October 31, 2024 • 27 mins
Another victim is found in the spring of 1995—a young man with ties to the son of a powerful city councilman. While the police do their best to find the killer, it appears to be too late. Tourism is down and Domino Beach itself is dying. And by summertime, Courtney Barnes locks onto a prime suspect.
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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.
My name is Courtney Barnes and I'm the author of
All Fall Down, the Story of the Domino Beach Murders.
(00:22):
With this podcast, I've decided to revisit the murders of
the serial killer who terrorized the small southern California beach
community I called home back in the nineteen nineties. As
I mentioned in episode one, I followed the case from
the very beginning, from the rape and strangulation of nineteen
year old Via Kendrick in nineteen ninety two, to the
(00:43):
discovery of the body of young heroin attic Billy Boy
Reeves about ten months later, to the absolute horror show
that was the murders of three college students during spring
break nineteen ninety four. I've talked about how Gregg Langford,
a powerful city councilman back in those days, sought to
sweep it all under the rug so that Domino Beach
is tourism industry wouldn't suffer. And I've told you how
(01:06):
Stan Major's, an ex COHN and registered sex offender, was
deemed guilty for at least some of the murders in
the court of public opinion, and as a result, ended
up taking his own life. And in our last episode,
you heard the story of Angela Bowers, the first victim
to escape from the Domino Beach Killer with her life,
and you heard it directly from her, in her own words.
(01:29):
So then then he presses my body up against the car,
the door of 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
(01:51):
voice all low and gravelly like that. Anyway, he says,
and these are his exact words, green, and you die
right here. And now, finally I told you how after
I wrote about Angela's harrowing ordeal in the SoCal Journal,
the newspaper I had been working for since pretty much
(02:12):
the moment I graduated college, I received a letter in
the mail from someone claiming to be the killer himself.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Rangel may have flewn away, but I think I like
you better anyhow.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
One day I think i'd like for you to meet me.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
It was because of that letter that authorities, led by
Delsoul County Sheriff Damon Stokes, were finally able to link
all five murders and the attempted abduction of Angela Bauers
to one person, one person whose identity at the beginning
of nineteen ninety five was still a mystery. I'm Courtney
(03:01):
Barnes and this is the Murder Years, Episode five, Black
Hole Sun. I turned twenty four in January of nineteen
ninety five, around the same time that Glenn Sherman, the
so CAW Journal's crime and politics reporter, officially left Domino
Beach for the greener pastures of the La Times. The
(03:23):
story I had written about Angela Bowers in November nineteen
ninety four had gotten me some attention, and not just
from the Domino Beach killer who had sent me his
first yes, first letter, but also from some national publications
who picked up the story. I was far from a
household name and no one was asking me to appear
on talk shows yet, but in certain circles I was
(03:44):
being hailed as a rising voice of feminism and victim advocacy,
which I have to say I thought was pretty cool
at the time. But that article had also got me
back on the radar of Domino Beach City Councilman Greg Langford,
who was decidedly less of a fan, which was almost
certainly why I was not named Glenn Sherman's replacement as
the new crime in politics reporter when he left the
(04:06):
so Cal Journal. Greg Langford made it clear that the
council had it in its power to make things difficult
for the paper if I was given that role. For example,
he made a veiled threat that we could be denied
press credentials to certain events, that city employees would be
told never to talk to us, you know, that sort
of thing. However, Lauren Redman, the so Cal Journal's editor
(04:28):
in chief, figured out a loophole. She made the decision
to not name anyone as Sherman's replacement, which gave her
the freedom to assign crime and politics articles to any
reporter she chose on a story by story basis. She
kept me as far away from Greg Langford as possible,
which meant I wouldn't cover any stories dealing with local
(04:48):
politics and I'd no longer have to attend and take
notes on city council meetings, which suited me just fine.
So even though I was still on lifestyle entertainment, I
was also assigned some stories dealing with especially when those
crimes involved women.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Got to admit I didn't like you for the longest time.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
That's former del Soul County Sheriff Damon Stokes never won
to sugarcoat his feelings.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
And not because of all the things you said about
me in the paper.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
I never said anything that wasn't supported by facts.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Well maybe that's technically true. But you had a way
with words, Courtney.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Well, some would say I still do.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
I don't doubt it. You were a master of subtexts.
If you wanted folks to feel a certain way about
a certain subject, you knew all the tricks.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Men. I'll take that as a compliment.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Take it however you like. Some may take it as
leading or even manipulative.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
I don't think that's fair. I was just trying to
be as honest as I could. I wanted to be.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
A champion of truth. Yeah, something along those sides, right.
I read you book, Courtney. I know how you see yourself.
We're all heroes in our own stories.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Are I never saw myself as a hero? Are you
telling me you saw yourself.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
That way I saw myself as sheriff of a county
that was living in fear, and there were times I
thought you were fanning the flames of that fear. I
was only what when you brought me that letter, I
started to see your potential, Your potential become part of
the solution instead of, you know, someone who was shining
a bright light on the problem. And then when you
(06:30):
brought me that second letter.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Okay, wait a second, let's not get ahead of ourselves.
The second letter Stokes just mentioned was delivered to me
at the offices of the SoCal Journal on the last
day of March nineteen ninety five. I remember it clearly
because when the letter was dropped on my desk, I
was working on a piece about the Mexican American pop
star Selena, who had been shot and killed by the
(06:54):
president of her own fan club earlier that day. I
could tell by the block letters on the end envelope
and lack of return address it was from the person
claiming to be the Domino Beach killer, the same person
who'd sent me that first letter. After the Angeli Bauers
piece was published about four and a half months earlier,
I probably should have taken it directly to Sheriff Stokes,
(07:15):
but instead I opened it.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Media staked out this spot in your Kazinski's cabin all day.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
The suspect apparently lives up this road, but FBI agents
won't let anyone throw and we'll make no comments.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
If you're old enough, you might remember the release of
the Unibomber's Manifesto, which happened in September of nineteen ninety five,
little less than six months after I received the second
letter from the Domino Beach Killer. Well, let me tell
you our guy could give Ted Kazinski a run for
his money. In the long winded, rambling, crazy bastard department.
(07:50):
The second letter was much longer and harder to follow
than the first, so I'm not going to read it
all here, but I will share some highlights with you.
He was much more explicit about his beliefs that I
was born to be one of his victims. He writes, you.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Know I could clean eminem. I can't decide if I
should eat you first or last.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Notice the way he tried to dehumanize me, the same
way he compared Verak Kendrick to a parrot with the
whole Polly wants a cracker thing, or the way he
dumped the body of Billy Boy Reeves in the garbage
is if he weren't even a real person. He goes
on to say that he liked my writing, so it
would probably be most poetic if I were his final victim.
Then seemed to delight in telling me that I would
(08:33):
never know when he was wrapping things up and when
my time would come. He jumps back and forth between
discussing me his other victims, the incompetence of Sheriff Stokes
(08:55):
and the rest of the police, and of course the
approaching turn of the millennium, and how God was going
to rain destruction down on us all and blah blah blah.
It was somehow both incredibly tedious and extremely terrifying at
the same time.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
I always thought that was intentional on his part. What
do you mean, Well, he was trying to sound crazy.
I think he regretted sending you that first letter. Maybe
he felt like he was giving you too much about himself.
I mean, the second one was like performative, almost, or
maybe like he was just throwing a bunch of stuff
against the wall to see if it would stick.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
The last third or so of the letter was almost
all incoherent rambling, eventually and mercifully concluding with a lyric
from black Hole Sun, a song by the grunge band Soundgarden.
One of Stokes's deputies recognized.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
It call my name through the cream and I'll hear
you scream again. I mean, what kind of messed up
shit is that?
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Chris Cornell, the lead singer and songwriter for Soundgarden, would
later that the song's lyrics have little, if any literal meaning.
He claims to have just been playing around with the
words just for the sake of playing around with them,
and that if you really listen or just read the lyrics,
it's hard to make much sense out of them. But
the song is undeniably bleak, and it's not hard to
(10:16):
see how a twisted mind might choose to interpret it,
kind of like how Charles Manson formed his own interpretation
of the songs from the Beatles White Album, leading him
to direct his followers to commit a slew of murders.
In the late nineteen sixties, Dark Stuff.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
It was almost a year since the murders of the
ASU students, and we were all worried, especially after that
whole Angela Bauers thing. What spring Break nineteen ninety five,
What happens to her? That second letter, you know, made
us worry a hell of a lot more. Anyway, I
sent both letters up to the FBI for analysis, hoping
they could give us, you know, I don't know, something
(10:54):
to help us, you know, name a new suspect.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
And then well, three days after I received the killer's
second letter in the mail, eighteen year old Juan Costas
was found dead under the Domino Beach boardwalk. It was
less than a week before the first crop of spring
Breakers were set to arrive. Juan had been stabbed in
the torso and neck over forty times.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
That one.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
That one hit hard.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Maya Morales resident of Domino Beach at the time of
the murders.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
Juan was a friend more than a friend. He was
like family to me. His mother and my mother were friends.
There weren't a lot of Latino people living in the
city of Domino Beach back then, and we all kind
of stuck together, you know, looked out for each other.
So Juan's mother died when he was in middle school,
(11:53):
and his dad worked all the time. So my mom
kind of took Juan in and she gave him me,
she helped out with his homework. She sometimes let him
sleep on the couch. Seemed like he was almost always
over at my place, and he became like a little
brother to me. But by the time he was like
(12:14):
sixteen or seventeen, he stopped coming around so much, but
I still saw him all the time. Where would you
see him, I don't know around. You'd come to the
record store and hang out and talk music. Some days
I'd see him on the skateboard in the parking lot
near the boardwalk, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
And what was he like?
Speaker 4 (12:34):
Funny funny in a kind of goofy way, you know,
always making dumb jokes, trying to do impressions of Red
and Stimpy or Beavis and butt Head. He was so
terrible at it, but somehow you could always.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Tell who he was trying to do.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
And he was small for his age, skinny and shorter
than most of the other kids. He got down a
little bit at school, but I don't think it was
too bad. Of course. One way he got the bullying
to slow down was by telling everyone he was ganged up.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
One was in a gang.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
Hell no, he just said that so he could get people.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
To leave him alone.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
He didn't have a violent phone in his body. He
was a good kid.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Well that's a pretty charitable assessment of mister Costas.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Again, former Sheriff Damon Stokes.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
I'd busted him for selling heroin when he was still
young enough to duck the charge. I knew it wasn't his,
but he never gave up who he was selling for.
I don't know, you know, I think he was doing
more than pretending to be in a gang. I mean,
it was southern California in the mid nineteen nineties. Gangs
were everywhere back then, especially places that had a drug trade,
(13:46):
even places like Domino Beach.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
So even with the timing of the letter and everything,
you didn't think one's death was the work of the
Domino Beach killer. You thought it was a gang thing.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Well, I mean, the Domino Beach killer wasn't off the
table or anything. But with the exception of Billy Boy Reeves,
who we figured was practice for him, our guy seemed
to be targeting young women and his crimes almost always
had a sexual component to him. If Juan Costas was
one of his victims, then that meant the killer was
branching out, you know, trying something new.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
What evidence did you have that it was a gang issue.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Well, nothing concrete, but like the Domino Beach Killer, gangs
like to send messages. A lot of times those messages
are left where the right people we'll see them, like
under the boardwalk where a lot of drugs happened to
be sold.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
You thought something similar about the murder of Billy Boy Reeves.
You thought he was a victim of the drug trade too,
and you were wrong.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
But I couldn't pin every violent crime we came across
on a serial killer we couldn't find.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
I wrote the article covering the death of Juan Costas,
and while I included Sheriff stokes take, I offered a
little speculation that it could have just has easily been
the work of the Domino Beach Killer. In my opinion,
Stokes was too focused on the sexual nature of the
previous crimes. It seemed to me that the killer strangled
the victims he raped. Those two things seemed to go
(15:13):
hand in hand. But he wasn't afraid to use a knife.
He'd used one on Billy Boy Reeves when he slid
his throat, and he'd stabbed the ASU students. He didn't
sexually assault to death with a kitchen knife, and both
of them had dozens of stab wounds, just like Jan
cost Us.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Yeah, poor Wan.
Speaker 5 (15:32):
I always like that kid.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
That's Connor Langford, son of Domino Beach City councilman Greg Langford,
on again off again boyfriend to Maya Morales and the
person who discovered the body of the killer's first victim,
Vera Hendrick.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
But Maya and I weren't really on the best of
terms when he was killed a couple months earlier, she
found out I was sleeping with this girl from San
Diego and called it quits this time for good. I
was fucking stupid that girl, Sure as hell wasn't worth
losing Maya over, but I was making all kinds of
(16:06):
really bad decisions that wasn't exactly in the best head
space back then. Why not, Well, my band broke up
for one thing. There was in the fall of ninety
four when Brody Brody was the drummer.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Brody Hanigan, your friend who was with you when you
found Vera's body.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Yeah, the band was really just me and him, Me
on guitar and vocals, Brody on drums. I can't even
tell you how many bass players we went through but
it was a lot anyways. Brody was always a little
more serious than me about, you know, the whole rock
star thing. He wanted to move to Seattle, because if
you were trying to be in a rock band in
the nineties, Seattle was the place to be, but I
(16:44):
wouldn't go. I wanted to stay in Domino Beach. I mean,
there's no surfing in Seattle, right. So after a while
of him asking and me saying no, he was like,
fuck it, bro see you later, and he bounced out
of town. So I had no band and no girl.
The only thing I did have was a fucking drug
problem that was getting worse and worse by the day.
(17:06):
So at least I had something to spend all my
time and money on. I knew Maya was hurting over
Wan's murder, and I wanted to comfort her so bad.
I guess I was hoping she'd want to lean on me,
a familiar shoulder to cry on, you know, But she
wouldn't even take my calls.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
How did that make you feel?
Speaker 5 (17:26):
How the fuck you think?
Speaker 2 (17:27):
It made me feel bad, real fucking bad.
Speaker 5 (17:31):
But that doesn't mean.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Fuck it.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
What's the matter now?
Speaker 1 (17:41):
By the spring of nineteen ninety five. All of us
in Domino Beach were well aware of Connor Langford's downward spiral.
Just a few short years ago, he had been the
perfect representation of Domino Beach, the easy going surfer dude,
want to be rock star with an easy smile, who
is everyone's friend, and the complete opposite of his conservative,
politically ambitious father. Connor would turn your head when he
(18:05):
walked into a room. He had charisma for days and
didn't seem to have a care in the world. But
that had changed.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
I never thought he was a bad.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Guy again, Maya Morales.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
He was just going through a really rough time without
Brody in the band, and okay.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Without me.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
Connor did not know who he was anymore. I mean
there he was closing it on thirty years old, and
I think he started to realize that he was passing
his life away. Everyone around him was growing up and
either leaving town or getting a job or trying new things,
and he was just same old Connor. Well that's not true.
(18:48):
He was trying to be the same old Connor, but
that guy was long gone.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
The murder of Juan Costas didn't land the way some
of the others had. Maybe because Stokes didn't push that
it was the work of our serial killer, or maybe
we were all just jaded by what had happened the
year before. In a is that all you got kind
of way, when you stacked it up against the murders
of spring Break nineteen ninety four, it didn't compare. I
(19:16):
know that sounds suppressingly cynical, but look, as a culture,
America gets really upset when bad things happen to pretty
white girls like Collie Blake, Sandra Gerard, Mary Crouch, Angela Bauers,
even homeless bohemian Vera Hendrick. But a teenage junkie like
Billy Boy Reeves, or a Hispanic kid with suspected gang
(19:36):
ties like Jan Costas, they just didn't rate. But that
being said, spring Break nineteen ninety five was pretty slow
by Domino Beach standards. By then, the murders of the
ASU students the year before had become almost the stuff
of legend. And after the failed abduction of Angela Bauers
in November and the two letters I received, the first
(19:57):
of which was published in the paper, it seemed pretty
clear to everyone that Domino Beach a serial killer problem
was far from over. And then finally a break in
the case.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
It was mid April, I think with me got the
analysis of the two letters back from the FBI. There
was some profiling stuff based on handwriting, but even the
FBI admitted it was pure speculation since they were written
in block letters, I mean, white male, mid twenties to
mid thirties, et cetera. But the gold nugget and all
that turned out to have nothing to do with psychology.
(20:46):
It was the paper the letters were written on.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Stokes didn't release this information publicly, so I didn't find
out about it until much later. The FBI analyzed the
paper and found that it was actually somewhat new. Apparently
there was a faulty watermark on both sheets of paper
used to write the letters. The paper company's name had
been misspelled, and most of the reams of that paper
had been recalled. Most but not all, at least two
(21:14):
hundred reams were sold around southern California.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
It wasn't exactly a smoking gun, but you know, it
was something. If we could find where the paper was sold,
which was pretty big, if we could find the killer,
or at least whoever sent the letters, it would just.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Take time, and time was something Domino Beach was running
short on in spring and summer of nineteen ninety five.
Tourism had fallen by fifty percent over the previous year,
and Councilman Langford was not happy.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yeah, my dad was tough to be around back then,
not that I was any picnic either. We fought all
the fucking time. He told me to get the hell
out and find my own place, but I wouldn't. I
just stayed in the poolhouse. One time he changed the
locks and I just broke a window. It wasn't like
he was ever gonna call the cops on me.
Speaker 5 (22:08):
Can you imagine?
Speaker 2 (22:09):
I bet you would have written a hell of a
story about the councilman having his own son rested.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
I don't think I would have gotten that assignment, but
I sure would have gone after it.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Yeah, I guess I did go a little extra hard
on him. I was dealing with a lot of shit,
and I don't know he was an easy target for me.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Connor was indeed going hard on his dad back in
spring of nineteen ninety five. Since his band had broken up,
he had joined a local cover band that played at
Triple B's three nights a week. Now. I've never claimed
to know much about music, But one thing I know
is that cover bands don't usually have to be all
that good. As long as they've got the right tune
and know most of the words, people will dance and
(22:53):
sing along. And the cover band Connor was playing guitar
and singing for in April of nineteen ninety five was deaf,
not good even for a cover band. But in spite
of their questionable quality, and in spite of the decrease
in tourists, they played to a full house pretty much
every night, mostly because it was a spectacle. Connor was
(23:14):
always drunk or stoned out of his mind when he
was performing, and was known to spit beer on the crowd,
or moon them or curse them out, which the visiting
college kids found absolutely hysterical. The locals came to watch
him for a different reason. In between songs, Connor was
prone to ranting about his father, mostly just complaining about
(23:34):
what a terrible dad he was, but sometimes airing dirty
laundry or accusing him of corruption. I went to see
the band play one Friday night in late April, hoping
to write a piece that would infuriate Councilman Langford if
I could convince Lauren Redman to publish it. As it
turned out, I got a lot more than I bargained for.
(23:56):
It was about six or seven songs deep in the
set when Connor brought the show to a screeching halt
and started mumbling incoherently into the microphone. In the moments
when you could actually understand what he was saying, he
called out his dad for his conservative politics and how
in his mind they conflicted with the whole vibe of
Domino Beach. Then he was ranting about arguments with his
(24:19):
father and arguments his mother had with his father.
Speaker 5 (24:22):
I don't need to do anything, you race piece.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yet he called his father out as being verbally abusive
and implied he hit him and his mother.
Speaker 5 (24:30):
You're a fucking joke. God damn it, Connor, what are
you gonna do? Hit me again? Come on then, bitch.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
And of course he blamed his father for the fact
that the Domino Beach killer was still at large.
Speaker 5 (24:39):
This is your fault.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
During the nearly five minute rants, the other members of
the band tried at least three times to start playing
hope and Connor would drop his ranting and go along
with them, but it didn't work. Connor would just wave
them off and then go back to whatever it was
he was complaining about, until finally Connor put his hands
on his guitar again and started playing. He was so
(25:03):
drunk it took the rest of the band a few
bars to even work out what he had started to play.
But when they did figure it out and joined in,
my heart sank. It was a very sloppy, off key
rendition of Soundgarden's black Hole Sun And as he sang
that line, call my name through the cream and I'll
hear you scream again. I don't think he was actually
(25:26):
looking at me, but somehow I felt his eyes. I
couldn't explain it then and I still can't, but that
is the moment, the moment I decided that the killer
plaguing Domino Beach was none other than Connor Langford. The
(25:55):
Murder Years is a 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
(26:20):
mastering by Justin Longerbeam Studio engineer Josh Hook. Original music
by Nathan Bankston. Original concept developed in partnership with Anne,
Margaret Johns and Greg Spring, Executive producer for iHeartMedia. Maya Howard.
(26:40):
Performances for this episode by Erica Leniac as Courtney Barnes,
Tom Virtue as Sheriff Damon Stokes, Alex Salem as Connor Langford,
Melon Faxis 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.
My name is Courtney Barnes and I'm the author of
All Fall Down, the Story of the Domino Beach Murders.
(00:22):
With this podcast, I've decided to revisit the murders of
the serial killer who terrorized the small southern California beach
community I called home back in the nineteen nineties. As
I mentioned in episode one, I followed the case from
the very beginning, from the rape and strangulation of nineteen
year old Via Kendrick in nineteen ninety two, to the
(00:43):
discovery of the body of young heroin attic Billy Boy
Reeves about ten months later, to the absolute horror show
that was the murders of three college students during spring
break nineteen ninety four. I've talked about how Gregg Langford,
a powerful city councilman back in those days, sought to
sweep it all under the rug so that Domino Beach
is tourism industry wouldn't suffer. And I've told you how
(01:06):
Stan Major's, an ex COHN and registered sex offender, was
deemed guilty for at least some of the murders in
the court of public opinion, and as a result, ended
up taking his own life. And in our last episode,
you heard the story of Angela Bowers, the first victim
to escape from the Domino Beach Killer with her life,
and you heard it directly from her, in her own words.
(01:29):
So then then he presses my body up against the car,
the door of 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
(01:51):
voice all low and gravelly like that. Anyway, he says,
and these are his exact words, green, and you die
right here. And now, finally I told you how after
I wrote about Angela's harrowing ordeal in the SoCal Journal,
the newspaper I had been working for since pretty much
(02:12):
the moment I graduated college, I received a letter in
the mail from someone claiming to be the killer himself.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Rangel may have flewn away, but I think I like
you better anyhow.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
One day I think i'd like for you to meet me.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
It was because of that letter that authorities, led by
Delsoul County Sheriff Damon Stokes, were finally able to link
all five murders and the attempted abduction of Angela Bauers
to one person, one person whose identity at the beginning
of nineteen ninety five was still a mystery. I'm Courtney
(03:01):
Barnes and this is the Murder Years, Episode five, Black
Hole Sun. I turned twenty four in January of nineteen
ninety five, around the same time that Glenn Sherman, the
so CAW Journal's crime and politics reporter, officially left Domino
Beach for the greener pastures of the La Times. The
(03:23):
story I had written about Angela Bowers in November nineteen
ninety four had gotten me some attention, and not just
from the Domino Beach killer who had sent me his
first yes, first letter, but also from some national publications
who picked up the story. I was far from a
household name and no one was asking me to appear
on talk shows yet, but in certain circles I was
(03:44):
being hailed as a rising voice of feminism and victim advocacy,
which I have to say I thought was pretty cool
at the time. But that article had also got me
back on the radar of Domino Beach City Councilman Greg Langford,
who was decidedly less of a fan, which was almost
certainly why I was not named Glenn Sherman's replacement as
the new crime in politics reporter when he left the
(04:06):
so Cal Journal. Greg Langford made it clear that the
council had it in its power to make things difficult
for the paper if I was given that role. For example,
he made a veiled threat that we could be denied
press credentials to certain events, that city employees would be
told never to talk to us, you know, that sort
of thing. However, Lauren Redman, the so Cal Journal's editor
(04:28):
in chief, figured out a loophole. She made the decision
to not name anyone as Sherman's replacement, which gave her
the freedom to assign crime and politics articles to any
reporter she chose on a story by story basis. She
kept me as far away from Greg Langford as possible,
which meant I wouldn't cover any stories dealing with local
(04:48):
politics and I'd no longer have to attend and take
notes on city council meetings, which suited me just fine.
So even though I was still on lifestyle entertainment, I
was also assigned some stories dealing with especially when those
crimes involved women.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Got to admit I didn't like you for the longest time.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
That's former del Soul County Sheriff Damon Stokes never won
to sugarcoat his feelings.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
And not because of all the things you said about
me in the paper.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
I never said anything that wasn't supported by facts.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Well maybe that's technically true. But you had a way
with words, Courtney.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Well, some would say I still do.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
I don't doubt it. You were a master of subtexts.
If you wanted folks to feel a certain way about
a certain subject, you knew all the tricks.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Men. I'll take that as a compliment.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Take it however you like. Some may take it as
leading or even manipulative.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
I don't think that's fair. I was just trying to
be as honest as I could. I wanted to be.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
A champion of truth. Yeah, something along those sides, right.
I read you book, Courtney. I know how you see yourself.
We're all heroes in our own stories.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Are I never saw myself as a hero? Are you
telling me you saw yourself.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
That way I saw myself as sheriff of a county
that was living in fear, and there were times I
thought you were fanning the flames of that fear. I
was only what when you brought me that letter, I
started to see your potential, Your potential become part of
the solution instead of, you know, someone who was shining
a bright light on the problem. And then when you
(06:30):
brought me that second letter.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Okay, wait a second, let's not get ahead of ourselves.
The second letter Stokes just mentioned was delivered to me
at the offices of the SoCal Journal on the last
day of March nineteen ninety five. I remember it clearly
because when the letter was dropped on my desk, I
was working on a piece about the Mexican American pop
star Selena, who had been shot and killed by the
(06:54):
president of her own fan club earlier that day. I
could tell by the block letters on the end envelope
and lack of return address it was from the person
claiming to be the Domino Beach killer, the same person
who'd sent me that first letter. After the Angeli Bauers
piece was published about four and a half months earlier,
I probably should have taken it directly to Sheriff Stokes,
(07:15):
but instead I opened it.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Media staked out this spot in your Kazinski's cabin all day.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
The suspect apparently lives up this road, but FBI agents
won't let anyone throw and we'll make no comments.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
If you're old enough, you might remember the release of
the Unibomber's Manifesto, which happened in September of nineteen ninety five,
little less than six months after I received the second
letter from the Domino Beach Killer. Well, let me tell
you our guy could give Ted Kazinski a run for
his money. In the long winded, rambling, crazy bastard department.
(07:50):
The second letter was much longer and harder to follow
than the first, so I'm not going to read it
all here, but I will share some highlights with you.
He was much more explicit about his beliefs that I
was born to be one of his victims. He writes, you.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Know I could clean eminem. I can't decide if I
should eat you first or last.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Notice the way he tried to dehumanize me, the same
way he compared Verak Kendrick to a parrot with the
whole Polly wants a cracker thing, or the way he
dumped the body of Billy Boy Reeves in the garbage
is if he weren't even a real person. He goes
on to say that he liked my writing, so it
would probably be most poetic if I were his final victim.
Then seemed to delight in telling me that I would
(08:33):
never know when he was wrapping things up and when
my time would come. He jumps back and forth between
discussing me his other victims, the incompetence of Sheriff Stokes
(08:55):
and the rest of the police, and of course the
approaching turn of the millennium, and how God was going
to rain destruction down on us all and blah blah blah.
It was somehow both incredibly tedious and extremely terrifying at
the same time.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
I always thought that was intentional on his part. What
do you mean, Well, he was trying to sound crazy.
I think he regretted sending you that first letter. Maybe
he felt like he was giving you too much about himself.
I mean, the second one was like performative, almost, or
maybe like he was just throwing a bunch of stuff
against the wall to see if it would stick.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
The last third or so of the letter was almost
all incoherent rambling, eventually and mercifully concluding with a lyric
from black Hole Sun, a song by the grunge band Soundgarden.
One of Stokes's deputies recognized.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
It call my name through the cream and I'll hear
you scream again. I mean, what kind of messed up
shit is that?
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Chris Cornell, the lead singer and songwriter for Soundgarden, would
later that the song's lyrics have little, if any literal meaning.
He claims to have just been playing around with the
words just for the sake of playing around with them,
and that if you really listen or just read the lyrics,
it's hard to make much sense out of them. But
the song is undeniably bleak, and it's not hard to
(10:16):
see how a twisted mind might choose to interpret it,
kind of like how Charles Manson formed his own interpretation
of the songs from the Beatles White Album, leading him
to direct his followers to commit a slew of murders.
In the late nineteen sixties, Dark Stuff.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
It was almost a year since the murders of the
ASU students, and we were all worried, especially after that
whole Angela Bauers thing. What spring Break nineteen ninety five,
What happens to her? That second letter, you know, made
us worry a hell of a lot more. Anyway, I
sent both letters up to the FBI for analysis, hoping
they could give us, you know, I don't know, something
(10:54):
to help us, you know, name a new suspect.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
And then well, three days after I received the killer's
second letter in the mail, eighteen year old Juan Costas
was found dead under the Domino Beach boardwalk. It was
less than a week before the first crop of spring
Breakers were set to arrive. Juan had been stabbed in
the torso and neck over forty times.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
That one.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
That one hit hard.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Maya Morales resident of Domino Beach at the time of
the murders.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
Juan was a friend more than a friend. He was
like family to me. His mother and my mother were friends.
There weren't a lot of Latino people living in the
city of Domino Beach back then, and we all kind
of stuck together, you know, looked out for each other.
So Juan's mother died when he was in middle school,
(11:53):
and his dad worked all the time. So my mom
kind of took Juan in and she gave him me,
she helped out with his homework. She sometimes let him
sleep on the couch. Seemed like he was almost always
over at my place, and he became like a little
brother to me. But by the time he was like
(12:14):
sixteen or seventeen, he stopped coming around so much, but
I still saw him all the time. Where would you
see him, I don't know around. You'd come to the
record store and hang out and talk music. Some days
I'd see him on the skateboard in the parking lot
near the boardwalk, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
And what was he like?
Speaker 4 (12:34):
Funny funny in a kind of goofy way, you know,
always making dumb jokes, trying to do impressions of Red
and Stimpy or Beavis and butt Head. He was so
terrible at it, but somehow you could always.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Tell who he was trying to do.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
And he was small for his age, skinny and shorter
than most of the other kids. He got down a
little bit at school, but I don't think it was
too bad. Of course. One way he got the bullying
to slow down was by telling everyone he was ganged up.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
One was in a gang.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
Hell no, he just said that so he could get people.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
To leave him alone.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
He didn't have a violent phone in his body. He
was a good kid.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Well that's a pretty charitable assessment of mister Costas.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Again, former Sheriff Damon Stokes.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
I'd busted him for selling heroin when he was still
young enough to duck the charge. I knew it wasn't his,
but he never gave up who he was selling for.
I don't know, you know, I think he was doing
more than pretending to be in a gang. I mean,
it was southern California in the mid nineteen nineties. Gangs
were everywhere back then, especially places that had a drug trade,
(13:46):
even places like Domino Beach.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
So even with the timing of the letter and everything,
you didn't think one's death was the work of the
Domino Beach killer. You thought it was a gang thing.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Well, I mean, the Domino Beach killer wasn't off the
table or anything. But with the exception of Billy Boy Reeves,
who we figured was practice for him, our guy seemed
to be targeting young women and his crimes almost always
had a sexual component to him. If Juan Costas was
one of his victims, then that meant the killer was
branching out, you know, trying something new.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
What evidence did you have that it was a gang issue.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Well, nothing concrete, but like the Domino Beach Killer, gangs
like to send messages. A lot of times those messages
are left where the right people we'll see them, like
under the boardwalk where a lot of drugs happened to
be sold.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
You thought something similar about the murder of Billy Boy Reeves.
You thought he was a victim of the drug trade too,
and you were wrong.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
But I couldn't pin every violent crime we came across
on a serial killer we couldn't find.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
I wrote the article covering the death of Juan Costas,
and while I included Sheriff stokes take, I offered a
little speculation that it could have just has easily been
the work of the Domino Beach Killer. In my opinion,
Stokes was too focused on the sexual nature of the
previous crimes. It seemed to me that the killer strangled
the victims he raped. Those two things seemed to go
(15:13):
hand in hand. But he wasn't afraid to use a knife.
He'd used one on Billy Boy Reeves when he slid
his throat, and he'd stabbed the ASU students. He didn't
sexually assault to death with a kitchen knife, and both
of them had dozens of stab wounds, just like Jan
cost Us.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Yeah, poor Wan.
Speaker 5 (15:32):
I always like that kid.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
That's Connor Langford, son of Domino Beach City councilman Greg Langford,
on again off again boyfriend to Maya Morales and the
person who discovered the body of the killer's first victim,
Vera Hendrick.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
But Maya and I weren't really on the best of
terms when he was killed a couple months earlier, she
found out I was sleeping with this girl from San
Diego and called it quits this time for good. I
was fucking stupid that girl, Sure as hell wasn't worth
losing Maya over, but I was making all kinds of
(16:06):
really bad decisions that wasn't exactly in the best head
space back then. Why not, Well, my band broke up
for one thing. There was in the fall of ninety
four when Brody Brody was the drummer.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Brody Hanigan, your friend who was with you when you
found Vera's body.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Yeah, the band was really just me and him, Me
on guitar and vocals, Brody on drums. I can't even
tell you how many bass players we went through but
it was a lot anyways. Brody was always a little
more serious than me about, you know, the whole rock
star thing. He wanted to move to Seattle, because if
you were trying to be in a rock band in
the nineties, Seattle was the place to be, but I
(16:44):
wouldn't go. I wanted to stay in Domino Beach. I mean,
there's no surfing in Seattle, right. So after a while
of him asking and me saying no, he was like,
fuck it, bro see you later, and he bounced out
of town. So I had no band and no girl.
The only thing I did have was a fucking drug
problem that was getting worse and worse by the day.
(17:06):
So at least I had something to spend all my
time and money on. I knew Maya was hurting over
Wan's murder, and I wanted to comfort her so bad.
I guess I was hoping she'd want to lean on me,
a familiar shoulder to cry on, you know, But she
wouldn't even take my calls.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
How did that make you feel?
Speaker 5 (17:26):
How the fuck you think?
Speaker 2 (17:27):
It made me feel bad, real fucking bad.
Speaker 5 (17:31):
But that doesn't mean.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Fuck it.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
What's the matter now?
Speaker 1 (17:41):
By the spring of nineteen ninety five. All of us
in Domino Beach were well aware of Connor Langford's downward spiral.
Just a few short years ago, he had been the
perfect representation of Domino Beach, the easy going surfer dude,
want to be rock star with an easy smile, who
is everyone's friend, and the complete opposite of his conservative,
politically ambitious father. Connor would turn your head when he
(18:05):
walked into a room. He had charisma for days and
didn't seem to have a care in the world. But
that had changed.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
I never thought he was a bad.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Guy again, Maya Morales.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
He was just going through a really rough time without
Brody in the band, and okay.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Without me.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
Connor did not know who he was anymore. I mean
there he was closing it on thirty years old, and
I think he started to realize that he was passing
his life away. Everyone around him was growing up and
either leaving town or getting a job or trying new things,
and he was just same old Connor. Well that's not true.
(18:48):
He was trying to be the same old Connor, but
that guy was long gone.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
The murder of Juan Costas didn't land the way some
of the others had. Maybe because Stokes didn't push that
it was the work of our serial killer, or maybe
we were all just jaded by what had happened the
year before. In a is that all you got kind
of way, when you stacked it up against the murders
of spring Break nineteen ninety four, it didn't compare. I
(19:16):
know that sounds suppressingly cynical, but look, as a culture,
America gets really upset when bad things happen to pretty
white girls like Collie Blake, Sandra Gerard, Mary Crouch, Angela Bauers,
even homeless bohemian Vera Hendrick. But a teenage junkie like
Billy Boy Reeves, or a Hispanic kid with suspected gang
(19:36):
ties like Jan Costas, they just didn't rate. But that
being said, spring Break nineteen ninety five was pretty slow
by Domino Beach standards. By then, the murders of the
ASU students the year before had become almost the stuff
of legend. And after the failed abduction of Angela Bauers
in November and the two letters I received, the first
(19:57):
of which was published in the paper, it seemed pretty
clear to everyone that Domino Beach a serial killer problem
was far from over. And then finally a break in
the case.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
It was mid April, I think with me got the
analysis of the two letters back from the FBI. There
was some profiling stuff based on handwriting, but even the
FBI admitted it was pure speculation since they were written
in block letters, I mean, white male, mid twenties to
mid thirties, et cetera. But the gold nugget and all
that turned out to have nothing to do with psychology.
(20:46):
It was the paper the letters were written on.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Stokes didn't release this information publicly, so I didn't find
out about it until much later. The FBI analyzed the
paper and found that it was actually somewhat new. Apparently
there was a faulty watermark on both sheets of paper
used to write the letters. The paper company's name had
been misspelled, and most of the reams of that paper
had been recalled. Most but not all, at least two
(21:14):
hundred reams were sold around southern California.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
It wasn't exactly a smoking gun, but you know, it
was something. If we could find where the paper was sold,
which was pretty big, if we could find the killer,
or at least whoever sent the letters, it would just.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Take time, and time was something Domino Beach was running
short on in spring and summer of nineteen ninety five.
Tourism had fallen by fifty percent over the previous year,
and Councilman Langford was not happy.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yeah, my dad was tough to be around back then,
not that I was any picnic either. We fought all
the fucking time. He told me to get the hell
out and find my own place, but I wouldn't. I
just stayed in the poolhouse. One time he changed the
locks and I just broke a window. It wasn't like
he was ever gonna call the cops on me.
Speaker 5 (22:08):
Can you imagine?
Speaker 2 (22:09):
I bet you would have written a hell of a
story about the councilman having his own son rested.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
I don't think I would have gotten that assignment, but
I sure would have gone after it.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Yeah, I guess I did go a little extra hard
on him. I was dealing with a lot of shit,
and I don't know he was an easy target for me.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Connor was indeed going hard on his dad back in
spring of nineteen ninety five. Since his band had broken up,
he had joined a local cover band that played at
Triple B's three nights a week. Now. I've never claimed
to know much about music, But one thing I know
is that cover bands don't usually have to be all
that good. As long as they've got the right tune
and know most of the words, people will dance and
(22:53):
sing along. And the cover band Connor was playing guitar
and singing for in April of nineteen ninety five was deaf,
not good even for a cover band. But in spite
of their questionable quality, and in spite of the decrease
in tourists, they played to a full house pretty much
every night, mostly because it was a spectacle. Connor was
(23:14):
always drunk or stoned out of his mind when he
was performing, and was known to spit beer on the crowd,
or moon them or curse them out, which the visiting
college kids found absolutely hysterical. The locals came to watch
him for a different reason. In between songs, Connor was
prone to ranting about his father, mostly just complaining about
(23:34):
what a terrible dad he was, but sometimes airing dirty
laundry or accusing him of corruption. I went to see
the band play one Friday night in late April, hoping
to write a piece that would infuriate Councilman Langford if
I could convince Lauren Redman to publish it. As it
turned out, I got a lot more than I bargained for.
(23:56):
It was about six or seven songs deep in the
set when Connor brought the show to a screeching halt
and started mumbling incoherently into the microphone. In the moments
when you could actually understand what he was saying, he
called out his dad for his conservative politics and how
in his mind they conflicted with the whole vibe of
Domino Beach. Then he was ranting about arguments with his
(24:19):
father and arguments his mother had with his father.
Speaker 5 (24:22):
I don't need to do anything, you race piece.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yet he called his father out as being verbally abusive
and implied he hit him and his mother.
Speaker 5 (24:30):
You're a fucking joke. God damn it, Connor, what are
you gonna do? Hit me again? Come on then, bitch.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
And of course he blamed his father for the fact
that the Domino Beach killer was still at large.
Speaker 5 (24:39):
This is your fault.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
During the nearly five minute rants, the other members of
the band tried at least three times to start playing
hope and Connor would drop his ranting and go along
with them, but it didn't work. Connor would just wave
them off and then go back to whatever it was
he was complaining about, until finally Connor put his hands
on his guitar again and started playing. He was so
(25:03):
drunk it took the rest of the band a few
bars to even work out what he had started to play.
But when they did figure it out and joined in,
my heart sank. It was a very sloppy, off key
rendition of Soundgarden's black Hole Sun And as he sang
that line, call my name through the cream and I'll
hear you scream again. I don't think he was actually
(25:26):
looking at me, but somehow I felt his eyes. I
couldn't explain it then and I still can't, but that
is the moment, the moment I decided that the killer
plaguing Domino Beach was none other than Connor Langford. The
(25:55):
Murder Years is a 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
(26:20):
mastering by Justin Longerbeam Studio engineer Josh Hook. Original music
by Nathan Bankston. Original concept developed in partnership with Anne,
Margaret Johns and Greg Spring, Executive producer for iHeartMedia. Maya Howard.
(26:40):
Performances for this episode by Erica Leniac as Courtney Barnes,
Tom Virtue as Sheriff Damon Stokes, Alex Salem as Connor Langford,
Melon Faxis as Maya Morales, Amy Phillips as Angela Bowers
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