January 28, 2026 • 39 mins
The letter came on regular paper. Blue ink. Her handwriting was the same as when we were twelve.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
The Red Weather is a work of fiction. Any resemblance
to actual persons or events reflects the adaptation of real,
publicly available materials for creative and legal reasons. The content
of this podcast is the sole responsibility of Red Weather
LLC and does not reflect the views of responsibilities of
iHeartMedia or its affiliates. A few days before she died,
(00:22):
I got a letter from Willow. Willow was my neighbor
and one of my best friends as a kid. We
grew up in the Redwoods outside of Sebastopol, California. It's
about sixty miles north of San Francisco, and even though
we were just through the woods from one another, we
had very different childhoods. Willow was part of a commune,
or what they called it a collective. It was a
(00:45):
group of maybe thirty people and it was called tender Hearts.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
It was one guy, really, the leader, Elric, and then women,
then kids.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
That's Sheriff Maldonado. He was the sheriff back in the
eighties and the nineties, so he ended up dealing with
the tender Hearts when birds would complain or if kids
got into trouble. It was hard to wrap your head
around it. Was nature and trees and praying. I guess
it would be called meditating today, and drugs those pot
(01:14):
mushrooms Mescoon. Willow's mom was a founding member of Tender Hearts,
so she lived there with Willow and her sister Anna.
When we were young, Willow and I were close, really close.
We used to meet in the woods between our houses
and spend all afternoon together, sometimes camping out, but things
got complicated in our teens. By the time I got
her letter, I hadn't talked to her in years. I
(01:37):
didn't even know she had my address. She was in Panama,
in Pocas del Toro. It's a series of islands close
to Costa Rica. Apparently she'd gone with an organization to
help sea turtles protect their habitat or something, but really
it sounds like she went to get away and to
get sober. The letter was mostly about what she was
up to in Panama, working in a vegan pizza place
(01:58):
down there. Before I could at her back, I found
out she took her own life. My mom saw it
on Facebook. So you're still in touch with her mom.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Well, only through Facebook. I mean, it's not like I
see her or talk to her, have private phone calls,
but you know, she posts things, and this was one
of the things she posted. I was surprised. It's really sad.
It's really sad.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
She was begging me to come visit her.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
This is Noah. He grew up with Willow too.
Speaker 5 (02:28):
She begged me. She was like, hey, please please come visit.
I'm really lonely. I need a friend, I need some help.
Speaker 6 (02:33):
You know.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
She wrote me this.
Speaker 5 (02:34):
Poem that was very you know, in that context, was
quite deep and dark and basically just talking about loneliness
and isolation and kind of meaninglessness of everything.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
He's now a psychiatrist up in Seattle.
Speaker 5 (02:45):
And it's really challenging. It's really I mean, I've had
a number of patient suicide and even with that, it's
really hard to reconcile that of like, could I have
done something more?
Speaker 1 (03:01):
If I was honest, I might not have even written
her back. I mean, we were in very different places.
She was single, childless, hopping around different countries. I'm married,
I had a kid. I live in LA I work
as a writer director, and as you might know, I
host a podcast about the TV show I was on
as a kid, Welcome to Vodney's World.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
I'm Dannie official.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
I'm rather strong than I'm will Fordell. Willow was still
chasing new experiences, new people, and new places in a
way that when we were young was exciting and admirable,
but now that we're in our forties, it felt a
little desperate, erratic.
Speaker 5 (03:40):
I remember for the first few years of our friendship,
you know, like it was kind of like being a
being on a drug near her. She had so much
energy and excitement and spotanity and like. But then I
remember as she started to decompensate in our teen years,
it was like it was it was really challenging to
be around her. I should say all this with a
(04:00):
caveat that it's impossible for me not to use my
psychiatric nosology on her now now looking back, I mean,
she was just the archetype of someone who had had
clearly had a lot of childhood trauma.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
There's a few traumas Noah could be referring to here.
There was the fact that she grew up on a
collective in the woods. She definitely had some awful boyfriends,
there were drugs, But the central trauma of Willow's life
had to do with her sister Anna. Anna was two
years older than us, which isn't much except when you're fifteen.
(04:46):
Back then, she was in a whole other category of existence,
and I probably would have gotten to nowhere better. Except
on Halloween night nineteen ninety five, Anna disappeared. It was
a horrible time for a couple of there. It seemed
like everyone we knew was a suspect or had a secret.
We all got interviewed by the cops. People blamed Willow's mom,
(05:07):
people blamed the Tender Hearts and his boyfriend. People blamed
the town. But no one knew what actually happened. Nobody
was ever found, no charges ever filed. Most everyone assumed
that Anna ran away, that she just wanted out of
Tender Hearts or small town took off. But Willow never
thought that she knew her sister would never leave without her,
(05:30):
or at least without saying goodbye. This is from Willow's letter.
I know I made you promise something about the night
Anna disappeared. You and Christo Vecchio and Oriyan and Connor
were there too. Do you remember we pinky swore. So
here's the deal. I want you to know I don't
(05:52):
fucking care anymore. I released your pinky, Sir, I am no.
I can't read this, but I think she wrote authority.
But I want to know the truth. If Anna is
still out there, or the person who killed her is
out there, then keeping my secret is stupid. It always
has been. I kept going back over the letter, going
back over my memories and my relationship with Willow. I
(06:14):
kept wondering, why did she send this to me? Why
didn't she decide to tell the truth herself. In nineteen
ninety five, my neighbor and a trainer disappeared. She was seventeen.
Her body was never found, no one was ever arrested,
no explanation given. And back then, I lied to my parents,
(06:37):
I lied to police, I lied to everybody because Anna's sister,
Willow asked me to. I've decided to go back to
my hometown, interview my friends and family, and talk to
police and journalists whoever I can to try to find
out what actually happened. I am actor and filmmaker writer
Strong This is the Red Weather. Before I left for Sebastopol,
(07:51):
I called up my friend Chris because he's one of
the few people who knew what Willow was talking about.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
Yeah, what's up right? Recorded?
Speaker 1 (08:01):
What that you no it's the thing Elly, that it's recording.
Speaker 7 (08:05):
That is Sean Hayes with you telling me that this
all being recorded.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Chris is a comedy writer now who also lives in
La So I don't I don't know if you've heard,
but Willow Trainer died.
Speaker 6 (08:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (08:16):
My cousin Tarn texted me.
Speaker 7 (08:18):
You've never torn, right, No, Sacramento torn. Uh, there was
a Thanksgiving you came with I'm pretty sure you came
with me anyways. Crazy. I don't know if she killed
herself in Puerto Rico or Panama, Panama. Well, she was
always a fucking train rack, dude, I mean, even before
the kid fucking grew up in a cult.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Well, I don't know if I would even call it that.
Speaker 7 (08:39):
I think that's because you're a sweetheart, sweetheart. Okay, I'm
gonna call it a call, because there's a creepy fucking
tree calls. They were out, They were basically like rural homeless.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Before she killed herself, she sent me a letter she's
I know and saying that we can uh tell the truth.
Chris had also made a promise because he was with
me and Willow the night that Anna disappeared.
Speaker 7 (09:00):
Who cares if we could tell the truth now, like
I know, I know, but I mean there's there's so
much that I don't even know about the case. The case,
you know, oh, yes, oh the case. Like these detective
riders on the case.
Speaker 8 (09:12):
Now there was a first party and they didn't they
like find a bullet in a tree.
Speaker 7 (09:17):
Or bullets in yes, three bullets country, multiple bullets.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
That's what I mean.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
I don't even know the basics. It's like and then
let alone the fact of.
Speaker 7 (09:24):
Like what we did, but what Willow did? Right, So
that is why you're recording this phone call. Yeah, I mean,
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
I'm just I you know, I feel like I've got
this this this platform.
Speaker 7 (09:36):
You know, dat's a public figure. I did a podcast
and all right, Colombo, well you're not going to go
solo on this. Brother will be the Hardy Boys or
the Scooby Gang. And I'm not gonna be Shaggy. It's
too on the nose. I want to be Scooby or Velma.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
I'm definitely Velma and testing testing one about sound gear
so I could doc a man everything I could. I
said goodbye to my wife Alex and her son. Indeed
recording right now, Yeah, I'm never gonna stop rowing.
Speaker 8 (10:07):
That's the whole point, okay.
Speaker 9 (10:15):
And you have the draft.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Too, Yeah, but it's I've got time, so I think
while I'm up there, I'll be able to get writing
done with this loud guy. Hey dude, I'm saying goodbye.
I had three months to write a script, a horror
movie for a small studio. It wasn't my original idea.
They had brought me in after they sold the pitch,
but they were pain This sort of thing has become
(10:37):
my life, writing movies that never get made.
Speaker 10 (10:40):
All right, I love you having fun having special, dude,
time special, all right, I love you guys.
Speaker 9 (10:56):
A week or two week or two? What? Yes, we're two?
Speaker 4 (11:14):
Hell hello it is.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
I drove across town and I picked up Chris. I
was glad he was coming with me.
Speaker 8 (11:20):
I knew there'd be gaps in memory, conflicting versions and
things people maybe didn't want to think about it or
talk about, so I thought it'd be good to have
his help.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
I am not driving at all.
Speaker 11 (11:30):
Not at all.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
You do not need to see my road rage. Bro
Ooh another fun rule.
Speaker 12 (11:36):
You get one moody whiny white guys song per hour.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
That's okay, that's all I have.
Speaker 5 (11:42):
I know that.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
So we're gonna put on your phone. Yeah, dude, you're
getting beach Boys and Jimmy Buffett. He'd also, I know,
keep things lighthearted. I did some research before we left
l A. And when I looked into Anna's case, there
was one name that kept coming up. Monica Tremblaine.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
All right, Hi, I are you doing.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Hey? She was the journalist who covered the story for
the Press Democrat or local paper.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Hey.
Speaker 8 (12:07):
You know we've met before, right, Well, yeah, I mean
we talked back in the day.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
I mean I feel like my mom was there. No, no, no, no, no,
this was way after then. It was in the two
thousand and three. Yeah. I came to the Graduate play
when you did it with Jerry Hall.
Speaker 13 (12:22):
We talked for a second at uh huh at the
opening night party. Okay, yeah, I was for sure. I
was like, oh, he doesn't remember me, or either you
were avoiding me.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
No, oh god, sorry, do me a favor, though. Don't
look up the review of that play.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Manica graduated from Berkeley and then moved to Santa Rosa
to work for the Press Democrat only a month before
Anna disappeared. It was a small paper doing all the
things paper did in the nineties, classified its town hall meetings,
the kind of things today you just find online if
at all.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
You know, it was like my first real story. I
mean I was only twenty three then. I was so young.
Speaker 13 (13:00):
Yeah, But what was interesting was that, like everybody, everybody
at the paper assumed that Anna was a runaway.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
But I did not believe that. Why hmmm, you know, there.
Speaker 13 (13:13):
Was something off and everything about this, I mean everything
just felt like there was something there, felt like there
was something more, like more going on.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
I felt a vibe vibe.
Speaker 13 (13:26):
I was younger than everybody at the paper, you know,
and so when I talked to the kids, you kids,
I felt closer to you than everybody else. But then again,
you guys were a bunch of white kids in this
very white hippie town.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
I mean y'all had money.
Speaker 13 (13:41):
I mean you you were already on TV, you were famous,
so right right, it was a lot, you know, the commune,
the drugs fire, that's.
Speaker 8 (13:50):
Like I want to get into all of that stuff,
but let's just start with this. What can we just do?
Like the uh, what where Hannah was that night? What
happened to her? Just like the pure only the facts
version of what we know.
Speaker 13 (14:05):
Anna Trainer was at a party in downtown Sebasketball that.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Would be Heather Colburn's house, a Halloween party.
Speaker 13 (14:11):
There are a lot of witnesses that said Anna was
there and she was drinking, and that she had a
fight with her.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Boyfriend or ex boyfriend, depending on your point of view.
His name is Mick Bowden. My brother Shilah was actually
there at the party. I remember sitting there. I just
remember he punched the window.
Speaker 12 (14:30):
There was a lot of screaming and arguing going on,
and then, you know, I don't remember exactly what it
was about, but it definitely stopped the situation. Lateryone was
like whoa, okay, and then you know, but it's kind
of in a party scene, so like everybody's you know,
and I think they might have been out smoking.
Speaker 13 (14:47):
Well yeah, Mick, he left the party an hour or
so before Anna.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
More on that later.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
So she gets a ride.
Speaker 13 (14:54):
So she gets its ride from these three girls, Lindsay Green,
Gianna Parata, and Audrey Wick.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
So I don't know if I should tell you this,
but I call them the mean girls.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
Were they pretending to help her or I mean they
were you know, honestly, there was a lot of back
and forth with that.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Lindsay, Jenna and Audrey gave her a ride and when
they were asked by the police, they said they drove
her home.
Speaker 13 (15:18):
On Lindsay told the police that they were actually messing
with Anna and that they dropped her off a few
miles from her house.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Actually, like I said, mean girls.
Speaker 13 (15:27):
But we can assume at least that she didn't go
home because then Nick got that page from Anna ten
oh three.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
This was the era of pagers. We all had them,
and we all had our own code that we used
to let someone know if we wanted them to call
us back or meet us somewhere.
Speaker 13 (15:44):
Well, first she paged him to a phone number, which
we let her found out was the Juniver Street pay phone,
and he told police that he paid her back with
his cold that he was going to meet her there.
Speaker 6 (15:55):
But then the fire a devastating night in western Sonoma
County as fire rage over one hundred acres and burned
four homes in its path.
Speaker 13 (16:02):
Sources te well, we have that the first witness caught
in the fires at ten twenty pm. It started out
on the Tenderheart property and then you know, as we know,
it's bread.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
No one was hurt, but a lot of loss.
Speaker 4 (16:16):
It was a big deal to firefighters I don't know
their names.
Speaker 13 (16:19):
In front of me on the way towards the fire,
they saw a young woman, blonde walking alone on Juniper.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
That was the last time anyone saw an a trainer. Well,
I have some info, some new info, maybe answers for
some of this.
Speaker 13 (16:43):
Well, damn rider, it's only been thirty years.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
It's an eight hour drive from La to Sebasterful. So
along the way, Chris and I talked about our hometown. Yes,
I mean when we were kids, it was like this tiny,
crusty and now it's like now it's like nice, nice
restaurants and cute little shops. Yeah, and like even the
(17:17):
Foster Freeze is now a place that you know, you
get like milkshakes and fifteen dollars Hamburgers are so good.
So Basketball isn't all that different from a lot of
small towns in California. But back in the seventies it
had a very particular culture. Here's how my brother Shiloh
put it.
Speaker 12 (17:33):
A lot of hippies that moved from San Francisco, like
our parents. But then there were also the pot growers
and like that sort of edgyness to it.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Kind of where the hate Ashbury Summer of Love crowd
went to grow up, grow some vegetables, grow some pot
and raise kids with names like Rioter and Willow. In
the actual town where Chris grew up, you could still
have a pretty typical suburban childhood. But outside of town
it was the wild West of alternative parenting. There were
(18:06):
all kinds of situations. Take my buddy Ryan. He grew
up on a commune.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
It was fifty four acres of land.
Speaker 8 (18:13):
There was a ranch house where all of this stuff happened,
like a central ranch house that was owned and common
by everybody.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
So this was the common land.
Speaker 8 (18:21):
You know, people would take turns with, like running the daycare.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
It wasn't religious or spiritual, but it was certainly a
counter cultural.
Speaker 8 (18:28):
Scene, kind of like you know, hippie dancy thrill your
hands and spacey, you know.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
Kind of just like you know tied I. That was
so much Tied Die.
Speaker 6 (18:38):
Yeah, yeah, a.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
Love as it really was that it really was.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Yeah, my own home life wasn't that extreme. Chris and
I pulled into my parents place that evening, I.
Speaker 8 (18:53):
All right Island.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
They moved into the woods, put in a well built
our house. As a kid, we had electricity, but we
didn't have TV. I was homeschooled on and off. We
were vegetarians. And while my parents' property has a name,
we call it redwood Shire, unlike Tender Hearts. That started
as kind of a joke.
Speaker 11 (19:12):
As soon as we bought it, you know, we just
the redwoods were just so beautiful, and so Dad, coming
from an accounting background, he wanted to make something that
was productible. So we made it an experimental farm, and
we had to give it a name, so I said, well,
(19:32):
it has to be redwood Yeah, and then.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
It also relates to my dad's name, which is for real,
King Arthur Strong.
Speaker 11 (19:40):
Well yeah, but a lot of it came from King
Arthur like Shire.
Speaker 4 (19:45):
Yeah, so redwood Shire.
Speaker 13 (19:47):
It's just stuck.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Our day to day life was positively mainstream, compared to
Willow and Anna, who were literally a few hundred yards
away living in tents and barns with some kind of
guiding spirituality or philosophy, which I was realizing I knew
nothing about, and neither did Oryan.
Speaker 8 (20:06):
I think I understood what was going on more even later,
when I was in my twenties or something like that.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
But girth family.
Speaker 8 (20:12):
So this guy was called was he called like the
father or something creepy like that? You know, very much polyamory,
but like not modern you know, consensual, et cetera, much
more of kind of like dude has a bunch of
wives kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Our lives couldn't be more different. But we were within
walking distance, which is how I ended up physically smack
dab in the middle of this case. And that was
news to Monica.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
So I was. I was with Anna's sister Willow that night, and.
Speaker 13 (20:45):
Yeah, you and your friends are at kind of Drake's
house watching horror movies.
Speaker 4 (20:49):
Well that's that's what we said. Yeah, that's what she said.
But we were actually in the woods. We were on
the Tender Hearts property.
Speaker 13 (20:57):
Wait, if you're on the Tender Hearts property, you can
confirm none of the adults were there.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Yeah, I mean we didn't. As far as we knew,
no one was there. They were all on the sunrise
seance hike the night that Anna vanished. The adults of
Tender Hearts said they were holding something called a sunrise seance,
which was an annual tradition for them. El Rick and
the women would hike up Mount Saint Helena for a
ceremony and apparently it involves psychedelics. Shiloh and I actually
(21:25):
went on one of these with Oryan and Willow when
we were younger, like maybe twelve or thirteen, and the
whole idea is to go up there and watch the sunrise. Yeah.
I just remember being so tired and exhausted.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
Yeah. I did it a couple of times, but only
got lost the ones. Oh ma.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
To us, it was just a hike, but who knows.
We were clueless kids. At the time of Anna's disappearance.
None of the Tender Hearts were charged with a crime,
but it was shut down within a year. I never
knew why, and WILLI never talked about them. Part of
doing this podcast is about finally getting some answers about
(22:08):
what was going on next door.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
So does that does that change anything? I don't think so.
I mean it confirms what they said at the time.
Speaker 8 (22:17):
Yeah, so, I think what we were doing, me and
Willow and our friends.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
I think the person that it affects the most is Mick.
Mick Bowden was the ex boyfriend and argued with that
night because he.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
Was also with us.
Speaker 13 (22:30):
He hold on, I need to grab a pin. Hey, right,
are you talking to me? And that's fine? But are
you voting on record? Are you hoping to officially reopen
this case?
Speaker 1 (22:45):
I actually wasn't sure if what I had to say
would warrant that, but I was willing to find out.
Our first morning in Sebastopol, Chris and I went to
the police station. I thought it'd be good to do
this in person and get an honest reaction in real time,
but I had a lot to learn. Hello, Hi, So
we're here to talk to someone about an old case
(23:09):
from nineteen ninety five. I tried to explain what we
were there for, which took way longer than I expected.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
Peterburg teenager on Juniperle.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
I think that's county, but let me ask, hey, Ken,
turns out I wasn't even in the right jurisdiction.
Speaker 6 (23:26):
Really, that would be the Sheriff's office, Western County. Yeah,
if you're asking about a missing girl outside the town limits,
we wouldn't have anything to do with that.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
That was a huge dead ends.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
That was awful. It was so embarrassing for you. I
gotta say to a question, God, Sherlock Homeschool to crack
the case wide over.
Speaker 5 (23:47):
Oh she called nine years ago.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Did you take that call personally?
Speaker 8 (23:52):
Idiot?
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Dude, you gotta leave this in no, no, no. Of course,
if I had just asked Monica and stead of running
off and trying to play gotcha, she could have told
me that the Sheriff's department ran the investigation. But when
she and I talked, we were deep in the weeds
of my whereabouts that night.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
Mick Bolden was with you when after the.
Speaker 8 (24:15):
Party and then before Anna paged him. I think, I really,
I'm not exactly sure what the timing is.
Speaker 4 (24:21):
Well, what were you doing out there? Uh, it's kind
of a long story.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
A lot of this goes back to, well, let me
ask you this, what do you know about Anna's social life?
Speaker 4 (24:34):
I know she was in a tough spot.
Speaker 13 (24:37):
It was sexual, some rumors in any window, harsh stuff
with you guys.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
I'm actually surprised Monica even knows that Anna was going
through a lot that fall. There's a reason the mean
girls were picking on her, and there was a reason
that I was running around the woods that night with
my friends. And this is the most uncomfortable part of
doing this podcast, because in order to really get into
the story, I'm going to have to get into what
(25:01):
was going on among us kids in ways that will
probably be hard to confront. But as it turns out,
even Sheriff Maldonado, who was indeed the correct official investigator,
he knew some of this. Well, I know she had
a REP. I do know that.
Speaker 4 (25:18):
I remember that.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
I tracked down Maldonado easily just to google away. It
turns out he's retired now, but he remembered the case immediately.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
Well, yes, and no.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
I mean we tend to assume run away with a
team like that, you know, But then there were also
other things there. You had that home situation that she
was in, and you know, that's not something that we're
used to dealing with. Then there was the fire, the
fire that there was for a loop, and then I
do remember we found her car down south of here.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Anna's car technically it was her mom's car was found
almost a month later in a parking lot near the
San Francisco Airport.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Well, finding the car like that that pushed us in
the in the runaway direction, you know. Uh, But at
the same time we had the bullets and then uh yeah,
there was there was just.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
A lot of a lot of loose ends with that.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
Mm hmmmmm.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Man, uh, you just calling me, that's that's uh bringing
it back, that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
He agreed to talk with me, so we made a
plan to meet at his house and sit down for
an interview. After my utter fail at the police station,
Chris and I went to the Pine Cone Diner, which
is one of our favorite old downtown spots. This is
the real stuff, the stuff that everybody cuts out of
their podcast. That that's gonna say. That's I just want
(26:43):
I just want to make sure that you know the
sharer or whoever it is like that. I want them
to take me seriously. If they don't arrest you, Oh
come on, then why would they arrest because you lied
to the Okay.
Speaker 4 (26:54):
Yeah, we're gonna thank you.
Speaker 9 (26:56):
Oh my god, I love her.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Look I'm saying, is teke to be to exhale, like
cover your bases. Like have you talked to a lawyer?
You should talk to my brother in law. I like,
find out where you stand legally. Well, I mean I
already talked to Monica the reporter. You did, Yeah, I
just with her before I left.
Speaker 4 (27:16):
What did she say? Okay? Okay? Well that was always
one of the big questions.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
For the first time I had broken the pinky swear.
Speaker 13 (27:24):
I guess I'm honestly, I'm not sure. Does that answer
things or does that just create more questions?
Speaker 4 (27:30):
Right?
Speaker 1 (27:31):
I mean, that's kind of my whole with this podcast,
That's what I want to find out. I told Monica
the truth that the night er sister disappeared, Willow started
the fire. She's gonna didn't immediately say lawyer.
Speaker 4 (27:53):
Up, No, no.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
And I know some of you might be thinking, why
keep this a secret? We knew Willow had accidentally started
the fire, and we thought that if it came back
to her, she might get arrested for arson on top
of losing her sister. But I'll be honest, I didn't
really think through all that. I was fifteen, Willa was
(28:17):
my friend. I didn't tell anyone because she asked me
not to. Yeah, That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
So it made not It just might not change anything.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Maybe not. But while we had lunch, I got out
my notes. Fine, let's just go over the theory. Yes,
let's talk about what we do know what we need
to know. Theory number one, Anna ran away the most
likely situation by leeps and guts Okay, I mean that's
what everyone I think, that's what everyone assumes. But I
have a hard time imagining that she changed her name
(28:46):
and ran off to I Don't wear and has never
called anybody, and now she's just what Sippy Martini is
on a rooftop somewhere. That sounds lovely. Theory Number two,
someone killed Anna that night, right, But well there's l Rick,
the leader of tender Hearts, because he's a very shady guy. Yes,
(29:07):
maybe people except shady people. From all that I know.
The cops did look into him, and he was exonerated.
Speaker 5 (29:13):
At the time.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Oh exonerate. It's just stup, look at you. I think
in order to get more information about that, I need
to talk to Laney, because Laney is Willow and Anna's mom.
But she hadn't responded to any of my calls or
Facebook messages. There's gonna be her worst killer, says I know,
so I'm not looking forward to There's also always the
chance that it was a random Yeah, sure, some psycho
(29:37):
killer just driving. That happens all the time. And have
you not seen the dateline? On dateline, it's always the husband.
She was too young to have a husband, yes, but
the husband in this game. No, the husband in this
case is Mick, right, that is the theory. But they
never brought charges. But maybe once I tell the cops
what we were.
Speaker 9 (29:56):
Doing that night or coffee?
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Yes, was the coffee here?
Speaker 4 (30:00):
Always this terrible Jesus Gars terrible.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Well, my friend is doing a podcast and we are
trying to be very honest, so I'm just gonna lay
it on the table.
Speaker 4 (30:08):
This coffee is terrible.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
But you, my dear, are it light. You're wonderful.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
Thank you, thank you, thank you, And if you.
Speaker 9 (30:18):
Need anything else, wave mede down.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
I might think of something. Are you kitty the waitress?
I mean, what you want me to call fee on?
She's just calm down, some random waitress with the pine
co Oh my god? What lighting up?
Speaker 4 (30:35):
Okay, but excuse me. My friend here thinks that I
was hitting on you. Now look I'm clearly married, and okay,
I got it. I was joking. Yes I know. Oh
I know she knows.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Do you know?
Speaker 9 (30:49):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Now I know? Now you know?
Speaker 6 (30:51):
Yes?
Speaker 9 (30:51):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Now I'm sorry. Sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
What are you sorry for it?
Speaker 1 (30:55):
For being too sensitive? For thinking that you were making
her uncomfortable? You're it's fine, Yes, we're good.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
I'm sorry you are such a debute downer. Can you
please just lighten up. Let's have fun. There'll be the brooding, sad,
sack reformed child actor. Okay, you're not going to crack
this case, buddy, Okay, I know, but I gotta try it.
I knew I wasn't going to solve anything, but I
(31:23):
hoped that looking back at this time in my life,
I might be able to understand some things that never
made sense and in some way and maybe this wasn't healthy.
I felt like I owed that to Willow and my parents.
That night round a campfire, Chris and I got into it.
Guess when I just think about Willow, you know how
(31:46):
she was when we were teenagers, complete mess, right, But
you know I wrote her off? Yeah, I guess because
I was out of town all.
Speaker 12 (31:54):
The time, and the drugs that she did, and her
bad attitude and the way she slept.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Around right right there that you know, we were still
in the era of slugshaming and not like you and
I did that. But I definitely I felt like she
was going down this path and I didn't. I don't
know how to deal with it. I don't want to
deal with it. Willow isn't an easy figure to describe
(32:19):
in my life. I might have met her earlier, but
I didn't really connect with Willow until I was seven
or so, when I ran into her in the woods,
this barefoot girl with hand me down clothes. We used
to meet between our properties. We'd climb trees, find salamanders,
banana slugs, play house, play war. She sort of felt
(32:40):
like an imaginary friend for a while. She was funny, fearless.
I mean, I went back to my house every night.
But her house back then was a teepee and later
they had a building a shack, but I think she
still slept out in the woods a lot of nights.
My brother thought she was crazy. She threw rocks at
(33:01):
him once and he never got over that. My mom
said she has spunk, and my dad said watch out
for that one. But you know that was a compliment.
She was there when I broke my arm. I was
there when she stepped on a yellowjacket hive. She taught
me how to make.
Speaker 8 (33:19):
A spear and how to skin a squirrel. She was
my best friend. She was my first kiss. For a
lot of reasons, we drifted apart in high.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
School, not the least of which I ended up on
a TV show for seven years.
Speaker 4 (33:33):
Oh what the heck with that? Marry me?
Speaker 1 (33:35):
I live in a trailer park and I have no education,
but my hair does this? Shut up? Man, I'm going
for it. I had been acting since I was little,
doing plays in Santa Rosa, which is the biggest town
about thirty minutes away. And then I got lucky. I
was discovered. Boy Meet's World took over my life, took
me away from Sebastamal to go work in La put
(33:56):
me in magazines and on TV every Friday night. And
even though I still went to school back home and
I flew home every weekend, it wasn't the same. I
never really fit in in my hometown. And Willow and
I got older, we got different. There was a moment
(34:20):
when it seemed like we should date, so we did,
but then we went back to just being friends. I
woke up one day and realized I hadn't talked to
her for years. I was twenty years old when boy
Met's World ended. I moved to New York and Willow
and I lost touch. And then the letter. So you
(34:44):
feel like you bailed on her? Kind of yeah, didn't you.
I mean, I guess yes, because all of us guys
managed to stay in touch, right, we managed to stay friends,
You and me, Connor and Oriyan, not Willow, And that's fucked.
She lost her sister and her whole family situation. Just
(35:05):
I feel like maybe if we had told the truth
back then she asked us not to, she bret. But
you can see that was obviously the wrong call. You're
in full martyr mode right now.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
Dude.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
You're in for a world of pain. I don't understand
because you're the ones telling me that I should be
honest and leave in everything, like going to the wrong.
Speaker 12 (35:25):
Cops because that's funny, because that's entertaining, and that's not
potentially going to get you arrested.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
You keep saying that why would we be arrested because
Willow accidentally started the fire, accidentally started a fire. That
that is not at all what happened. What are you
talking about? What are you talking I'm with the pinkies
where the barn. Yeah, she lit the barn on right
with the sixties that we had because she was trying
to scare them. It was not an accident. She didn't
accidentally drop m sixties. She saw that weed, and she
(35:54):
lit it all on fire. What this was the first
I'd heard this. Apparently the barn that Willow burn was
full of marijuana.
Speaker 12 (36:02):
From Florida ceiling wald wall was most weed I've ever
seen in my life, and Willow burned it down to
the ground intentionally.
Speaker 4 (36:11):
Did you really not know that?
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Aren't you calling this thing the red weather because of
the fire? No? No, from a walla Stephens poem.
Speaker 12 (36:27):
Oh, of course an obscure poets even more obscure poem.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
Holy Christ writer, No one cares. Willow started that fire.
She took out four houses, burned to the ground because
she found a craft ton of drugs in that barn.
Where'd the pod come from? You should probably find out,
shouldn't we. I was only two days into recording, and
already I felt like I had no idea what I
(36:54):
was getting into. For what it's worth, the title from
a poem called Disillusionment of ten o'clock. Here it is.
It's short. The houses are haunted by white nightcounts. A
nun are green or purple with green rings, or green
with yellow rings, or yellow with blue rings. None of
(37:16):
them are strange with socks of lace and peedded censures
people are not going to dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only here and there. An old sailor, drunk and asleep
in his boots, catches tigers in red Weather. It's tough
(37:37):
to not conform. Maybe impossible. We wear the same nightcowns,
we have the same dreams. And if I think about
how my parents, how Willow and Anna's mom, just the
baby boomers in general, they had such high hopes. It
really thought that they could change the world and remake
(37:58):
it for us kids. And they tried protests, the sex,
drugs and rock and roll, running off into the woods
to build houses, to join communes. I want to believe
that it meant something, but it did some good. But
maybe not. Maybe they were just catching tigers and red Weather.
(38:28):
The Red Weather is an iHeart podcast hosted by writer Strong,
sound engineering, editing and mixing by Bo milkis produced by
Tess Bartholomey, executive producers at iHeartRadio, Trevor Young and Matt Frederick,
Associate producer Bo milkis original score by Kyle Morgan. If
you're enjoying the show, please remember to leave a review
(38:49):
in rating. Thanks for listening.
The Red Weather is a work of fiction. Any resemblance
to actual persons or events reflects the adaptation of real,
publicly available materials for creative and legal reasons. The content
of this podcast is the sole responsibility of Red Weather
LLC and does not reflect the views of responsibilities of
iHeartMedia or its affiliates. A few days before she died,
(00:22):
I got a letter from Willow. Willow was my neighbor
and one of my best friends as a kid. We
grew up in the Redwoods outside of Sebastopol, California. It's
about sixty miles north of San Francisco, and even though
we were just through the woods from one another, we
had very different childhoods. Willow was part of a commune,
or what they called it a collective. It was a
(00:45):
group of maybe thirty people and it was called tender Hearts.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
It was one guy, really, the leader, Elric, and then women,
then kids.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
That's Sheriff Maldonado. He was the sheriff back in the
eighties and the nineties, so he ended up dealing with
the tender Hearts when birds would complain or if kids
got into trouble. It was hard to wrap your head
around it. Was nature and trees and praying. I guess
it would be called meditating today, and drugs those pot
(01:14):
mushrooms Mescoon. Willow's mom was a founding member of Tender Hearts,
so she lived there with Willow and her sister Anna.
When we were young, Willow and I were close, really close.
We used to meet in the woods between our houses
and spend all afternoon together, sometimes camping out, but things
got complicated in our teens. By the time I got
her letter, I hadn't talked to her in years. I
(01:37):
didn't even know she had my address. She was in Panama,
in Pocas del Toro. It's a series of islands close
to Costa Rica. Apparently she'd gone with an organization to
help sea turtles protect their habitat or something, but really
it sounds like she went to get away and to
get sober. The letter was mostly about what she was
up to in Panama, working in a vegan pizza place
(01:58):
down there. Before I could at her back, I found
out she took her own life. My mom saw it
on Facebook. So you're still in touch with her mom.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Well, only through Facebook. I mean, it's not like I
see her or talk to her, have private phone calls,
but you know, she posts things, and this was one
of the things she posted. I was surprised. It's really sad.
It's really sad.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
She was begging me to come visit her.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
This is Noah. He grew up with Willow too.
Speaker 5 (02:28):
She begged me. She was like, hey, please please come visit.
I'm really lonely. I need a friend, I need some help.
Speaker 6 (02:33):
You know.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
She wrote me this.
Speaker 5 (02:34):
Poem that was very you know, in that context, was
quite deep and dark and basically just talking about loneliness
and isolation and kind of meaninglessness of everything.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
He's now a psychiatrist up in Seattle.
Speaker 5 (02:45):
And it's really challenging. It's really I mean, I've had
a number of patient suicide and even with that, it's
really hard to reconcile that of like, could I have
done something more?
Speaker 1 (03:01):
If I was honest, I might not have even written
her back. I mean, we were in very different places.
She was single, childless, hopping around different countries. I'm married,
I had a kid. I live in LA I work
as a writer director, and as you might know, I
host a podcast about the TV show I was on
as a kid, Welcome to Vodney's World.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
I'm Dannie official.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
I'm rather strong than I'm will Fordell. Willow was still
chasing new experiences, new people, and new places in a
way that when we were young was exciting and admirable,
but now that we're in our forties, it felt a
little desperate, erratic.
Speaker 5 (03:40):
I remember for the first few years of our friendship,
you know, like it was kind of like being a
being on a drug near her. She had so much
energy and excitement and spotanity and like. But then I
remember as she started to decompensate in our teen years,
it was like it was it was really challenging to
be around her. I should say all this with a
(04:00):
caveat that it's impossible for me not to use my
psychiatric nosology on her now now looking back, I mean,
she was just the archetype of someone who had had
clearly had a lot of childhood trauma.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
There's a few traumas Noah could be referring to here.
There was the fact that she grew up on a
collective in the woods. She definitely had some awful boyfriends,
there were drugs, But the central trauma of Willow's life
had to do with her sister Anna. Anna was two
years older than us, which isn't much except when you're fifteen.
(04:46):
Back then, she was in a whole other category of existence,
and I probably would have gotten to nowhere better. Except
on Halloween night nineteen ninety five, Anna disappeared. It was
a horrible time for a couple of there. It seemed
like everyone we knew was a suspect or had a secret.
We all got interviewed by the cops. People blamed Willow's mom,
(05:07):
people blamed the Tender Hearts and his boyfriend. People blamed
the town. But no one knew what actually happened. Nobody
was ever found, no charges ever filed. Most everyone assumed
that Anna ran away, that she just wanted out of
Tender Hearts or small town took off. But Willow never
thought that she knew her sister would never leave without her,
(05:30):
or at least without saying goodbye. This is from Willow's letter.
I know I made you promise something about the night
Anna disappeared. You and Christo Vecchio and Oriyan and Connor
were there too. Do you remember we pinky swore. So
here's the deal. I want you to know I don't
(05:52):
fucking care anymore. I released your pinky, Sir, I am no.
I can't read this, but I think she wrote authority.
But I want to know the truth. If Anna is
still out there, or the person who killed her is
out there, then keeping my secret is stupid. It always
has been. I kept going back over the letter, going
back over my memories and my relationship with Willow. I
(06:14):
kept wondering, why did she send this to me? Why
didn't she decide to tell the truth herself. In nineteen
ninety five, my neighbor and a trainer disappeared. She was seventeen.
Her body was never found, no one was ever arrested,
no explanation given. And back then, I lied to my parents,
(06:37):
I lied to police, I lied to everybody because Anna's sister,
Willow asked me to. I've decided to go back to
my hometown, interview my friends and family, and talk to
police and journalists whoever I can to try to find
out what actually happened. I am actor and filmmaker writer
Strong This is the Red Weather. Before I left for Sebastopol,
(07:51):
I called up my friend Chris because he's one of
the few people who knew what Willow was talking about.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
Yeah, what's up right? Recorded?
Speaker 1 (08:01):
What that you no it's the thing Elly, that it's recording.
Speaker 7 (08:05):
That is Sean Hayes with you telling me that this
all being recorded.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Chris is a comedy writer now who also lives in
La So I don't I don't know if you've heard,
but Willow Trainer died.
Speaker 6 (08:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (08:16):
My cousin Tarn texted me.
Speaker 7 (08:18):
You've never torn, right, No, Sacramento torn. Uh, there was
a Thanksgiving you came with I'm pretty sure you came
with me anyways. Crazy. I don't know if she killed
herself in Puerto Rico or Panama, Panama. Well, she was
always a fucking train rack, dude, I mean, even before
the kid fucking grew up in a cult.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Well, I don't know if I would even call it that.
Speaker 7 (08:39):
I think that's because you're a sweetheart, sweetheart. Okay, I'm
gonna call it a call, because there's a creepy fucking
tree calls. They were out, They were basically like rural homeless.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Before she killed herself, she sent me a letter she's
I know and saying that we can uh tell the truth.
Chris had also made a promise because he was with
me and Willow the night that Anna disappeared.
Speaker 7 (09:00):
Who cares if we could tell the truth now, like
I know, I know, but I mean there's there's so
much that I don't even know about the case. The case,
you know, oh, yes, oh the case. Like these detective
riders on the case.
Speaker 8 (09:12):
Now there was a first party and they didn't they
like find a bullet in a tree.
Speaker 7 (09:17):
Or bullets in yes, three bullets country, multiple bullets.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
That's what I mean.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
I don't even know the basics. It's like and then
let alone the fact of.
Speaker 7 (09:24):
Like what we did, but what Willow did? Right, So
that is why you're recording this phone call. Yeah, I mean,
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
I'm just I you know, I feel like I've got
this this this platform.
Speaker 7 (09:36):
You know, dat's a public figure. I did a podcast
and all right, Colombo, well you're not going to go
solo on this. Brother will be the Hardy Boys or
the Scooby Gang. And I'm not gonna be Shaggy. It's
too on the nose. I want to be Scooby or Velma.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
I'm definitely Velma and testing testing one about sound gear
so I could doc a man everything I could. I
said goodbye to my wife Alex and her son. Indeed
recording right now, Yeah, I'm never gonna stop rowing.
Speaker 8 (10:07):
That's the whole point, okay.
Speaker 9 (10:15):
And you have the draft.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Too, Yeah, but it's I've got time, so I think
while I'm up there, I'll be able to get writing
done with this loud guy. Hey dude, I'm saying goodbye.
I had three months to write a script, a horror
movie for a small studio. It wasn't my original idea.
They had brought me in after they sold the pitch,
but they were pain This sort of thing has become
(10:37):
my life, writing movies that never get made.
Speaker 10 (10:40):
All right, I love you having fun having special, dude,
time special, all right, I love you guys.
Speaker 9 (10:56):
A week or two week or two? What? Yes, we're two?
Speaker 4 (11:14):
Hell hello it is.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
I drove across town and I picked up Chris. I
was glad he was coming with me.
Speaker 8 (11:20):
I knew there'd be gaps in memory, conflicting versions and
things people maybe didn't want to think about it or
talk about, so I thought it'd be good to have
his help.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
I am not driving at all.
Speaker 11 (11:30):
Not at all.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
You do not need to see my road rage. Bro
Ooh another fun rule.
Speaker 12 (11:36):
You get one moody whiny white guys song per hour.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
That's okay, that's all I have.
Speaker 5 (11:42):
I know that.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
So we're gonna put on your phone. Yeah, dude, you're
getting beach Boys and Jimmy Buffett. He'd also, I know,
keep things lighthearted. I did some research before we left
l A. And when I looked into Anna's case, there
was one name that kept coming up. Monica Tremblaine.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
All right, Hi, I are you doing.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Hey? She was the journalist who covered the story for
the Press Democrat or local paper.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Hey.
Speaker 8 (12:07):
You know we've met before, right, Well, yeah, I mean
we talked back in the day.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
I mean I feel like my mom was there. No, no, no, no, no,
this was way after then. It was in the two
thousand and three. Yeah. I came to the Graduate play
when you did it with Jerry Hall.
Speaker 13 (12:22):
We talked for a second at uh huh at the
opening night party. Okay, yeah, I was for sure. I
was like, oh, he doesn't remember me, or either you
were avoiding me.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
No, oh god, sorry, do me a favor, though. Don't
look up the review of that play.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Manica graduated from Berkeley and then moved to Santa Rosa
to work for the Press Democrat only a month before
Anna disappeared. It was a small paper doing all the
things paper did in the nineties, classified its town hall meetings,
the kind of things today you just find online if
at all.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
You know, it was like my first real story. I
mean I was only twenty three then. I was so young.
Speaker 13 (13:00):
Yeah, But what was interesting was that, like everybody, everybody
at the paper assumed that Anna was a runaway.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
But I did not believe that. Why hmmm, you know, there.
Speaker 13 (13:13):
Was something off and everything about this, I mean everything
just felt like there was something there, felt like there
was something more, like more going on.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
I felt a vibe vibe.
Speaker 13 (13:26):
I was younger than everybody at the paper, you know,
and so when I talked to the kids, you kids,
I felt closer to you than everybody else. But then again,
you guys were a bunch of white kids in this
very white hippie town.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
I mean y'all had money.
Speaker 13 (13:41):
I mean you you were already on TV, you were famous,
so right right, it was a lot, you know, the commune,
the drugs fire, that's.
Speaker 8 (13:50):
Like I want to get into all of that stuff,
but let's just start with this. What can we just do?
Like the uh, what where Hannah was that night? What
happened to her? Just like the pure only the facts
version of what we know.
Speaker 13 (14:05):
Anna Trainer was at a party in downtown Sebasketball that.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Would be Heather Colburn's house, a Halloween party.
Speaker 13 (14:11):
There are a lot of witnesses that said Anna was
there and she was drinking, and that she had a
fight with her.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Boyfriend or ex boyfriend, depending on your point of view.
His name is Mick Bowden. My brother Shilah was actually
there at the party. I remember sitting there. I just
remember he punched the window.
Speaker 12 (14:30):
There was a lot of screaming and arguing going on,
and then, you know, I don't remember exactly what it
was about, but it definitely stopped the situation. Lateryone was
like whoa, okay, and then you know, but it's kind
of in a party scene, so like everybody's you know,
and I think they might have been out smoking.
Speaker 13 (14:47):
Well yeah, Mick, he left the party an hour or
so before Anna.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
More on that later.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
So she gets a ride.
Speaker 13 (14:54):
So she gets its ride from these three girls, Lindsay Green,
Gianna Parata, and Audrey Wick.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
So I don't know if I should tell you this,
but I call them the mean girls.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
Were they pretending to help her or I mean they
were you know, honestly, there was a lot of back
and forth with that.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Lindsay, Jenna and Audrey gave her a ride and when
they were asked by the police, they said they drove
her home.
Speaker 13 (15:18):
On Lindsay told the police that they were actually messing
with Anna and that they dropped her off a few
miles from her house.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Actually, like I said, mean girls.
Speaker 13 (15:27):
But we can assume at least that she didn't go
home because then Nick got that page from Anna ten
oh three.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
This was the era of pagers. We all had them,
and we all had our own code that we used
to let someone know if we wanted them to call
us back or meet us somewhere.
Speaker 13 (15:44):
Well, first she paged him to a phone number, which
we let her found out was the Juniver Street pay phone,
and he told police that he paid her back with
his cold that he was going to meet her there.
Speaker 6 (15:55):
But then the fire a devastating night in western Sonoma
County as fire rage over one hundred acres and burned
four homes in its path.
Speaker 13 (16:02):
Sources te well, we have that the first witness caught
in the fires at ten twenty pm. It started out
on the Tenderheart property and then you know, as we know,
it's bread.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
No one was hurt, but a lot of loss.
Speaker 4 (16:16):
It was a big deal to firefighters I don't know
their names.
Speaker 13 (16:19):
In front of me on the way towards the fire,
they saw a young woman, blonde walking alone on Juniper.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
That was the last time anyone saw an a trainer. Well,
I have some info, some new info, maybe answers for
some of this.
Speaker 13 (16:43):
Well, damn rider, it's only been thirty years.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
It's an eight hour drive from La to Sebasterful. So
along the way, Chris and I talked about our hometown. Yes,
I mean when we were kids, it was like this tiny,
crusty and now it's like now it's like nice, nice
restaurants and cute little shops. Yeah, and like even the
(17:17):
Foster Freeze is now a place that you know, you
get like milkshakes and fifteen dollars Hamburgers are so good.
So Basketball isn't all that different from a lot of
small towns in California. But back in the seventies it
had a very particular culture. Here's how my brother Shiloh
put it.
Speaker 12 (17:33):
A lot of hippies that moved from San Francisco, like
our parents. But then there were also the pot growers
and like that sort of edgyness to it.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Kind of where the hate Ashbury Summer of Love crowd
went to grow up, grow some vegetables, grow some pot
and raise kids with names like Rioter and Willow. In
the actual town where Chris grew up, you could still
have a pretty typical suburban childhood. But outside of town
it was the wild West of alternative parenting. There were
(18:06):
all kinds of situations. Take my buddy Ryan. He grew
up on a commune.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
It was fifty four acres of land.
Speaker 8 (18:13):
There was a ranch house where all of this stuff happened,
like a central ranch house that was owned and common
by everybody.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
So this was the common land.
Speaker 8 (18:21):
You know, people would take turns with, like running the daycare.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
It wasn't religious or spiritual, but it was certainly a
counter cultural.
Speaker 8 (18:28):
Scene, kind of like you know, hippie dancy thrill your
hands and spacey, you know.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
Kind of just like you know tied I. That was
so much Tied Die.
Speaker 6 (18:38):
Yeah, yeah, a.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
Love as it really was that it really was.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Yeah, my own home life wasn't that extreme. Chris and
I pulled into my parents place that evening, I.
Speaker 8 (18:53):
All right Island.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
They moved into the woods, put in a well built
our house. As a kid, we had electricity, but we
didn't have TV. I was homeschooled on and off. We
were vegetarians. And while my parents' property has a name,
we call it redwood Shire, unlike Tender Hearts. That started
as kind of a joke.
Speaker 11 (19:12):
As soon as we bought it, you know, we just
the redwoods were just so beautiful, and so Dad, coming
from an accounting background, he wanted to make something that
was productible. So we made it an experimental farm, and
we had to give it a name, so I said, well,
(19:32):
it has to be redwood Yeah, and then.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
It also relates to my dad's name, which is for real,
King Arthur Strong.
Speaker 11 (19:40):
Well yeah, but a lot of it came from King
Arthur like Shire.
Speaker 4 (19:45):
Yeah, so redwood Shire.
Speaker 13 (19:47):
It's just stuck.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Our day to day life was positively mainstream, compared to
Willow and Anna, who were literally a few hundred yards
away living in tents and barns with some kind of
guiding spirituality or philosophy, which I was realizing I knew
nothing about, and neither did Oryan.
Speaker 8 (20:06):
I think I understood what was going on more even later,
when I was in my twenties or something like that.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
But girth family.
Speaker 8 (20:12):
So this guy was called was he called like the
father or something creepy like that? You know, very much polyamory,
but like not modern you know, consensual, et cetera, much
more of kind of like dude has a bunch of
wives kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Our lives couldn't be more different. But we were within
walking distance, which is how I ended up physically smack
dab in the middle of this case. And that was
news to Monica.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
So I was. I was with Anna's sister Willow that night, and.
Speaker 13 (20:45):
Yeah, you and your friends are at kind of Drake's
house watching horror movies.
Speaker 4 (20:49):
Well that's that's what we said. Yeah, that's what she said.
But we were actually in the woods. We were on
the Tender Hearts property.
Speaker 13 (20:57):
Wait, if you're on the Tender Hearts property, you can
confirm none of the adults were there.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Yeah, I mean we didn't. As far as we knew,
no one was there. They were all on the sunrise
seance hike the night that Anna vanished. The adults of
Tender Hearts said they were holding something called a sunrise seance,
which was an annual tradition for them. El Rick and
the women would hike up Mount Saint Helena for a
ceremony and apparently it involves psychedelics. Shiloh and I actually
(21:25):
went on one of these with Oryan and Willow when
we were younger, like maybe twelve or thirteen, and the
whole idea is to go up there and watch the sunrise. Yeah.
I just remember being so tired and exhausted.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
Yeah. I did it a couple of times, but only
got lost the ones. Oh ma.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
To us, it was just a hike, but who knows.
We were clueless kids. At the time of Anna's disappearance.
None of the Tender Hearts were charged with a crime,
but it was shut down within a year. I never
knew why, and WILLI never talked about them. Part of
doing this podcast is about finally getting some answers about
(22:08):
what was going on next door.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
So does that does that change anything? I don't think so.
I mean it confirms what they said at the time.
Speaker 8 (22:17):
Yeah, so, I think what we were doing, me and
Willow and our friends.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
I think the person that it affects the most is Mick.
Mick Bowden was the ex boyfriend and argued with that
night because he.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
Was also with us.
Speaker 13 (22:30):
He hold on, I need to grab a pin. Hey, right,
are you talking to me? And that's fine? But are
you voting on record? Are you hoping to officially reopen
this case?
Speaker 1 (22:45):
I actually wasn't sure if what I had to say
would warrant that, but I was willing to find out.
Our first morning in Sebastopol, Chris and I went to
the police station. I thought it'd be good to do
this in person and get an honest reaction in real time,
but I had a lot to learn. Hello, Hi, So
we're here to talk to someone about an old case
(23:09):
from nineteen ninety five. I tried to explain what we
were there for, which took way longer than I expected.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
Peterburg teenager on Juniperle.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
I think that's county, but let me ask, hey, Ken,
turns out I wasn't even in the right jurisdiction.
Speaker 6 (23:26):
Really, that would be the Sheriff's office, Western County. Yeah,
if you're asking about a missing girl outside the town limits,
we wouldn't have anything to do with that.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
That was a huge dead ends.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
That was awful. It was so embarrassing for you. I
gotta say to a question, God, Sherlock Homeschool to crack
the case wide over.
Speaker 5 (23:47):
Oh she called nine years ago.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Did you take that call personally?
Speaker 8 (23:52):
Idiot?
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Dude, you gotta leave this in no, no, no. Of course,
if I had just asked Monica and stead of running
off and trying to play gotcha, she could have told
me that the Sheriff's department ran the investigation. But when
she and I talked, we were deep in the weeds
of my whereabouts that night.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
Mick Bolden was with you when after the.
Speaker 8 (24:15):
Party and then before Anna paged him. I think, I really,
I'm not exactly sure what the timing is.
Speaker 4 (24:21):
Well, what were you doing out there? Uh, it's kind
of a long story.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
A lot of this goes back to, well, let me
ask you this, what do you know about Anna's social life?
Speaker 4 (24:34):
I know she was in a tough spot.
Speaker 13 (24:37):
It was sexual, some rumors in any window, harsh stuff
with you guys.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
I'm actually surprised Monica even knows that Anna was going
through a lot that fall. There's a reason the mean
girls were picking on her, and there was a reason
that I was running around the woods that night with
my friends. And this is the most uncomfortable part of
doing this podcast, because in order to really get into
the story, I'm going to have to get into what
(25:01):
was going on among us kids in ways that will
probably be hard to confront. But as it turns out,
even Sheriff Maldonado, who was indeed the correct official investigator,
he knew some of this. Well, I know she had
a REP. I do know that.
Speaker 4 (25:18):
I remember that.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
I tracked down Maldonado easily just to google away. It
turns out he's retired now, but he remembered the case immediately.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
Well, yes, and no.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
I mean we tend to assume run away with a
team like that, you know, But then there were also
other things there. You had that home situation that she
was in, and you know, that's not something that we're
used to dealing with. Then there was the fire, the
fire that there was for a loop, and then I
do remember we found her car down south of here.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Anna's car technically it was her mom's car was found
almost a month later in a parking lot near the
San Francisco Airport.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Well, finding the car like that that pushed us in
the in the runaway direction, you know. Uh, But at
the same time we had the bullets and then uh yeah,
there was there was just.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
A lot of a lot of loose ends with that.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
Mm hmmmmm.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Man, uh, you just calling me, that's that's uh bringing
it back, that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
He agreed to talk with me, so we made a
plan to meet at his house and sit down for
an interview. After my utter fail at the police station,
Chris and I went to the Pine Cone Diner, which
is one of our favorite old downtown spots. This is
the real stuff, the stuff that everybody cuts out of
their podcast. That that's gonna say. That's I just want
(26:43):
I just want to make sure that you know the
sharer or whoever it is like that. I want them
to take me seriously. If they don't arrest you, Oh
come on, then why would they arrest because you lied
to the Okay.
Speaker 4 (26:54):
Yeah, we're gonna thank you.
Speaker 9 (26:56):
Oh my god, I love her.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Look I'm saying, is teke to be to exhale, like
cover your bases. Like have you talked to a lawyer?
You should talk to my brother in law. I like,
find out where you stand legally. Well, I mean I
already talked to Monica the reporter. You did, Yeah, I
just with her before I left.
Speaker 4 (27:16):
What did she say? Okay? Okay? Well that was always
one of the big questions.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
For the first time I had broken the pinky swear.
Speaker 13 (27:24):
I guess I'm honestly, I'm not sure. Does that answer
things or does that just create more questions?
Speaker 4 (27:30):
Right?
Speaker 1 (27:31):
I mean, that's kind of my whole with this podcast,
That's what I want to find out. I told Monica
the truth that the night er sister disappeared, Willow started
the fire. She's gonna didn't immediately say lawyer.
Speaker 4 (27:53):
Up, No, no.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
And I know some of you might be thinking, why
keep this a secret? We knew Willow had accidentally started
the fire, and we thought that if it came back
to her, she might get arrested for arson on top
of losing her sister. But I'll be honest, I didn't
really think through all that. I was fifteen, Willa was
(28:17):
my friend. I didn't tell anyone because she asked me
not to. Yeah, That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
So it made not It just might not change anything.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Maybe not. But while we had lunch, I got out
my notes. Fine, let's just go over the theory. Yes,
let's talk about what we do know what we need
to know. Theory number one, Anna ran away the most
likely situation by leeps and guts Okay, I mean that's
what everyone I think, that's what everyone assumes. But I
have a hard time imagining that she changed her name
(28:46):
and ran off to I Don't wear and has never
called anybody, and now she's just what Sippy Martini is
on a rooftop somewhere. That sounds lovely. Theory Number two,
someone killed Anna that night, right, But well there's l Rick,
the leader of tender Hearts, because he's a very shady guy. Yes,
(29:07):
maybe people except shady people. From all that I know.
The cops did look into him, and he was exonerated.
Speaker 5 (29:13):
At the time.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Oh exonerate. It's just stup, look at you. I think
in order to get more information about that, I need
to talk to Laney, because Laney is Willow and Anna's mom.
But she hadn't responded to any of my calls or
Facebook messages. There's gonna be her worst killer, says I know,
so I'm not looking forward to There's also always the
chance that it was a random Yeah, sure, some psycho
(29:37):
killer just driving. That happens all the time. And have
you not seen the dateline? On dateline, it's always the husband.
She was too young to have a husband, yes, but
the husband in this game. No, the husband in this
case is Mick, right, that is the theory. But they
never brought charges. But maybe once I tell the cops
what we were.
Speaker 9 (29:56):
Doing that night or coffee?
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Yes, was the coffee here?
Speaker 4 (30:00):
Always this terrible Jesus Gars terrible.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Well, my friend is doing a podcast and we are
trying to be very honest, so I'm just gonna lay
it on the table.
Speaker 4 (30:08):
This coffee is terrible.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
But you, my dear, are it light. You're wonderful.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
Thank you, thank you, thank you, And if you.
Speaker 9 (30:18):
Need anything else, wave mede down.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
I might think of something. Are you kitty the waitress?
I mean, what you want me to call fee on?
She's just calm down, some random waitress with the pine
co Oh my god? What lighting up?
Speaker 4 (30:35):
Okay, but excuse me. My friend here thinks that I
was hitting on you. Now look I'm clearly married, and okay,
I got it. I was joking. Yes I know. Oh
I know she knows.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Do you know?
Speaker 9 (30:49):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Now I know? Now you know?
Speaker 6 (30:51):
Yes?
Speaker 9 (30:51):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Now I'm sorry. Sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
What are you sorry for it?
Speaker 1 (30:55):
For being too sensitive? For thinking that you were making
her uncomfortable? You're it's fine, Yes, we're good.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
I'm sorry you are such a debute downer. Can you
please just lighten up. Let's have fun. There'll be the brooding, sad,
sack reformed child actor. Okay, you're not going to crack
this case, buddy, Okay, I know, but I gotta try it.
I knew I wasn't going to solve anything, but I
(31:23):
hoped that looking back at this time in my life,
I might be able to understand some things that never
made sense and in some way and maybe this wasn't healthy.
I felt like I owed that to Willow and my parents.
That night round a campfire, Chris and I got into it.
Guess when I just think about Willow, you know how
(31:46):
she was when we were teenagers, complete mess, right, But
you know I wrote her off? Yeah, I guess because
I was out of town all.
Speaker 12 (31:54):
The time, and the drugs that she did, and her
bad attitude and the way she slept.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Around right right there that you know, we were still
in the era of slugshaming and not like you and
I did that. But I definitely I felt like she
was going down this path and I didn't. I don't
know how to deal with it. I don't want to
deal with it. Willow isn't an easy figure to describe
(32:19):
in my life. I might have met her earlier, but
I didn't really connect with Willow until I was seven
or so, when I ran into her in the woods,
this barefoot girl with hand me down clothes. We used
to meet between our properties. We'd climb trees, find salamanders,
banana slugs, play house, play war. She sort of felt
(32:40):
like an imaginary friend for a while. She was funny, fearless.
I mean, I went back to my house every night.
But her house back then was a teepee and later
they had a building a shack, but I think she
still slept out in the woods a lot of nights.
My brother thought she was crazy. She threw rocks at
(33:01):
him once and he never got over that. My mom
said she has spunk, and my dad said watch out
for that one. But you know that was a compliment.
She was there when I broke my arm. I was
there when she stepped on a yellowjacket hive. She taught
me how to make.
Speaker 8 (33:19):
A spear and how to skin a squirrel. She was
my best friend. She was my first kiss. For a
lot of reasons, we drifted apart in high.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
School, not the least of which I ended up on
a TV show for seven years.
Speaker 4 (33:33):
Oh what the heck with that? Marry me?
Speaker 1 (33:35):
I live in a trailer park and I have no education,
but my hair does this? Shut up? Man, I'm going
for it. I had been acting since I was little,
doing plays in Santa Rosa, which is the biggest town
about thirty minutes away. And then I got lucky. I
was discovered. Boy Meet's World took over my life, took
me away from Sebastamal to go work in La put
(33:56):
me in magazines and on TV every Friday night. And
even though I still went to school back home and
I flew home every weekend, it wasn't the same. I
never really fit in in my hometown. And Willow and
I got older, we got different. There was a moment
(34:20):
when it seemed like we should date, so we did,
but then we went back to just being friends. I
woke up one day and realized I hadn't talked to
her for years. I was twenty years old when boy
Met's World ended. I moved to New York and Willow
and I lost touch. And then the letter. So you
(34:44):
feel like you bailed on her? Kind of yeah, didn't you.
I mean, I guess yes, because all of us guys
managed to stay in touch, right, we managed to stay friends,
You and me, Connor and Oriyan, not Willow, And that's fucked.
She lost her sister and her whole family situation. Just
(35:05):
I feel like maybe if we had told the truth
back then she asked us not to, she bret. But
you can see that was obviously the wrong call. You're
in full martyr mode right now.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
Dude.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
You're in for a world of pain. I don't understand
because you're the ones telling me that I should be
honest and leave in everything, like going to the wrong.
Speaker 12 (35:25):
Cops because that's funny, because that's entertaining, and that's not
potentially going to get you arrested.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
You keep saying that why would we be arrested because
Willow accidentally started the fire, accidentally started a fire. That
that is not at all what happened. What are you
talking about? What are you talking I'm with the pinkies
where the barn. Yeah, she lit the barn on right
with the sixties that we had because she was trying
to scare them. It was not an accident. She didn't
accidentally drop m sixties. She saw that weed, and she
(35:54):
lit it all on fire. What this was the first
I'd heard this. Apparently the barn that Willow burn was
full of marijuana.
Speaker 12 (36:02):
From Florida ceiling wald wall was most weed I've ever
seen in my life, and Willow burned it down to
the ground intentionally.
Speaker 4 (36:11):
Did you really not know that?
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Aren't you calling this thing the red weather because of
the fire? No? No, from a walla Stephens poem.
Speaker 12 (36:27):
Oh, of course an obscure poets even more obscure poem.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
Holy Christ writer, No one cares. Willow started that fire.
She took out four houses, burned to the ground because
she found a craft ton of drugs in that barn.
Where'd the pod come from? You should probably find out,
shouldn't we. I was only two days into recording, and
already I felt like I had no idea what I
(36:54):
was getting into. For what it's worth, the title from
a poem called Disillusionment of ten o'clock. Here it is.
It's short. The houses are haunted by white nightcounts. A
nun are green or purple with green rings, or green
with yellow rings, or yellow with blue rings. None of
(37:16):
them are strange with socks of lace and peedded censures
people are not going to dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only here and there. An old sailor, drunk and asleep
in his boots, catches tigers in red Weather. It's tough
(37:37):
to not conform. Maybe impossible. We wear the same nightcowns,
we have the same dreams. And if I think about
how my parents, how Willow and Anna's mom, just the
baby boomers in general, they had such high hopes. It
really thought that they could change the world and remake
(37:58):
it for us kids. And they tried protests, the sex,
drugs and rock and roll, running off into the woods
to build houses, to join communes. I want to believe
that it meant something, but it did some good. But
maybe not. Maybe they were just catching tigers and red Weather.
(38:28):
The Red Weather is an iHeart podcast hosted by writer Strong,
sound engineering, editing and mixing by Bo milkis produced by
Tess Bartholomey, executive producers at iHeartRadio, Trevor Young and Matt Frederick,
Associate producer Bo milkis original score by Kyle Morgan. If
you're enjoying the show, please remember to leave a review
(38:49):
in rating. Thanks for listening.
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