December 1, 2021 • 36 mins
Fred, Verna, and their four young children are the happiest-looking family in Malibu. It’s a Brady Bunch story, a blended family living by the beach. But when they take their 50-foot sailboat, Perseverance, to the Channel Islands, tragedy strikes, and Verna and Doug mysteriously drown. Fred’s story—that it was all a terrible accident—has a problem. And her name is Lady.
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Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushkin. The Channel Islands have the kind of stark, pristine
beauty that makes people fall in love with California. Santa
(00:38):
Cruz Island is probably the most stunning in the archipelago.
About thirty miles due west of Malibu. It's surrounded by glassy,
indigo water, giant kelp forests, and tide pools. But probably
the island's most fascinating feature, the one that draws kayakers
and scuba divers from all over, is its abundance of
(00:58):
sea caves with names like Shipwreck Cave and Limbo. On
the north side of the island, a couple hundred feet
into the ocean, there's a huge, white, spattered rock with
a sheer cliff face. It's called bird Rock for obvious reasons.
Bird Rock has its own sea cave, a tall chamber
(01:19):
with walls that are covered in green algae. It's mysterious
and cool, but once you know the story of Fred Railer,
it's impossible to look at the sea cave or any
part of this beautiful island the same way again. On
January second, nineteen eighty one, Railer, a thirty eight year
(01:39):
old man from Malibu, was pulled out of the water
on the open ocean side of Bird Rock, along with
his wife, thirty six year old Verna Johnson Railer and
her son, his stepson, eight year old Doug Johnson. Verna
and Doug were soon declared dead. Fred was cold, but
other than that fine, His pulse was steady, his breathing
(02:01):
was normal. He appeared to be unscathed. Fred said their rowboat,
a sixteen foot orange story, overturned and he had done
everything possible to save his wife and stepchild. He was
the sole survivor and the only witness. For many, many months,
(02:23):
we were just trying to figure out what happened and
is there any truth to Railer's story. That's a criminalist
named doctor Dwayne Mose. At the time of Verna and
Doug's deaths, he worked for a California state crime lab,
and eventually we decided there was no truth to it
at all. We could not substantiate anything he said, but
(02:51):
we could substantiate alternatives. And as I saw this going on,
it all came together in my head as a story.
Doctor Mose is an expert in crime scene reconstruction. When
he found out about the sea cave inside Bird Rock,
(03:12):
he wanted to investigate and I said, I want to
go inside, and I looked around at the rocks, the
height of the cave, and that's when another piece of
the puzzle fell in place. That's what I turned to
the people in the boat and I said, this is
where it happened. It did not happen out there in
the ocean. It happened in this cave. The cave, he said,
(03:36):
was spacious and secluded, and it's tall and narrow. It's
tall enough so that a man can take an oar
to a rowboat, swing it high, and bring it down
on an object with some force. My theory is that
he rowed the boat into this cave with the intention
(03:58):
of killing both of them. He would have started with
Verna catching her off guard. Verna was in the bow
and Douglas was in the stern, and Railer was sitting
where a rower would normally sit, and he was in
the middle. So while Verna would be looking forward to
(04:19):
defend the bow of the boat against the rocks, Railer
could easily pick up an oar, swing it hit her
on the head. Then he would have turned to Doug.
I believe that Douglas Johnson sprang from the stern of
the doorway onto Railer in an attempt to protect his mother,
(04:41):
and I believe that Railer took Douglas by the head
slammed the back of his head twice into the edge
of the seat where the seat met the inside surface
of the hull. Verna was petite, one hundred and fifteen pounds,
(05:02):
Doug only fifty something. Fred was six feet two. First
thing in the morning. He could have easily overpowered them,
knocking them out, Moses says, so he could finish them off.
He then threw, pushed, or carried both of them overboard
and drowned them. He then exited the cave, and it
(05:26):
would have been difficult to get both bodies back in
the boat, so I think he pushed the boat out
of the cave and then took the two bodies and
swam around on the other side of Bird Rock, where
he was found and taken out of the water by
the people on this boat that was passing by. That
explained so much, explained all the damage to the hull
(05:50):
of the dory, explained while there was no witnesses to
what went on, it just made it easier to do
what he did. By the way the oars for the
Dory were never recovered. They were lost somewhere somehow in
the ocean. But this is just a story, albeit a
(06:11):
powerful persuasive one. It's a story that a lot of
people have come to believe is true. It's a story
that helps send Fred Rayler to prison. But Fred's story
that he was trying as hard as he could to
save his wife and stepson, that he was a rescuer,
not a murderer. His story has a few supporters too.
(06:35):
To this day, I do not believe he did this.
That's Verna's sister, Julianne, Verna's mother, went to her grave
convinced of Fred's innocence. And Verna's daughter Kim, who lost
not only her mother but also her little brother Doug,
she believes Fred too, So do his two daughters, Heidi
(06:59):
and Kirsten. They all maintain that Verna and Doug died
in a tragic accident. And it's not just the family.
There are legal experts who leave Fred's case was a
miscarriage of justice. This is Justin Brooks, director of the
California Innocence Project. Well, it looked to me like the
kind of case where a person was convicted based on bias.
(07:22):
This summer, I got access to an archive of recorded interviews,
investigation reports, and court filings. They led me into a
forgotten world Malibu in the late seventies and early eighties,
when the consummate family man was accused of horrible crimes,
and Malibu itself was the motive. I'm Dana Goodyear and
(07:49):
this is Lost Hills. This is Season two, Dead in
(08:20):
the Water, Episode one. Mister Malibu. Fred Railer is an
inmate at the California State Prison in Lancaster. He's serving
a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the
murders of his wife, Erna and his stepson Doug. For
(08:40):
the past few months, he's been calling me most days,
usually at eight thirty am sharp, just after I've dropped
off my kids at school. Good morning, Hi, Fred, how
are you? His daughter Kirsten put us in touch. She's
forty seven, the youngest of the sisters, and she doesn't
have a family of her own. She's devoted her adult
(09:00):
life to freeing her father. In the time since I
started talking to Fred, he's been given a diagnosis of
kidney cancer, and the project of getting him released has
become even more urgent. For his kids. Fred has told
his story a thousand and one times. He's written it down,
recorded it into a polygraph machine, sworn to it on
(09:20):
the witness stand, committed it to memory. So the story
has a plot in quality, like an old horse that's
been led around the ring too many times. On January second,
nineteen eighty one, the family set out early from Ventura
Harbor on Perseverance, their fifty foot sailboat. It was a Friday,
the first weekend of the new year. Much of Fred's
(09:44):
extended family was on board, his mother and father, and
his brother and sister in law, who were visiting from
Indiana for the holidays. His wife, Ferna, the four kids
they had between them, ages six to eleven, and the
family dog, a six month old beagle puppy named Lady.
They crossed the channel to Santa Cruz Island. Verna steered
(10:06):
Perseverance into the anchorage to the east of Bird Rock.
Around noon. They had lunch. Then Fred's brother and his
wife took an inflatable dinghy to the island, bringing the
two older girls with them. Kirsten was only six, and
she was told to stay back with her grandparents and
take a nap. That left Fred, Verna and Doug. Fred
(10:28):
says an idea popped into Verna's head. We had to
puppy aboard the first time, and Verna suggested that we
go out and maybe take some pictures with the dog
and Douglas and the boats and things. Verna, he says,
had a specific shot in mind, Doug holding Lady in
(10:49):
front of Bird Rock with perseverance in the deep background.
So Fred, Verna, Doug, and Lady piled into the orange story.
Fred made sure dog grabbed a life jacket. Fred had
on a float coat buoyant but not life saving, and
Verna didn't have any kind of floatation device. He rowed
them around the north side of Bird Rock, the open
(11:12):
ocean side to the spot Verna chose approximately thirty feet
off the rock. In the anchorage, the water had been glassy,
but out here it was rougher, and they were also
effectively alone. So we had just gotten passed what they
called bird Rock, and we're getting ready to start lining
(11:37):
things up. According to Fred, Verna was in the bow,
the front of the boat. He was in the middle,
sitting on the bottom of the boat with his knees
over the seat. He had his back toward Verna and
was facing Doug, who was in the stern the rear
of the boat. Verna had been holding lady with the
dog's name, and she passed them to me, and then
(11:58):
I passed the dog to Douglas. When the dog got
very enamored with the birds that were on the rock
and got excited, and no sooner head he got ahold
of the dogs, and the dog started to go over
the side. Lady, he says, lunged for the birds, and
(12:20):
Doug lunged for Lady, toppling halfway out of the dory.
So Douglas started to go for the dog too, and
then I had one of the dog's legs and then
I fall a bump in my back, and I was
probably Verna trying to help as well. And with that
(12:41):
final accidental jolt from Verna, Fred says, the dory flipped.
Then the boat went over, and when I was underneath it,
I got tangled and got stuck underneath the boat. It
was terrifying, he says. Between the bow and stern lines
(13:01):
and his camera strap and the strings on the hoodie
of his float coat, he was caught. He couldn't find
an air pocket and he couldn't breathe. I actually thought
I was gonna die under there because I couldn't get
my head away from the seat. And when we were
I was underwater, so my head was up against his
seat and I couldn't get loose, and I kept trying,
(13:26):
and finally I did get loose. When he surfaced, he says,
he looked around and spotted Ferna. Then I saw her
on the bow of the boat with sort of like
one arm on the on the overturned portion. She was
like she was sort of holding on. Her eyes were open,
(13:47):
but unseeing. He swam straight to Doug. Doug was in
bad shape, listing in the water near the Doory's stern.
I noticed Douglas was off just a few feet away,
but he wasn't saying anything. The waves Fred says were
splashing in Doug's face, so I got to hold his
(14:08):
doug us and then I noticed that he was vomiting
and wasn't really responding. So I cleared the vomita and
I tried getting some air into him. Carrying Doug with
one arm, he swam back to Verna. He tried giving
them both CPR. They didn't respond. I was so stunned.
I didn't really know what to do it it was
(14:33):
way too far to swim back to Perseverance. He was
desperate to get to land. The dory was overturned and
it was basically floating to the south away from us,
and so I tried to go over to the rock,
bird Rock itself. Meanwhile, Lady had somehow clawed her way
(14:58):
onto his shoulders. So he swam that way with Verna
under one arm and Doug under the other and the
puppy riding piggyback. But Bird Rock was not to be
there salvation. And when I got to the where the
rock was, the bird Rock, there was a blow hole,
(15:19):
which is like a cavity where the water goes in
and then it shoots the water out. So we had
to swim past that. That side of bird Rock is
a sheer cliff some sixty feet tall, craggy covered in barnacles,
no place to get footing. But somehow Fred says he
was able to get Lady onto bird Rock. And then
(15:39):
I pushed the dog up on the rocks, and I
was trying to get a handhold so I could pull
Vernon and dug out of the water right now into
the rock, but I couldn't. It was January, the water
was fifty degrees and they'd been in it, according to
Fred's timeline, for something like an hour. They were bundled up,
(16:00):
water logged by now. Fred had on jeans of a
lore shirt and the float coat. Vernon was wearing pants,
a blouse, sweater, and a brown and orange nylon ski jacket. Doug,
Fred later noted, was dressed like Charlie Brown going out
to play in the snow. Underneath his life jacket, he
was wearing a bulky winter sweater and parka and a
(16:22):
pair of jeans. Near the rock, the waves surged to
four feet. There's three heads bobbed up and down. They
were exhausted, near death, or maybe in Vernon and Doug's case,
already dead. And then I knew, I was thinking. I
knew that if I didn't, if we didn't get help,
soon all three of was gone down. Finally, Fred says
(16:47):
he saw a sailboat and yelled for help. They heard me,
and then they came over to where I was and
threw me a rope. We got. Vernon and Douglas were
pulled up on board their boat. And then as I
was trying to get get up the ladder. My aggs
(17:09):
were shot, and then they winched me aboard, And the
next thing I really knew was I woke up in
the helicopter. He woke up into a nightmare. His wife
was dead, his stepson dead. I'm gonna ask you point
blank about Verna and Doug. Did you kill Verna and Doug?
(17:32):
I did not to Fred. Verna was perfect. Their life
together in Malibu was a dream. Why would he have
killed them and ruined everything? You have to imagine Malibu
(18:08):
when the tailors lived there, same epic beaches, bathed in
the same magic our light, but with practically no one
on them. It was the seventies. The innocent, squeaky clean
gidget era of the nineteen fifties was over. The coke
fueled eighties were just roaring into view. Malibu was on
(18:32):
the cusp of becoming the maximalist fantasia it is today,
one hundred million dollars mansions and Lamborghinis and Birken bags
at the beach, But not yet. There were celebrities, but
they were low key, laid back cool. Movie star Ali
McGraw lived out there with her young son and her
(18:53):
movie star husband Steve McQueen was nineteen seventy two, and
we rented a house on that fantastic broad Beach, which
at the time was the widest swath of perfect sand.
I love, I loved it, and it provided my son
with an incredible childhood. Their house, a rental on Broadbeach Road,
(19:17):
was a street away from the railers. And she doesn't
remember this, but Fred coached her son in sports. All
of us had funky little houses left over from the fifties.
You know, sand dunes in front of the house and
the kind of flowers that only grow where there's sand.
My house was a funky little clapboard house, really small,
(19:42):
three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a small kitchen, a living room
facing the ocean. It was when I rented it, an
absolute horror of brown wood inside, shag carpeting, brown kitchen appliances.
Back then, the celebrities had privacy. Nobody came out there
(20:06):
to photograph Steve or Goldie Hawn or Sylvester Stallone. These
are people artists and directors and musicians. Half of the
rock stars had second homes there. There was a freedom
to do whatever. There were tons of drugs. I didn't
(20:26):
do drugs at that point, but yeah, of course, I
mean it was the most amazing moment in Los Angeles music.
I never met Bob Dylan and he's still out there.
But there, you know, there was Neil Young, there were
most of the Eagles. There was you know, Peter Paul
(20:47):
and Mary and Chris Christofferson, him and the band. You know,
all of Robbie Robertson's crowd were out there. Robbie Robertson
had moved his family there sight unseen, into Sam Peck
and Pau's house in the Malibu Colony because his friend
David Geffen told him to the night that we arrived
(21:10):
there thing And I was sitting there with my wife
and then we heard this ungodly screaming from a woman.
So we jumped up and we ran out to the
front door, trying to figure out what was going on.
What was that? And we should call the police, we
(21:33):
should what should we do? We're running back and forth,
but the screaming keeps going on and on until it
becomes like an odd thing and odd screaming. And as
it turned out, our next door neighbor was Diane Cannon,
(21:54):
the actress, and she was practicing primal scream he set
up a studio in a former bordello called Shangola overlooking
Zooma Beach. Everyone recorded out there, the band and Bob Dylan,
we just we found this to be kind of like
(22:15):
a sanctuary that you could be invisible as well as
be around some of the most famous people in the world.
It was a very unusual and great combination. The seventies
became pretty crazy, and there was a lot of drugs
(22:40):
and a lot of everything going on, and when you're
just in the middle of something, it seems very natural,
seems very normal, so you just participate. You just hang
out and say, oh, everybody's doing it, this is cool.
(23:01):
But most of the people in Malibudan were pretty normal,
and the electricians and the school teachers and the movie
stars all sent their kids to the local elementary school.
What was extraordinary about it was in that time, I
have to call them, real people lived there. It was
just people who did every sort of job you can imagine,
(23:23):
and it was so normal. So of course the sea
there then was clean and beautiful, and the kids swam
in it every single day after school. It was maybe
the last moment that a middle class family could live
beachfront in Malibu. Before long, even Ali McGraw got priced out.
(23:45):
The house she was renting got put up for sale.
I couldn't afford to buy it, and so a big
entertainer bought it, took every single thing down off of
the property, and is currently on the market for sixteen
million dollars. Back then, Malibu was fun and it was sexy,
and it was a little out there. It wasn't really
(24:08):
yet on the map, at least not in the way
it is now. But it was also changing, getting flashier, fancier, faster,
and I was losing my fascination with the place because
it was changing. This vibe that it was there before
(24:30):
started evolving into different people and it didn't have the
same charm, didn't have the same quality of coolness with
all of these wonderful people. The drugs had changed, and
that changed everything. I don't know. In the beginning, it
(24:53):
felt fun and more inclusive and friendly, and later on,
you know, with hard drugs, I mean, that's all it
takes you. You know, you go from a social drugs
through hard drugs and ain't social anymore. And there was
(25:14):
a new crowd in town. It was a combination of
some people with money and drug dealers, and you kind
of scroungy people, and there was even It went from
being this shangril world out there, this bit of paradise,
(25:39):
into a feeling of it just felt dirty all of
a sudden. Soon the middle class, the real people, would
be edged out. People like Fred and Verna. She was
a teacher's aid. He was a civilian employee of the
naval base at Point Magoo, highly educated with the Masters
(26:01):
from Berkeley in naval architecture, but a government employee making
government money. They were raising four kids and what was
quickly becoming one of the most expensive communities in America.
It would have been hard to compete, let alone hang on,
but the Railer family had something very valuable. They owned
(26:23):
a house on Sea Level Drive, a private, gated street
that dead ends at one of the prettiest beaches in Malibu.
Their house was large and ugly, covered an orange shag,
but Fred was fixing it up, building a roof deck
with panoramic ocean views. He knew what they had and
if they played it right, they might be able to
(26:45):
ride this wave of real estate and money and get
to live in Malibu forever. Fred and Verna bought the
(27:10):
house on Sea Level Drive in the fall of nineteen
seventy seven. They were a new couple in love, and
they had a powerful connection. Fred was a widower. His wife, Jean,
the mother of Heidi and Kirsten, had died the year before,
and Verna was a widow. Her husband, Bill Johnson, the
father of Kim and Doug, had also died by suicide.
(27:33):
People whispered lovely. Verna's hair had turned prematurely silver. The
kids were all little. Heidi and Kirsten needed a mom,
Kim and Doug needed a dad. Fred was attractive, thick, curly,
dark hair, a little broody, a catch, and Verna. Everyone
(27:55):
in Malibu loved Verna. They found each other and it worked.
I think a lot of people envied Fred and Verna.
You know, they were the perfect story of yours, mine
and ours. That's Mark Hetrick, an old friend of the
family that I talked to recently. His wife, Beth, and
Verna taught together at the elementary school. Mark was a carpenter.
(28:19):
He was helping Fred with the roof deck and they
all hung out a lot. He kind of could do anything.
I mean, he wasn't a professional contractor or a carpenter,
and he wasn't afraid to, you know, take the roof
off of his house and put a deck on it.
You know, he could weld, and he you know, he
was a mechanic. I mean, he could just do all
these things. He was just very mechanical and very engineering.
(28:43):
As a family, they were athletic and outdoorsy, always hiking
or getting in the ocean. They were a hundred percent
involved in their children's lives. You know, Verna was in
the teacher's assistance in their classes, and you know, Fred
was there for all of the kids all the time,
and Verna was there for all the kids all the time.
(29:06):
And I mean they were the parents that every kid
would want, and their family was just the most important
thing to him. Mark told me he and Beth looked
up to Fred and Verna. They were the picture postcard
Christmas postcard family of just you know, two very handsome,
(29:30):
intelligent people with four kids that were just delightful. Those
were the kind of kids that we wanted to have
and the kind of the family that we wanted to have.
Fred and Verna seemed pretty unimpressed by the wealth and
glamor of Malibu. They weren't your you know, your real
upscale Malibu people that had a Hollywood connection, you know,
(29:56):
or a movie industry of connection. Because Fred and Verna,
you know, they were you know, they were pretty settled, solid,
you know, upper middle class family living there that m
you know, had this wonderful piece of property and they
were you know, and it was a wonderful place to
live in, a wonderful place to raise kids. Fred in
(30:17):
particular did not seem concerned with appearances. You know, he
was sort of not your average Malibu guy, you know.
I mean, he wasn't trying to be mister Malibu. So
was Fred affected by the whole Malibu glitz and glamour. No,
(30:38):
not at all. Fred, you know, he didn't really care
about that stuff. He was a family man living his values,
and there wasn't a lot of that going around Malibu
at the time. Here's another friend in an interview with investigators.
We've seen so many people our age that sort of
the man goes through this sort of midlife crisis where
(30:59):
they're sort of insecure and concerned with material things and girlfriends,
you know, driving a poor and chasing girls, and you know,
sort of where their family is a drag on him,
and there were an awful lot of people like that alboat,
(31:21):
and you know, Fred couldn't be more different than that.
Like a lot of engineers, Fred was logical and analytical,
and he was highly competent, especially in the water on
the sailboat. He was meticulous about safety. Here's Mark Keatrick
again in an archival interview. The kids always had their
(31:45):
life jackets on if they weren't in the cockpit, and
they had to ask an adult permission to get out
of the cockpit and go anywhere else on the boat.
Anytime they were ever rowing around in the dinghy, whether
it was in the harbor or whether it was over
on the island, they couldn't go out of shouting distance
at the boat. Mark sailed with Fred a lot and
(32:05):
was in several harrowing situations with him. But whatever was
going on, he said, Fred kept his composure, never never
raised his voice, never shattered or got angry. Man was
extremely calm and in situations that were potentially dangerous or scary,
(32:31):
remain calm under pressure. Fred's extensive training in the water
had taught him this. But that quality of composure of
not succumbing to panic or hysteria, it hadn't helped him
say Verna and Doug's lives. Fred was the only survivor
(32:55):
of the dory incident, the only human survivor. The day
after Verna and Doug drown, Lady the beagle puppy was
rescued from Bird Rock. Here's Tony Clinch, an experienced tailor
who knew the waters around Santa Cruz Island. Well, he's
telling an investigator about how he found Lady hiding under
(33:16):
a shrub. Were not supposed, Bob, that's how we spotted
the dogs. Das dog. Maybe that's begle. It would seem
a bittersweet footnote to the tragic story. Fred's heroic efforts
in the water had not been a total waste. At
least he was able to save his dog, But the
(33:38):
fact of Lady that she was improbably alive, opened up
a seam in Fred's story. Fred said he swam from
where the dory capsized over to Bird Rock, carrying Verna
and Doug with Lady on his head. Clinch didn't buy it.
With the current and the wind, just no, what I
(34:00):
could he have? He couldn't have in front the dog
couldn't have made it a shore. Then the claim that
he hoisted Lady up onto bird Rock and Lady scrambled
up at Suli. I would define that the line of
even being could have scaled and faced Cliff must If
Fred was telling the truth about where they capsized, what
(34:21):
he did where he swam, then Lady should be dead.
But Lady was alive. Fred's sailing buddy Dick had picked
her up from Tony Clinch, and soon Lady would return
to Sea Level Drive and provide a small bit of
comfort to Kim, Heidi, and Kirsten because they began their
(34:42):
lives without Verna and Doug. Lady's inexplicable survival that was
just one of the things that made the police suspect
Fred's story was the invention of a murderer. Coming up.
(35:11):
On the next episode of Lost Hills, detectives come knocking.
They have a lot of questions for Fred. To be
honest with you, Fred, we really don't know what much
about what's going on. 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
(35:34):
everything is really sketchy. So we're kind of like turn
into after the fact, somehow we need to figure out
if there's a way we can figure out to make
sure that there was no file play or easy like
that's next in episode two. Quiet No Longer Lost Hills
(36:04):
is written and reported by Me Dana Goodyear. It's created
by Me and Benedair and produced by Western Sound and
Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus and you can hear
the whole season add free and get early access to
the final two episodes. Find Pushkin Plus on the Lost
Hill Show page in Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin dot Fm.
Pushkin. The Channel Islands have the kind of stark, pristine
beauty that makes people fall in love with California. Santa
(00:38):
Cruz Island is probably the most stunning in the archipelago.
About thirty miles due west of Malibu. It's surrounded by glassy,
indigo water, giant kelp forests, and tide pools. But probably
the island's most fascinating feature, the one that draws kayakers
and scuba divers from all over, is its abundance of
(00:58):
sea caves with names like Shipwreck Cave and Limbo. On
the north side of the island, a couple hundred feet
into the ocean, there's a huge, white, spattered rock with
a sheer cliff face. It's called bird Rock for obvious reasons.
Bird Rock has its own sea cave, a tall chamber
(01:19):
with walls that are covered in green algae. It's mysterious
and cool, but once you know the story of Fred Railer,
it's impossible to look at the sea cave or any
part of this beautiful island the same way again. On
January second, nineteen eighty one, Railer, a thirty eight year
(01:39):
old man from Malibu, was pulled out of the water
on the open ocean side of Bird Rock, along with
his wife, thirty six year old Verna Johnson Railer and
her son, his stepson, eight year old Doug Johnson. Verna
and Doug were soon declared dead. Fred was cold, but
other than that fine, His pulse was steady, his breathing
(02:01):
was normal. He appeared to be unscathed. Fred said their rowboat,
a sixteen foot orange story, overturned and he had done
everything possible to save his wife and stepchild. He was
the sole survivor and the only witness. For many, many months,
(02:23):
we were just trying to figure out what happened and
is there any truth to Railer's story. That's a criminalist
named doctor Dwayne Mose. At the time of Verna and
Doug's deaths, he worked for a California state crime lab,
and eventually we decided there was no truth to it
at all. We could not substantiate anything he said, but
(02:51):
we could substantiate alternatives. And as I saw this going on,
it all came together in my head as a story.
Doctor Mose is an expert in crime scene reconstruction. When
he found out about the sea cave inside Bird Rock,
(03:12):
he wanted to investigate and I said, I want to
go inside, and I looked around at the rocks, the
height of the cave, and that's when another piece of
the puzzle fell in place. That's what I turned to
the people in the boat and I said, this is
where it happened. It did not happen out there in
the ocean. It happened in this cave. The cave, he said,
(03:36):
was spacious and secluded, and it's tall and narrow. It's
tall enough so that a man can take an oar
to a rowboat, swing it high, and bring it down
on an object with some force. My theory is that
he rowed the boat into this cave with the intention
(03:58):
of killing both of them. He would have started with
Verna catching her off guard. Verna was in the bow
and Douglas was in the stern, and Railer was sitting
where a rower would normally sit, and he was in
the middle. So while Verna would be looking forward to
(04:19):
defend the bow of the boat against the rocks, Railer
could easily pick up an oar, swing it hit her
on the head. Then he would have turned to Doug.
I believe that Douglas Johnson sprang from the stern of
the doorway onto Railer in an attempt to protect his mother,
(04:41):
and I believe that Railer took Douglas by the head
slammed the back of his head twice into the edge
of the seat where the seat met the inside surface
of the hull. Verna was petite, one hundred and fifteen pounds,
(05:02):
Doug only fifty something. Fred was six feet two. First
thing in the morning. He could have easily overpowered them,
knocking them out, Moses says, so he could finish them off.
He then threw, pushed, or carried both of them overboard
and drowned them. He then exited the cave, and it
(05:26):
would have been difficult to get both bodies back in
the boat, so I think he pushed the boat out
of the cave and then took the two bodies and
swam around on the other side of Bird Rock, where
he was found and taken out of the water by
the people on this boat that was passing by. That
explained so much, explained all the damage to the hull
(05:50):
of the dory, explained while there was no witnesses to
what went on, it just made it easier to do
what he did. By the way the oars for the
Dory were never recovered. They were lost somewhere somehow in
the ocean. But this is just a story, albeit a
(06:11):
powerful persuasive one. It's a story that a lot of
people have come to believe is true. It's a story
that helps send Fred Rayler to prison. But Fred's story
that he was trying as hard as he could to
save his wife and stepson, that he was a rescuer,
not a murderer. His story has a few supporters too.
(06:35):
To this day, I do not believe he did this.
That's Verna's sister, Julianne, Verna's mother, went to her grave
convinced of Fred's innocence. And Verna's daughter Kim, who lost
not only her mother but also her little brother Doug,
she believes Fred too, So do his two daughters, Heidi
(06:59):
and Kirsten. They all maintain that Verna and Doug died
in a tragic accident. And it's not just the family.
There are legal experts who leave Fred's case was a
miscarriage of justice. This is Justin Brooks, director of the
California Innocence Project. Well, it looked to me like the
kind of case where a person was convicted based on bias.
(07:22):
This summer, I got access to an archive of recorded interviews,
investigation reports, and court filings. They led me into a
forgotten world Malibu in the late seventies and early eighties,
when the consummate family man was accused of horrible crimes,
and Malibu itself was the motive. I'm Dana Goodyear and
(07:49):
this is Lost Hills. This is Season two, Dead in
(08:20):
the Water, Episode one. Mister Malibu. Fred Railer is an
inmate at the California State Prison in Lancaster. He's serving
a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the
murders of his wife, Erna and his stepson Doug. For
(08:40):
the past few months, he's been calling me most days,
usually at eight thirty am sharp, just after I've dropped
off my kids at school. Good morning, Hi, Fred, how
are you? His daughter Kirsten put us in touch. She's
forty seven, the youngest of the sisters, and she doesn't
have a family of her own. She's devoted her adult
(09:00):
life to freeing her father. In the time since I
started talking to Fred, he's been given a diagnosis of
kidney cancer, and the project of getting him released has
become even more urgent. For his kids. Fred has told
his story a thousand and one times. He's written it down,
recorded it into a polygraph machine, sworn to it on
(09:20):
the witness stand, committed it to memory. So the story
has a plot in quality, like an old horse that's
been led around the ring too many times. On January second,
nineteen eighty one, the family set out early from Ventura
Harbor on Perseverance, their fifty foot sailboat. It was a Friday,
the first weekend of the new year. Much of Fred's
(09:44):
extended family was on board, his mother and father, and
his brother and sister in law, who were visiting from
Indiana for the holidays. His wife, Ferna, the four kids
they had between them, ages six to eleven, and the
family dog, a six month old beagle puppy named Lady.
They crossed the channel to Santa Cruz Island. Verna steered
(10:06):
Perseverance into the anchorage to the east of Bird Rock.
Around noon. They had lunch. Then Fred's brother and his
wife took an inflatable dinghy to the island, bringing the
two older girls with them. Kirsten was only six, and
she was told to stay back with her grandparents and
take a nap. That left Fred, Verna and Doug. Fred
(10:28):
says an idea popped into Verna's head. We had to
puppy aboard the first time, and Verna suggested that we
go out and maybe take some pictures with the dog
and Douglas and the boats and things. Verna, he says,
had a specific shot in mind, Doug holding Lady in
(10:49):
front of Bird Rock with perseverance in the deep background.
So Fred, Verna, Doug, and Lady piled into the orange story.
Fred made sure dog grabbed a life jacket. Fred had
on a float coat buoyant but not life saving, and
Verna didn't have any kind of floatation device. He rowed
them around the north side of Bird Rock, the open
(11:12):
ocean side to the spot Verna chose approximately thirty feet
off the rock. In the anchorage, the water had been glassy,
but out here it was rougher, and they were also
effectively alone. So we had just gotten passed what they
called bird Rock, and we're getting ready to start lining
(11:37):
things up. According to Fred, Verna was in the bow,
the front of the boat. He was in the middle,
sitting on the bottom of the boat with his knees
over the seat. He had his back toward Verna and
was facing Doug, who was in the stern the rear
of the boat. Verna had been holding lady with the
dog's name, and she passed them to me, and then
(11:58):
I passed the dog to Douglas. When the dog got
very enamored with the birds that were on the rock
and got excited, and no sooner head he got ahold
of the dogs, and the dog started to go over
the side. Lady, he says, lunged for the birds, and
(12:20):
Doug lunged for Lady, toppling halfway out of the dory.
So Douglas started to go for the dog too, and
then I had one of the dog's legs and then
I fall a bump in my back, and I was
probably Verna trying to help as well. And with that
(12:41):
final accidental jolt from Verna, Fred says, the dory flipped.
Then the boat went over, and when I was underneath it,
I got tangled and got stuck underneath the boat. It
was terrifying, he says. Between the bow and stern lines
(13:01):
and his camera strap and the strings on the hoodie
of his float coat, he was caught. He couldn't find
an air pocket and he couldn't breathe. I actually thought
I was gonna die under there because I couldn't get
my head away from the seat. And when we were
I was underwater, so my head was up against his
seat and I couldn't get loose, and I kept trying,
(13:26):
and finally I did get loose. When he surfaced, he says,
he looked around and spotted Ferna. Then I saw her
on the bow of the boat with sort of like
one arm on the on the overturned portion. She was
like she was sort of holding on. Her eyes were open,
(13:47):
but unseeing. He swam straight to Doug. Doug was in
bad shape, listing in the water near the Doory's stern.
I noticed Douglas was off just a few feet away,
but he wasn't saying anything. The waves Fred says were
splashing in Doug's face, so I got to hold his
(14:08):
doug us and then I noticed that he was vomiting
and wasn't really responding. So I cleared the vomita and
I tried getting some air into him. Carrying Doug with
one arm, he swam back to Verna. He tried giving
them both CPR. They didn't respond. I was so stunned.
I didn't really know what to do it it was
(14:33):
way too far to swim back to Perseverance. He was
desperate to get to land. The dory was overturned and
it was basically floating to the south away from us,
and so I tried to go over to the rock,
bird Rock itself. Meanwhile, Lady had somehow clawed her way
(14:58):
onto his shoulders. So he swam that way with Verna
under one arm and Doug under the other and the
puppy riding piggyback. But Bird Rock was not to be
there salvation. And when I got to the where the
rock was, the bird Rock, there was a blow hole,
(15:19):
which is like a cavity where the water goes in
and then it shoots the water out. So we had
to swim past that. That side of bird Rock is
a sheer cliff some sixty feet tall, craggy covered in barnacles,
no place to get footing. But somehow Fred says he
was able to get Lady onto bird Rock. And then
(15:39):
I pushed the dog up on the rocks, and I
was trying to get a handhold so I could pull
Vernon and dug out of the water right now into
the rock, but I couldn't. It was January, the water
was fifty degrees and they'd been in it, according to
Fred's timeline, for something like an hour. They were bundled up,
(16:00):
water logged by now. Fred had on jeans of a
lore shirt and the float coat. Vernon was wearing pants,
a blouse, sweater, and a brown and orange nylon ski jacket. Doug,
Fred later noted, was dressed like Charlie Brown going out
to play in the snow. Underneath his life jacket, he
was wearing a bulky winter sweater and parka and a
(16:22):
pair of jeans. Near the rock, the waves surged to
four feet. There's three heads bobbed up and down. They
were exhausted, near death, or maybe in Vernon and Doug's case,
already dead. And then I knew, I was thinking. I
knew that if I didn't, if we didn't get help,
soon all three of was gone down. Finally, Fred says
(16:47):
he saw a sailboat and yelled for help. They heard me,
and then they came over to where I was and
threw me a rope. We got. Vernon and Douglas were
pulled up on board their boat. And then as I
was trying to get get up the ladder. My aggs
(17:09):
were shot, and then they winched me aboard, And the
next thing I really knew was I woke up in
the helicopter. He woke up into a nightmare. His wife
was dead, his stepson dead. I'm gonna ask you point
blank about Verna and Doug. Did you kill Verna and Doug?
(17:32):
I did not to Fred. Verna was perfect. Their life
together in Malibu was a dream. Why would he have
killed them and ruined everything? You have to imagine Malibu
(18:08):
when the tailors lived there, same epic beaches, bathed in
the same magic our light, but with practically no one
on them. It was the seventies. The innocent, squeaky clean
gidget era of the nineteen fifties was over. The coke
fueled eighties were just roaring into view. Malibu was on
(18:32):
the cusp of becoming the maximalist fantasia it is today,
one hundred million dollars mansions and Lamborghinis and Birken bags
at the beach, But not yet. There were celebrities, but
they were low key, laid back cool. Movie star Ali
McGraw lived out there with her young son and her
(18:53):
movie star husband Steve McQueen was nineteen seventy two, and
we rented a house on that fantastic broad Beach, which
at the time was the widest swath of perfect sand.
I love, I loved it, and it provided my son
with an incredible childhood. Their house, a rental on Broadbeach Road,
(19:17):
was a street away from the railers. And she doesn't
remember this, but Fred coached her son in sports. All
of us had funky little houses left over from the fifties.
You know, sand dunes in front of the house and
the kind of flowers that only grow where there's sand.
My house was a funky little clapboard house, really small,
(19:42):
three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a small kitchen, a living room
facing the ocean. It was when I rented it, an
absolute horror of brown wood inside, shag carpeting, brown kitchen appliances.
Back then, the celebrities had privacy. Nobody came out there
(20:06):
to photograph Steve or Goldie Hawn or Sylvester Stallone. These
are people artists and directors and musicians. Half of the
rock stars had second homes there. There was a freedom
to do whatever. There were tons of drugs. I didn't
(20:26):
do drugs at that point, but yeah, of course, I
mean it was the most amazing moment in Los Angeles music.
I never met Bob Dylan and he's still out there.
But there, you know, there was Neil Young, there were
most of the Eagles. There was you know, Peter Paul
(20:47):
and Mary and Chris Christofferson, him and the band. You know,
all of Robbie Robertson's crowd were out there. Robbie Robertson
had moved his family there sight unseen, into Sam Peck
and Pau's house in the Malibu Colony because his friend
David Geffen told him to the night that we arrived
(21:10):
there thing And I was sitting there with my wife
and then we heard this ungodly screaming from a woman.
So we jumped up and we ran out to the
front door, trying to figure out what was going on.
What was that? And we should call the police, we
(21:33):
should what should we do? We're running back and forth,
but the screaming keeps going on and on until it
becomes like an odd thing and odd screaming. And as
it turned out, our next door neighbor was Diane Cannon,
(21:54):
the actress, and she was practicing primal scream he set
up a studio in a former bordello called Shangola overlooking
Zooma Beach. Everyone recorded out there, the band and Bob Dylan,
we just we found this to be kind of like
(22:15):
a sanctuary that you could be invisible as well as
be around some of the most famous people in the world.
It was a very unusual and great combination. The seventies
became pretty crazy, and there was a lot of drugs
(22:40):
and a lot of everything going on, and when you're
just in the middle of something, it seems very natural,
seems very normal, so you just participate. You just hang
out and say, oh, everybody's doing it, this is cool.
(23:01):
But most of the people in Malibudan were pretty normal,
and the electricians and the school teachers and the movie
stars all sent their kids to the local elementary school.
What was extraordinary about it was in that time, I
have to call them, real people lived there. It was
just people who did every sort of job you can imagine,
(23:23):
and it was so normal. So of course the sea
there then was clean and beautiful, and the kids swam
in it every single day after school. It was maybe
the last moment that a middle class family could live
beachfront in Malibu. Before long, even Ali McGraw got priced out.
(23:45):
The house she was renting got put up for sale.
I couldn't afford to buy it, and so a big
entertainer bought it, took every single thing down off of
the property, and is currently on the market for sixteen
million dollars. Back then, Malibu was fun and it was sexy,
and it was a little out there. It wasn't really
(24:08):
yet on the map, at least not in the way
it is now. But it was also changing, getting flashier, fancier, faster,
and I was losing my fascination with the place because
it was changing. This vibe that it was there before
(24:30):
started evolving into different people and it didn't have the
same charm, didn't have the same quality of coolness with
all of these wonderful people. The drugs had changed, and
that changed everything. I don't know. In the beginning, it
(24:53):
felt fun and more inclusive and friendly, and later on,
you know, with hard drugs, I mean, that's all it
takes you. You know, you go from a social drugs
through hard drugs and ain't social anymore. And there was
(25:14):
a new crowd in town. It was a combination of
some people with money and drug dealers, and you kind
of scroungy people, and there was even It went from
being this shangril world out there, this bit of paradise,
(25:39):
into a feeling of it just felt dirty all of
a sudden. Soon the middle class, the real people, would
be edged out. People like Fred and Verna. She was
a teacher's aid. He was a civilian employee of the
naval base at Point Magoo, highly educated with the Masters
(26:01):
from Berkeley in naval architecture, but a government employee making
government money. They were raising four kids and what was
quickly becoming one of the most expensive communities in America.
It would have been hard to compete, let alone hang on,
but the Railer family had something very valuable. They owned
(26:23):
a house on Sea Level Drive, a private, gated street
that dead ends at one of the prettiest beaches in Malibu.
Their house was large and ugly, covered an orange shag,
but Fred was fixing it up, building a roof deck
with panoramic ocean views. He knew what they had and
if they played it right, they might be able to
(26:45):
ride this wave of real estate and money and get
to live in Malibu forever. Fred and Verna bought the
(27:10):
house on Sea Level Drive in the fall of nineteen
seventy seven. They were a new couple in love, and
they had a powerful connection. Fred was a widower. His wife, Jean,
the mother of Heidi and Kirsten, had died the year before,
and Verna was a widow. Her husband, Bill Johnson, the
father of Kim and Doug, had also died by suicide.
(27:33):
People whispered lovely. Verna's hair had turned prematurely silver. The
kids were all little. Heidi and Kirsten needed a mom,
Kim and Doug needed a dad. Fred was attractive, thick, curly,
dark hair, a little broody, a catch, and Verna. Everyone
(27:55):
in Malibu loved Verna. They found each other and it worked.
I think a lot of people envied Fred and Verna.
You know, they were the perfect story of yours, mine
and ours. That's Mark Hetrick, an old friend of the
family that I talked to recently. His wife, Beth, and
Verna taught together at the elementary school. Mark was a carpenter.
(28:19):
He was helping Fred with the roof deck and they
all hung out a lot. He kind of could do anything.
I mean, he wasn't a professional contractor or a carpenter,
and he wasn't afraid to, you know, take the roof
off of his house and put a deck on it.
You know, he could weld, and he you know, he
was a mechanic. I mean, he could just do all
these things. He was just very mechanical and very engineering.
(28:43):
As a family, they were athletic and outdoorsy, always hiking
or getting in the ocean. They were a hundred percent
involved in their children's lives. You know, Verna was in
the teacher's assistance in their classes, and you know, Fred
was there for all of the kids all the time,
and Verna was there for all the kids all the time.
(29:06):
And I mean they were the parents that every kid
would want, and their family was just the most important
thing to him. Mark told me he and Beth looked
up to Fred and Verna. They were the picture postcard
Christmas postcard family of just you know, two very handsome,
(29:30):
intelligent people with four kids that were just delightful. Those
were the kind of kids that we wanted to have
and the kind of the family that we wanted to have.
Fred and Verna seemed pretty unimpressed by the wealth and
glamor of Malibu. They weren't your you know, your real
upscale Malibu people that had a Hollywood connection, you know,
(29:56):
or a movie industry of connection. Because Fred and Verna,
you know, they were you know, they were pretty settled, solid,
you know, upper middle class family living there that m
you know, had this wonderful piece of property and they
were you know, and it was a wonderful place to
live in, a wonderful place to raise kids. Fred in
(30:17):
particular did not seem concerned with appearances. You know, he
was sort of not your average Malibu guy, you know.
I mean, he wasn't trying to be mister Malibu. So
was Fred affected by the whole Malibu glitz and glamour. No,
(30:38):
not at all. Fred, you know, he didn't really care
about that stuff. He was a family man living his values,
and there wasn't a lot of that going around Malibu
at the time. Here's another friend in an interview with investigators.
We've seen so many people our age that sort of
the man goes through this sort of midlife crisis where
(30:59):
they're sort of insecure and concerned with material things and girlfriends,
you know, driving a poor and chasing girls, and you know,
sort of where their family is a drag on him,
and there were an awful lot of people like that alboat,
(31:21):
and you know, Fred couldn't be more different than that.
Like a lot of engineers, Fred was logical and analytical,
and he was highly competent, especially in the water on
the sailboat. He was meticulous about safety. Here's Mark Keatrick
again in an archival interview. The kids always had their
(31:45):
life jackets on if they weren't in the cockpit, and
they had to ask an adult permission to get out
of the cockpit and go anywhere else on the boat.
Anytime they were ever rowing around in the dinghy, whether
it was in the harbor or whether it was over
on the island, they couldn't go out of shouting distance
at the boat. Mark sailed with Fred a lot and
(32:05):
was in several harrowing situations with him. But whatever was
going on, he said, Fred kept his composure, never never
raised his voice, never shattered or got angry. Man was
extremely calm and in situations that were potentially dangerous or scary,
(32:31):
remain calm under pressure. Fred's extensive training in the water
had taught him this. But that quality of composure of
not succumbing to panic or hysteria, it hadn't helped him
say Verna and Doug's lives. Fred was the only survivor
(32:55):
of the dory incident, the only human survivor. The day
after Verna and Doug drown, Lady the beagle puppy was
rescued from Bird Rock. Here's Tony Clinch, an experienced tailor
who knew the waters around Santa Cruz Island. Well, he's
telling an investigator about how he found Lady hiding under
(33:16):
a shrub. Were not supposed, Bob, that's how we spotted
the dogs. Das dog. Maybe that's begle. It would seem
a bittersweet footnote to the tragic story. Fred's heroic efforts
in the water had not been a total waste. At
least he was able to save his dog, But the
(33:38):
fact of Lady that she was improbably alive, opened up
a seam in Fred's story. Fred said he swam from
where the dory capsized over to Bird Rock, carrying Verna
and Doug with Lady on his head. Clinch didn't buy it.
With the current and the wind, just no, what I
(34:00):
could he have? He couldn't have in front the dog
couldn't have made it a shore. Then the claim that
he hoisted Lady up onto bird Rock and Lady scrambled
up at Suli. I would define that the line of
even being could have scaled and faced Cliff must If
Fred was telling the truth about where they capsized, what
(34:21):
he did where he swam, then Lady should be dead.
But Lady was alive. Fred's sailing buddy Dick had picked
her up from Tony Clinch, and soon Lady would return
to Sea Level Drive and provide a small bit of
comfort to Kim, Heidi, and Kirsten because they began their
(34:42):
lives without Verna and Doug. Lady's inexplicable survival that was
just one of the things that made the police suspect
Fred's story was the invention of a murderer. Coming up.
(35:11):
On the next episode of Lost Hills, detectives come knocking.
They have a lot of questions for Fred. To be
honest with you, Fred, we really don't know what much
about what's going on. 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
(35:34):
everything is really sketchy. So we're kind of like turn
into after the fact, somehow we need to figure out
if there's a way we can figure out to make
sure that there was no file play or easy like
that's next in episode two. Quiet No Longer Lost Hills
(36:04):
is written and reported by Me Dana Goodyear. It's created
by Me and Benedair and produced by Western Sound and
Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus and you can hear
the whole season add free and get early access to
the final two episodes. Find Pushkin Plus on the Lost
Hill Show page in Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin dot Fm.
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