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Speaker 6: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 6: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 6: written about them. Geesy Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK Every
Speaker 6: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 6: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 6: journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 3: Good evening for Tony read. This case began as a
Speaker 3: claim of innocence in the murder of Donna Joe Richmond
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy five. While the errors in the original
Speaker 3: investigation and a flawed trial resulted in a guilty verdict,
Speaker 3: the reassessment confirmed that the defendant was framed, but the
Speaker 3: question became by whom. Working with a new team of investigators,
Speaker 3: which included two of the original detectives, the probe uncovered
Speaker 3: a startling new possibility. Was the real culprit a serial offender.
Speaker 3: Turning to the public for information, mister Reid created the
Speaker 3: twelve twenty six to seventy five podcasts based on primary
Speaker 3: evidence and new interviews surrounding the murder of Donna Joe
Speaker 3: on that date in Exeter, California. The team re examined
Speaker 3: every possibility. The investigator soon found something more than a
Speaker 3: terribly failed verdict. They discovered connections to the unsolved murders
Speaker 3: of Jennifer Armour and Claude Snelling and links to the
Speaker 3: East Area rapist. The uncovered shocking corruption by the original
Speaker 3: lead investigator, who illegally destroyed trial evidence and looked into
Speaker 3: the unexplained death of the original defense attorney. This pursuit
Speaker 3: led them right back to Exeter, where a new suspect
Speaker 3: and these murders emerged Joseph DiAngelo, who was then a
Speaker 3: full time sergeant with the local police department, the officer
Speaker 3: in charge of violent crimes and burglary investigations. This book
Speaker 3: is more than an adaptation of the twelve twenty six
Speaker 3: seventy five podcasts. It shares new insight formed during the
Speaker 3: investigation and provides a firsthand look at the Tullari crimes,
Speaker 3: as well as exposing the faulty evidence used to obtain
Speaker 3: and maintain the false conviction. More than anything else, twelve
Speaker 3: twenty six seventy five demonstrates the enormous consequences of letting
Speaker 3: a serial killer go free, made worse when combined with
Speaker 3: the painful mistakes, infighting and finger pointing by certain jurisdictions,
Speaker 3: the catastrophic results are undeniable. Now that the mystery of
Speaker 3: how it unfolded is revealed, we can also begin to
Speaker 3: examine the reforms necessary to prevent this tragedy from happening again.
Speaker 3: The book that we're featuring this evening is twelve twenty six,
Speaker 3: seventy five with my special guest attorney, private investigator and author,
Speaker 3: Tony Reid. Welcome to the program, and thank you so
Speaker 3: much for this interview. Tony Reid.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me, Dan, I really
Speaker 2: appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Just when I thought I knew so much about this story,
Speaker 3: had no idea, So thank you so much for this
Speaker 3: incredible investigation. And right away tell us who this book
Speaker 3: is dedicated to.
Speaker 2: And why well, the book is dedicated to retired Sergeant
Speaker 2: John Vaughn, who worked with the Facilia Police Department for
Speaker 2: a number of years. In his capacity, he was sergeant
Speaker 2: and was the lead investigator on the promise side of
Speaker 2: Claude Snelling, who was killed in Visilia on September eleventh
Speaker 2: eineteen seventy five, and John really then led the investigation
Speaker 2: for several months afterwards, pursuing this aspect and then followed
Speaker 2: the tracks of the offender, who was then unknown up
Speaker 2: to Sacramento, was repudiated there turned away and the connections
Speaker 2: were denied, and really kind of just held a lot
Speaker 2: of the problems of the investigation in his own part,
Speaker 2: good idea to get involved again, But quickly when he
Speaker 2: saw what the evidence was and why I was asking,
Speaker 2: he more than willingly opened up his heart and his
Speaker 2: mind back to get into the case again, and it
Speaker 2: truly helped sort out so many of the immense mysteries
Speaker 2: that were present, how things got flubbed and what happened,
Speaker 2: and so really without John's assistance that the case would
Speaker 2: have not been possible, no part of this investigation would
Speaker 2: have been there. He really helped solve so many of
Speaker 2: those critical mysteries.
Speaker 3: Tell our audience who Margie Smith is and her role
Speaker 3: in all of this.
Speaker 2: Margie is a faciliar resident. She lived in the city
Speaker 2: at the time of where the rams actings were going on.
Speaker 2: Quite interestingly too, it just so happens that on the
Speaker 2: day that we're talking about, the principal date of the book,
Speaker 2: December twenty sixth, eighteen seventy five, that she was working
Speaker 2: at the office of the real term whose name is
Speaker 2: Bill Rose, and Margie was working there as secretary and
Speaker 2: had seen Oscar Clifton the day that he came in,
Speaker 2: and had known him through those connections and just never
Speaker 2: seemed to fit right that this person with whom she
Speaker 2: had very brief contact, stories that she really helped set
Speaker 2: a lot of the mysteries in action.
Speaker 3: Do you think of a couple other people and important
Speaker 3: people in the East Area Rapist Original Nights Soccer case,
Speaker 3: Richard Shelby and Larry Crompton and Larry Poole tell us
Speaker 3: the role of all these law enforcement professionals.
Speaker 2: Well in the terms of Richard Shelby and Larry Crompton,
Speaker 2: both of those individuals have written books that were extremely helpful,
Speaker 2: but particularly Richard Shelby is an individual who also opened
Speaker 2: up his mind to the questions and he was sitting
Speaker 2: on the other side of the fence for the East
Speaker 2: Aia Rapist series. He was one of the individuals who
Speaker 2: was started working the cases as soon as the Easteria
Speaker 2: rapist emergen Sacramento. He was the lead investigator there and
Speaker 2: at the time when the connection was first presented as
Speaker 2: a possibility between Visilia and Sacramento. He was working the case,
Speaker 2: and so he really also understood what was going on,
Speaker 2: and the Sacramento investigators so really quite understanding what happened
Speaker 2: with the breakdown between why this suspect lead was very valuable,
Speaker 2: suspect lead was not properly investigated, how they got derailed.
Speaker 2: Richard was the person who really answered that question. And
Speaker 2: in one word, it comes down to hypnosis. And that's
Speaker 2: something that I get into quite extensively in the book,
Speaker 2: because I don't believe people really understood exactly how it
Speaker 2: was used, how it was treated as evident in this
Speaker 2: period kind of became popularized. But how also it can
Speaker 2: be either extremely beneficial to a case, where it can
Speaker 2: be very detrimental. However, regardless of however you look at it,
Speaker 2: after nineteen eighty one, it was absolutely forbidden in the
Speaker 2: courtrooms of California, and it never should have after that
Speaker 2: had the impact on the case that it did. And
Speaker 2: so the other individual that you mentioned, Larry Pool. By
Speaker 2: the time I was contacting him, Larry had left law enforcement.
Speaker 2: He was out in the private sector, and since several
Speaker 2: messages engaging him about the case, pointing out some of
Speaker 2: the evidence that we had developed for the Exeter suspect,
Speaker 2: and bouncing off the ideas about the timeline, the evidence,
Speaker 2: the connections, and saying you know too, Larry was one
Speaker 2: of the few individuals who really believed the viability of
Speaker 2: the Visiliate connection, and so it was very important to
Speaker 2: have his perspective on the case and for him to
Speaker 2: assist early on in attempting to have some referrals go
Speaker 2: to the then current investigators, those who were still involved,
Speaker 2: and then unfortunately having that derailed as well. That's very painful.
Speaker 3: You say, there's several contributors who were some of the
Speaker 3: greatest who deserve some of the greatest acknowledgement. Yes, so
Speaker 3: can't be personally identified, including direct witnesses, victims and laws
Speaker 3: enforcement officers and their surviving family members. But you also
Speaker 3: acknowledge a few reporters, and so you talk about lou Griswold,
Speaker 3: but also Lily Luciano and Mike Bannell of ABC ten
Speaker 3: tell us about their role in this.
Speaker 2: Who was a person that I met in Visilia. I
Speaker 2: had gone up quite early on after I'd done some
Speaker 2: of my initial investigations. In fact, after I had met
Speaker 2: with the current team at Vicilia police department, and word
Speaker 2: was getting around the community about some of the investigation,
Speaker 2: and one of the leaders of the local road asked
Speaker 2: me to come to a presentation, and Margie and actually
Speaker 2: did this together and kind of gave a quick overview
Speaker 2: of the case and talked about some of the important connections,
Speaker 2: what we were looking at, the idea of the suspect
Speaker 2: being an exeter. And after that presentation at the rotary,
Speaker 2: lu Griswold approached me and then you know, he kind
Speaker 2: of said, hey, this this sounds quite interesting. And Louis
Speaker 2: still then a reported with the Fresno b so he
Speaker 2: was friends with the with Sergeant Vaughn and remembered the
Speaker 2: investigation and kind of got interested, reinvigorated in the story
Speaker 2: and helped write some of the early interviews, but also
Speaker 2: wrote a really important interview post arrest which thanked John
Speaker 2: Vaughan for his contributions to the original investigation, and he
Speaker 2: titled that article sweet Vindication for the simple reason that
Speaker 2: John never really got the credit that he fully deserved
Speaker 2: for having put together the investigation correctly. In the first
Speaker 2: and then the other two that you mentioned Lilia and Mike,
Speaker 2: I worked with those two reporters for the better part
Speaker 2: of a year, gave them full access to the case,
Speaker 2: gave them, you know, a lot of my list of witnesses,
Speaker 2: showed them at every page of the police reports, of
Speaker 2: the transcripts, anything they wanted to see, they got access to.
Speaker 2: Any questions that they had, they got access to. So
Speaker 2: it was really, you know, it was an immense task
Speaker 2: that this case is and you had mentioned earlier that
Speaker 2: this is this whole story is so overwhelming, how do
Speaker 2: you keep it straight? They had done, you know, a
Speaker 2: full year's worth of investigation. They traveled with me around
Speaker 2: the various locations for a couple of days and we
Speaker 2: recorded on site interviews. They had also gone and spoken
Speaker 2: to many of the locals in question, and of course
Speaker 2: with the District Attorney's office, and really put together fantastic
Speaker 2: series which is still available on YouTube, Asking the Question
Speaker 2: framed by the Golden State Color. That's the title of
Speaker 2: the series, and it's in five different parts and is
Speaker 2: really worthwhile watching for anyone who's interested in the story
Speaker 2: to be able to understand, you know, where these locations were,
Speaker 2: who was involved. It's a great summary of the case,
Speaker 2: and so they deserve tremendous amount of credit for getting
Speaker 2: some very valuable interviews and providing some new insights beyond
Speaker 2: even what I could provide.
Speaker 3: Now, before we talk about what D'Angelo was doing, Joseph
Speaker 3: DiAngelo was doing in nineteen seventy two, tell us a
Speaker 3: little bit about the creation of the twelve twenty six
Speaker 3: seventy five podcast.
Speaker 2: Sure, so, you know, as we talked about, we had
Speaker 2: gone through and met with a lot of these early investigators.
Speaker 2: We shared with them the reports that we had at
Speaker 2: that point and asked them for the information. They had
Speaker 2: then taken and referred the case out to their contemporaries.
Speaker 2: When it came back, it came back as crickets. There
Speaker 2: is a terrible le legacy in this case, and that
Speaker 2: is that once the Visalia linkage was broken, and that
Speaker 2: happened in nineteen seventy eight, fully and firmly, once that
Speaker 2: got derailed, no one wanted to hear the name of
Speaker 2: that city who was involved in this investigation. Nobody wanted
Speaker 2: to hear that name place again. And anytime it came up,
Speaker 2: it was that's been disproven, that's debunked, that's garbage. I'm
Speaker 2: not even going to listen to anything that was wrong.
Speaker 2: For so many reasons that John explained. However, that was
Speaker 2: the accepted narrative, and when we put together the idea,
Speaker 2: it's like, how are we going to repair this? If
Speaker 2: law enforcement aren't taking this seriously now and the public
Speaker 2: have this misperception, how do we go about correcting it?
Speaker 2: So that was really the genesis of the idea for
Speaker 2: the podcast, the website, the social media is to set
Speaker 2: out the idea to say, let's re record some of
Speaker 2: these original transcripts and police reports. Let's tell the story
Speaker 2: about what happened, what went wrong, and see if there
Speaker 2: are enough people who are interested in this who can
Speaker 2: come forward and supplement some of this information and perhaps
Speaker 2: set it right and explain what happened with some of
Speaker 2: the misconnections. And really, there were a couple of things
Speaker 2: that happened in response to this, and I'll summarize those
Speaker 2: as being the polar opposite. We had a tremendous number
Speaker 2: of people who reached out and provided first hand accounts,
Speaker 2: agreed to interviews, provided some new evidence for what was
Speaker 2: going on, and then quite the opposite, the people who
Speaker 2: wanted to continue the narrative that the connection was improper
Speaker 2: in the first place, to debunk it, and then to
Speaker 2: go so far as to publicly expound to in as
Speaker 2: many ways as they could, whether it was a national
Speaker 2: media or local media, to continue this narrative that was
Speaker 2: completely flawed. It was in essence of this battle between
Speaker 2: two opposingarratives and was this true or was this not true?
Speaker 2: So that's really the genesis of the podcast and why
Speaker 2: it was important to be able to write the book
Speaker 2: and everything else for.
Speaker 3: This incredible event to happen, for this investigation that derailed.
Speaker 3: Like you say, in nineteen seventy eight, you introduce all
Speaker 3: of the important and crucial characters, but first you go
Speaker 3: back to nineteen seventy two and tell us what Joseph
Speaker 3: DiAngelo was doing at twenty six years of age.
Speaker 2: Well, the important part of this whole narrative, and what
Speaker 2: I try to really present in the book, is that
Speaker 2: the book itself is really not about Jodyangelo. It's about
Speaker 2: the people who were investigating him. It's about law enforcement.
Speaker 2: But I think one of the things that is most
Speaker 2: troubling here for the public to understand is that Joseph
Speaker 2: di'angelo was a fully trained law enforcement officer, far more
Speaker 2: well trained than many of his contemporaries. In nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: eight he began his career Polease studies. He got two
Speaker 2: years here at college, got his AA. Then by nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy two he had completed his advanced degree, his BA
Speaker 2: at Sacramento State, and shortly thereafter he joined the Roseville
Speaker 2: Police Department as an intern in their Investigation and Identification Bureau.
Speaker 2: And so what had happened there was, you know, one
Speaker 2: of the critical mysteries is where was the lead up
Speaker 2: series to the ransacker? Where did he start? Was one
Speaker 2: of the questions that Larry Pool was very creative in
Speaker 2: asking about his investigation. One of the things he pent
Speaker 2: back was where was Jodyangelo when he started? And come
Speaker 2: to find out that the lead up series was actually
Speaker 2: in Rancho Cordova. We now know that he was the
Speaker 2: Cordova cat burglar. He then moved down to Exeter in
Speaker 2: the first part of nineteen seventy three, but really for
Speaker 2: that time period where he'd finished at Sex State in
Speaker 2: seventy two, and before he had moved there, he had
Speaker 2: spent a good almost a year being this home invasion
Speaker 2: cat burglar in the Ranch Cortdova area, and so that
Speaker 2: really is his genesis. But it's very important, and I
Speaker 2: want to reemphasize the fact that this case is extremely
Speaker 2: unusual and remains relevant and important for the simple fact
Speaker 2: that we still don't fully understand exactly the role of
Speaker 2: his police training. What did he know and how did
Speaker 2: he use that advantage to escape detection? For all of
Speaker 2: this time it was clear that he was a police officer,
Speaker 2: and what does that mean for society? How can we
Speaker 2: prevent this from happening again? If we don't really fully
Speaker 2: explore the role of his participation in law enforcement For
Speaker 2: six and a half years he was an active, sworn
Speaker 2: police officer in the state of California. What does that
Speaker 2: mean you talk.
Speaker 3: About though that's not so well known at all. Is
Speaker 3: your idea about his motivation? Yes, you talk about the
Speaker 3: average IQ used by jurisdictions, by police departments to hire candidates,
Speaker 3: And so tell us what your ideas are about this
Speaker 3: IQ and d'angelo's resentment.
Speaker 2: You know, it is an interesting question because there is
Speaker 2: actually a There was a civil rights suit brought by
Speaker 2: someone who failed an IQ test, not because he was
Speaker 2: too because he lacked intelligence, but because he was too intelligent.
Speaker 2: So he sued the local department asking for a re
Speaker 2: examination that allowed him to join the police force because
Speaker 2: the theory that the state but the courts upheld the
Speaker 2: idea that a law enforcement officer could be too smart
Speaker 2: to join the ranks is that you know, someone who
Speaker 2: is too smart is going to get bored. And we
Speaker 2: don't know exactly what happened in the mind of Jody Angel.
Speaker 2: He has not spoken in any way about that part
Speaker 2: of his experiences and what happened to why he joined
Speaker 2: Exeter PD. What we do know is that when he
Speaker 2: did join, many of his colleagues had asked, I think
Speaker 2: a very reasonable question, why is it someone like you,
Speaker 2: with all of your training and experience, when you're so
Speaker 2: smart you should be with the FBI, Why are you
Speaker 2: here in this small little city of Exeter. And so
Speaker 2: it turns out, yes, that there is a there is
Speaker 2: a threshold, and law enforcement entities really do prefer to
Speaker 2: keep people within a very tight range of the bell
Speaker 2: curve and not too smart and certainly not unintelligent, and
Speaker 2: as police officers. So when it gets down to motive,
Speaker 2: one of the things that is very clear from the
Speaker 2: pattern of activity is that Jodi Angelo was always responding
Speaker 2: to the press and was directly it appears to me
Speaker 2: as if he was directly engaging with some of the
Speaker 2: particular officers his you know, want by putting the crimes
Speaker 2: onto maps and understanding the exact locations and everything. One
Speaker 2: of the things that became very clear and checking this out,
Speaker 2: sounding this out with the investigators, it was quite obvious
Speaker 2: that the offender would strike in and with great knowledge
Speaker 2: of jurisdictional boundaries. Jurisdictional boundaries play a big role in policing.
Speaker 2: If you're even if you're half a mile outside of
Speaker 2: city limits and into the county, that affects exactly who
Speaker 2: is going to be investigating this crime. And we certainly
Speaker 2: see that in the book twenty six to seventy five.
Speaker 2: There is there are two other beyond the Richmond case,
Speaker 2: or two other very compelling instances where it's documented the
Speaker 2: offender is striking with great jurisdictional precision. To me, that
Speaker 2: demonstrates that it was a knowledge of those areas that
Speaker 2: allowed him to perhaps play what I call a game
Speaker 2: of cat and mouse, hitting in particular areas, knowing that
Speaker 2: certain officers would get that case and to be able
Speaker 2: to play that chase game with them directly.
Speaker 3: Is it important to as you note that under this
Speaker 3: cat Burglar, the Gordovas metals cat burglar. That all of
Speaker 3: these monikers, early monikers before Vasselia Ransacker were the privy
Speaker 3: of the police themselves. They weren't released to the media,
Speaker 3: and you talk about him interacting with the media. So
Speaker 3: how important is it that all of these burglaries, say
Speaker 3: two hundred burglaries, were really not noted by the media. Whatsoever?
Speaker 3: Was there something to that his need.
Speaker 2: You know it is It is hard to say again
Speaker 2: because we don't have any true insight into the mind
Speaker 2: of this individual. He has not been willing to speak
Speaker 2: since to the public and has not spoken to any reporters.
Speaker 2: So there's a great deal that we're still missing and
Speaker 2: when would be appreciated at some point if we can,
Speaker 2: if we can figure that out. But one of the
Speaker 2: things that is clear, like for instance, with Cordova, that
Speaker 2: wasn't that was a name that was used only internally,
Speaker 2: and that name does not appear in any of the
Speaker 2: newspaper stories. It didn't really even receive much attention outside
Speaker 2: the burglary unit for the Sheriff's department there, And the
Speaker 2: same is very much true with the Vasilia Ransacker. The
Speaker 2: name was barely used at all during the time that
Speaker 2: the bulk of the burglaries were occurring. It was something
Speaker 2: that was kind of whispered around town. It's like, you know, what,
Speaker 2: what what do we call this person? When you have
Speaker 2: an unknown subject, they often then take on a name.
Speaker 2: And I've got a few others that are named here
Speaker 2: in the book other relevant cases, and those would be
Speaker 2: examples like the Portville rapist or even the Tillary Cap burglar.
Speaker 2: And these names get floated around as to to help
Speaker 2: in a way to help law enforcement identify it and
Speaker 2: solicit information, but to at least have a way to
Speaker 2: refer to the case easily. The monikers serve those purposes.
Speaker 2: It's really hard to say with jody'angelo exactly what rule
Speaker 2: he had, if any, in you know, creating these other
Speaker 2: than you know, his his jurisdictional precision, striking specifically within
Speaker 2: a very narrow range in Rancho Cordova and then returning
Speaker 2: to that exact same neighborhood as the Easter Area rapist.
Speaker 2: What does that mean? I don't know the answer to
Speaker 2: that question.
Speaker 3: So tell us about DeAngelo's work with Exeter Police, his
Speaker 3: role there, and how that was connected to his crimes.
Speaker 2: Well, we know that he joined Exeter Police Department as
Speaker 2: patrolman in nineteen seventy three. He did not leave Exeter
Speaker 2: Police Department until mid August of nineteen seventy six, so
Speaker 2: it was just more than three years. And something I
Speaker 2: think another error that's floating rout there in the public
Speaker 2: narrative is this idea that as soon as the composite
Speaker 2: sketch came out in Visalia following the encounter with Sector McGowan,
Speaker 2: the shooting in the backyard of the war residents that
Speaker 2: happened in late mid December excuse me, of nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 2: so well after D'Angelo had already been in that area
Speaker 2: for two and a half years. And this narrative that
Speaker 2: as soon as the sketch came out, as soon as
Speaker 2: he was identified, D'Angelo fled and went up to Auburn.
Speaker 2: That's not true. He actually named in Exeter and as
Speaker 2: a sergeant and was the lead investigator for the violent
Speaker 2: crimes unit for Exeter PD after that for another eight months.
Speaker 2: So it's an absolute misconception to say that as soon
Speaker 2: as that sketch was out there and as soon as
Speaker 2: he was identified, he fled. The better critical part about
Speaker 2: this is that the first two attacks in the Easter
Speaker 2: A Rapist series occur while Sergeant D'Angelo is still with
Speaker 2: Exeter PD. The first of those is June eighteen of
Speaker 2: seventy six, and the next is in July, and we
Speaker 2: know that he's still active and reporting for duty and
Speaker 2: Exeter while that's going on. You know, was he aware
Speaker 2: that he needed to move? Very likely? Was he setting
Speaker 2: up some kind of confusion again with his ability to
Speaker 2: strike in a jurisdiction and create the confusion to know
Speaker 2: how these crimes are going to be investigated? And indeed,
Speaker 2: that question of you know, where did this offender live
Speaker 2: throughout the course of the series. You know, we know
Speaker 2: that the Assyria Rapist series starts in Sacramento and then
Speaker 2: it expands and there were many theories floated around from
Speaker 2: law enforcement about, you know, did he live in Concord,
Speaker 2: did he live in Stockton or Modesto at all of
Speaker 2: these other places? And later on, why was he in
Speaker 2: Galita and how did he end up in Irvine? No
Speaker 2: one lives in all of these areas, but to be
Speaker 2: able to create the confusion that exists to know how
Speaker 2: crimes are going to be investigated, and to know that
Speaker 2: people are going to start with the assumption, Hey, the
Speaker 2: person lived in this area at this time. To be
Speaker 2: able to create the subterfuge of having those first two
Speaker 2: ar attacks occur in Sacramento while he's still on exeter
Speaker 2: ped I think as a very fine example of both
Speaker 2: his tactical awareness as a police officer and his situational
Speaker 2: awareness as the offender to be able to create that confusion.
Speaker 3: Explain for our audience the role of you talk about
Speaker 3: agent McGowan, and you talked about Debbie Ward, So tell
Speaker 3: us more about this stakeout that McGowan was in and
Speaker 3: why and his description of the perpetrator. Yes, and then
Speaker 3: how hypnosis you say, put a big monkey ranch into
Speaker 3: the investigation itself.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, indeed, all right, Well, I mean I think
Speaker 2: that this question really starts out with an exploration of
Speaker 2: what was going on with the ran secret cases. And
Speaker 2: it's really important to emphasize again that that John wasn't
Speaker 2: appointed to the case until after the Snelling homicide in September.
Speaker 2: So they went through and sort of said, you know,
Speaker 2: let's recalibrate all of our investigation. Let's go through and
Speaker 2: he's kind of moved areas within the town. And if
Speaker 2: we draw these these lines, this intersection over the map
Speaker 2: of the Cilia, we can see how he's kind of shifted.
Speaker 2: Then they started going back through the reports and pouring
Speaker 2: back through things, and one of the reports that they
Speaker 2: found was from a few months prior, in July. There
Speaker 2: was a report of the ransacker having encountered a young
Speaker 2: girl who returned midday to her home and as she
Speaker 2: was walking in through the gate, the subject was fleeing
Speaker 2: through the apartment that was over the garage, and as
Speaker 2: he fled down the stairway he saw the girl. He
Speaker 2: punched her, knocked her to the ground, and then fled
Speaker 2: the scenes. When they went upstairs and look, they found
Speaker 2: sure enough, this was a ransacker burglary at this residence. Well,
Speaker 2: they this got noted then by the new team of
Speaker 2: investigators and very carefully said, you know, hey, look we're
Speaker 2: mapping everything out here. Let's definitely put this one on
Speaker 2: here because this is the first time that someone actually
Speaker 2: saw the offender. So that was an important crime. Well,
Speaker 2: a few months had gone by and the young girl's mother,
Speaker 2: everything is sloading around town. After the homicide. Everybody is
Speaker 2: on high alert. Well, this young girl's mother had noticed
Speaker 2: that there were several footprints outside of their bedroom and
Speaker 2: bathroom windows, and they she called the police department and
Speaker 2: Agent McGowan responded to the scene. So he's looking around
Speaker 2: and he's looking at these footprints and noticing this looks
Speaker 2: this looks curious. There are these weird circular impressions that
Speaker 2: are in the ground underneath the bathroom window. I wonder
Speaker 2: what these are. And so he stands there and he
Speaker 2: looks around the yard and he realizes across the way
Speaker 2: that there's a flower pot that has been moved, but
Speaker 2: it was slightly out of place, and so when he
Speaker 2: picked up the flower pot and he moved it over
Speaker 2: to the spot where these other circular impressions were, he
Speaker 2: realized this is the pot where the offender had used
Speaker 2: to peer into the windows. So it's like he found
Speaker 2: the clue and realized too that if the offender was
Speaker 2: coming back act that this would be a valuable piece
Speaker 2: of information. The second part of what was going on
Speaker 2: was that in between September and December, as the events
Speaker 2: were unfolding, it was very frustrating for VISILIAPD because every
Speaker 2: time they were putting out the burglary reports about what
Speaker 2: was going on and where the patrols were going to
Speaker 2: be that night, as if by magic, the offender would
Speaker 2: strike in a completely different area with precision again, and
Speaker 2: so on the night that they said, hey, look, in
Speaker 2: case the offender comes back to this residence, let's do
Speaker 2: a few things differently. Let's have only the team who
Speaker 2: are assigned to this location be aware of the investigation.
Speaker 2: We don't want anybody else, even on the force, to
Speaker 2: be to have knowledge of what's going about to unfold.
Speaker 2: And the second thing is we're going to be radio silent,
Speaker 2: absolutely no chatter unless until there's a some kind of emergency.
Speaker 2: And they even went so far as to put like
Speaker 2: this invisible ink on the sidewalk so in case the
Speaker 2: offender stepped on the sidewalk, they would be able to
Speaker 2: follow his tracks away from and then follow where he went.
Speaker 2: So they had that, they had, They had set up
Speaker 2: patrol cars around the area to block off as much
Speaker 2: traffic as they could, and realized, you know, let's let's
Speaker 2: set the trap. And they did, and on the night
Speaker 2: in question, the offender started a few blocks away and
Speaker 2: had another signature ransacking burglary at the home of a
Speaker 2: medical doctor nearby who had two children on one of
Speaker 2: them was one of the cheerleaders that was obviously being stocked.
Speaker 2: The offender had broken into the home while they were away,
Speaker 2: classic Vicilia ransacker entry, stolen a bunch of items and
Speaker 2: had them on his person when he came to the
Speaker 2: ward residence next And in that moment, Asian McGowan had
Speaker 2: discovered that there appeared to be some activity. He was
Speaker 2: positioned at the garage across the street with the lights off,
Speaker 2: and then followed the subject over to the yard, had
Speaker 2: a herbal encounter and there was an exchange of gunfire
Speaker 2: during that incident. But before that gunfire erupted, the offender
Speaker 2: had done something very mysterious. He had lifted up his
Speaker 2: He was wearing a ski mask at the time to
Speaker 2: conceal his identity. But as McGowan told him, you were
Speaker 2: under arrest, the offender turned very slowly towards McGowan, lifted
Speaker 2: the mask up and bield his face. But that was
Speaker 2: with one hand, and it appears to me as if
Speaker 2: simply a distraction, because with his other he then reaches
Speaker 2: into his jacket pocket, pulls out his disguised revolver and
Speaker 2: turns and fires at agent McGowan. Because Bill had been
Speaker 2: with LAPD, one of the things that he was trained
Speaker 2: to do that was perhaps different and saved his life
Speaker 2: in that moment, was to hold his flashlight away from
Speaker 2: his body. So rather than being able to shoot where
Speaker 2: the flashlight was had hit the policeman, he shot at
Speaker 2: the flashlight and said it was an extended distance by
Speaker 2: his arm. The shrapnel from that, however, broke apart the
Speaker 2: flashlight had the glass. A piece came up and hit
Speaker 2: him in the eye and went down to the ground.
Speaker 2: He called out for help, fired another warning shot, and
Speaker 2: then the pursuit followed. They tried to capture this aspect
Speaker 2: and in fact the paint works they were able to
Speaker 2: follow a short distance down backtracked, ended up in some
Speaker 2: shrubbery along the highway, but disappeared into the night. So
Speaker 2: for a very brief period of time, for what essentially
Speaker 2: ten to fifteen seconds, jody'angelo was under arrest in the
Speaker 2: backyard of the Ward residence. And it's the only time
Speaker 2: any law enforcement entity had D'Angelo under arrest as this
Speaker 2: suspect during any part of the investigation. Whether you want
Speaker 2: to look at anytime from nineteen seventy five until Pru's
Speaker 2: homicide in nineteen eighty six, at no other point in
Speaker 2: time was the Angelo under arrest. And so FACILIPD deserved
Speaker 2: a lot of credit for having such a creative stakeout
Speaker 2: and for actually capturing the suspect.
Speaker 3: What about the description that he gives, what other specifics.
Speaker 2: Well, the description is pretty fantastic. He is able to give.
Speaker 2: He gives a description after he's in recovery at the hospital,
Speaker 2: and his description actually matches very closely with that of
Speaker 2: the report from Best Snelling, who was the attempted abduction
Speaker 2: a little ways away earlier in September. Both of them
Speaker 2: describe an individual who appears to be somewhere between five
Speaker 2: eight and five to eleven, approximately one hundred and sixty pounds,
Speaker 2: very athletic. One thing that was consistent in all the
Speaker 2: descriptions in terms of the activities of the Visilia ransactor
Speaker 2: was a strong athletic ability to be able to jump
Speaker 2: over fences, jump through shrubbery, to run and evade any detection.
Speaker 2: And so all of this lined up, and so it
Speaker 2: was very clear from the moment that McGowan was describing
Speaker 2: his suspect that we were talking about the same person.
Speaker 2: This was the same person who shot at him killed
Speaker 2: Claude Snelling. This is the same person, and in fact,
Speaker 2: it's the same caliber of weapon. It was not the
Speaker 2: same exact weapon, but it was the same caliber of weapon.
Speaker 2: And anyone who talks about the importance of police training
Speaker 2: to the case should realize in both of these instances,
Speaker 2: we're talking about a snubnose thirty eight and at a
Speaker 2: short distance that can be a very deadly and precise instrument.
Speaker 2: Any distance away and becomes a lot harder to be
Speaker 2: able to control and hit a particular target. One thing
Speaker 2: that's very clear from DeAngelo's activities as the ransacker is
Speaker 2: that his targets are a good distance away from him,
Speaker 2: and he shot at and hit each of his targets
Speaker 2: with great precision. He shot at and Claud Snelling twice
Speaker 2: and hit Claud Snelling twice. He shot at Bill McGowan
Speaker 2: once and hit Bill McGowan's flashlight dead center. So that
Speaker 2: told a lot of people that this was someone who
Speaker 2: was very experienced with handling a thirty eight revolver. The
Speaker 2: typical revolver carried by police officers tell.
Speaker 3: Us about the hypnosis or the decision to use hypnosis
Speaker 3: and what that description now becomes in terms of being altered.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's such an important part of this story. So
Speaker 2: what happens is, you know, after the after the Snelling
Speaker 2: incident I mentioned a few months after this the incident
Speaker 2: had occurred, So before the McGowan shooting, there was a
Speaker 2: decision to explore hypnosis as a way to perhaps draw
Speaker 2: out more information about this aspect. And in nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 2: this was considered to be very cutting edge science was
Speaker 2: considered to be reliable. In fact, the Los Angeles Police
Speaker 2: Department had developed a whole unique squad that was training
Speaker 2: other law enforcement entities around the state of California. They
Speaker 2: had a federal grant and were going around trying to
Speaker 2: build up their notoriety. There is even an important article
Speaker 2: in Time magazine about this squad, and they called themselves
Speaker 2: this Bengali Squad, or at least they were referred to
Speaker 2: that publicly. And in going through this, there was the
Speaker 2: opportunity to take Bestinelling down to Los Angeles and to
Speaker 2: be hypnotized by the lead investigators there and to draw
Speaker 2: out hopefully some information and the way that Vaughan describes
Speaker 2: that trip is that with Beth and her mom and
Speaker 2: to officers taking the family down to Los Angeles, there
Speaker 2: was a lot of apprehension that the young girl had
Speaker 2: regarding what had happened, and was any part of this
Speaker 2: her fault, you know, And the fact that her father
Speaker 2: rescued her and gave his life to rescue her certainly,
Speaker 2: you know, wore heavily on her brain and her conscious
Speaker 2: That's very understandable. But when she got down there, she
Speaker 2: went through the hypnosis section session and they drew out
Speaker 2: a few things. There was only really one very minor
Speaker 2: detail that came out through the hypnosis that that was
Speaker 2: in any way different from the three other descriptions. She
Speaker 2: had met with the SILIPD three times before this and
Speaker 2: had given a very clear set of information, was always
Speaker 2: clear and consistent, and then after that, going back through things,
Speaker 2: there was only one really thing that was that was
Speaker 2: substantially different, and that was the addition of this unusual
Speaker 2: note of the offender having short study fingers, and other
Speaker 2: than that, it was it was very much a re telling.
Speaker 2: The only thing that was added to that was, you know,
Speaker 2: on the way back home from you know, Visilia is
Speaker 2: about halfway between Los Angeles and Sacramento, so it's a
Speaker 2: good ways away, and on the way on return trip home,
Speaker 2: one noted that that really had a sense of peace
Speaker 2: that she didn't have before, and understanding and a calmness
Speaker 2: about her that wasn't there before the before the hypnosis. However,
Speaker 2: after the McGowan shooting, we've got a whole other cattle efficient.
Speaker 2: This really illustrates exactly why hypnosis is so flawed. For
Speaker 2: some people, it's very beneficial and therapeutic, and for other
Speaker 2: people it's perhaps the worst thing possible you could do.
Speaker 2: What had happened with the McGowan hypnosis was again Bill,
Speaker 2: I think, you know, as a law enforcement officer, certainly
Speaker 2: felt some apprehension himself. He after all, had this suspect
Speaker 2: under his gun, he told him he was under arrest,
Speaker 2: and I'm certain that he felt he had his own
Speaker 2: emotion as a law enforcement officer for letting this murderer
Speaker 2: get away, So he certainly wanted to do everything he
Speaker 2: could to be helpful to the story. One of the
Speaker 2: things we know, however, is that after the before his hypnosis,
Speaker 2: they had put out a suspect description in the local newspaper.
Speaker 2: They published a composite sketch. They've gone through and really
Speaker 2: worked out quite a lot of information before he went
Speaker 2: to the hypnosis, and we're starting to get some clues
Speaker 2: come in from members of the public. And there was
Speaker 2: a case that God investigated before the hypnosis. And it
Speaker 2: appears to me as if the court's warning about hypnosis
Speaker 2: is exactly correct, that what you're thinking about during the
Speaker 2: time of the hypnosis subsequent to the events gets mixed
Speaker 2: into your understanding, your awareness, and sometimes the ability then
Speaker 2: to incorporate thoughts, fears, concerns, suspicions, anything like that. It's
Speaker 2: incorporated and becomes fact. And that appears to be what
Speaker 2: happened with the McGowan hypnosis, is that he incorporated a
Speaker 2: completely different person, peeping suspect who was spotted a couple
Speaker 2: of years prior and was reported, an encounter was reported,
Speaker 2: and all of those details got conflated into his new description.
Speaker 2: If you go back and look pre hypnosis and compare
Speaker 2: that to the garbage, the literal garbage that comes out
Speaker 2: during hypnosis, it's dis disturbing. And Jaun was present in
Speaker 2: the room while McGowan was undergoing the hypnosis, and he
Speaker 2: said that he was completely agitated, He was sick to
Speaker 2: his stomach. He kept calling out where Shipley, the other
Speaker 2: officer who was with him at the scene of the
Speaker 2: Ward residence, and the scene and the shooting that night,
Speaker 2: where Shipley where Shipley, and all of this intensely emotional.
Speaker 2: They even had to stop the session once and resume
Speaker 2: it for him to be able to continue. It was
Speaker 2: the complete opposite of what had happened with Best Knowlling.
Speaker 2: And unfortunately too, every time that MacGowan was a later
Speaker 2: on cold to think about his description, he got to
Speaker 2: the point where it got so confused for him in
Speaker 2: his own mind. He would look at this aspect description
Speaker 2: and read this aspect description he had read and drawn
Speaker 2: out before the hypnosis, and said, that's not the guy
Speaker 2: he got sewing his head about what happened. That got
Speaker 2: mixed up, Which is exactly why a few years later,
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty two, there's a very important decision in
Speaker 2: a state caled surely, and that case told California law
Speaker 2: enforcement that's it. No more hypnosis in the courts. It's
Speaker 2: completely unreliable. And on top of that, there is actual
Speaker 2: demonstrable proof that people are giving incorrect descriptions, they're incorporating
Speaker 2: what law enforcement wants them to say. And if law
Speaker 2: enforcement is in any way involved in these hypnosis sessions,
Speaker 2: this isn't admissible evidence. The witness is completely tainted and
Speaker 2: you can't just pick out part of this the witness.
Speaker 2: That witness is no longer able to testify reliably about
Speaker 2: the incident.
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Speaker 3: Answer now, Tony, we were talking about hypnosis and it's
Speaker 3: debunking officially by the Supreme Court to say that it
Speaker 3: would not be allowed. Let's get to Sergeant Vaughan. You
Speaker 3: say he was there when McGowan was first describing the perpetrator.
Speaker 3: Tell us about the efforts by Sergeant Vaughan and including
Speaker 3: your conversations with him as well, that about what he
Speaker 3: was trying to put forth about the connection between Vasalia
Speaker 3: ransacker and East Area rapist and who he was stating
Speaker 3: these claims too.
Speaker 2: Sure, well, the next chapter where this story goes is
Speaker 2: this is essentially now. The nosis session is in Jinuary
Speaker 2: of nineteen seventy six, and they also meet with a
Speaker 2: leading psychologist at the time. His name was Jewel Fort,
Speaker 2: and they're at that point trying to put together the
Speaker 2: information that they have from the various reports, from the
Speaker 2: information from McGowan, the composite schedule, what they know about
Speaker 2: the offender, and they do a pass at an early
Speaker 2: psychological profile, and he in this profile is the determination
Speaker 2: that the offender very likely did not live in the
Speaker 2: area where the crimes were being committed, that he appeared
Speaker 2: to have a pattern that would be consistent with someone
Speaker 2: who lived approximately ten to fifteen miles away, would drive
Speaker 2: to the areas where the crimes were occurrent and then
Speaker 2: return home and try to relive the events. Whatever else
Speaker 2: we might say about some of the other remarkable things
Speaker 2: that are in their report, that's astonishingly correct. There's a
Speaker 2: lot in there that we look at now and go, well,
Speaker 2: that might not be such a good thing to say.
Speaker 2: But other than that, that was one thing in the
Speaker 2: re course that was really fantastic, and so essentially through
Speaker 2: the efforts of combining the information. One of the other
Speaker 2: things critical things that the Facilia Police Department had done
Speaker 2: was to use an early computerized system that was being
Speaker 2: developed by the California Department of Justice, and this was
Speaker 2: the CII system. So they had the ability in the
Speaker 2: CII system to track things like stolen property and even
Speaker 2: we're developing what was called anmo a method of operation
Speaker 2: or motorceparandi database that would allow the Department of Justice
Speaker 2: to receive tips to say if we've got an a
Speaker 2: vendor who's following these particular traits. And they put in
Speaker 2: some of the things that the psychologist had developed, and
Speaker 2: they put in together some of the things that were
Speaker 2: in the report and created this profile that was uploaded
Speaker 2: to the California system. Well after the e is a
Speaker 2: Rapist series was started in Sacramento in June of seventy
Speaker 2: six and then continued and accelerated through the first year
Speaker 2: or so. It turns out that they too, Sacramento, were
Speaker 2: inputting information into the same system, which is exactly what
Speaker 2: it's designed to do, and it hit emerged and that
Speaker 2: clue was then followed as soon as both entities got
Speaker 2: the alert, Hey there's a match of your information. You
Speaker 2: both should check this out. So that was the first
Speaker 2: trip that Facility Police Department had made to Sacramento. So
Speaker 2: they carried up with them their reports about the Ransack
Speaker 2: or his unusual burglaries. This report of the Snelling homicide,
Speaker 2: the very strong similarities in the Snelling homicide to the
Speaker 2: East Airy rapist series. The fact that the offender appears
Speaker 2: suddenly in the bedroom of the sleeping victim, puts hands
Speaker 2: over her mouth, is completely disguised, disguises, his voice in
Speaker 2: his face, uses a weapon, is transporting the victim out
Speaker 2: of the residents, and a number of other strong similarities.
Speaker 2: So they're looking Facility are looking at this, they're looking
Speaker 2: at the burglaries, and they're going up to Sacramento and saying,
Speaker 2: so we're showing you are cards, you show us yours,
Speaker 2: And they have an initial conversation and they're looking at
Speaker 2: this and they're saying, this is pretty strong. This is
Speaker 2: looking pretty good as far as a match at that
Speaker 2: point in time too. By the time they're actually up there,
Speaker 2: they're now looking at a total of thirteen. Thirteen in
Speaker 2: the series are on this list. I have the list
Speaker 2: that was written out which cases those were, and they
Speaker 2: were looking essentially at that point in time. Well, when
Speaker 2: another year goes by and there's still not been any activity,
Speaker 2: they go up and they make a second trip to Sacramento,
Speaker 2: and this time, you know, they're going through the cases
Speaker 2: and they're looking a little closer. They make the decision
Speaker 2: to say, you know, hey, maybe we should do a
Speaker 2: public appeal, maybe we should seek information. Because we did
Speaker 2: this in Basilia, we got some great leads. So they
Speaker 2: went to the Sacramento Union and I gave them an interview.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that Vond put in that
Speaker 2: interview that is just truly remarkable and perhaps one of
Speaker 2: the greatest clues that he had noticed. One of the
Speaker 2: most unique mo points was that the offender who was
Speaker 2: known to him as the ransacker benefit Sacramento was the
Speaker 2: Hysteri rapist. Both of these offenders, the v R. And
Speaker 2: the er both had the habit of taking stolen items
Speaker 2: from one scene and leaving them at another scene, eitherby
Speaker 2: trying to implicate someone from the victim's residents and planting
Speaker 2: evidence at another location, or taking items from one burglary
Speaker 2: and planting them the victim's residents. It was nonsensical in
Speaker 2: a way that it was the same thing that kept
Speaker 2: happening over and over again, and it was clear to
Speaker 2: DeVaughn and his words were both men have the peculiarity
Speaker 2: of taking things from one scene and leaving them at another.
Speaker 2: And those words were something that became really important for
Speaker 2: the Richmond homicide where Oscar Clifton was the suspect, because
Speaker 2: that's exactly the only critical piece of physical evidence in
Speaker 2: the case, an invoice book that was discovered the scene
Speaker 2: belonged to Oscar Clifton. There's no doubt about it. He
Speaker 2: did not ever deny that the book was his, but
Speaker 2: that was the impetus for making this connection between Visilia
Speaker 2: and Sacramento in the first place. And as further proof
Speaker 2: of this, that's exactly what happened later on when the
Speaker 2: Easteria rapists would move down to the Galida area. In
Speaker 2: your Santa Barbara, another mo hit came up on the
Speaker 2: same CII system. Aliorni Department of Justice told Sacramento, hey,
Speaker 2: your offender matches these other weird burglaries and this homicide
Speaker 2: down in Galita, you guys should take a look. So
Speaker 2: here's Sacramento Jeff's department completely sandwiched between the pre years
Speaker 2: where Basilia follows them up using the CII system, and
Speaker 2: as he exits following the same CII system away from Sacramento.
Speaker 2: It's quite disturbing when you look at it in retrospect
Speaker 2: that the information was there the whole time and that
Speaker 2: it was not properly followed. But again because the Basilia
Speaker 2: ran connection got so derailed, and you know, going back
Speaker 2: to this story of the Sacramento Union, the thing that
Speaker 2: seemed to upset Sacramento Jeff's department the most was the
Speaker 2: implication that the hysteria rapist had been the Visilia Ransack
Speaker 2: or not becase because of the burglaries, but because of
Speaker 2: this snelling homicide. The quote that's in the newspaper from
Speaker 2: the spokesman Bill Miller pulls out the fact that it
Speaker 2: was unprofessional and irresponsible for Viacilia PD to suggest that
Speaker 2: the East Area rapist was a person who was capable
Speaker 2: of homicide. And obviously, now when we're sitting here in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two and we know that it was the
Speaker 2: same person, that's even more reprehensible. But looking at it,
Speaker 2: even then, the thought I believe was that they just
Speaker 2: didn't want to scare the community. They didn't want them
Speaker 2: to be on high alert. They didn't want them to
Speaker 2: be facing the fact that not only was this person
Speaker 2: who had committed essentially fifty rapes in the Sacramento area
Speaker 2: just going around causing complete terror and panic and seem
Speaker 2: to escape every possible trap that they were trying to
Speaker 2: set for him, that this person was also a killer.
Speaker 2: I think now that we know the exact timeline, there's
Speaker 2: one more piece that's that's devastating to that narrative, because
Speaker 2: what we're talking about there is June of nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 2: on the second visit when Vasili are there, and what
Speaker 2: we know now is that Jodyangelo had in fact killed
Speaker 2: in Sacramento, that he admitted responsibility for the double homicide
Speaker 2: of Brian Katy Masori, and that happened in February of
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy eight, so a few months before this a
Speaker 2: case that was not connected to the Easteria rapist until
Speaker 2: much later nineteen ninety nine or two thousand. I believe
Speaker 2: it's the first instance where Sacramento said, Hey, we're now
Speaker 2: looking at the easter Aia rapists for being responsible for
Speaker 2: this parent murders. Why is it that such a a
Speaker 2: terrible conflation of these homicides and this motive of not
Speaker 2: scaring the public. How did this happen? How did this unfold?
Speaker 2: And knowing the timeline we know now that he did
Speaker 2: get away with those homicides for many years, and what
Speaker 2: does that say about not following the evidence. It's pretty painful,
Speaker 2: and I understand why now in retrospect Sacramento doesn't really
Speaker 2: want to talk about that exact timeline and how things
Speaker 2: line up with the warning that came from Sergeant Vaughn
Speaker 2: and Vacilia PD tell.
Speaker 3: Our audience about Jennifer Armor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the case that actually inspired my reach
Speaker 2: to Sergeant fall Into to see if he was aware
Speaker 2: of this case before really picking any investigation with him.
Speaker 2: One of the things I had done was to map
Speaker 2: out the Vasilia ransacker series as I knew it to
Speaker 2: be and after he got assigned the case, he said,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm going to start with my investigation and
Speaker 2: we're going to draw a line in these prior ransackings
Speaker 2: because he's really moved his area of activity. In nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy four, he was very active, but it was in
Speaker 2: a different part of town. And I drew these four
Speaker 2: quadrants for John and I said, what do these quadrants
Speaker 2: mean in terms of, you know, your patrol zones? And
Speaker 2: he said, that's an exact match for where we did
Speaker 2: our patrols. Us are the boundaries for our patrol zones.
Speaker 2: And so you could look and say he was active
Speaker 2: in zone one in this first part of nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: four and then shifted and so Vaughan said, you know,
Speaker 2: let's let's investigate these other crimes more carefully. Well. The
Speaker 2: implication for that, unfortunately for Jennifer Armer's case, is that
Speaker 2: her abduction occurred in November of nineteen seventy four, just
Speaker 2: a month where shy of where this line had been
Speaker 2: drawn by Vasilia PD. And it's unclear now you know
Speaker 2: what would have happened if YE had noticed that and said, hey,
Speaker 2: we've got this other case. So I noticed this case
Speaker 2: as being an unsolved troumise I from another investigation that
Speaker 2: I was doing and picked this up and said, you know, hey,
Speaker 2: how does this line up because this young girl lived
Speaker 2: in this zone where he was most active in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy four, and then when she is actually abducted, did
Speaker 2: we can see that she's only two blocks away from
Speaker 2: where the Snelling homicide occurred? Is there any correlation here?
Speaker 2: And the second part of that question, was this case
Speaker 2: ever investigated by you? Do you know anything about this?
Speaker 2: And I basically got a blank look, one of the
Speaker 2: only times that I got a blank look from John,
Speaker 2: and very we missed it. He was very honest and upfront,
Speaker 2: and he said, you know, had I known about this,
Speaker 2: I definitely would have explored this, but no, we simply
Speaker 2: I was simply unaware. And I think the principal cause
Speaker 2: of that was the way that the case was investigated.
Speaker 2: This young girl was on her way to the cross
Speaker 2: town football game homecoming night. It's a big deal in Vicelia,
Speaker 2: It's called the Cowhide Game, and met Whitney versus Redwood
Speaker 2: and she was walking from her home down in the
Speaker 2: Zone one and ends up in Zone two near the
Speaker 2: Snelling house. Where she's last seen, a few blocks away
Speaker 2: from where she's supposed to meet her friend and get
Speaker 2: a ride to the game. She never shows up, and
Speaker 2: this fifteen year old girl didn't have a car, didn't
Speaker 2: have a driver's license, didn't have any way to transport herself,
Speaker 2: so she goes missing that night. Her mom reports her
Speaker 2: missing the next day, and a police presume that she's
Speaker 2: a runaway. However, nothing appears for the better part of
Speaker 2: ten days. On that day, a rancher out just north
Speaker 2: of Exeter discovers her body in the frank Kurn Canal.
Speaker 2: She's pulled out and it's discovered that her hands are
Speaker 2: bound behind her back using her own bra She's partially disrobed.
Speaker 2: Some of the items of clothing are found nearby. The
Speaker 2: quote in the newspaper, and I kid you not is
Speaker 2: we don't know how she got there, we'd sure like
Speaker 2: to note. And that's as much as I seemed to
Speaker 2: be put out publicly about the case. And as a
Speaker 2: matter of fact, they go so far as to say
Speaker 2: it could be foul play. But where it could be
Speaker 2: a runaway, we simply don't have enough information here to
Speaker 2: tell us what happened. So in essence. For the first
Speaker 2: year after her death, law enforcement treated the case as
Speaker 2: a runaway and that she'd met some unfortunate mishap. We
Speaker 2: don't know what happened, and certainly had the case been
Speaker 2: in front of Vaughan to say, hey, wait a minute,
Speaker 2: we've got another student, an actual classmate, best Snelling, who
Speaker 2: is abducted, transported to Exeter where she had no reason,
Speaker 2: no connection to be, and she's taken from the exact
Speaker 2: area where where the Snelling homicide occurs. What's going on here?
Speaker 2: So that was the first clue that took the investigation
Speaker 2: back to Exeter. But another one that was equally important
Speaker 2: was that shortly after the Snelling homicide, there were two
Speaker 2: items that were found in between another city, farmers Bill
Speaker 2: and Exeter, well out closer towards Exeter, on a connecting
Speaker 2: road called Avenue two fifty six, one of the only
Speaker 2: roads that connects all the way through from Viacilia to
Speaker 2: to Exeter, and they found there a gun that had
Speaker 2: a serial number that matched one of the vr burglaries.
Speaker 2: And they found some loot. They found in wrapped inside
Speaker 2: a clear plastic raincoat, a screwdriver that matched the prime
Speaker 2: marks of the Visilia rants are plus some additional loots
Speaker 2: some AMMO that was noted that matched the description of
Speaker 2: some of those items, and they found those on both
Speaker 2: sides of this very narrowest road, local offshoot called Hypericum
Speaker 2: Road that becomes important later on in the story. And
Speaker 2: in essence, that was the second clue that said to
Speaker 2: So we said to John, so other than this young
Speaker 2: girl who was taken from Visili and found out in
Speaker 2: Exeter and this loot found in Exeter, you know, what
Speaker 2: are some of the other things. And it was noted
Speaker 2: too that the psychologists who were one of the places
Speaker 2: that he mentioned as a possibility was the city of Exeter.
Speaker 2: And so, you know, putting these things together, it led
Speaker 2: to the strong possibility to Jennifer Armor was a abducted
Speaker 2: by the Basilia ransacker, that there was an Exeter connection
Speaker 2: and with the loot, what happened with that investigation. So
Speaker 2: being able to talk to John and ask him the
Speaker 2: questions about how that was explored, what the suspects they
Speaker 2: looked at, and where that ended, I think became really
Speaker 2: critical to answer the question about Jennifer Armer. Other note
Speaker 2: that I want to make is that after we were
Speaker 2: proceeding and talking about the case, and well before the
Speaker 2: Angelo's identification, we asked for a meeting with the sheriff's office.
Speaker 2: And because the case was even though it was an
Speaker 2: abduction in the Salia and the body was found near Exeter,
Speaker 2: neither one of those municipalities was actually involved in the
Speaker 2: investigation because the body was placed in the canal north
Speaker 2: of Exeter. Where the body is found is in California,
Speaker 2: where the homicide jurisdiction is based. In this since the
Speaker 2: homicide of Jennifer Armer was being handled by the Tillary
Speaker 2: County Sheriff's Office and by no other entities, it is
Speaker 2: quote unquote their case. So when we sat down, we said, hey, look,
Speaker 2: this was in September of twenty seventeen. We said, you know, hey, look,
Speaker 2: here's all of this evidence that connected the Visilia ransacker,
Speaker 2: that connected the Exeter loot, that connected these Exeter locations.
Speaker 2: Because the meeting also incorporated, hey, this is why these
Speaker 2: clues exist to connect the Visilia ransacker to the Richmond
Speaker 2: investigation and the end the wrongful conviction of Oscar Clifton.
Speaker 2: They certainly didn't want to hear that. As a matter
Speaker 2: of fact, there are exact words, we have no interest
Speaker 2: in litigating that case. So in that moment they had
Speaker 2: zero point zero zero interest and hearing out the armor
Speaker 2: case and about that investigation.
Speaker 3: Let's use as an opportunity Tony to stop for these messages.
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Speaker 7: plus turns and condition to place and what's every details?
Speaker 3: Now you're talking about that. You just mentioned Donna Richmond
Speaker 3: and the wrongful conviction of Oscar Clifton. Let's get to
Speaker 3: Donna Richmond's murder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, December twenty sixth, nineteen seventy five, the day
Speaker 2: after Christmas. You know, Exeter is a really small town.
Speaker 2: It's really about a mile and a half square and
Speaker 2: end ten thousand people. It's the citrus capital of the world.
Speaker 2: That's their own local moniker orange groves everywhere, And in fact,
Speaker 2: this case is primarily about two different or one outside
Speaker 2: the city limits on the south end and one outside
Speaker 2: the city limits on the north end where Donald Richmond is.
Speaker 2: Her day that day is completely around the city limits
Speaker 2: of Exeter. She starts off at her home. She's writing around,
Speaker 2: visiting friends, taking care of some animals for some people
Speaker 2: that are out of town. Visits her friends on the
Speaker 2: west side of town. Goes up and last scene at
Speaker 2: her boyfriend's house in the northwest corner of town. So
Speaker 2: she's supposed to be home. According to her father, she's
Speaker 2: supposed to be home at four o'clock. He gets home
Speaker 2: at five o'clock and he says, fortunately the worst words
Speaker 2: that any parent could say, where's Donna. She's not home
Speaker 2: And they begin a search and can't find her. Report
Speaker 2: missing to the police department, to the Exeter police department
Speaker 2: by the way, and they don't find anything for several hours.
Speaker 2: Shortly they're around this time, her brother with a friend
Speaker 2: goes out on a siding road nearby a grove road
Speaker 2: that runs behind the home. A shortcut that they used,
Speaker 2: and they find her brother and the friend find a
Speaker 2: bicycle and it's hers and it's sitting there in the grove,
Speaker 2: in the dark grove. At this point five is setting
Speaker 2: in and they're at the scene. There are some bottles
Speaker 2: and cans there is there are these two notebooks that
Speaker 2: are on the ground and no sign of Donna, and
Speaker 2: they go back to get the dad. They start driving
Speaker 2: around asking more questions. Exeter PD responds to the scene
Speaker 2: and they call the Sheriff's office, and the Sheriff's office realize, hey,
Speaker 2: we're outside the city limits. We're taking lead, and that's
Speaker 2: all really going full force now by eight pm, so
Speaker 2: the investigation I can encapsulate, the investigation of this homicide
Speaker 2: is occurring between eight pm and twelve pm that night
Speaker 2: in that location, well before worked on his body. Has
Speaker 2: ever found. All of the evidence that they quote unquote
Speaker 2: ever needed to convict this man was found at this
Speaker 2: place at this time. And that comes down to one thing.
Speaker 2: That is Oscar Clifton's invoice book, which I mentioned previously.
Speaker 2: It is the only piece of physical evidence that connected
Speaker 2: him to the crime, and he didn't deny that it
Speaker 2: was his. His only statement was, I have no idea
Speaker 2: how I got there. How did my invoice book end
Speaker 2: up at this location? Well, the other thing that is
Speaker 2: present there at this location is a small notepad at
Speaker 2: jotder notepad, the very style that police officers are known
Speaker 2: to carry, and that notepad is filled with numerical equations,
Speaker 2: some aditions, and production and some other things. No handwriting
Speaker 2: is on it. But curiously, the Sheriff's Apartment notes that
Speaker 2: on the outside of both this small jought notepad and
Speaker 2: the invoice book there are no fingerprints. Both appear to
Speaker 2: have been quote unquote smudged or wiped clean fingerprints. We
Speaker 2: don't know what happened or why. We don't know who
Speaker 2: did that, but there are no fingerprints on the inside.
Speaker 2: And at the time, there was no investigation made into
Speaker 2: this small jot or notepad. The only thing that we
Speaker 2: have is that it was a photographed and that a
Speaker 2: photograph of the drawing. The numbers that are peer inside
Speaker 2: are are captured in that form. Other than that, we
Speaker 2: don't know anything else about it. And during the course
Speaker 2: of the trial, when this becomes an important dietam of evidence,
Speaker 2: an important question, it simply became we determined that it
Speaker 2: was not part of the case. There was never any
Speaker 2: explanation for the identity of that note pattern. The whole
Speaker 2: focus was on Oscar Clifton's invoice book. Well, the problem
Speaker 2: immediately ensues if in a case like this with an alibi,
Speaker 2: you know, if you're not at this location committing this homicide,
Speaker 2: where are you right? And fortunately for Oscar Clifton, the
Speaker 2: sheriff's office just did not investigate his alibi. The trial
Speaker 2: was actually starting, so about six months later they go
Speaker 2: and ask some important questions, only after all of this
Speaker 2: other time had elapsed and people's memories were shortened, et cetera.
Speaker 2: But there is one critical witness who was not revealed
Speaker 2: to the defense, who very clearly places Oscar Clifton at
Speaker 2: the work site in Visalia, eleven miles away from the
Speaker 2: crime at the time it occurred according to the prosecution timeline,
Speaker 2: and there is no way to reconcile those two events.
Speaker 2: This witness a young boy about eleven years old. His
Speaker 2: testimony was just never provided and never never disclosed, and
Speaker 2: that accounts for the many years of mystery about this.
Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, that the tape of that
Speaker 2: interview is found in the desk rour of the lead
Speaker 2: investigating officer who I mentioned in the name by Name book.
Speaker 2: His name is Bob Byrd. Detective Sergeant Bird work with
Speaker 2: the Sheriff's Department for many years. He illegally ordered the
Speaker 2: destruction of the case evidence after the trial was over.
Speaker 2: There is no reason to believe now I feel that,
Speaker 2: in light of his illegal actions later on, that he
Speaker 2: was not also involved in fighting this alibi tape that
Speaker 2: very clearly identified Oscar Clifton being at the alibi location
Speaker 2: at the time of the crime.
Speaker 3: You state a reason for Oscar Clifton to believe that
Speaker 3: this is just police harassment. Tell us about this charge
Speaker 3: that he did have and where he might have got
Speaker 3: that idea.
Speaker 2: Well, there is another case that stems from nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 2: wherein Oscar Clifton was arrested and was served a six
Speaker 2: month term in county jail for an attempted rape. The
Speaker 2: implication of that is, of course, to paint Oscar Clifton
Speaker 2: with a dark and suspicious brush. The important part of
Speaker 2: this as evidence, though, is really important to dig into
Speaker 2: because there are two really critical forces and factors involved
Speaker 2: in this. Number One, the investigating officer who arrested Oscar
Speaker 2: Clifton in nineteen sixty five to ten years prior. For
Speaker 2: this is this same officer who's involved in the destruction
Speaker 2: of the evidence in hiding this tape. It's Bob Bird.
Speaker 2: You know, it's really hard because you feel like, you know,
Speaker 2: why would anyone, you know, go so far out of
Speaker 2: his way to pin so many things on an individual,
Speaker 2: what would cause such hate? And what we know now
Speaker 2: is that there was a great deal of personal animosity
Speaker 2: between the individuals. And as a matter of fact, one
Speaker 2: of the reasons that I think Lily Luciano and Mike
Speaker 2: Bonel for their work on the case is they actually
Speaker 2: captured an interview with Bob Bird wherein he describes his
Speaker 2: role in the cases and his knowledge of Clifton. In particular,
Speaker 2: he says two things. One he says, yes, there was
Speaker 2: animosity between us, and number two, he says, I didn't
Speaker 2: have anything to do with arresting Oscar Cliff in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty five, and secondly, I didn't have anything to do
Speaker 2: with arresting in nineteen seventy five. And third is I
Speaker 2: didn't have anything to do with destroying the evidence. His
Speaker 2: three statements about that are absolutely one hundred percent factually false.
Speaker 2: The police report from nineteen sixty five, he's signed at
Speaker 2: the bottom as the arresting officer. We know he was
Speaker 2: the arresting officer number two regarding the evidence destruction. His
Speaker 2: name is specifically on the evidence destruction by the two
Speaker 2: other officers who admit in writing then to completing this
Speaker 2: illegal act that they did so at the direct order
Speaker 2: bought Bird and third that you know for a Bird.
Speaker 2: In his statement to Lilia, he admits that had he
Speaker 2: done that, that would have been in the illegal act.
Speaker 2: It's one of the only things that he says in
Speaker 2: the interview and that is very true, is that, yes,
Speaker 2: going back clearly to nineteen sixty five, it was very
Speaker 2: well founded California law. If you were in custody, if
Speaker 2: you're either arrested for a time or you've been tried
Speaker 2: and convicted, so long as you're in the jurisdiction of
Speaker 2: the state, the race of the state, that the state
Speaker 2: is compelled to hold and maintain the evidence used for
Speaker 2: your trial and conviction for the period where you are
Speaker 2: in custody and for one year thereafter. So here we've
Speaker 2: got an instance where Bob Bird ordered the destruction of
Speaker 2: this evidence within within six months of the time that
Speaker 2: the conviction was garnered. Right, That is incomprehensible by any standard.
Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, every law enforcement officer I
Speaker 2: talked about too about this case is like, are you sure?
Speaker 2: Are you certain about that? That is deeply disturbing and illegal.
Speaker 2: That is almost like it can't happen, and yet it did.
Speaker 2: And yet that's the very reason why so much of
Speaker 2: the tree proof that we now want to know about
Speaker 2: this case. What was the evidence? Were there anything items
Speaker 2: that could have been tested that could still have exonerated
Speaker 2: Oscar Clifton through DNA, and so had that material been preserved,
Speaker 2: would have been available when DNA testing was finally ordered
Speaker 2: in the case in twenty ten, And it was not
Speaker 2: until that time. It was not until twenty ten when
Speaker 2: this state, when Tilaia County finally admitted to the court
Speaker 2: that yes, these items were destroyed in our custod and
Speaker 2: they were ordered at the destruction of this lead investigator
Speaker 2: on this case. It's in writing, it's a court admission.
Speaker 2: This sad part about that is that there was never
Speaker 2: any criminal investigation into the significance of that had been
Speaker 2: clear that had there been a hearing on this, it
Speaker 2: could have come out that, yes, in fact, since the
Speaker 2: evidence is no longer available to be tested, that would
Speaker 2: have been used to exonerate. Now that's a due process
Speaker 2: violation and Oscar Clifton could have been exonerated in that moment. Instead,
Speaker 2: he would die in prison three years after that round
Speaker 2: of DNA testing happened.
Speaker 3: Lesson has an opportunity to stop for these messages. Now
Speaker 3: you talked about that he died in prison. Well, we
Speaker 3: haven't talked about why on earth would they frame Oscar
Speaker 3: Clifton and cover up the crimes of DiAngelo? What would
Speaker 3: be the motive for bird for all of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a really tough one, and I try
Speaker 2: to delve into that in some cases in the book.
Speaker 2: Obviously there's only one person who can answer this question
Speaker 2: who is still alive and has admitted that if the
Speaker 2: actions were true, he would have committed a crime. Me
Speaker 2: point out something that I think is really significant here
Speaker 2: is that in the state of California, there is a
Speaker 2: penal code statute that says if evidence, if false evidence
Speaker 2: is used to obtain a death penalty conviction, which Oscar
Speaker 2: Clifton was ultimately charged with and found by the jury.
Speaker 2: As part of the verdict, Oscar Clifton was given the
Speaker 2: death sentence initially that was later commuted for the simple
Speaker 2: fact that, as the evidence would show, there was not
Speaker 2: a rape. The charge that was presented at trial was
Speaker 2: attempted rape, not rape. There was never any revidence of that.
Speaker 2: The autopsy confirmed it, the testimony of the corner confirmed
Speaker 2: all of this. There was no actual rape. So it
Speaker 2: comes down to the question of what evidence was there
Speaker 2: at the time, and if we're presenting false evidence, what
Speaker 2: is the implication of that. This crime provides for the
Speaker 2: death penalty for the person who procures false evidence to
Speaker 2: obtain a false conviction. And that's really important because the
Speaker 2: death penalty, any death penalty case has no statute limits.
Speaker 2: So I would say, even though there has never once
Speaker 2: been any prosecution of this particular statute, would be a
Speaker 2: great time for the State of California to be looking
Speaker 2: at this and saying, wait a minute, did we put
Speaker 2: an innocent man on death row? Did we subject him
Speaker 2: to a death penalty through false evidence? And if so,
Speaker 2: that case is still has no statute limitations. This could
Speaker 2: be investigated today. So that's why number one, this is
Speaker 2: everything else that I'm about to say is still viable
Speaker 2: information number two because of the way that the crime
Speaker 2: was really investigated that night December twenty six, nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 2: It was focused on this invoice book and around the
Speaker 2: bicycle and really well before the body is found, and
Speaker 2: this idea that they needed to arrest Oscar Clifton as
Speaker 2: soon as they could, and that's exactly what they did.
Speaker 2: By one am, they had him in custody on suspicion
Speaker 2: and promicide and kidnapping charge and anything that they could
Speaker 2: and to search his home illegally without a warrant. They
Speaker 2: arrested him without a warrant. And again it's Bob Bird's
Speaker 2: name at the bottom of those documents, so his denial
Speaker 2: that he was there is once again highly suspicious. Then
Speaker 2: we go back to the question of Bird and Dangelo,
Speaker 2: and the other thing that's that's really important is the
Speaker 2: way that the Sheriff's office and the city police department
Speaker 2: in Exeter worked. The Sheriff's office at that time didn't
Speaker 2: have a lot of extra money to have a lot
Speaker 2: of substations, so they would essentially ask you to the
Speaker 2: municipalities to carve out a corner where they could put
Speaker 2: a desk in a radio and have the sheriffs be
Speaker 2: able to use this little corner is their quote unquote substation.
Speaker 2: And that's exactly what happened in Exeter the night of
Speaker 2: December twenty sixth. While this investigation is proceeding. They are
Speaker 2: using the Exeter Police Department to conduct this investigation. That's
Speaker 2: in his that's in Bird's notes about where they're meeting
Speaker 2: and where all this is being coordinated. Jody Angelos is
Speaker 2: working as the violent He is the head of the
Speaker 2: violent crimes unit in Exeter starting in October of seventy five,
Speaker 2: so two months prior to this, he is the lead
Speaker 2: investigator for violent crimes. So we have that nexus. Then
Speaker 2: we have another problem. We have the loot that I
Speaker 2: mentioned earlier. The loot is found on Avenue two fifty
Speaker 2: six out near Exeter, and it's found on a road
Speaker 2: called named Hypericum Road. If you look at the nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy five phone directory, as I have many times, the
Speaker 2: only address listing for Oscar Cliffson because he'd been away
Speaker 2: from the area for a number of years. After his
Speaker 2: initial arrest, he'd moved back, but he had had his
Speaker 2: phone for very long and so he wasn't in the directory.
Speaker 2: In fact, the only listing there is his parents who
Speaker 2: live on Hypericum Avenue. Deeply suspicious. Number two. Number three
Speaker 2: is that the at the Richmond homicide location where she's
Speaker 2: found the day after the bicycle's found, she's found me
Speaker 2: out early that afternoon. At that location. There's also a
Speaker 2: ski mask which matches the description exactly that provided by
Speaker 2: bet Snelling. It's a zigzag pattern. It's very unusual design,
Speaker 2: and you know was the offender. Was D'Angelo trying to say,
Speaker 2: I'm painting this picture. I'm telling you that the person
Speaker 2: who killed Dono Joe Richmond was the same person who
Speaker 2: killed blood Snelling and he wore this mask and you
Speaker 2: should follow this lead and an interesting coincidence and something
Speaker 2: that we'll never know because among the items destroyed was
Speaker 2: the ski mask. So again, had that been available for testing,
Speaker 2: that she certainly would have been powerful physical evidence. Then
Speaker 2: on top of that, we have another critical issue for Bombert.
Speaker 2: One of the other things that he denies in his
Speaker 2: interview with Lily Luciano is that he ever knew the
Speaker 2: name jody'angelo. He said, I have no familiar ay with
Speaker 2: that name. Never heard it before. That's pretty incredible for
Speaker 2: someone a who works at the Exeter substation and is
Speaker 2: in the city. Bobard not just lived in Exeter for
Speaker 2: this kind of frame that worked there as well.
Speaker 3: More.
Speaker 2: Perhaps even most compelling about that is that where Boberd's
Speaker 2: home is is two doors and I want to say
Speaker 2: that again, just for the people in the back of
Speaker 2: the room. Two doors away. When where Jody Angelo lived
Speaker 2: for this entire period. Jody Angelo, his name and address
Speaker 2: are on his marriage license issued in November of seventy three.
Speaker 2: It's on Emperor Street, six hundred block of Emperor Street,
Speaker 2: at the intersection there his duplex walked two doors up
Speaker 2: and you were at the home of Tillarry County Detective
Speaker 2: Sergeant Bob Bird. It would be absolutely the greatest coincidence
Speaker 2: in the world for him to live two doors away,
Speaker 2: and the way that the streets are aligned for him,
Speaker 2: the only way for him to act, says his home
Speaker 2: from the west side would be to drive around the
Speaker 2: corner King and then Emperor and then on to Beach.
Speaker 2: The only way for him to access his home would
Speaker 2: be to drive by the spot where everybody else in
Speaker 2: town described seeing Jody Angelo's police car parked outside his
Speaker 2: Emperor residents. I have no explanation for but Bird's Bird's involvement. Finally,
Speaker 2: I want to say one more thing about Bird and
Speaker 2: what he knew that was unique and the course of
Speaker 2: the proceedings. Oscar Clifton is brought to trial in late
Speaker 2: June of nineteen seventy six, and there's another offender who's
Speaker 2: been operating in the area at the time who went
Speaker 2: under the moniker, the Porterville rapist. He was arrested, charged
Speaker 2: and confessed to ultimately I believe it was seven though
Speaker 2: he was charged with thirteen, charged with these seven particular rapes,
Speaker 2: and he confessed to them and was found guilty for
Speaker 2: those charges. During the trial. He's arrested. While the trial's
Speaker 2: going on, He's being surveilled and then arrested immediately. I
Speaker 2: think it's maybe two days after the verdictsrendered. And it
Speaker 2: turns out that during the time that right after his
Speaker 2: arrest is procured that Sacramento Sheriffs, the same investigators for
Speaker 2: the Easter Area rapists, contact the Tillaria County Sheriff's Department
Speaker 2: and tell them to put a hold on their suspect.
Speaker 2: Ben Galloway because his description and the activities that he
Speaker 2: did inside the home appear to be such a close
Speaker 2: match to the Easter Aia rapist. So what they do
Speaker 2: is they deliver the information about the series and they
Speaker 2: put a hold on him, and it's not until there
Speaker 2: is another rape immediately well Galoway's in custody, after he's
Speaker 2: in custody, that they say, wait a minute, we got
Speaker 2: the wrong guy. Obviously the series is continuing. You can
Speaker 2: take off our hold. But in that intervening period they
Speaker 2: had delivered to Bird, the head of the violent Crimes Unit,
Speaker 2: they had delivered to him. That's one of the first
Speaker 2: people Disney the verse two arm points that anyone in
Speaker 2: law enforcement had seen at that point, so he had
Speaker 2: had some familiarity already with the Easteria rapist. M The
Speaker 2: second thing is is that by February of nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 2: they had developed enough of a profile about the Easter
Speaker 2: Aia rapist to deliver an interagency memorandum. And in this
Speaker 2: memo they describe not just his MO but his physical
Speaker 2: description and one other key attribute, and that is the
Speaker 2: blood type of the offender. The blood type is type A,
Speaker 2: and that is DeAngelo's blood type, and you say, well,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, isn't the a non secretor It turns
Speaker 2: out that the reason they were able to get it, yes,
Speaker 2: they did confirm through the blood tester, through the zerology
Speaker 2: that they were doing at the time, that yes, the
Speaker 2: defender wasn't a nonsecrator. But the blood type came from
Speaker 2: a scuffle during one of the rape victims. She had
Speaker 2: used his own knife and caused him to cut himself
Speaker 2: and he bled on the victim, and she being a
Speaker 2: different blood type, they were able to distinguish this and
Speaker 2: they said, ah, this is the offender's blood that came
Speaker 2: from the knife wound. We now know that he's a
Speaker 2: Type A. They had a lot of information about the
Speaker 2: offender and so that when they put out this interagency
Speaker 2: memo in February of nineteen seventy seven is suspicious. And
Speaker 2: the reason I use the word suspicious because February twenty eight,
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy seven, is the date that Er had ordered
Speaker 2: the destruction of the evidence in the Clifton case. I mean,
Speaker 2: without any explanation, without any benefit of the law or
Speaker 2: any other reason. There had been only one blood type
Speaker 2: that was identified in the analysis of the evidence during
Speaker 2: the Richmond case. And this goes exactly contrary to the
Speaker 2: statement that the Tillarry County DA's office issued in their
Speaker 2: quote unquote conviction integrity review stated improperly in that review
Speaker 2: that the offender, whoever all of the material that they
Speaker 2: examined in that that there was the criminalist, had never
Speaker 2: identified a blood type of any of the samples. That
Speaker 2: is not true. At grand jury, one of the criminalists
Speaker 2: testified that the sample that he tested of the trusted
Speaker 2: collection of mud and debris from the skin of the victim,
Speaker 2: he developed a blood type A. That was not his
Speaker 2: testimony at trial. It appeared to be exculpatory information which
Speaker 2: was hidden from defense council. There's no explanation for why
Speaker 2: defense council didn't himself read the grand jury transcript. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of other reasons to call into question ray
Speaker 2: dono hughes integrity and actions as defense counsel in this case.
Speaker 2: That aside, it is an absolute misstatement for anyone to
Speaker 2: say that no criminalists identified a blood type. In fact,
Speaker 2: there was, and it was type A. Type A is
Speaker 2: d'angelo's blood type, and it was the ear's blood type
Speaker 2: confirmed in this memo that was distributed at the exact time.
Speaker 2: So here is Bob Bird now looking at all of
Speaker 2: these different things. He now sees that the person that
Speaker 2: if he had any reason to suspect that d'angelo's timing
Speaker 2: for his departure for the Steria Rapist series, a person
Speaker 2: that Sacramento had contacted him to say, Hey, wait a minute,
Speaker 2: did do you have any information about maybe someone who
Speaker 2: left Tlarry and came up here? Do you have any
Speaker 2: other crimes in the area that you were working. Do
Speaker 2: you have any other forces or factors that could make
Speaker 2: anyone from your area be an new steria rapist suspect.
Speaker 2: He has all of that information, and apparently he says nothing.
Speaker 2: He knows too, that the blood type that they did
Speaker 2: develop in the Richmond case is now an exact match
Speaker 2: on this memorandum. I don't have any explanation. All I
Speaker 2: have are questions, and none of them appear to be
Speaker 2: in any way comfortable questions for Bob Bird. I would
Speaker 2: very much like the State of California to get him
Speaker 2: under subpoena, get his testimony before he dies, and answer
Speaker 2: that very question, what did you know, when did you
Speaker 2: know it? And why did you destroy this evidence, because
Speaker 2: it appears as if now you were covering either for
Speaker 2: your colleague, for your neighbor, or for the person that
Speaker 2: you knew had fled to Sacramento at the exact time
Speaker 2: this series picks up in Sacramento.
Speaker 3: I want to thank you so much Tony Reid for
Speaker 3: coming on and talking about your extraordinary book twelve twenty
Speaker 3: six seventy five. We could go on for a lot
Speaker 3: longer trying to explain this incredible story for those people
Speaker 3: that might want to take another look or more take
Speaker 3: a longer look. Is there a website for this book?
Speaker 2: Close more Yes, So the website has the same name.
Speaker 2: It's entitled as the book. It's twelve hyphen twenty six
Speaker 2: hyphen seventy five twelve twenty six seventy five dot com.
Speaker 2: That's the URL. There's also a Facebook group December twenty
Speaker 2: sixth seventy five that has all of this, and you
Speaker 2: know where. The book has a lot more information in it.
Speaker 2: It's not just a restatement of the podcast. There's a
Speaker 2: lot more new information that I've learned since doing even
Speaker 2: the last episode about eight months ago. I cover a
Speaker 2: lot of things in the podcast that are out that
Speaker 2: are not in this book, so there's definitely some benefit
Speaker 2: to listening to those that are. Forty Go to forty
Speaker 2: two episodes if you really like hearing my voice and
Speaker 2: so far, Dan, I really like hearing a lot more
Speaker 2: in these other episodes, and I go into, for instance,
Speaker 2: I go into the DNA testing that supposedly excluded the
Speaker 2: Angelo and why the tilliary DA's office are absolutely mistaken
Speaker 2: in their interpretation of that evidence. There's a whole two
Speaker 2: episodes about the flaws in that analysis and how I've
Speaker 2: had that examined by external forensic scientists who confirmed my
Speaker 2: join beings.
Speaker 3: That's low incredible. Thank you so much, Tony Reid, twelve,
Speaker 3: twenty six, seventy five. It's been fascinating. Thank you so much, Tony.
Speaker 3: Have a good night.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Dan, take care, thank you, and idol today