3. The Shallow End, Part 1

Fred’s first wife, Jeanne, a flight attendant for United Airlines, is glamorous, outgoing, the life of the party. But there are tensions in the marriage and they’re mounting. Jeanne tells her sister she’s had enough. She’s in love with someone else.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushkin. Lying to Hawaii and United seven forty seven can
be a real adventure. Whatever your pleasure, you will find
it on United seven forty seven Our Friendship to Hawaii.

(00:39):
It was nineteen sixty nine. Fred was living on the
houseboat working at Point Magoo and he was going back
and forth to Hawaii Jean's route, Jean, who would go
on to become Fred's first wife. That's how we actually
met is I was coming back from Hawaii to California

(01:00):
on a red eye and she was the one of
the flight attendants and I noticed her light off because
she was just a knock very beautiful woman. She was
tall and slender with dark hair, and Ali McGraw type
is how she sometimes described herself. She reminded Fred of
Mindy from Mork and Mindy, and interestingly enounced halfway through

(01:25):
there was a guy who fell down in the aisle
and they thought there wasn't going to be an emergency.
And I remembered him as a drunk in a bar
where we were getting ready to fly, and I said,
I'm pretty sure that guy's just drunk. Let me, let's check.
And then Gine and I had our first argument because
she wanted up feed him black coffee, and I said, look,

(01:48):
do you want a sleepy, quiet guy or do you
want a wide away drunk. You know this is this
is a no brainer. So anyhow, that was our first
fuss when we when we got ready to get off
the plane, I said, you know, I know we didn't
get off to a really great start, but could I
get shure an address you on phone number? I'd like

(02:12):
to see you. You don't want to get back. Jean
had grown up Baptist on a working cattle ranch in Evergreen, Colorado,
the eldest of three sisters. Describing herself later, she'd list
her hobbies as piano, horseback riding, boating, and swimming. She
loved the mountains and the beach. After graduating from Colorado

(02:35):
State in nineteen sixty four with a degree in music education,
Jean decided to become a flight attendant. When Jean met Fred,
she was living in an apartment near Lax with her
friend and fellow flight attendant, Barbara Warner. Barbara said Fred
and Jean's relationship was bumpy from the start. Here she

(02:56):
is talking to an investigator, but this moves throughout MATTHI
because of their schedule. He was out of sea some
time that she was gone some time, but after weathering
a pregnancy scare, they decided to make it official. I
think we were both about twenty seven or twenty eight

(03:17):
at the time, and Fred, I think you ever get married?
She thought this might be my last him. They canna,
but believed it because they were tim many men who
liked her. She really thought he was a very nice person. Again, Yeah,
he had never been married and had good background, all
of those nice things. They had potential, and he wasn't dumb,
and neither was Jeane. They had compatible intellectual time. They're too.

(03:47):
Fred and Jean got married in nineteen seventy at a
Baptist church in Denver and had the reception at her
parents country club. They were an impressive young couple destined
for a glamorous, adventurous life. By nineteen seventy four, they
had two adorable little girls and had settled in Malibu,
which was already thanks to Malibu Barbie and the Chevy,

(04:08):
Malibu becoming something more than just a semi rural beach
town at the western edge of la It wasn't so
much a place as it was a massed projection, a
collective dream Anyone who'd known them back in Evergreen or
Centerville would have thought they'd made it. They owned a
Jaguar then two. Life was good, or at least it

(04:31):
looked good from the outside. I'm Dana Goodyear And this
is Lost Hills, Episode three, The Shallow End, Part one

(05:20):
and Doug drown Family friend Candy Henman had called the
Santa Barbar Sheriff's apartment. She told them they really needed
to look into what happened to Jean. She thought Fred's
first marriage might shed some light on the deaths of
Verna and Doug. There were tensions in Fred and Jean's
marriage right from the beginning. Jean was ebulliant, extroverted, and fiery.

(05:42):
Fred was more withdrawn, controlled, exacting a slow burn. This
is Patti lytell a friend from Malibu. She's being interviewed
by an investigator after the drownings. She's on break from
her job at a bank in Santa Monica. I mean
the nice home. They had very good jobs, making good money,

(06:03):
so very very well off, and they were both attracted people.
Fred is an attracted very good to me. You know,
looking at them at that time, you know they've seen
like they had everything going for them, but something was wrong. Yeah,
I mean Fred and Jean had bought a house on

(06:24):
a street called Calpine, in a quiet neighborhood across PC
from Point Doom. It was so sweet that no one
will ever believe me. There was a pool, and then
later on when we went to some friends place and
they had a hot tub in the Jeane and I
looked at each other after that evening and said, we
need a hot tub. So then some other friends were

(06:49):
He was a shipbuilder, and so long story short, he
and I started building hot tubs, and the one for
our house was the first one. Fred loved it there.
You could hear the distant sound of the ocean and
the occasional owl when we first got there, and the

(07:09):
gene and I want to be the first time we were. Boy.
This is really dark, you know, because there's no street
lights or anything, so when you turn out the lights
in your house, it's dark. Fred remembers this as a
relatively good period in the marriage, and I think Jean
was basically quite happy. She enjoyed the house, she enjoyed

(07:29):
the kids. I was probably second or third, but you know,
basically we weren't they unhappy. They were a two career
couple trying to figure out middle class domestic bliss when
all the rules were changing, women's lib had happened, and
the sexual Revolution. They were supposed to be free, fulfilled,

(07:53):
self actualized, but they both traveled a lot for work
and they had young kids. So did they fight. Yeah,
they fought. The issues were, you know, primarily the three
big were sick. He wanted more, financeers, she wanted more

(08:15):
and you know, basically, how to deal with the kids.
Fred was an involved father, incredibly so by the standards
of the day. He worried about the potty training, what
the kids ate, getting them to school on time. When
Jean was flying, he'd packed the girls lunches and make
them dinner. Maybe it's the double standard, or maybe he

(08:37):
was an extra amazing dad. One of his friends even
said later quote he was a mother to those girls.
In nineteen seventy five, Fred was working for the Navy
on Midway atoll Way out in the Pacific with a
guy named Dennis O'Gorman. He spoke to investigators it was

(08:59):
really evident that he and Jean weren't getting along. O'Gorman
recalled one particularly cold moment about a month into the
time on Midway, Jean had been writing to Fred and
not hearing back. One day, she called extremely upset. She
didn't know if he's alive or dead, or when he
was coming home or a damn thing. The next morning,

(09:19):
he's got this big grin on his face and he's
got this letter about this thick and he says that
Continent one wants to hear from me. She'll hear from me,
all right. So he opened it up and it's what
they call sit reps, and all they are is their
navy messages, and it says recommend send money, recommend sending food,
recommend send you know whatever. So he just packaged up

(09:42):
all his copies that he had of these things for
the last thirty days and he wanted him up sent
them off to her. And he thought that was really funny.
I thought it was kind of pathetic, you know. So that,
along with other little things he said, I began to
realize that he and his first wife are not getting
along very well. Okay. When Jean's sister Carol visited them,

(10:03):
she found the atmosphere stifling. She thought Fred was sullen
and surly, even anti shut down. She hadn't seen him
in eight months, and he didn't even greet her with hello,
and she was alarmed to hear the way he belittle
Jean addressing her as wife. Carol even asked Fred had

(10:23):
he forgotten her sister's name. But things for Jean and
Fred were about to go from bad to worse because
there was a secret in their marriage and Jeanne had
started spreading it all over town. There might be at

(10:52):
least a partial explanation for Fred's incredibly awkward behavior deep
embarrassment because Jeanne was pretty uninhibited when it came to
expressing her discontent, and her problem with the sex wasn't
his insatiable appetite. I noticed that it was described in
the report here that Jane called Fred the mint a

(11:15):
man because he couldn't last very long. Yeah, she did.
This is Barbara Warner again, Jean's old roommate, speaking to
the investigator. Barbara also mentioned Fred and Jean's tussles of
her finances. Jean was used to making her own money
and spending it how. She pleased extremely highly his money,

(11:37):
at least she thought so, because she wanted something she
charged his guy for later, She's never played on her
bills or anything, because she just wouldn't had charged bought
that saint she got to cash perfecting. At some point,
Jean started to outright hate her husband Fred. Talking about him,
she'd shut her and say, I can't stand him. This

(11:58):
is Candy Henman. There. There was this part of her
that when she wasn't around Fred and she wasn't thinking
about Fred, that was very vibrant and very very energetic
and positive. And then she would revert into the other
kind of personality if she was around him or talking
about him, then she would become intimidated. Candy felt very

(12:20):
strongly that Jean wasn't safe with Fred. I kept telling
her she needed to get out of that marriage. In
nineteen seventy, California became the country's first no fault divorce state,
and soon everyone was doing it. Within a year, for
every one hundred couples that got married in La County,

(12:41):
seventy nine were filing for divorce. In Malibu. There was
also another factor splitting up families, maybe some wife swapping.
This is Michelle Williams, a friend of the Railers, and
to be clear, she wanted me to know that she
was not part of the swinging scene. But there was

(13:04):
a group who, like me, had never slept with anybody
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

(13:26):
ended in a couple of divorces. There was this one
book everyone was reading about experimenting outside marriage and how
fulfilling it could be. Carl Rogers, noted psychologist, came out
with a book called Becoming Partners where he described what
open marriage would look like, and everybody was reading that book. Yeah, no,

(13:52):
that was a pretty popular book. Jean, unhappy and frustrated,
had also begun to look outside her marriage for fulfillment.
She told friends about a relationship she had at work
with an inflight supervisor on her Honolulu root and then
without meaning to, she fell in love with Fred's sailing buddy, Dick.

(14:14):
Fell though in Dick, the same person who a few
years later would help return Lady the Beagle to the
family after her adventure on Bird Rock that same Dick,
Jean and Fred spent a lot of time with Dick
and his wife Linda, as well as with another couple,
Bill and Donna. Fairfield. It was always the six of

(14:36):
them sailing together and getting naked in the hot tub.
Somehow along the way, Jean and Dick started to confide
in each other. Here's Jean's friend Barbara Warner again. He
was disenchanted at the time, and they had the trint
for a long time. Both the couple of Linda Dick
had the friends and Fred they had sailed together and

(14:57):
it was one of the friendship things that had started
out as a friendship affair. As she was having trouble,
she would talk to Dick and then maybe camp more
than friend or would they meet at would they most
count Jean would check in under her own name to
take advantage of her United Airlines discount, and that was

(15:18):
not the only example of her indiscretion. This is Mike Killeen,
a friend of Fred's, talking to an investigator. Jean let
everybody know that Fred had premature jaculations in the embarrassing
Jean let everybody know that she was having affairs. My god,
I knew that she was having an affair with this

(15:39):
Dick guy. I knew that, unlike her fling at work,
Jean's relationship with Dick was a serious affair. It went
on for several years, and as she grew more consumed
with it, she told more and more people. The more
she hated Fred, the more she wanted to be with Dick,
and the deeper she fell in love with Dick, the

(16:00):
more she wanted to extricate herself from Fred. To this day,
though Fred denies that he knew about their relationship, I'll
never know about Jean. You know, there was no outward signs,
there was no discussions, there was no anything that would

(16:20):
lead me to believe that. And he insists he didn't
cheat either, And I know for myself that I didn't.
I was quite happy and wanted to settle down with
one person. But one person who almost certainly did know
about Jean's affair with Deck was Verna Johnson. Before she

(16:44):
was Fred's second wife, Verna was one of Jean's best friends.
She taught at the preschool at the Methodist church where
Jean and Fred sent Heidi, and she often looked after
the girls when Jean was flying. Jean and Verna were
extremely tight, sharing secrets, gossip fears. Verna knew all Jeans start.

(17:05):
Verna's sister, Julianne, recalled spending a day at the amusement
park Magic Mountain with Verna and Jean and all the kids.
Julianne told an investigator that Jean ignored the children. She
was just totally preoccupied with dishing about Fred. She didn't
say really nice things about him, and she talked like

(17:28):
a gossips talking. She would say one thing and then
turn around and say, well, I told so and so
of his part, and she would clerk. She would talk
about a lot of other people, meaning she was saying
something to burn him. She said, well, I told so
and so the same thing about Fred. Warner was a
confidant of Jeans to listen to her private blues about

(17:52):
what a rat Fred was. Candy Henman and a lot
of Jean's friends knew Fred kept a handgun in the house.
I asked him about that. It was a three fifty
seven Smith and Wesson his parents had given him for
Christmas when he was at Purdue. He kept it loaded
in the drawer of his nightstand. We were in the
middle of nowhere, and it would do something. Hadn't see

(18:15):
something happened. He told me the gun was there for
Jean's protection as much as anything else. But the number
one person, Jean wanted protection from was Fred. Patty Lytell
remembered something even more unsettling. She told detectives that Jean
had confided in her an verna that Fred was threatening her,

(18:37):
saying if he ever caught her cheating, he'd kill her.
There was one particularly bad night in the hot tub

(18:58):
at Calpine that everyone remembers. It was the Sextet, the Railers,
the Fairfields, the velf Owens naked. Of course, Jean, according
to others who were there, was a little drunk or
a little high, and she was getting a little loud.
It was obnoxious. This was an ongoing thing. Jeane would

(19:19):
get carried away. We would have wine with dinner, and
when we went to parties and things. I think that's
when she would get caught up in the in the
party atmosphere and sometimes overdo it. She was kind of
a lightweight when it came to alcohol and pot. I

(19:41):
was bigger. I had a better way of hanging on
to it and still, you know, be able to do
long division. So that was sort of the difference. On
the night in question, Jean drove head first into the
hot tub, where everyone else, including Dick, was already hanging out.

(20:02):
Fred was furious. He later wrote quote, I pulled her
up by her hair and told her to get a
hold of herself. When Fred's friend Mike Colleen, who wasn't there,
heard about the incident, he thought it sounded overblown. His
sympathies lay entirely with Fred. Must have been a situation

(20:24):
where Jeane was probably mounting off about one thing and
another and embarrassing everybody, and maybe Fred did something that
we all do occasionally, he overreacted. According to Bill Fairfield's
statement to detectives, everyone in the hot tub laughed about
the absurdity of Fred yankee Jean out of the water,
but this laughter probably did not include Jean. It became

(20:46):
another story she confided miserably to her friends. Years later,
after Verna's death, investigators interviewed Dick felt thown about Fred
and Jean, and Dick also took Fred's side, his sailing
buddy over his old lover. He mentioned that Fred and
Jean fought openly in public and that it seemed to

(21:08):
him Jean was the instigator. One day, according to a
flight attendant friend of Jeans, she showed up at work
in a state of distress. One incident, I remember the
strength she came to work with her start tied up
around her neck. She had the scarf from her uniform

(21:31):
tied around her neck and asked for permission to keep
wearing it throughout the flight because I was charge, you
don't mind and lend our Today I think I've kind
of said Widder tried to feel me and I said
water And she said she tried to joke, told the
stars down and did you call that pitting? There were

(21:54):
marks on her necks where she tried to choke her.
There's a feeling that I got from her that very up.
You know, we're not at the band to know. Fred

(22:22):
says this never happened, that he was never physical or
violent with Jean, but Jeane told friends she was scared
of him, so scared she was going to move Fred's
pistol over to Verna's house. Also, I guess things start
going down the hill to a point where you mentioned

(22:42):
that Jean had told you several times had threatened to
kill her. If you ever car fooling around. That's the
investigator questioning, Barbara Warner. You're good and I never heard
can't say that I only heard it true. Jena. Yeah,
Jane would say something I can't like that. I would
think good, but I think genuinely I remember her saying,

(23:07):
you know, I think he's capable of him to be
honest with you. I don't know. The Only thing I
can do is just knowing thread and knowing his great
pride is that his pride was hurt by possibly her.
I think its towards the end, she was getting so
fed up with it. Knowing teens, she probably would say,

(23:30):
I can't stand it. Another minute's getting out of here.
And it probably got to him after a while, and
he was outward. But he was a very virile type
macho man, and I don't think he really was, and
I think he probably drew this up to him and
it was tough on him to put it mildly. But

(23:50):
early summer nineteen seventy six, Jane was growing desperate. I
know she tried to get the two of them his
accountlings and he had refused to go. And then finally,
after she had thrested separation and divorced, she said, well, okay,
let's try it. Jean found a therapist and they went

(24:11):
a couple of times. It was a failure. The best
part about it, Fred says is that he and Jean
would get a baskin Robbins afterward, and I guess it
got so bad to a point that she said, I
don't no counseling in the world that's going to help
us beyond hope. Fred was desperate too. The Navy was
sending him back to Kauai that summer for an extended

(24:33):
stay at the Pacific Missile Test Facility. He didn't want
the marriage to end. He thought they could solvage it,
but Jean seemed past caring. Jean called a lawyer to
initiate the process of divorce. She was going to tell
him that he was going to be kicked out of
coul when he got home. By that point, by being

(24:56):
away and thinking and trying to get her head straight,
but she was waiting for him back. They had talked
and both of them to that they had a definite problem.
He was going to put her foot down and say
I've had him separate. Yeah. She's the kind of person
that when he got back from Hawaii in October, Jean

(25:19):
would finally end the marriage. Barbara has speculated many times
about what went on between Jean and Fred in that
fragile moment when he returned. You have heartal situation. What
exactly do you might do? But she may have been
so exasperated, it's so tired of SETI I'll tell you

(25:41):
what I have had him a fairy. I can't take
a spirit any longer. It maybe not realizing him. Why
don't he re love? Jean never did divorce Fred because
shortly after he got home, unexpectedly and inexplicably, she died.

(26:06):
Coming up on the next episode of Lost Tales, Jean's
funeral gets people talking. Everything around him seemed black, dark,
and his face, his look, his everything was just darkness.
And I knew without a doubt that he had done it.
He just looked wicked, an evil less dark face in

(26:30):
my face and coming over and being friendly and chatty,
and I was thinking, you're a murderer. Why are you
even talking to me? That's next in episode four, The
Shallow End, Part two. Lost Hills is written and reported
by Me Dana Goodyear. It's created by me and Ben

(26:52):
Adair and produced by Western Sound and Pushkin Industries. Subscribe
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