November 25, 2020 • 40 mins
In an attempt to find out what happened to Mitrice while she was at the police station, the team attempts to track down one of the most crucial pieces of physical evidence...the surveillance videotape.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans. Hello. It's been well documented that the
police made many mistakes on the night my Terese disappeared
and at her crime scene, mistakes that tragically could have
(00:29):
led to her death and also could have damaged evidence
in a way that makes it much more difficult or
even potentially impossible, to find and prosecute her killer. But
over the years, some people have suggested that certain members
of law enforcement could have actually been involved in My
Teresa's death and in a cover up of her killing.
(00:52):
So to investigate this theory, we have to go back
to the timeline. In a potential homicide investigation, it standard
procedure to start with the last people who were known
to have seen the victim alive, but this logic did
not seem to apply in My Teresa's case because some
of the last people who saw her alive were the police.
(01:14):
It's also good practice in either a homicide investigation or
a missing person's investigation to track down suraillance footage, and
we found out that there is suraillance footage that shows
my Trees in the Lost Hills Sheriff's station on the
night she disappeared, at least eight hours in all, on
four different cameras. It's been eleven years since Ronda started
(01:38):
investigating my Teresa's death, and she is still fighting to
get access to that tape, right, And are they saying
so they're saying to you, basically without saying that, they're
saying no, we're not going to release it, whereas before
they were saying we don't have the right equipment. So
it's like, which is it. This call I had with
Ronda was on September fifteenth, twenty twenty. She was explaining
(02:00):
to me that finally the LASD had agreed to release
the video footage of my tree from the night of
September sixteenth, two thousand and nine, and the detective who
she was talking to said that they were going to
upload the footage onto the LSD website for all the
world to see, and we'll see Thursday and let me
know what happens, right, thanks, bye? Uh okay. So apparently
(02:27):
they're going to give her. She thinks they're going to
give her the actual VHS tape, which would be great
because then we can figure out a way to play it.
She says, she'll let us have it, but I'm like,
you know, yeah, great, let's all play it. Figure out
a way to view the footage, make a copy like
it seems so crazy, and they still weren't going to
do it. I started looking into my Teresa's case about
a year ago. In any case, but especially one with
(02:51):
so many theories out there about what could have happened.
I try to investigate sherlock holmstyle. I follow the process
of elimination, but we can't eliminate a possible theory if
we can't even get base questions answered, which has been
one of the most frustrating parts of this case. This
surveillance video is key. It's one of the only pieces
(03:16):
of physical evidence out there that could potentially provide clues
to my Teresa's state of mind, her behavior, and possibly
what happened to her on the night she disappeared. Two
days after my call with Ronda, we met with her
and Ceci at my Teresa's gravesite at Inglewood Cemetery. Remember,
(03:39):
the detective told Ronda that they would finally release the video,
which shocked her because she spent years fighting to get
access to that video and now the LASD was just
going to put it on their website. That's when she
told me they were going to put it on the
actual actual website of the sheriff's apartment, which whatever so
(04:02):
did not sound Yeah. So, so I don't know when that.
She didn't tell me when that was going to happen, because,
like I think, the video had to be sent down
to their tech people to get uploaded and all that stuff.
I mean, she was really clear about what was going
to happen. So I started thinking about it a little
bit because, you know, so much of what we learned
about my trees we learned in the news. So I thought,
(04:24):
you know what I'm going to have to I'm going
to ask Alex if he would please show some compassion
and notify the family, you know, her parents before they
just uploaded this, you know, on the site for the
world to see. But at the cemetery, she told us
that once again, the police had changed their minds. She
(04:47):
talked to the sheriff, Alex Phillanueva, and he said the
police weren't going to make the video public. I'm not
really sure because then he got back to me and
said that that they were not going to put it
on the website. That's not what he wants if he
doesn't want it on the website, And then he was
clear that the only reason why he was released he
was releasing it to me per my request, and that
(05:12):
her this video does not fall within the policy of transparency.
When Sheriff Philanueva was elected in twenty eighteen, he made
a transparency promise. This was crucial for the community following
the secrecy and corruption of the sheriff Lee Baca and
Paul tanaka Era. Ronda says that Sheriff Phillanueva told her
(05:38):
that the transparency promise doesn't apply to my Teresa's case
because he made the promise after she disappeared. More like
he's letting me know he's doing me a favor. That's
kind of how it fell. So I so fine, whatever,
So I don't know if that means. So I don't
know what's going to happen now because I know what
(05:59):
the detective told me, and so this morning he just
told me something different. When I'm what I did ask
for is I asked for the raw footage, So I
want the complete digitized version and if that's what I
If that's what I don't get, I'm going to continue
to raise hell and there's no other option, so release it.
I've seen police hold back information before and sometimes they
(06:23):
have good reasons. They may want to avoid false confessions
by restricting access to facts that only the killer would know,
for example, But in a missing person's case, it is
standard practice to release footage of where the person was
seen last. It's been two months since they said that
they would make the video public and we're still waiting.
(06:48):
I'm Catherine Townsend and this is Helen Gone. The saga
(07:32):
over the release of a simple videotape goes to the
heart of this case because it's symptomatic of the battle
that the family has been fighting with law enforcement for transparency.
Tom Martin was captain of Lost Hill Station at the time,
and for months after my Chase went missing, he told
(07:52):
her family point blank that there was no video from
the night that she disappeared. So the way the search
did not happen was it didn't make any sense to us,
like why you wouldn't start from the station. So at
some point and they called the search off, we were like, okay,
we don't know where the hell even which direction did
she go left or right or whatever? When we asked
(08:14):
for well, let us just see the video so we
can determine which way to start. Our search, and then
that's when they started out, well there's no video. It's like, really,
there's no video, Like that makes no sense. Then in
January twenty ten, Ronda, my Teresa's mother, Latisse, and documentary
filmmaker Chip Croft were all at the Lost Hills Sheriff
(08:36):
station in a meeting with Captain Tom Martin and Lee Baca,
who was Sheriff of Los Angeles County at the time.
In that meeting, Sheriff Boka asked Captain Martin point blank,
is their video footage? And Martin said yes, the footage
was in his desk just feet away from where they
(08:56):
were sitting. It had been sitting in his desk drawer
for months now. Ship and Ronda were shocked. A. Chip
has also made multiple requests to get the video released.
He remembers Sheriff Boka asking Captain Martin about the video.
I was sitting right next to Captain Martin when Sheriff
(09:18):
Balka asked him that question. You don't have any video
with my terse in jail, and he turned be read,
I mean really be read and just see why I
do have this tape in my desk. And it turns
out there was the four tracks of rail to take
feeding from. Four cameras at the Sheriff's department and three
rooting side, and one was outside on the side of
the building. And there are two cameras on the front
(09:41):
of the building which would have explained shown how my
Teres left the sheriff station. And I still today suspect
that those two cameras were operating. And what was he
(10:03):
just said. He accidentally stuck it there, he said. So
there's been various reasons. One of them was in that moment.
He didn't tell us why. Yeah, So the next day
I got a call from his chief, Neil Tyler, who
told me that he had it in his desk because
he was trying to protect the individual that was also
(10:25):
on film. Okay, okay, because you could have just that's no,
that would be a reason not to show it to us.
That's not a reason about the live out its existence.
So there's that, And that was what they said, And
they had other limsy excuses about why he he had it.
I don't know. I don't know, but you know, eventually
(10:45):
he gets promoted. So for my Teresa's family, this marked
a major turning point in the investigation. I believe that
that's when their relationship with the police started to turn adversarial,
and when certain members of My Teresa's family began to
go from frustrated to furious. They never gave us the video. Oh,
(11:07):
they let you watch the video, so we had to
fight for that. So when they admit that they had
the video, then we got to keep pressing. It took
another couple of months for them to get us to
show the video. In March twenty ten, Latis, Ronda, and
others finally saw the video. Ronda was expecting several hours
(11:30):
of footage, but she says that she was shown a
much shorter, heavily edited version that was made up of
footage compiled from several different cameras. Latissa said multiple times
that on the footage that she saw, my Trees appeared
to be behaving in a manner that she called infantile
and childlike. She said that she could see her daughter
(11:54):
lying in the fetal position in her cell. In a
later deposition, she described my Trees as distressed and said
that My Trees had been pulling at her hair and
pulling at the mesh wiring that lined the holding cell area.
At one point, she said my Trees picked up the
phone and put it down. She looked, Latis said, as
(12:18):
if she was trying to use the phone but couldn't
get it to work. Latist said that his shadow was
visible as if someone was passing by the door, and
it seemed like My Trees was trying to get the
person's attention, possibly to get assistance, but that there appeared
to be no response. Both Ronda and Latise have spoken
(12:39):
out in the past about the edits in the video.
For example, Latis talked about seeing a piece of paper
crumpled on the floor and wondering how it got there.
And there's something else. At the end of the video,
they saw My Trees walking out of the station into
the darkness, and then right before they pressed stop, someone
(13:03):
walked out behind her. They were shocked because initially, they say,
they were told that there were no deputies in the
station at the time. When my chase was released. The
end of the video, the screen goes entirely black, and
you think it's the end of the video. So we
all turn and we're arguing at the detectives because we're kissed, right,
(13:24):
and so then the guy, the the person who the
tech now the tech guy he like, he goes like
that to me. So the tech guy's in this middle
and we're all around him, and then the screen is
right there, so he's so everybody's arguing. So I'm like
here like directly basing him. So then at some point
he turns to me and he goes like that, like
to make alert me to look up. So I believe
(13:46):
that tech guy knew that that video was not over,
but the detectives didn't. You could tell they were shocked.
So I look up and then you see that you
see a deputy coming out of the door, and that's
significant because we were told that there was nobody at
that station. Now, my Teresa's family and friends wanted to
(14:10):
know the name of the deputy who was seen on
the tape. They wanted to talk to him, not necessarily
to accuse him of any wrongdoing, but because he may
have been one of the last people to see my
Teres alive. Journalist Mike Kessler attempted to track the deputy
down for his Los Angeles Magazine article back in twenty eleven.
(14:31):
At that time, he said that the department refused to
give the family the deputy's name. Mike said that he
was able to get the name of the deputy through
a confidential source. He called him, and he wrote about
that call in his article. He wrote, quote, he told me,
Unfortunately for you, dude, I wasn't there and hung up.
(14:53):
On our next call, he insisted that he couldn't remember
if he'd been at the station the night my Terrese
was arrested, and then went on to imply that he
had been on site the night. This nonsense. What's happened?
He said, I was one of the guys that kept
away from this, minding my own business. End quote. Now
(15:14):
this seems to be a bizarre statement. We tried to
reach that deputy, but several of our calls went unreturned.
But then Rhonda told us and another source confirmed that
the deputy in the video was actually someone else, someone
whose name had never been mentioned before. We're still working
(15:34):
to figure out who the deputy was who exited the
building right after my Trese. That's why we need that tape.
Knowing what is on the unedited version of that tape
is crucial to this case. Even before Black Lives Matter,
a maud arbery and Breonna Taylor made national headlines, a
(15:58):
journalist named Alexander Narzaian wrote in Newsweek, quote, my Terce
Richardson was a young woman who became a case but
also a cause to many in Los Angeles. She's a
symbol too, as potent as Michael Brown and Ferguson Missouri,
or Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York, of a
(16:18):
law enforcement culture that has grown contemptuous of both laws
and men. End quote. He also quotes La based journalist
jas Mechanic as saying that she considers my Terse to
be a victim of police brutality. Here's the thing. Even
(16:42):
if the tape doesn't provide helpful leads, releasing it could
help answer some very basic questions for my Teresa's family.
Police have given several reasons for why they say the
tape can't be released. First, they said that it didn't exist.
The Malibu Serve Side News quoted Captain Tom Martin as
(17:03):
stating in November two thousand and nine that there was
no video or tape of any kind of my Trees
at the Lost Hill station on the night she was arrested.
When Captain Martin revealed that he had the tape, he
said that he hadn't told the family about it before
because he thought that when they asked for footage, they
were referring to footage from outside the building, not inside. Now,
(17:25):
this infuriated my Teresa's family members because they believe that
once again the police were not being forthcoming. Then they said,
according to Ronda, that they would not publicly release it
due to confidentiality issues. But we've talked to Schermaine Henderson,
who was in the cell with my Trees, and she
(17:46):
says she's on board to help in any way that
she can. Ronda says she's also spoken to Chermaine several
times over the years. She says that was always the case.
Chermaine was never concerned about confidentiality. Finally, police said that
they do not have the correct equipment to play the
tape on. Now, it does seem absurd that police say
(18:10):
that they don't have the technology to play the video,
yet they were somehow able to edit it and cut
it together. Supposedly, the reason why they're not going to
release the video is because Alex told me that the
sheriff told me that he said that the captain. I
guess some homicide doesn't want to set a president president
(18:33):
of what released on a ten year whole video is
an open investigation. Okay, well that's the case, then no
video should ever be released. That's right, until exposed. I've
seen too many videos when something's going on in the middle.
You know, it's like Ali sheet my fan, but I'm
gonna bring your ass down. CC made a good point
at the cemetery. This is Hollywood. There is no way
(18:53):
in hell that they do not have a machine to
play a VHS when you can buy original Nintendos from
Love before my trace was even barn Okay, and that's bullshit.
There are people who collect vhs, There are people who
collect cassette, there are people who collect all different forms
(19:17):
of media. So that's bullshit. Yes, hello, how much shit
is on freaking video just at these studios. See, here's
the thing is they get to they get to they
get to play these little games, and then when you're
a private citizen, you're not in any position to do
anything about it, like other than continuing to complain. You know,
(19:38):
it's and I'll continue to file every complaint that I
possibly can. Maybe they are releasing the original footage because
when I asked for in my pri our request, it
was for the ration the unedited version so it was
very clear. Now whether that's what they're going to release
or not, we'll see Captain Martin not subjected to any
(20:07):
type of disciplinary action for allegedly suppressing evidence. Instead, he
was promoted, transferred to another department, and given a raise.
(20:37):
I know that a lot of people will think that
multiple cops being involved in large scale conspiracies and secret
societies sounds like something out of the detective noir novel,
But it's important to understand the backdrop that my Teresa's
case played out against. Consider this. Lee Baca, who was
(20:57):
sheriff of Los Angeles County when my Terse went missing,
is now a federal prisoner. He's incarcerated at the Federal
Correctional Institution Latuna, just north of El Paso, Texas. Baca
was convicted of charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice, obstruction
of justice, and making false statements. Prosecutors accused Baca of
(21:22):
being at the head of a massive conspiracy, which also
involved his under sheriff, Paul Tanaka, and eight other deputies.
This all started after the FBI began looking into allegations
of police brutality against inmates at La County jails. The
FBI had an informant inside one of those jails, but
(21:44):
when jail staff figured out what was going on, Baca
and his deputies hid the informant from the federal prosecutors,
who had issued a summons for a grand jury appearance.
Bacca's trial became a media circus, and it also brought
out allegations of white supremacist gangs, which some in law
enforcement insisted were merely social clubs hidden in plain sight,
(22:08):
operating inside the LASD. This included the infamous Lynnwood Vikings,
who were based in the now defunct Lynwood Station. Its
members were LASD deputy sheriffs and included Baka and Tanaka.
They were described by a judge as a neo Nazi,
white supremacist gang who engaged in racially motivated hostility. The
(22:34):
ACLU compiled a report it read, in part, the long
standing and pervasive culture of deputy hyper violence in Los
Angeles County jails, a culture apparently condoned at the highest levels.
Cries out for swift and thorough investigation and intervention by
the federal government end this abuse allegedly included rape of
(22:59):
inmates by deputy sheriffs. In May twenty seventeen, Baca was
sentenced to three years in federal prison for his role
in the scheme to obstruct the FBI investigation. Now not
suggesting that former Sheriff Baca had anything to do with
abuses in my Teresa's case, but I am saying that
(23:20):
when the police aren't releasing video footage of what went
down at the station that night, I can certainly understand
why the family would have questions. And it was shortly
after Baca pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice that the
Attorney General agreed to reopen the investigation into my Teresa's case.
(23:43):
In late twenty fifteen, Ronda submitted a complaint containing over
five hundred pages of exhibits to the Office of the
Attorney General. They sent a response a few weeks later
saying that they had reviewed the evidence and made the
determination that the lasd deputies had not broken any laws.
(24:11):
My Teresa's father, Michael Richardson, asked the California Attorney General's Office,
led by Kamala Harris at the time, to review my
Teresa's case, and in twenty sixteen they agreed. But the
next year, the family received more heartbreaking news. The Attorney
General's office wrote in a letter to Michael that they
(24:33):
had found insufficient evidence to support criminal prosecution against sheriff's
deputies who were with my Trees on the night she disappeared.
The LASD was cleared of any wrongdoing, So once again
my Teresa's loved ones had gotten their hopes up, and
once again the case was closed. After receiving the letter,
(24:57):
Michael told newsstation Box eleven that he believed Harris had
used my terse as a political pawn. Kamala Harris used
my daughter's case as a platform to not only seek
the support of the people in her district, but use
them to elevate her career to senator, he said. Ronda
(25:21):
was allowed to see the video a few more times.
She said that she keeps seeing different versions. Okay, so
we never saw the original. We only ever saw what
they comply, right. I saw the first CD, which by
the way, was different than what I saw recently. So
on the first CD it was a little clear as
brainy because it's old anyways, but it's a little bit
(25:43):
clearer than the first one that we saw. And in
the first video that we saw, like we didn't see Chermaine.
We saw her leaving, like really quickly, so they like
cut that out so you couldn't and by the way,
you can't see her anyway, like we wouldn't know. I
couldn't pick her out of it. Yeah, so that's how
brainy was, and so so we didn't see her. We
(26:04):
saw in a shell selper like that Theresa, I mean,
like so short. But in the video that I saw,
you know recently, I saw her the entire time. So
I from the time that Latiss walked in, my tree's
walked in there, so you can have they had a
little bit of interaction and but you could see them,
you know, kind of talking to each other or sometimes
not talking to each other. And then eventually she did leave.
(26:26):
But the Attorney General's office said that they had viewed
the video. Ronda has a lot of questions about this,
she said. She specifically asked if the Attorney General's office
had viewed the unedited video. If they had, she's wondering
why the Sheriff's office said that they can't make that
video available to her and the public. For Ronda and Ceci,
(27:02):
there has been a beacon of hope and they're in bedstigation.
In recent years, Sheriff Alex Villanueva. They both campaigned on
his behalf, and CEC says Ronda is partially responsible for
his election. They say that under Villanueva's administration, they believe
that the Sheriff's Department has instituted reforms and moved toward transparency,
(27:27):
but they still believe that he has a long way
to go. This was obvious in twenty nineteen on the
tenth anniversary of my Teres's disappearance, when Ronda and Ceci
were at a press conference with Alex when he spoke
about policy changes that he said were a direct result
of holes in policies that were in place at the
time my Terce was released. CEC talked about this press
(27:51):
conference when we met with her at Jeoffrey's. You know,
he was supposed to come to this press conference, and
I'm I'm the one who begged him to do. At
the press conference, I'm like, my community needs this. You
need to set it right out here, get this shit done.
Tell the people you are reopening the investigation. Do the
(28:12):
right thing. So Alex comes to the press conference, We're
all standing there in the line and blah blah blah,
and everything's like pharmal Pharmal. All of a sudden, he's
like way off script and he's like pretending like he's
not going to do anything. Ceci and Rondo were hoping
that Sheriff Villanuevo would reopen the investigation and dive deep
(28:34):
into the case again, but then he did not make
that the central part of the press conference. Sheriff Villanueva
said mistakes were made, but this did not point to
evidence of malicious intent. He said, quote, there's a difference
between wrongdoing and holes and policies. There's always going to
(28:56):
be something that falls through the cracks. In this case,
it wound up being my terce Richardson, and that's something
we're going to have to live with forever. Quote. Ronda
was devastated. Sheriff Philanueva had talked about getting fresh eyes
on the case. Now he seemed to have moved on
(29:16):
to policy changes. Ronda, who is like the head of
this investigation, like on a personal level for the last
ten years, she's the one who got him elected. She's
looking at him like what the fuck, Like you're like
she lost her shit. So after he fucked up at
the press conference with all the newspeople looking at us,
(29:39):
We're standing there and I'm just looking at her. I'm
dumbfounder I don't know what to do. She's like everybody's looking.
And then all of a sudden, one of his like
security guards peaks his head out at lost sale station
and looks at me. He's like Ceci. I'm like, yeah,
he goes the sheriff wants to see you. I'm like okay,
So he goes you and Ronda. I'm like okay. So
(30:00):
I'm like, Ronda, Alex wants to see us, so I
grab her. We go back. She loses her shit on Alex,
losing her shit, losing god damn you, Like, I mean,
I can't even tell you this shit she was. I
don't even remember. And so I'm like trying to calm
her down, and Ron is like boom, like an elbow check,
(30:24):
and she's like, get out of my way. I'm like, shit,
throw me against the wall. I'm like, okay, I got this.
I got this. So finally she storms out of the
room and and Alex just looks at me and he's like,
oh my god, Cec, thank you so much. And he's
got these big eyes, like these doe eyes, like a deer.
I'm like am I looking at my sheriff for Vliet like,
(30:47):
I mean, he's looking at me scared, like he was
scared around and I'm like really. We asked several times
to talk to some of the officers involved. The police
department formally denied our request, but Ceci was able to
get me a brief interview with sheriffvill and Nueva. We
(31:08):
talked about reform, but mostly I wanted to hear about
the video in my Teresa's case. Rohnda, Latisse and Chip
have been allowed to view a heavily edited video a
couple of times over the years, but they haven't ever
been given access to the unedited video. So finally we
wanted to ask the question why not. Anyway, I know
(31:31):
you're super busy, so I really really appreciate it, and yeah,
thank you. Since we are doing the podcast this season
about the My Trees Richardson case, in terms of just
I know that some policies have changed since this happened,
Can you just talk a little bit about that. Well,
we have a policy where it's voluntary and in making.
(31:54):
Can you eat volunteer to stay inside our jail facility overnight?
So then I released in the week hours in the morning,
and it supplies to the entire jail, but it's particularly
based on our female population at CRDF and also all
the stations, the patrol stations, so we can't legally hold
(32:14):
someone back once their time is up to be released publicly. However,
there is obviously a potential harm to release something, for example,
to in the morning, and so they can sign a
waiver where they could they request to be held for
a maximum sixteen hours until the next business day during
normal business hours where they can be released and of
(32:36):
course arrange for the transportation right and that was a
big change for the past. Then we got to my
Terrace's case. Well, I'd made a promise that I would
have a we would have reexamined the entire case from
start to finish, and we also looked at it and
I have possible any wrongdoings from within the department. So
(32:57):
we had a new team of homicide investigators and internal
affairs investigators look at the whole thing from start to finish,
and they went through all the interviews, they went through
all the physical evidence, they walked to the scene themselves,
they retraced everything, they looked at all the video evidence.
So they covered everything very very very detailed, and they
(33:20):
arrived at the same conclusion, and unfortunately the matter still
remains unresolved to this day and that we still need answers.
One mystery, he says, is where did my tries go
between the police station and where she was found. Was
she driven there by someone or did she walk there?
(33:41):
There's basically no definitive evidence either way. What we need
is we need some between the time that she left
on her own from the Lost Hill station to the
point where her remains were recovered. That period of time
is still I think there's some video surveillance of her
getting water from the garden hose at a certain residence,
(34:04):
but we're missing a lot of information of what happened
and were there any contact with other people, something that
would point us in the right direction. Because the coroner
couldn't determine the exact cause of because of the nature
of the remains, there was nothing left to determine, right
you know, exactly how she died, so that still remains
the unresolved issue. When you say video footage, do you
(34:27):
think that she was most likely killed in the early
morning hours after she disappeared, or do you think she
might have been out there for a couple of days.
I'm inclined to think that it happened pretty much contiguous,
since since she left the station area, I don't think
she was out there for days, because she would have
popped up again on another call for service pretty easy,
(34:50):
because if she wasn't from the neighborhood and people were
concerned about her safety, they would have called it in.
And the fact that we didn't get that call in
that illustrates it was pretty continuous chain of events until
she ended upcoming so after so pretty shortly. Then after
she left Bill Smith's residence. Yeah, if you follow the
(35:12):
chain of events and when she was last seeing alive
with that one residence, and then from there, I don't
think there weren't days that went by. I think it
was a short span of time. I think one of
the things that's so confusing for me about this is
if she did. I mean, do you have any theories
about how she got out there to Dark Canyon? Because
I hiked it with my producer and I was when
(35:33):
we got to it. It was one of the hardest
things I've ever done, and I sort of said, I
don't know how in the world she could have gotten
out here. That's again, that's that's one of those mysteries
that we need to resolve. And if she died by
unlawful means and it was a criminal homicide, well that
means that there's a suspect that's still outstanding. Or is
she on her own because he's young, somewhat athletic, and
(35:57):
her own mental state of mind drove her to brave
all those to get to that point and she succumbed
naturally to the elements another possibility, and now you can
see why we're well, which one is it? We don't
have enough information to put us down either path. So yeah,
so that was my next question about I mean, you
don't have any theories, you're just you're saying you don't
(36:19):
have enough information basically, right, we're missing some key elements
to give us an indication. Which route It ended up being,
what do you think about the theory that some people
have you know, mentioned that there could have been law
enforcement involved, that that theory has been turned out there,
But since we had all those big new evidence of
(36:40):
within the station and everyone's been interviewed, there's there's nothing
that supports that. Finally we got to the video. Well,
in regarding the video, I mean, do you think that'll
ever be publicly released? The judge of put a put
an order on it so it couldn't be released. We're
(37:02):
going to release it in a response to a pry.
And however, I think the families of Mantris Richardson intervened
with court and they sought an order to keep it
from being disclosed publicly. So that's where it's at right now.
I mean, if the judge will returns that order or
removes it, well, then they will be released poetly. Okay.
(37:24):
And do you and when you say a video, do
you mean the edited video or is there still is
there still an unedited video? Does that exist anymore? No?
The edited video that is out there is a compilation
of all the pieces of video that had something on it.
What they did is they removed all the dead spots
(37:44):
where there's nothing happening at all. Okay, gotcha. So what
they did is they put it all together to put
it in context of the actual activities and emotions on
the camera, and they got rid of all the time
that there was nothing happening. Yeah, they compressed it for
clarity purpose. So it was everything with heron and you
didn't see anything that would be on the video, No,
(38:08):
nothing at all. It looked like normal traffic inside the
station and the exterior station. I mean, if you had
to guess, you don't think it's going to be released
anytime soon. That's that's at the discretion of the court.
So we may never get the unedited tapes from that night,
but we do know that my Chrise was alive and
(38:29):
well when she left the station that night, shortly after midnight.
And I'm encouraged by the fact that Sheriff vill Nueva,
unlike so many other law enforcement officers from the past,
isn't saying that there's no sign of foul play. He
admits that there are missing pieces, and he says he
thinks that someone, maybe someone way up in the Santa
(38:51):
Monica Mountains knows something. Yeah, we do get a lot
of the love transience, people that wandered different areas throughout
that whole corridor there, but you know, absence somebody coming
forward and saying this is what happened, and how we're
still going to be left with this unresolved, you know. Depth,
(39:12):
So we have to put aside Los Angeles law enforcement
politics and all the other chaos. We need to do
what we do best. We need to go back to Montegnito,
back to the woods and start tracking people down, starting
with a deputy who walked out of the Lost Hill
station minutes after my trease. I'm Katherine Townsend and this
(39:35):
is Helen Gone. Helen Gone is a production of School
of Humans and iHeartRadio. It's written and narrated by me,
Catherine Townsend. Our producers are Gabby Watts, Taylor Church and
James Morrison. Music is by Ben Sale. Mix is by Tuonewelders.
Our executive producers are Brandon barr Els Crowley and Brian Lavin.
(39:57):
Special thanks to Chipcroft for use of footage from his
documentary Loss Compassion, School of Humans. School of Humans
School of Humans. Hello. It's been well documented that the
police made many mistakes on the night my Terese disappeared
and at her crime scene, mistakes that tragically could have
(00:29):
led to her death and also could have damaged evidence
in a way that makes it much more difficult or
even potentially impossible, to find and prosecute her killer. But
over the years, some people have suggested that certain members
of law enforcement could have actually been involved in My
Teresa's death and in a cover up of her killing.
(00:52):
So to investigate this theory, we have to go back
to the timeline. In a potential homicide investigation, it standard
procedure to start with the last people who were known
to have seen the victim alive, but this logic did
not seem to apply in My Teresa's case because some
of the last people who saw her alive were the police.
(01:14):
It's also good practice in either a homicide investigation or
a missing person's investigation to track down suraillance footage, and
we found out that there is suraillance footage that shows
my Trees in the Lost Hills Sheriff's station on the
night she disappeared, at least eight hours in all, on
four different cameras. It's been eleven years since Ronda started
(01:38):
investigating my Teresa's death, and she is still fighting to
get access to that tape, right, And are they saying
so they're saying to you, basically without saying that, they're
saying no, we're not going to release it, whereas before
they were saying we don't have the right equipment. So
it's like, which is it. This call I had with
Ronda was on September fifteenth, twenty twenty. She was explaining
(02:00):
to me that finally the LASD had agreed to release
the video footage of my tree from the night of
September sixteenth, two thousand and nine, and the detective who
she was talking to said that they were going to
upload the footage onto the LSD website for all the
world to see, and we'll see Thursday and let me
know what happens, right, thanks, bye? Uh okay. So apparently
(02:27):
they're going to give her. She thinks they're going to
give her the actual VHS tape, which would be great
because then we can figure out a way to play it.
She says, she'll let us have it, but I'm like,
you know, yeah, great, let's all play it. Figure out
a way to view the footage, make a copy like
it seems so crazy, and they still weren't going to
do it. I started looking into my Teresa's case about
a year ago. In any case, but especially one with
(02:51):
so many theories out there about what could have happened.
I try to investigate sherlock holmstyle. I follow the process
of elimination, but we can't eliminate a possible theory if
we can't even get base questions answered, which has been
one of the most frustrating parts of this case. This
surveillance video is key. It's one of the only pieces
(03:16):
of physical evidence out there that could potentially provide clues
to my Teresa's state of mind, her behavior, and possibly
what happened to her on the night she disappeared. Two
days after my call with Ronda, we met with her
and Ceci at my Teresa's gravesite at Inglewood Cemetery. Remember,
(03:39):
the detective told Ronda that they would finally release the video,
which shocked her because she spent years fighting to get
access to that video and now the LASD was just
going to put it on their website. That's when she
told me they were going to put it on the
actual actual website of the sheriff's apartment, which whatever so
(04:02):
did not sound Yeah. So, so I don't know when that.
She didn't tell me when that was going to happen, because,
like I think, the video had to be sent down
to their tech people to get uploaded and all that stuff.
I mean, she was really clear about what was going
to happen. So I started thinking about it a little
bit because, you know, so much of what we learned
about my trees we learned in the news. So I thought,
(04:24):
you know what I'm going to have to I'm going
to ask Alex if he would please show some compassion
and notify the family, you know, her parents before they
just uploaded this, you know, on the site for the
world to see. But at the cemetery, she told us
that once again, the police had changed their minds. She
(04:47):
talked to the sheriff, Alex Phillanueva, and he said the
police weren't going to make the video public. I'm not
really sure because then he got back to me and
said that that they were not going to put it
on the website. That's not what he wants if he
doesn't want it on the website, And then he was
clear that the only reason why he was released he
was releasing it to me per my request, and that
(05:12):
her this video does not fall within the policy of transparency.
When Sheriff Philanueva was elected in twenty eighteen, he made
a transparency promise. This was crucial for the community following
the secrecy and corruption of the sheriff Lee Baca and
Paul tanaka Era. Ronda says that Sheriff Phillanueva told her
(05:38):
that the transparency promise doesn't apply to my Teresa's case
because he made the promise after she disappeared. More like
he's letting me know he's doing me a favor. That's
kind of how it fell. So I so fine, whatever,
So I don't know if that means. So I don't
know what's going to happen now because I know what
(05:59):
the detective told me, and so this morning he just
told me something different. When I'm what I did ask
for is I asked for the raw footage, So I
want the complete digitized version and if that's what I
If that's what I don't get, I'm going to continue
to raise hell and there's no other option, so release it.
I've seen police hold back information before and sometimes they
(06:23):
have good reasons. They may want to avoid false confessions
by restricting access to facts that only the killer would know,
for example, But in a missing person's case, it is
standard practice to release footage of where the person was
seen last. It's been two months since they said that
they would make the video public and we're still waiting.
(06:48):
I'm Catherine Townsend and this is Helen Gone. The saga
(07:32):
over the release of a simple videotape goes to the
heart of this case because it's symptomatic of the battle
that the family has been fighting with law enforcement for transparency.
Tom Martin was captain of Lost Hill Station at the time,
and for months after my Chase went missing, he told
(07:52):
her family point blank that there was no video from
the night that she disappeared. So the way the search
did not happen was it didn't make any sense to us,
like why you wouldn't start from the station. So at
some point and they called the search off, we were like, okay,
we don't know where the hell even which direction did
she go left or right or whatever? When we asked
(08:14):
for well, let us just see the video so we
can determine which way to start. Our search, and then
that's when they started out, well there's no video. It's like, really,
there's no video, Like that makes no sense. Then in
January twenty ten, Ronda, my Teresa's mother, Latisse, and documentary
filmmaker Chip Croft were all at the Lost Hills Sheriff
(08:36):
station in a meeting with Captain Tom Martin and Lee Baca,
who was Sheriff of Los Angeles County at the time.
In that meeting, Sheriff Boka asked Captain Martin point blank,
is their video footage? And Martin said yes, the footage
was in his desk just feet away from where they
(08:56):
were sitting. It had been sitting in his desk drawer
for months now. Ship and Ronda were shocked. A. Chip
has also made multiple requests to get the video released.
He remembers Sheriff Boka asking Captain Martin about the video.
I was sitting right next to Captain Martin when Sheriff
(09:18):
Balka asked him that question. You don't have any video
with my terse in jail, and he turned be read,
I mean really be read and just see why I
do have this tape in my desk. And it turns
out there was the four tracks of rail to take
feeding from. Four cameras at the Sheriff's department and three
rooting side, and one was outside on the side of
the building. And there are two cameras on the front
(09:41):
of the building which would have explained shown how my
Teres left the sheriff station. And I still today suspect
that those two cameras were operating. And what was he
(10:03):
just said. He accidentally stuck it there, he said. So
there's been various reasons. One of them was in that moment.
He didn't tell us why. Yeah, So the next day
I got a call from his chief, Neil Tyler, who
told me that he had it in his desk because
he was trying to protect the individual that was also
(10:25):
on film. Okay, okay, because you could have just that's no,
that would be a reason not to show it to us.
That's not a reason about the live out its existence.
So there's that, And that was what they said, And
they had other limsy excuses about why he he had it.
I don't know. I don't know, but you know, eventually
(10:45):
he gets promoted. So for my Teresa's family, this marked
a major turning point in the investigation. I believe that
that's when their relationship with the police started to turn adversarial,
and when certain members of My Teresa's family began to
go from frustrated to furious. They never gave us the video. Oh,
(11:07):
they let you watch the video, so we had to
fight for that. So when they admit that they had
the video, then we got to keep pressing. It took
another couple of months for them to get us to
show the video. In March twenty ten, Latis, Ronda, and
others finally saw the video. Ronda was expecting several hours
(11:30):
of footage, but she says that she was shown a
much shorter, heavily edited version that was made up of
footage compiled from several different cameras. Latissa said multiple times
that on the footage that she saw, my Trees appeared
to be behaving in a manner that she called infantile
and childlike. She said that she could see her daughter
(11:54):
lying in the fetal position in her cell. In a
later deposition, she described my Trees as distressed and said
that My Trees had been pulling at her hair and
pulling at the mesh wiring that lined the holding cell area.
At one point, she said my Trees picked up the
phone and put it down. She looked, Latis said, as
(12:18):
if she was trying to use the phone but couldn't
get it to work. Latist said that his shadow was
visible as if someone was passing by the door, and
it seemed like My Trees was trying to get the
person's attention, possibly to get assistance, but that there appeared
to be no response. Both Ronda and Latise have spoken
(12:39):
out in the past about the edits in the video.
For example, Latis talked about seeing a piece of paper
crumpled on the floor and wondering how it got there.
And there's something else. At the end of the video,
they saw My Trees walking out of the station into
the darkness, and then right before they pressed stop, someone
(13:03):
walked out behind her. They were shocked because initially, they say,
they were told that there were no deputies in the
station at the time. When my chase was released. The
end of the video, the screen goes entirely black, and
you think it's the end of the video. So we
all turn and we're arguing at the detectives because we're kissed, right,
(13:24):
and so then the guy, the the person who the
tech now the tech guy he like, he goes like
that to me. So the tech guy's in this middle
and we're all around him, and then the screen is
right there, so he's so everybody's arguing. So I'm like
here like directly basing him. So then at some point
he turns to me and he goes like that, like
to make alert me to look up. So I believe
(13:46):
that tech guy knew that that video was not over,
but the detectives didn't. You could tell they were shocked.
So I look up and then you see that you
see a deputy coming out of the door, and that's
significant because we were told that there was nobody at
that station. Now, my Teresa's family and friends wanted to
(14:10):
know the name of the deputy who was seen on
the tape. They wanted to talk to him, not necessarily
to accuse him of any wrongdoing, but because he may
have been one of the last people to see my
Teres alive. Journalist Mike Kessler attempted to track the deputy
down for his Los Angeles Magazine article back in twenty eleven.
(14:31):
At that time, he said that the department refused to
give the family the deputy's name. Mike said that he
was able to get the name of the deputy through
a confidential source. He called him, and he wrote about
that call in his article. He wrote, quote, he told me,
Unfortunately for you, dude, I wasn't there and hung up.
(14:53):
On our next call, he insisted that he couldn't remember
if he'd been at the station the night my Terrese
was arrested, and then went on to imply that he
had been on site the night. This nonsense. What's happened?
He said, I was one of the guys that kept
away from this, minding my own business. End quote. Now
(15:14):
this seems to be a bizarre statement. We tried to
reach that deputy, but several of our calls went unreturned.
But then Rhonda told us and another source confirmed that
the deputy in the video was actually someone else, someone
whose name had never been mentioned before. We're still working
(15:34):
to figure out who the deputy was who exited the
building right after my Trese. That's why we need that tape.
Knowing what is on the unedited version of that tape
is crucial to this case. Even before Black Lives Matter,
a maud arbery and Breonna Taylor made national headlines, a
(15:58):
journalist named Alexander Narzaian wrote in Newsweek, quote, my Terce
Richardson was a young woman who became a case but
also a cause to many in Los Angeles. She's a
symbol too, as potent as Michael Brown and Ferguson Missouri,
or Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York, of a
(16:18):
law enforcement culture that has grown contemptuous of both laws
and men. End quote. He also quotes La based journalist
jas Mechanic as saying that she considers my Terse to
be a victim of police brutality. Here's the thing. Even
(16:42):
if the tape doesn't provide helpful leads, releasing it could
help answer some very basic questions for my Teresa's family.
Police have given several reasons for why they say the
tape can't be released. First, they said that it didn't exist.
The Malibu Serve Side News quoted Captain Tom Martin as
(17:03):
stating in November two thousand and nine that there was
no video or tape of any kind of my Trees
at the Lost Hill station on the night she was arrested.
When Captain Martin revealed that he had the tape, he
said that he hadn't told the family about it before
because he thought that when they asked for footage, they
were referring to footage from outside the building, not inside. Now,
(17:25):
this infuriated my Teresa's family members because they believe that
once again the police were not being forthcoming. Then they said,
according to Ronda, that they would not publicly release it
due to confidentiality issues. But we've talked to Schermaine Henderson,
who was in the cell with my Trees, and she
(17:46):
says she's on board to help in any way that
she can. Ronda says she's also spoken to Chermaine several
times over the years. She says that was always the case.
Chermaine was never concerned about confidentiality. Finally, police said that
they do not have the correct equipment to play the
tape on. Now, it does seem absurd that police say
(18:10):
that they don't have the technology to play the video,
yet they were somehow able to edit it and cut
it together. Supposedly, the reason why they're not going to
release the video is because Alex told me that the
sheriff told me that he said that the captain. I
guess some homicide doesn't want to set a president president
(18:33):
of what released on a ten year whole video is
an open investigation. Okay, well that's the case, then no
video should ever be released. That's right, until exposed. I've
seen too many videos when something's going on in the middle.
You know, it's like Ali sheet my fan, but I'm
gonna bring your ass down. CC made a good point
at the cemetery. This is Hollywood. There is no way
(18:53):
in hell that they do not have a machine to
play a VHS when you can buy original Nintendos from
Love before my trace was even barn Okay, and that's bullshit.
There are people who collect vhs, There are people who
collect cassette, there are people who collect all different forms
(19:17):
of media. So that's bullshit. Yes, hello, how much shit
is on freaking video just at these studios. See, here's
the thing is they get to they get to they
get to play these little games, and then when you're
a private citizen, you're not in any position to do
anything about it, like other than continuing to complain. You know,
(19:38):
it's and I'll continue to file every complaint that I
possibly can. Maybe they are releasing the original footage because
when I asked for in my pri our request, it
was for the ration the unedited version so it was
very clear. Now whether that's what they're going to release
or not, we'll see Captain Martin not subjected to any
(20:07):
type of disciplinary action for allegedly suppressing evidence. Instead, he
was promoted, transferred to another department, and given a raise.
(20:37):
I know that a lot of people will think that
multiple cops being involved in large scale conspiracies and secret
societies sounds like something out of the detective noir novel,
But it's important to understand the backdrop that my Teresa's
case played out against. Consider this. Lee Baca, who was
(20:57):
sheriff of Los Angeles County when my Terse went missing,
is now a federal prisoner. He's incarcerated at the Federal
Correctional Institution Latuna, just north of El Paso, Texas. Baca
was convicted of charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice, obstruction
of justice, and making false statements. Prosecutors accused Baca of
(21:22):
being at the head of a massive conspiracy, which also
involved his under sheriff, Paul Tanaka, and eight other deputies.
This all started after the FBI began looking into allegations
of police brutality against inmates at La County jails. The
FBI had an informant inside one of those jails, but
(21:44):
when jail staff figured out what was going on, Baca
and his deputies hid the informant from the federal prosecutors,
who had issued a summons for a grand jury appearance.
Bacca's trial became a media circus, and it also brought
out allegations of white supremacist gangs, which some in law
enforcement insisted were merely social clubs hidden in plain sight,
(22:08):
operating inside the LASD. This included the infamous Lynnwood Vikings,
who were based in the now defunct Lynwood Station. Its
members were LASD deputy sheriffs and included Baka and Tanaka.
They were described by a judge as a neo Nazi,
white supremacist gang who engaged in racially motivated hostility. The
(22:34):
ACLU compiled a report it read, in part, the long
standing and pervasive culture of deputy hyper violence in Los
Angeles County jails, a culture apparently condoned at the highest levels.
Cries out for swift and thorough investigation and intervention by
the federal government end this abuse allegedly included rape of
(22:59):
inmates by deputy sheriffs. In May twenty seventeen, Baca was
sentenced to three years in federal prison for his role
in the scheme to obstruct the FBI investigation. Now not
suggesting that former Sheriff Baca had anything to do with
abuses in my Teresa's case, but I am saying that
(23:20):
when the police aren't releasing video footage of what went
down at the station that night, I can certainly understand
why the family would have questions. And it was shortly
after Baca pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice that the
Attorney General agreed to reopen the investigation into my Teresa's case.
(23:43):
In late twenty fifteen, Ronda submitted a complaint containing over
five hundred pages of exhibits to the Office of the
Attorney General. They sent a response a few weeks later
saying that they had reviewed the evidence and made the
determination that the lasd deputies had not broken any laws.
(24:11):
My Teresa's father, Michael Richardson, asked the California Attorney General's Office,
led by Kamala Harris at the time, to review my
Teresa's case, and in twenty sixteen they agreed. But the
next year, the family received more heartbreaking news. The Attorney
General's office wrote in a letter to Michael that they
(24:33):
had found insufficient evidence to support criminal prosecution against sheriff's
deputies who were with my Trees on the night she disappeared.
The LASD was cleared of any wrongdoing, So once again
my Teresa's loved ones had gotten their hopes up, and
once again the case was closed. After receiving the letter,
(24:57):
Michael told newsstation Box eleven that he believed Harris had
used my terse as a political pawn. Kamala Harris used
my daughter's case as a platform to not only seek
the support of the people in her district, but use
them to elevate her career to senator, he said. Ronda
(25:21):
was allowed to see the video a few more times.
She said that she keeps seeing different versions. Okay, so
we never saw the original. We only ever saw what
they comply, right. I saw the first CD, which by
the way, was different than what I saw recently. So
on the first CD it was a little clear as
brainy because it's old anyways, but it's a little bit
(25:43):
clearer than the first one that we saw. And in
the first video that we saw, like we didn't see Chermaine.
We saw her leaving, like really quickly, so they like
cut that out so you couldn't and by the way,
you can't see her anyway, like we wouldn't know. I
couldn't pick her out of it. Yeah, so that's how
brainy was, and so so we didn't see her. We
(26:04):
saw in a shell selper like that Theresa, I mean,
like so short. But in the video that I saw,
you know recently, I saw her the entire time. So
I from the time that Latiss walked in, my tree's
walked in there, so you can have they had a
little bit of interaction and but you could see them,
you know, kind of talking to each other or sometimes
not talking to each other. And then eventually she did leave.
(26:26):
But the Attorney General's office said that they had viewed
the video. Ronda has a lot of questions about this,
she said. She specifically asked if the Attorney General's office
had viewed the unedited video. If they had, she's wondering
why the Sheriff's office said that they can't make that
video available to her and the public. For Ronda and Ceci,
(27:02):
there has been a beacon of hope and they're in bedstigation.
In recent years, Sheriff Alex Villanueva. They both campaigned on
his behalf, and CEC says Ronda is partially responsible for
his election. They say that under Villanueva's administration, they believe
that the Sheriff's Department has instituted reforms and moved toward transparency,
(27:27):
but they still believe that he has a long way
to go. This was obvious in twenty nineteen on the
tenth anniversary of my Teres's disappearance, when Ronda and Ceci
were at a press conference with Alex when he spoke
about policy changes that he said were a direct result
of holes in policies that were in place at the
time my Terce was released. CEC talked about this press
(27:51):
conference when we met with her at Jeoffrey's. You know,
he was supposed to come to this press conference, and
I'm I'm the one who begged him to do. At
the press conference, I'm like, my community needs this. You
need to set it right out here, get this shit done.
Tell the people you are reopening the investigation. Do the
(28:12):
right thing. So Alex comes to the press conference, We're
all standing there in the line and blah blah blah,
and everything's like pharmal Pharmal. All of a sudden, he's
like way off script and he's like pretending like he's
not going to do anything. Ceci and Rondo were hoping
that Sheriff Villanuevo would reopen the investigation and dive deep
(28:34):
into the case again, but then he did not make
that the central part of the press conference. Sheriff Villanueva
said mistakes were made, but this did not point to
evidence of malicious intent. He said, quote, there's a difference
between wrongdoing and holes and policies. There's always going to
(28:56):
be something that falls through the cracks. In this case,
it wound up being my terce Richardson, and that's something
we're going to have to live with forever. Quote. Ronda
was devastated. Sheriff Philanueva had talked about getting fresh eyes
on the case. Now he seemed to have moved on
(29:16):
to policy changes. Ronda, who is like the head of
this investigation, like on a personal level for the last
ten years, she's the one who got him elected. She's
looking at him like what the fuck, Like you're like
she lost her shit. So after he fucked up at
the press conference with all the newspeople looking at us,
(29:39):
We're standing there and I'm just looking at her. I'm
dumbfounder I don't know what to do. She's like everybody's looking.
And then all of a sudden, one of his like
security guards peaks his head out at lost sale station
and looks at me. He's like Ceci. I'm like, yeah,
he goes the sheriff wants to see you. I'm like okay,
So he goes you and Ronda. I'm like okay. So
(30:00):
I'm like, Ronda, Alex wants to see us, so I
grab her. We go back. She loses her shit on Alex,
losing her shit, losing god damn you, Like, I mean,
I can't even tell you this shit she was. I
don't even remember. And so I'm like trying to calm
her down, and Ron is like boom, like an elbow check,
(30:24):
and she's like, get out of my way. I'm like, shit,
throw me against the wall. I'm like, okay, I got this.
I got this. So finally she storms out of the
room and and Alex just looks at me and he's like,
oh my god, Cec, thank you so much. And he's
got these big eyes, like these doe eyes, like a deer.
I'm like am I looking at my sheriff for Vliet like,
(30:47):
I mean, he's looking at me scared, like he was
scared around and I'm like really. We asked several times
to talk to some of the officers involved. The police
department formally denied our request, but Ceci was able to
get me a brief interview with sheriffvill and Nueva. We
(31:08):
talked about reform, but mostly I wanted to hear about
the video in my Teresa's case. Rohnda, Latisse and Chip
have been allowed to view a heavily edited video a
couple of times over the years, but they haven't ever
been given access to the unedited video. So finally we
wanted to ask the question why not. Anyway, I know
(31:31):
you're super busy, so I really really appreciate it, and yeah,
thank you. Since we are doing the podcast this season
about the My Trees Richardson case, in terms of just
I know that some policies have changed since this happened,
Can you just talk a little bit about that. Well,
we have a policy where it's voluntary and in making.
(31:54):
Can you eat volunteer to stay inside our jail facility overnight?
So then I released in the week hours in the morning,
and it supplies to the entire jail, but it's particularly
based on our female population at CRDF and also all
the stations, the patrol stations, so we can't legally hold
(32:14):
someone back once their time is up to be released publicly. However,
there is obviously a potential harm to release something, for example,
to in the morning, and so they can sign a
waiver where they could they request to be held for
a maximum sixteen hours until the next business day during
normal business hours where they can be released and of
(32:36):
course arrange for the transportation right and that was a
big change for the past. Then we got to my
Terrace's case. Well, I'd made a promise that I would
have a we would have reexamined the entire case from
start to finish, and we also looked at it and
I have possible any wrongdoings from within the department. So
(32:57):
we had a new team of homicide investigators and internal
affairs investigators look at the whole thing from start to finish,
and they went through all the interviews, they went through
all the physical evidence, they walked to the scene themselves,
they retraced everything, they looked at all the video evidence.
So they covered everything very very very detailed, and they
(33:20):
arrived at the same conclusion, and unfortunately the matter still
remains unresolved to this day and that we still need answers.
One mystery, he says, is where did my tries go
between the police station and where she was found. Was
she driven there by someone or did she walk there?
(33:41):
There's basically no definitive evidence either way. What we need
is we need some between the time that she left
on her own from the Lost Hill station to the
point where her remains were recovered. That period of time
is still I think there's some video surveillance of her
getting water from the garden hose at a certain residence,
(34:04):
but we're missing a lot of information of what happened
and were there any contact with other people, something that
would point us in the right direction. Because the coroner
couldn't determine the exact cause of because of the nature
of the remains, there was nothing left to determine, right
you know, exactly how she died, so that still remains
the unresolved issue. When you say video footage, do you
(34:27):
think that she was most likely killed in the early
morning hours after she disappeared, or do you think she
might have been out there for a couple of days.
I'm inclined to think that it happened pretty much contiguous,
since since she left the station area, I don't think
she was out there for days, because she would have
popped up again on another call for service pretty easy,
(34:50):
because if she wasn't from the neighborhood and people were
concerned about her safety, they would have called it in.
And the fact that we didn't get that call in
that illustrates it was pretty continuous chain of events until
she ended upcoming so after so pretty shortly. Then after
she left Bill Smith's residence. Yeah, if you follow the
(35:12):
chain of events and when she was last seeing alive
with that one residence, and then from there, I don't
think there weren't days that went by. I think it
was a short span of time. I think one of
the things that's so confusing for me about this is
if she did. I mean, do you have any theories
about how she got out there to Dark Canyon? Because
I hiked it with my producer and I was when
(35:33):
we got to it. It was one of the hardest
things I've ever done, and I sort of said, I
don't know how in the world she could have gotten
out here. That's again, that's that's one of those mysteries
that we need to resolve. And if she died by
unlawful means and it was a criminal homicide, well that
means that there's a suspect that's still outstanding. Or is
she on her own because he's young, somewhat athletic, and
(35:57):
her own mental state of mind drove her to brave
all those to get to that point and she succumbed
naturally to the elements another possibility, and now you can
see why we're well, which one is it? We don't
have enough information to put us down either path. So yeah,
so that was my next question about I mean, you
don't have any theories, you're just you're saying you don't
(36:19):
have enough information basically, right, we're missing some key elements
to give us an indication. Which route It ended up being,
what do you think about the theory that some people
have you know, mentioned that there could have been law
enforcement involved, that that theory has been turned out there,
But since we had all those big new evidence of
(36:40):
within the station and everyone's been interviewed, there's there's nothing
that supports that. Finally we got to the video. Well,
in regarding the video, I mean, do you think that'll
ever be publicly released? The judge of put a put
an order on it so it couldn't be released. We're
(37:02):
going to release it in a response to a pry.
And however, I think the families of Mantris Richardson intervened
with court and they sought an order to keep it
from being disclosed publicly. So that's where it's at right now.
I mean, if the judge will returns that order or
removes it, well, then they will be released poetly. Okay.
(37:24):
And do you and when you say a video, do
you mean the edited video or is there still is
there still an unedited video? Does that exist anymore? No?
The edited video that is out there is a compilation
of all the pieces of video that had something on it.
What they did is they removed all the dead spots
(37:44):
where there's nothing happening at all. Okay, gotcha. So what
they did is they put it all together to put
it in context of the actual activities and emotions on
the camera, and they got rid of all the time
that there was nothing happening. Yeah, they compressed it for
clarity purpose. So it was everything with heron and you
didn't see anything that would be on the video, No,
(38:08):
nothing at all. It looked like normal traffic inside the
station and the exterior station. I mean, if you had
to guess, you don't think it's going to be released
anytime soon. That's that's at the discretion of the court.
So we may never get the unedited tapes from that night,
but we do know that my Chrise was alive and
(38:29):
well when she left the station that night, shortly after midnight.
And I'm encouraged by the fact that Sheriff vill Nueva,
unlike so many other law enforcement officers from the past,
isn't saying that there's no sign of foul play. He
admits that there are missing pieces, and he says he
thinks that someone, maybe someone way up in the Santa
(38:51):
Monica Mountains knows something. Yeah, we do get a lot
of the love transience, people that wandered different areas throughout
that whole corridor there, but you know, absence somebody coming
forward and saying this is what happened, and how we're
still going to be left with this unresolved, you know. Depth,
(39:12):
So we have to put aside Los Angeles law enforcement
politics and all the other chaos. We need to do
what we do best. We need to go back to Montegnito,
back to the woods and start tracking people down, starting
with a deputy who walked out of the Lost Hill
station minutes after my trease. I'm Katherine Townsend and this
(39:35):
is Helen Gone. Helen Gone is a production of School
of Humans and iHeartRadio. It's written and narrated by me,
Catherine Townsend. Our producers are Gabby Watts, Taylor Church and
James Morrison. Music is by Ben Sale. Mix is by Tuonewelders.
Our executive producers are Brandon barr Els Crowley and Brian Lavin.
(39:57):
Special thanks to Chipcroft for use of footage from his
documentary Loss Compassion, School of Humans. School of Humans
Hell and Gone News
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