Speaker 1: Tapes from the Dark Side contains descriptions of violence and sexuality.
Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: October fifteenth, nineteen seventy eight, Lawrence Bittaker walked out of
Speaker 2: the California Men's Colony of Free Man. He drifted back
Speaker 2: to Los Angeles, slipping seamlessly into civilian life. With his
Speaker 2: skills as a machinist, he was soon earning nearly one
Speaker 2: thousand dollars a week, a small fortune for his time.
Speaker 2: To neighbors, he didn't look like a threat. He was
Speaker 2: a quiet man down the street who kept to himself,
Speaker 2: but also the one who would lend a hand when needed.
Speaker 2: Some even saw him as generous. He'd donated to the
Speaker 2: Salvation Army, buy bags of fast food and bottles of wine,
Speaker 2: and then hand him out to the homeless on skid row.
Speaker 2: On the surface, Lawrence Bittaker the picture of rehabilitation, But
Speaker 2: beneath that carefully crafted facade, something far darker was beginning
Speaker 2: to take shape. January fifteenth, nineteen seventy nine, just three
Speaker 2: months after Laurence Bittaker's release, Roy Norris walked out of
Speaker 2: prison as well. He moved back into his mother's home
Speaker 2: in Redondo Beach, but freedom didn't bring reform. Within a month,
Speaker 2: Norris had already attacked again, raping a woman, then leaving
Speaker 2: her lone and terrified in the desert. By day, he
Speaker 2: blended in working as an electrician in Compton, but soon
Speaker 2: a letter arrived. It was from Lawrence Bittaker. Weeks later,
Speaker 2: the two men met at a hotel. Old prison acquaintances reunited,
Speaker 2: and in that meeting they breathed new life into a
Speaker 2: plan they had whispered about behind bars, a plan to stalk, kidnap,
Speaker 2: and rape young girls in Burbank. Norris's hotel room became
Speaker 2: something of a hangout spot, especially for local teenagers. He
Speaker 2: always seemed to have a steady supply of beer in
Speaker 2: marijuana on hand. Later he would admit to the truth
Speaker 2: the drugs and alcohol weren't for him, not really, They
Speaker 2: were baits, a way to make sure his rooms stayed
Speaker 2: popular with teens. One of those young girls who would
Speaker 2: hang out in Bittaker's motel room was named Tina, a
Speaker 2: woman who was tracked down by Laura Brand, the so
Speaker 2: called serial killer whisperer who we've been hearing from this
Speaker 2: season now. Tina was always with her boyfriend Steve when
Speaker 2: she was at the motel, and this kind of drove
Speaker 2: Larry crazy. He wanted her isolated to himself. The interview
Speaker 2: you're about to hear was recorded just prior to Tina's
Speaker 2: passing in June of twenty twenty three, and again it
Speaker 2: was featured on the podcast Partners in True Crime.
Speaker 3: He was hanging around the hotel, Like I said, the
Speaker 3: group I just told you about was usually who I
Speaker 3: was rip going around over there.
Speaker 1: Steve. I never left Steve's side, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, did you guys all go to like the same
Speaker 4: high school?
Speaker 1: Me and Dina Steve? I know Steve wasn't going to
Speaker 1: high school. He dropped out.
Speaker 3: Steve's mom kicked him out at sixteen, just before all
Speaker 3: this happened, and my mom took him in. So he
Speaker 3: was living with us at the time this happened. Wow,
Speaker 3: because there was, like I said, a group of us
Speaker 3: could be fifteen to twenty of us just in Burbank
Speaker 3: that all knew each other, and you know, we party
Speaker 3: in the park and you know, in different groups I
Speaker 3: guess would go party over there at the hotel.
Speaker 4: Michael was the one who told me that story about Steve.
Speaker 4: I like one day Bittaker said to him, he goes,
Speaker 4: do you want to write home or something? He asked
Speaker 4: him for write home, and he said. It scared the
Speaker 4: shit out of Steve because he drove him up he
Speaker 4: said San Dimas, but I think it was San Gabriel,
Speaker 4: and he just didn't say a word to him, got
Speaker 4: out of the car, just pointed a gun at him,
Speaker 4: and then just got right back in and drove him home.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because Steve's mom at that time lived up in
Speaker 3: Sunline and Sunlin to Hunga, and so at that time
Speaker 3: Steve would go back and forth from now staying at
Speaker 3: my house and sometimes going to his mom's. It wasn't
Speaker 3: San Gabriel Mountain. It was Sana San Andreas Mountain, Angela's
Speaker 3: Crest up in that area. I'm sorry, It's like I'm
Speaker 3: shaking inside, you know, but that's the mountains.
Speaker 1: He took him up into us. That I was told
Speaker 1: by Steve.
Speaker 3: Because it was close to Steve's mom's house, he was
Speaker 3: able to take him. He took him up there and
Speaker 3: spirits shit.
Speaker 1: Out of him.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, uh, I'm you know it ruins Steve.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I bet I absolutely.
Speaker 1: Ruined his life. It ruined my marriage.
Speaker 4: Do you think that's what happened? Is like he was
Speaker 4: just so scarred from like Bittaker, it just.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, he'd come home after testifying.
Speaker 1: You gotta remember he was like sixteen, maybe seventeen by
Speaker 1: the time the childs are. I don't remember. He was
Speaker 1: a kid.
Speaker 3: We were kids, and he used to come home and
Speaker 3: I just hold him for hours while he would cry.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, you know, I mean I believe in
Speaker 3: court they had a play part of that tape again
Speaker 3: because they had a verify that's the troops he heard.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: I was pretty horrific what we went through. I mean,
Speaker 3: it took me years. I used to run if I
Speaker 3: saw a silver van.
Speaker 4: Oh, I could just imagine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was about because he didn't like me, and
Speaker 3: I knew it, and.
Speaker 1: He let me know he didn't like me.
Speaker 4: Really, he like really made it known to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in his I don't even know how to you
Speaker 1: were you've been in a room with him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he has I don't even know how to put it.
Speaker 3: He has a way to get in your head. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he doesn't have to say something. You could read what
Speaker 3: he's telling you in his eyes.
Speaker 4: You know, I've actually pushed some buttons and seem like
Speaker 4: that anger come out of him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, got angry at me.
Speaker 3: I uh, well, I'm Italian, so I do have him
Speaker 3: about the kid back then, I you know did I
Speaker 3: was a smart kid, but I did speak my what
Speaker 3: I spoke my mind. And I do remember pissing him
Speaker 3: off several times. And I remember he got so mad
Speaker 3: one time and he said, you're grounded and you can't
Speaker 3: come back to here for a week or whatever, you know,
Speaker 3: two weeks whatever it was that he got really red.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, I was scary, it was. It was scary.
Speaker 4: Well you said about when he went up to Dina
Speaker 4: and did the modeling roots like he that was like
Speaker 4: their number one rooms was the modeling stuff.
Speaker 3: And my mom educated me on you know, I mean,
Speaker 3: we had so many serial killers running around in that
Speaker 3: area of California at that time. You know at that
Speaker 3: time that you know, if you were a smart parent,
Speaker 3: you better educate your kids, especially your girls, your younger
Speaker 3: teen preteen or teen girls. Great, and my mom did
Speaker 3: you don't go walk by yourself at night. My mom
Speaker 3: taught me that it wasn't just about not getting in
Speaker 3: the car with strangers, but look.
Speaker 1: In the end I did.
Speaker 3: I Actually, my mom almost died from a heart attack
Speaker 3: when they found me, Dina and Steven penciling, and they
Speaker 3: called our parents, see we were missing.
Speaker 1: And that's when Larry got busted and our parents thought
Speaker 1: that he killed us because we were gone and missing.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: So actually there was another girl that traveled with us.
Speaker 3: Her name was Andrea, Andrea Durgan. But she I don't
Speaker 3: think she ever went around Larry. She just happened to
Speaker 3: want to trail along with us. And she was only
Speaker 3: all of twelve, but she looked like she may have
Speaker 3: been fifteen or sixteen body wise. And her poor mom
Speaker 3: did drop of a heart attack when they police from
Speaker 3: Pittsburgh called her and said we found your daughter. She
Speaker 3: died of just because they thought we were dead, that
Speaker 3: he got us.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh I've kind even begin to tell you. And
Speaker 3: I mean ironically, you know, my mom kept me as
Speaker 3: protected as she could for media and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: And as the years went, well, every time Larry came
Speaker 3: up for an appeal, you know, we all went on
Speaker 3: with our lives and got married and had children, and
Speaker 3: we all moved and they always found us, you know,
Speaker 3: whatever it was every I think he had two or
Speaker 3: three appealsskus me appeals and they would find us. Next thing,
Speaker 3: you know, there's an LA District attorney again at our
Speaker 3: doors and having us relive it, you know, because there's appeal.
Speaker 1: It was his peal was coming.
Speaker 4: Oh, I know.
Speaker 2: During this interview that Laura does with Tina, Laura Brand
Speaker 2: herself begins to open up a little bit about her
Speaker 2: investigation into Larry and Roy and I found this fascinating,
Speaker 2: so I decided to leave it in. It gives us
Speaker 2: some background about Laura and what she was going through
Speaker 2: at this time in her life.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: It's so I started. So it was about so in June,
Speaker 4: and this year it'll be two years. And when I
Speaker 4: started the investigation, ah, so I went. I had been
Speaker 4: interviewing Bittaker Norris for about like five years, and ironically,
Speaker 4: which is so kind of weird, I got pregnant and
Speaker 4: the boyfriend I was living with I was like madly
Speaker 4: in love and he didn't want the baby, and then
Speaker 4: he tried to force me to get an abortion. I
Speaker 4: wanted to do it, so he kicked me out and
Speaker 4: I literally had about like two grand to my name,
Speaker 4: and he was trying. When he tried to scare me
Speaker 4: into an abortion, he said, you know, you just wasted
Speaker 4: your degree. You're never going to become a forensic psychologist.
Speaker 4: You'll never write a book, You'll never be able to
Speaker 4: go to San Quentin and do your interviews anymore. Like
Speaker 4: your career's over. So I took the last of my
Speaker 4: money and I flew out to San Francisco for six
Speaker 4: weeks and I was like, Okay, I'm going to interview
Speaker 4: three different serial killers, and I had picked bitager. It was.
Speaker 4: He was one of the first interviews I went in for,
Speaker 4: and at the time, I was like seven and a
Speaker 4: half months pregnant, and I was like really showing. And
Speaker 4: it was just so bizarre too, because like the three
Speaker 4: years prior I had gone in and I had interviewed
Speaker 4: him before, and I had written to him and I
Speaker 4: had tried to get him to call me, and he
Speaker 4: was just so vicious towards me. He didn't like me,
Speaker 4: he didn't want to talk to me. And but it
Speaker 4: was so weird when I got pregnant, all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: he started calling my cell phone every single day. Then
Speaker 4: when I went in and he saw me pregnant, it
Speaker 4: was the weirdest freaking thing. It was like a one
Speaker 4: eighty turn from like being vicious and just cruel and mean.
Speaker 4: And he it was five minutes in the interview. He
Speaker 4: grabbed the pen in the paper out of my hand
Speaker 4: because I was like asking questions and taking notes, grabs
Speaker 4: out of my hand, and he started drawing a map
Speaker 4: of the mountains of where Cindy and Andrea, the two
Speaker 4: victims that were never found. And I was just like
Speaker 4: a holy shit. And then he's drawing me a map
Speaker 4: of where the buried evidence was and it was just,
Speaker 4: I mean, it was like a movie. Like as I
Speaker 4: ran out of the prison afterwards, and I called a
Speaker 4: criminologist and was like I don't know what to do,
Speaker 4: Like what what the hell do I do? And he's like,
Speaker 4: go the FBI. The FBI was closed, So then he came.
Speaker 4: He said, call the district attorney, which was Stephen Kay.
Speaker 4: So I got a number for him and I started
Speaker 4: calling him, and he like didn't even believe me. He's like,
Speaker 4: he hasn't spoken in forty years, he's never given up
Speaker 4: that information. This is But finally I started calling Stephen.
Speaker 4: Talking to Stephen, he realized I wasn't like insane like Bittager.
Speaker 4: It actually he is like the nicest person in the
Speaker 4: god oh my god, yeah he really, he's so sweet
Speaker 4: and he's been helping me, like step by step on all.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's literally been walking me through everything because I'm like,
Speaker 4: this is so much to take in and he's like,
Speaker 4: I told you, lord, it's a rabbit hole of a case.
Speaker 4: That I was like, it really freaking is. And just
Speaker 4: by chance, I like Bitteger had mentioned Robin Roebeck, who's
Speaker 4: like the sole survivor, and for some reason, I just
Speaker 4: went on Facebook and I was like, I'm just going
Speaker 4: to type her name in, even though it might be
Speaker 4: like a maiden name, and I found her and I
Speaker 4: sent her a message and I don't even know what
Speaker 4: to say. I was like, I don't know if you're
Speaker 4: the right person, but I'm trying to track down somebody
Speaker 4: who was a witness and a case from nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 4: And it was like two hours later she texted me
Speaker 4: she was Bitaker and Norris, and I was just like,
Speaker 4: holy shit, I found her and she was the same
Speaker 4: reaction you had, Like it's so funny because every person
Speaker 4: I tracked down is the same reaction. It's just like,
Speaker 4: you know, because it's like a hurricane hitting you out
Speaker 4: of nowhere, because you know it's forty years Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, it's being uh punched in the.
Speaker 4: Stomach exactly how she describes it too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And Russia's like, I mean, I'm gonna be fifty six.
Speaker 3: And I laughed because my memory it's like sometimes I
Speaker 3: can't remember yesterday, but I can remember that like it
Speaker 3: happened yesterday.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, oh yeah. And that's what she said too,
Speaker 4: and she it was funny, she said, she well, she
Speaker 4: called me and she was on the phone. She was hysteric.
Speaker 2: One of the details that stuck with Tina after all
Speaker 2: these years were the photographs, dozens and dozens of photographs
Speaker 2: strewn all about Bittaker's hotel room, all of young, scantily
Speaker 2: clad teenage girls.
Speaker 3: There's more than you would probably even want to imagine
Speaker 3: because the photo, the one stock of polaroids you would have,
Speaker 3: were women posing in lingerie right like against a lot
Speaker 3: of times, it was like they were against I remember, right,
Speaker 3: a white wall, like they they were posing for the camera.
Speaker 1: Do you remember It was a lot of times.
Speaker 3: I mean, and I'm you know, they look like prostitutes.
Speaker 3: I'd say, you know what I mean, but that's what
Speaker 3: they look like to me as a fourteen fifteen year
Speaker 3: old kid.
Speaker 1: And then he'd have pictures of.
Speaker 3: Rand you know, he'd be out in front of my
Speaker 3: front of Burbank High School in my high school with binoculars.
Speaker 1: Always have binoculars in the vanag. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Do you remember if he ever were there any of
Speaker 4: the polaroids where it looked like a girl was in
Speaker 4: a closet or were there hangars in the background.
Speaker 1: Yes, there was, I remember that.
Speaker 4: Okay, I just got really big chills. What do you
Speaker 4: remember from like the hangars of the closet?
Speaker 3: Do you what my mind is picturing is? I remember
Speaker 3: they had a picture and it was a girl and
Speaker 3: she was kind of scrunched down in a closet, you know,
Speaker 3: And I would try and look at because my curiosity.
Speaker 3: I knew that man was up to no good and
Speaker 3: I wanted to snoop, but I had to be careful
Speaker 3: because you know how he was. I had to be
Speaker 3: very careful. I would try to look at photos that
Speaker 3: he had laying around and stuff like that. I heard,
Speaker 3: and I don't even know how through this is. I'm
Speaker 3: trying to remember even who I heard it from, because really,
Speaker 3: the only person that ever interviewed me and kept me
Speaker 3: and my family informed.
Speaker 1: Was Stephen Kay.
Speaker 3: He was the only man that was allowed in my
Speaker 3: house to ask questions and tell me stuff. Somebody told
Speaker 3: me that when they went into the motel room, he
Speaker 3: had stacks of polaroids and then that one stack was
Speaker 3: polaroids that were people he was planning on taking out
Speaker 3: to kill then, And I said really, and they said yeah,
Speaker 3: and your photo was in that. I mean there was,
Speaker 3: you know, some of us were popping ALICD was you know,
Speaker 3: I'm drinking a lot, smoking a lot of marijuana, that
Speaker 3: kind of a thing. And so really it was just
Speaker 3: go to his place, get as fucked up as you
Speaker 3: can for free, and then you know, either he kicked
Speaker 3: you out or he left, you know, one or the other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just smoke back then, The only thing I
Speaker 1: ever did was smoke a little weed. I was on it.
Speaker 3: I was on it watching every time I was in
Speaker 3: that room.
Speaker 1: Steve turned into a violent man after that, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: an absolute MONSTERY turned into.
Speaker 3: I kid you not, so be careful if you ever
Speaker 3: find you and meet him in a good public place.
Speaker 3: And I hate to say that I feel so sorry
Speaker 3: for him, but I was lucky to escape with my
Speaker 3: life Steve did to me.
Speaker 2: For their plan to work, Larry knew they couldn't rely
Speaker 2: on just any car. They needed something bigger, something that
Speaker 2: could trap a victim inside, and in February of nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy nine, with money from Roy Norris, Larry bought it
Speaker 2: a silver gray nineteen seventy seven gmc Vandora. The van
Speaker 2: was windowless on one side, with a sliding door large
Speaker 2: enough to swallow someone whole. Larry later admitted that when
Speaker 2: he first saw that door, he knew they could pull
Speaker 2: up close to a girl, slide it open, and drag
Speaker 2: her inside without anyone noticing. The pair gave the vehicle
Speaker 2: a name. To them, it wasn't just a van, it
Speaker 2: was their murder. Mac and Tina herself actually spent a
Speaker 2: night inside that very van.
Speaker 1: Once or twice.
Speaker 3: You know, I wouldn't go home at not you know,
Speaker 3: I want to stay the night with oh my boyfriend,
Speaker 3: you know. And there was the twenty four hour laundromat
Speaker 3: right next door to the hotel, right next door to
Speaker 3: the liquor store, and me and Steve had stayed at
Speaker 3: the twenty four hour Laundermount to stay the night together.
Speaker 3: And that particular night, you know, we were getting leaving
Speaker 3: Larry's to go to the laundermaut and that's when Larry said, well,
Speaker 3: you guys don't have to go sleep at the Laundermount.
Speaker 3: Y'all can sleep in the van. I looked at Steve
Speaker 3: like fuck now, And of course Steve wasn't listening to me,
Speaker 3: and you know, he was thinking of enjoying, you know, thinking.
Speaker 1: No, we're being a van.
Speaker 3: Nobody bother us, you know, because we risked getting arrested
Speaker 3: being underage teenagers in a twenty four hour launder maat it,
Speaker 3: you know, one two o'clock in the morning or whatever,
Speaker 3: because the Bourbon cops are really honest kids, honest teenager
Speaker 3: respect that.
Speaker 1: But anyway, you know, it was, Steve was like, come on,
Speaker 1: it's going to be okay.
Speaker 3: And I remember him taking me by the hand, us
Speaker 3: going out of the motel room, Larry following us or
Speaker 3: us following him, and then him proceeding to tell Steve
Speaker 3: he mainly always talk.
Speaker 1: Really did he talk directly? I mean he did talk directly.
Speaker 1: To me.
Speaker 3: But when I'm sure, I couldn't hide on my face fear.
Speaker 3: As much as you know you're you think you're you are,
Speaker 3: you know there's you're gonna have some. And Larry is
Speaker 3: that type of person. He could notice a millisecond of
Speaker 3: changing place. I'm telling you, I felt like he could
Speaker 3: hear my heart beat.
Speaker 4: If you had any second of hesitation, he probably instantly
Speaker 4: picked up on it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like you could hear your heart beat. And it
Speaker 3: was almost like he thrived off my towards you end,
Speaker 3: I was picking up like he is driving off my bear.
Speaker 3: He wants to drive me crazy. He knows, you know,
Speaker 3: he knows. You know, you know because I told you,
Speaker 3: We tried. We called the Burbank police and told him,
Speaker 3: and you know we we were too scared teenagers. We
Speaker 3: were like, you need to go check on this guy.
Speaker 3: I don't I don't know if I had the room
Speaker 3: number correct. I think it was.
Speaker 1: Room one eleven eleven, Yeah, it was eleven.
Speaker 4: And you know it's even weirder. His cell at San
Speaker 4: Quentin was one eleven. And what's even weirder is it's
Speaker 4: my birthday.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. Yeah, Well, numerology, you know.
Speaker 4: That's what everyone's like. There's some so much like synchronicity
Speaker 4: with you. In this case, he had my birthday, was
Speaker 4: the cell number we had. We have the same initials,
Speaker 4: which is even weird. Like the it's just weird little coincidences.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is kind of weird how there's those little connections.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've always thought like this was like yeah, like no,
Speaker 4: I've always believed like I was meant to dig into
Speaker 4: this case, like those were like the little signs like
Speaker 4: this is what you're meant to do. It's been crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been wild.
Speaker 4: Here's what's even crazier is you saw the ice pick
Speaker 4: with the brown stains on it, right, Yeah, so obviously
Speaker 4: that had to have been blood. What's weird though, is
Speaker 4: he killed Andrea the second victim. That was like the
Speaker 4: I think it was like July twelfth. It was like
Speaker 4: really the beginning of July. He had killed her. But
Speaker 4: when he had killed her, he had stuck the ice
Speaker 4: pick in her and it got stuck in a bone
Speaker 4: and he just left it in there and just threw
Speaker 4: her body here, and then he killed Jackie. That was
Speaker 4: the beg. It was like September thirty, killed Jackie Leah,
Speaker 4: but he again he put he stuck the ice pick
Speaker 4: into her skull and left it there and tossed her.
Speaker 4: So I'm thinking, if you and Steve saw that ice
Speaker 4: pick with blood on it, like whose blood was it?
Speaker 4: Who else did he use that ice pit on?
Speaker 2: Between February and June of nineteen seventy nine, Bittaker and
Speaker 2: Norris prowled the streets, picking up more than twenty female hitchhikers.
Speaker 2: But these weren't their true targets, not yet. These rides
Speaker 2: were rehearsals, trial runs designed to perfect the ruses, to
Speaker 2: learn exactly how to make young women step into the
Speaker 2: van willingly. They were also scouting, searching for the perfect
Speaker 2: place to carry out what they had planned, and by
Speaker 2: late April they found it, a lonely fire road hidden
Speaker 2: deep in the San Gabriel Mountains. Larry smashed the locked
Speaker 2: gate with a crowbar, then replaced the lock with one
Speaker 2: of his own, and from then on that stretch of
Speaker 2: wilderness belonged to them or non