Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm a journalist who's spent the last twenty five years
writing about true crime.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
compelling true crimes.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
new insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
This is Buried Bones. Hey, Paul, have you been thinking
(01:03):
about this case all week? You love a good serial
killer case.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
I know, I actually have. I mean, this is a
fascinating case.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah it is. Let me go ahead and do a
quick summary so we can get back into it. So
we have a story that's set in nineteen seventy one,
California in Uba City, and there are a series of
men who have been found brutally murdered with it looks
like a meat cleaver knife. It seems like it's cutting devices, beaten,
(01:34):
just in terrible shape and they've been found in what
I describe as shallow graves, but you say it is
pretty impressive six foot by two to three feet deep.
And they're in orchards, and they're almost all exclusively you know, transients,
people who work on the orchards, people who don't have
families that are following up if they go missing. And
(01:56):
so far we have these bodies found in two different orchards,
and the consistency is the brutality of the way they
were killed. That they are transients, they're all white men,
they all seem to be sort of the same age range,
I mean forties, fifties and sixties. And you know, there's
there's some interesting characteristics that you've picked up on. So
(02:18):
do you want to talk about that where we've got
twelve victims one assault that happened a year before. That
will be key for us, But do you want to
talk about some of the special circumstances around here that
are making you come to a particular conclusion so far.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Well, I think when you take a look at all
twelve cases of homicide, the victimology is the same. You know,
you have white males, they all appear to be older.
These are not you know, teenage boys or younger adults
that are being killed. These white males are generally transient.
They don't appear to have any real financial assets, so,
(02:54):
you know, robbery, financial gain as a matter of committing
these crimes does not appear to be the offender's motive.
The offender is specifically utilizing orchards to dispose of the bodies,
which is interesting because there could be many places, you know,
that the offender could go that are much more remote,
probably even easier to dispose of the bodies. So there's
(03:18):
something about the orchards that the offender is comfortable with,
or maybe he's sending a message, you know, whatever, whatever
it is, the way all of these victims are killed
appears to be reasonably consistent from one case to another.
A knife or other sharp edged weapons such as a
(03:38):
meet kleefer has been used in each instance. There's some beating,
there's some bludgeoning. There's also, at least in one case
you mentioned, there was strangulation, you know, But fundamentally, you know,
it all appears to be within the same range of
violence inflicted on these victims. The victims' bodies are being
(04:02):
disposed of in gray sites, and you know, these are
not what I would classify as the typical shallow grave.
You know, when you say that these grave sites are
three feet or three and a half feet down, the
offender is having to dig that that takes time. That's
(04:22):
a lot of earth to move. And I don't know
how compact the you know, the soil is in these locations,
but in my experience is that, you know, once you
get down eighteen inches, it becomes harder and harder because
the dirt becomes so compact. Most offenders give up after
(04:43):
about eighteen inches. In at least one case, there is
evidence that the victim had been killed on the orchard. There's,
you know, a bloody area that the offender had tried
to cover up, and then there was what I imagine was
either a dragged or dripped blood trail that went fifteen
yards over to the grave site. And though the other
(05:05):
cases don't seem to have that evidence, that doesn't mean
that the offender didn't do that. He may have just
been better at covering up what I would call the
homicide scene versus the body disposal location. The pattern is consistent.
Some of these victims are showing their clothing lower body
(05:26):
clothing their genital area being exposed. This is where I'm
keying in on. Okay, there's a sexual motivation to these crimes,
even though some of the victims are fully clothed. But
I've talked multiple times about how offenders either will redress
their victims or allow the victims to redress before they're killed.
(05:46):
And then in the very first case of homicide, you have,
whether it be a pamphlet or some sort of document
that the detective described as homosexual literature. So you know,
I'm still not sure what to make of that from
a is this something that the offender planted or is
(06:08):
this something that that particular victim had, And maybe there
was a solicitation that occurred, and the offender is a
serial predator, or the offender is sending a message if
the offender is planting that type of literature. But I
think it goes without saying this offender is male. This
(06:28):
offender is attacking other males. There's a sexual component to
these homicides. There's no financial motivation. And all the homicide
victims that have been discovered to date are white males.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Well, let's talk about the one victim who isn't white,
and he's the survivor and not someone who's been buried
of course on an orchard. And I just want to
remind everybody the details because this assault that happens at
this bar, cafe restaurant is something that's really key here.
So remember that happened February twenty fifth of nineteen seventy
(07:06):
in the middle of the night one am, Jose Romero
Rea was beaten in a bathroom in the Guadalajara restaurant
cafe and you know, so brutal and awful. So we
now go back to nineteen seventy where that attack happened
to Jose, and you know he barely survives. It happens
(07:29):
in a bathroom. It's owned by a man. This cafe
is owned by a man named Natividad Corona. And it
sounds like and Natividad is the one who called in
the tip because according to him, the person who attacked
this man Jose in the bathroom was Natividad's half brother,
(07:51):
whose name was Juan Corona. So he's thirty six years old,
he's from Mexico originally, and he is very very unstable
according to his brother. So the sequence of events is
that Natividad has always been sort of wary of him,
even though he said, you can come live with me
(08:12):
or live in the area where I am, I can
give you work. He's been supportive. But in nineteen fifty five,
so this is sixteen years ago, Natividad petitioned for Wan
to be committed to a state mental hospital. And here's why.
After a flood that had drowned thirty eight people in
Sutter County that year, Natividad said that Wan became paranoid
(08:36):
and he became delusional. He believed Wan believed that all
people in the county had died in this flood and
they were basically coming back as zombies walking the streets,
and he reacted violently and he was having fits of rage.
And so in fifty six he was committed to the
(08:57):
de Witt State Hospital in Auburn, Californa. Now, before we
get into that, so let me get your reaction here.
So Wan is the man who nearly killed this man
jose Y're earlier and we'll find out more about Wan.
And as you can guess, yes, he has access to
all of this property where these migrant workers are. Now,
(09:18):
the thought is it's not necessarily who did it, because
I think it's pretty clear it's Wan. It's why and
what do we believe? Because you've come up with what
I think is a very fair safe assessment of the
motivations of this killer, you know, sexual and motivation. Obviously
it's not robbery, it's some kind of gratification. But Wan's
(09:40):
family and Wan and his defensive attorneys are going to
say that's not it. It's completely different. So that's I
think where we're headed. But tell me what you think
so far.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Okay, Well, you know it's it's interesting because I am
aware of the Wan Corona case. I never paid attention
to it. I know the lab that I used to
work for out of the Contracosta County Sheriff's office, they
either did some work on the Corona case or had
consulted on the Corona case way back when, right when
(10:13):
this thing was happening, when bodies were being recovered. But interesting,
going back to Jose's attack and Natividad is saying that
it was one that did the attack. One Corona did
the attack on Jose in the men's restroom. You know,
that's it's interesting, and you have provided the detail that
(10:36):
I guess rumors had it that Natividad was homosexual, and
so you know, I wonder if Natividad permitted certain homosexual
activities to occur amongst men in the restroom at that restaurant.
You know, back in the day, I've got at least
two vice operations that were focused in on men's restrooms
(11:01):
because that was sort of the hookup locations. And so
I'm kind of extrapolating backwards in time, if you will,
in terms of where men could engage in sexual activity
with other men. And is there something that happened between
Jose and Natividad that Wan took exception to or did
(11:22):
Wan approach Jose, you know, whether it was out in
the restaurant or he followed him back into the restroom
and then things went sideways. And then obviously, if Wan's
the offender in that case, which sounds like he is,
he's armed, and that may just be part of him.
You know. I think part of it is when did
(11:43):
Wan come into the country. He may have other cases
down in Mexico. And I've seen this where you have
serial predators that come up into the country and they
just continue committing the same crimes they were doing down
in Mexico, but authorities up in the United States have
no idea. You know that these guys are serial predators.
(12:04):
So that's, you know, one of the thoughts that I have.
And then you get into the psychiatric assessment, where now
natividad is indicating that after this flood Sutter County, thirty
eight people killed, that that one became paranoid and violent,
(12:27):
and you know, generally this would be indicative of what
I would call the psychotic offender. And the psychotic offender
is truly mentally ill and for whatever their mindset is,
you know, they are resorting to violence. And the most
(12:49):
notable example I can give is the vampire killer out
of Sacramento, Richard Trenton Chase. Truly a psychotic offender, and
it's a horrific series of crimes that he committed. The
problem that I'm running into is the crimes in the orchards.
There is an organized element to these crimes. They are
(13:14):
pre planned. The offender is covering up for his crimes.
He's burying the bodies, select purposely selecting victims that really
aren't going to be missed, nobody's going to report them.
He is showing a level of mental acuity that I
would not attribute to a psychotic offender. So I call
(13:39):
into question Natividad's assessment of his half brother. He's not
an expert, you know. This is where I want a
true forensic psychiatrist doing an assessment of wand to determine
is there a mental issue there. He sounds like an
organized serial predator that is completely aware of right versus
(14:04):
wrong and is committing crimes that he wants to commit.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Well, we have several routes to go, and you tell
me what's the most efficient way. I can skip down
into details from the trial that explains Natividad's activities. If
that feeds it all into some sort of I don't know,
anti homosexual rage or whatever that would be. But you know,
(14:29):
he's not simply a gay man. There's other stuff that happens.
And I can also tell you that in fifty three,
nineteen fifty three, when jan was eighteen, then he immigrated
from illegally from Mexico to California. So when you were
(14:49):
asking about Mexico, is there anything happening back in Mexico,
he was eighteen, so you know when he came to California, sure,
and he followed Natividad. They were very close.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
You know.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
We also have more bodies. I will tell you a
total of twenty five. And we also have sort of
the way he was busted. To begin with, he has
a wife and kids, so it sounds like his brother
had called and tipped off the police in fifty six.
So one followed Natividad here in fifty three when he
(15:23):
was eighteen. So in nineteen fifty six, Natividad has him committed.
He went to the de Witt State Hospital in Auburn, California,
and he was giving thorizine and shock treatment until he
was quote unquote cured. It didn't work well, obviously not.
It sounds like it pissed him off even more.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Well, you know, this is where you know thorizine is
basically a sedative, you know, and of course you see
these electroshock treatments, you know, basically barbaric types of treatments
for people that are suffering from mental health issues within
these types of settings. I've heard of the DeWitt State Hospital.
(16:03):
I'm not sure it still exists. Of course, I'm very
familiar with Auburn, California, But I mean we are talking
this is now fifteen years before these cases there in Uba.
You have Natividad is the one that is basically saying
(16:25):
Wan has got mental issues and the state takes them
in and then starts giving him these treatments. Right, this
is where you know what type of professional evaluation had
actually occurred on Wan during this timeframe. And how old
is Wan at this point to see in his early twenties.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
He is twenty one when he's committed to DeWitt.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Okay, So on one hand, the paranoia aspect, you know,
this is where I start wondering, is he starting to
develop schizophrenia? Which early twe is when you start to
see some of those types of symptoms. I just have
trouble resolving somebody who was suffering from schizophrenia, And then
(17:12):
fifteen years later is what I would consider a very
organized offender. That's where I'm questioning the early assessment of
Wan's mental health.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Well, and let me tell you about the next fifteen years.
So he gets down in fifty six, He got out
the same year that he was committed. After his release,
he seems to get it together. He became a licensed
labor contractor. He was hiring mostly Mexican migrant laborers to
staff all of these orchards and farms, and some of
(17:45):
these workers have been hired to tend to the peach orchard, right,
so you know Jan has access. Obviously, he also contracted
labor for Sullivan Ranch, and for that job he drove
a nineteen seventy one cheval panel van yellowish color, as
we suspected, I mean, I will tell you, of course,
(18:05):
they say it matched the mold, the track, mouldeds or
the mood point at this point. Okay, so they think
that they have enough information to charge one Corona with
this with at least one of these crimes. So they
surprise him early morning, May twenty six. So the first
body was discovered on the nineteenth, so this is pretty quick.
(18:27):
This is seven days. They find twenty seven items. They
grab him, find twenty seven items. There, two foot rusty
crowbar with some possible blood stains, a pothole digger with
possible blood stains, mud and hair on digging portion, two
pairs of men's shorts, and a leather bag, one with
blood stains. Two and a half foot wooden club with
(18:50):
possible blood stains. There was an axe, a hatchet, a hoth,
three butcher knives, a meat cleaver, and a bolo machete.
Got I mean this is beyond a kill kid. But
they also take six nine millimeter luger shells, some business papers,
check stubs, a checkbook, in a ledger, and the ledger,
they said, will become known as the murder book. So
(19:13):
they pounded the van as well as an Impula sedan.
They find red hair in the trunk, black belt and
to throw rugs, and they find red stains that they
think could be blood. One sample of a red stain
from the rear of the van. They confiscate rubber boots
from the van, and I think the red hair is
(19:33):
significant just because it doesn't belong in their car. It
sounds like and they're trying to connect all of these victims.
At the Sullivan ranch, they confiscate two knives. One is
an eight inch blade stamped Tennessee toothpick Okay, has blood
stains on the guard, and then the last inch of
the blade has two hooks that are designed to tear
(19:55):
the bottom of a wound.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
What I'm envisioning is, yet you have a blade and
then you have sort of these ancillary hooks at the
base of the blade. So if you stab that knife
all the way in, Let's say you're hunting or you're
committing a homicide. If you get that knife blade down
in there, you're able to maybe even twist the knife,
(20:19):
and then those hooks are going to grab the margins,
and you're in essence doing more damage to the wound itself,
maybe to increase the lethality of that stab.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
That's awful. And and then moving on, there's a hunting
knife and there is also a nine millimeter Browning automatic pistol.
Everything has blood on it. Now we haven't heard about
anybody being shot yet, but it's all covered in blood.
So he gets arrested.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Of course, I would say contrary to my initial assessment.
You know, the fact that he's got all of this stuff,
all this evidence in his possession or under his control
some capacity. It's bloody. He's not getting rid of it,
he's not hiding it. It can be easily traced back
to him. That in my mind, is you know, suggestive
(21:12):
of somebody that's really not thinking everything through. And this
is where I kind of go. It's technically it's it's
it's now an antiquated model that the FBI's original behavioral
analysis unit used to use. But the organized versus the
disorganized defender, and you know, you're truly psychotic. Offender like
(21:37):
a Richard Trenton Chase is disorganized. It's he's not even
trying to do any type of self preservation. He's just
wandering around and killing people. An organized offender is somebody
like a Ted Bundy who is trying to commit crimes,
is planning the crimes, is getting away with the crimes,
is covering up, you know, trying to you know, keep
(21:58):
offending and not getting caught. I would say that Onuan
Corona is demonstrating what's considered mixed. He's got some disorganized aspects,
all these bloody weapons and other items of physical evidence
that he's not getting rid of or trying to hide
or anything. But then he is showing a level of
planning as as well as you know, trying to cover
(22:22):
his tracks, you know, in terms of victim selection and
disposal of the victim's bodies, et cetera. So he's probably
falling into this mixed defender category.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Well, when he's arrested as public defender arranges for him
to be examined by a guy named doctor Joseph Catan.
So his defense attorney arranges for him to be examined
by this psychiatrist who's from Los Altos and his name
is doctor Joseph Canton. He says that Onan Corona has
continued to hallucinate, and he says that one has schizoid
(22:57):
personality disorder, and other psychiatrists say that he has a psychosis,
schizophrenia and paranoia. So that's the defense, and then of
course it prosecutor has a whole other idea.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
And this is where with other cases you have a
true psychotic offender, and I use the term psychotic indicating
there is a real and significant mental illness going on,
where now you have a defense of insanity. This person
does not know right from wrong. Those types of individuals
(23:33):
when they commit crimes, it's very obvious they are completely
out of it. There is no attempt to cover up
their tracks. That's not what we're seeing with Juan Corona.
That's where I'm having a problem with that type of assessment.
I think Corona knows right from wrong. Why is he
burying the bodies because he wants to hide what he
(23:55):
has done. He knows it's wrong. I don't doubt that
there's maybe there's a level of some mental health aspects,
but he is not on the order of a truly
disorganized psychotic offender.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Okay, well, let's see what the defense has to say. First,
we do have some more information from the field, because
they're of course continuing to search. There's another tip back
on the first ranch, the Peach ranch. They had seen
Corona one Corona around this area. Of course, you know
he was there, I'm sure all the time because he's
(24:31):
hiring workers. But they had actually seen him near the
peach tree orchard around ten o'clock one night in January
of seventy one. And you know, this is like maybe
really specifically kind of scoping out stuff. But also we
have so many bodies total of twenty five. I told
you that we don't even know when he would have
started this, so that might have been the first night,
(24:53):
we don't know. They find two more graves belonging to
a fifty five year old man and a fifty four
year old man in the northern part of the peachtree orchards.
One of the two men, his body is buried with
scattered trash like grass clippings, fabric, broken mirror, child stocking, glassholders,
anything like that. Now, Paul, one last thing, there are
(25:16):
bank deposit slips addressed to one Corona in this man's
grave that they find June fourth.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
All right, so these are one coronas it's his bank account.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Bank deposit slips. That could be an accident.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
Well, that'd be my first thought, you know, because you
throw a body in the trunk of a Chevy van
or I shouldn't say trunk, put the back of a
Chevy van, you pull the body out, the body's been bleeding,
you know, Yeah, things stuck to the bloody aspects of
the body, and those things could be bank deposit slips
that I imagine one Corona is not the neatest individual,
(25:52):
and the back of this van probably look like a junkyard.
He's probably completely unaware that he's leaving basically his ID card.
You know, I'm the killer with this body. There's a
long shot chance that he purposely left those sort of
as a taunt. You'll never catch me. But you basically
(26:15):
just made law enforcement's job very easy by having your
name and bank account with the body. So I don't know,
I think it's more accidental.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
It sounds accidental because he actually seemed to have done
a decent job covering it up, you know, I mean,
it was lucky that they found this shallow grave to
begin with on the first one, and it just sort
of went one to the other to the other. But
he's going to be charged with first degree murder for
twenty five murders, and who knows how many others there
are out there. So the trial starts September eleventh, nineteen
(26:47):
seventy two. So listen to this. I hadn't heard this before.
So he is with a defense attorneyamed Richard Hawk, who
is really well known, and he gets the public defender
booted out and he steps in. In exchange for Hawk,
the defense attorney being given exclusive literary dramatic rights to
(27:09):
one Corona's story. So he gets a kick ass lawyer,
but you know, he's selling all of his rights, which
I'm sure at that point one was going, you can
do whatever you want. Sure they moved the trial because
Richard Hawk, the defense attorney, says there's a lot of
anti Mexican sentiment in Ubis City. So it goes to Fairfield, California,
which is seventy five miles away.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
I know Fairfield very well.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
There, well, I imagine you know most of those places very well.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
There you go, I lived in Fairfield at one point.
He did. And yeah, and the town I lived in, Vacaville,
is a twin city to Fairfield. I was in Fairfield
all the time.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Well then, I don't know if it's the same courthouse,
but he was there, it would be well, this seems
like an open and shutcase. It does to you and I.
But the prosecutor has made a lot of missteps unfortunately,
the biggest issue is that all the evidence going into
trial is circumstantial in nature. But they do not test
(28:03):
the blood on any of Corona's knives for a match
with any of the victims, even a blood typing match.
You know, they don't do any of that. So he
could have said, I killed all kinds of animals. What
are you going to do about it? You know, And
they didn't find things with him that were souvenirs I
don't think of the victims or whatever. So there was
(28:24):
an issue there, and that's what when the prosecutor's starting
to get nervous. They also don't turn in some reports
to the defense, and you know, that becomes a problem.
There are a lot of mix ups. They're having a
really hard problem. And I had to talk to Alison,
the researcher about this because it was confusing to both
of us. So everybody is mislabeling these victims. We have
(28:48):
several John Doe's, and they can't figure out sh should
we be labeling them in the order that they were
found or the order that we think they were killed,
the circumstances, or the different orchards. So even though that
seems kind of stuper and in silly with a jury
and with a judge, it's problematic because it looks so
haphazard and it's confusing to people.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Well, you know, this is where you know, the da
is going to charge murder in those cases that they
feel that they can prove murder. And so you have
all these victims, and so the question that I would
be wondering, because I know nothing about how they proceeded
with prosecution, is that did they charge all of what
(29:31):
was it twenty five, twenty six.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Twenty five with first degree murder?
Speaker 3 (29:35):
So so they have twenty five first degree murder charges.
But these cases all have a spectrum of evidence from
probably none to significant like a bank deposit with Juan
Corona's name and bank account on there. Yep, you know,
so this is where you know, maybe there was a
misstep on the prosecutor's office going, well, we know that
(29:59):
he did all of of these. But the problem is
is that each murder has to stand by itself, and
that may be where that I mean, when you charge
a very very weak murder case in a series like this,
well that gives the defense an opening and if they
can you know, basically undo the jurors confidence that one
(30:22):
was involved in let's say John Doe number two, then
they can make an argument, well, hell can we trust
the prosecution and what they're presenting in these other cases?
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Well, this is I mean, for lack of a better term,
a complete fuck up from beginning to end. You're right,
they have so much evidence twenty five I guess if
you want to be specific, different crime scenes. You know,
all these different graves. They mix everything up. They remove
the fingertips as part of biological evidence from I don't
know if it's all the victims, but several of them.
They totally screw that up. They can't figure out who
(30:55):
what fingertips go with what body. At this point, they
lose I know, so it gets worse. They lose the
cast of the tracks taken near the first grave site.
Remember it was truck tracks, which to me, is not
make or break, but it's indicative of how sloppy this is,
and it's not going to look good for a judge
(31:15):
and jury. They miss label shoe prints, sumerm pressings, they
mislabel those casts. The forensic details once they're brought into
the case don't seem particularly damning. So what they're saying
is that the cigarette butt found in one of the
men's graves. They applied a little known technique in typing
(31:35):
dried blood to bodily fluids other than blood like saliva.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
So I did this work, you know, very early on
in my career. You know, the ABO testing and like
for blood bank aspects, you can go ahead and do
your ABO testing directly from the blood, but when you
start dealing with dried stains, you now have to do techniques.
(32:01):
And if it's a blood stain, we would do what
it's called an absorption ellusion technique in order to be
able to determine the ABO type. Something like with semen,
we would have to go to an absorption inhibition. So
it's without going into details, and quite frankly, I'm not
sure I could get into the details because it's very esoteric,
(32:24):
you know, it's been too long since I've been there,
but it's somewhat of an indirect way of determining the
ABO type of a person who secretes their ABO substance
into their semen or their saliva. So this technique, this
is it was evolving in the nineteen seventies. I was
(32:44):
doing it in nineteen ninety four, you know, so it
was a little bit more mature what I was doing
at versus the forensic scientists who are doing it back
in the day. And you know, quite frankly, you know
the training program, the competency aspect of what they were doing.
I tell agencies today, you know that have cases from
(33:04):
this era, I say, you absolutely just throw out the
old what would call conventional zerology testing. Don't worry about
what they found on their ABO testing, you know, the
whatever technique they used or secrete a status aspect, just
use modern DNA if you still have evidence.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Yeah, well listen to what doctor Ruth guy says, and
you tell me what you think. So they have established
that this is a technique they're going to use. She
said she was able to determine the ABO blood type
of the smoker who they presumed as the killer, which
I don't know if that's a gimme or not. It
(33:45):
was a butt that was found in the grave, But
what if he used dirt that had the butt already
in it?
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Right.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
She testified that she was able to determine the ABO
blood type of the smoker if they were among seventy
percent of the population known as secrets. A cigarette was
smoked by someone who had an O type blood, and
neither the person who was in the grave or one
Corona had OH. They were both A. And there was
(34:13):
blood on the gun barrel. You know, there was only
one person who was shot, and the blood on the
gun barrel was type of OH. And the guy who
was shot was a type A. So they're coming up
with these things and none of it points to one
Corona except you have the weapons.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
Yes, Well, as I just mentioned, I don't put any
weight on that ABO testing at all. And when you
start talking about type O, I mean that throws in
a whole other can of worms. In terms of interpreting
these types of results, I mean it sounds like with
(34:51):
things being mislabeled, things being lost, you have csis in
over their head. You know, this is an unusual case.
I mean, think about the number of grave sites, the
number of bodies that they're finding in rapid order. I've
never worked a case like that, and I've got more
experience than most, you know, across the nation in terms
(35:13):
of big cases and complex cases. And then you think
about a smaller agency, you know, and often Uba is
serviced by California DOJ. You know, so that's the laboratory
system that it's a statewide laboratory system that Yuba would
be using. And the California DOJ has krimliss and very
(35:36):
experienced krimalists that go out to help these smaller agencies,
you know. So part of my assessment on what went
wrong in terms of the evidence in this case, did
they pull in the state level krimlis on this or
were they relying on Uba Sheriff's CSIS or Yuba City csis?
(35:59):
You know, small county, small town, and they're in over
their heads. But even if you bring in the state,
you're kind of inventing as you go along, you know,
so you could be very experienced. Doesn't necessarily excuse some
of the mislabeling or loss of evidence, you know, that
shouldn't happen. I think right now this is where trying
(36:23):
to assess the prosecution's case. It's getting to where they
were dealing with what they had back in the nineteen
seventies and to present to a jury. You know, this
innovative ABO testing off of saliva from cigarette butts that
I will tell you probably was not adequately validated compared
(36:47):
to how scientific methodologies in forensic labs are validated today.
I just put no weight on it, you know. And
it's a creator status, a golden State killer. I went
to the very first Task Force Media being back in
twenty eleven when we reconvened down in Santa Barbara, and
I told them all these guys that were eliminated based
on secreator's status back in the nineteen seventies, throw it out,
(37:10):
you know, let's track them down again and get a
sample that we can do modern DNA on. So that's
you know, that's that's what's you know, kind of catching
my attention. I mean, I think there's you know, there's
no question that one Corona is the killer in this case.
It's now, okay, what did the investigative aspect do right?
(37:33):
What did they do wrong? How strong was the people's
case against one Corona? And how did the defense, you know,
attack that case, that strategy? What was the defense's strategy?
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Okay, here we go. The prosecutor cannot give him motive,
so he closes by basically saying that a team of
ten psychiatrists could work years on a man who has
done something just like this and still not come up
with the answer. We know, Juri's love hearing a shit
like that. We don't know what happened.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Yeah, but I want to point out, I mean, at
the time of this case, the term serial killer had
never been used. So this is where you know, they
had the term lust killer, you know, going back at
least the nineteen fifties, where you know, investigators understood that
there was a type of predator out there that was
(38:24):
sexually motivated. But now in this particular case where I
mean it's obvious to me, but for them, you know,
they couldn't go after the evidence and say, you have
these mens whose genitalia are exposed and everything else. It'd
be a simple collection technique and doing DNA is showing
oh there was sexual interaction between one Corona and this victim.
(38:47):
But they didn't have that, and they didn't understand truly
what the serial predator was until you had you know,
the fbis this is John Douglas, Bob Wrestler, doctor Anne Burgess,
and I've got all their books behind me. You know.
This is where authorities just really didn't understand the serial
(39:09):
predator in the early nineteen seventies. And so for a
prosecutor to say, well, we don't know what the motive is,
it's obvious what the motive is. You know, there's a
sexual component, there's a fantasy component, and there may have
been a mission oriented component with one Corona.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Well, let me tell you, the defense really goes after
one Corona's brother. Okay, so this is a switch up here.
So you know, Natividad was the one who turned in
or tipped to the sheriff off that his brother had
just attacked this man terribly in his cafe a year earlier.
(39:44):
So here's what the defense says.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
And this is a smart strategy.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
The number one thing is they said, this prosecutor has
no idea what he's doing. They're incompetent. And you know,
there were some witnesses who said some of these men
were definitely getting into one Corona's truck, except the witnesses
were off with the color, and he had a couple
of different kinds of vehicles. So you know, they meticulously
(40:10):
went through each witness and essentially discredited what the witnesses said,
and of course the finger tip mixups and everything else.
But here's the big thing. The new information that they
had not heard yet was that they are taking the
suspicion off of one and putting it on Natividad. And
what they say is because several victims pants were down
(40:32):
and their penises were exposed. The defense attorney Hawk says,
the killer was what's called pasevo homosexual And there is
an expert who is going to take the stand, who's
an expert on homosexuality, who's a doctor, and this is
what mister Hawk says. The expert, Evelyn Hooker, who's this doctor,
(40:53):
will tell you that there is nothing the ultimate act
of humiliation degradation to a Mexican man, The ultimate act
of losing his muchismo is to play the role of
the female in a sexual encounter. She will tell you
that these men are driven by masochistic tendencies either to
have pain inflicted upon them or be degraded. That underneath
(41:16):
all of this masochistic tendency is a boiling, bellowing rage,
and that it is not uncommon for all of the
pacebo homosexual to suddenly turn in a homicidal rage to
destroy or mutilate the man that he has just had
intercourse with. And then he says, in what is a
I'm sure to be a classic line, the same expert
(41:38):
will also tell you that one Corona is hopelessly heterosexual.
Now the question is, we're pretty certain that one Corona
is responsible for this. Is he setting his brother up?
Or is there something like what we've been talking about,
a very conscious or subconscious element of sexual whatever about
(42:00):
one Corona. So on which one is it?
Speaker 3 (42:03):
You know, first everything that this doctor Hooker, Evelyn Hooker,
when you take the totality of the series in what's
going on, that just does not line up with what
we know today as the predator. There's you know, questions
that I would have that you know, I know we
(42:23):
don't have answers to. However, you know, when I think
about all the details that I can recollect that you've
told me, this completely falls in line with a predator
that is actively seeking out victims of a certain type
and is sexually interacting with them at some level. That
(42:47):
we don't know what that level is because they didn't
collect the evidence and didn't document appropriately for what today's
standards would be to say that one Corona is heterosecond
and to make a defense, well, therefore he's not responsible
for this sexual humiliation of these white men victims. I mean,
(43:11):
that's from my perspective, that's ludicrous. Basically, you have a
predator that is seeking self gratification. That self gratification includes
a sexual component, includes the violence component, it includes the
idea of being able to get away with these crimes.
Committing these crimes you know, on locations that the predator
(43:33):
has familiarity with one crona has an anchor point at
these in these orchards. From a geographic profiling standpoint, he's
choosing victims that he knows he can victimize and kill,
and nobody's going to basically report anybody missing. No loved
ones are out there because of these you know, the
(43:54):
transient nature of who these victims are. I mean, he's
just showing all the classic characteristics of an organized defender.
As I mentioned before, I think he's mixed or some
disorganized aspects to him. But he is out there committing
crimes for self gratification and wants to continue to commit
these crimes.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Well, here's what's interesting to me about the defense. You know,
they don't go down the mental illness road because Hawk
believes the defense attorney believes that you know, this obviously
is is admitting that he did something wrong. So he
thought this is a more viable defense. So what he says,
I'm gonna try to shorthand this. So Hawk essentially says
(44:37):
that accuses Natividad Corona of just about everything under the sun.
And I don't know what's verified in whatsnot. I do
know that he was a member of the Guadalajara police
in the fifties, but he was dismissed for fraud and
homosexuality in sixty eight. He had contracted civilists and these
charges followed Natividad to the cafe that he owned, because
(45:01):
there was an anonymous writer to the Alcohol Beverage Commission
that said that Natividad will corrupt any miner who enters
this restaurant. He sweet talks them and gets them drunk.
And in seventy one that year he was accused by
the Jalisco police of kidnapping and possibly murdering a young boy.
(45:21):
The defense says that Natividad is the one who killed
all of these people when he was in a rage
caused by the syphilis that he had. So this is
what they're trying to do. They're saying one Corona is
a family man. He's got a wife and four daughters.
He goes to church every week. He's a good boss,
(45:42):
according to everybody. Now here's one issue. Paul Jose, the
man who was almost killed right by one, he changes
his story, I have no idea. Multiple times. He actually
says that Natividad was his attacker in nineteen seventy, isn't
and his brother wan And just as Natividad had tried
(46:04):
to frame you know, his brother, the defense said he
was happy to have him take the fall again. And
so this is all Natividad's doing.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
Well, I think it's interesting, you know, and this is
where you know, today we could answer this question. Yeah,
so Natividad, it's very possible that he has committed you know,
some violent acts against males, maybe young males. And you know,
his half brother, you know Wand is also committing homicidal
(46:36):
acts against men. You know, criminalities does seem to run
in families. We've seen this over and over and over again.
Any law enforcement agency, you go into them and say, okay,
who who's responsible for a majority or crimes in your city?
And you'll see they'll they'll point out select families and go,
(46:57):
this family is the biggest pain in the ass in
this jurisdiction. And it's it's the grandfather, it's the father,
it's the son, it's the grandkid. They're all committing crimes.
You know, in terms of Natividad having a criminal past,
that does not give me any pause about you know,
Wand's involvement in the crimes that he's been charged with.
(47:19):
And now you think about, okay, let's let's take let's
do a little bit of a fender profiling. You know,
did Natividad have the same connections to the orchards that
Wan has? Does Natividad have the same connection to the
victims that Wan has? All the bloody weapons and everything else?
Who had possession of those? Was it in Natividad's possession?
(47:41):
Was it Wan's possession? Did Natividad have access to to
Wand's you know, wherever these these weapons were located at?
You know, so I think as we go down and
try to evaluate all the cases between these two relatives
Vividad and Wan. Things seem to stack up on Wan
(48:04):
and not on a Natividad. Now, maybe there's an argument
that Natividad, being maybe a very organized, intelligent offender, is
over time constantly trying to set up Wan, you know,
and is doing everything he can to have the case
go against Wan. It just doesn't seem like that would
(48:24):
be the situation. You know. I think the defense was
smart to point fingers at Natividad because that is going
to cause the jur ready to go huh, you know,
and who knows about you know, the attack in Natividad's restaurant.
You know, maybe Natividad did that attack, but it doesn't
you know negate Wand's association with these other homicide cases
(48:48):
out in the orchards.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
And think about what's actually documented, which is Wan going
to a mental health facility years earlier. I mean, it's
not like Natividad put him in in sixty nine or
even seventy. This was I think it was fifty three,
so long ago for delusional thoughts and then acting out violently,
(49:12):
and that's document he is in this facility. So there
are records that show that.
Speaker 3 (49:16):
Well, it's showing you know, certainly is showing wands passed.
But you still have to prove the case. You know,
these murder charges, I mean, these cases need you have
to have the evidence that is contemporaneous with each of
those cases. You can't say, well, this guy was in
a mental health facility fifteen years ago, so therefore he's
(49:39):
responsible for these murders. You have to have the evidence
for those murders in order to prove the case. Now,
maybe during sentencing, you know, the jury would hear about
wands past, both pros and cons in terms of why
his sentence should be longer or shorter depending on prosecution
versus defense. And that's just where you know right now,
(50:03):
I'm not doubting Wan's involvement in the homicides, but if
there is any controversy over that, and you know, I
don't know if there is or not, you know, if
they still have the evidence, I think it would be
easy to prove with modern technology.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
Well, there didn't appear to be controversy in nineteen seventy
two when he went on trial because he was convicted
on all twenty five counts. Not quite case closed because
of something I mentioned earlier. Just so we know, hawk
the defense attorney was really annoying to me, and he
was good to know. He was sentenced to six months
(50:37):
in Jalen seventy three a year later for tax evasion.
So there you go.
Speaker 3 (50:42):
You know that I know that name, Richard Hawk. And
I'm not sure it's because of the Corona case or
if there's something else that he got involved with, but
that one that Richard Hawk sounds familiar to me.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
It probably does. He said later on, I only took
the case because I wanted to be famous. Great, it's
just what you want in a defense attorney. So there
are appeals that happened, and in seventy eight an appeals court,
California Appeals Court says that Richard Hawk gave him an
incompetent defense because they said, what about the insanity defense?
(51:13):
What about mental incompetency, And they said that you know,
Hawk made a big mistake, and of course Hawk said, well,
you know, you got to pick your horse and ride it.
So this is what the appeal court says. The trial
council for appellent failed to raise the obvious alternative defenses
of mental incompetence and diminished capacity or legal insanity. The
(51:35):
trial council failed to present any meaningful defense at all.
After a lengthy trial lasting several months, in which the
prosecutor produced more than one hundred leon expert witnesses had
put an immense amount of wealth of documentary evidence forward,
the defense council failed to call a single witness on
his client's behalf and submitted the case basically upon the
(51:56):
evidence produced by the prosecution. I don't know he shot
a shot.
Speaker 3 (52:01):
Well, all he did was cross examine the prosecution's witnesses. Yeah,
so you know, yeah, maybe there is a valid you know,
valid incompetence, you know, for one Corona. You know, in
terms of the initial trial, did he get retried? Was
(52:21):
it remanded?
Speaker 2 (52:24):
Listen to this, so, yes, he was going to get
a retrial. In the interim, he has a heart attack
in prison and he has stabbed thirty two times by
inmates at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville. He loses
sight in one eye, survives it, obviously. He allegedly confesses
to three murders, not of transient workers, and then recants,
(52:48):
and then he does go on trial in eighty two.
There's a second trial in Hayward, California. The defense does
not argue mental incompetence. They again do the same thing,
and this isn't hawk. This time they say that Natividad,
who is dead at this point, has carried out the
killings in a rage related to his homosexuality. At least
(53:09):
we're past the cypfulest part. This time one takes the stand.
He claims his innocence, but he's again convicted twenty five
concurrent life sinances and he dies in twenty nineteen. It's
very not very long ago.
Speaker 3 (53:23):
No, yeah, I didn't realize that. Yeah, the CMF Vacaville
was my rear neighbor for part of my life. Well
he was therefol well, so said Kemper. So it was
Charles Manson. You know, this was sort of the clearinghouse
for anybody that potentially had some mental issues. I mean,
you have many many of the serial killers initially went
(53:46):
to CMF Acaville to be evaluated before they ended up
being distributed into the prison system that was appropriate for
their housing. So, you know, Juan Corona would have been
my rear neighbor for you know, part of my life
for sure. I think it would be interesting, you know,
to evaluate the physical evidence today with modern technology just
(54:09):
to see, you know, what's going on. I really don't
have any questions at One Corona. You know about One
Corona and his involvement in these twenty five cases. Natividad,
I think is potentially just being used as a scapegoat,
and he may have his own criminal history that could
include significant violence. But you know, I just I'm not
(54:33):
seeing how Natividad could set one up at the level
of you know, whether you call it circumstantial or not.
I mean, it's a pretty significant case against One Corona,
and I think I'm pretty satisfied that the right guy
was serving time for these twenty five.
Speaker 2 (54:51):
Murders, so he was in for forty six years. You know,
sometimes I think, Okay, what do we take away from
this case? And I actually am not quite sure, except
the constant reminder to me that there are people who
fall through the cracks, like I didn't even tell you this.
One of the victims, his wife was notified your ex
husband's dead. What do we do with the body? And
(55:13):
she said, I don't care. So I mean that I
think was a very common theme, with the exception of
maybe one or two of these men, twenty five people,
and then Jose, I don't know what Jose's thinking flipping.
I mean, maybe you're right, maybe Natividad is a suspect
in that. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (55:28):
Well, I think with Jose, you think about the I
mean traumatic brain injury TBI in terms of memory recall,
you know individuals that suffer that it's difficult to put
a lot of voracity on their memory because it's been
shown they just either they completely have amnesia. They go
(55:50):
I last remember, let's say with with with Jose, I
last remember opening the bathroom door, you know, and then
he's you know, attacked, you know it later or two
minutes later. He has no memory because of the traumatic
brain injury. So it's kind of tough to say, Okay,
he changed his story and now it's Natividad. That's that
(56:10):
it's his attacker. I don't think I would, you know,
put a lot of weight on that. I think you
know my takeaway and it really I think you're right.
Is I mean, you think about this, you have twenty
five men. This is where you know most of the
cases that I've dealt with involving serial predators or women
(56:32):
and children, and now yet you do see where you
do have a vulnerable male victim. This transient population that
one Corona was able to take advantage of, and he
was able to kill a lot of men. And I
don't know exactly the time span, but it's within a
(56:54):
year or two years, you know, in terms of those
cases that are ending up in the orchard knows what,
you know, what other cases he was involved with, you know,
So it doesn't matter who you are in terms of
your own characteristics. You know, you can become a victim
if a predator targets you, and you just have to
(57:15):
be aware of that and take steps to try to avoid,
you know, making yourself vulnerable.
Speaker 2 (57:22):
And as a subset of that, I would say I'm
thrilled that the alternate suspect Natividad and his homosexuality seem
to play no part in two different trials where it
absolutely could have in the seventies and nineteen eighty two.
So at least that didn't work. But yeah, I mean
this case. I know you like serial killer cases, but
(57:44):
in they're not for entertainment for me. It is for
figuring these kinds of things out. You know, how do
you get away with something? What is what are we
doing as a society to fail people? So that there
is somebody who can come as a predator and take
advantage of these people. And we find out every week.
Speaker 3 (58:04):
I think, yeah, no, and that's just that there is
a what's that term, white soft underbelly, if you will,
that predators can focus in on, you know, and nobody
pays attention. And the reality is is since the nineteen seventies,
with all the security changes and technology advancements, you know,
(58:26):
it's a lot harder for offenders to go after victims
that have strong associations within society, whether it be with family,
or or they work or whatever else. And I always
say predators go to where the prey is at and
where where's the prey? It's the prey. The prey is
(58:47):
those people that if something happens to them, nobody notices.
Speaker 2 (58:52):
Well, next week, let's see what ends up happening. It'll
be I'm sure a very different case, but you know,
and hopefully we'll be going back. I need to go
backwards a little bit. I think, take a break from
the seventies. This is a lot of seventies for me.
But next week we'll have something totally new, so I'm
looking forward to it. Pulholes.
Speaker 3 (59:12):
As always, Kate, thank you very much for this.
Speaker 1 (59:19):
This has been an exactly right production for.
Speaker 3 (59:21):
Our sources and show notes go to Exactlyrightemedia dot com
slash Buried Bones sources.
Speaker 1 (59:27):
Our senior producer is Alexis Emirosi.
Speaker 3 (59:29):
Research by Alison Trumble and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1 (59:33):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 3 (59:35):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (59:38):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 3 (59:40):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark, and Daniel Kramer.
Speaker 2 (59:44):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
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Speaker 3 (59:49):
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Age story of murder and the race to decode the
criminal mind, is available now.
Speaker 2 (59:56):
And Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life Solving America's
Cold Cases is also available now.
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