October 24, 2024 • 26 mins
Angela Bowers is the only person who ever escaped the Domino Beach Killer with her life. In the present day, Courtney interviews Angela, who recounts the 1994 attempted abduction in great detail. The killer has finally made a mistake—but the reign of terror is far from over, as evidenced by a mysterious letter Courtney receives in the mail.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The following podcast contains explicit descriptions of violence, including sexual violence,
that some listeners may find upsetting. Continue at your own risk.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Nine one more.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
What's your emergency? No One just tried to kidnap me?
He said he was gonna kill me. Are you in
danger right now?
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I don't, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
I don't even know where I am. Where the fucking
am I?
Speaker 4 (00:28):
I'm at the Quick Film station at the five.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
North on ramp outside Domino Beach.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
Just off, just just off Pickford, Yeah, pick Pickford.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Please?
Speaker 4 (00:39):
Hi, I don't know you might be coming back.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Can I have your name, ma'am? Angela, Angela Power. It
was just after midnight on November nineteenth, nineteen ninety four,
when nine to one one received an emergency call from
twenty two year old Domino Beach resident Angela Bowers. It
(01:02):
was a bad month for serial killers. In ten days,
notorious Milwaukee cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer would be beaten to death
in prison by another inmate, and closer to home, the
Domino Beach killer had finally made a critical mistake. I'm
(01:34):
Courtney Barnes and this is the Murder Years, Episode four Loser.
It had been two months since registered sex offender Stan
Major has committed suicide and taken the blame for four
of the five murders that happened in Domino Beach over
the past two years. Here's retired Del Soul County Sheriff
(01:57):
Damon Stokes.
Speaker 5 (02:00):
The cases may have been officially close to satisfy the
city council, but I was still working on I told
you I never believe Majors killed those spring breakers, not
for one second.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
And Stokes wasn't the only one with doubts. This is
Domino Beach resident Maya Morales, who you've heard from in
our previous episodes. Did I feel safe? Of course, not
not really, But.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
I mean, what was I supposed to do? Lock myself
in my bedroom? I still had to go to work,
still had to live my life.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Did you believe Stan Majors committed any of the murders.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
I mean, I guess not to be honest, I didn't
really have an opinion. But Connor, sure as hell did.
Things between me and him weren't so good at the time,
but he would tell anyone who would listen about how
this was awesome scam his dad was running. Seriously, he
signed a paranoid as hell. He was convinced it was
(02:56):
some great bit conspiracy.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Or whatever Maya's talking about. Connor Langford, son of city
councilman Greg Langford. Connor's relationship status with Maya had fallen
into its complicated territory by late nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 6 (03:14):
Yeah, Maya and I were kind of growing apart. Well,
I think it was more of a thing like she
was growing and I was staying the same. No, that's
not true. The truth is I was starting to use
drugs pretty heavily at that time, and boom, I wasn't.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Myself what kind of drugs whatever.
Speaker 6 (03:37):
I could find. I mean, I'd always been a pothead
and i'd like to drop, I said, every once in
a while, I'd occasionally do some party drugs like cocaine,
ecstasy or molly or whatever the fuck they call it now.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
But this is the time when you had started experimenting
with harder drugs too, isn't that right?
Speaker 6 (03:56):
Yeah, I'd tried heroin a couple times, but I wasn't
in it, if you know what I mean. Not then Anyway,
The point is I was driving my way not just
because of my drug use, but because I was always
bitching about my dad.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
So Maya said, you might have believed your father was
involved in, or maybe directing some sort of conspiracy.
Speaker 6 (04:21):
I'm sure I sounded crazy to her, but I wasn't wrong.
My dad knew that sex offender dude was not the killer,
but the dumbfuck shot himself, and it's not like there
was anyone else to speak out in his defense. You know,
my dad just wanted Domino Beach to go back to
being known as a nice, pretty little vacation destination. It
(04:43):
didn't matter if it was actually safe, as long as
he created the illusion of safety.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
It wouldn't be long before that illusion of safety and
Domino Beach would be shattered. Courtney, Hey, Angela, Yeah, it's me.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
How are you. It's been forever?
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Okay, let me provide a little context here. Angela Bowers
is about a year younger than me, and we knew
each other back in the early nineties when we both
lived in Domino Beach. She waited tables at Gertie's Diner,
which was one of my favorite places to set up
camp and write whenever I wanted to get out of
the office during tourist season. Gertie's was open until like
(05:28):
two or three o'clock in the morning and was a
final stop for partying kids after the bars and clubs closed.
They had great coffee and pretty decent food if you
like your breakfast extra greasy, and let's face it, who doesn't.
I was in there so much back in those days.
Angela and I became friendly, if not actual friends, but
(05:48):
after what happened in November of ninety four, we became
a lot closer.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
So what's going on? Still teaching?
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Well? I actually called to talk about you, same.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Old Courtney, all business all the time, not all the time.
I relax, I'm kidding. So what's this about writing another book?
Speaker 1 (06:08):
No, this is for a podcast I'm working on based
on my book, actually, and I'm recording this call if
that's okay?
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Yeah, sure, what up?
Speaker 4 (06:18):
True crime nerds ready to hear me recount the worst fucking.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Night of my life? And you know we don't have to.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
It's fine. It was a long time ago, court I.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Know, but sometimes releaving events like this can be.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Yeah, yeah, trigger warning. I get it.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
Look I said it's fine and I meant it. Now,
come on, let's do this thing.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
November is a quiet time for Domino Beach, which makes
it one of the favorite times of year for the
local surfers, who would rather not compete with tourists for
the waves that they consider rightfully theirs. In fact, not
only are there note tourists that time of year, but
even a lot of locals start leaving town for Thanksgi,
some of them not coming back until after New Year's
(07:03):
But Angela was going to be there for the winter.
She had arrived in Domino Beach about two years before me,
another college dropout who decided she'd rather live among the
surf and sand while she was young, figuring she had
plenty of time to decide what she wanted to do
with the rest of her life. I always admired that
way of thinking. I decided I wanted to be a
(07:24):
journalist in like the third grade and never deviated from
that path. I've never looked back. Pretty Much every decision
I've made as far back as I can remember, was
made to help me achieve that goal. I'm kind of
jealous of people who are able to just go with
the flow, confident that one day everything will work out
the way it's supposed to. Angela is one of those people.
(07:47):
I had her take me back to that night in
November nineteen ninety four, a night that changed her life forever.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
Okay, So, Gurdi's closed at eleven o'clock during the off season,
and that night I don't think we had a customer
since like nine or nine thirty. So Andre, he was
the cook. Do you remember Andre?
Speaker 3 (08:17):
I'm not sure it's okay, it doesn't matter anyway.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
Andre had already cleaned off the grill before we even
locked the door for the night. He had a girlfriend
in Riverside and he was trying to get over to
her place before it got too late. So I told
him to go on that I'd go ahead and lock
up by myself. It wasn't the first time, and well,
I just didn't think anything of it.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
What about the murders of the spring Breakers earlier that year.
Weren't you scared being alone? Not really?
Speaker 4 (08:41):
No, I mean that had been like six or seven
months ago, and they were saying the killer committed suicide,
right right, Okay, So I guess I finished all the
side work and balanced the register by maybe eleven forty
eleven forty five something like that. Then I went out
(09:01):
the back door and locked up.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Can you describe the back of the diner for our listeners,
just because this is audio only.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
Yeah, it was not exactly a parking lot. I don't
know what you call it, just a little strip of
asphalt where employees parked.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
There was just enough.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
Room for maybe three or four cars, right next to
the dumpster.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Was it well lit?
Speaker 3 (09:22):
No, well kind of.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
I parked close to the back door and there was
a light hanging over it. You couldn't see much around you.
But I never felt scared or anything closing up at night.
Kind of wish I had been scared, then I might
have been more on my guard. So we can take
a break if you want. No, why drag this out
any longer than I have to, Okay, but take your time,
(09:46):
and whenever you want to stop, I get it.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
I'll be fine. Okay.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
So I come out and lock the back door, put
the diner keys in my purse, take out my car keys.
Then I walk like eight or ten steps to my car.
I unlock the door, and just as I get it open,
the first thing I remember is the slap slap slap
(10:12):
of shoes on pavement running up fast behind me. I
start to turn, but before I make it around, a
hand clamps down over my mouth, and there's a glove
on it, like driving gloves or workout gloves, you know.
And his hand is big enough that I feel his
thumb on one of my cheekbones and the rest of
(10:33):
his fingers gripping my jawbone. And next thing I feel
is my right arm being wrenched behind my back and
he pulls it up really hard. Feels like it's going
to break where my shoulder was going to dislocate. But
I'm still holding out of my car keys and he
takes them out of my hand, and then I think
(10:55):
he shoves them in his back pocket, because I feel
his pelvis kick forward into my back, you know, and
I can feel what I first think is a gun
shoved into his pants, but I later realize it's his boner.
The guy's already hard, you know, already turned on. Then
(11:15):
he presses my body up against the car, the door
to the back seat, I mean, and he presses it
up even harder against me, and I feel this hot
breath in my ear, and he says, oh, And he's
doing this thing with his voice like you know how
everyone who plays Batman, how they make their voice all
(11:36):
low and gravelly like that anyway, he says, and these
are his exact.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Words, scream, and you die right here and now.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
And then he takes his hand away from my mouth,
and what do you do? I scream? I scream bloody murder,
but not for long. He grabs a fistful of my
hair and slams my forehead into the door of the car,
right above the window that shuts me up. Then he
opens the back door and kind of lets me fall
(12:09):
onto the seat, and I hear a zipper being unzipped.
I think he's about to whip it out, but no,
it turns out he's not unzipping his pants. It's like
a backpack ord gym bag or something. Because then I
hear a piece of tape being ripped off, and then
it's over my mouth, and all of a sudden, I
feel like I can't breathe so well through my nose,
(12:32):
and I'm like hyperventilating, and I feel like I'm suffocating.
And then so he's already got one of my arms
behind my back, so he grabs the other one and
jerks it back and up real hard, and he holds
my hands together. Then he puts a knee on the
small of my back, and wraps one of those thick
plastic zip ties around my wrists and cinches it up
(12:54):
real tight. Now now, I'm sure he's about to try
to pull my jeans down and get on top of me,
but he just kind of kicks at my legs until
I pull them into the car. Once I'm all curled
up in the back seat, he closes the door.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
You must have been terrified.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
I must have been. But it's hard to remember the
way I felt that the time.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
When I look back on it, I.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
Remember a lot of details, but it's like I'm outside
looking in, you know, like I'm watching it in a
movie or on TV. Supposedly that's pretty common in situations
like that, but I don't know.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
It's weird anyway.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Where was I? Oh?
Speaker 4 (13:32):
Yeah, lying face down in the back seat of my car,
And I can feel the blood running into my left
eye from where he slammed my head into the door.
But the swimmy feeling is starting to ease up. I'm
not clear headed yet, but I'm getting there, you know.
So I'm just listening, trying to take everything in, and
(13:53):
I hear him get in the front seat and start
the car, and when he turns around, to look behind
him as he's backing up, I tell myself, look at
his face, Look at his face.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
So I do, what do you see?
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Nothing? Well, not nothing, but not enough. I don't know.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
I mean I can tell it's a white guy. I
think so anyway, but it was dark and he's wearing
a hoodie or maybe it's a ski mask. I can't remember.
But I just can't see much of anything. So then
he starts driving, and after a few minutes he turns
off the radio and starts talking. And at first I
(14:34):
think he's talking to himself, but no, he's talking to me.
What does he say, Well, I don't remember it word
for word, but he's saying that I shouldn't have screamed,
that what he's gonna do to me will be worse
because I did. And then he asks me if I
know who he is, and when I don't say anything,
(14:56):
he says something like he's the number one spring breaker
where the Domino Beach spring breaking something like that.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Did you know what he was talking about?
Speaker 4 (15:06):
Yeah, pretty much right away. I mean, I don't know
if he's telling the truth, but he wants me to
believe he's the guy who killed those ASU girls and
he's saying all this stuff that he's gonna fuck me tonight.
Speaker 7 (15:20):
I don't care if you're alive or dead. If you
want to live, you better play nice.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
And then he kind of laughs and says something like.
Speaker 7 (15:27):
Oh am, I kidding, You're not gonna live through this.
And I don't like nice girls anyway.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
And he's disguising his voice the whole time.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
Yeah, like Batman. But I can tell it's a pretty
young guy though, in his twenties. Probably how can you tell.
I don't know just the way he sounds to me.
Maybe it's his speech patterns or whatever. I don't know,
but I definitely remember thinking that. And then then he
stops talking, and I start feeling like he's working himself
(15:57):
up to do whatever he's gonna do.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
And I'm telling myself.
Speaker 4 (16:01):
I had to get out of this car or I
am dead now. At this point, we've been driving for
like ten minutes, and I get the feeling he's about
to get on the.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Five, the five interstate.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
Yeah, and something inside me says, if you're still in
this car when he gets on the highway, no one's
ever even going to find your body. So I start
thinking and I remember, I remember that one of the
doors in the back has a busted lock. It works
from the outside, which is why I never bothered to
get a fix, but not from the inside. So even
(16:33):
if the door is locked, you can still open it.
I couldn't believe I remembered that. I mean, how often
do you ride in the backseat of your own car?
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Right fast? Thinking?
Speaker 4 (16:42):
I guess anyway, I kind of pulled myself up, so
I'm leaning against the door, trying to get my hands
on the door handle behind me. He thinks I'm trying
to get a look at his face, so he grabs
the rear view mirror and snaps it off. But I'm
not even looking at him anymore. I'm looking out the window,
and sure enough, up ahead is the I five. I'm
(17:02):
not sure where we are exactly. It's not the route
I usually take to get out of the five, but
it doesn't matter. You know, it's pretty much now or never,
So what do you do. I wait for him to
slow down and take the turn to get onto the
on ramp, and just as he does, I yank the
handle and the door flings open. I don't even have
(17:22):
to jump because I open the door on a turn.
The momentum just pulls me out of the car, and
the next thing you know, I'm rolling along the asphalt.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Jesus Well.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
As soon as I come to a stop, I get
to my feet, and that's about the same time the
car starts backing up. I look around and there are
like no other cars anywhere, but there's this gas station,
maybe one hundred yards away, one of those that's right
next to the on ramp.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Okay, yeah, I know what you mean.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
So I run like hell.
Speaker 4 (17:54):
I've still got duct tape over my mouth, so I
can barely breathe, and my hands are as if tied
me behind my back, so my balance is fucked, and
I'm just running full steam for that gas station part
as I can. It's a miracle I don't fall down. Meanwhile,
I can hear the car turning around behind me, but
he's got to stick to the road and I'm running
(18:15):
across the dirt right So I finally get under those big,
bright fluorescent lights over the pumps, and there's some old
guy there getting gas. Old it's probably younger than I
am now, but he seems ancient to me at the time. Anyway,
I come running up on him and he gives me
this like what the fuck look that I swear would
(18:37):
have made me burst out laughing if it wasn't for
the duct tape. Then the cashier guy comes out, and
at that point, the fucker who tried to kidnap me
just turns my car around and peels out, heads back
onto the five, and the cashier and the old guy
helped cut me free. Then they take me inside and
I call nine to one one, and that's it. Jesus,
(19:02):
I haven't told that story in so long.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Thank you for telling it now, anything for.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
You, bitch, Seriously, though, It's been like a long time
since I've even let myself think.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
About all that. So in November of nineteen ninety four,
I hadn't written about any of the murder victims since
Verra Kendrick's death over two years earlier. But when I
got to the so called journal office that morning and
(19:38):
heard about what happened to Angela, well, I knew I
had to be the one to tell her story. Glenn Sherman,
the Journal star reporter and who I sometimes call my
former mentor if I'm feeling generous, was in the process
of being wooed away by the La Times following his
coverage of the spring Break murders in April of that year.
And if not for that, I don't know that I
(19:59):
could have convinced him and to let me write the story.
For whatever reason, he threw me a bone.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
I remember when you came by the hospital that morning,
you brought some flowers and tried to pretend we were friends.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Hello, we were friends. Hello.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
The only reason you could have possibly thought that was
if you didn't have any real friends.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Yeah, well maybe I didn't. I mean, sure, you and.
Speaker 4 (20:25):
I became friends, But come on, I was just some
waitress you knew, and you were just some regular customer
who tipped pretty well.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
I tipped really well. So why did you agree to
talk to me back then?
Speaker 3 (20:40):
I don't know. You sold me.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
You were all, we.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Can't let this son of a bitch get away with this,
and we're gonna bring him down.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
And you're such a tough, strong woman. What can I say?
You know you can be persuasive.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Angela was a fantastic subject, even back then when it
was all so raw and fresh. She never seemed scared
to me. She was pissed off this happened to her,
and I channeled that anger into my story, and it
wasn't the story of a victim. It was the story
of a survivor, of someone who was faced with certain
death and just flat out refused. It gave me the
(21:21):
chance I was looking for to blow apart the narrative
that the now dead for two months Stan Majors had
ever killed anyone. It gave me the opportunity to call
out Counselman Langford and Sheriff Stokes for trying to pull
the wool over all our eyes. I let our readers
know officially and for the first time, that there was
a serial killer preying on the people of Domino Beach.
(21:44):
And in one of my favorite parts of the article,
toward the end, I wrote that since the killer liked
to reference popular music, the song that best suited his
failed abduction of Angela Bauers was Loser by Beck.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Yeah, I'll give you that.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
That was a tell me shit again. That's Mia.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Morales and Connor liked it too.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
We weren't hanging out much by them, but after that
article came out, it was the first time I had
seen him smile aid forever. He really liked you ripping
his daughter part like you did.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Here's Sheriff Stokes.
Speaker 5 (22:20):
I didn't take it personally. When you're right, you're right.
And after that article you wrote, it made it easier
for me to do the job I wanted to do.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Okay, so I had made an impact. Well, the truth is,
Angela Bowers is the one who made the impact. I
just made sure everyone knew it, and everyone did everyone.
Three days after the story was published, a letter arrived
for me in the mail at the SoCal Journal. My
name and the paper's address were printed in neat block letters.
(22:54):
There was no return address, and the postmark was from
in town. I opened it up and well, here, why
don't I just read it to you? Now? Hello, Courtney,
I wanted to thank you for your wildly entertaining but
extremely inaccurate.
Speaker 8 (23:11):
Extremely inaccurate story about me. I like your writing much
better than Glenna Shrinings. But it's been a while since
we crossed paths. You wrote about my Polly but not
my corn Fleet girls, and we never got a chance
to pretend we're dead together.
Speaker 7 (23:27):
My angel may have flewn away, but I think I
like you better anyhow. One day I think i'd like
for you to meet me. I hope that happens, but
I worry that you might be right about what you
said about me. Maybe I am a loser.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Baby, so why don't you kill me?
Speaker 5 (23:50):
Yeah, you poked the pair, all right, and maybe that
was folish of you, But it was also brave because
you got the killer to tell us something we didn't know.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
It was the pretend we're dead reference that confused Sheriff
Stokes and me too. But I remembered the song and
recognized the title, so I went to Gravel Records and
asked Maya about it. She told me it was by
a group called L seven and sold me the CD
with that song on it.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
I did, Nah, I don't remember that at all.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
I went home and played the song over and over
until I had the song lyrics memorized. Then I sat
down with Sheriff Stokes and looked back at the only
other unsolved murder in Domino Beach, the murder of teenage
junkie and prostitute Billy Boy Reeves. One of the photos
of the alley where his body was found captured a
lyric from the song spray painted onto the wall just
(24:41):
say No to Individuality. The killer had referenced all three
groups of murders in his Letter, Polly Fervera, Kendrick, Cornflake
Girl from Mary Crouch, Polly Blake, and Sandra Gerard, and
pretend were dead for Billy Boy Reeves. The five people
who had been murdered in Domino Beach since September nineteen
(25:02):
ninety two were all killed by the same person, and
he was still out there. The Murder Years is a
(25:23):
production of AYR Media and iHeartMedia. Executive producer Elisa Rosen
for AYR Media. Written by Tim Huddleston, directed by Alisa Rosen,
editing and sound designed by Tristan Bankston, Consulting producer Jean
Chandil coordinator Olive Goldberg, Audio engineering and mastering by Justin
(25:49):
Longerbean studio engineer Josh Hook. Original music by Nathan Bankston.
Original concept developed in partnership with Margaret Johns and Greg Spring.
Executive producer for iHeartMedia. Maya Howard performances for this episode
(26:09):
by Erica Leniac as Courtney Barnes, Tom Virtue as Sheriff
Damon Stokes, Alex Salem as Connor Langford, Melon Faxus as
Maya Morales, Amy Phillips as Angela Bowers,
The following podcast contains explicit descriptions of violence, including sexual violence,
that some listeners may find upsetting. Continue at your own risk.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Nine one more.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
What's your emergency? No One just tried to kidnap me?
He said he was gonna kill me. Are you in
danger right now?
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I don't, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
I don't even know where I am. Where the fucking
am I?
Speaker 4 (00:28):
I'm at the Quick Film station at the five.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
North on ramp outside Domino Beach.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
Just off, just just off Pickford, Yeah, pick Pickford.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Please?
Speaker 4 (00:39):
Hi, I don't know you might be coming back.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Can I have your name, ma'am? Angela, Angela Power. It
was just after midnight on November nineteenth, nineteen ninety four,
when nine to one one received an emergency call from
twenty two year old Domino Beach resident Angela Bowers. It
(01:02):
was a bad month for serial killers. In ten days,
notorious Milwaukee cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer would be beaten to death
in prison by another inmate, and closer to home, the
Domino Beach killer had finally made a critical mistake. I'm
(01:34):
Courtney Barnes and this is the Murder Years, Episode four Loser.
It had been two months since registered sex offender Stan
Major has committed suicide and taken the blame for four
of the five murders that happened in Domino Beach over
the past two years. Here's retired Del Soul County Sheriff
(01:57):
Damon Stokes.
Speaker 5 (02:00):
The cases may have been officially close to satisfy the
city council, but I was still working on I told
you I never believe Majors killed those spring breakers, not
for one second.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
And Stokes wasn't the only one with doubts. This is
Domino Beach resident Maya Morales, who you've heard from in
our previous episodes. Did I feel safe? Of course, not
not really, But.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
I mean, what was I supposed to do? Lock myself
in my bedroom? I still had to go to work,
still had to live my life.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Did you believe Stan Majors committed any of the murders.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
I mean, I guess not to be honest, I didn't
really have an opinion. But Connor, sure as hell did.
Things between me and him weren't so good at the time,
but he would tell anyone who would listen about how
this was awesome scam his dad was running. Seriously, he
signed a paranoid as hell. He was convinced it was
(02:56):
some great bit conspiracy.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Or whatever Maya's talking about. Connor Langford, son of city
councilman Greg Langford. Connor's relationship status with Maya had fallen
into its complicated territory by late nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 6 (03:14):
Yeah, Maya and I were kind of growing apart. Well,
I think it was more of a thing like she
was growing and I was staying the same. No, that's
not true. The truth is I was starting to use
drugs pretty heavily at that time, and boom, I wasn't.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Myself what kind of drugs whatever.
Speaker 6 (03:37):
I could find. I mean, I'd always been a pothead
and i'd like to drop, I said, every once in
a while, I'd occasionally do some party drugs like cocaine,
ecstasy or molly or whatever the fuck they call it now.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
But this is the time when you had started experimenting
with harder drugs too, isn't that right?
Speaker 6 (03:56):
Yeah, I'd tried heroin a couple times, but I wasn't
in it, if you know what I mean. Not then Anyway,
The point is I was driving my way not just
because of my drug use, but because I was always
bitching about my dad.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
So Maya said, you might have believed your father was
involved in, or maybe directing some sort of conspiracy.
Speaker 6 (04:21):
I'm sure I sounded crazy to her, but I wasn't wrong.
My dad knew that sex offender dude was not the killer,
but the dumbfuck shot himself, and it's not like there
was anyone else to speak out in his defense. You know,
my dad just wanted Domino Beach to go back to
being known as a nice, pretty little vacation destination. It
(04:43):
didn't matter if it was actually safe, as long as
he created the illusion of safety.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
It wouldn't be long before that illusion of safety and
Domino Beach would be shattered. Courtney, Hey, Angela, Yeah, it's me.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
How are you. It's been forever?
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Okay, let me provide a little context here. Angela Bowers
is about a year younger than me, and we knew
each other back in the early nineties when we both
lived in Domino Beach. She waited tables at Gertie's Diner,
which was one of my favorite places to set up
camp and write whenever I wanted to get out of
the office during tourist season. Gertie's was open until like
(05:28):
two or three o'clock in the morning and was a
final stop for partying kids after the bars and clubs closed.
They had great coffee and pretty decent food if you
like your breakfast extra greasy, and let's face it, who doesn't.
I was in there so much back in those days.
Angela and I became friendly, if not actual friends, but
(05:48):
after what happened in November of ninety four, we became
a lot closer.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
So what's going on? Still teaching?
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Well? I actually called to talk about you, same.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Old Courtney, all business all the time, not all the time.
I relax, I'm kidding. So what's this about writing another book?
Speaker 1 (06:08):
No, this is for a podcast I'm working on based
on my book, actually, and I'm recording this call if
that's okay?
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Yeah, sure, what up?
Speaker 4 (06:18):
True crime nerds ready to hear me recount the worst fucking.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Night of my life? And you know we don't have to.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
It's fine. It was a long time ago, court I.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Know, but sometimes releaving events like this can be.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Yeah, yeah, trigger warning. I get it.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
Look I said it's fine and I meant it. Now,
come on, let's do this thing.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
November is a quiet time for Domino Beach, which makes
it one of the favorite times of year for the
local surfers, who would rather not compete with tourists for
the waves that they consider rightfully theirs. In fact, not
only are there note tourists that time of year, but
even a lot of locals start leaving town for Thanksgi,
some of them not coming back until after New Year's
(07:03):
But Angela was going to be there for the winter.
She had arrived in Domino Beach about two years before me,
another college dropout who decided she'd rather live among the
surf and sand while she was young, figuring she had
plenty of time to decide what she wanted to do
with the rest of her life. I always admired that
way of thinking. I decided I wanted to be a
(07:24):
journalist in like the third grade and never deviated from
that path. I've never looked back. Pretty Much every decision
I've made as far back as I can remember, was
made to help me achieve that goal. I'm kind of
jealous of people who are able to just go with
the flow, confident that one day everything will work out
the way it's supposed to. Angela is one of those people.
(07:47):
I had her take me back to that night in
November nineteen ninety four, a night that changed her life forever.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
Okay, So, Gurdi's closed at eleven o'clock during the off season,
and that night I don't think we had a customer
since like nine or nine thirty. So Andre, he was
the cook. Do you remember Andre?
Speaker 3 (08:17):
I'm not sure it's okay, it doesn't matter anyway.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
Andre had already cleaned off the grill before we even
locked the door for the night. He had a girlfriend
in Riverside and he was trying to get over to
her place before it got too late. So I told
him to go on that I'd go ahead and lock
up by myself. It wasn't the first time, and well,
I just didn't think anything of it.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
What about the murders of the spring Breakers earlier that year.
Weren't you scared being alone? Not really?
Speaker 4 (08:41):
No, I mean that had been like six or seven
months ago, and they were saying the killer committed suicide,
right right, Okay, So I guess I finished all the
side work and balanced the register by maybe eleven forty
eleven forty five something like that. Then I went out
(09:01):
the back door and locked up.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Can you describe the back of the diner for our listeners,
just because this is audio only.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
Yeah, it was not exactly a parking lot. I don't
know what you call it, just a little strip of
asphalt where employees parked.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
There was just enough.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
Room for maybe three or four cars, right next to
the dumpster.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Was it well lit?
Speaker 3 (09:22):
No, well kind of.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
I parked close to the back door and there was
a light hanging over it. You couldn't see much around you.
But I never felt scared or anything closing up at night.
Kind of wish I had been scared, then I might
have been more on my guard. So we can take
a break if you want. No, why drag this out
any longer than I have to, Okay, but take your time,
(09:46):
and whenever you want to stop, I get it.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
I'll be fine. Okay.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
So I come out and lock the back door, put
the diner keys in my purse, take out my car keys.
Then I walk like eight or ten steps to my car.
I unlock the door, and just as I get it open,
the first thing I remember is the slap slap slap
(10:12):
of shoes on pavement running up fast behind me. I
start to turn, but before I make it around, a
hand clamps down over my mouth, and there's a glove
on it, like driving gloves or workout gloves, you know.
And his hand is big enough that I feel his
thumb on one of my cheekbones and the rest of
(10:33):
his fingers gripping my jawbone. And next thing I feel
is my right arm being wrenched behind my back and
he pulls it up really hard. Feels like it's going
to break where my shoulder was going to dislocate. But
I'm still holding out of my car keys and he
takes them out of my hand, and then I think
(10:55):
he shoves them in his back pocket, because I feel
his pelvis kick forward into my back, you know, and
I can feel what I first think is a gun
shoved into his pants, but I later realize it's his boner.
The guy's already hard, you know, already turned on. Then
(11:15):
he presses my body up against the car, the door
to the back seat, I mean, and he presses it
up even harder against me, and I feel this hot
breath in my ear, and he says, oh, And he's
doing this thing with his voice like you know how
everyone who plays Batman, how they make their voice all
(11:36):
low and gravelly like that anyway, he says, and these
are his exact.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Words, scream, and you die right here and now.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
And then he takes his hand away from my mouth,
and what do you do? I scream? I scream bloody murder,
but not for long. He grabs a fistful of my
hair and slams my forehead into the door of the car,
right above the window that shuts me up. Then he
opens the back door and kind of lets me fall
(12:09):
onto the seat, and I hear a zipper being unzipped.
I think he's about to whip it out, but no,
it turns out he's not unzipping his pants. It's like
a backpack ord gym bag or something. Because then I
hear a piece of tape being ripped off, and then
it's over my mouth, and all of a sudden, I
feel like I can't breathe so well through my nose,
(12:32):
and I'm like hyperventilating, and I feel like I'm suffocating.
And then so he's already got one of my arms
behind my back, so he grabs the other one and
jerks it back and up real hard, and he holds
my hands together. Then he puts a knee on the
small of my back, and wraps one of those thick
plastic zip ties around my wrists and cinches it up
(12:54):
real tight. Now now, I'm sure he's about to try
to pull my jeans down and get on top of me,
but he just kind of kicks at my legs until
I pull them into the car. Once I'm all curled
up in the back seat, he closes the door.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
You must have been terrified.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
I must have been. But it's hard to remember the
way I felt that the time.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
When I look back on it, I.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
Remember a lot of details, but it's like I'm outside
looking in, you know, like I'm watching it in a
movie or on TV. Supposedly that's pretty common in situations
like that, but I don't know.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
It's weird anyway.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Where was I? Oh?
Speaker 4 (13:32):
Yeah, lying face down in the back seat of my car,
And I can feel the blood running into my left
eye from where he slammed my head into the door.
But the swimmy feeling is starting to ease up. I'm
not clear headed yet, but I'm getting there, you know.
So I'm just listening, trying to take everything in, and
(13:53):
I hear him get in the front seat and start
the car, and when he turns around, to look behind
him as he's backing up, I tell myself, look at
his face, Look at his face.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
So I do, what do you see?
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Nothing? Well, not nothing, but not enough. I don't know.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
I mean I can tell it's a white guy. I
think so anyway, but it was dark and he's wearing
a hoodie or maybe it's a ski mask. I can't remember.
But I just can't see much of anything. So then
he starts driving, and after a few minutes he turns
off the radio and starts talking. And at first I
(14:34):
think he's talking to himself, but no, he's talking to me.
What does he say, Well, I don't remember it word
for word, but he's saying that I shouldn't have screamed,
that what he's gonna do to me will be worse
because I did. And then he asks me if I
know who he is, and when I don't say anything,
(14:56):
he says something like he's the number one spring breaker
where the Domino Beach spring breaking something like that.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Did you know what he was talking about?
Speaker 4 (15:06):
Yeah, pretty much right away. I mean, I don't know
if he's telling the truth, but he wants me to
believe he's the guy who killed those ASU girls and
he's saying all this stuff that he's gonna fuck me tonight.
Speaker 7 (15:20):
I don't care if you're alive or dead. If you
want to live, you better play nice.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
And then he kind of laughs and says something like.
Speaker 7 (15:27):
Oh am, I kidding, You're not gonna live through this.
And I don't like nice girls anyway.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
And he's disguising his voice the whole time.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
Yeah, like Batman. But I can tell it's a pretty
young guy though, in his twenties. Probably how can you tell.
I don't know just the way he sounds to me.
Maybe it's his speech patterns or whatever. I don't know,
but I definitely remember thinking that. And then then he
stops talking, and I start feeling like he's working himself
(15:57):
up to do whatever he's gonna do.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
And I'm telling myself.
Speaker 4 (16:01):
I had to get out of this car or I
am dead now. At this point, we've been driving for
like ten minutes, and I get the feeling he's about
to get on the.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Five, the five interstate.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
Yeah, and something inside me says, if you're still in
this car when he gets on the highway, no one's
ever even going to find your body. So I start
thinking and I remember, I remember that one of the
doors in the back has a busted lock. It works
from the outside, which is why I never bothered to
get a fix, but not from the inside. So even
(16:33):
if the door is locked, you can still open it.
I couldn't believe I remembered that. I mean, how often
do you ride in the backseat of your own car?
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Right fast? Thinking?
Speaker 4 (16:42):
I guess anyway, I kind of pulled myself up, so
I'm leaning against the door, trying to get my hands
on the door handle behind me. He thinks I'm trying
to get a look at his face, so he grabs
the rear view mirror and snaps it off. But I'm
not even looking at him anymore. I'm looking out the window,
and sure enough, up ahead is the I five. I'm
(17:02):
not sure where we are exactly. It's not the route
I usually take to get out of the five, but
it doesn't matter. You know, it's pretty much now or never,
So what do you do. I wait for him to
slow down and take the turn to get onto the
on ramp, and just as he does, I yank the
handle and the door flings open. I don't even have
(17:22):
to jump because I open the door on a turn.
The momentum just pulls me out of the car, and
the next thing you know, I'm rolling along the asphalt.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Jesus Well.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
As soon as I come to a stop, I get
to my feet, and that's about the same time the
car starts backing up. I look around and there are
like no other cars anywhere, but there's this gas station,
maybe one hundred yards away, one of those that's right
next to the on ramp.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Okay, yeah, I know what you mean.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
So I run like hell.
Speaker 4 (17:54):
I've still got duct tape over my mouth, so I
can barely breathe, and my hands are as if tied
me behind my back, so my balance is fucked, and
I'm just running full steam for that gas station part
as I can. It's a miracle I don't fall down. Meanwhile,
I can hear the car turning around behind me, but
he's got to stick to the road and I'm running
(18:15):
across the dirt right So I finally get under those big,
bright fluorescent lights over the pumps, and there's some old
guy there getting gas. Old it's probably younger than I
am now, but he seems ancient to me at the time. Anyway,
I come running up on him and he gives me
this like what the fuck look that I swear would
(18:37):
have made me burst out laughing if it wasn't for
the duct tape. Then the cashier guy comes out, and
at that point, the fucker who tried to kidnap me
just turns my car around and peels out, heads back
onto the five, and the cashier and the old guy
helped cut me free. Then they take me inside and
I call nine to one one, and that's it. Jesus,
(19:02):
I haven't told that story in so long.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Thank you for telling it now, anything for.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
You, bitch, Seriously, though, It's been like a long time
since I've even let myself think.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
About all that. So in November of nineteen ninety four,
I hadn't written about any of the murder victims since
Verra Kendrick's death over two years earlier. But when I
got to the so called journal office that morning and
(19:38):
heard about what happened to Angela, well, I knew I
had to be the one to tell her story. Glenn Sherman,
the Journal star reporter and who I sometimes call my
former mentor if I'm feeling generous, was in the process
of being wooed away by the La Times following his
coverage of the spring Break murders in April of that year.
And if not for that, I don't know that I
(19:59):
could have convinced him and to let me write the story.
For whatever reason, he threw me a bone.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
I remember when you came by the hospital that morning,
you brought some flowers and tried to pretend we were friends.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Hello, we were friends. Hello.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
The only reason you could have possibly thought that was
if you didn't have any real friends.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Yeah, well maybe I didn't. I mean, sure, you and.
Speaker 4 (20:25):
I became friends, But come on, I was just some
waitress you knew, and you were just some regular customer
who tipped pretty well.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
I tipped really well. So why did you agree to
talk to me back then?
Speaker 3 (20:40):
I don't know. You sold me.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
You were all, we.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Can't let this son of a bitch get away with this,
and we're gonna bring him down.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
And you're such a tough, strong woman. What can I say?
You know you can be persuasive.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Angela was a fantastic subject, even back then when it
was all so raw and fresh. She never seemed scared
to me. She was pissed off this happened to her,
and I channeled that anger into my story, and it
wasn't the story of a victim. It was the story
of a survivor, of someone who was faced with certain
death and just flat out refused. It gave me the
(21:21):
chance I was looking for to blow apart the narrative
that the now dead for two months Stan Majors had
ever killed anyone. It gave me the opportunity to call
out Counselman Langford and Sheriff Stokes for trying to pull
the wool over all our eyes. I let our readers
know officially and for the first time, that there was
a serial killer preying on the people of Domino Beach.
(21:44):
And in one of my favorite parts of the article,
toward the end, I wrote that since the killer liked
to reference popular music, the song that best suited his
failed abduction of Angela Bauers was Loser by Beck.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Yeah, I'll give you that.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
That was a tell me shit again. That's Mia.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Morales and Connor liked it too.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
We weren't hanging out much by them, but after that
article came out, it was the first time I had
seen him smile aid forever. He really liked you ripping
his daughter part like you did.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Here's Sheriff Stokes.
Speaker 5 (22:20):
I didn't take it personally. When you're right, you're right.
And after that article you wrote, it made it easier
for me to do the job I wanted to do.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Okay, so I had made an impact. Well, the truth is,
Angela Bowers is the one who made the impact. I
just made sure everyone knew it, and everyone did everyone.
Three days after the story was published, a letter arrived
for me in the mail at the SoCal Journal. My
name and the paper's address were printed in neat block letters.
(22:54):
There was no return address, and the postmark was from
in town. I opened it up and well, here, why
don't I just read it to you? Now? Hello, Courtney,
I wanted to thank you for your wildly entertaining but
extremely inaccurate.
Speaker 8 (23:11):
Extremely inaccurate story about me. I like your writing much
better than Glenna Shrinings. But it's been a while since
we crossed paths. You wrote about my Polly but not
my corn Fleet girls, and we never got a chance
to pretend we're dead together.
Speaker 7 (23:27):
My angel may have flewn away, but I think I
like you better anyhow. One day I think i'd like
for you to meet me. I hope that happens, but
I worry that you might be right about what you
said about me. Maybe I am a loser.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Baby, so why don't you kill me?
Speaker 5 (23:50):
Yeah, you poked the pair, all right, and maybe that
was folish of you, But it was also brave because
you got the killer to tell us something we didn't know.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
It was the pretend we're dead reference that confused Sheriff
Stokes and me too. But I remembered the song and
recognized the title, so I went to Gravel Records and
asked Maya about it. She told me it was by
a group called L seven and sold me the CD
with that song on it.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
I did, Nah, I don't remember that at all.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
I went home and played the song over and over
until I had the song lyrics memorized. Then I sat
down with Sheriff Stokes and looked back at the only
other unsolved murder in Domino Beach, the murder of teenage
junkie and prostitute Billy Boy Reeves. One of the photos
of the alley where his body was found captured a
lyric from the song spray painted onto the wall just
(24:41):
say No to Individuality. The killer had referenced all three
groups of murders in his Letter, Polly Fervera, Kendrick, Cornflake
Girl from Mary Crouch, Polly Blake, and Sandra Gerard, and
pretend were dead for Billy Boy Reeves. The five people
who had been murdered in Domino Beach since September nineteen
(25:02):
ninety two were all killed by the same person, and
he was still out there. The Murder Years is a
(25:23):
production of AYR Media and iHeartMedia. Executive producer Elisa Rosen
for AYR Media. Written by Tim Huddleston, directed by Alisa Rosen,
editing and sound designed by Tristan Bankston, Consulting producer Jean
Chandil coordinator Olive Goldberg, Audio engineering and mastering by Justin
(25:49):
Longerbean studio engineer Josh Hook. Original music by Nathan Bankston.
Original concept developed in partnership with Margaret Johns and Greg Spring.
Executive producer for iHeartMedia. Maya Howard performances for this episode
(26:09):
by Erica Leniac as Courtney Barnes, Tom Virtue as Sheriff
Damon Stokes, Alex Salem as Connor Langford, Melon Faxus as
Maya Morales, Amy Phillips as Angela Bowers,
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