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Speaker 7: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 7: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 7: written about them Gasey, Bundy Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK Every
Speaker 7: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 7: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 7: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 2: Good Evening at daybreak on January sixth, nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 2: a couple on a camping trip in the Mohave Desert
Speaker 2: set out for a stroll and never returned. The local
Speaker 2: sheriff's office eventually discovered that Barry and Louise Burman had
Speaker 2: been murdered. As years passed and the double homicide remained unsolved,
Speaker 2: the Burman case spawned speculation and conjecture despite extensive investigation
Speaker 2: by local and federal authorities. To date, there's never been
Speaker 2: an arrest made in the case, let alone a conviction,
Speaker 2: but this doesn't mean the crime is unsolvable. After years
Speaker 2: of investigation, research and interviews, Kerrie was able to link
Speaker 2: the Berman murders to a Cambodian sex crimes and trafficking
Speaker 2: case involving a former marine. This is the first book
Speaker 2: to tell the full story of the Burman murders and
Speaker 2: uncover the likely suspect. The books that were featuring this
Speaker 2: Evening is The Burman Murders, Unraveling the Mohabi Desert's most
Speaker 2: mysterious unsolved crime with my special guest, investigative journalist and
Speaker 2: attorney and author, Doug carry Good evening and welcome to
Speaker 2: the program, Doug Carrey.
Speaker 6: Dan, it's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you so much, and congratulations on this
Speaker 2: upcoming book, The Berman Murders. It's been a long road
Speaker 2: getting to hear Dan, as you do in the you
Speaker 2: talk about a long road. Can you just tell us
Speaker 2: a little bit about how long a project this was
Speaker 2: for you, and you talk about it in the introduction.
Speaker 2: Just the mysteries of the Mohave Desert has been one
Speaker 2: of your passions, instilled by your grandmother, Dale King, and
Speaker 2: in the eighties you became involved in desert conservation and
Speaker 2: co founded a wilderness group, Desert Survivors, And one of
Speaker 2: the places you cherished the most was a pristine and
Speaker 2: channing locale, Saline Valley. So tell us a little bit
Speaker 2: about just your interest in this case. Tell us a
Speaker 2: little bit about your background in this area and how
Speaker 2: you became involved in this extraordinary book project.
Speaker 4: Well, Dan, I was enamored of the area. Saline Valley
Speaker 4: is one of the most remarkable locations on the planet.
Speaker 4: It lies about two hundred miles north of Law, Los Angeles,
Speaker 4: and it's kind of in between the Sierra Nevada Mountain
Speaker 4: Range and Death Valley, ringed by high mountains. The access
Speaker 4: into that area is extraordinarily difficult. You have to go
Speaker 4: on rough dirt roads. And in the middle of this
Speaker 4: enchanting valley, where there's rippling sand dunes and a shimmering
Speaker 4: saltwater lake is a palm tree oasis of hot springs
Speaker 4: that have been developed over the years into a kind
Speaker 4: of counterculture oasis. It's just a remarkable spot with interesting energy,
Speaker 4: unique and eccentric people. And I've been going there for
Speaker 4: years and it was one of my favorite spots. And
Speaker 4: so when these folks disappeared, i mean, through the small
Speaker 4: community of people that are interested in Saline Valley, this
Speaker 4: news rippled. And then almost three years later, when their
Speaker 4: bodies turned up in a cutbank grave, a shallow grave
Speaker 4: in a far away desert drywash, miles from the oasis,
Speaker 4: everybody wondered what happened. It was clear they had been murdered,
Speaker 4: and the case was never solved. So fast forward twenty fourteen.
Speaker 4: I just I thought about the case, and I decided
Speaker 4: I just want to go back and see what I
Speaker 4: can find out. And that started the nine year journey
Speaker 4: to unravel the case of the Burman murders.
Speaker 2: Now, tell us where this Saline Valley is. You say
Speaker 2: about two hundred miles from north of Los Angeles, but
Speaker 2: you write about that it has more in common with
Speaker 2: small town Wyoming than any kind of urban connection to California.
Speaker 4: So wait, Dan, When people think of California, a lot
Speaker 4: of times they think of urban California, or the coast,
Speaker 4: or perhaps Yosemite. But there's a whole part of California
Speaker 4: that really has more in common with Nevada in terms
Speaker 4: of the culture, the land escape than it does with
Speaker 4: what you would traditionally think of as California. And it's
Speaker 4: commonly called the East Sierra. The Sierra Mountain Nevada Range
Speaker 4: is this hundreds of mile long mountain spine, And when
Speaker 4: you go east of that mountain range, between the mountains
Speaker 4: and the Nevada border, there's a part of California that's
Speaker 4: really quite rural and unspoiled, Inio County, which is where
Speaker 4: this took place. Is about ten thousand square miles, about
Speaker 4: the size of the state of Connecticut, yet it has
Speaker 4: a population of only about fifteen thousand people.
Speaker 6: And the little.
Speaker 4: Towns are very a rural in character and not like
Speaker 4: you would expect to find in California. And it's the
Speaker 4: it's the officials the Sheriff's office in Inio County and
Speaker 4: seated in these small towns that took responsibility for trying
Speaker 4: to solve the disappearance and then later the apparent homicide
Speaker 4: of the Burmans.
Speaker 2: You take us immediately to Sheriff's headquarters in Inyo County.
Speaker 2: January tenth, nineteen eighty six, Deputy Leon boyer As was
Speaker 2: a call from Robert Pollard, commonly known as Chili Bob,
Speaker 2: a campground host at the Hot Springs in Saline Valley.
Speaker 2: Tell us about what Chili Bob has to say and report.
Speaker 2: Chili Bob was quite a character. He was known for
Speaker 2: his fondness for beer, and if you went out to
Speaker 2: Saline Valley, he was the campground host. He lived in
Speaker 2: a little trailer out there, and he had been anointed
Speaker 2: by the US Department of Interior Bureau of Land Management
Speaker 2: that putatively managed this area to kind of watch over things.
Speaker 2: And the reason they anointed him as the campground host
Speaker 2: is because he had a two way radio.
Speaker 6: He was the only one.
Speaker 4: That could communicate outside of the valley and he was
Speaker 4: able to summon authorities if something came up. So he
Speaker 4: put in a call to the Sheriff's office and Independence,
Speaker 4: which is this little town population six hundred and seated
Speaker 4: at the Sheriff's headquarters. Fielding the call was a guy
Speaker 4: who was a rancher, part time deputy named Leon Boyer.
Speaker 4: Just classic rancher type, kind of slow talking, common sense,
Speaker 4: big hands, piercing, blue eyes kind of a guy, and
Speaker 4: who had a real good common sense for crime and criminals.
Speaker 4: And he becomes the guy that, over the course of
Speaker 4: this case is the one who's stuck with it more
Speaker 4: than anybody else, a remarkable individual.
Speaker 2: Well, tell us what Deputy Boyer does. He talks to
Speaker 2: his Larry fresh Hour, another deputy, and expects him to
Speaker 2: go check out the situation at the campground near Palm Springs.
Speaker 2: But tell us what does happen and when they get
Speaker 2: around to going and finding out about this from Chili Bob.
Speaker 4: Yes, Dan, just to clarify in Saline Valley, what people
Speaker 4: call Palm Springs or sometimes the singular Palm Spring is
Speaker 4: a tiny little oasis of its own, not the city
Speaker 4: of Palm Springs, hundreds of miles away. So when Chili
Speaker 4: Bob calls in radios into the Sheriff's office, leon Boyer
Speaker 4: then dispatches a deputy to go and check out what's
Speaker 4: going on. There's an abandoned vehicle. These people haven't been
Speaker 4: seen for days, but the deputy, for reasons known only
Speaker 4: to him, he's passed away. So I wasn't able to
Speaker 4: get his comment. He just kind of sits on the call.
Speaker 4: Maybe he thinks they probably wandered off, whatever his reasoning was.
Speaker 4: He got the call midday on a Friday, and it
Speaker 4: wasn't until Monday that when leon Boyer called him back
Speaker 4: and said, get on this, that he finally made the
Speaker 4: truck out into Saline Valley, which is not an easy
Speaker 4: trek at any time, but especially in the winter when
Speaker 4: those roads can get pretty rough. So he got the
Speaker 4: department's four wheel drive Ford Bronco and finally had it
Speaker 4: out there hours on a dirt road, you have to
Speaker 4: drive first on a two lane highway that might be
Speaker 4: fairly characterized as the middle of nowhere, halfway to Death Valley,
Speaker 4: and then from there you have to take a fifty
Speaker 4: mile very rough dirt road in order to get into
Speaker 4: the Hot Springs. So that's what Deputy fresh Hour does
Speaker 4: and finds this abandoned vehicle without any clue what happened
Speaker 4: to the owners.
Speaker 2: Now you say, in nineteen eighty six the Hot Springs
Speaker 2: had become the site of a cultural phenomena. Tell us,
Speaker 2: what do you mean by that?
Speaker 4: Well, it remains that way today, and it was especially
Speaker 4: so back then. This Hot Springs area was just a
Speaker 4: place that drew unique kind of characters that are drawn
Speaker 4: to the desert. My grandmother was one of them, so
Speaker 4: I'd had some familiarity with this growing up. But you
Speaker 4: get all kinds of people from all walks of life.
Speaker 4: It's one of the places where you might find firefighters
Speaker 4: or police officers who are just on a getaway trip
Speaker 4: and next to a magic bus full of pot smoking hippies,
Speaker 4: and nobody seems to mind each other. It's a place
Speaker 4: where the normal bounds of civilization just don't seem to apply.
Speaker 4: It's not uncommon when you first drive into camp to
Speaker 4: see somebody walking with a big broad brimmed hat on,
Speaker 4: maybe a pair of sunglasses and sandals, and that's it.
Speaker 6: Buck naked.
Speaker 4: And it's not because it's a place of licentiousness. It's
Speaker 4: not a hookup side. It's more of just a back
Speaker 4: to nature kind of a place and people are more freewheeling. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's the nature of the culture there.
Speaker 2: When the deputies get to the campground near this Wizard
Speaker 2: Pool soaking pool, they find the nineteen eighty two Thatt's
Speaker 2: in king cab where we'll drive. What do they find
Speaker 2: inside the truck and what do they find in terms
Speaker 2: of clues in and around the truck.
Speaker 4: Very little in and around the truck except for a
Speaker 4: couple of towels that had been thrown over some bushes
Speaker 4: after the Burmans arrived in camp and soaked in one
Speaker 4: of the soaking pools. And just to set the stage
Speaker 4: a little bit more so, there's hot springs. But over
Speaker 4: the years, the folks, the regulars they're called, who come
Speaker 4: out there, had piped the water to these amazing stone
Speaker 4: and cement bathing pools that are still there, and that
Speaker 4: becomes the focal point of the camp. People gather, and
Speaker 4: especially on a cold night because it was winter when
Speaker 4: they disappeared, you climb into the tub and you're soaking
Speaker 4: in this wonderfully hot water. Anyway, when the sheriff's office
Speaker 4: got out there and really started digging into what happened,
Speaker 4: they jimmied open the door of the truck. They found
Speaker 4: some cowboy boots. They found the kinds of things that
Speaker 4: you'd bring on a car camping trip, like bedding and clothes.
Speaker 4: But interestingly, they didn't find their day packs. They didn't
Speaker 4: find any hiking type shoes. They did find a pair
Speaker 4: of cameras that was interesting, and the indication was pretty
Speaker 4: quickly that what had happened is they had the sheriff's
Speaker 4: office got a report that these folks had gotten up
Speaker 4: and taken a morning walk and had not come back.
Speaker 2: So they identify the vehicle, and they identify the people
Speaker 2: that are missing and apparently walked from this campground. Tell
Speaker 2: us who they identify these people as, and then how
Speaker 2: do they proceed in terms of getting breaks, in terms
Speaker 2: of finding out what happened to these people in at
Speaker 2: just after New Year's nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 4: So Dan, if you'd been out there when these folks arrived,
Speaker 4: you would have just thought they were campers like anybody else,
Speaker 4: very unassuming. The truck that they drove was a good truck.
Speaker 4: It was a good dots in four wheel drive truck,
Speaker 4: but not you know, some kind of a remarkable or
Speaker 4: ostentatious type vehicle. They just looked like hippie types. But
Speaker 4: Barry Berman was actually the era apparent to the Aluah
Speaker 4: Liqueur fortune. His father, Jules Berman, was just an extraordinary
Speaker 4: Southern California entrepreneur who was into real estate and oil.
Speaker 4: But had made his fortune because early in his life
Speaker 4: he got into the liquor business, and after World War
Speaker 4: Two he spotted a trend. He saw that people seemed
Speaker 4: to be interested in imported products. It was attributed to
Speaker 4: the fact that a lot of boys had come back
Speaker 4: from the war and they were kind of interested in
Speaker 4: things from overseas. So he thought, well, maybe this would
Speaker 4: apply to liquor. So the first place he dove in
Speaker 4: was with a with an interesting tasting beer called Heineken,
Speaker 4: and he got involved in bringing Heineken to the United States,
Speaker 4: made a fortune from that, and then kept going.
Speaker 6: J and B.
Speaker 4: Scotch, Bass, Plao and others. And then when he had
Speaker 4: the opportunity to buy an obscure Mexican liqueur called Kalua.
Speaker 4: He ponied up, bought that brand and built it into
Speaker 4: a million case a year international busines to the point
Speaker 4: where Jules Berman had a mansion in Beverly Hills staffed
Speaker 4: by servants. He had a big home in Acapulco. He
Speaker 4: had a ten thousand acre hunting preserve. He had a
Speaker 4: yacht named Kalua. He had a garage full of exotic cars.
Speaker 4: I mean he was rolling at the highest levels. His
Speaker 4: only child, Barry, though, was of a different stripe and
Speaker 4: rejected his father's materialism. And Barry was married to Louise Burman,
Speaker 4: who was actually seventeen years older.
Speaker 6: Barry was thirty five when.
Speaker 4: He vanished, Louise was fifty two. Kind of a mismatch
Speaker 4: in a way. He was apparently a virgin. You know,
Speaker 4: this was his first first lover, whereas Louise had had
Speaker 4: many lovers and Barry was her fourth husband.
Speaker 2: You write about how they met, but first how Barry
Speaker 2: issuing his father's lifestyle and that being a materialism and
Speaker 2: that wealth. What he was searching for and what he
Speaker 2: found and where.
Speaker 4: So after high school, Barry decided not to go to
Speaker 4: college he just didn't feel the call of academia, and
Speaker 4: he had the means if he wanted, and the opportunity
Speaker 4: to join his father's business or just be an air
Speaker 4: too well. His father indulged him, but Barry wanted something more.
Speaker 4: He was a man of deeply held convictions, and so
Speaker 4: he went on a seeker's journey, and that brought him
Speaker 4: into northern India, into Punjab Province, and he walked into
Speaker 4: an ashrama. When I say in ashram, it's a sprawling
Speaker 4: in the size of a town, and it's the center
Speaker 4: of a practice called Radasoamia, a transcendental meditation practice. And
Speaker 4: the reigning SatGuru at that time was a man named
Speaker 4: Charen Singh, very charismatic, well spoken, and when Barry saw
Speaker 4: him and looked into his eyes, he felt this connection.
Speaker 4: And Barry became a devotee of char and Singh and
Speaker 4: decided that he was going to what was called the
Speaker 4: path to spiritual Enlightenment, which meant things like shunning drugs
Speaker 4: and alcohol, leading an ethical life, not killing or eating meat,
Speaker 4: and meditating for two and a half hours every day.
Speaker 4: And Barry was very diligent about adhering to the path,
Speaker 4: and he met Louise because she was also somebody who
Speaker 4: had become after a wild child type existence, had become
Speaker 4: a devtee of char and singh.
Speaker 2: And that's how they met in a more practical way
Speaker 2: through the religion. She was looking for a place, and
Speaker 2: he had a place to rent as well.
Speaker 6: That's true.
Speaker 4: So they met at what's called a satsung imagine a
Speaker 4: gathering of adherence to this faith, somewhat like Sunday service.
Speaker 4: And they met at a satsung, and she mentioned she
Speaker 4: was looking for a place to live. Well, Barrie's dad
Speaker 4: at that time owned a place called the El Capitan Ranch,
Speaker 4: a thirty five hundred acre coastal front ranch north of
Speaker 4: Santa Barbara, an exquisite and extraordinary piece of property that
Speaker 4: he had purchased. And there was a slice about a
Speaker 4: twelve acre slice of that ranch that lay right on
Speaker 4: a little cove, very private piece, and there were three
Speaker 4: cottages there, and Barry and some of the other adherents
Speaker 4: of Radasoami end up moving into these three cottages and
Speaker 4: essentially having like a little Enclaver or a hamlet of
Speaker 4: people who practice a transcendental meditation. Just as a side note,
Speaker 4: Dan years later when that parcel finally changed hands, that
Speaker 4: twelve acre piece, it was purchased by Brad Pitt and
Speaker 4: Angelina Jolie. Just kind of of an interesting twist there.
Speaker 2: So let's get back to nineteen eighty six January. Their relationship.
Speaker 2: They've been married a few years. What does it characterize
Speaker 2: by and what happened? What did they decide around New
Speaker 2: Year's nineteen eighty six as a couple.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so Barry and Louise had gone through a rocky phase.
Speaker 4: I mean they were always a bit of a mismatch,
Speaker 4: and Barry himself was a very solitary person as far
Speaker 4: as we know.
Speaker 6: Louise was his first lover.
Speaker 4: So here's a young man with an older woman. They's
Speaker 4: somewhat different in personality. She's very bubbly and engaging. He's
Speaker 4: much more withdrawn, more like monk like is how he's
Speaker 4: been described by his friends. And he would sometimes conduct marriages.
Speaker 4: Even people really looked up to him. He was a
Speaker 4: man of few words. She was much more engaging in chatty,
Speaker 4: and they had just gone through a patch where they
Speaker 4: just weren't They didn't seem to be jibing, they just
Speaker 4: weren't doing well. They stopped sharing a bed, and then
Speaker 4: something happened. We're not sure how it was that they
Speaker 4: got back together, but at the end of nineteen eighty
Speaker 4: five they reconnected and they decided to celebrate by going
Speaker 4: on to make trip, and that was the trip that
Speaker 4: led them into Saline Valley.
Speaker 2: It's interesting to you write about a friend named Arthur Korb,
Speaker 2: and even though the couple Barry and Louise, or Barry
Speaker 2: especially was familiar with the area and Death Valley, Arthur
Speaker 2: Korb gave them a little hint about something that they
Speaker 2: might do if they're in the area.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 4: Barry was very interested in going to a place in
Speaker 4: Death Valley National Park called Scotty's Castle. Barry was a craftsman.
Speaker 4: He chose for his trade to handcraft iron like wrought
Speaker 4: iron gates and lamps and things like that, and out
Speaker 4: at Scotty's Castle there's extraordinary iron work and he wanted
Speaker 4: to go there and look at it and take pictures.
Speaker 4: And when Arthur Korb, who was a close friend who
Speaker 4: had actually sponsored a Barry for initiation into the faith
Speaker 4: Rodasoami Faith under the Sat Guru char and Sing, Arthur said, oh, oh, well,
Speaker 4: if you're going out there. You got to check out
Speaker 4: these hot springs and Sailing Valley. And just to step back,
Speaker 4: Barry was an outdoorsy guy. He could handle himself, and
Speaker 4: he and Arthur would sometimes go on vacation trips to
Speaker 4: explore remote hot springs. So this was in keeping with
Speaker 4: past pattern and practice. And Barry was a guy who
Speaker 4: knew his way around, and so he and Louise packed
Speaker 4: up the truck and that they found their way into
Speaker 4: Sailing Valley.
Speaker 2: Now you take us to the scene. I'm not certain
Speaker 2: of the date. You can tell us the date did,
Speaker 2: but they.
Speaker 6: Arrive at the Wizard Pool.
Speaker 2: They go to Scottie's Castle, I believe tell us about
Speaker 2: their arrival and who they find at the pool. Once
Speaker 2: they arrive at that campsite.
Speaker 4: So it's Sunday night, January five, nineteen eighty six, and
Speaker 4: they come rolling in after dark. But they find their
Speaker 4: way up to the Palm Spring, which is the more
Speaker 4: isolated of the soaking pools that are in this part
Speaker 4: of Sailing Valley. There's a more larger set of soaking
Speaker 4: pools and more of a social scene about three quarters
Speaker 4: of a mile away down the hill. Up at Palm Spring,
Speaker 4: there's two soaking pools and it tends to draw a
Speaker 4: little more of a back.
Speaker 6: To nature crowd.
Speaker 4: So they roll in after dark and they actually put
Speaker 4: on their bathing suits. They were rather modest, modest people,
Speaker 4: even though the most people out at the hotsprings don't barn.
Speaker 4: They come slipping into the water. And at the time
Speaker 4: they got into the tub, there were three men in
Speaker 4: the tub. Two of them were dirt bike riders, motorcycle guys,
Speaker 4: young guys from Modesto, California, who were out there. They'd
Speaker 4: brought their dirt bikes out and they were kind of
Speaker 4: enjoying that kind of thing. They'd been motoring around on
Speaker 4: their dirt bikes. The other fellow was in the military.
Speaker 4: They didn't know a lot about him. People hadn't talked
Speaker 4: with him much. He was traveling alone. Seemed like a
Speaker 4: bit of a laid back guy, had a resonant voice.
Speaker 4: He was an officer, Marine Corps officer or captain. He
Speaker 4: mentioned that he was in the military and they had
Speaker 4: gone to school in New Mexico. And so the three
Speaker 4: men and young men and then Barry and Louise chat
Speaker 4: in the hot tub for a while. The two dirt
Speaker 4: bike riders get up and head off to bed at
Speaker 4: some point, leaving this military man named Mike in the
Speaker 4: soaking tub with Barry and Louise, and then at some
Speaker 4: point they go their separate ways and go to bed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you take us to Monday, January sixth, and likely
Speaker 2: because of their faith, they would be up very very
Speaker 2: early to do that two and a half hour meditation.
Speaker 2: But they'd be up very very early, and it was
Speaker 2: indications that looked like they had before everyone else got up,
Speaker 2: left the camp for some sort of hike. What is
Speaker 2: the what did the bikers do that day? And what
Speaker 2: do they the dirt bikers witness this mic preparing to
Speaker 2: do that day.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you have to picture the We're at a
Speaker 4: location that is in the desert where there's really just
Speaker 4: raw desert, very rugged surrounding this location. There's a little
Speaker 4: access road coming in which itself is pretty darn a rugged,
Speaker 4: and then this small campsite where people just camp out
Speaker 4: in the desert, and then leading away from there in
Speaker 4: a northerly direction is a kind of a rough dirt
Speaker 4: road jeep trail kind of a thing that leads a
Speaker 4: couple of miles farther up to a set of hot
Speaker 4: springs that have not been developed a natural set of
Speaker 4: hot springs. It's about a two mile walk and it's
Speaker 4: possible that the Burmans were headed up there, although the
Speaker 4: report was that Louise Burman had a sore ankle and
Speaker 4: so she wasn't going to go very far. There are
Speaker 4: other little sites that you might see along the way,
Speaker 4: so it's possible they were even just taking a shorter stroll.
Speaker 4: We don't know, but there were reports that they had
Speaker 4: been heading up the road, which was a logical place
Speaker 4: to take a little walk. And it wasn't long after
Speaker 4: that the dirt bike riders spotted the military man named
Speaker 4: Mike get into his little pickup truck and he headed
Speaker 4: up this this rough road in a vehicle. And then
Speaker 4: a little while later the dirt bikers. There were the
Speaker 4: two guys who had been in the tub, and then
Speaker 4: their their buddy who had gone to bed early. The
Speaker 4: three of them get on their dirt bikes and they
Speaker 4: take off. Now they didn't just head up the road
Speaker 4: although they were supposed to stay on the road. These
Speaker 4: guys were, you know, they were rambunctious guys and they
Speaker 4: were kind of exploring little little washes and places where
Speaker 4: you could get with the dirt bike. It's against the rules,
Speaker 4: but there's nobody around to complain. So they were they
Speaker 4: were exploring around, going here and there, and and they
Speaker 4: sort of made their way up the road. They stopped
Speaker 4: at one point for lunch, and then they crossed over
Speaker 4: a pass and actually headed down into an adjacent valley
Speaker 4: called your Ear Valley.
Speaker 6: And then later in the day.
Speaker 4: They came back and they didn't see anyone the whole
Speaker 4: time that they were out on their excursions. So Mike
Speaker 4: in his truck and the Burmans had gone up this road.
Speaker 4: Nobody saw them. And then late in the day Mike
Speaker 4: comes driving down the road in his pickup truck. He
Speaker 4: goes back to his camp. He gets out and he's
Speaker 4: all dusty and dirty.
Speaker 2: Yeah you say that, Dale, these are aliases. But Dale
Speaker 2: Dunsmuir and Katie Aberdeen, they drove into Palm Spring and
Speaker 2: they noticed the truck and then they noticed this Mike
Speaker 2: come and talk to them. What did they what did
Speaker 2: They later say that he the conversation they had with him.
Speaker 4: They weren't really eager to talk about it. It took
Speaker 4: me a long time to track them down. They're off
Speaker 4: the grid kind of people, But I did track them down.
Speaker 4: Kind of an interesting encounter when I finally found them
Speaker 4: living in a in a very tidy, pleasant little trailer
Speaker 4: out in the desert. And when I came to the door,
Speaker 4: she answered, and he was standing behind in the kitchen
Speaker 4: without a stitch of clothes on and a big grin
Speaker 4: on his face. He was quite a bit older than her.
Speaker 4: She was actually quite a beauty, very well known as
Speaker 4: being a mountaineer and a very attractive younger woman. And
Speaker 4: he was known as being a very competent mountaineer. And
Speaker 4: they were known around the Eastern Sierra as people who
Speaker 4: were good mountaineers and interesting folks. And what they reported
Speaker 4: to me, and I agreed that I wouldn't print the
Speaker 4: print their names because they were a little concerned about
Speaker 4: their own safety. But what she reported to me in
Speaker 4: particular was that after the military man named Mike got
Speaker 4: back to camp, that he comes over to the camp
Speaker 4: and he said he had given up smoking, but he
Speaker 4: was hoping that they could provide him with some cigarettes,
Speaker 4: and so he traded a can of peaches for cigs,
Speaker 4: and then stood there and chatted with this very attractive
Speaker 4: woman and ended up floating the idea of that why
Speaker 4: don't they have a threesome, which is just not in
Speaker 4: keeping with the vibe out in Saline Valley. And if
Speaker 4: something like that was going to happen, it would have
Speaker 4: to develop organically, you know, over time. You don't just
Speaker 4: walk up to strangers and all of a sudden start
Speaker 4: talking in a way like you know, hey, ever had
Speaker 4: a threesome and she felt very uncomfortable and thought there
Speaker 4: is something wrong with this guy, and she wanted to
Speaker 4: just get him out of her camp.
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Speaker 2: Nixon and Boyer they're looking at this now possibly a crime.
Speaker 2: They don't have any evidence of that at this point.
Speaker 2: But they track down those bikers from Modesto. So what
Speaker 2: do they find out from one particular, Brian Casey in particular.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so let me just mention in between there there's
Speaker 4: a massive search that's undertaken, biggest search in Inneo County history.
Speaker 4: Nothing turns up. So now it's on the detective, the
Speaker 4: lead detective Nixon, Randy Nixon, and then Leon Boyer was
Speaker 4: involved too, even though he wasn't an investigator, he's a
Speaker 4: good lawman with a good instinct and he very much
Speaker 4: wanted to work on the case and he did so.
Speaker 4: What they found, they were able to track down the
Speaker 4: motorcycle riders somehow their name had been mentioned and they
Speaker 4: were able to find them, and they were talked to separately,
Speaker 4: interviewed separately, and immediately came across as guys who had
Speaker 4: nothing to hide, completely cooperative. They had taken pictures of
Speaker 4: their little excursion that day. When I started investigating, they
Speaker 4: just sent me their photos said yeah, hey, you want
Speaker 4: to look at our photos.
Speaker 6: Here they are. They sent them to me.
Speaker 4: I met with the guys very open in fact, I
Speaker 4: even got to examine one of the dirt bikes they
Speaker 4: still had it. These were guys who were just had
Speaker 4: nothing to hide, no story, to coordinate or anything, and
Speaker 4: they just told you what I told you, which is
Speaker 4: they had taken this excursion and come back and then
Speaker 4: the Burmans just didn't return to camp. The military guy
Speaker 4: had said, well, he might have seen them with their
Speaker 4: backpacks when he was out driving up up the road,
Speaker 4: and then he said he might have. He said he
Speaker 4: also had seen the dirt bike riders go by, and
Speaker 4: those later become very significant statements.
Speaker 2: You talk about this very very interesting heroic character, Leon Boyer.
Speaker 2: He's not working on the case, as you say, officially,
Speaker 2: but he decides to work on this case on his own.
Speaker 2: He is also why not, he's also a natural composite
Speaker 2: artist as well, So he decides through the description he
Speaker 2: gets through the two people at the campsite to come
Speaker 2: up with a composite and he also endeavors to continue.
Speaker 2: So how does he do that tell us about his work,
Speaker 2: vacation and the Desert Bill petition?
Speaker 6: What a guy?
Speaker 4: I mean, he right away zeroed in on this military
Speaker 4: guy named Mike, because first of all, there's not very
Speaker 4: many people out there at the scene. There was some
Speaker 4: other campers, but they were like a hippie couple with
Speaker 4: a little boy, and they apparently never left camp. So
Speaker 4: the only people seen going up this rough road that
Speaker 4: day were the dirt bike riders who just seemed honest
Speaker 4: as the day is long.
Speaker 6: And then this Mike guy. But who was he? Where
Speaker 6: was he?
Speaker 4: The Sheriff's office didn't know where to start. So what
Speaker 4: Deputy Boyers started doing is just going out into Saline
Speaker 4: Valley on his own time on vacation and just chatting
Speaker 4: with people, asking them, you know, and showing him his
Speaker 4: composite drawing and saying, have you ever seen a guy
Speaker 4: like this named Mike? And he started getting reports, Oh yeah,
Speaker 4: I remember that guy, And sure enough, at one point
Speaker 4: he finds his name. The reason is that at that
Speaker 4: time there was a move to designate parts of the
Speaker 4: desert as wilderness. It involved all the California desert. There
Speaker 4: was kind of a conservation debate going on about what
Speaker 4: do we do with these desert lands, and there were
Speaker 4: competing interests and a lot of people were involved, and
Speaker 4: folks in Sailing Valley were really nervous about the idea
Speaker 4: of some kind of more federal protection or involvement in
Speaker 4: the area. And there was a petition posted that basically
Speaker 4: was a hands off Sailing Valley kind of a petition,
Speaker 4: and Deputy Boyer started checking this petition every time he
Speaker 4: went out there just to see anybody named Mike. Well,
Speaker 4: he finds a signature of a guy named Mike, who,
Speaker 4: it turned out when they run the name is a
Speaker 4: US Marine. And not only that, his driver's license photo.
Speaker 4: I mean it's like a spitting image of the composite drawing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So they find out more information about him in
Speaker 2: terms of he's also involved in logistics, and also that
Speaker 2: just a couple of the other things the statements that
Speaker 2: he had made line up as well that he was
Speaker 2: in he lived in Barstow. And so how do they
Speaker 2: proceed in preparing to be able to interview this pepe.
Speaker 4: Once they have him located, the inter County Sheriff's office
Speaker 4: decides to do a surprise interview. It turns out he
Speaker 4: is the adjunct to the commanding General at the Marine
Speaker 4: Corps Logistics based Barstow, which is a massive logistics space
Speaker 4: obviously out in Barstow, still there, and he is the
Speaker 4: designated adjunct to the commanding officer, and they're concerned. They
Speaker 4: just decide we're just going to go out and do it.
Speaker 4: By surprise, they did coordinate it with NCIS, or actually
Speaker 4: the predecessor to INCIS, but the Naval Investigative Service, they
Speaker 4: coordinated that they were going to come out there. That
Speaker 4: the general did not have a lot of advanced notice,
Speaker 4: not that they didn't trust him, but they just felt,
Speaker 4: we're just going to go out there and spring it.
Speaker 4: By that time, Randy Nixon was off the case. Leon
Speaker 4: Boyer wasn't brought along because he wasn't a trained investigator,
Speaker 4: So it was two other investigators go out there and
Speaker 4: they set up in a conference room and spring an
Speaker 4: interview on this marine named Mike to see what he
Speaker 4: might have to say.
Speaker 2: You write about the incredible questioning that they do, and
Speaker 2: also of the characteristics of a person you say that
Speaker 2: is lying and what that entails in the answering of
Speaker 2: those questions.
Speaker 4: Well, one thing I learned Dan in writing this book
Speaker 4: and interviewing people in law enforcement and also doing research,
Speaker 4: which is that a lot of the things that you
Speaker 4: and I might look at as being telltale signs of
Speaker 4: line if we hadn't done our homeworker. Actually can just
Speaker 4: be natural nervousness. A person who doesn't look you in
Speaker 4: the eye or shifts around, they may just be nervous.
Speaker 4: But there are some indications that a person is lying.
Speaker 4: One of them is that if they can demonstrate to
Speaker 4: you that they have pretty good memory and they have
Speaker 4: specific answers to things that aren't threatening, but then when
Speaker 4: you get into the threatening content, suddenly their memory seems
Speaker 4: to fail and their answers turned vague.
Speaker 6: That's one sign of somebody who's lying.
Speaker 4: Another is that they might try to keep changing the subject,
Speaker 4: that they don't want to pin themselves down.
Speaker 6: And this Mike the Marine.
Speaker 4: Exhibited all of those characteristics, and his story kept changing
Speaker 4: and it was like he was trying to feel his way.
Speaker 6: What do they know?
Speaker 4: And it was a remarkable interview. Honestly, he would have
Speaker 4: don't hold it against me. I'm a lawyer by background,
Speaker 4: so I think like a lawyer. As I first read
Speaker 4: that interview. After the Sheriff's office agreed that they were
Speaker 4: going to cooperate in my investigation and turnover files from
Speaker 4: this cold case, I was so fascinated. When I got
Speaker 4: my hands on the transcript of that interview, and as
Speaker 4: I was reading it and his story kept changing and
Speaker 4: he was going here there, I wanted to tap him
Speaker 4: on the shoulder.
Speaker 6: And say stop. The lawyer in me was like, you
Speaker 6: need to be quiet.
Speaker 4: You are incriminating yourself right here, and he definitely did
Speaker 4: by just he came up with all these different store
Speaker 4: well I might have done this, and then they tell him, well,
Speaker 4: if you've done that, that's inconsistent with this fact. Oh well,
Speaker 4: then I might have been this that I did. And
Speaker 4: he never did pin himself down. Now they interviewed him
Speaker 4: before they even had bodies. It was only ten months
Speaker 4: since he had been out there, and he couldn't remember
Speaker 4: whether he was there alone or with a person. He
Speaker 4: couldn't remember where he camped. He gave multiple stories about
Speaker 4: what he did on the day that they disappeared, and
Speaker 4: whether he met them. He finally started admitting to things
Speaker 4: as he got more cornered. But the guy was all
Speaker 4: over the place. It's of quite an incriminating interview. So
Speaker 4: I have to say this suspect, and I'll give you
Speaker 4: his name. It's Michael Pepe. He's never been charged, and
Speaker 4: it's important to note he's never been arrested, never been charged,
Speaker 4: and so in the eyes of the law, he's innocent
Speaker 4: until proven guilty. So what I do in the book
Speaker 4: is I'm not capable of judging whether somebody's innocent or guilty.
Speaker 4: But what I can do is present the facts, present
Speaker 4: the case. Because law enforcement was sure they had the
Speaker 4: right guy, and when I came into it, I didn't
Speaker 4: have any dog in this hunt. I thought, well, maybe
Speaker 4: they just got it wrong. But when you start to
Speaker 4: look at the evidence, it does tend to point in
Speaker 4: one direction. And he's never given an explanation for any
Speaker 4: of this. It says god given right and his constitutional
Speaker 4: right not to say a word. But you know I
Speaker 4: tried multiple times to get a word out of him.
Speaker 4: Neither him nor his lawyers would ever agree to that.
Speaker 2: You write that it's likely because he was interviewed by
Speaker 2: surprise at the camp and with the military influence. The
Speaker 2: commander's influence is likely, you right, the reason why he
Speaker 2: answered questions at all.
Speaker 4: I think that he I don't think he felt compelled
Speaker 4: by the authorities to talk. I do think though, that
Speaker 4: when his commanding general told him, I want you to
Speaker 4: go meet with these guys, that he probably felt some
Speaker 4: a pressure, at least in his own mind to answer
Speaker 4: questions as opposed to just saying, you know what, I
Speaker 4: want a lawyer. But he didn't call for a lawyer.
Speaker 4: He was free to walk out at any time. They
Speaker 4: took a break, at least one break in the course
Speaker 4: of this couple of hour interview, and he could have
Speaker 4: gotten up and left. It was his right, and he did.
Speaker 4: He chose instead to keep answering questions.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like a dramatic who will say people might
Speaker 2: be familiar with some investigators crowding the chair close to
Speaker 2: the suspect and then peppering them with questions and more
Speaker 2: accusations and allegations. This didn't happen. They were trying to
Speaker 2: get him to admit on his own ten months earlier
Speaker 2: that he could remember after they refreshed his memory of
Speaker 2: the campsite and maybe even the people that were there.
Speaker 2: He's still, well, it's not possible, it could be possible.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 2: So he was super noncommittal to specific questions that would
Speaker 2: pin him down whatsoever.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, but he had a great memory. When it came
Speaker 4: to other details about other desert trips that happened, about
Speaker 4: the same time. Oh, he was telling stories about this
Speaker 4: or that and reciting all these details, and he knew
Speaker 4: the types of aircraft he had seen out in the desert.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of military test line that goes on
Speaker 4: out there, and he could remember the roads and the
Speaker 4: locations where he went. The fellow exhibited a good knowledge
Speaker 4: of the area and of his own undertakings out there,
Speaker 4: until it came to the time of well what were
Speaker 4: you doing on this particular trip and on this particular day,
Speaker 4: And then he was all over the board.
Speaker 6: Now you say that there was.
Speaker 2: They asked him for details to fill in all of
Speaker 2: those gaps in his memory. He didn't get back to
Speaker 2: him about those details, and they didn't get back to him.
Speaker 2: And then you write about November nineteen eighty eight, twelve,
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty eight, and an outdoorsman on his way down
Speaker 2: from a climb near from Saline Valley, he stumbles across
Speaker 2: a couple human skull, one human skull, and then he
Speaker 2: contacts authorities and they get around to searching the area
Speaker 2: and they find bones and skulls of Louise and Barry Bermant.
Speaker 4: Right, if we're able to contact that hiker, I don't
Speaker 4: think that the Sheriff's office actually has his name.
Speaker 6: If they do, they didn't turn it over to me.
Speaker 4: But my suspicion is that somehow that's been lost out
Speaker 4: of the files.
Speaker 6: I have a photo of him, but don't know his name.
Speaker 4: Anyway, that area, if you're not somebody who's been out
Speaker 4: in the desert a lot, it's kind of hard to
Speaker 4: describe how just out of the way it feels. Just
Speaker 4: getting into Sailing Valley and getting into the hot springs
Speaker 4: is quite a track. But to get up where the
Speaker 4: bodies are found, you've got to go up this rough
Speaker 4: kind of jeep road.
Speaker 6: It takes a while to get there.
Speaker 4: It's about seven miles up from the camp, and it
Speaker 4: just takes a while to navigate that terrain and get
Speaker 4: up in there. And it's not the kind of place
Speaker 4: where people go very often. But interestingly, if you were
Speaker 4: to kind of go off the road into some of
Speaker 4: these washes, which is really like a dry riverbed, you
Speaker 4: could drive a vehicle a little ways off the road
Speaker 4: and get up in some of these draws and into
Speaker 4: spots where it wouldn't be so bad to hide a body.
Speaker 4: And that's exactly the kind of place where the bodies
Speaker 4: were found. It was a place that would be accessible
Speaker 4: by vehicle, and they were secreted in a way that
Speaker 4: indicated a lot of work and thought and heavy lifting
Speaker 4: had gone into burying them and concealing their bodies in
Speaker 4: this what would be called a cutbank, a channel carved
Speaker 4: by intermittent flash flooding dry most of the time, occasionally
Speaker 4: water would come through over thousands of years and carve
Speaker 4: the channel. And it was in one of these channels
Speaker 4: that their bodies had been stacked. Clothing had mostly been removed,
Speaker 4: jewelry was gone, and then the dirt and rocks had
Speaker 4: been placed around them in a way that was quite
Speaker 4: clever and caused the gravesite to just kind of blend
Speaker 4: in with the surround. This hiker coming down from an attempt, we.
Speaker 6: Don't know if it was successful or not.
Speaker 4: I think he had made the summit of this very
Speaker 4: isolated desert peak. And now he's crossing back towards his
Speaker 4: vehicle and he sees a skull. He marked the spot
Speaker 4: with a Karen. That was nineteen nineteen eighty eight when
Speaker 4: I went out there and finally found the gravesite, that
Speaker 4: Karen that he made of Rocks was still there, all
Speaker 4: the bushes, everything was exactly looked exactly the same as
Speaker 4: it had when the remains turned up.
Speaker 2: Let's just says there's an opportunity to hear these messages.
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Speaker 5: gotten lucky?
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Speaker 6: Yes? You do?
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Speaker 2: Now, what we did mention is what they do find
Speaker 2: besides the bones, the shallow grave, and this obvious attempt
Speaker 2: for this person to hide, and it was indicative of
Speaker 2: somebody that was experienced in this kind of I guess
Speaker 2: work to hide and conceal.
Speaker 6: You said it was.
Speaker 2: It seemed to parallel the work he had done as
Speaker 2: in the military at Quantico. So let's talk about what
Speaker 2: happens they find a handcuff key.
Speaker 6: They do.
Speaker 4: They find a little bit of remains of a little
Speaker 4: bit of clothing, and the jewelry is gone. Berry's handcrafted
Speaker 4: silver belt buckle that Arthur Korb had handcrafted his good friend.
Speaker 4: All that is gone, and but they find handcuff key,
Speaker 4: which says a lot.
Speaker 6: Yes.
Speaker 2: So now let's talk about the what this Pepe is
Speaker 2: doing at this time in terms of his own family
Speaker 2: and where is he located in the US, and then
Speaker 2: talk about NIS which later becomes NCIS.
Speaker 4: So Pepe his life does not go real well for
Speaker 4: him after that interview in the General's office. He may
Speaker 4: have already been up for a transfer. It wasn't clear,
Speaker 4: but actually the General secretary told me the.
Speaker 6: General wanted him out of there. I believed he was
Speaker 6: guilty and wanted him out. I was able to interview.
Speaker 4: The general as well, and Pepe ends up back at Quantico,
Speaker 4: serves out his twenty years, and you know, he'd had
Speaker 4: several wives, reportedly had some pretty troubled relationships with women.
Speaker 4: And he decides at that point in his life, after
Speaker 4: he's retired from the Marine Corps and has a pension
Speaker 4: that he's going to after bouncing around the United States
Speaker 4: a little bit kind of not set up in anyway,
Speaker 4: he decides he's going to try his luck overseas.
Speaker 2: Yes, and overseas. You talk about Cambodia, and if I
Speaker 2: have mispronounced it, that phenomenon pay and what the condition
Speaker 2: of Cambodia is in terms of poverty and lawlessness.
Speaker 4: Cambodia in the early two thousands was like the wild West.
Speaker 4: That's how people described it. You have to go back
Speaker 4: to a couple of decades to the Khmer Rouge, the
Speaker 4: killing fields, the mass genocide that had occurred, and just
Speaker 4: the complete disruption of society that had gone on in
Speaker 4: Cambodia and that post war environment. You had a country
Speaker 4: that was reputed to be one of the most corrupt
Speaker 4: in the world, with corrupt officials, the corrupt judicial system,
Speaker 4: and kind of an anything goes atmosphere, and it became
Speaker 4: known as a place where people who are sexually deviant
Speaker 4: could pretty much get anything or anybody that they wanted.
Speaker 4: And it was kind of a red flag according to
Speaker 4: people who are involved in trafficking. When you see a
Speaker 4: retired American man, or folks from Britain or Australia and such.
Speaker 4: Moving later in life to Cambodia, it often meant that
Speaker 4: they were interested in having sex with children.
Speaker 6: Pepe had no history.
Speaker 4: Of this that I could I could see it was
Speaker 4: in the United States. It was clear he had some
Speaker 4: troubled relationships, but you know, so to a lot of people,
Speaker 4: although there were hints that the troubles that he had
Speaker 4: in his relationships were more because of a deviant or
Speaker 4: at least we might say kind of unusual or aggressive
Speaker 4: sexual behavior. When he goes to Cambodia, Dan he was
Speaker 4: actually a well respected guy when he landed there. He
Speaker 4: was a retired marine officer. He had a master's in business.
Speaker 4: He began teaching business classes at a local university. He
Speaker 4: rented a upscale villa in a nice neighborhood of pnom Pen.
Speaker 4: He daffed it with a gate guard, he had a cook.
Speaker 6: But he started.
Speaker 4: Bringing in young girls and making deals with their family
Speaker 4: where he would essentially purchase these young girls as sex slaves.
Speaker 6: And I'm not talking like young.
Speaker 4: Like fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, I'm talking nine to twelve year olds.
Speaker 4: And it was pointed out to me by one of
Speaker 4: the one of the Christian aid organizations that helped rescue
Speaker 4: these these women that are girls that they were like
Speaker 4: the size of five or six year olds by US standards.
Speaker 4: These were tiny girls, just genetically small, but also had
Speaker 4: grown up into private environments where they probably just didn't
Speaker 4: get that much to eat. So you've got these tiny
Speaker 4: children that normal human being would feel compassion for. They
Speaker 4: come out of poverty and extreme circumstances. A normal person,
Speaker 4: you know, you'd want to give them a hug and
Speaker 4: a solid meal.
Speaker 6: But that's not.
Speaker 4: What Pepe wanted to do. He made deals with the
Speaker 4: families to take them in, to send them to school,
Speaker 4: and provide them with books and a place to live
Speaker 4: and food. But in exchange, he expected them to submit
Speaker 4: to him with whatever he wanted, and what he wanted
Speaker 4: was not kind and gentle. There are people who are
Speaker 4: attracted to children who think that they're in love or might,
Speaker 4: even though what they're doing is terrible and illegal, might
Speaker 4: think that it's some sort of normalized behavior. But what
Speaker 4: Pepe was doing was tying girls up and doing brutal
Speaker 4: things to them that would leave them bleeding. He was
Speaker 4: not behaving even within the norm of an abnormal and
Speaker 4: deviant world.
Speaker 6: He was way out on the edge.
Speaker 2: He had victims living in his home. You talk about
Speaker 2: five particular victims, and two being sisters. One precocious young
Speaker 2: girl that always dreamed of being a singer, and supposedly
Speaker 2: she resisted and that wasn't in the in the cards
Speaker 2: for her, and she was abused and was screaming and
Speaker 2: also supposedly bit him, bit his penis, and so she
Speaker 2: was kicked out of this house. She was dropped off,
Speaker 2: as you write, battered and bleeding, and a mission worker
Speaker 2: you can tell us about this organization, how they noticed
Speaker 2: that the girl being dropped off and then went and
Speaker 2: spoke to her, and you say, from there the wheels
Speaker 2: of justice proceeded.
Speaker 4: Yes, there are non governmental organizations in Goo's, often faith
Speaker 4: based organizations that go into these impoverished areas, Cambodia being
Speaker 4: one of the main ones, in an effort to try
Speaker 4: to identify the victims of sex trafficking, rescue them, and
Speaker 4: bring some measure of hope in a place that can
Speaker 4: often be hopeless.
Speaker 6: And when this.
Speaker 4: Girl was spotted by an undercover investigator, that's what led
Speaker 4: to the unraveling of Pepe's sex slave world, because the
Speaker 4: investigator saw this little girl that looked like she was
Speaker 4: bleeding and something bad had happened to her, being dropped
Speaker 4: off by a motorbike in a bad area. So he
Speaker 4: approached her and said he or she. I don't know
Speaker 4: if it was a man or a woman. I've never
Speaker 4: been able to identify. IJM is very protective over the
Speaker 4: identity of their people, so they don't give away names
Speaker 4: or methodology. But the investigator, whoever it was, got the
Speaker 4: girl to tell a story, and she was a smart
Speaker 4: little girl. She was able to identify who he was
Speaker 4: and show them where his villa was, and that set
Speaker 4: the wheels in motion very quickly. It was so extreme
Speaker 4: that even the Cambodian officials, who are known for kind
Speaker 4: of looking the other way on some of this stuff,
Speaker 4: they responded quickly and vigorously coordinated with agents from ICE
Speaker 4: from the US embassy to identify this American and try
Speaker 4: to take him down.
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Speaker 2: Now you introduced the some other very very interesting and
Speaker 2: dedicated characters, Prosecutor Patricia Donahue and her team, and they're
Speaker 2: trying to get convictions in a federal court in the US,
Speaker 2: even though these crimes were committed in Cambodia, and because
Speaker 2: on behalf of a congressman or in Hatch and others,
Speaker 2: there was a law permitting even though there was no
Speaker 2: official exchange with Cambodia illegally. Then, despite that that, they
Speaker 2: would still prosecute crimes from Americans occurring in Cambodia.
Speaker 6: That's right.
Speaker 4: The Cambodian government wasn't always cooperative, and the system was
Speaker 4: viewed as being one of the most corrupt in the world. Nonetheless,
Speaker 4: there are good people who wanted to do the right thing,
Speaker 4: and what they found out was going on behind the
Speaker 4: walls of Pepe's villa was so horrific that they responded vigorously,
Speaker 4: arrested him, rescued the girls. He was put into prison
Speaker 4: in Cambodia, which is not a place fun place to
Speaker 4: be hillatious conditions, and ultimately, though was handed over to
Speaker 4: agents from ICE to be brought back to the United States,
Speaker 4: to Los Angeles, specifically to stand trial on federal charges.
Speaker 4: The reason that the US government felt they could bring
Speaker 4: him back and charge him was because of this law
Speaker 4: called the Protect Act that had been introduced by orn
Speaker 4: Hatch and passed.
Speaker 6: On an almost unanimous vote.
Speaker 4: One of the few things that I think Congress got
Speaker 4: almost everybody to agree on. And the problem that they
Speaker 4: were addressing was US citizens taking advantage of the relative
Speaker 4: wealth and opportunity that people in the United States have,
Speaker 4: and you would have deviants who, by the standards of
Speaker 4: some of these impoverished countries, were wealthy and powerful. And
Speaker 4: the deviants would come with money, cash in their pocket
Speaker 4: and the ability to hire translators and know their way around,
Speaker 4: and they would dial into the underage sex scene there
Speaker 4: and stories started getting out and it was horrifying and
Speaker 4: it didn't reflect well in the United States. So the
Speaker 4: thought was, let's regulate this conduct by making it illegal
Speaker 4: foreign American who travels in foreign commerce to engage in
Speaker 4: certain kinds of just off the charts acts. They didn't
Speaker 4: purport to outlaw, you know everything. I mean, it's not
Speaker 4: the same scope of what might be considered illegal here
Speaker 4: in the United States, but underage sex crimes in particular,
Speaker 4: or what they were targeting. And it was under that
Speaker 4: Act that Pepe was brought back to the United States
Speaker 4: and placed in the Metropolitan Detention Center as the government
Speaker 4: scrambled to identify the girls, get them to the United
Speaker 4: States so they could testify at trial and put together
Speaker 4: a case under the Protect Act.
Speaker 2: You're right that they were successful. It was an incredible
Speaker 2: trial where they have these little girls being cross examined
Speaker 2: quite vigorously by defense attorneys trying to shake them on
Speaker 2: their stories. Very very interesting. We have to sort of
Speaker 2: fast forward that they get this extraordinary verdict two hundred
Speaker 2: and ten years all consecutive sentencing, so a real absolute
Speaker 2: denouncement of this person by the jury, and then everybody
Speaker 2: is awarded. They've shurtain people get awards for this conviction,
Speaker 2: and then they get the news that it's been through
Speaker 2: appeal that there has to be another trial. Briefly, tell
Speaker 2: us what happens and the difference, as you write, when
Speaker 2: these witnesses grown up, much more grown up now testify again,
Speaker 2: and because of the me too movement, cross examination is
Speaker 2: much different, isn't it right?
Speaker 4: When the girls first are brought over, they're just little girls.
Speaker 4: And one of the key witnesses wasn't even twelve years
Speaker 4: old yet when she testified in two thousand and eight
Speaker 4: at the first trial. But fast forward, there's all these
Speaker 4: legal machinations that go on. Ultimately, the verdicts get thrown
Speaker 4: out on the technical argument that the statute the protect
Speaker 4: Act was targeting travelers and he had set up a
Speaker 4: villa and was living there, so he wasn't a traveler.
Speaker 4: So the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in all their wisdom,
Speaker 4: decides to throw out the convictions despite the overwhelming evidence
Speaker 4: of all this misconduct. They say, yeah, okay, yeah, okay,
Speaker 4: Sure he raped and abused and tortured children, but he
Speaker 4: wasn't traveling. He was actually situated there, so we're just
Speaker 4: going to throw it all out. Well, the government didn't
Speaker 4: give up. They came back charged him under different statutes
Speaker 4: that didn't require them to prove that he was traveling,
Speaker 4: and took the case to trial again in twenty twenty,
Speaker 4: twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2: And what was a verdict then at that time.
Speaker 4: Is Pepe is found is found guilty again, and he's
Speaker 4: finally sentenced and again sentenced to a two hundred and
Speaker 4: ten years.
Speaker 2: It's very interesting. One of the sisters was the first
Speaker 2: to testify. She was nine years old when she first
Speaker 2: went to Devilla, twelve years old at trial and then
Speaker 2: then at finally at trial. She had been adopted by
Speaker 2: an American family, educated and was a US citizen, and
Speaker 2: very powerful testimony by this now twenty five year old woman.
Speaker 6: What a moment.
Speaker 4: She was such a bright little girl. He had nicknamed
Speaker 4: her Smiley. She was only nine years old, as you indicate,
Speaker 4: when he was committing sex crimes against her. She was
Speaker 4: one day shy of her twelfth birthday. When she testified
Speaker 4: at the first trial and the second trial, she was
Speaker 4: twenty five years old. She had been adopted by an
Speaker 4: American family. She was a girl of beauty and grace
Speaker 4: and gravitas. Well spoken English. When she walked into the courtroom,
Speaker 4: I mean people's jaws dropped. This little girl was transformed
Speaker 4: into a twenty something meter woman of enormous dignity. And
Speaker 4: to see her matter of factly delivering her testimony, explaining
Speaker 4: what happened in such an even voice, matter of fact
Speaker 4: and with such gravitas, and again I come back to dignity.
Speaker 4: This enormous presence that she had was just stunning, absolutely stunning.
Speaker 4: And the shift in power between Pepe who had abused
Speaker 4: her as a nine year old and now you've got
Speaker 4: him at defense table with Marshalls hovering nearby, and he's
Speaker 4: kind of on the defensive, you know, a prisoner being
Speaker 4: put on trial there and this woman just explaining what
Speaker 4: he did to her. Powerful court drama.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, you talk about just at the end as well,
Speaker 2: you get the reaction from Deputy Leon Boyer and also
Speaker 2: Louise's son, the really only surviving member of this small
Speaker 2: family since the parents had died. The Burman family parents
Speaker 2: had died, the Michael Westerman, Louise's son. His reaction and
Speaker 2: Leon Boyer's reaction, well, they both felt an enormous sense
Speaker 2: of closure. When Pepe was once again sentenced to two
Speaker 2: hundred and ten years.
Speaker 6: But you want me to tell you something that's not
Speaker 6: in the book. Sure.
Speaker 4: So, at the time the book was finished and published,
Speaker 4: and it's about to be released. As of the time
Speaker 4: of my last edit, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
Speaker 4: had affirmed the convictions, and once again we all thought
Speaker 4: the case was over. But there's a tiny little footnote
Speaker 4: right now that could be a very big footnote. Pepe's
Speaker 4: lawyers psitioned for a review to the US Supreme Court.
Speaker 4: We all assumed that the Supreme Court would just summarily
Speaker 4: deny the petition, but just in the last few days,
Speaker 4: the US Supreme Court has instead asked the government to
Speaker 4: file a response. Now, this doesn't mean they're going to
Speaker 4: grant review, and it would be a long way from
Speaker 4: here to the case being reversed, but it remains within
Speaker 4: the realm of possibility. I actually haven't even broken that
Speaker 4: news to some of the people who are emotionally involved
Speaker 4: in the case. I don't know if they can take
Speaker 4: yet another curveball in a case that's had so many Dan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's incredible to me to see the cases that
Speaker 2: are the most involving the most serious crime, which is murder.
Speaker 2: To have such vigorous defense despite knowing really essentially the
Speaker 2: guilt of their client, it's not well, geez, maybe I
Speaker 2: think the guy's guilty or he's a minor. A very
Speaker 2: very vigorous defense, including plus examination of children.
Speaker 6: I thought it was very very interesting.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, as somebody who's a lawyer by background,
Speaker 4: I understand that the adversarial system cannot function unless you
Speaker 4: have people who are willing to vigorously defend even the
Speaker 4: most heinous and unforgivable kinds of people and crimes. They're
Speaker 4: entitled to a vigorous defense. Otherwise the system breaks down.
Speaker 4: That said, I wouldn't be able to do it. There's
Speaker 4: no way I could defend this guy. It wasn't just
Speaker 4: the girl's testimony, Dan, there were hundreds and hundreds of
Speaker 4: explicit photos that he had taken of them. There were
Speaker 4: photos of him naked with one of the girls. There
Speaker 4: was corroborating evidence. There's no question he did these acts.
Speaker 4: And I find it a bit remarkable and troubling that
Speaker 4: so much legal attention has been paid to the fine
Speaker 4: parsinge of these statutes to see whether all the technical
Speaker 4: requirements about travel have been met. His latest argument is that, well,
Speaker 4: the government said he came back several times, you know,
Speaker 4: to the United States, and they charged him in connection
Speaker 4: with two trips where he came home and then went
Speaker 4: back to Cambodia. And it's unlawful to cross a state
Speaker 4: line with intent to commit crimes of that nature against children.
Speaker 4: Me it seems pretty clear. But he has this theory
Speaker 4: that's bolstered by an old Supreme Court case. Well, if
Speaker 4: the travel itself is innocent, even though he's returning with
Speaker 4: intent to commit heinous crimes against children, that doesn't make
Speaker 4: it a crime. If the purpose of the trip was innocent.
Speaker 4: So that if he came home from Cambodia to go
Speaker 4: to his son's graduation or on another instance, his daughter's wedding,
Speaker 4: well that's an innocent trip. And even though when he
Speaker 4: went back, the reason, one of the dominant motivating reasons
Speaker 4: to go back was to rape and abuse and torture children,
Speaker 4: and he had that intent, the jury found when he
Speaker 4: got on the airplanes to go back, that's what he
Speaker 4: was intending to do. Nonetheless, that intent that he had
Speaker 4: right here in the United States on the tarmac at
Speaker 4: lax isn't enough to make it a crime under federal
Speaker 4: statutes that talk about crossing the border with that kind
Speaker 4: of intent, And it appears he may have a prayer
Speaker 4: on that argument. Now, look, I'm all for technical arguments
Speaker 4: and applying the law the way the law is written,
Speaker 4: but there is that there are times when things just
Speaker 4: go too far that just to me, defies common sense,
Speaker 4: and I sure hope the Supreme Court sees through it.
Speaker 2: Let's get back to before I Let You Go. Is
Speaker 2: we haven't mentioned that one season in prison like many
Speaker 2: in mates, apparently supposedly according to witnesses. And there's two witnesses,
Speaker 2: one named Walters, who talks about what Pepe said once
Speaker 2: he's in prison regarding the Berman murders. And you write
Speaker 2: about it because it's very very interesting, seems to be
Speaker 2: very plausible details contained just before I Let You Go
Speaker 2: take us back, according to Walter, According to Pepe, what
Speaker 2: happened at that campground.
Speaker 4: So I published a cover story in twenty fifteen for
Speaker 4: LA Weekly about the case, and this made the rounds
Speaker 4: at the prison, Federal prison where Pepe was incarcerated, and
Speaker 4: his cellmate stepped forward and contacted me, and then another
Speaker 4: guy did the same another inmate, and they both said
Speaker 4: that Pepe had been bragging about the murders as a
Speaker 4: way of elevating his status. Keep in mind, anybody convicted
Speaker 4: and imprisoned in connection with the abuse of children is
Speaker 4: very low on the prism totem pull. In fact, in
Speaker 4: some prisons that alone can get you in physical peril,
Speaker 4: not so much in the federal system.
Speaker 6: But it makes you the lowest.
Speaker 4: Of the low, and he was, according to them, he
Speaker 4: was trying to elevate his status by saying I'm a murderer.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm a badass, and that he talked about
Speaker 4: the killings. And they came forward with details that were
Speaker 4: not public about the case. Maybe they were good guesses,
Speaker 4: and these guys could have just been playing to see
Speaker 4: if they could get some favorable treatment or whatever. But
Speaker 4: I interviewed them by phone several times, corresponded by email
Speaker 4: also with them, and then a veteran in county sheriff's
Speaker 4: investigator went and met with them and concluded that he
Speaker 4: thought they were credible guys who had strong reasons for
Speaker 4: coming forward. But the in county district attorney decided there
Speaker 4: just wasn't enough to prosecute the case. And honestly, as
Speaker 4: a lawyer, I can understand knowing that you have a
Speaker 4: strong case and you think you've identified the perpetrator isn't
Speaker 4: the same as going in front of a jury and
Speaker 4: having to deal with the passage of time, the lack
Speaker 4: of physical evidence, etc. And I can understand why he
Speaker 4: passed on the case and decided not to prosecute, even
Speaker 4: though I was very disappointed that charges weren't filed, because
Speaker 4: you know, over the course of this investigation, I had
Speaker 4: come to feel that the investigators were probably right. And
Speaker 4: when they told me they had fingered the guy that
Speaker 4: they thought did it, I thought it seemed to me
Speaker 4: that they probably had. Again, you know, I'm not a
Speaker 4: judge or jury, and he's never been charged, let alone convicted,
Speaker 4: but they felt strongly that they had the guy.
Speaker 2: I want to thank you very much Doug Kerry for
Speaker 2: coming on and discussing your incredible Bin Murders Unraveling the
Speaker 2: Mohabi Desert's most mysterious unsolved crime. For those people that
Speaker 2: might want to check out more about this title, tell
Speaker 2: us how they might need social media or do you
Speaker 2: have a website?
Speaker 4: Awesome, Well, all of the above kind of what an
Speaker 4: author has to do these days. So my website is
Speaker 4: Doug Carrey, which is just Doug.
Speaker 6: Kaari dot com.
Speaker 4: I've got a Facebook page at Doug Carrey Author or
Speaker 4: Doug Carry Author, and then an Instagram at Doug Carry Author.
Speaker 4: So I'm on Instagram, Facebook, and then a web page.
Speaker 4: And you can find information about how to publish a
Speaker 4: book The Burman Murders if you google it. It's in
Speaker 4: Arns and Noble and Amazon and various other other stores.
Speaker 6: It's all over the web. The reviews have been pretty good.
Speaker 4: I'm real happy with how the book is performing and
Speaker 4: what people are saying about it. And it would, you know,
Speaker 4: it would be my honor if your listeners checked it out.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Doug Carrey for this interview. The
Speaker 2: Burman Murder is unraveling the Mojave Desert's most mysterious unsolved crime.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for this interview. And you have
Speaker 2: a great evening, and good night,