: coming on talking about Black Knight Gold Coast. A fascinating story.
Speaker 8: Thank you very much. Great George, have a great night.
Speaker 10: Thank you so much, thank you so much for having
Speaker 10: me have a great night you too. Good Night, good night.