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May 28, 2021 21 mins

On the night that Tristan Beaudette was killed while camping with his daughters, the campground at Malibu Creek State Park was full of families. Just across the access road from Beaudette’s tent, Stacey Sebourn was in a tent with her eight-year-old daughter and her daughter’s best friend. Sebourn provides a harrowing first-hand account of her experience.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushkin. I still haven't stopped trembling. I can hold my

(00:42):
fingers up right now and they're slightly shaking. I am stalling.
I don't want to type about June twenty second, but
I know I need to. A week or two after
the first season of Lost Hills wrapped up, I met
a woman named Stacy Seborn. This is her reading from

(01:05):
her journal. My dreams are starting to interfere with my memory.
My days are mixing up, colliding with one another. I'm
in a state of haze. It's hard to see what
I'm looking at. It is literally hard to hear clearly.

(01:26):
Stacy wanted to give me a firsthand account of the
fear and chaos that erupted in the campground at Malibu
Creek State Park on the morning that Tristan Boudette was
killed sleeping beside his two little girls, Friday four thirty three,
AM awoke to four to five gunshots, all in a row.
Panic my brain, Oh my god, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,

(01:53):
fuck fuck. Stacy was right there, just across the road
from Boudette's campsite, in a tent with her eight year
old daughter, Amelia and Amelia's best friend Sophia. I grabbed
myself one and turned it on. The light turned on. Shit.

(02:15):
I pressed it into the blanket. The sound of it
turning on startled me. Fuck. I covered it hard with
my hands. I knew I needed to be quiet. I'm
waiting to hear the crackling of twigs footsteps up to
our tent. We are going to be shot next. Oh
my god, help us. I can hear the baby crying, Daddy, daddy, daddy,

(02:41):
over and over and the most mournful, slow cry. My
heart sinks. I want to help the baby. Amelia, my daughter,
speaks up for the first time, and in a whisper,
she says, Mommy, what was that. I answered back in
a whisper. It was Firecracker's baby. Go back to sleep.

(03:07):
Oh my god, fuck fuck fuck. I'm on full alert
and listening. Did the father kill his family and then himself.
Is that baby hurt? Is someone consoling that baby? Is
that baby alone? Is he out there waiting to shoot

(03:29):
someone else? Is there a random shooter out there? Sophia
is still sleeping? Oh my god, fuck fuck fuck. I'm
listening and waiting for footsteps. We need to be quiet.
I fight the urge to run. I'm Dana Goodyear and

(03:59):
this is a Lost Hills bonus episode. The eyewitness do

(04:20):
you want me to get a mask? It's early on
a Saturday morning, and I'm at Stacy's house in a
quiet suburban neighborhood in Orange County. We sit down in
her TV room and the first thing Stacy does is
grab her laptop. She starts flipping through pictures of the
camping trip, starting with the drive out to Malibu Creek
State Park. The girls were goofing around in the car.

(04:42):
They have smiles plastered on their faces. This is the
very beginning. We loaded up the car and those are
my that's my daughter Amelia and her best friend Sophia,
who they've been best for instance first grade, so that's
five plus years now. They're just like sisters. So we're

(05:05):
very excited. This was our first time out camping alone.
My daughter and I decided, um, we're going to give
it a try. We loved camping, nature and hiking and
just being out there, so we thought, well, mald was
pretty close. Um. I did my research. I looked online,

(05:26):
I looked through the state parks. It looked very safe,
and I was very excited because I offered a lot
of things to campers. They have the mash site there
that was very intrigued about. They had a rock pool,
which I had no idea what that was. And you know,
if the girls could get wet and have fun and
it was hot, that was, you know, a great alternative.

(05:47):
Plus the beach was right there. So we had a
lot planned. You know, I had a lot of fun
expectations going into this park. They were assigned to Site fifty.
I pulled in and my first thing is to always
just observe what are my surroundings. And you do that
naturally when you camp, because you want to know where
to set up your tents, whereas the table to go.

(06:11):
But being alone with little girls, I also was keeping
an eye on my neighbors and who was around me.
So we got out of the car. We stretched, We
looked around um at our spot and I said, okay, girls,
where are we going to put the tent? And there's
an obvious flat place next to where our parking was,

(06:32):
and there's a picnic table. But the girls wanted to
go up the hill a little bit up the embankment
between some trees and there was this tiny little area.
I had lots of twigs and rocks, and I said,
I said, okay, you know, I was a little reluctant,
but that's what they wanted to do. And you know,

(06:54):
I felt like, Okay, this is their trip, Let's do
whatever they want. So we went up there. We swept
out our area, we propped up the tent, loaded it up,
and then began our our fin adventure. The Bodettes pulled
in and and then I ended up walking over and
talking to them a little bit because I saw they

(07:16):
had their kids and they had a bunch of equipment
that they're kept taking out of the cars, you know,
for the kids, bicycles and stuff. They were very kind
and so I felt even more comfortable being there with
my little girls. And that was another reason why I
wanted to talk to them too, since they were my viewpoint.
You know. The other campers to the sides of me

(07:37):
were behind trees and stuff. Okay, this is behind our tents.
The sun was going down and it was the Golden
Magic hour. I'm like, girls, get up there, I want
to get your picture. So this was a little incline
that I was telling you about. And this was dinner.
They made us dinner. They cut vegetables and brought out

(07:58):
soup and heated it up. The girls did. This was
their trip, so I let them do it. That was
actually my first fire that I made all by myself.
I was very proud of it. Okay, this is bedtime, Yeah,
this was okay, girls, lights out, go to sleep. The

(08:21):
next thing, Stacy knew she was being startled awake by gunfire.
I knew they were gunshots, and I didn't know where
the gun man was, and there was someone out there shooting.
So we just held tight. We laid low. We were
real quiet, and I was listening. I was listening for

(08:43):
any movement. That was the scariest thing, thinking that, you know,
we were sitting ducks at no defense and I had
my little girls with me. We just listened. I had
my phone on and in the meantime, I'm listening to

(09:05):
what's happening around us. And this man yelled for help
a few times. The man with Scott McCarty, Tristan's brother
in law. But in the confusion, Stacy was afraid it
was a ruse. Maybe the shooter was luring victims from
their tents. I heard a baby crying, and she was

(09:29):
crying in the most mournful sound. Calling for daddy over
and over again, Daddy, Daddy, and I still hear the
baby crying in my head. It's it was the worst,

(09:49):
and not being to help the family next to me.
They hollered back to the man yelling and said, we
have extra chairs up here, bring the baby up here.
He said his kids are sleeping in the tent and

(10:14):
someone shot his friend, and I believe he said. I
didn't hear what the family was asking, but he said,
my friend's no longer here. Trembling in her tent, listening
for footsteps, braced for more gunfire, Stacy knew she had

(10:35):
to do something, and as soon as I heard a
man yelling for help, I dialed nine one one, because
then I knew something was definitely wrong, and I whispered
in my phone as quiet as I could, but I
was articulating so that they could hear me. There have

(10:55):
been gunshots at the campsite Malibou Creek State Park, and
there is a man yelling for help, Come fast, come now.

(11:26):
Inside the tent, Stacy was trying to stay calm. Amelia's friend,
Mercifully was still asleep, but Amelia was wide awake, and
she was scared. She asked me, Mommy, are we going
to get shot too? And I told her, no, baby,
we're fine, We're fine, just go back to sleep. But

(11:48):
my heart, I am terrified, thinking that we are going
to get shot next. It seemed like it took forever
to get the police there, but when they did come in,
they filled this entire street up with their police cars
and I watched them through my tent. It was a

(12:11):
very dark night that was extremely black. When the police
pulled in, they had their flashlights out, and two of
them came up into my camp spot and I was
still so terrified, petrified and frozen. I was trying to
get their attention. I wanted to leave so bad, and

(12:35):
one officer I told them this, I'm really confused this.
This place seemed like such a safe place to be,
and he said I would never take my family here.
And I remember feeling taken aback and confused. Well, and

(12:56):
I told him, how am I supposed to know that?
You know? Knowing now what I know, If I knew
that then that there were shootings in that area, I
would not have been there with my little girls. At
what point did you realize that the victim and the
person asking for help. Were the dads that you had

(13:18):
been talking with earlier, m I knew it was them
when the when the sun came up, I didn't know
who was who, but I knew there were two fathers
and kids, and then there was just the one father
and the kids, so I knew at that time it
was one father that had passed. Can you describe what

(13:39):
the campground looked like as the sun came up and
you had some vision back? It was misty, It was
not a clear morning. I don't remember it being cold,
but I know shaking all over. I think I shook
for days. I think, you know, holding in all that

(14:01):
fear of not knowing what was going to happen, and
trying to protect my girls by not moving, you know,
by holding still when all I wanted to do was run.
You know, it's a it's a hard thing to do.
I remember watching the paramedics pull up. It was starting

(14:22):
to get light out, and the officer hollered at him,
we don't need to. Stacy says she was desperate to
get the kids to safety. She'd never seen the shooter,
no one had. Was he hidden somewhere in the campground?
Would he shoot again? After I gave my statement to

(14:46):
the officer, and I started to leave. I got up
to the front of the entrance and I, yes, I
made it. We're leaving. And there was an officer who's
taking caution tape and stretching it across my my exit

(15:11):
right in front of me. And okay, so I told
myself calm down. A lady officer came up to the
window and I said, I gave my statement, I've been
cleared to go, and she radioed back Stacy Seaborne gave
a statement, is she free to go? And it took

(15:32):
a while to get an answer, and when the answer
came back, it was no, one is allowed to leave.
My heart sank and I'm ready to just bust through
that little strip of caution tape, but I realized I
had reception. I put the car in park and I
called my husband, who of course didn't answer because he's sleeping. It.

(15:54):
What time was I leaving? Five or six in the morning.
I called my son, no answer, called the house phone,
no answer. And as I was sitting at the exit
trying to leave, desperately trying to leave, I saw a

(16:15):
woman desperately trying to come in. I'm sorry, I think
that might have been Scott's wife. Yeah, yeah, if I
remember correctly, she left and then came back. I was

(16:37):
still sitting there trying to get out. She was still
trying to get in. Stacy and the girls eventually made
it out of Malibu Creek State Park and she started
to drive home to Orange County. It was a long
drive home. When I finally got home, actually sitting at
the red light turning near our street, I texted my

(17:02):
older daughter and I said, come get the girls and
take them in the house because I knew I was
just gonna was all coming out. So as soon as
she the girls got into the car, my husband came
out and I just crumbled. In the days that followed,
there were no clear answers, just rumors and a creeping

(17:24):
feeling that Stacy had, a feeling that still haunts her.
Tristan was in Site fifty one, Stacy and the girls
were in Site fifty. The shooter could just as easily
have fired on their tent. I felt like it could
have been us. I do believe there are certain things

(17:46):
that had happened to keep us out of that spot.
For instance, when the girls wanted to tuck the tent
up and the trees and not in the open area.
It was just a little whisper, little angels whispering in
my ear. To let them do what they wanted to do.
It's gonna be okay. It's not the ideal spot, but
you know, this is their trip. Let them do it.

(18:08):
And I look back at it thinking that it was,
you know, a savings grace for us. I, you know,
was a single parent in a tent with two young kids,
and and so is Tristan a single parent with two
young kids, and I just it's terrible. Stacy tells me

(18:49):
she was able to find out the information for Tristan's
memorial service, and she worked up the courage to go.
I was very reluctant to go up to them at
the service because I wasn't technically invited and I didn't
want to intrude on the family's morning. But there was
an opportunity where I think Scott recognized me, so I

(19:12):
felt like it was okay to come up to him,
and I was able to apologize to him for not
helping him when he needed it, and he's so gracious
and he did acknowledge that I didn't have anything to
be sorry for. But I was able to give him
a hug and tell him that I'm praying for his family,
and I was just so sorry for the situation. The

(19:36):
trip to Malibu Creek State Park, Stacy says, was supposed
to be the beginning of something, a lifetime of mother
daughter adventures. Instead, it marked an ending. I did keep thinking,
you know, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry to you
know what was I being so stupid thinking it was

(19:57):
okay to do this. Unfortunately, it took away my m
This incident took away my right to be able to
enjoy nature in a peaceful way, a soul filling way.

(20:17):
And I loved it so much prior to that, because
it did fill my soul, you know, hearing the wind
in the trees and watching the birds, and you know,
it's just joyful. So I'm I'm relearning. I'm you know,
relearning that, Stacy, thank you so much. Leaving Stacy's house,

(20:46):
I'm thinking about what pastor Phil told me that violence
reverberates in all kinds of unexpected ways through generations. It
tears people apart, but a shared trauma can also glue
people together in unexpected ways. Stacy alone in her tent

(21:07):
with two little girls, camp set away from Tristan alone,
an attent with his
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