December 1, 2021 • 31 mins
The Ventura County Medical Examiner determines Verna and Doug’s deaths to be accidental drownings, so Fred moves forward with funeral plans. But the cremations are halted after a family friend calls in a tip to the sheriff’s department. Fred receives some unexpected visitors. . . and they want to know what happened to his first wife.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushkin. The day of their deaths, January second, nineteen eighty one,
Verna and Doug's bodies were flown by helicopter back to
the mainland. The next day, they were autopsied by the
(00:38):
acting Medical Examiner of Ventura County, doctor Craig Duncan, Hi
DUC Duncan Dan a good year. I met doctor Duncan
recently at his home in Ventura, which is full of
California oil paintings and human skulls. He's a psychiatrist now
(00:58):
and wears a big opal ring, but back in nineteen
eighty one, he was a forensic pathologist. Graduated from medical
school in nineteen sixty nine that I went to Baltimore
to complete my training under Russell Fisher, who was really
the grandfather of forensic pathology, or a major figure. And
(01:20):
he saw the case of Verna and Doug as uncomplicated.
It's a standard autopsy of a standard drowning case, and
handled in that fashion with fairly fresh bodies and obvious
drowning results. There was clearly evidence of water drowning, lungs
(01:46):
being full of water. I had the autopsy reports with
me and we went through them together. It didn't take
long the very little one on Douglas's body in terms
of external markings up. I've Verna over here, so this
is Verna. See no trauma, very little evidence of any
(02:15):
trauma at all on Verna's body, same with Douglas, other
than what I would anticipate in a struggle to prevent
one from drowning, not a struggle with another human, just
at other than the injury of drowning. There were no injuries,
(02:35):
no indication that Verna or Dug had been attacked. And
I contend that there was no evidence of homicide in
the initial autopsies, as evidenced by no assault wounds clubbing
on the head with an oar, etc. And no defense
wounds bruises, fractures on the arms, which would be just
(02:57):
human nature to do in the event of an attack.
It was simple, he said. No trauma, no assault of wounds,
no homicide. Doctor Duncan declared Verna and Doug's deaths accidental.
That determination freed Fred as next of kin to proceed
(03:18):
with his funerary plans. They drowned on Friday, the autopsies
happened on Saturday. On Monday, he'd have a memorial for
Verna and Doug at the Malibu Methodist Church, followed by
a reception at the house on Sea Level Drive. Meanwhile,
he arranged to have the bodies moved to a mortuary
in Los Angeles and scheduled them to be cremated on Wednesday,
(03:40):
January seventh. Then their ashes would be scattered at sea,
and Fred would begin to put back the pieces of
his life as the single father of three young girls.
Or that's what he assumed. I'm Dana Goodyear and this
(04:00):
is Lost Hills episode two, Quiet No Longer. Fred slept
(04:35):
alone in his and Vernah's bed. In the morning, he'd
have the awful task of telling Verna's daughter Kim, and
his daughters Heidi and Kirsten that Verna and Doug would
not be coming home. They remember it how he sat
them down and started methodically going through it. Yeah, he
told us. And it was hard because it's like hearing
(04:59):
a story that you do not want to know the
ending two. And he didn't just start off. He started
off telling us that they were out on the boat
and the dog had jumped into the water. But it's
you know, we're just waiting. He didn't just come out
and say it. And then you know. He told us
(05:20):
it was shocking. That's Heidi. We met up over the
summer at Heidi's house in Colorado. Kirsten was there too,
and so was Kim. Fred they said, had gone through
the story in order, the Dog, the Birds, the dory,
overturning the attempts at CPR. Here's Kim, but he did
(05:41):
start from the beginning of what had happened and walked
us through each step and then told us that they
were God. The three sisters are incredibly close. Add to that,
they all look a lot alike. Even though Kim, Verna's
daughter from her first marriage, is not blood related to
(06:04):
Heidi and Kirsten, the similarities are uncanny. Same straight, dark hair,
same long oval faces, same vivid dark eyes. Oh, people
have asked if we're triplets. I mean high and I
get twins all the time, and then when the three
of us are together they ask if for triplets. Kim
says this was going on even back when Vernon Doug
(06:26):
were alive. And then there were times when my mom
would take us out and she might have like all
four of us, and somehow it would come up that
we were a blended family, you know, in the very beginning,
and then who were the two biological siblings? And I
think a lot of times it was sometimes was it
you and Doug? Doug and I would get matched the time.
(06:50):
It's strange, but the sisters remember that time right after
Vernon Doug died as weirdly sweet, the three girls and
Fred at home eating food dropped off by the neighbor ladies,
figuring out how to cope. I have a lot of
good memories of the three of us and Dad and
the chokes about all the freaking castrolls. He would just
(07:13):
pull something out because all the women were bringing over casseroles,
so we're like, well, this is our dinner tonight. He
rearranged their rooms so the girls could all sleep together.
Kim and I had a bedroom downstairs, and Kirsten and
Dug upstairs. And then after the accident, he built us
a triple bunk bed so we were right off the kitchen,
(07:35):
right next to his room, and I remember just being
in there one time and he was in the kitchen
doing the dishes, like listening to Divo and just like
singing along. It was like another little lifetime of happiness
because I felt like we all got it together and
we were like, you know, a family again, the little
(08:12):
lifetime wouldn't couldn't last. And I still don't remember the
timeline of when we didn't know they were men coming
to talk to my dad periodically and we didn't know
what that was about. The men coming to see Fred
(08:32):
were detectives from the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department. They
specialized in homicides. Fred Railer is a waterman. Before prison,
(09:05):
the water was his life, which is kind of surprising
given where he grew up in Centerville, Indiana. You know,
that's funny. I was always interested in water. As a kid.
He became obsessed with the new sport of scuba diving.
My parents put a pool in, which was sort of
(09:25):
rare back in Indiana in the days. It was very helpful,
and I actually bought a scuba tank and a regulator
after I read some of Jocastos stuff and watched him
on television. So I taught myself to swim on around
and clean the pool without killing myself. And so that's
(09:48):
basically how I really got fascinated with it. Later during college,
he taught swimming. When I was at Purdue, one of
my electives was water safety instructors, so they actually taught
us the Red Cross methods for teaching swimming, and when
I came back, actually did swimming lessons in our pool
(10:11):
for a lot of people. And then when I left,
I left my Red Cross hat and instruction books, and
my mother started teaching swimming and she taught swimming for
several years. After college, he got his job at Point
Magoo working as an engineer for the Navy, and the
Navy sent him to as scuba school in San Diego.
(10:35):
The reason for diving was most of our trouble was
with stuff underwater. It would either leaked, or it wasn't
connected right, or you know, something was going wrong. So
they sent me basically to scuba school, and then that
allowed me to work with Navy diver to help install
things and also take pictures of them, and you just
(10:56):
see what was going on. The Navy started sending him
to the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai. They actually
had an underwater range, which is like a series of
microphones spread out underwater and they can track surface ships
and submarines and things. Fred oriented his whole life around
(11:18):
the water for a while. He even lived on a
houseboat called home in the Channel Islands Marina in Oxnard.
He had a little side business there cleaning the bottoms
of sailboats for race days. That's where he met one
of the winningest skippers in the harbor, Dick felt On.
So we did crazy things for sport. We had a
friend who was a Navy pilot on helicopters, and we
(11:41):
used to go to San Nicholas Island, which was sixty
miles offshore, and I could do some jobs out there
because we had some weather stuff out there, So I'd
go out there on the weekend and he would actually
drop us out of the helicopter in really nice spots
where we could get lobster and things like that. The
(12:03):
Channel Islands were Fred's playground before they became the place
his wife and steps on died. One of the things
the detectives from Santa Barbara were struggling to figure out
was how someone with Fred's water experience had failed to
(12:25):
save a child in a life preserver. They first showed
up at Sea Level Drive five days after Verna and
Doug died. It was eleven am on Wednesday, January seventh,
the day Fred had scheduled Verna and Doug's creamations. Fred
greeted them cordially. I thank both of your names. Their
(12:48):
names were Claude Tuller and Fred Ray. Ray did most
of the talking. He gave the impression that the last
place he wanted to be was in Malibu bothering a
grieving husband. He was reassuring, if disingenuous. He failed to
mention that he had a taper quarter running living explain
(13:09):
this Tokay. Santa Cruz Island, Ray said, was part of
Santa Barbara County, so the deaths were in their jurisdiction.
Our problem is this is that we were we received
a phone call because we're supposed to ski because it
was in Santa Barbara County. He was going to need
(13:31):
Fred's help clearing up a few murky details. To be
honest with you, Fred, we really don't know what much
about what's going on, and we have no idea of well,
I can't say we had no idea. We do have
an idea of what happened out at the island, but
everything is really sketchy. So, uh, we're kind of like
(13:55):
thrown into it after the fact. We don't know Yah, Yeah,
how it was ruled. If it's accidental or if it's
intentional or whatever. We don't know that parts we know
it certainly looks like it it was accidental, and so
(14:16):
we we are only looking into it to ascertain what
the circumstances or what happened. If you understand Detective Ray said,
it certainly looks like it was accidental. That's because there
was barely any physical evidence, just Fred's story and a
(14:37):
whole lot of head scratchers. The only thing that I
would suggest that maybe we do is so you know,
remind you that that if if there's anything wrong with
this at all, that you know you have certain rights too.
(14:59):
So I don't know if it's necessary at that point,
but certainly I would want to make your work every
every that you have. Plus, I'm sure there's going to
he mentioned that there might be some civil problems associated
with the drownings. But I'm sure that there's gonna be
a lot of legal things that you're going to have to,
you know, consult with, don't you think, say you read
(15:26):
Fred his Miranda rights, I should remind you that you
do have the way right to remain silent, and anything
you say cannon will be used against you for a
while amazingly, Fred went ahead with the interview without his
lawyer again just for awareness. You know, I'm Fred. It's
(15:52):
gonna really it will be difficult to talk about this,
I remarked when I I first heard about on the
on the movies want a Transity. Fred seemed eager to
please or form a rapport with the detectives. You know,
we've had a service for both of them Monday, and
(16:15):
we had friends over afterwards, and a lot of my
friends are really into sailing and the ocean, and all
those things were marked over and over that how many
times have you dumped a boat? And everybody just got
a little angry and got back in and everything was fine,
he said. Doug, whom he referred to as his son,
(16:38):
was very comfortable in the water. That's part of the
things that I find, you know, as perverse as it is,
is that my son was a good swimmer. He had
just mastered standing up on a boogie board. I mean
he's small, He was a small boy, but very agile,
(16:59):
and it was a good swimmer. He was practically babbling
answering questions the detectives hadn't even asked. But I think
part of the thing that got him, was the fact
that he was wearing a life jacket, that he was
trapped underneath the boat. Cool was he talked him to
the boat. Well, and again that's something that I can
only surmise because initially I was trapped up the boat.
(17:24):
They had a camera and the camera strapped got hooked
in the door locked. I drew a picture of that.
I don't know if he's familiar with the boat. It
was a sixteen foot shock rolling doory. Yeah, I saw
the boat, Yes, I did. Next, Ray wanted to know
(17:47):
about any objects that were in the boat with them,
clues that could corroborate the locations in his story or
work to contradict them. Did you have anything in the
boat other than than the three of you, I mean,
any were you carry and saying which is or cults
(18:08):
or no we had The answer was no. But Fred
took the question as an invitation to back all the
way up to the purchase of his sailboat months earlier. Well,
let me let me go back. I guess the easiest
thing is to really start in the beginning about September
(18:31):
August or September of last year. We really had a
desire to get a boat. We thought we went we
were to a point where we could really take off
and do some sailing. As it sounded like he wanted
the detectives to be happy for him. We just felt
so fortunate, I mean, so it was really just like
(18:53):
a real gream come true that we could get the boat.
And then we spent just about every weekend sailing or
initially just day sailing or with friends, then finally going
out to the island, and he made an er trips
out there. Then he started talking about Lady the beagle.
(19:15):
We had just gotten a dog about maybe a month.
I'd have to look at the records, but maybe a month.
For two months ago, the whole family want a dog,
and I was sort of against the dog one because
we had a boat and we had four children. I
felt they could ted each other. They really needed it
and we didn't need something else that they care of.
(19:36):
But they won, and we got a little beagle puppy,
and we had taken her in the car and we'd
taken her up and spent the night on the boat
that we never had her out. So one of the
reasons for the trip was one my parents were here.
From the end, I seem like I'm rambling. So we
(19:57):
were all aboard and we got underway in the morning.
My mother actually sailed the boat all the way over,
and then we put the sails down, and then my
wife takes the both handles the helm at that point,
and we put down a bow anchor and the stem anchor.
(20:20):
The detectives let him talk and talk until he pretty
much talked himself out. I think I'm going to pick
some tea. Can I get you some instant coffee? I
got the happy Fred needed a break. What little coffee
wasn't hurt. The hidden tape recorder capturing the interrogation wasn't
(20:48):
the only secret Ray and Tyler were keeping from Fred.
Doug Inverna had not, in fact been cremated that day.
Unbeknownst to Fred, their bodies were sitting in cold storage
at the mortuary, waiting for a deputy from Santa Barbara
to pick them up. How to Judge's search warrant, that
(21:09):
deputy would bring the bodies back to Santa Barbara, where
they'd each undergo a second secret autopsy, which would tell
a very different story about what happened at Bird Rock.
(22:05):
After Fred returned with the coffee, Detective Ray took charge
of the conversation. Basically, you're not sure what time it
was when you went out in the d from your boat. No,
the best you know it was after lunch. You know,
(22:25):
it's probably and again it's probably between one and one
thirty somewhere under there, okay. And then you rolled out
and buy the rocks. From the point where you had
the accident, you could still see your boat where it
was anchored. Yes, how far off of that rock would
you see? Your word, Probably twenty to thirty feet. When
(22:49):
the accident had Fred had told the detectives that the
purpose of being in the open ocean in the doory
was to take a picture Doug and Lady with bird,
rock and Perseverance. How are you going to take the
picture now you wanted the picture? Yeah, where I was
going to be sitting. I had been sitting on the
(23:11):
floor on the boat, or and my son was going
to be holding the dog, and the picture would have
been looking from this point over his shoulder. You would
have seen the rocks and the birds. He would have
been in the foreground the rocks and the birds, and
then Perseverance would have been in the background. But that
didn't really square. Was that kind of close to take
(23:31):
a picture of the rock. I mean, just because of
the size of the rock, even that kind of close
to get it into photograph, I don't really understand. I
guess your question. In other words, if you're going to
take a picture of of say he's your son, you know,
I am you sitting here with a camera and you
(23:54):
want the bolt in the background and the rock to
the side. Well, to see that it's a rock, if
you're so close to it's all, even the seas it's
a big wall, well you have to, I guess, really
look through the camera and see what the field of
you is in the camera, because it's not a wide angle,
(24:16):
it's a it's a narrower type of her thing. I
was basically listening to her as to where she wanted
the boat. We had rode out and we had stopped,
and Verna said, okay, so this should work. Thank we're
rewards this lot of work here. So I brought the
oars in the boat and I slipped off the seat
(24:39):
down into the floor so her back would have been
towards us here, and she was sitting on a cushion,
and she had another cushion up in this v excuse Fred,
the newly single dad was juggling. Yeah, all right, No
(25:05):
she went with grandma. Wow. I don't know what they
would have the tell okay, oh, so she would have
been sitting with her back to us. Ray wanted to
(25:28):
know about Doug's condition after the doory flipped. What was
his clothes? His eyes were open? What's he breathing? Could
you too? No, he wasn't breathing, just flity, you know,
it was just running from his mouth. He wasn't he
(25:49):
wasn't shaking, he wasn't wretching. What color was involmit again? Yellow?
It's almost like you could see the corn chips and
stuff that he had had for lunch. Detective Ray knew
Fred had a lot of ocean experience. To the ocean here,
(26:10):
you've been around the ocean boast you are so. Came
to California in nineteen sixty six and my first job,
the Navy appointment. Do basically been near the water and
ever since. Was this your first sailboat? It was my
(26:35):
first sailboat. I'd had two houseboats before that, and I
crewed on a number of sailboats, the biggest. The interview
went on for hours until it was six o'clock at night.
The detectives were still asking Fred questions while the kids
were popping in and out. I'll be up. By the
(26:59):
time the detectives were done with Fred, the tone had shifted.
They were less reassuring and Fred was less chummy. Somehow,
we need to figure out if there's a way we
could figure out to make sure that there was no
foul play or easy like that. This Ray handed the
(27:20):
baton to his colleague Claude Teller. Well, it's a couple
of ways. If you're willing to the polygraph examination. Sure, yeah,
I think I would probably have to talk to my
attorney and then find out just exactly what, you know,
(27:43):
what really I should be doing before you take a polograph.
I think I really and I really need to talk
to him before, you know, just Lord knows, you're sure
going through a lot. Now, we understand. We were just hoping,
because you know, there's no way to tell one we
or another right now. We're just hoping there's some way
(28:05):
that we could make it easy, shortened everything happen, you know.
I think sometimes almost come down to that anyway, because
I don't know if Verna and dougeat Insurance insurance. So
that's what this was all about. Yes, so we'll have
to we'll have to come to some type of resolution.
(28:29):
They're very likely before they'll settle its way. But were
they both insured? Yeah, our family was insure. Has it happened.
There were life insurance policies on both Verna and Doug
fresh ones. They've been finalized in the weeks before their deaths,
(28:49):
and the policies were substantial, with an additional payout in
the case of accidental death. The second secret autopsies would
(29:14):
never have happened had it not been for a Malibu
woman named Candy Henman. Candy had been a close friend
of Fred's first wife, Jean, and she had serious concerns
about Fred. I wasn't at liberty to say anything to
anybody because it's such a small town and small group
of people, and I didn't want to make some accusation
(29:34):
or say anything that. I just didn't want to do that,
So I kept quiet about it and just thought things
would all things would unravel and everybody figure it out.
But when she heard that Verna and Doug had drowned,
she was beside herself. That's when I said, I am
(29:54):
quiet no longer I don't care if I become persona
non grata for all the community. I was not going
to keep quiet. Candy started making calls. It was very urgent.
They were scheduled to be cremated, and I said, hold
hold it, hold everything. You got to do some kind
of investigation. I think there was a murder committed. Kentty
(30:19):
wasn't trying to gossip, burstling mud. She was on a crusade.
I was determined that day that I was going to
make sure that somebody hailed him accountable, somebody was going
to realize that there's a monster out there. Before they
closed the case on Verna and Doug, she told the
cops they needed to find out what happened to Fred's
(30:45):
first wife. Coming up on the next episode of Lost
tells marriage in Malibu looked a little different in the seventies,
but there there there was a group who, like me,
(31:07):
had never slept with any body else before we got married.
It was just you just didn't do it. And so
there was a little bit of a freedom for some
people to you know, get intimate with other people. It
was open marriage, and it ended in a couple of divorces.
(31:29):
That's next in episode three, The Shallow End, Part one.
Lost Hills is written and reported by Me Dana Goodyear.
It's created by me and Ben Adair and produced by
Western Sound and Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to Pushkin plas and
you can hear the whole season add free and get
(31:50):
early access to the final two episodes. Find Pushkin plos
on the Lost Hills show page in Apple Podcasts, or
at pushkin dot fm.
Pushkin. The day of their deaths, January second, nineteen eighty one,
Verna and Doug's bodies were flown by helicopter back to
the mainland. The next day, they were autopsied by the
(00:38):
acting Medical Examiner of Ventura County, doctor Craig Duncan, Hi
DUC Duncan Dan a good year. I met doctor Duncan
recently at his home in Ventura, which is full of
California oil paintings and human skulls. He's a psychiatrist now
(00:58):
and wears a big opal ring, but back in nineteen
eighty one, he was a forensic pathologist. Graduated from medical
school in nineteen sixty nine that I went to Baltimore
to complete my training under Russell Fisher, who was really
the grandfather of forensic pathology, or a major figure. And
(01:20):
he saw the case of Verna and Doug as uncomplicated.
It's a standard autopsy of a standard drowning case, and
handled in that fashion with fairly fresh bodies and obvious
drowning results. There was clearly evidence of water drowning, lungs
(01:46):
being full of water. I had the autopsy reports with
me and we went through them together. It didn't take
long the very little one on Douglas's body in terms
of external markings up. I've Verna over here, so this
is Verna. See no trauma, very little evidence of any
(02:15):
trauma at all on Verna's body, same with Douglas, other
than what I would anticipate in a struggle to prevent
one from drowning, not a struggle with another human, just
at other than the injury of drowning. There were no injuries,
(02:35):
no indication that Verna or Dug had been attacked. And
I contend that there was no evidence of homicide in
the initial autopsies, as evidenced by no assault wounds clubbing
on the head with an oar, etc. And no defense
wounds bruises, fractures on the arms, which would be just
(02:57):
human nature to do in the event of an attack.
It was simple, he said. No trauma, no assault of wounds,
no homicide. Doctor Duncan declared Verna and Doug's deaths accidental.
That determination freed Fred as next of kin to proceed
(03:18):
with his funerary plans. They drowned on Friday, the autopsies
happened on Saturday. On Monday, he'd have a memorial for
Verna and Doug at the Malibu Methodist Church, followed by
a reception at the house on Sea Level Drive. Meanwhile,
he arranged to have the bodies moved to a mortuary
in Los Angeles and scheduled them to be cremated on Wednesday,
(03:40):
January seventh. Then their ashes would be scattered at sea,
and Fred would begin to put back the pieces of
his life as the single father of three young girls.
Or that's what he assumed. I'm Dana Goodyear and this
(04:00):
is Lost Hills episode two, Quiet No Longer. Fred slept
(04:35):
alone in his and Vernah's bed. In the morning, he'd
have the awful task of telling Verna's daughter Kim, and
his daughters Heidi and Kirsten that Verna and Doug would
not be coming home. They remember it how he sat
them down and started methodically going through it. Yeah, he
told us. And it was hard because it's like hearing
(04:59):
a story that you do not want to know the
ending two. And he didn't just start off. He started
off telling us that they were out on the boat
and the dog had jumped into the water. But it's
you know, we're just waiting. He didn't just come out
and say it. And then you know. He told us
(05:20):
it was shocking. That's Heidi. We met up over the
summer at Heidi's house in Colorado. Kirsten was there too,
and so was Kim. Fred they said, had gone through
the story in order, the Dog, the Birds, the dory,
overturning the attempts at CPR. Here's Kim, but he did
(05:41):
start from the beginning of what had happened and walked
us through each step and then told us that they
were God. The three sisters are incredibly close. Add to that,
they all look a lot alike. Even though Kim, Verna's
daughter from her first marriage, is not blood related to
(06:04):
Heidi and Kirsten, the similarities are uncanny. Same straight, dark hair,
same long oval faces, same vivid dark eyes. Oh, people
have asked if we're triplets. I mean high and I
get twins all the time, and then when the three
of us are together they ask if for triplets. Kim
says this was going on even back when Vernon Doug
(06:26):
were alive. And then there were times when my mom
would take us out and she might have like all
four of us, and somehow it would come up that
we were a blended family, you know, in the very beginning,
and then who were the two biological siblings? And I
think a lot of times it was sometimes was it
you and Doug? Doug and I would get matched the time.
(06:50):
It's strange, but the sisters remember that time right after
Vernon Doug died as weirdly sweet, the three girls and
Fred at home eating food dropped off by the neighbor ladies,
figuring out how to cope. I have a lot of
good memories of the three of us and Dad and
the chokes about all the freaking castrolls. He would just
(07:13):
pull something out because all the women were bringing over casseroles,
so we're like, well, this is our dinner tonight. He
rearranged their rooms so the girls could all sleep together.
Kim and I had a bedroom downstairs, and Kirsten and
Dug upstairs. And then after the accident, he built us
a triple bunk bed so we were right off the kitchen,
(07:35):
right next to his room, and I remember just being
in there one time and he was in the kitchen
doing the dishes, like listening to Divo and just like
singing along. It was like another little lifetime of happiness
because I felt like we all got it together and
we were like, you know, a family again, the little
(08:12):
lifetime wouldn't couldn't last. And I still don't remember the
timeline of when we didn't know they were men coming
to talk to my dad periodically and we didn't know
what that was about. The men coming to see Fred
(08:32):
were detectives from the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department. They
specialized in homicides. Fred Railer is a waterman. Before prison,
(09:05):
the water was his life, which is kind of surprising
given where he grew up in Centerville, Indiana. You know,
that's funny. I was always interested in water. As a kid.
He became obsessed with the new sport of scuba diving.
My parents put a pool in, which was sort of
(09:25):
rare back in Indiana in the days. It was very helpful,
and I actually bought a scuba tank and a regulator
after I read some of Jocastos stuff and watched him
on television. So I taught myself to swim on around
and clean the pool without killing myself. And so that's
(09:48):
basically how I really got fascinated with it. Later during college,
he taught swimming. When I was at Purdue, one of
my electives was water safety instructors, so they actually taught
us the Red Cross methods for teaching swimming, and when
I came back, actually did swimming lessons in our pool
(10:11):
for a lot of people. And then when I left,
I left my Red Cross hat and instruction books, and
my mother started teaching swimming and she taught swimming for
several years. After college, he got his job at Point
Magoo working as an engineer for the Navy, and the
Navy sent him to as scuba school in San Diego.
(10:35):
The reason for diving was most of our trouble was
with stuff underwater. It would either leaked, or it wasn't
connected right, or you know, something was going wrong. So
they sent me basically to scuba school, and then that
allowed me to work with Navy diver to help install
things and also take pictures of them, and you just
(10:56):
see what was going on. The Navy started sending him
to the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai. They actually
had an underwater range, which is like a series of
microphones spread out underwater and they can track surface ships
and submarines and things. Fred oriented his whole life around
(11:18):
the water for a while. He even lived on a
houseboat called home in the Channel Islands Marina in Oxnard.
He had a little side business there cleaning the bottoms
of sailboats for race days. That's where he met one
of the winningest skippers in the harbor, Dick felt On.
So we did crazy things for sport. We had a
friend who was a Navy pilot on helicopters, and we
(11:41):
used to go to San Nicholas Island, which was sixty
miles offshore, and I could do some jobs out there
because we had some weather stuff out there, So I'd
go out there on the weekend and he would actually
drop us out of the helicopter in really nice spots
where we could get lobster and things like that. The
(12:03):
Channel Islands were Fred's playground before they became the place
his wife and steps on died. One of the things
the detectives from Santa Barbara were struggling to figure out
was how someone with Fred's water experience had failed to
(12:25):
save a child in a life preserver. They first showed
up at Sea Level Drive five days after Verna and
Doug died. It was eleven am on Wednesday, January seventh,
the day Fred had scheduled Verna and Doug's creamations. Fred
greeted them cordially. I thank both of your names. Their
(12:48):
names were Claude Tuller and Fred Ray. Ray did most
of the talking. He gave the impression that the last
place he wanted to be was in Malibu bothering a
grieving husband. He was reassuring, if disingenuous. He failed to
mention that he had a taper quarter running living explain
(13:09):
this Tokay. Santa Cruz Island, Ray said, was part of
Santa Barbara County, so the deaths were in their jurisdiction.
Our problem is this is that we were we received
a phone call because we're supposed to ski because it
was in Santa Barbara County. He was going to need
(13:31):
Fred's help clearing up a few murky details. To be
honest with you, Fred, we really don't know what much
about what's going on, and we have no idea of well,
I can't say we had no idea. We do have
an idea of what happened out at the island, but
everything is really sketchy. So, uh, we're kind of like
(13:55):
thrown into it after the fact. We don't know Yah, Yeah,
how it was ruled. If it's accidental or if it's
intentional or whatever. We don't know that parts we know
it certainly looks like it it was accidental, and so
(14:16):
we we are only looking into it to ascertain what
the circumstances or what happened. If you understand Detective Ray said,
it certainly looks like it was accidental. That's because there
was barely any physical evidence, just Fred's story and a
(14:37):
whole lot of head scratchers. The only thing that I
would suggest that maybe we do is so you know,
remind you that that if if there's anything wrong with
this at all, that you know you have certain rights too.
(14:59):
So I don't know if it's necessary at that point,
but certainly I would want to make your work every
every that you have. Plus, I'm sure there's going to
he mentioned that there might be some civil problems associated
with the drownings. But I'm sure that there's gonna be
a lot of legal things that you're going to have to,
you know, consult with, don't you think, say you read
(15:26):
Fred his Miranda rights, I should remind you that you
do have the way right to remain silent, and anything
you say cannon will be used against you for a
while amazingly, Fred went ahead with the interview without his
lawyer again just for awareness. You know, I'm Fred. It's
(15:52):
gonna really it will be difficult to talk about this,
I remarked when I I first heard about on the
on the movies want a Transity. Fred seemed eager to
please or form a rapport with the detectives. You know,
we've had a service for both of them Monday, and
(16:15):
we had friends over afterwards, and a lot of my
friends are really into sailing and the ocean, and all
those things were marked over and over that how many
times have you dumped a boat? And everybody just got
a little angry and got back in and everything was fine,
he said. Doug, whom he referred to as his son,
(16:38):
was very comfortable in the water. That's part of the
things that I find, you know, as perverse as it is,
is that my son was a good swimmer. He had
just mastered standing up on a boogie board. I mean
he's small, He was a small boy, but very agile,
(16:59):
and it was a good swimmer. He was practically babbling
answering questions the detectives hadn't even asked. But I think
part of the thing that got him, was the fact
that he was wearing a life jacket, that he was
trapped underneath the boat. Cool was he talked him to
the boat. Well, and again that's something that I can
only surmise because initially I was trapped up the boat.
(17:24):
They had a camera and the camera strapped got hooked
in the door locked. I drew a picture of that.
I don't know if he's familiar with the boat. It
was a sixteen foot shock rolling doory. Yeah, I saw
the boat, Yes, I did. Next, Ray wanted to know
(17:47):
about any objects that were in the boat with them,
clues that could corroborate the locations in his story or
work to contradict them. Did you have anything in the
boat other than than the three of you, I mean,
any were you carry and saying which is or cults
(18:08):
or no we had The answer was no. But Fred
took the question as an invitation to back all the
way up to the purchase of his sailboat months earlier. Well,
let me let me go back. I guess the easiest
thing is to really start in the beginning about September
(18:31):
August or September of last year. We really had a
desire to get a boat. We thought we went we
were to a point where we could really take off
and do some sailing. As it sounded like he wanted
the detectives to be happy for him. We just felt
so fortunate, I mean, so it was really just like
(18:53):
a real gream come true that we could get the boat.
And then we spent just about every weekend sailing or
initially just day sailing or with friends, then finally going
out to the island, and he made an er trips
out there. Then he started talking about Lady the beagle.
(19:15):
We had just gotten a dog about maybe a month.
I'd have to look at the records, but maybe a month.
For two months ago, the whole family want a dog,
and I was sort of against the dog one because
we had a boat and we had four children. I
felt they could ted each other. They really needed it
and we didn't need something else that they care of.
(19:36):
But they won, and we got a little beagle puppy,
and we had taken her in the car and we'd
taken her up and spent the night on the boat
that we never had her out. So one of the
reasons for the trip was one my parents were here.
From the end, I seem like I'm rambling. So we
(19:57):
were all aboard and we got underway in the morning.
My mother actually sailed the boat all the way over,
and then we put the sails down, and then my
wife takes the both handles the helm at that point,
and we put down a bow anchor and the stem anchor.
(20:20):
The detectives let him talk and talk until he pretty
much talked himself out. I think I'm going to pick
some tea. Can I get you some instant coffee? I
got the happy Fred needed a break. What little coffee
wasn't hurt. The hidden tape recorder capturing the interrogation wasn't
(20:48):
the only secret Ray and Tyler were keeping from Fred.
Doug Inverna had not, in fact been cremated that day.
Unbeknownst to Fred, their bodies were sitting in cold storage
at the mortuary, waiting for a deputy from Santa Barbara
to pick them up. How to Judge's search warrant, that
(21:09):
deputy would bring the bodies back to Santa Barbara, where
they'd each undergo a second secret autopsy, which would tell
a very different story about what happened at Bird Rock.
(22:05):
After Fred returned with the coffee, Detective Ray took charge
of the conversation. Basically, you're not sure what time it
was when you went out in the d from your boat. No,
the best you know it was after lunch. You know,
(22:25):
it's probably and again it's probably between one and one
thirty somewhere under there, okay. And then you rolled out
and buy the rocks. From the point where you had
the accident, you could still see your boat where it
was anchored. Yes, how far off of that rock would
you see? Your word, Probably twenty to thirty feet. When
(22:49):
the accident had Fred had told the detectives that the
purpose of being in the open ocean in the doory
was to take a picture Doug and Lady with bird,
rock and Perseverance. How are you going to take the
picture now you wanted the picture? Yeah, where I was
going to be sitting. I had been sitting on the
(23:11):
floor on the boat, or and my son was going
to be holding the dog, and the picture would have
been looking from this point over his shoulder. You would
have seen the rocks and the birds. He would have
been in the foreground the rocks and the birds, and
then Perseverance would have been in the background. But that
didn't really square. Was that kind of close to take
(23:31):
a picture of the rock. I mean, just because of
the size of the rock, even that kind of close
to get it into photograph, I don't really understand. I
guess your question. In other words, if you're going to
take a picture of of say he's your son, you know,
I am you sitting here with a camera and you
(23:54):
want the bolt in the background and the rock to
the side. Well, to see that it's a rock, if
you're so close to it's all, even the seas it's
a big wall, well you have to, I guess, really
look through the camera and see what the field of
you is in the camera, because it's not a wide angle,
(24:16):
it's a it's a narrower type of her thing. I
was basically listening to her as to where she wanted
the boat. We had rode out and we had stopped,
and Verna said, okay, so this should work. Thank we're
rewards this lot of work here. So I brought the
oars in the boat and I slipped off the seat
(24:39):
down into the floor so her back would have been
towards us here, and she was sitting on a cushion,
and she had another cushion up in this v excuse Fred,
the newly single dad was juggling. Yeah, all right, No
(25:05):
she went with grandma. Wow. I don't know what they
would have the tell okay, oh, so she would have
been sitting with her back to us. Ray wanted to
(25:28):
know about Doug's condition after the doory flipped. What was
his clothes? His eyes were open? What's he breathing? Could
you too? No, he wasn't breathing, just flity, you know,
it was just running from his mouth. He wasn't he
(25:49):
wasn't shaking, he wasn't wretching. What color was involmit again? Yellow?
It's almost like you could see the corn chips and
stuff that he had had for lunch. Detective Ray knew
Fred had a lot of ocean experience. To the ocean here,
(26:10):
you've been around the ocean boast you are so. Came
to California in nineteen sixty six and my first job,
the Navy appointment. Do basically been near the water and
ever since. Was this your first sailboat? It was my
(26:35):
first sailboat. I'd had two houseboats before that, and I
crewed on a number of sailboats, the biggest. The interview
went on for hours until it was six o'clock at night.
The detectives were still asking Fred questions while the kids
were popping in and out. I'll be up. By the
(26:59):
time the detectives were done with Fred, the tone had shifted.
They were less reassuring and Fred was less chummy. Somehow,
we need to figure out if there's a way we
could figure out to make sure that there was no
foul play or easy like that. This Ray handed the
(27:20):
baton to his colleague Claude Teller. Well, it's a couple
of ways. If you're willing to the polygraph examination. Sure, yeah,
I think I would probably have to talk to my
attorney and then find out just exactly what, you know,
(27:43):
what really I should be doing before you take a polograph.
I think I really and I really need to talk
to him before, you know, just Lord knows, you're sure
going through a lot. Now, we understand. We were just hoping,
because you know, there's no way to tell one we
or another right now. We're just hoping there's some way
(28:05):
that we could make it easy, shortened everything happen, you know.
I think sometimes almost come down to that anyway, because
I don't know if Verna and dougeat Insurance insurance. So
that's what this was all about. Yes, so we'll have
to we'll have to come to some type of resolution.
(28:29):
They're very likely before they'll settle its way. But were
they both insured? Yeah, our family was insure. Has it happened.
There were life insurance policies on both Verna and Doug
fresh ones. They've been finalized in the weeks before their deaths,
(28:49):
and the policies were substantial, with an additional payout in
the case of accidental death. The second secret autopsies would
(29:14):
never have happened had it not been for a Malibu
woman named Candy Henman. Candy had been a close friend
of Fred's first wife, Jean, and she had serious concerns
about Fred. I wasn't at liberty to say anything to
anybody because it's such a small town and small group
of people, and I didn't want to make some accusation
(29:34):
or say anything that. I just didn't want to do that,
So I kept quiet about it and just thought things
would all things would unravel and everybody figure it out.
But when she heard that Verna and Doug had drowned,
she was beside herself. That's when I said, I am
(29:54):
quiet no longer I don't care if I become persona
non grata for all the community. I was not going
to keep quiet. Candy started making calls. It was very urgent.
They were scheduled to be cremated, and I said, hold
hold it, hold everything. You got to do some kind
of investigation. I think there was a murder committed. Kentty
(30:19):
wasn't trying to gossip, burstling mud. She was on a crusade.
I was determined that day that I was going to
make sure that somebody hailed him accountable, somebody was going
to realize that there's a monster out there. Before they
closed the case on Verna and Doug, she told the
cops they needed to find out what happened to Fred's
(30:45):
first wife. Coming up on the next episode of Lost
tells marriage in Malibu looked a little different in the seventies,
but there there there was a group who, like me,
(31:07):
had never slept with any body else before we got married.
It was just you just didn't do it. And so
there was a little bit of a freedom for some
people to you know, get intimate with other people. It
was open marriage, and it ended in a couple of divorces.
(31:29):
That's next in episode three, The Shallow End, Part one.
Lost Hills is written and reported by Me Dana Goodyear.
It's created by me and Ben Adair and produced by
Western Sound and Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to Pushkin plas and
you can hear the whole season add free and get
(31:50):
early access to the final two episodes. Find Pushkin plos
on the Lost Hills show page in Apple Podcasts, or
at pushkin dot fm.
Host
Dana Goodyear
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