March 16, 2021 • 37 mins
After Tristan Beaudette’s murder, other victims come forward telling similar tales. . . of a sniper in Malibu who has been shooting at campers and at moving cars for the past 18 months. Always in the dark of night, at 4AM.
The cops say they can’t connect the crimes, but then they arrest a drifter: 42-year-old Anthony Rauda, who lives under a tarp behind the Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station. Is he the killer, or a scapegoat?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushkin. Mountain lions do their hunting in the dark after
(00:57):
dusk and in the early morning hours, right before the
sun comes up. The hills above Malibu, California, are full
of them. They're vicious predators, but they're so shy that
the wildlife biologists who study them call them ghost cats.
If you hike in the hills surrounding Malibu, you probably
(01:17):
haven't seen a mountain lion, but one has almost certainly
seen you. Hemmed in by freeways and in ever expanding suburbia,
the mountain lions are stressed half crazy. A few years ago,
I wrote a story about them for The New Yorker,
where I work. The people in Malibu were really upset,
(01:38):
especially about a rogue lion known as P forty five,
which was slaughtering pet alpacas and mini horses seemingly for sport.
There was a huge debate over who was to blame
for these deaths, a murderous lion or the people who
had left their pets unprotected in lion country. One morning,
(02:03):
I went out searching for evidence of lions in the
mountains near Malibu Creek State Park. I was with one
of the wildlife biologists, and we were in a tangle
of branches and bushes, looking at a dried out deer carcass,
a month old lion kill. This question just popped into
my head, so I asked him, Hey, do you ever
(02:24):
find a dead body out here? He turned and looked
at me so strangely he was going to stick to
talking about lions, no comment on what humans might do
in these hills. In my fifteen years living in Los Angeles,
(02:48):
I've logged a decent amount of time in Malibu, sometimes reporting,
but mostly just taking my kids for afternoons at the beach.
You know, Malibu, It's paradise, the ocean, the mountains, the
honeycolored light, celebrities and surf bums, and laid back billionaires,
people with prayer beads and private security. It's like a
(03:12):
postcard of itself. The real gidget is a hostess at
a local restaurant, and you could easily run into Kim
Kardashian at the sushi bar. But often in Malibu I
get this unsettling sensation that there's something else there underneath
that pretty surface, something elusive and slightly menacing, a riptide
(03:39):
an undertow, and I can never quite shake the feeling.
That the place is warning me to go away. Here's
what I know when I start all this. It's not
a lot. It was before sunrise June twenty second, eighteen,
(04:05):
and the campground at Malibu Creek State Park was packed.
It's an idyllic spot. Campsites are arranged in a ring
around a large meadow dotted with oak trees. Jagged peaks
zigzag across the open sky. It was four in the morning,
still dark. Everyone was inside their nylon tents and RVs,
(04:28):
cozy in their sleeping bags for a couple more hours.
But someone was awake, watching, silent, undetected, slipping shadow like
around the sleeping campground. He had a gun and he
(04:48):
fired it directly into one family's tent. Inside the tent
was a man named Tristan Bodette, a brilliant young research
scientist thirty five years old. He was sleeping beside his
two little girls. The bullet struck his forehead, killing him,
(05:12):
and whoever did it slipped away into the darkness. It's
like a story that's meant to terrify you, playing on
your deepest fears. A story you'd tell around a campfire
with ghosts and murderers and things you can't explain except
that this story is true. And once I heard it,
(05:35):
I couldn't stop thinking about it. How did this happen?
How does anything like this happen in Malibu, of all places?
But it did happen in Malibu, And as I'd come
to find out, inexplicable, nightmarish things happen in Malibu all
the time. Tonight, a mystery in Malibu. The driver found
(05:58):
a man dead in a ditch along Lost Versus Canyon Road.
There have also been nine additional calls for shots fire.
I just don't feel safe anymore. Breaking now a homicide investigation.
We do have a nude body and it's still unclear
exactly how it got here. It is a suspicious death.
(06:21):
The human bones were just a half mile from the trailhead.
We possibly said somebody screaming for help. Detectives and I
trying to figure out who he is and who killed him.
I'll tell you what. They'll be standing with pitchforks outside
Lost til Sheriff's department. I said to holler down, are
you all right? She said, I'm just resting or something
like that. Once she left, she just disappeared. I'm doing
(06:46):
a goodyear and This is Lost Hells episode one, the
(07:18):
Killing Zone. Would you guys start by just saying your
names and what your relationship is to Tristan. My name
is Scott McCurdy. I'm Tristan's brother in law, and this
is my wife. My name's Pamela wo I'm at Tristan's
(07:38):
sister in law and married to Scott McCurdy. I want
to talk to Scott because he was with Tristan on
the camping trip. He was in the next tent over
with his own young boys. He's the closest person to
the story. Tristan's little girls were two and four. The
younger one could barely talk. Scott is the closest thing
(07:59):
to a witness. Tristan always has this bucket list of
things that he wants to do, and camping in Malibu
State Park was on the bucket list. Years ago, before
we had kids, he and I went up to Malibu
Creek State Park and he and I always wanted to
go back and camp there. Scott tells me that Tristan,
(08:20):
his wife, Erica, and their kids were about to move
from Orange County up to the Bay Area. I feel
like he knew that I was a little bit sad
that he was going to be leaving Southern California. Erica
is an obgyn and had a medical exam to study for.
So Tristan proposed a trip something he and Scott had
been wanting to do for a long time, camping just
(08:41):
the dads with the kids in Malibu Creek State Park,
and he wanted to have kind of one last camping
trip while he was down here and we were all together,
and so it was meant to be this bonding, really
fun experience. The caravan up to Malibu, we're driving up
(09:04):
and we pull in and Tristan was first, and we
passed the ranger booth where you get your site, and
I follow Tristan in and we'd go down the long
winding road and he makes a wrong turn and off
the asphalt road onto this gravel dirt road, which later
(09:25):
he commented he was so excited that he got to
take his forest or off roading. It was such a funny, dude.
The campground is basically a large oak meadow. There's a
one way asphalt road that goes around it with campsites
offset on either side. You know, we found our campsite,
we got the kids out, and we all walked around
and the campsite was was a little bit angled, and
(09:49):
so Tristan really didn't like it because, you know, there
wasn't a good spot to pitch the tent where you
wouldn't be leaning one way or the other, and so
it just wasn't wasn't the ideal camp site. So we decided,
and we were early enough not all the sites were full,
that we decided we'd, you know, one of us would
go back and bargain with the rain to get another site.
(10:11):
They moved to a different spot, Site forty nine, in
a nice flat area on the northern end of the meadow,
and then they noticed that the guy in the next
site over was leaving. They asked him if they could
use his site too spread out a little. He said, sure,
no problem. Tristan set up his tent there in Site
fifty one. Then he and Scott and all the kids
(10:31):
spent the day at Surfrider Beach, that famous stretch along
Pacific Coast Highway right by the Malibu Pier. At the
end of the day, they headed back to the park
and got ready for a night around the campfire. Scott
says that Tristan could be counted on to bring delicious
food and pre mixed cocktails when they camped. He was
the kind of person who optimized everything. And so did you.
(10:53):
And Tristan get to stay up drinking Manhattan's or something
out of a flask after the kids finally went to bed.
Tristan had pre mixed Manhattan's for that trip, that last
conversation we had. We you know, we stayed up and
we were just talking about families for hours and hours
(11:15):
and um and I told him how much I was
gonna miss him. I'm like, I kind of guilted him
a little bit, like, you know, well we had a
good run, buddy, you know, we had a good run.
I'm gonna I'll miss you. You know. I remember at
the end of the night, we decided, you know, okay,
well it's it's late, let's go to bed. It was
probably I don't know, I don't know what time it was.
(11:36):
Maybe it was one o'clock or something. I'm not sure.
And you know, we put out the camp fire, and
you know, we I gave him a big hug, and
you know, I told him I loved him, and I
told him I did I told him again that I
was gonna miss him, and It makes me sad but
(11:59):
so happy at the same time, because at least I
got that. A few hours later, Scott says he was
awakened by a loud noise like fireworks and the sound
(12:22):
of one of his nieces crying. He couldn't figure out
why Tristan wasn't helping her. He knew that something must
be wrong. He got up, leaving his own young children,
and hurried over to Tristen's tent. He opened the flap.
In the dark, he could see the girls kneeling beside
their dad. One of them kept saying, wet, wet. He
(12:45):
dug around for a phone, and when he found it,
used it as a flashlight. He rolled Tristan over and
saw that his face was drenched in blood. The girls
were kneeling in a pool of it. That's what was wet.
He pulled the girls out of the tent into the
chilly early morning air and began to scream for help.
(13:15):
I've never investigated a murder before, but I'm assuming the
autopsy will be filled with information. You know, leads I
can follow that will get me started in the right direction.
When the coroner releases it, I scour it for details.
At the time of his death, It says Tristan Bodatt
was wearing a gray tshirt, blue shorts, and white socks.
(13:38):
His face was unshaven. He had a little alcohol in
his system, probably the Manhattan's, and a little THHC. Above
his right eye, just below the hairline, but pretty close
to dead center was an oval hole where a full
copper jacketed lead bullet had entered, piercing his brain. That
bullet was excavated from his right shoulder blade. Included with
(14:01):
the autopsy is something called a GSR data sheet. It
stands for Gunshot Residue. I had to look that up.
The box for homicide is checked, but everything else about
Tristan Bodat's case and how he died can only be
learned from the omissions gaps in the narrative of facts.
(14:22):
The weapon is described as outstanding make a model, unknown, ammunition,
brand and caliber. Unknown. Number of shots fired is left blank.
How did the injury occur? The autopsy simply bopaquely says
(14:42):
shot by another. When Tristan Bodett was killed, rumors started
flying around Malibu. Bodette worked at a pharmaceutical company and
had published research on vaccines, probably he'd been targeted, assassinated
by Big pharma or the government, or the perpetrator was
(15:02):
a disgruntled park worker, possibly ex military, or maybe it
had something to do with the elite go marijuana grows
that everyone knows, or a problem in Malibu Creek State Park.
But what Scott says that they moved spots twice and
ended up in a third spot given by a nameless stranger,
it just makes me think about how random the killing was.
(15:25):
Scott was there, he was with Tristan the whole time,
right up until they zipped into their separate tents, and
he's baffled. For me, and I think for Tristan, campgrounds
or a sanctuary, there were a place that you could
go and you could let your guard down a little bit,
the kids could play, you'd have fun setting up your
(15:48):
camp and making dinner and just hanging out with the
people you love. Do you think about Malibu differently now? Yeah,
you know, I definitely do. I mean, I think you've
got just this really great spot in the world where
you should be able to go and enjoy nature, And
(16:10):
you just don't think that in a place so beautiful
that you're going to experience something so evil. When I
think about what happened to Tristan Boudet, I always think
about the thin wall of his tent. He probably felt
so safe nestled in beside his girls. He trusted nature,
(16:32):
He wasn't scared. He had no idea what was out
there or how vulnerable he was going camping anywhere. Um,
something could happen. You know, there could be there could
be a bear, there could be a mountain lion. Those
are kind of inherent risks in nature that you know
(16:52):
they could be present, and you know if it happens,
you know, if if there's if there's a bear, you know,
it's the idea of that is really scary, right. But
usually when there's something like that, I mean, it's posted,
you know, you know what, you know that there's there
are predators out there lurking, and so maybe you keep
(17:13):
your kids a little bit closer and you keep your
kids a little bit safer that day. But you would
never go to a campground where there was a known
human predator. No, no one whatever did that. We did
not know that there was this danger at this park,
(17:34):
and had we known, we would never have put our
children in danger. Never. It was only after Tristan's death
that he and everyone in Malibu found out there was
a real danger. People were being targeted in Malibu Creek
(17:56):
State Park. Law enforcement knew and Tristan Boudette was not
the first victim. From twenty sixteen to twenty eighteen, there
was a series of shootings in and around Malibu Creek
(18:18):
State Park. One person was injured, but no one died.
These were near misses, six of them. I'm a thousand
feet above Malibu in a helicopter with the Twoey Write,
a retired sergeant detective from Lost Hills Station. That's a
(18:39):
small outpost of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, and it
covers law enforcement for this whole area from coastal Malibu
to Calabasas and the miles and miles of wilderness in between.
It's a beautiful areas, are a wild area with some
rugged terrain. The sun such a beautiful out There's pointdo
over by the beach. I can see a line of
(19:01):
houses shoulder to shoulder on the sand. They look like toys.
From here. It's some of the most expensive real estate
in the world. You can see down there. That's Malibu Colony.
That little Peninsula of Holmes. There quite a few rich
and famous folks live there. We head inland over the mountains,
following Malibu Canyon Road. This should Malibu Canyon going in Here,
(19:24):
the highway goes along the canyon. It's a major road
connecting the beach and the valley. Something like twenty thousand
cars travel on it every day. Over and here is
some of the areas where like the Kardashians live and
all of that kind of And there's Malibu Creek State Park.
It's wild and pristine, volcanic rocks, oak savannah's undulating grasslands.
(19:49):
If you remember the opening sequence to the nineteen seventies
TV show Mash where the helicopter flies past craggy green peaks,
that's Malibu Creek State Park. But Sergeant Twey Wright see
something different. He sees the killing zone. Hey, I'm thinking
(20:12):
you might just to keep it simple. We might start
with the shootings and then moved to the burglaries and
then moved to the capture since it happened that way
and the capture route in the camp. That sounds like
a great sequence. Sergeant Wright was in charge of search
and rescue, finding hikers lost in the mountains below. His
(20:33):
knowledge of this terrain put him right in the center
of the investigation into Tristan Bodat's death and everything that
happened before and after it. Sergeant Wright asks the pilot
Pete to take a lap over the park. Pete, maybe
a left bank there, and we'll go back over towards Tapia.
(20:55):
Below us is a picnic spot, Tapia Park, at the
edge of Malibu Creek State Park. That's where in November
twenty sixteen, a backpacker named Jimmy Rogers was shot hurt
but not killed. We'll see being in a hammock slung
between two trees near Miss number one. Over here in
(21:16):
the park. Down in the campground there is where the
next two incidents occurred. Less than a week later, and
about a mile away, in the campground where Bodat was
later killed, a man was shot at while inside his
camper near Miss number two. Two months later, in January
(21:41):
twenty seventeen, there was another shooting in the same campground,
this time at a couple sleeping in their car near
Miss number Three's talking about the highway shootings. Then, in
the summer of twenty seventeen, the targets seemed to change
to moving cars driving along the canyon Road. In the
(22:02):
span of a few weeks, first a white Porsche and
then a white BMW were hit with gunfire near misses
four and five. Below us on the park side of
the canyon Road, there's a hill well concealed by bushes
and trees. You can see the hill and the brush
(22:24):
and the canopy trees come right up to the edge
of the highway YEP. Sergeant Rights theory is that a
shooter lay in wait, firing on approaching cars. It's a
good elevated position where you have immediate cover and an
immediate escape direction. The shootings in the park and on
the canyon Road were totally bizarre events rhymes with no reason.
(22:48):
They all happened at the same time around three four am.
Each one involved a single shot, but after near miss
number five things went quiet. Eleven months passed without another
shooting until June eighteenth, twenty eighteen. Early that morning, around
(23:09):
four am, in the same area, a Tesla, a white one,
was hit in the hood near miss number six. Even then,
after twenty months of unsolved shootings, law enforcement didn't alert
the public. The Sheriff's department stayed silent. And so did
(23:30):
California State Parks. There was no press conference, nothing was
posted at the park, no information wanted flier, not even
a suggestion to remain vigilant. And four days after the
Tesla was shot, Tristan Boudette was killed in the campground.
(23:50):
When you got the call that there had been a
shooting at the campground, it wasn't out of the blue
for you. I'm just putting myself in your shoes and
thinking you must have had a sinking feeling because there
had been a series of incidents leading up to that moment. Yeah,
that is true, and this was our greatest fear that
(24:14):
this was a serial shooter and that eventually he would
hit somebody and or kill them. He'd already hit somebody
in the beginning. So he's saying that privately, law enforcement
worried there was a potential serial killer at large. They
thought he was looking for victims and that Malibu Creek
(24:37):
State Park and the Canyon Road were his hunting ground.
While millions of people, oblivious of the danger, continued to
visit the trails, spend the night in the campground, and
travel on the Canyon Road. Even me, I took my
kids to Malibu Creek State Park in early twenty eighteen,
(24:58):
we walked the three mile loop to the rock pool.
It's a famous swimming spot, and we checked out the
teenagers jumping from the ledges. We talked about camping in
the campground when it got warm enough. It's hard not
to look back and wonder what if we had. After
the Bodat murder, the earlier victims the near misses went
(25:19):
to the media. There was an outcry in Malibu as
people began to panic about the canyon shooter. The campground
was temporarily closed, but though no one was in custody,
the rest of the park remained open, and there was
still no sign posted about anything that had transpired there. Then,
(25:40):
about a month after the murder, there was a rash
of mysterious burglaries from commercial buildings near the periphery of
the park. You wanna talk about the burgerschure, okay, scroungey
desperate stuff, Not laptops or cell phones, but sandwiches from
the fridge, seize candy, cinnamon rolls, junk food from the
(26:01):
front of a vending machine, smashed out with a rock.
A couple of these places had video surveillance and a
guy was caught on camera masked and wearing a headlamp
with a backpack what appeared to be a rifle sticking
out of it. The next place we're going to go
to is called the Calabasas Recreation Center, just so happens
(26:22):
to be directly next door to Malboy last tools sheriff station.
The area where all these crimes took place is essentially
the backyard of the sheriff station and one burglary. The
last one was literally next door, so he came within
what would you say, a hundred yards of the sheriff station.
(26:44):
I would say maybe even closer to the parking lot.
Sergeant Wright says he followed bootprints from the rec center's
parking lot up into the dusty, desolate hills behind the
Sheriff's station. Do you see that big oak tree down
at the bottom. Yep, we're looking at a fold in
the hills where a gnarled oak clings to the side
of a steep slope. The one furthest back towards the hill,
(27:06):
the big one. YEA. I figured there was a up here. Following,
Sergeant writes hunch half a dozen Sheriff's deputies returned to
the site of the last bootprint. As they trudged up
and down hills in the bright sun, the only sound
was a Sheriff's Department helicopter chuffing in the distance. But
(27:28):
then a deputy heard a strange, clanging noise echoing through
the canyon. It seemed to be coming from a ridge
to the west. Already steeped in shadow, the deputy dropped
to his knee and looked through the optic on his rifle.
Zooming in, he saw a man saw the whites of
(27:54):
his eyes, as he would later testify, clean cut, early forties,
wearing all black and a backpack with a rifle sticking
out the top. The deputies jumped him right outside his camp.
Of course, he tried to flee, but deputies were on
(28:17):
him real quick search and rescue and lost Hill's patrol
immediately got their guns on him, and at some point
he tossed the pack and you could see the rifle
sticking out of the pack. The man with the gun
(28:38):
was Anthony Routa, a loaner who'd been living in the
hills on and off for years. The cops celebrated was
the mystery of the canyon shooter. All wrapped up. Sergeant Wright,
who helped track Routa to his camp, admits that it
all seems a little neat the drifter living behind the station,
(29:00):
hiding in plain view. That guy's responsible for what may
be the most violent crime wave in Malibu history. I
would think it would take some nerve to commit a
burglary direct next door to the station. I mean, why
would somebody commit a murder and then hold on to
the same weapon and then do burglaries on videotape and
(29:22):
making no very little effort to hide other than putting
a mask on part of your face. There's an assumption
that most criminals would think, if their picture was captured
on camera with a weapon, that there's going to be
a heightened law enforcement effort to engage them. And that's
(29:44):
exactly what happened. Okay number four and number five one calendar, Anthony,
(30:22):
It's been a long morning. In a cold court room
near the County Jail in downtown Los Angeles, Anthony Rawda
is late for his hearing. Officially, at this stage, the
charges have nothing to do with murder. Rauda is in
violation of the terms of his post release community supervision,
meaning he's an ex felon. He hasn't shown up to
(30:44):
meet with his probation officer for two years, and he's
not supposed to have weapons or ammunition. The deputies who
arrested him at his campsite say he had both unofficially,
though the charges seem to have everything to do with
the killing in Malibu Creek State Park. Only a few
hours after Roudah's arrest, the sheriff himself had a press
(31:05):
conference at the Hall of Justice, that's department headquarters downtown,
and while they didn't quite say that Roudah was the
suspect in the shootings or the murder, it was a
big show. The captain of the Major Crimes Bureau, the
Lost Hills Captain, a top official from California State Parks.
And now Roudah's being held without bail. And there are
(31:26):
two plain closed detectives in the front row of the
courtroom talking loudly about a fishing cabin. One of the
detectives has long gray hair and a beard, and is
wearing ship kickers and jeans. The other, lean, with sunken cheeks,
sneers at me when I try to say hello. Later,
I'll find out that the lean one is Detective Mark Donnell,
(31:48):
and that the one with the ship kickers is a
detective named Tye Barry, complicated guy a long and twisted
history with the Sheriff's Department. Donald and Barry are both
part of the Major Crimes Bureau and worked the Malibu case. Finally,
Rouda enters with a deputy in blue latex gloves gripping
(32:11):
his arm, guiding him to his seat. My first impression
of Anthony Rowta is he's pale, library pale an indoorsman,
not the weather beaten, leather skinned survivalist I'd been expecting.
His hair is dark and slicked back in individual lines
that look pencil drawn, a little goatee, blue jumpsuit, wrists
(32:36):
cuffed behind his back. He's separated from the rest of
the courtroom by a plexiglass partition. But he has something
he wants to say to the judge. Welcome to speed,
over defense objection, and I would ask if anything to
be off the record. That's Rounda's public defender attempting to intervene,
(32:59):
and that's the judge who looks exceptionally annoyed. I I
want to speak. You don't have rights to speed, but
he's seeking through your return No I'm not going to speak.
I'm not going to cooperate with the pub defenders opposee
anymore's thousand okason. On that one, Rowdah hurls himself against
the plexiglass piece of ship. You're a piece of ship,
(33:22):
bitch sharks that motherfucker. The bailiff calls for help and
a bunch of deputies appear. They kick all the reporters out,
but they forget about the microphones that have been placed
on a podium at the front of the courtroom. And
that's when Rowdah tells the judge to go fuck himself.
I think my client is a little over brought, having
been in custody. Fuck you. He seems mad at everyone,
(33:47):
the judge, the DA, the bailiff, even as public defender
the one person who wants to help him. Roudah appears desperate, furious, trapped,
He's thrashing about in the fluorescent light of this dingy,
cold courtroom. He reminds me of the mountain lions hemmed
(34:09):
in stressed out. A dangerous ghost is a gaining session.
(34:33):
Several weeks later, when I see route end coourt, he's
undergone a disturbing transformation. He's strapped to a restraint chair,
his face covered by a mesh mask to stop him
from spitting at the deputies. His head laws to one
side as if he's under heavy sedation. I noticed that
the public defender who Route has been trying to fire,
(34:54):
is gesturing to me. He wants me to come talk
to him in a quiet corner at the back of
the courtroom. I got the information, unfortunately under sealed, and
so I can't He's talking about the discovery, the evidence
provided by the Sheriff's department about the weapon and ammunition
that Routa was arrested with. I don't think they've got
(35:16):
the ballistics or anything. In other words, he doesn't think
they have enough to charge Routo with murder. You know,
I'm not sure what direction you're going in there checked
any others. I don't know any It means to be
ricky okay, because I don't think this killer is the shooter.
(35:39):
There's a killer out there, and I don't know if
they shouldn't even be guessing. I don't know what his
family situation was. I don't know if there was any arrivals.
I don't know if there's anything else something wrong Skid
didn't do. He's crazy. That was so much pressure that
they had to arrest somebody. I think they got the
(36:02):
crisy guy. They probably want him in custody so that
that they can get the sky interest or somebody doctor him,
get him corminating stuff. It's the only thing I can
figure because of these knots. It's unfair. He believes that
route is a sacrificial lamb, meant to appease the agitated
(36:24):
Malibu community. Anyway, just between him and when Tristan Boudett
was killed shot in Malibu Creek State Park in the
hour before dawn, I couldn't stop thinking about it. Then
(36:49):
I found out about all the other shootings too. Now
the cops have arrested Anthony Rowda, a homeless guy living
behind the station, and they seem to want everyone to
think that it's all his fault, that he's the perfect
bad guy, a single efficient explanation for everything that's been
going on. I don't know what to believe, but I
(37:11):
know that's not the whole story. Could Anthony Rowda have
committed all these crimes? What was law enforcement doing this
whole time? How did Malibu turn into the killing zone
Pushkin. Mountain lions do their hunting in the dark after
(00:57):
dusk and in the early morning hours, right before the
sun comes up. The hills above Malibu, California, are full
of them. They're vicious predators, but they're so shy that
the wildlife biologists who study them call them ghost cats.
If you hike in the hills surrounding Malibu, you probably
(01:17):
haven't seen a mountain lion, but one has almost certainly
seen you. Hemmed in by freeways and in ever expanding suburbia,
the mountain lions are stressed half crazy. A few years ago,
I wrote a story about them for The New Yorker,
where I work. The people in Malibu were really upset,
(01:38):
especially about a rogue lion known as P forty five,
which was slaughtering pet alpacas and mini horses seemingly for sport.
There was a huge debate over who was to blame
for these deaths, a murderous lion or the people who
had left their pets unprotected in lion country. One morning,
(02:03):
I went out searching for evidence of lions in the
mountains near Malibu Creek State Park. I was with one
of the wildlife biologists, and we were in a tangle
of branches and bushes, looking at a dried out deer carcass,
a month old lion kill. This question just popped into
my head, so I asked him, Hey, do you ever
(02:24):
find a dead body out here? He turned and looked
at me so strangely he was going to stick to
talking about lions, no comment on what humans might do
in these hills. In my fifteen years living in Los Angeles,
(02:48):
I've logged a decent amount of time in Malibu, sometimes reporting,
but mostly just taking my kids for afternoons at the beach.
You know, Malibu, It's paradise, the ocean, the mountains, the
honeycolored light, celebrities and surf bums, and laid back billionaires,
people with prayer beads and private security. It's like a
(03:12):
postcard of itself. The real gidget is a hostess at
a local restaurant, and you could easily run into Kim
Kardashian at the sushi bar. But often in Malibu I
get this unsettling sensation that there's something else there underneath
that pretty surface, something elusive and slightly menacing, a riptide
(03:39):
an undertow, and I can never quite shake the feeling.
That the place is warning me to go away. Here's
what I know when I start all this. It's not
a lot. It was before sunrise June twenty second, eighteen,
(04:05):
and the campground at Malibu Creek State Park was packed.
It's an idyllic spot. Campsites are arranged in a ring
around a large meadow dotted with oak trees. Jagged peaks
zigzag across the open sky. It was four in the morning,
still dark. Everyone was inside their nylon tents and RVs,
(04:28):
cozy in their sleeping bags for a couple more hours.
But someone was awake, watching, silent, undetected, slipping shadow like
around the sleeping campground. He had a gun and he
(04:48):
fired it directly into one family's tent. Inside the tent
was a man named Tristan Bodette, a brilliant young research
scientist thirty five years old. He was sleeping beside his
two little girls. The bullet struck his forehead, killing him,
(05:12):
and whoever did it slipped away into the darkness. It's
like a story that's meant to terrify you, playing on
your deepest fears. A story you'd tell around a campfire
with ghosts and murderers and things you can't explain except
that this story is true. And once I heard it,
(05:35):
I couldn't stop thinking about it. How did this happen?
How does anything like this happen in Malibu, of all places?
But it did happen in Malibu, And as I'd come
to find out, inexplicable, nightmarish things happen in Malibu all
the time. Tonight, a mystery in Malibu. The driver found
(05:58):
a man dead in a ditch along Lost Versus Canyon Road.
There have also been nine additional calls for shots fire.
I just don't feel safe anymore. Breaking now a homicide investigation.
We do have a nude body and it's still unclear
exactly how it got here. It is a suspicious death.
(06:21):
The human bones were just a half mile from the trailhead.
We possibly said somebody screaming for help. Detectives and I
trying to figure out who he is and who killed him.
I'll tell you what. They'll be standing with pitchforks outside
Lost til Sheriff's department. I said to holler down, are
you all right? She said, I'm just resting or something
like that. Once she left, she just disappeared. I'm doing
(06:46):
a goodyear and This is Lost Hells episode one, the
(07:18):
Killing Zone. Would you guys start by just saying your
names and what your relationship is to Tristan. My name
is Scott McCurdy. I'm Tristan's brother in law, and this
is my wife. My name's Pamela wo I'm at Tristan's
(07:38):
sister in law and married to Scott McCurdy. I want
to talk to Scott because he was with Tristan on
the camping trip. He was in the next tent over
with his own young boys. He's the closest person to
the story. Tristan's little girls were two and four. The
younger one could barely talk. Scott is the closest thing
(07:59):
to a witness. Tristan always has this bucket list of
things that he wants to do, and camping in Malibu
State Park was on the bucket list. Years ago, before
we had kids, he and I went up to Malibu
Creek State Park and he and I always wanted to
go back and camp there. Scott tells me that Tristan,
(08:20):
his wife, Erica, and their kids were about to move
from Orange County up to the Bay Area. I feel
like he knew that I was a little bit sad
that he was going to be leaving Southern California. Erica
is an obgyn and had a medical exam to study for.
So Tristan proposed a trip something he and Scott had
been wanting to do for a long time, camping just
(08:41):
the dads with the kids in Malibu Creek State Park,
and he wanted to have kind of one last camping
trip while he was down here and we were all together,
and so it was meant to be this bonding, really
fun experience. The caravan up to Malibu, we're driving up
(09:04):
and we pull in and Tristan was first, and we
passed the ranger booth where you get your site, and
I follow Tristan in and we'd go down the long
winding road and he makes a wrong turn and off
the asphalt road onto this gravel dirt road, which later
(09:25):
he commented he was so excited that he got to
take his forest or off roading. It was such a funny, dude.
The campground is basically a large oak meadow. There's a
one way asphalt road that goes around it with campsites
offset on either side. You know, we found our campsite,
we got the kids out, and we all walked around
and the campsite was was a little bit angled, and
(09:49):
so Tristan really didn't like it because, you know, there
wasn't a good spot to pitch the tent where you
wouldn't be leaning one way or the other, and so
it just wasn't wasn't the ideal camp site. So we decided,
and we were early enough not all the sites were full,
that we decided we'd, you know, one of us would
go back and bargain with the rain to get another site.
(10:11):
They moved to a different spot, Site forty nine, in
a nice flat area on the northern end of the meadow,
and then they noticed that the guy in the next
site over was leaving. They asked him if they could
use his site too spread out a little. He said, sure,
no problem. Tristan set up his tent there in Site
fifty one. Then he and Scott and all the kids
(10:31):
spent the day at Surfrider Beach, that famous stretch along
Pacific Coast Highway right by the Malibu Pier. At the
end of the day, they headed back to the park
and got ready for a night around the campfire. Scott
says that Tristan could be counted on to bring delicious
food and pre mixed cocktails when they camped. He was
the kind of person who optimized everything. And so did you.
(10:53):
And Tristan get to stay up drinking Manhattan's or something
out of a flask after the kids finally went to bed.
Tristan had pre mixed Manhattan's for that trip, that last
conversation we had. We you know, we stayed up and
we were just talking about families for hours and hours
(11:15):
and um and I told him how much I was
gonna miss him. I'm like, I kind of guilted him
a little bit, like, you know, well we had a
good run, buddy, you know, we had a good run.
I'm gonna I'll miss you. You know. I remember at
the end of the night, we decided, you know, okay,
well it's it's late, let's go to bed. It was
probably I don't know, I don't know what time it was.
(11:36):
Maybe it was one o'clock or something. I'm not sure.
And you know, we put out the camp fire, and
you know, we I gave him a big hug, and
you know, I told him I loved him, and I
told him I did I told him again that I
was gonna miss him, and It makes me sad but
(11:59):
so happy at the same time, because at least I
got that. A few hours later, Scott says he was
awakened by a loud noise like fireworks and the sound
(12:22):
of one of his nieces crying. He couldn't figure out
why Tristan wasn't helping her. He knew that something must
be wrong. He got up, leaving his own young children,
and hurried over to Tristen's tent. He opened the flap.
In the dark, he could see the girls kneeling beside
their dad. One of them kept saying, wet, wet. He
(12:45):
dug around for a phone, and when he found it,
used it as a flashlight. He rolled Tristan over and
saw that his face was drenched in blood. The girls
were kneeling in a pool of it. That's what was wet.
He pulled the girls out of the tent into the
chilly early morning air and began to scream for help.
(13:15):
I've never investigated a murder before, but I'm assuming the
autopsy will be filled with information. You know, leads I
can follow that will get me started in the right direction.
When the coroner releases it, I scour it for details.
At the time of his death, It says Tristan Bodatt
was wearing a gray tshirt, blue shorts, and white socks.
(13:38):
His face was unshaven. He had a little alcohol in
his system, probably the Manhattan's, and a little THHC. Above
his right eye, just below the hairline, but pretty close
to dead center was an oval hole where a full
copper jacketed lead bullet had entered, piercing his brain. That
bullet was excavated from his right shoulder blade. Included with
(14:01):
the autopsy is something called a GSR data sheet. It
stands for Gunshot Residue. I had to look that up.
The box for homicide is checked, but everything else about
Tristan Bodat's case and how he died can only be
learned from the omissions gaps in the narrative of facts.
(14:22):
The weapon is described as outstanding make a model, unknown, ammunition,
brand and caliber. Unknown. Number of shots fired is left blank.
How did the injury occur? The autopsy simply bopaquely says
(14:42):
shot by another. When Tristan Bodett was killed, rumors started
flying around Malibu. Bodette worked at a pharmaceutical company and
had published research on vaccines, probably he'd been targeted, assassinated
by Big pharma or the government, or the perpetrator was
(15:02):
a disgruntled park worker, possibly ex military, or maybe it
had something to do with the elite go marijuana grows
that everyone knows, or a problem in Malibu Creek State Park.
But what Scott says that they moved spots twice and
ended up in a third spot given by a nameless stranger,
it just makes me think about how random the killing was.
(15:25):
Scott was there, he was with Tristan the whole time,
right up until they zipped into their separate tents, and
he's baffled. For me, and I think for Tristan, campgrounds
or a sanctuary, there were a place that you could
go and you could let your guard down a little bit,
the kids could play, you'd have fun setting up your
(15:48):
camp and making dinner and just hanging out with the
people you love. Do you think about Malibu differently now? Yeah,
you know, I definitely do. I mean, I think you've
got just this really great spot in the world where
you should be able to go and enjoy nature, And
(16:10):
you just don't think that in a place so beautiful
that you're going to experience something so evil. When I
think about what happened to Tristan Boudet, I always think
about the thin wall of his tent. He probably felt
so safe nestled in beside his girls. He trusted nature,
(16:32):
He wasn't scared. He had no idea what was out
there or how vulnerable he was going camping anywhere. Um,
something could happen. You know, there could be there could
be a bear, there could be a mountain lion. Those
are kind of inherent risks in nature that you know
(16:52):
they could be present, and you know if it happens,
you know, if if there's if there's a bear, you know,
it's the idea of that is really scary, right. But
usually when there's something like that, I mean, it's posted,
you know, you know what, you know that there's there
are predators out there lurking, and so maybe you keep
(17:13):
your kids a little bit closer and you keep your
kids a little bit safer that day. But you would
never go to a campground where there was a known
human predator. No, no one whatever did that. We did
not know that there was this danger at this park,
(17:34):
and had we known, we would never have put our
children in danger. Never. It was only after Tristan's death
that he and everyone in Malibu found out there was
a real danger. People were being targeted in Malibu Creek
(17:56):
State Park. Law enforcement knew and Tristan Boudette was not
the first victim. From twenty sixteen to twenty eighteen, there
was a series of shootings in and around Malibu Creek
(18:18):
State Park. One person was injured, but no one died.
These were near misses, six of them. I'm a thousand
feet above Malibu in a helicopter with the Twoey Write,
a retired sergeant detective from Lost Hills Station. That's a
(18:39):
small outpost of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, and it
covers law enforcement for this whole area from coastal Malibu
to Calabasas and the miles and miles of wilderness in between.
It's a beautiful areas, are a wild area with some
rugged terrain. The sun such a beautiful out There's pointdo
over by the beach. I can see a line of
(19:01):
houses shoulder to shoulder on the sand. They look like toys.
From here. It's some of the most expensive real estate
in the world. You can see down there. That's Malibu Colony.
That little Peninsula of Holmes. There quite a few rich
and famous folks live there. We head inland over the mountains,
following Malibu Canyon Road. This should Malibu Canyon going in Here,
(19:24):
the highway goes along the canyon. It's a major road
connecting the beach and the valley. Something like twenty thousand
cars travel on it every day. Over and here is
some of the areas where like the Kardashians live and
all of that kind of And there's Malibu Creek State Park.
It's wild and pristine, volcanic rocks, oak savannah's undulating grasslands.
(19:49):
If you remember the opening sequence to the nineteen seventies
TV show Mash where the helicopter flies past craggy green peaks,
that's Malibu Creek State Park. But Sergeant Twey Wright see
something different. He sees the killing zone. Hey, I'm thinking
(20:12):
you might just to keep it simple. We might start
with the shootings and then moved to the burglaries and
then moved to the capture since it happened that way
and the capture route in the camp. That sounds like
a great sequence. Sergeant Wright was in charge of search
and rescue, finding hikers lost in the mountains below. His
(20:33):
knowledge of this terrain put him right in the center
of the investigation into Tristan Bodat's death and everything that
happened before and after it. Sergeant Wright asks the pilot
Pete to take a lap over the park. Pete, maybe
a left bank there, and we'll go back over towards Tapia.
(20:55):
Below us is a picnic spot, Tapia Park, at the
edge of Malibu Creek State Park. That's where in November
twenty sixteen, a backpacker named Jimmy Rogers was shot hurt
but not killed. We'll see being in a hammock slung
between two trees near Miss number one. Over here in
(21:16):
the park. Down in the campground there is where the
next two incidents occurred. Less than a week later, and
about a mile away, in the campground where Bodat was
later killed, a man was shot at while inside his
camper near Miss number two. Two months later, in January
(21:41):
twenty seventeen, there was another shooting in the same campground,
this time at a couple sleeping in their car near
Miss number Three's talking about the highway shootings. Then, in
the summer of twenty seventeen, the targets seemed to change
to moving cars driving along the canyon Road. In the
(22:02):
span of a few weeks, first a white Porsche and
then a white BMW were hit with gunfire near misses
four and five. Below us on the park side of
the canyon Road, there's a hill well concealed by bushes
and trees. You can see the hill and the brush
(22:24):
and the canopy trees come right up to the edge
of the highway YEP. Sergeant Rights theory is that a
shooter lay in wait, firing on approaching cars. It's a
good elevated position where you have immediate cover and an
immediate escape direction. The shootings in the park and on
the canyon Road were totally bizarre events rhymes with no reason.
(22:48):
They all happened at the same time around three four am.
Each one involved a single shot, but after near miss
number five things went quiet. Eleven months passed without another
shooting until June eighteenth, twenty eighteen. Early that morning, around
(23:09):
four am, in the same area, a Tesla, a white one,
was hit in the hood near miss number six. Even then,
after twenty months of unsolved shootings, law enforcement didn't alert
the public. The Sheriff's department stayed silent. And so did
(23:30):
California State Parks. There was no press conference, nothing was
posted at the park, no information wanted flier, not even
a suggestion to remain vigilant. And four days after the
Tesla was shot, Tristan Boudette was killed in the campground.
(23:50):
When you got the call that there had been a
shooting at the campground, it wasn't out of the blue
for you. I'm just putting myself in your shoes and
thinking you must have had a sinking feeling because there
had been a series of incidents leading up to that moment. Yeah,
that is true, and this was our greatest fear that
(24:14):
this was a serial shooter and that eventually he would
hit somebody and or kill them. He'd already hit somebody
in the beginning. So he's saying that privately, law enforcement
worried there was a potential serial killer at large. They
thought he was looking for victims and that Malibu Creek
(24:37):
State Park and the Canyon Road were his hunting ground.
While millions of people, oblivious of the danger, continued to
visit the trails, spend the night in the campground, and
travel on the Canyon Road. Even me, I took my
kids to Malibu Creek State Park in early twenty eighteen,
(24:58):
we walked the three mile loop to the rock pool.
It's a famous swimming spot, and we checked out the
teenagers jumping from the ledges. We talked about camping in
the campground when it got warm enough. It's hard not
to look back and wonder what if we had. After
the Bodat murder, the earlier victims the near misses went
(25:19):
to the media. There was an outcry in Malibu as
people began to panic about the canyon shooter. The campground
was temporarily closed, but though no one was in custody,
the rest of the park remained open, and there was
still no sign posted about anything that had transpired there. Then,
(25:40):
about a month after the murder, there was a rash
of mysterious burglaries from commercial buildings near the periphery of
the park. You wanna talk about the burgerschure, okay, scroungey
desperate stuff, Not laptops or cell phones, but sandwiches from
the fridge, seize candy, cinnamon rolls, junk food from the
(26:01):
front of a vending machine, smashed out with a rock.
A couple of these places had video surveillance and a
guy was caught on camera masked and wearing a headlamp
with a backpack what appeared to be a rifle sticking
out of it. The next place we're going to go
to is called the Calabasas Recreation Center, just so happens
(26:22):
to be directly next door to Malboy last tools sheriff station.
The area where all these crimes took place is essentially
the backyard of the sheriff station and one burglary. The
last one was literally next door, so he came within
what would you say, a hundred yards of the sheriff station.
(26:44):
I would say maybe even closer to the parking lot.
Sergeant Wright says he followed bootprints from the rec center's
parking lot up into the dusty, desolate hills behind the
Sheriff's station. Do you see that big oak tree down
at the bottom. Yep, we're looking at a fold in
the hills where a gnarled oak clings to the side
of a steep slope. The one furthest back towards the hill,
(27:06):
the big one. YEA. I figured there was a up here. Following,
Sergeant writes hunch half a dozen Sheriff's deputies returned to
the site of the last bootprint. As they trudged up
and down hills in the bright sun, the only sound
was a Sheriff's Department helicopter chuffing in the distance. But
(27:28):
then a deputy heard a strange, clanging noise echoing through
the canyon. It seemed to be coming from a ridge
to the west. Already steeped in shadow, the deputy dropped
to his knee and looked through the optic on his rifle.
Zooming in, he saw a man saw the whites of
(27:54):
his eyes, as he would later testify, clean cut, early forties,
wearing all black and a backpack with a rifle sticking
out the top. The deputies jumped him right outside his camp.
Of course, he tried to flee, but deputies were on
(28:17):
him real quick search and rescue and lost Hill's patrol
immediately got their guns on him, and at some point
he tossed the pack and you could see the rifle
sticking out of the pack. The man with the gun
(28:38):
was Anthony Routa, a loaner who'd been living in the
hills on and off for years. The cops celebrated was
the mystery of the canyon shooter. All wrapped up. Sergeant Wright,
who helped track Routa to his camp, admits that it
all seems a little neat the drifter living behind the station,
(29:00):
hiding in plain view. That guy's responsible for what may
be the most violent crime wave in Malibu history. I
would think it would take some nerve to commit a
burglary direct next door to the station. I mean, why
would somebody commit a murder and then hold on to
the same weapon and then do burglaries on videotape and
(29:22):
making no very little effort to hide other than putting
a mask on part of your face. There's an assumption
that most criminals would think, if their picture was captured
on camera with a weapon, that there's going to be
a heightened law enforcement effort to engage them. And that's
(29:44):
exactly what happened. Okay number four and number five one calendar, Anthony,
(30:22):
It's been a long morning. In a cold court room
near the County Jail in downtown Los Angeles, Anthony Rawda
is late for his hearing. Officially, at this stage, the
charges have nothing to do with murder. Rauda is in
violation of the terms of his post release community supervision,
meaning he's an ex felon. He hasn't shown up to
(30:44):
meet with his probation officer for two years, and he's
not supposed to have weapons or ammunition. The deputies who
arrested him at his campsite say he had both unofficially,
though the charges seem to have everything to do with
the killing in Malibu Creek State Park. Only a few
hours after Roudah's arrest, the sheriff himself had a press
(31:05):
conference at the Hall of Justice, that's department headquarters downtown,
and while they didn't quite say that Roudah was the
suspect in the shootings or the murder, it was a
big show. The captain of the Major Crimes Bureau, the
Lost Hills Captain, a top official from California State Parks.
And now Roudah's being held without bail. And there are
(31:26):
two plain closed detectives in the front row of the
courtroom talking loudly about a fishing cabin. One of the
detectives has long gray hair and a beard, and is
wearing ship kickers and jeans. The other, lean, with sunken cheeks,
sneers at me when I try to say hello. Later,
I'll find out that the lean one is Detective Mark Donnell,
(31:48):
and that the one with the ship kickers is a
detective named Tye Barry, complicated guy a long and twisted
history with the Sheriff's Department. Donald and Barry are both
part of the Major Crimes Bureau and worked the Malibu case. Finally,
Rouda enters with a deputy in blue latex gloves gripping
(32:11):
his arm, guiding him to his seat. My first impression
of Anthony Rowta is he's pale, library pale an indoorsman,
not the weather beaten, leather skinned survivalist I'd been expecting.
His hair is dark and slicked back in individual lines
that look pencil drawn, a little goatee, blue jumpsuit, wrists
(32:36):
cuffed behind his back. He's separated from the rest of
the courtroom by a plexiglass partition. But he has something
he wants to say to the judge. Welcome to speed,
over defense objection, and I would ask if anything to
be off the record. That's Rounda's public defender attempting to intervene,
(32:59):
and that's the judge who looks exceptionally annoyed. I I
want to speak. You don't have rights to speed, but
he's seeking through your return No I'm not going to speak.
I'm not going to cooperate with the pub defenders opposee
anymore's thousand okason. On that one, Rowdah hurls himself against
the plexiglass piece of ship. You're a piece of ship,
(33:22):
bitch sharks that motherfucker. The bailiff calls for help and
a bunch of deputies appear. They kick all the reporters out,
but they forget about the microphones that have been placed
on a podium at the front of the courtroom. And
that's when Rowdah tells the judge to go fuck himself.
I think my client is a little over brought, having
been in custody. Fuck you. He seems mad at everyone,
(33:47):
the judge, the DA, the bailiff, even as public defender
the one person who wants to help him. Roudah appears desperate, furious, trapped,
He's thrashing about in the fluorescent light of this dingy,
cold courtroom. He reminds me of the mountain lions hemmed
(34:09):
in stressed out. A dangerous ghost is a gaining session.
(34:33):
Several weeks later, when I see route end coourt, he's
undergone a disturbing transformation. He's strapped to a restraint chair,
his face covered by a mesh mask to stop him
from spitting at the deputies. His head laws to one
side as if he's under heavy sedation. I noticed that
the public defender who Route has been trying to fire,
(34:54):
is gesturing to me. He wants me to come talk
to him in a quiet corner at the back of
the courtroom. I got the information, unfortunately under sealed, and
so I can't He's talking about the discovery, the evidence
provided by the Sheriff's department about the weapon and ammunition
that Routa was arrested with. I don't think they've got
(35:16):
the ballistics or anything. In other words, he doesn't think
they have enough to charge Routo with murder. You know,
I'm not sure what direction you're going in there checked
any others. I don't know any It means to be
ricky okay, because I don't think this killer is the shooter.
(35:39):
There's a killer out there, and I don't know if
they shouldn't even be guessing. I don't know what his
family situation was. I don't know if there was any arrivals.
I don't know if there's anything else something wrong Skid
didn't do. He's crazy. That was so much pressure that
they had to arrest somebody. I think they got the
(36:02):
crisy guy. They probably want him in custody so that
that they can get the sky interest or somebody doctor him,
get him corminating stuff. It's the only thing I can
figure because of these knots. It's unfair. He believes that
route is a sacrificial lamb, meant to appease the agitated
(36:24):
Malibu community. Anyway, just between him and when Tristan Boudett
was killed shot in Malibu Creek State Park in the
hour before dawn, I couldn't stop thinking about it. Then
(36:49):
I found out about all the other shootings too. Now
the cops have arrested Anthony Rowda, a homeless guy living
behind the station, and they seem to want everyone to
think that it's all his fault, that he's the perfect
bad guy, a single efficient explanation for everything that's been
going on. I don't know what to believe, but I
(37:11):
know that's not the whole story. Could Anthony Rowda have
committed all these crimes? What was law enforcement doing this
whole time? How did Malibu turn into the killing zone
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