January 30, 2026 • 38 mins
Orion and I were psycho mimes. Chris was Phantom of the Coffee Shop-era. Willow wore wings.
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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. Previously on The Red Weather, in
nineteen ninety five, my neighbor and a trainer disappeared from
(00:24):
a commune, and back then I lied to everybody.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
An a trainer was at a party in downtown Sebasketball.
There are a lot of witnesses that said Anna she
had a fight with her boyfriend.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
I was with Anna's sister Willow that night, but we
were actually in the woods. We were on the Tender Hearts.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Property, the most weed I've ever seen in my life,
and Willow burned it down to the ground intentional.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
I'm not sure does that answer things or does that
does create more questions?
Speaker 4 (00:50):
Right?
Speaker 1 (00:51):
I mean, that's kind of my whole with this podcast,
That's what I want to find out. My dad has
this story he tells from when he was a teenager.
One night, his friends told him to get in the car.
Speaker 5 (01:07):
Friends of mine that I grew up with.
Speaker 6 (01:10):
Said, hey, we have a girl that's living away from
here who.
Speaker 5 (01:15):
Is willing to take us on.
Speaker 6 (01:17):
And said, oh, yeah, yeah, come on, let's go. And
I said, oh, well sure, you know, I jumped in
the car and there were three or four of us.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
They were all going to see Sally Chase, an older
married woman who wanted to party with him while her
husband was out of town. They parked the car and
walked through the woods to go to a farmhouse.
Speaker 6 (01:40):
It was raining, started raining real light.
Speaker 5 (01:43):
But this house is up on the top of the hill.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
And side note, even though this really happened, this story
in my imagination is animated. Specifically, it looks like the
cover of a Hardy Boys novel or any old timey
book or movie poster with a haunted house or a
spooky farmhouse. Anyway, when my dad and his past and
they definitely called each other pal got close to Sally
Chase's porch, gunshots rang out.
Speaker 6 (02:06):
You're just one of light and window, and all of
a sudden, this guy yells out, oh.
Speaker 5 (02:09):
Did you should it bit you to come around her?
Speaker 1 (02:11):
In my wife boom boom. Sally's husband was there yelling
and brandishing a shotgun, so one of my dad's friends
falls to the ground, screaming in pain. The shots kept coming,
and understandably, my dad panicked.
Speaker 6 (02:25):
And I turned and I ran as fast as I
could out of there, not thinking of anybody else but surviving.
As I'm running, I come up to his.
Speaker 5 (02:35):
Field on ahead of me and said, okay, right through there,
and I run.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
He ran headlong into a fence in the dark, cut
up his forehead.
Speaker 6 (02:41):
I jump over the fence and they finally found a
place in another road that I could come out one.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Blood was dripping down his face. He made it to
the road. He flagged down a car as soon as
he got in. The man who picked him up was concerned.
My dad was embarrassed, scared and didn't know what to say.
But the driver had a very important, very telling question.
Speaker 6 (03:01):
They said, you haven't worn up see Sally Chase for it.
I said not, I'm talking about man.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
My dad denied it, but the guy persisted, you were
up season Sally Chase.
Speaker 5 (03:09):
Vers goes, damn man, that guy up.
Speaker 6 (03:10):
There's crazy. He shot to my buddies. At least and
he said, no, no, that's a joke, is what It was.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
A setup, a prank, one of these small town rituals
that had been going on for years. So the guy
gave my dad a ride into town where all his
friends were waiting for him, laughing and welcoming him to
the club of Sally Chase Survivors, which was always this
kind of funny story straight out of something like the
movie Porky's Some nineteen fifties Boys Will Be Boys romp.
(03:41):
But when I consider this story now, this memory, I
have a hard time wrapping my head around what my
dad was thinking. He was going to sleep with some
random married woman in a farmhouse. Did he believe this
woman was so excited to cheat on her husband that
she just invited a group of teenage boys sight unseen
to her house. Was going to be some kind of orgy?
(04:02):
Were they going to take turns? Did he really think
this through? No, of course not. He just went along
with his friends, because when you're a teenager, you don't
think these things through. You're caught up in a moment
in your age, in your friend group. You're completely in
a bubble. Your hormones are going crazy, your priorities are
completely messed up. It's not that different from what my
(04:24):
friends and I were doing the night that Anna Trainer disappeared,
just like my dad's story. When I think back and
I try and remember my worldview, it just doesn't make
any sense. We were out there for some kind of revenge,
and there was a sex and porn element that is
super fuzzy and makes me uncomfortable to even think about,
(04:47):
let alone talk about into a microphone. It was just
like my dad, this adolescent misadventure that if you look
back with any perspective, you can't help but question your motivations,
your intelligence, and even maybe your moral compass. The difference is,
of course, that for my dad it all worked out.
(05:10):
His crazy Night in the Woods was a joke and
he was fine. They could laugh about it. They even
went on to play the same prank on my dad's
brother and other friends. But my Crazy Night in the
Woods ended with a fire that burned four houses and
one hundred acres, And after that night, Willow's sister Anna
was never seen again. I am actor and filmmaker writer
(05:32):
Strong This is the Red Weather. Before she killed herself,
(06:29):
my friend Willow had let me out of a promise
to keep a secret about the night her sister Anna disappeared.
I'd gone back to my hometown to talk with reporters, police, family,
and other people from our lives. My friend Chris joined me.
He was also in on the promise, but I had
barely begun the process when Chris and I discovered that
(06:50):
our versions of this promise were pretty different. Why would
we be arrested because Willow accidentally started the fire?
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Accidentally started a fire that that is not at all
would happen?
Speaker 4 (07:00):
What are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (07:01):
What are you talking? I'm talking with the pinkiesware. Turns
out Chris was with her, and she'd started the fire
intentionally to burn down a barn full of cannabis, which
back then we would have called pot or marijuana or
if you're my parents.
Speaker 5 (07:15):
Grass that's what you called it. So I still call it, yes,
I don't.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Know, Yeah, I feel like growing up, you guys always
called it grass or dope, called a magic plants, magic plants.
Speaker 7 (07:30):
Well, we just called it magic plants for you guys,
you little guys.
Speaker 8 (07:33):
You know.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
In any event, coming forward to the cops suddenly felt
like a bigger deal. I'd already scheduled to sit down
with Sheriff Maldonado, the lead investigator from Anna's case, I
was set to meet him at his house.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
Would you be willing to sit down with me?
Speaker 9 (07:45):
Uh?
Speaker 4 (07:47):
Sure, I can come to you.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
It's just a couple of microphones and a recorder, you know.
Speaker 10 (07:51):
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, that sounds good.
Speaker 5 (07:54):
I'll try to find what notes I might have.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Chris and I took the time to walk the woods
behind my parents' house where we were the knight that
Anna disappeared, yeh, finding out we had different versions of
that night. It seemed important to retrace our steps, all right.
So the rat hole used to be Yeah, there see
the bones of it. Yeah, the rat hole was a
for it. My brother and I made, well, really, my
dad made it and we helped. I probably nailed a
(08:17):
couple of boards. But it was every kid's dream come true.
Speaker 11 (08:20):
Which was a two story building that had no windows
or doors, but the only way you get in was
through a trapdoor underneath.
Speaker 5 (08:30):
It took me a long time to knock it down.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
When did your dad take it down? I actually don't know.
I mean it was after we moved.
Speaker 6 (08:35):
Out, probably ten to fifteen years ago. I don't remember.
Just in fact, the parts are still there. I never
took them away. I didn't what to do with it,
because when they had the septic redone, they just took
all the old sheptic concrete threw it down there too.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
It was this crumbling molding mess. But when we were kids,
it was the best. We put a carpet inside, we
spray painted the walls, and it was where we set
the stage for our knight. Didn't consult us, just took
it down. It's like, what was our plan? It was
Halloween nineteen ninety five. I was with Chris, our friends Connor,
Ryan and Willow. We were fifteen. We didn't have cars,
(09:10):
didn't have good flashlights, we didn't have a clue, but
we had the rat hole, some rope, a fake dead body,
and maybe the worst idea in the world. At the time,
we thought we were doing the right thing, something noble.
We were trying to save Anna's reputation. And the interesting
thing about that is I didn't even really know Anna
(09:30):
that well. I mean, I was intimidated by Anna. She
was older man, she was the coolest. When Chilo knew
her a little bit better. I think she just was
kind of lost at that time, and I.
Speaker 11 (09:41):
Regret looking back on it, my lack of understanding what
she was going through and.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
You were in love with her. We all had a
massive crush on Rose and I barely even talked to her.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
But whatever, I was anything with a pulse and boob Okay,
fuck off, I wasn't in teen magazines and on television.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
At fall. Anna was going through a rough time. Likes.
She and Willow grew up in the Tender Hearts, the
collective through the woods from Me, so they were homeschooled
up until high school, and then she wanted to go
to the same high school as everyone in Sebastopol, the
public school. Anily, she went from being a commune kid
(10:26):
out in the sticks to suddenly having this much more regular,
all American high school experience, and by all accounts, it
didn't go well.
Speaker 11 (10:36):
You know, I think she at that time was going
through a lot of stuff that.
Speaker 5 (10:43):
I don't think we could really relate.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
To or understand. You know, my brother tried to go
to Annilie's freshman year.
Speaker 11 (10:49):
He only lasted two weeks after coming off of being homeschooled.
Speaker 5 (10:52):
Yeah, walking into.
Speaker 11 (10:53):
That was yeah awful.
Speaker 5 (10:55):
Yeah, God, I don't know. I still have nightmares about it.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
This was a girl who never set foot in the classroom.
She'd never done a book report, let alone dealt with
the kind of social pressure of a typical American high school.
You have to remember this was the nineteen nineties. No
one wanted to actually be weird, to actually be different.
If you didn't shop at Hot Topic, listen to Tupac
and Nirvana, you probably weren't going to be popular. And
(11:22):
I know there are a lot of hippie kids everywhere,
but that usually meant kids who smoked pot and listened
to the Grateful Dead. It did not mean kids who
would say, find roadkill, skin it and eat it. Ryan
remembers that I remember.
Speaker 12 (11:38):
Her actually bringing that to school and it being cooked,
and like people trying it.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
I think I might have tried.
Speaker 9 (11:45):
A little bit of it. Actually, well yeah, she never.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Tried something, but it was I thought it was either
possum or squirrel.
Speaker 9 (11:54):
Okay, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
But Anna wanted a more normal life. She wanted to
be in town, so even though rough, she stuck it
out and things did get better for a time. She
made friends. For better or worse, she discovered drinking and drugs,
and by her junior year she had a boyfriend, Mick Bowden.
He was the ultimate town kit. He got good grades,
had money, He had his own car and Acura Integra.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Look, my understanding was that Anna and Mick were a
little star crossed.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
This is Monica Tremblaine. She's the local reporter who covered
the case originally and was helping me connect the dots.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Definitely, it was surprising that they dated it in the
first place.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Huck, I'm hated me too, hated. Mick and Anna were
together for a year or so, and after they broke up,
Anna got a reputation she was well, now you say
sex positive, but that wasn't really a thing.
Speaker 13 (12:48):
Yeah, there was some she gave head to some guy
in the dark room or a couple guys in the dark.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Room or something, and the fact that she had done
that was.
Speaker 5 (12:57):
Enough of a story to tell to everybody, I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 9 (13:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 11 (13:06):
She had a reputation of being very sexually open, which
I remember was unjustified.
Speaker 5 (13:16):
Well, I mean, it just always annoyed me.
Speaker 11 (13:18):
Because it was only because she was a woman, and
that whole idea, the concept of somebody being a slut only.
Speaker 5 (13:25):
Applies to a woman.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
And eventually there was a tape Shiloh had actually seen.
Speaker 5 (13:30):
It was it a VHS No, I think it was on.
It was like one of those little tiny.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
D mini DV things. This is the infamous yurt party tape.
And if you don't know what a yurt is, you've
clearly never been on an Iowasco retreat or been a
teenager in northern California. They're semi permanent tents.
Speaker 13 (13:50):
It starts out and everybody's dancing. There's like music playing.
She was there with a couple guys and it started
getting you know, more like sexy dancing. And I remember
like she had this like like one piece on, and
I remember what I can see in the video that
(14:11):
you know, he's trying to like take her shirt off.
Like they started kissing and making out and grinding and yeah.
Speaker 11 (14:19):
And they were all making out in the bed together.
It was like, yeah, the two guys and her.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
As you can imagine, like most small towns, if something
scandalous went down at a party, everyone knew about it.
And somehow apparently Mick got a hold of this tape.
What's he gonna do because there was no online couldn't download.
Is he gonna make copies of the tape?
Speaker 4 (14:40):
I guess?
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Or just show people in them out a screening today?
This would be called revenge porn, but back then it
didn't have a name. It was just ruining Anna's life.
And Willow wanted us to protect her sister. She wanted
us to help, so we got our little trip together. Okay,
but this is where I remember ducking down from the headlights, right,
and I had the Louisville Slugger. I had a baseball bat.
(15:04):
Wait we had a bat?
Speaker 4 (15:05):
Yeah, for pure defense.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
I know we had fireworks, but not a bat. Definitely,
you were on the path. No, No, because I remember
me and Connor we were ducking down. Do you remember
there used to be like a huge fern right here.
We were behind that. No, no, you were definitely on
the path. How much you want to bet? I don't
need to remember.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Connor will back me up on this. I'm not because
you're scared you're gonna lose the bet.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
No, let's just bet on it. Okay, fine, Connor lives
in England now, he's a professor of sociology.
Speaker 9 (15:35):
No, Chris is right.
Speaker 14 (15:36):
Really, Yeah, you were dealing with rigging up the dummy
Bucky Bucky.
Speaker 9 (15:40):
Yes, that's right. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Our idea was to get Mick out to the woods
and distract him long enough to grab the yurt tape
from his car. But in order to do that, and
here's where fifteen year old logic takes over, we decided
to not only lure him out, but also to scare
the crap out of him. Because it was Halloween. My
family was really big into Halloween, so we threw parties
(16:03):
with Haunted Walks of the Woods, and we were the
family that did the Haunted House at our grade school.
We used to make our own masks and creatures, and
we had a lot of props, including a fake dead
body we called Bucky.
Speaker 5 (16:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 11 (16:16):
But then we had it on a noose I think,
and then it was like, you know, you could swing
it down, so when people walked by, we would drop
it in front of them, right, and that would scare people.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Is that body still up in the pony house?
Speaker 5 (16:30):
I see, I just came across the gams.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
So we made our plan to get the your tape
exactly the way you would plan a haunted maze. Nick
ideally pulls up, gets out of the car, sees the
light on in the rat hole. Oh what's that? I
must go over towards there, walk down this path.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
How did we get it?
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Even get him out here in the first place.
Speaker 14 (16:51):
WILLI set it up? Yeah, she told Mick to meet
him there. Well, do you remember what she told him? No,
but I know we put hay bails.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
That was to divert Mick from the Tender Hearts driveway.
We knew he'd dead end by the rat hole where
Willow was waiting, So she gets him in the rat
hole and she lights off. The eighties, sixties m sixties
were loud, completely illegal fireworks someone had procured from Chinatown.
Speaker 14 (17:16):
So we would go into Chinatown and we would stock
up on firecrackers with different sizes and power. It was
the sixties and the eights, and these were like the
big daddies, right, These are the ones that would make
a really big.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Boom, basically cherry bombs, pop pop, douchebag Nick pieces pants.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Okay, hopefully comes back down this path where you and
O'Ryan have bucket.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Once Mick came back out of the rat hole, Oriyan
and I would drop Bucky, scaring the crap out of
him and buying more time for Connor and Chris to
rifle through his car and hopefully find the tape. The tape,
the YRT tape that was the play that was That's
not what happened. As much as our friend Connor helped
(18:09):
us remember some things, I wish we hadn't called him
because after we talked, Chris refused to meet Sheriff Maldonado
with me.
Speaker 9 (18:16):
Do you know the actual like legal technicalities.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
I've looked up as much as I can. I asked
chat GPT. But you know, look, we didn't start the fire.
Speaker 14 (18:26):
Wait, so you're planning to sit down with the sheriff.
He's a retired sheriff whatever, an officer of the law. Yeah,
and tell him that you lied to him thirty years ago.
Speaker 9 (18:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
I mean, I don't think we even committed a crime.
I'm still going to talk to him. There's zero chance
that this isn't beyond the statute delimitration.
Speaker 9 (18:46):
That's what I'm man.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Just come with me. We just tell him the truth.
We've already made progress.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
The moldy old pager, the dog dug up and your
parents kept in a garage.
Speaker 5 (18:55):
It's something, It is something, but.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
I'm not going Chris was talking about a pager weed
found After we walk the property, Chris and I went
through some of the stuff in my parents' garage.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
I swear my.
Speaker 8 (19:06):
Parents have been throwing anything away for fifty years.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
What is this creepy boxing, dirty children?
Speaker 5 (19:15):
This is Cookie's collection.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
We had a golden Retriever named Cookie. She's somewhat of
a legend. According to family lore. The only thing that
Cookie ever did wrong was she would steal kids' shoes
and bury them.
Speaker 7 (19:27):
You guys could take your shoes off to go on
the trampoline and after having a lot of fun, coming
back and you don't have your shoes, or you're missing.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
One, and many a kid went home without a shoe.
Speaker 7 (19:38):
I don't know how many years later you finally followed her.
Speaker 5 (19:42):
While there was still follows her.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
She went all the way down in the meadow. I
had she dug up.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Old Jordan, British la gear.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
Is this the Patriot?
Speaker 1 (19:56):
It was green? Of course it didn't turn on.
Speaker 5 (19:59):
Look is that yours?
Speaker 2 (20:01):
No?
Speaker 1 (20:01):
I never had a colored one pager of color colored Patriot?
Speaker 9 (20:05):
Karen, So, I mean that could be anybody's.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
I know, it's kind of crazy. Just find it a
pager when we know Anna had one out here. I
was so excited by the prospect of finding a clue
that I was making this random object fit the story,
but regardless, it was a cool relic of the time.
Speaker 5 (20:24):
It's bigger than I remember them being. Wow, look at that.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
I hadn't seen a pager in thirty years, let alone
held one. I told Chris he didn't have to come
with me, and that I wouldn't say his name. Hi,
Sheriff Maldonado.
Speaker 5 (20:42):
Hey, yeah, come on it. Hi.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
He lives in Katti about thirty five minutes away.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
Is it?
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Is it Sheriff Still?
Speaker 15 (20:47):
I don't know if it was one of those those
titles like president or yeah, it's Sheriff's.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Maldonado's in his seventies, but he looks younger. We took
a seat at his dining room table while his two cats,
both of them long haired and silver, roamed around us.
I felt like I had a lot to film in
on who I was, what I was doing, why, But
then I also had some more basic questions, do you
remember me at all?
Speaker 5 (21:15):
Kind of just remembered your kids in general. You know,
we knew one of you was an actor. You're part
of the younger.
Speaker 10 (21:20):
Crowd, I think the sister right, yeah, Willow. And there
was something because it was Halloween.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
It was a scarecrow yeah, we had this dead.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
Yes, yeah, exactly, that was us.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
I actually can't remember what I told the Sheriff's department
back in nineteen ninety five, and I wasn't sure what
Mick told him at the time.
Speaker 10 (21:40):
A few younger guys all that seemed like what high Town,
My old partner, Fred.
Speaker 5 (21:47):
High Tower, I'd call Tom Shannigans.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
What's that like Shenanigans.
Speaker 5 (21:51):
Yeah, but Fred, he wasn't. He was.
Speaker 9 (21:56):
It was.
Speaker 10 (21:57):
It's not a stutter, it's a he mixed the words up.
He blend him together, you know, like pursuitable. He said
once suspectful.
Speaker 5 (22:08):
Was a classic.
Speaker 10 (22:09):
Red was trying for Tomfoolery and Shenanigan's.
Speaker 5 (22:13):
But you know, just never came out right.
Speaker 10 (22:17):
A lot of our job in a situation like this
with juveniles, a lot of the job is pulling out
the kid's stuff.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
It didn't feel like that to us at the time.
It felt like life or death.
Speaker 9 (22:29):
I remember hearing screams from the car.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
We never considered that Mick might have a friend with him,
So when his accurate pulled in, Travis Washman was with him,
and while Mick did get out and walked to the
rat hole, Travis waited in the car.
Speaker 9 (22:43):
And then Chris ran at him. He was trying to
get him out.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Oh the dude, kill me, nick. I remember actually being
really scared, thinking these older guys were gonna beat us
up or kill us if they got us. Pure chaos
and mayhem. I was with O'Ryan and someone was dressed
as a mine. Ryan and me, we were both mines.
Part of the confusion was the costume factor. Before we
(23:08):
enacted this whole plan, we'd gotten dressed up in costume
and walked around downtown Sebastopol. Connor's costume was an easy joke.
Speaker 9 (23:16):
He said he was going to be the scariest thing
in the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah, what was it? A lawyer?
That's right. So he just he just wore like a
suit and die, right right right.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Ryan and I cobbled together some makeup and hair gel
that my parents had. We had white faces and mohawks.
We called ourselves psycho mimes, and you were like, what
the Phantom of the Opera, Phantom.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
Of the Coffee Chapera had.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
I had a Starbucks barised that green apron, and then
I had a phantom mask.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
I feel you're judging eyes, Yeah, I'm not quite getting
Starbucks was a new exciting thing. It was the go
go nineties.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
We all had more hair and it was fine.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Willa wore the same thing she always did, a pair
of fairy wings, right, because she was a nymph, no,
a dryad. Is there a difference.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
Yeah, yeah, they're tree spirits like a or river spirits.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
That is next level.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
Whatever she had made.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Regardless, Willow was a flying pixie thing with wings. And yes,
I'm aware that the one girl and our group of friends,
the muse of this podcast with a fantasy sounding name,
was quite literally dressed as a manic pixie dream girl.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
But it's the truth.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
She wore wings even later in life.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
And it was like her go to so in costume.
In the dark, we were scattered, separated in the woods,
no light. Travis and Mick looking for us.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
Willow and I ended up in that barn at the
Tender Hearts property.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
When I talked to Maldonatto, I relayed Chris's story as
if it was my own.
Speaker 5 (24:51):
There was weed in the bar.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
I mean, this wasn't just a shit, my friend.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
This was a barn, right, so you're done with weed?
And it was hanging.
Speaker 5 (25:01):
Yeah, they were drying it out. Oh yeah, I guess yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
So Willow like gets to her feet and she's like
freaking out, but she's not crying. She's syperventilating. She's breathing
in and out, trying to almost catch her breath, like
she was having a panic attack or something it was.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
And she started gathering hay into a pile, and I'm like.
Speaker 10 (25:24):
Willa, Willo, woo woo, Willow, Willow, Willow, what.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Are you doing. We wouldn't stop.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Calmed down, calm down, Let's get out of here. And
she pulls out her lighter that we had for the fireworks.
Speaker 5 (25:35):
Swoosh.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Immediately the thing goes up, and then seconds later all
of the weed is up in flames, and we get
them get the hell out of there, because we're lucky
to not burn to death.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
But we never told you, any of you any of
that we at the time, we just said that we
were at my friend's house and we watched the shining
and we went to bed. So I'm hoping that some
of this, any of this might be helpful, you know,
at least if I'm coming forward, at least then you'll
(26:11):
know you'll have part of the truth.
Speaker 5 (26:18):
Are you expecting applause.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
No, I mean, I'm I'm just trying to.
Speaker 10 (26:24):
Because I'm not sure what you I'm not sure what
you want to do here. If this is about you
getting something off your chest, I don't know, honoring your
dead girlfriend. If you really want to get into this,
if you want to really get into this thing, then
you got to do it right.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Got to call Lachlan Grace. Lachlan is the current Sonoma
County sheriff.
Speaker 10 (26:47):
Get her on board, you get her to sign off,
then we're really talking here.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Admitting I lie to the current sheriff felt like a
bigger risk.
Speaker 10 (26:54):
I spent over a year on and a trainer, interviews, photos,
we had clothing, her mom had letters, books, and you
don't want to see all that, all of it. If
you want to move past, you want to get beyond
the Tom Shannigans and let's go.
Speaker 5 (27:13):
But you've got to talk to Lucky.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Yeah, Well, I guess, I'm I guess My question is
could I be charged with the client.
Speaker 5 (27:23):
You gotta talk to Luckily?
Speaker 4 (27:34):
Well?
Speaker 9 (27:34):
Did you even know about the your tape?
Speaker 1 (27:36):
After I talked to Maldonado, I called Monica to catch up.
Speaker 9 (27:39):
No, I mean I knew there were rumors about Anna.
I knew about a mixtape, a mixtape, a haunted tape.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
This was over at Annaly and there was this mixtape
with songs. But then the story was it was a
ghost tape and her voice by her voice beyond the grave.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
I never heard about that, all right, But let's just
for a second, if Mick did have video, if he
was trying to blackmail Anna.
Speaker 9 (28:03):
Or wait, writer, do you want it to be here?
Speaker 1 (28:07):
No?
Speaker 9 (28:09):
Okay, they looked at Mick.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
He had somebody with them every step of the way
the party, driving Travis home, he was looking for Anna,
but he dropped Travis off at his house. He got
the patremna, he drove try to pick her up from
Jennifer Street payphone, and she never showed.
Speaker 4 (28:25):
And the fire started.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Do you do you think, like I really really think
that Mick couldn't kill there.
Speaker 15 (28:33):
It's stretch, I guess, but like, isn't it a stretch
to think.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Anyone could kill anyone?
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Monica asked me if I wanted it to be Mick,
and I realized I kind of do, oh me, Jill.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Even if Mick managed to meet up with Anna then
murder her in twenty minutes, couldn't have getten rid of
the body and driven her car all the way to SFO.
Speaker 9 (29:01):
Not without help, right, not without help. And we know
he was with the rest of the night.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Out of respect for privacy and legal reasons, we've had
to edit one of the names that came up in
some interviews.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Really, look, the only time that it didn't make sense
was the time that he was with us, So in anything,
you just helped to clear his name.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
I never heard make drive away, So I stayed alone
in the woods for a while, I mean maybe an hour,
it felt like forever, and finally I heard Oryan calling
out and we found each other. And then we found Willow.
Speaker 4 (29:37):
On the road.
Speaker 9 (29:37):
How did you get to kind of Drakes? We walked
that's like four.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yeah, four miles maybe maybe even five.
Speaker 9 (29:45):
Yeah, And Chris and I were on the road too.
Speaker 4 (29:47):
Oh really, you guys.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
I thought you guys were still in the woods.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
No, we met back up with you guys, walked back
and we.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Watched the sunrise and Connors we did. Yeah, we heard
science and we hid in the bushes whenever a car
went by. We knew there might still be a fire going,
but we had no idea how big it was.
Speaker 14 (30:04):
I do remember that that's where we stopped and watched
the sunrise come up, and we were just I just
the we were so emotionally charged.
Speaker 9 (30:17):
It was like we were doing amphetamines.
Speaker 14 (30:18):
We basically had that level of sort of insane energy.
Speaker 9 (30:23):
And then there was just this pause on the side
of the road after an intense night like that.
Speaker 12 (30:27):
It's just kind of like, you know, I'll sing this
song and it kind of like lightens the mood a
little bit, you know, Revity.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Yeah, A cool part about being friends with Oryan is
that whenever we hike and we've gone on backpacking trips
together since we were ten years old.
Speaker 9 (30:43):
He sings, Yeah.
Speaker 12 (30:44):
Challa Days was a rare Counting Crows song off of
a demo tape.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
I think it also like because it was like this
deep cut, you know, it was like it wasn't oh yeah,
it was initially released, so it felt like sort of
a secret that only we knew, you know, Like it
was like it was kind of like this our song.
Speaker 9 (31:03):
And then it's also I guess about a small town
in the.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Vein of like round here, and a lot of this
where is about like a girl in a small town
and it feels like it.
Speaker 9 (31:12):
Could be about Sebastopol. It does, right, Yeah, totally all right?
Could you sing it the whole thing?
Speaker 5 (31:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 9 (31:22):
For the podcast? Yeah, like you're gonna put this on iHeartRadio.
Oh my god, that's gould be good. It just has
to be you.
Speaker 8 (31:33):
Mary Jane says, it's all right. She's just around the
corner from the main line and any Dane Now, it's
all Rightey standing on the precipice of big.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Time not Willow didn't talk almost the whole time until
she stopped and made us all promise to stick to
the same story. It was cold, I remember shivering, and
the sun took forever to come on.
Speaker 5 (32:02):
But it was beautiful for.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
All the insanity of that night. It's it's weirdly a positive.
Speaker 5 (32:07):
Memory, falling falling down.
Speaker 9 (32:21):
This is Lachlan.
Speaker 4 (32:22):
Yeah, Hi, Sheriff Lachlin. This is right or strong.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
I got in touch with Grace Lachlin. You know, since
my goal is to like document this entire process from
start to finish.
Speaker 4 (32:31):
I I'm actually.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Recording this call right now, which I hope is okay,
and I'm happy to stop if you no, no, no, no,
you know what I want you?
Speaker 9 (32:39):
I want you to record it.
Speaker 16 (32:40):
I want actually, I want you to be sure to
include this in your podcast.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
Okay, yeah, okay.
Speaker 16 (32:45):
The Trainer case was wobble for my time, but you know,
I looked into it, spoke with Sheriff Maldonado, and he
let me know that you had information right, right right.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
And now you're coming into this.
Speaker 16 (32:55):
With microphones and a whole news story like some night
on a horse.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
Oh no, I don't think I'm going to. Actually I'm
just trying to.
Speaker 16 (33:03):
But the thing is, you are on record you made
false statements. That's documented in nineteen ninety five. That's obstruction
of justice. I can warrant charges. I'm lucky for you,
frankly lucky for me because I don't want the hassle.
It's wall past the statute of limitations.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
Okay, okay, yeah, I mean okay.
Speaker 16 (33:20):
And most importantly this is there's what we call good
faith in mitigation. So you come clean, now, you come forward,
no bullshit, no lying, and you want to help that
goes along way. So if you want, I can. Oh,
I'll take a look see what I can pull from
(33:41):
this file. Is there something you want in particular?
Speaker 5 (33:44):
All of it?
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Of course, that was my real answer. I wanted to
see all the evidence, but I knew I should be specific,
precise if I was ever going to get the Sheriff's
department on my side, I had to start slow. Maldonado
and Monica changed perspective.
Speaker 5 (34:01):
Wheat isn't news.
Speaker 10 (34:03):
Even with a fire that big, we could we could
smell it. But knowing it was the sister. When I
hear that, now, all I can think about is that
she was protecting her Maybe she was protecting her parents
or whatever you want to call them. When she keeps
that a secret, she's protecting her mom, And no, I
think I mean, I think.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
She was protecting us or protecting herself. Well for notting
a bunch of wheat on fire.
Speaker 5 (34:28):
What's worse.
Speaker 10 (34:28):
Your sister has gone missing, and you're a fifteen year
old kid who get a barn on fire.
Speaker 5 (34:33):
You're worried about that.
Speaker 10 (34:35):
Now you're worried about your mom, who's been out here
in the woods worshiping trees, singing the demons and dancing
in the circles.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Well, I don't think that's what they were doing.
Speaker 5 (34:43):
You know what I mean? We knew they weren't on
Kum Bay.
Speaker 15 (34:47):
Butterflies out there Wow, we went back for years, but
they had an alibi.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
I mean they were for that night.
Speaker 4 (34:54):
They were at the seance.
Speaker 5 (34:55):
That's what we thought too at first.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
Yeah, god, I'd love to Maldonado said that there were
there are that There are transcripts in the file of
his interviews with el Rick Light and Mick Bowden.
Speaker 9 (35:08):
Yeah all right, yeah, I'll take a look. See if easy.
Speaker 4 (35:10):
Thank you, Thank you so much, I really do it.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Nostalgia is such a trap. It's so powerful. It can
make your eyes well up just from holding a pager.
It can make songs from your teens sound better. The
more nostalgia draws you in, the more it just warps
your perception of reality. It can replace reality. Hey, how's
it going that night? I call my wife Alex back
(35:41):
in La.
Speaker 7 (35:42):
Well, I'm definitely not very good at this kind of
annoying everybody, like you know, I'm just I'm so attached
to this thing, this.
Speaker 9 (35:52):
Night for you.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
When I went into this, I knew I needed to
stop thinking like a fifty But I also need to
stop thinking like a forty five year old high on nostalgia.
Speaker 14 (36:05):
As my wife put it right, So you don't want
your mid life crisis to be a podcast.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
No, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Not every little thing from back then has big important meaning.
Even if I have big important feelings, Sometimes kid stuff
is just kid stuff. I needed to come at this
as objectively as possible. I needed to cut off nostalgia,
let go of expectations, my ego, and try and learn
as much as I could, and for now that man,
(36:33):
ignoring my personal feelings for someone like Mick, even Willow,
and just listening to someone like Maldonado.
Speaker 10 (36:40):
Yeah, it was only a few days before their TenderHearts
alibi Philip Art came crashing all the wind him.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
What are you saying that they weren't at the sounds.
Speaker 5 (36:49):
Well, not all of them. We got to get you
up to speed, man, We got to get you up speed.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
If some are all all of the Tender Hearts had lied,
if their alibi had come crashing down. This was actually
exactly what I wanted to hear, because it meant that
staying with this project, staying with Anna's case, was finally
going to move beyond me, my Tom Shanigans, and my nostalgia.
It meant it was time to confront one of the
(37:19):
most intriguing and mysterious aspects of Anna and Willow's life.
It was time for me to look into the tender hearts.
(37:50):
The Red Weather is an iHeart podcast hosted by writer Straw,
sound engineering, editing and mixing by Bo Milkins, Produced by
Tess Bartholomey. Executive producers at iHeartRadio Trevor Young and Matt Frederick,
Associate producer Bo milkis Original score by Kyle Morgan.
Speaker 4 (38:09):
If you're enjoying the.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Show, please remember to leave a review and rating.
Speaker 4 (38:12):
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. Previously on The Red Weather, in
nineteen ninety five, my neighbor and a trainer disappeared from
(00:24):
a commune, and back then I lied to everybody.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
An a trainer was at a party in downtown Sebasketball.
There are a lot of witnesses that said Anna she
had a fight with her boyfriend.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
I was with Anna's sister Willow that night, but we
were actually in the woods. We were on the Tender Hearts.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Property, the most weed I've ever seen in my life,
and Willow burned it down to the ground intentional.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
I'm not sure does that answer things or does that
does create more questions?
Speaker 4 (00:50):
Right?
Speaker 1 (00:51):
I mean, that's kind of my whole with this podcast,
That's what I want to find out. My dad has
this story he tells from when he was a teenager.
One night, his friends told him to get in the car.
Speaker 5 (01:07):
Friends of mine that I grew up with.
Speaker 6 (01:10):
Said, hey, we have a girl that's living away from
here who.
Speaker 5 (01:15):
Is willing to take us on.
Speaker 6 (01:17):
And said, oh, yeah, yeah, come on, let's go. And
I said, oh, well sure, you know, I jumped in
the car and there were three or four of us.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
They were all going to see Sally Chase, an older
married woman who wanted to party with him while her
husband was out of town. They parked the car and
walked through the woods to go to a farmhouse.
Speaker 6 (01:40):
It was raining, started raining real light.
Speaker 5 (01:43):
But this house is up on the top of the hill.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
And side note, even though this really happened, this story
in my imagination is animated. Specifically, it looks like the
cover of a Hardy Boys novel or any old timey
book or movie poster with a haunted house or a
spooky farmhouse. Anyway, when my dad and his past and
they definitely called each other pal got close to Sally
Chase's porch, gunshots rang out.
Speaker 6 (02:06):
You're just one of light and window, and all of
a sudden, this guy yells out, oh.
Speaker 5 (02:09):
Did you should it bit you to come around her?
Speaker 1 (02:11):
In my wife boom boom. Sally's husband was there yelling
and brandishing a shotgun, so one of my dad's friends
falls to the ground, screaming in pain. The shots kept coming,
and understandably, my dad panicked.
Speaker 6 (02:25):
And I turned and I ran as fast as I
could out of there, not thinking of anybody else but surviving.
As I'm running, I come up to his.
Speaker 5 (02:35):
Field on ahead of me and said, okay, right through there,
and I run.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
He ran headlong into a fence in the dark, cut
up his forehead.
Speaker 6 (02:41):
I jump over the fence and they finally found a
place in another road that I could come out one.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Blood was dripping down his face. He made it to
the road. He flagged down a car as soon as
he got in. The man who picked him up was concerned.
My dad was embarrassed, scared and didn't know what to say.
But the driver had a very important, very telling question.
Speaker 6 (03:01):
They said, you haven't worn up see Sally Chase for it.
I said not, I'm talking about man.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
My dad denied it, but the guy persisted, you were
up season Sally Chase.
Speaker 5 (03:09):
Vers goes, damn man, that guy up.
Speaker 6 (03:10):
There's crazy. He shot to my buddies. At least and
he said, no, no, that's a joke, is what It was.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
A setup, a prank, one of these small town rituals
that had been going on for years. So the guy
gave my dad a ride into town where all his
friends were waiting for him, laughing and welcoming him to
the club of Sally Chase Survivors, which was always this
kind of funny story straight out of something like the
movie Porky's Some nineteen fifties Boys Will Be Boys romp.
(03:41):
But when I consider this story now, this memory, I
have a hard time wrapping my head around what my
dad was thinking. He was going to sleep with some
random married woman in a farmhouse. Did he believe this
woman was so excited to cheat on her husband that
she just invited a group of teenage boys sight unseen
to her house. Was going to be some kind of orgy?
(04:02):
Were they going to take turns? Did he really think
this through? No, of course not. He just went along
with his friends, because when you're a teenager, you don't
think these things through. You're caught up in a moment
in your age, in your friend group. You're completely in
a bubble. Your hormones are going crazy, your priorities are
completely messed up. It's not that different from what my
(04:24):
friends and I were doing the night that Anna Trainer disappeared,
just like my dad's story. When I think back and
I try and remember my worldview, it just doesn't make
any sense. We were out there for some kind of revenge,
and there was a sex and porn element that is
super fuzzy and makes me uncomfortable to even think about,
(04:47):
let alone talk about into a microphone. It was just
like my dad, this adolescent misadventure that if you look
back with any perspective, you can't help but question your motivations,
your intelligence, and even maybe your moral compass. The difference is,
of course, that for my dad it all worked out.
(05:10):
His crazy Night in the Woods was a joke and
he was fine. They could laugh about it. They even
went on to play the same prank on my dad's
brother and other friends. But my Crazy Night in the
Woods ended with a fire that burned four houses and
one hundred acres, And after that night, Willow's sister Anna
was never seen again. I am actor and filmmaker writer
(05:32):
Strong This is the Red Weather. Before she killed herself,
(06:29):
my friend Willow had let me out of a promise
to keep a secret about the night her sister Anna disappeared.
I'd gone back to my hometown to talk with reporters, police, family,
and other people from our lives. My friend Chris joined me.
He was also in on the promise, but I had
barely begun the process when Chris and I discovered that
(06:50):
our versions of this promise were pretty different. Why would
we be arrested because Willow accidentally started the fire?
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Accidentally started a fire that that is not at all
would happen?
Speaker 4 (07:00):
What are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (07:01):
What are you talking? I'm talking with the pinkiesware. Turns
out Chris was with her, and she'd started the fire
intentionally to burn down a barn full of cannabis, which
back then we would have called pot or marijuana or
if you're my parents.
Speaker 5 (07:15):
Grass that's what you called it. So I still call it, yes,
I don't.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Know, Yeah, I feel like growing up, you guys always
called it grass or dope, called a magic plants, magic plants.
Speaker 7 (07:30):
Well, we just called it magic plants for you guys,
you little guys.
Speaker 8 (07:33):
You know.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
In any event, coming forward to the cops suddenly felt
like a bigger deal. I'd already scheduled to sit down
with Sheriff Maldonado, the lead investigator from Anna's case, I
was set to meet him at his house.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
Would you be willing to sit down with me?
Speaker 9 (07:45):
Uh?
Speaker 4 (07:47):
Sure, I can come to you.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
It's just a couple of microphones and a recorder, you know.
Speaker 10 (07:51):
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, that sounds good.
Speaker 5 (07:54):
I'll try to find what notes I might have.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Chris and I took the time to walk the woods
behind my parents' house where we were the knight that
Anna disappeared, yeh, finding out we had different versions of
that night. It seemed important to retrace our steps, all right.
So the rat hole used to be Yeah, there see
the bones of it. Yeah, the rat hole was a
for it. My brother and I made, well, really, my
dad made it and we helped. I probably nailed a
(08:17):
couple of boards. But it was every kid's dream come true.
Speaker 11 (08:20):
Which was a two story building that had no windows
or doors, but the only way you get in was
through a trapdoor underneath.
Speaker 5 (08:30):
It took me a long time to knock it down.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
When did your dad take it down? I actually don't know.
I mean it was after we moved.
Speaker 6 (08:35):
Out, probably ten to fifteen years ago. I don't remember.
Just in fact, the parts are still there. I never
took them away. I didn't what to do with it,
because when they had the septic redone, they just took
all the old sheptic concrete threw it down there too.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
It was this crumbling molding mess. But when we were kids,
it was the best. We put a carpet inside, we
spray painted the walls, and it was where we set
the stage for our knight. Didn't consult us, just took
it down. It's like, what was our plan? It was
Halloween nineteen ninety five. I was with Chris, our friends Connor,
Ryan and Willow. We were fifteen. We didn't have cars,
(09:10):
didn't have good flashlights, we didn't have a clue, but
we had the rat hole, some rope, a fake dead body,
and maybe the worst idea in the world. At the time,
we thought we were doing the right thing, something noble.
We were trying to save Anna's reputation. And the interesting
thing about that is I didn't even really know Anna
(09:30):
that well. I mean, I was intimidated by Anna. She
was older man, she was the coolest. When Chilo knew
her a little bit better. I think she just was
kind of lost at that time, and I.
Speaker 11 (09:41):
Regret looking back on it, my lack of understanding what
she was going through and.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
You were in love with her. We all had a
massive crush on Rose and I barely even talked to her.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
But whatever, I was anything with a pulse and boob Okay,
fuck off, I wasn't in teen magazines and on television.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
At fall. Anna was going through a rough time. Likes.
She and Willow grew up in the Tender Hearts, the
collective through the woods from Me, so they were homeschooled
up until high school, and then she wanted to go
to the same high school as everyone in Sebastopol, the
public school. Anily, she went from being a commune kid
(10:26):
out in the sticks to suddenly having this much more regular,
all American high school experience, and by all accounts, it
didn't go well.
Speaker 11 (10:36):
You know, I think she at that time was going
through a lot of stuff that.
Speaker 5 (10:43):
I don't think we could really relate.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
To or understand. You know, my brother tried to go
to Annilie's freshman year.
Speaker 11 (10:49):
He only lasted two weeks after coming off of being homeschooled.
Speaker 5 (10:52):
Yeah, walking into.
Speaker 11 (10:53):
That was yeah awful.
Speaker 5 (10:55):
Yeah, God, I don't know. I still have nightmares about it.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
This was a girl who never set foot in the classroom.
She'd never done a book report, let alone dealt with
the kind of social pressure of a typical American high school.
You have to remember this was the nineteen nineties. No
one wanted to actually be weird, to actually be different.
If you didn't shop at Hot Topic, listen to Tupac
and Nirvana, you probably weren't going to be popular. And
(11:22):
I know there are a lot of hippie kids everywhere,
but that usually meant kids who smoked pot and listened
to the Grateful Dead. It did not mean kids who
would say, find roadkill, skin it and eat it. Ryan
remembers that I remember.
Speaker 12 (11:38):
Her actually bringing that to school and it being cooked,
and like people trying it.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
I think I might have tried.
Speaker 9 (11:45):
A little bit of it. Actually, well yeah, she never.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Tried something, but it was I thought it was either
possum or squirrel.
Speaker 9 (11:54):
Okay, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
But Anna wanted a more normal life. She wanted to
be in town, so even though rough, she stuck it
out and things did get better for a time. She
made friends. For better or worse, she discovered drinking and drugs,
and by her junior year she had a boyfriend, Mick Bowden.
He was the ultimate town kit. He got good grades,
had money, He had his own car and Acura Integra.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Look, my understanding was that Anna and Mick were a
little star crossed.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
This is Monica Tremblaine. She's the local reporter who covered
the case originally and was helping me connect the dots.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Definitely, it was surprising that they dated it in the
first place.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Huck, I'm hated me too, hated. Mick and Anna were
together for a year or so, and after they broke up,
Anna got a reputation she was well, now you say
sex positive, but that wasn't really a thing.
Speaker 13 (12:48):
Yeah, there was some she gave head to some guy
in the dark room or a couple guys in the dark.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Room or something, and the fact that she had done
that was.
Speaker 5 (12:57):
Enough of a story to tell to everybody, I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 9 (13:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 11 (13:06):
She had a reputation of being very sexually open, which
I remember was unjustified.
Speaker 5 (13:16):
Well, I mean, it just always annoyed me.
Speaker 11 (13:18):
Because it was only because she was a woman, and
that whole idea, the concept of somebody being a slut only.
Speaker 5 (13:25):
Applies to a woman.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
And eventually there was a tape Shiloh had actually seen.
Speaker 5 (13:30):
It was it a VHS No, I think it was on.
It was like one of those little tiny.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
D mini DV things. This is the infamous yurt party tape.
And if you don't know what a yurt is, you've
clearly never been on an Iowasco retreat or been a
teenager in northern California. They're semi permanent tents.
Speaker 13 (13:50):
It starts out and everybody's dancing. There's like music playing.
She was there with a couple guys and it started
getting you know, more like sexy dancing. And I remember
like she had this like like one piece on, and
I remember what I can see in the video that
(14:11):
you know, he's trying to like take her shirt off.
Like they started kissing and making out and grinding and yeah.
Speaker 11 (14:19):
And they were all making out in the bed together.
It was like, yeah, the two guys and her.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
As you can imagine, like most small towns, if something
scandalous went down at a party, everyone knew about it.
And somehow apparently Mick got a hold of this tape.
What's he gonna do because there was no online couldn't download.
Is he gonna make copies of the tape?
Speaker 4 (14:40):
I guess?
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Or just show people in them out a screening today?
This would be called revenge porn, but back then it
didn't have a name. It was just ruining Anna's life.
And Willow wanted us to protect her sister. She wanted
us to help, so we got our little trip together. Okay,
but this is where I remember ducking down from the headlights, right,
and I had the Louisville Slugger. I had a baseball bat.
(15:04):
Wait we had a bat?
Speaker 4 (15:05):
Yeah, for pure defense.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
I know we had fireworks, but not a bat. Definitely,
you were on the path. No, No, because I remember
me and Connor we were ducking down. Do you remember
there used to be like a huge fern right here.
We were behind that. No, no, you were definitely on
the path. How much you want to bet? I don't
need to remember.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Connor will back me up on this. I'm not because
you're scared you're gonna lose the bet.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
No, let's just bet on it. Okay, fine, Connor lives
in England now, he's a professor of sociology.
Speaker 9 (15:35):
No, Chris is right.
Speaker 14 (15:36):
Really, Yeah, you were dealing with rigging up the dummy
Bucky Bucky.
Speaker 9 (15:40):
Yes, that's right. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Our idea was to get Mick out to the woods
and distract him long enough to grab the yurt tape
from his car. But in order to do that, and
here's where fifteen year old logic takes over, we decided
to not only lure him out, but also to scare
the crap out of him. Because it was Halloween. My
family was really big into Halloween, so we threw parties
(16:03):
with Haunted Walks of the Woods, and we were the
family that did the Haunted House at our grade school.
We used to make our own masks and creatures, and
we had a lot of props, including a fake dead
body we called Bucky.
Speaker 5 (16:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 11 (16:16):
But then we had it on a noose I think,
and then it was like, you know, you could swing
it down, so when people walked by, we would drop
it in front of them, right, and that would scare people.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Is that body still up in the pony house?
Speaker 5 (16:30):
I see, I just came across the gams.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
So we made our plan to get the your tape
exactly the way you would plan a haunted maze. Nick
ideally pulls up, gets out of the car, sees the
light on in the rat hole. Oh what's that? I
must go over towards there, walk down this path.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
How did we get it?
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Even get him out here in the first place.
Speaker 14 (16:51):
WILLI set it up? Yeah, she told Mick to meet
him there. Well, do you remember what she told him? No,
but I know we put hay bails.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
That was to divert Mick from the Tender Hearts driveway.
We knew he'd dead end by the rat hole where
Willow was waiting, So she gets him in the rat
hole and she lights off. The eighties, sixties m sixties
were loud, completely illegal fireworks someone had procured from Chinatown.
Speaker 14 (17:16):
So we would go into Chinatown and we would stock
up on firecrackers with different sizes and power. It was
the sixties and the eights, and these were like the
big daddies, right, These are the ones that would make
a really big.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Boom, basically cherry bombs, pop pop, douchebag Nick pieces pants.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Okay, hopefully comes back down this path where you and
O'Ryan have bucket.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Once Mick came back out of the rat hole, Oriyan
and I would drop Bucky, scaring the crap out of
him and buying more time for Connor and Chris to
rifle through his car and hopefully find the tape. The tape,
the YRT tape that was the play that was That's
not what happened. As much as our friend Connor helped
(18:09):
us remember some things, I wish we hadn't called him
because after we talked, Chris refused to meet Sheriff Maldonado
with me.
Speaker 9 (18:16):
Do you know the actual like legal technicalities.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
I've looked up as much as I can. I asked
chat GPT. But you know, look, we didn't start the fire.
Speaker 14 (18:26):
Wait, so you're planning to sit down with the sheriff.
He's a retired sheriff whatever, an officer of the law. Yeah,
and tell him that you lied to him thirty years ago.
Speaker 9 (18:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
I mean, I don't think we even committed a crime.
I'm still going to talk to him. There's zero chance
that this isn't beyond the statute delimitration.
Speaker 9 (18:46):
That's what I'm man.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Just come with me. We just tell him the truth.
We've already made progress.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
The moldy old pager, the dog dug up and your
parents kept in a garage.
Speaker 5 (18:55):
It's something, It is something, but.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
I'm not going Chris was talking about a pager weed
found After we walk the property, Chris and I went
through some of the stuff in my parents' garage.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
I swear my.
Speaker 8 (19:06):
Parents have been throwing anything away for fifty years.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
What is this creepy boxing, dirty children?
Speaker 5 (19:15):
This is Cookie's collection.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
We had a golden Retriever named Cookie. She's somewhat of
a legend. According to family lore. The only thing that
Cookie ever did wrong was she would steal kids' shoes
and bury them.
Speaker 7 (19:27):
You guys could take your shoes off to go on
the trampoline and after having a lot of fun, coming
back and you don't have your shoes, or you're missing.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
One, and many a kid went home without a shoe.
Speaker 7 (19:38):
I don't know how many years later you finally followed her.
Speaker 5 (19:42):
While there was still follows her.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
She went all the way down in the meadow. I
had she dug up.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Old Jordan, British la gear.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
Is this the Patriot?
Speaker 1 (19:56):
It was green? Of course it didn't turn on.
Speaker 5 (19:59):
Look is that yours?
Speaker 2 (20:01):
No?
Speaker 1 (20:01):
I never had a colored one pager of color colored Patriot?
Speaker 9 (20:05):
Karen, So, I mean that could be anybody's.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
I know, it's kind of crazy. Just find it a
pager when we know Anna had one out here. I
was so excited by the prospect of finding a clue
that I was making this random object fit the story,
but regardless, it was a cool relic of the time.
Speaker 5 (20:24):
It's bigger than I remember them being. Wow, look at that.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
I hadn't seen a pager in thirty years, let alone
held one. I told Chris he didn't have to come
with me, and that I wouldn't say his name. Hi,
Sheriff Maldonado.
Speaker 5 (20:42):
Hey, yeah, come on it. Hi.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
He lives in Katti about thirty five minutes away.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
Is it?
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Is it Sheriff Still?
Speaker 15 (20:47):
I don't know if it was one of those those
titles like president or yeah, it's Sheriff's.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Maldonado's in his seventies, but he looks younger. We took
a seat at his dining room table while his two cats,
both of them long haired and silver, roamed around us.
I felt like I had a lot to film in
on who I was, what I was doing, why, But
then I also had some more basic questions, do you
remember me at all?
Speaker 5 (21:15):
Kind of just remembered your kids in general. You know,
we knew one of you was an actor. You're part
of the younger.
Speaker 10 (21:20):
Crowd, I think the sister right, yeah, Willow. And there
was something because it was Halloween.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
It was a scarecrow yeah, we had this dead.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
Yes, yeah, exactly, that was us.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
I actually can't remember what I told the Sheriff's department
back in nineteen ninety five, and I wasn't sure what
Mick told him at the time.
Speaker 10 (21:40):
A few younger guys all that seemed like what high Town,
My old partner, Fred.
Speaker 5 (21:47):
High Tower, I'd call Tom Shannigans.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
What's that like Shenanigans.
Speaker 5 (21:51):
Yeah, but Fred, he wasn't. He was.
Speaker 9 (21:56):
It was.
Speaker 10 (21:57):
It's not a stutter, it's a he mixed the words up.
He blend him together, you know, like pursuitable. He said
once suspectful.
Speaker 5 (22:08):
Was a classic.
Speaker 10 (22:09):
Red was trying for Tomfoolery and Shenanigan's.
Speaker 5 (22:13):
But you know, just never came out right.
Speaker 10 (22:17):
A lot of our job in a situation like this
with juveniles, a lot of the job is pulling out
the kid's stuff.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
It didn't feel like that to us at the time.
It felt like life or death.
Speaker 9 (22:29):
I remember hearing screams from the car.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
We never considered that Mick might have a friend with him,
So when his accurate pulled in, Travis Washman was with him,
and while Mick did get out and walked to the
rat hole, Travis waited in the car.
Speaker 9 (22:43):
And then Chris ran at him. He was trying to
get him out.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Oh the dude, kill me, nick. I remember actually being
really scared, thinking these older guys were gonna beat us
up or kill us if they got us. Pure chaos
and mayhem. I was with O'Ryan and someone was dressed
as a mine. Ryan and me, we were both mines.
Part of the confusion was the costume factor. Before we
(23:08):
enacted this whole plan, we'd gotten dressed up in costume
and walked around downtown Sebastopol. Connor's costume was an easy joke.
Speaker 9 (23:16):
He said he was going to be the scariest thing
in the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah, what was it? A lawyer?
That's right. So he just he just wore like a
suit and die, right right right.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Ryan and I cobbled together some makeup and hair gel
that my parents had. We had white faces and mohawks.
We called ourselves psycho mimes, and you were like, what
the Phantom of the Opera, Phantom.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
Of the Coffee Chapera had.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
I had a Starbucks barised that green apron, and then
I had a phantom mask.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
I feel you're judging eyes, Yeah, I'm not quite getting
Starbucks was a new exciting thing. It was the go
go nineties.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
We all had more hair and it was fine.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Willa wore the same thing she always did, a pair
of fairy wings, right, because she was a nymph, no,
a dryad. Is there a difference.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
Yeah, yeah, they're tree spirits like a or river spirits.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
That is next level.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
Whatever she had made.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Regardless, Willow was a flying pixie thing with wings. And yes,
I'm aware that the one girl and our group of friends,
the muse of this podcast with a fantasy sounding name,
was quite literally dressed as a manic pixie dream girl.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
But it's the truth.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
She wore wings even later in life.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
And it was like her go to so in costume.
In the dark, we were scattered, separated in the woods,
no light. Travis and Mick looking for us.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
Willow and I ended up in that barn at the
Tender Hearts property.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
When I talked to Maldonatto, I relayed Chris's story as
if it was my own.
Speaker 5 (24:51):
There was weed in the bar.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
I mean, this wasn't just a shit, my friend.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
This was a barn, right, so you're done with weed?
And it was hanging.
Speaker 5 (25:01):
Yeah, they were drying it out. Oh yeah, I guess yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
So Willow like gets to her feet and she's like
freaking out, but she's not crying. She's syperventilating. She's breathing
in and out, trying to almost catch her breath, like
she was having a panic attack or something it was.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
And she started gathering hay into a pile, and I'm like.
Speaker 10 (25:24):
Willa, Willo, woo woo, Willow, Willow, Willow, what.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Are you doing. We wouldn't stop.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Calmed down, calm down, Let's get out of here. And
she pulls out her lighter that we had for the fireworks.
Speaker 5 (25:35):
Swoosh.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Immediately the thing goes up, and then seconds later all
of the weed is up in flames, and we get
them get the hell out of there, because we're lucky
to not burn to death.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
But we never told you, any of you any of
that we at the time, we just said that we
were at my friend's house and we watched the shining
and we went to bed. So I'm hoping that some
of this, any of this might be helpful, you know,
at least if I'm coming forward, at least then you'll
(26:11):
know you'll have part of the truth.
Speaker 5 (26:18):
Are you expecting applause.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
No, I mean, I'm I'm just trying to.
Speaker 10 (26:24):
Because I'm not sure what you I'm not sure what
you want to do here. If this is about you
getting something off your chest, I don't know, honoring your
dead girlfriend. If you really want to get into this,
if you want to really get into this thing, then
you got to do it right.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Got to call Lachlan Grace. Lachlan is the current Sonoma
County sheriff.
Speaker 10 (26:47):
Get her on board, you get her to sign off,
then we're really talking here.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Admitting I lie to the current sheriff felt like a
bigger risk.
Speaker 10 (26:54):
I spent over a year on and a trainer, interviews, photos,
we had clothing, her mom had letters, books, and you
don't want to see all that, all of it. If
you want to move past, you want to get beyond
the Tom Shannigans and let's go.
Speaker 5 (27:13):
But you've got to talk to Lucky.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Yeah, Well, I guess, I'm I guess My question is
could I be charged with the client.
Speaker 5 (27:23):
You gotta talk to Luckily?
Speaker 4 (27:34):
Well?
Speaker 9 (27:34):
Did you even know about the your tape?
Speaker 1 (27:36):
After I talked to Maldonado, I called Monica to catch up.
Speaker 9 (27:39):
No, I mean I knew there were rumors about Anna.
I knew about a mixtape, a mixtape, a haunted tape.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
This was over at Annaly and there was this mixtape
with songs. But then the story was it was a
ghost tape and her voice by her voice beyond the grave.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
I never heard about that, all right, But let's just
for a second, if Mick did have video, if he
was trying to blackmail Anna.
Speaker 9 (28:03):
Or wait, writer, do you want it to be here?
Speaker 1 (28:07):
No?
Speaker 9 (28:09):
Okay, they looked at Mick.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
He had somebody with them every step of the way
the party, driving Travis home, he was looking for Anna,
but he dropped Travis off at his house. He got
the patremna, he drove try to pick her up from
Jennifer Street payphone, and she never showed.
Speaker 4 (28:25):
And the fire started.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Do you do you think, like I really really think
that Mick couldn't kill there.
Speaker 15 (28:33):
It's stretch, I guess, but like, isn't it a stretch
to think.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Anyone could kill anyone?
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Monica asked me if I wanted it to be Mick,
and I realized I kind of do, oh me, Jill.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Even if Mick managed to meet up with Anna then
murder her in twenty minutes, couldn't have getten rid of
the body and driven her car all the way to SFO.
Speaker 9 (29:01):
Not without help, right, not without help. And we know
he was with the rest of the night.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Out of respect for privacy and legal reasons, we've had
to edit one of the names that came up in
some interviews.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Really, look, the only time that it didn't make sense
was the time that he was with us, So in anything,
you just helped to clear his name.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
I never heard make drive away, So I stayed alone
in the woods for a while, I mean maybe an hour,
it felt like forever, and finally I heard Oryan calling
out and we found each other. And then we found Willow.
Speaker 4 (29:37):
On the road.
Speaker 9 (29:37):
How did you get to kind of Drakes? We walked
that's like four.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yeah, four miles maybe maybe even five.
Speaker 9 (29:45):
Yeah, And Chris and I were on the road too.
Speaker 4 (29:47):
Oh really, you guys.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
I thought you guys were still in the woods.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
No, we met back up with you guys, walked back
and we.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Watched the sunrise and Connors we did. Yeah, we heard
science and we hid in the bushes whenever a car
went by. We knew there might still be a fire going,
but we had no idea how big it was.
Speaker 14 (30:04):
I do remember that that's where we stopped and watched
the sunrise come up, and we were just I just
the we were so emotionally charged.
Speaker 9 (30:17):
It was like we were doing amphetamines.
Speaker 14 (30:18):
We basically had that level of sort of insane energy.
Speaker 9 (30:23):
And then there was just this pause on the side
of the road after an intense night like that.
Speaker 12 (30:27):
It's just kind of like, you know, I'll sing this
song and it kind of like lightens the mood a
little bit, you know, Revity.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Yeah, A cool part about being friends with Oryan is
that whenever we hike and we've gone on backpacking trips
together since we were ten years old.
Speaker 9 (30:43):
He sings, Yeah.
Speaker 12 (30:44):
Challa Days was a rare Counting Crows song off of
a demo tape.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
I think it also like because it was like this
deep cut, you know, it was like it wasn't oh yeah,
it was initially released, so it felt like sort of
a secret that only we knew, you know, Like it
was like it was kind of like this our song.
Speaker 9 (31:03):
And then it's also I guess about a small town
in the.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Vein of like round here, and a lot of this
where is about like a girl in a small town
and it feels like it.
Speaker 9 (31:12):
Could be about Sebastopol. It does, right, Yeah, totally all right?
Could you sing it the whole thing?
Speaker 5 (31:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 9 (31:22):
For the podcast? Yeah, like you're gonna put this on iHeartRadio.
Oh my god, that's gould be good. It just has
to be you.
Speaker 8 (31:33):
Mary Jane says, it's all right. She's just around the
corner from the main line and any Dane Now, it's
all Rightey standing on the precipice of big.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Time not Willow didn't talk almost the whole time until
she stopped and made us all promise to stick to
the same story. It was cold, I remember shivering, and
the sun took forever to come on.
Speaker 5 (32:02):
But it was beautiful for.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
All the insanity of that night. It's it's weirdly a positive.
Speaker 5 (32:07):
Memory, falling falling down.
Speaker 9 (32:21):
This is Lachlan.
Speaker 4 (32:22):
Yeah, Hi, Sheriff Lachlin. This is right or strong.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
I got in touch with Grace Lachlin. You know, since
my goal is to like document this entire process from
start to finish.
Speaker 4 (32:31):
I I'm actually.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Recording this call right now, which I hope is okay,
and I'm happy to stop if you no, no, no, no,
you know what I want you?
Speaker 9 (32:39):
I want you to record it.
Speaker 16 (32:40):
I want actually, I want you to be sure to
include this in your podcast.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
Okay, yeah, okay.
Speaker 16 (32:45):
The Trainer case was wobble for my time, but you know,
I looked into it, spoke with Sheriff Maldonado, and he
let me know that you had information right, right right.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
And now you're coming into this.
Speaker 16 (32:55):
With microphones and a whole news story like some night
on a horse.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
Oh no, I don't think I'm going to. Actually I'm
just trying to.
Speaker 16 (33:03):
But the thing is, you are on record you made
false statements. That's documented in nineteen ninety five. That's obstruction
of justice. I can warrant charges. I'm lucky for you,
frankly lucky for me because I don't want the hassle.
It's wall past the statute of limitations.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
Okay, okay, yeah, I mean okay.
Speaker 16 (33:20):
And most importantly this is there's what we call good
faith in mitigation. So you come clean, now, you come forward,
no bullshit, no lying, and you want to help that
goes along way. So if you want, I can. Oh,
I'll take a look see what I can pull from
(33:41):
this file. Is there something you want in particular?
Speaker 5 (33:44):
All of it?
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Of course, that was my real answer. I wanted to
see all the evidence, but I knew I should be specific,
precise if I was ever going to get the Sheriff's
department on my side, I had to start slow. Maldonado
and Monica changed perspective.
Speaker 5 (34:01):
Wheat isn't news.
Speaker 10 (34:03):
Even with a fire that big, we could we could
smell it. But knowing it was the sister. When I
hear that, now, all I can think about is that
she was protecting her Maybe she was protecting her parents
or whatever you want to call them. When she keeps
that a secret, she's protecting her mom, And no, I
think I mean, I think.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
She was protecting us or protecting herself. Well for notting
a bunch of wheat on fire.
Speaker 5 (34:28):
What's worse.
Speaker 10 (34:28):
Your sister has gone missing, and you're a fifteen year
old kid who get a barn on fire.
Speaker 5 (34:33):
You're worried about that.
Speaker 10 (34:35):
Now you're worried about your mom, who's been out here
in the woods worshiping trees, singing the demons and dancing
in the circles.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Well, I don't think that's what they were doing.
Speaker 5 (34:43):
You know what I mean? We knew they weren't on
Kum Bay.
Speaker 15 (34:47):
Butterflies out there Wow, we went back for years, but
they had an alibi.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
I mean they were for that night.
Speaker 4 (34:54):
They were at the seance.
Speaker 5 (34:55):
That's what we thought too at first.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
Yeah, god, I'd love to Maldonado said that there were
there are that There are transcripts in the file of
his interviews with el Rick Light and Mick Bowden.
Speaker 9 (35:08):
Yeah all right, yeah, I'll take a look. See if easy.
Speaker 4 (35:10):
Thank you, Thank you so much, I really do it.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Nostalgia is such a trap. It's so powerful. It can
make your eyes well up just from holding a pager.
It can make songs from your teens sound better. The
more nostalgia draws you in, the more it just warps
your perception of reality. It can replace reality. Hey, how's
it going that night? I call my wife Alex back
(35:41):
in La.
Speaker 7 (35:42):
Well, I'm definitely not very good at this kind of
annoying everybody, like you know, I'm just I'm so attached
to this thing, this.
Speaker 9 (35:52):
Night for you.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
When I went into this, I knew I needed to
stop thinking like a fifty But I also need to
stop thinking like a forty five year old high on nostalgia.
Speaker 14 (36:05):
As my wife put it right, So you don't want
your mid life crisis to be a podcast.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
No, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Not every little thing from back then has big important meaning.
Even if I have big important feelings, Sometimes kid stuff
is just kid stuff. I needed to come at this
as objectively as possible. I needed to cut off nostalgia,
let go of expectations, my ego, and try and learn
as much as I could, and for now that man,
(36:33):
ignoring my personal feelings for someone like Mick, even Willow,
and just listening to someone like Maldonado.
Speaker 10 (36:40):
Yeah, it was only a few days before their TenderHearts
alibi Philip Art came crashing all the wind him.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
What are you saying that they weren't at the sounds.
Speaker 5 (36:49):
Well, not all of them. We got to get you
up to speed, man, We got to get you up speed.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
If some are all all of the Tender Hearts had lied,
if their alibi had come crashing down. This was actually
exactly what I wanted to hear, because it meant that
staying with this project, staying with Anna's case, was finally
going to move beyond me, my Tom Shanigans, and my nostalgia.
It meant it was time to confront one of the
(37:19):
most intriguing and mysterious aspects of Anna and Willow's life.
It was time for me to look into the tender hearts.
(37:50):
The Red Weather is an iHeart podcast hosted by writer Straw,
sound engineering, editing and mixing by Bo Milkins, Produced by
Tess Bartholomey. Executive producers at iHeartRadio Trevor Young and Matt Frederick,
Associate producer Bo milkis Original score by Kyle Morgan.
Speaker 4 (38:09):
If you're enjoying the.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Show, please remember to leave a review and rating.
Speaker 4 (38:12):
Thanks for listening.
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