April 13, 2021 • 33 mins
Lost Hills Station is embroiled in scandal. But the new captain is determined to set the story straight.
He says there were major errors in the investigation, and points a finger at two respected Lost Hills detectives: Sgt. Tui Wright and Lt. James Royal.
Ian Kincaid, a shooting victim, describes overhearing a private conversation at Lost Hills Station.
As her relationship with Sheriff Villanueva deepens, Cece Woods feels her power in Malibu grow.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushkin, Hey, Dana, Chuck Chuck the Sarah bal Blue Last
Hill Shaff Station. Hey just call on you touching base
a backup work es since you text, that's Salvador Bissarah
goes by Chuck. He's the new captain of Lost Hill Station.
(00:38):
The station has been in turmoil since Router was arrested.
Scandal after scandal. Remember when Kobe Bryant's helicopter crashed in
the Calabasas Hills. Well County Sheriff's deputies are facing discipline
now for taking and sharing graphic photos at the scene
of the helicopter crash that killed nine people, including Kobe
Bryant eight deputies. According to media reports, some of those
(01:00):
deputies taking and sharing photos were from Lost Hills. I've
been trying to get in with the leadership at the
station ever since I heard about the murder in the park.
Sometimes I just go to the station and stare at
the mirrored glass behind the unattended reception desk. On the
other side lie the answers to everything that doesn't make
sense about this case. But all I can see is
(01:24):
myself reflected back at me. It's the perfect metaphor for
the Sheriff's department. They see out, but you can't see in.
But the weird thing about Captain Bassarah, he's friendly. This
guy calls me, I think you've been keeping up with
the politics here. Remember I was the act captain here
(01:45):
and they got replaced and they got sent back. He's nice,
he wants to help. You're getting stonewalled, he tells me cheerfully.
When you're getting stonewalled, you know you're onto a good story.
Something obviously went wrong at Lost Hill Station. There was
apparently a shooter on the loose and Malibu for over
(02:06):
a year and a half, and it was kept secret.
Not only that the alleged shooter hated the Lost Hills cops,
had frequent contact with law enforcement and lived in the
hills behind the station. And Sergeant Wright, who gave me
the helicopter tour, He and Lieutenant Royal, the two Lost
Hills deputies who argued there was a serial sniper would
(02:28):
be serial killer in Malibu and then found him. They're
under investigation what went wrong. Sarah's newly in charge. He
wasn't there for all the mess, but he says he
really really wants me to find out the truth. He
wishes he could tell me, but he can. He'd get fired,
(02:51):
at a minimum, possibly charged. The truth he keeps promising
me is a bombshell. It's crazy crazy, it's gonna be
It'll make a good movie or a good book, or
so he should get a chapter in it. Anyways, call
me when you get a chance. I'll be in the
rest of the week. Okay, by bye, I think I
(03:13):
might be in. I'm Dana Goodyear and this is Lost Hills,
(03:48):
episode six, One More Day in Paradise. In twenty sixteen
and twenty seventeen, there was a series of near miss
shootings in and around Malibu Creek State Park, than nothing
for eleven months. In the summer of twenty eighteen, there
was a sixth attack another near miss. It involved a
(04:10):
white tesla being driven by a man named Ian Kincaid.
The date was June eighteenth, four days before Tristan Boudett
was killed. Today, I'm at Ian's house at the top
of a twisty road in the Malibu Hills. Standing in
(04:32):
front of his garage, he pulls the car out. The
white hood has a single piece of white electrical tape
right between the headlights. He peels it away, revealing a
deep gash. Wow, yeah, let me understand why I don't
want my kids to see it. So I was going
about sixty miles an hour, sixty five or something like
(04:55):
that when I pulled over, But beforehand, I'd been going
considerably faster. Ian works as a gaffer in Hollywood, which
means it's his job to light the sets. He's worked
on six Quentin Tarantino movies, and on the day we're
talking about, he was headed to the set of Once
Upon a Time in Hollywood. He wanted to get there
by six am. Let me up the hood, so he
(05:18):
got up in the dark and left his home. He
took Malibu Canyon Road. I was driving through the canyon
about four twenty and I was driving pretty fast. Sometimes
in the morning, i'd drive excess of speed, and I thought,
you know what, I'm going to get there too early.
I don't need to speed, So I slowed down and
(05:40):
within a minute was when the bullet hit my car.
And I remember thinking, what's that sound? Yeah, it was
like it was like I thought, did I leave a
coffee cup on my roof again? And was at what
that was rattling? Or I thought I looked down my
tea cup was right there, and I thought, well, maybe
(06:00):
it was an acorn because I was driving near some
oak trees and just you know, these are just thoughts
at four o'clock in the morning, I wasn't trying to
solve any mysteries. And then within i'd say ten seconds,
maybe the the alarm started going off. So I pulled
over and got out of the car, and it was
pitch dark, no other traffic, and I slammed the right
(06:22):
I pulled over right there at the at the Hindu temple.
The bullet went in the hood, passed through the front
trunk and out the fender. You can see it wouldn't
take too much of a change in speed for that
to gone in elsewhere. You know, his height wasn't too
far off, you know, if he was indeed aiming at me.
(06:45):
I tesked the hole with my pinky. It has a
jagged edge. I can feel how close a call that was,
how the bullets so easily could have hit him. So
I went through there. They've replaced this piece. I think
it came through here and then out the fender from
(07:06):
from about here, and they said it might have bounced
off the tire. After work, Ian says he stopped by
Lost Hill station. He remembers the deputy who took the
report didn't appear too worried, so she took a picture,
and she handed me a slip of paper with a
number one and said, this is your crime report if
(07:27):
you ever need it. Okay, And they weren't concerned. There
was no nobody expressing any kind of serious interest in it.
For the next few days, he tells me, he felt
strange and avoided Malibu Canyon. When he couldn't avoid the road,
(07:47):
he ruminated where had that shot come from, who had
fired it, and why. Then four days later, on June
twenty second, Bodat was killed. I remember driving through Malbi
Canyon seeing a lot of cops and a fenced off area,
(08:13):
and you know, if something was going on, and I
got to work and uh, and I really don't recall
when I learned, but they learned that somebody had been
murdered in the campground. I thought, wow, that's that's bizarre. Suddenly,
(08:37):
he says, the cops were all over him. My phone
just lit up, and within I been in a half
an hour, I probably got twenty calls from sheriffs, from LPD,
from Lost hills, from rangers, from newspapers, from reporters, and
(09:02):
I just what is this. They summoned him back to
Lost Hill station, where a group of deputies quickly ushered
him around the side. So I drove around the back
and there must have been fifteen guys in uniform that
came up, and there were a lot of guys that
were just like volunteer kind of guys wearing sheriff's deputy
(09:24):
sheriff's stuff. There was a sargeantie, remember, and there was
a detective and they had a handful of dowels and
they have different diameter, and they put the dowels into
the hole. And that was Sergeant Twoey Wright and his
search and rescue team. Sergeant Wright saw this shooting as
another one of the near misses and believed that whoever
(09:47):
had done it had also likely killed Tristan Boudet. They
were trying to figure out the trajectory of the bullet.
The trajectory was important investigating the BMW shooting. Sergeant Wright
had found that hill the suspected shooting mound on the
park side of the canyon road. He was wondering if
(10:07):
whoever shot the test had fired from the same elevated spot,
and later, after the Woolsey fire had burned a bunch
of brush away, he went back and searched there and
found nine millimeter casings. But back in June twenty eighteen,
Ian says, the deputies were being secretive by what I gathered.
(10:32):
They didn't want to tell me anything. They were trying
to usher me away from the car most of the
time and have somebody else asked me questions while they
were putting the dolls in and stuff. But I was
Ian says he did hear one thing loud and clear,
and it confused him in the months ahead, when he,
like everyone else in Malibu, kept hearing the Sheriff's departments
(10:53):
say there was no connection, no relation, no link among
all these violent crimes. He overheard Sergeant Wright and the
deputies say that he Ian was the eighth victim in
an ongoing shooting spree that had just turned deadly. I
(11:17):
believed they said that I was number eight, and I thought,
what's that mean? When I might number eight? And then
a little later they said that is it Tristan, Yeah,
that he was number nine. This was the thinking of
(11:37):
a faction inside Lost Hill Station. They didn't yet know
who the canyon shooter was, but they believed that he
was out there for a year and a half. They'd
been telling the department, but the department wouldn't listen. The
Tesla shooting had been the Sheriff's Department's last chance to
intervene before the murder, and they missed. Captain Bissarah is
(12:21):
inviting me to come and see him at Lost Hill Station. Yes,
of course I want to come. It'll be my first
time behind the mirrored glass. He's a generous host. He
takes me around to meet the detectives. He takes me
outside to the parking lot so I can see the helipad.
There's a pile of scat right on the seal mountain Lion.
(12:45):
Maybe I look around at the dry, empty hills over
the ridge. Is that steep slope where Rowda made his camp?
How did it take them so long to find him?
Captain Bissarah is babbling on about how cops hate journalists.
How if I'm ever going to find out what I
want to know about this investigation, I'm going to need
to build some trust. He thinks I should meet as
(13:07):
many deputies as possible, go out with them, see Malibu
through their eyes. He suggests, I going to ride along
with the beach team. Okay. Rowda told me in a
letter that he hasn't been to Malibu's beaches in years,
(13:28):
since the mid two thousands, but it's worth a try.
So I spend a morning weaving in and out of
sunbathers on a quad. There was an incident regarding paparazzi's
in Matthew McConaughey near a paradise cove, and there was
an incident where a paparazzi was assaulted and his property
(13:52):
was vandalized, thrown in the water, his camera. And then
we had some pirates guys that were dressed in pirate
outfits that were at zooma seven in the parking lot
that were smoking marijuana in their car. They said they
were in a band, so they've dressed like fires. There's
smoke at weed in their car. That was back when weeds.
I mean, you're still not supposed to smoke in public,
(14:14):
but it was more of a big deal back then.
This job's fun because you just drive around and watch everything.
(14:40):
M M, it's Bassarah. He tells me he's arranged today
with Malibu Search and Rescue Sergeant Toy rights old team.
I head back to the station and climb into a
Search and rescue SUV. Search and Rescue played a pivotal
(15:01):
role in the route investigation. They found a lot of
evidence and assisted in the capture operation. I've been trying
to get on their radar for months, so UM for
the team. We drive around for hours looking at the
beautiful ocean views. The guys tell me some stories. A
(15:22):
gentleman called the sheriff station and thought, there's a woman
being attacked on a trail. This is Mark Hollander, a
medical officer was Search and Rescue was He was wondering
if she was being beaten or raped. Was very concerned.
We came out there, did a big search, found no
evidence of anybody on the trail, any evidence of a
woman that was attacked. Um. One of our team members said,
(15:42):
you know, I believe that when mountain lions are in heat,
they put out a sound very similar to a woman screaming.
So he went onto Google and was able to get
the recording of this sound, which does sound like a
woman screaming for help, actually saying help, help, help type
thing very similar. He's not wrong, this is a recording
(16:06):
I found, so we as a fall if we went
to the gentleman's house who reported it, and played that
tape for him and said, is this what you heard
that night? And he goes, oh my god, Yes, that's
the exact sound I heard. Did you find did you
find the woman? Did she? Ohsh okay? We said, actually know.
(16:28):
The sound you're hearing is a malon lion and heat.
It's a good story, but they're not telling me the story.
Did you get what you needed? Basarah asks, totally. I lie.
I've been at this for weeks, driving all over Malibu,
wasting time, getting the run around, looking out the passenger
(16:49):
side window, watching the stone walls stream past. Then I
get a number for a retired Lostills detective named JT. Manuel,
(17:13):
and he agrees to meet me at a park about
five miles from the station. He knows all about Lieutenant Royal. Yeah,
he's very intelligent, extremely intelligent mentally and his never give
up at ititude. I mean, he's relentless. He knows Sergeant
(17:34):
Right too well. Two, he's a hunter, so he's a
good tracker, and he worked narcotics wherever. He's a very
smart guy. Detective Manuel is a big guy with blue
eyes and a Steelers baseball cap. We sit down on
a bench by the playground. You know, a lot of stills.
(17:55):
It's different that way, where you got to work a
lot harder to find the bad guys because they're not
all over the place and the crime rates usually are
not that high in this area, so you've got a
kind of be a hard worker to get things accomplish.
He was a detective at Lost Hill Station for twenty
(18:16):
five years. He reported directly to Lieutenant Royal. He heard
about near Missus one through three, the early shootings in
Malibu Creek State Park, from Lieutenant Royal. Lieutenant Royal's very
hands on supervisor, so he, you know, he made sure
we were briefed about it. And then near Missus four
(18:36):
and five happened on the Canyon Road. I think a
lot of us believed there was a pattern between three
and four. Definitely. By five, definitely we knew we had
a shooter out there. Lieutenant Royal and his detective started
chasing down everything, even though, as Sergeant Wright told me,
his superiors in the department weren't giving him much support.
(19:00):
Lieutenant Royal was looking for a pattern and looking at
people in the area, and we were all going off
of leads or suspicions and everything else. He was starting
to develop potential suspect names, potential people of interest who
(19:21):
may have been somewhat radical, radical behavior and all that.
So we were definitely looking at different individuals possibly possibly
could be an area. They were looking for someone they
just didn't know who. It's very hard to find people
(19:44):
in the hills. There's all kinds of people living in
the hills that you don't know about that you stumble
across or you get a phone call on, and it
truly is if you're looking for one individual without a
lot of go on, it can be like a needle
in a haystack. We did not have a lot of leads.
(20:08):
I asked him if they were starting to develop a
psychological profile. Yeah. I just thought the person was definitely
somebody disturbed who had some kind of anger towards the
public at large. Did you start to think at any
point that maybe the anger was toward law enforcement personally?
(20:30):
That crossed my mind, Yes, But I think more more
than anything, I thought this guy was just seriously out
to hurt somebody, lone wolf type of guy. Did Routa's
name come up at that point. I think with Routa,
I think that came up probably after they saw the
(20:52):
tape with him burglarized and the gun. This conversation has
definitely helped me understand how and when Anthony Rowda became
a suspect. But I wonder if he can speak to
the other thing that's puzzling me, the investor instigation into
Sergeant Right and Lieutenant Royal. I don't think it was fair.
(21:13):
I don't think it was right, and I don't think
it was warranted. Two deputies or two people from Lost Tills,
which is commonly thought of as a slow station, went
out and basically found a murderer and stayed persistent and
collected some important evidence. And I don't know if personally
(21:36):
that rubbed somebody the wrong way or they felt like
it made him look bad. But I can't really give
an answer to the motives of it. But it just,
like I said, neither one of them deserved to be punished.
They deserved to be rewarded. I know a lot of
(21:59):
people were thinking that these two guys got screwed for
working on working extremely hard, and like I said, it
just did not make sense. So according to Detective Manuel.
It wasn't that they did something wrong, it was politics.
(22:19):
But who did they piss off? Who is that powerful?
(23:00):
I make a plan to visit CC Woods. She knows
a ton about the Sheriff's department and is leaser focused
on Lost Hills. All this stuff, the exile of Sergeant
Wright and Lieutenant Royal, the investigations into their police work,
It all happened under the leadership of her friend, Sheriff
Alex Vieneueva. Cecie gives me directions to a fifteen million
(23:24):
dollar Malibu beach house. It belongs to another friend of hers.
I drive up to find her in the garage doing
her laundry because it's eight million degrees two miles up
the canyon, and I didn't want you guys to melt.
And I'm always here. Actually this is I literally come here,
hang out with my girlfriend. I do my laundry in luxury,
(23:46):
and I work swear work. We walk inside and the
ocean fills every window. There's a pool, a gym, a
massive tank filled with rare jellyfish. We sit down in
the private movie theater and she launches right into a
discussion of Sheriff Vienneueva so my relationship with Alex okay,
(24:08):
she's crazy about him. When his retriever died, she posted
a picture of him, his wife, Vivian, and the dog.
I love you, she wrote. She says there's a lot
of speculation about her closeness to Sheriff fian Aueva. You know,
it started professionally when you're in a high profile situation,
(24:30):
which with me started with the Malibu Creek State Park shootings,
and that just kind of put my name all over
the world and it still continues to. So when you
form a relationship with somebody professionally during a very excuse me,
during a very profound life changing time, so the people
(24:56):
who are meant to stay in your life will stay,
and the people who are not meant to stay in
your life are not going to. WHOA. This conversation is
getting weirder by the minute. I think they just look
at me because of this cute little blonde thing, you know,
this mouthy, little big boob blonde thing, and they think
that like that's enough that to sway the Sheriff's like opinion,
(25:17):
which is bullshit. And it's like, you know, I want
to protect my ass too by not allowing people to
think that I would ever use my sexuality to get somewhere,
because I don't. I use facts, facts, truth, data, whatever.
So anytime Ceci says, Sheriffian Aueva is doing exactly what
(25:40):
she wants, cleaning house at Lost Tails station. Holy shit, Okay,
good Lost Tales and bad Lost Sails. Let's go to
the bad Lost Tails. Bad Lost Tails has been around
for a very long time. That dark cloud just hung
right over that station. You want to talk about continuing
(26:02):
the rogue cop mentality, That's what was happening at that department.
In twenty nineteen, a captain she really disliked had taken
over at Lost Hills. At this point, I'm really fucking
sick and tired of that househole, Okay and everybody else.
He's a cock blocker over there. She wanted Sheriff Vienneueva
to get rid of him, and she says she made
(26:24):
it clear she would send Vienneueva pictures of the captain.
I would draw a red circle around his head. It
bexed through. I couldn't help myself. I'm like, I want
that fucker. God. The guy she's talking about was captain
(26:44):
at the time of the Kobe Bryant helicopter crash, so
that wasn't good. And CC was upset about a sexual
assault investigation where the victim was a college student in Malibu,
so she pushed to get the captain canned and then
for Chuck Bassarah to get his job, which he did.
From what I heard rumor on the eighth floor is
(27:07):
that and Alex did that. Every captain in the department
crossed their legs and protected their man. CC clearly finds
this all exhilarating. So now as soon as that happen,
(27:29):
like two months later, one of the deputies comes up
to me. He's like, oh, hey, CC, blah blah blah.
You know, I just wanted you to know that, like
at least half the station is scared to death of you.
I'm like, that means half the station's not doing their job, Okay,
So you let them know. If I catch them, I
(27:50):
will put them on blast. Okay, whether it's an article
or whatever it is, I'm going to make sure all
the right people know. So they should be scared of
a watchdog. They should be. She says she's looking out
for sheriff in a way of his best interests and
going to war with his enemies. He's not a fan
(28:10):
of these people who are making the department look bad.
Who is she talking about? I'm going to say Royal
and right or not in his on his good boy list.
You know, I may not. I really don't. There are
some ten thousand deputies in the LA Sheriff's Department. How
(28:31):
would Alex Vieneueva even be aware of two former Malibu cops.
Detective Manuel said there were some politics. Did Sergeant Wright
and Lieutenant Royal somehow piss off the sheriff or did
they piss off CC? Or These things now one and
the same. But I'm no different than an activist who
(28:55):
uses my platform to affect change. So that's what I do.
And because Malibu is so well known, Alex knows that
basically if we fart over here, it's gonna make global news. Okay,
speaking of which, she's got a new article in the works.
(29:17):
It's going to be a bombshell. Cecie checks the time
she's got to go. I'm gonna go see Vivian Vienneueva.
So there's like a dispatcher's lunch over at um Dukes.
So I'm gonna go meet with those guys anyway, She's
on her way to a lunch with Viennueva's wife, Vivian
at Dukes, that surfer themed restaurant on pch So, first
(29:42):
the sheriff and now his wife. I guess everyone loves
the energy out in Malibu. Captain Bassarah isn't done with me.
(30:07):
He keeps calling. He wants to know how I'm getting on.
He's chipperer as usual, but they're starting to be a
frantic edge to his patter. You really need to find
out the truth, he says. He tells me that Sergeant
Wright and Lieutenant Royal are causing him trouble. Actually, he says,
(30:32):
the right and Royal thing is like shit, and I
can't keep it off my boots. He says, he's stepping
in it, tracking it all over his carpet. What they
botched the investigation? He tells me. They're giving the defense
a defense. He says, they're helping Anthony Rowda. There's a
(30:57):
pair of top secret reports detailing all the ways Sergeant
Wright and Lieutenant Royal allegedly screwed up the internal affairs
reports about their police work. Captain Bassara says, to put
him in an envelope, write my name on it. He's
going to tape it to the bottom of his desk,
and if he's killed in the line of duty, I
should come to Lost Hills and claim it. It's Captain
(31:23):
Bassarah again. I'm driving on PC, the ocean on my left,
mountains on my right. He's going on and on about
the screw ups in the router a case. I know
what he thinks of right and Royal, or as he
calls them, Tweedledee and Tweedledum. But what about the other cops?
Ty Berry, the major crimes lead who showed up at
(31:46):
route's early hearings, and Daniel Morris, the homicide detective who
witnessed Tristan Bodette's autopsy, The ones with records of misconduct
which I got from the DA's office. The dirty cops.
I realize I've never asked him about those guys, Barry
and Morris, He says brightly. I do know them. We
(32:06):
were deputies together twenty years ago. We're like minded, he says,
we understand each other. All of a sudden, I feel
kind of sick, disoriented. I'm remembering this weird moment that
(32:27):
happened when Bassarah was first showing me around the station.
He asked if I wanted to see the jail. I
did for sure. I knew Routa had spent time there,
so Bassarah asked the jailer for the keys. He led
me to a cell with a cot along one wall.
I walked in and as I was looking around, I
(32:48):
heard the sound of clanking metal. He was closing the door,
and then, still smiling, he locked me in. Lost Hills
(33:34):
is written and hosted by me Dana Goodyear. It's produced
by Western Sound and Pushkin Industries. For more information about
my investigation, follow at Lost Hills Pod on social media.
Up next episode seven, Morning Light
Pushkin, Hey, Dana, Chuck Chuck the Sarah bal Blue Last
Hill Shaff Station. Hey just call on you touching base
a backup work es since you text, that's Salvador Bissarah
goes by Chuck. He's the new captain of Lost Hill Station.
(00:38):
The station has been in turmoil since Router was arrested.
Scandal after scandal. Remember when Kobe Bryant's helicopter crashed in
the Calabasas Hills. Well County Sheriff's deputies are facing discipline
now for taking and sharing graphic photos at the scene
of the helicopter crash that killed nine people, including Kobe
Bryant eight deputies. According to media reports, some of those
(01:00):
deputies taking and sharing photos were from Lost Hills. I've
been trying to get in with the leadership at the
station ever since I heard about the murder in the park.
Sometimes I just go to the station and stare at
the mirrored glass behind the unattended reception desk. On the
other side lie the answers to everything that doesn't make
sense about this case. But all I can see is
(01:24):
myself reflected back at me. It's the perfect metaphor for
the Sheriff's department. They see out, but you can't see in.
But the weird thing about Captain Bassarah, he's friendly. This
guy calls me, I think you've been keeping up with
the politics here. Remember I was the act captain here
(01:45):
and they got replaced and they got sent back. He's nice,
he wants to help. You're getting stonewalled, he tells me cheerfully.
When you're getting stonewalled, you know you're onto a good story.
Something obviously went wrong at Lost Hill Station. There was
apparently a shooter on the loose and Malibu for over
(02:06):
a year and a half, and it was kept secret.
Not only that the alleged shooter hated the Lost Hills cops,
had frequent contact with law enforcement and lived in the
hills behind the station. And Sergeant Wright, who gave me
the helicopter tour, He and Lieutenant Royal, the two Lost
Hills deputies who argued there was a serial sniper would
(02:28):
be serial killer in Malibu and then found him. They're
under investigation what went wrong. Sarah's newly in charge. He
wasn't there for all the mess, but he says he
really really wants me to find out the truth. He
wishes he could tell me, but he can. He'd get fired,
(02:51):
at a minimum, possibly charged. The truth he keeps promising
me is a bombshell. It's crazy crazy, it's gonna be
It'll make a good movie or a good book, or
so he should get a chapter in it. Anyways, call
me when you get a chance. I'll be in the
rest of the week. Okay, by bye, I think I
(03:13):
might be in. I'm Dana Goodyear and this is Lost Hills,
(03:48):
episode six, One More Day in Paradise. In twenty sixteen
and twenty seventeen, there was a series of near miss
shootings in and around Malibu Creek State Park, than nothing
for eleven months. In the summer of twenty eighteen, there
was a sixth attack another near miss. It involved a
(04:10):
white tesla being driven by a man named Ian Kincaid.
The date was June eighteenth, four days before Tristan Boudett
was killed. Today, I'm at Ian's house at the top
of a twisty road in the Malibu Hills. Standing in
(04:32):
front of his garage, he pulls the car out. The
white hood has a single piece of white electrical tape
right between the headlights. He peels it away, revealing a
deep gash. Wow, yeah, let me understand why I don't
want my kids to see it. So I was going
about sixty miles an hour, sixty five or something like
(04:55):
that when I pulled over, But beforehand, I'd been going
considerably faster. Ian works as a gaffer in Hollywood, which
means it's his job to light the sets. He's worked
on six Quentin Tarantino movies, and on the day we're
talking about, he was headed to the set of Once
Upon a Time in Hollywood. He wanted to get there
by six am. Let me up the hood, so he
(05:18):
got up in the dark and left his home. He
took Malibu Canyon Road. I was driving through the canyon
about four twenty and I was driving pretty fast. Sometimes
in the morning, i'd drive excess of speed, and I thought,
you know what, I'm going to get there too early.
I don't need to speed, So I slowed down and
(05:40):
within a minute was when the bullet hit my car.
And I remember thinking, what's that sound? Yeah, it was
like it was like I thought, did I leave a
coffee cup on my roof again? And was at what
that was rattling? Or I thought I looked down my
tea cup was right there, and I thought, well, maybe
(06:00):
it was an acorn because I was driving near some
oak trees and just you know, these are just thoughts
at four o'clock in the morning, I wasn't trying to
solve any mysteries. And then within i'd say ten seconds,
maybe the the alarm started going off. So I pulled
over and got out of the car, and it was
pitch dark, no other traffic, and I slammed the right
(06:22):
I pulled over right there at the at the Hindu temple.
The bullet went in the hood, passed through the front
trunk and out the fender. You can see it wouldn't
take too much of a change in speed for that
to gone in elsewhere. You know, his height wasn't too
far off, you know, if he was indeed aiming at me.
(06:45):
I tesked the hole with my pinky. It has a
jagged edge. I can feel how close a call that was,
how the bullets so easily could have hit him. So
I went through there. They've replaced this piece. I think
it came through here and then out the fender from
(07:06):
from about here, and they said it might have bounced
off the tire. After work, Ian says he stopped by
Lost Hill station. He remembers the deputy who took the
report didn't appear too worried, so she took a picture,
and she handed me a slip of paper with a
number one and said, this is your crime report if
(07:27):
you ever need it. Okay, And they weren't concerned. There
was no nobody expressing any kind of serious interest in it.
For the next few days, he tells me, he felt
strange and avoided Malibu Canyon. When he couldn't avoid the road,
(07:47):
he ruminated where had that shot come from, who had
fired it, and why. Then four days later, on June
twenty second, Bodat was killed. I remember driving through Malbi
Canyon seeing a lot of cops and a fenced off area,
(08:13):
and you know, if something was going on, and I
got to work and uh, and I really don't recall
when I learned, but they learned that somebody had been
murdered in the campground. I thought, wow, that's that's bizarre. Suddenly,
(08:37):
he says, the cops were all over him. My phone
just lit up, and within I been in a half
an hour, I probably got twenty calls from sheriffs, from LPD,
from Lost hills, from rangers, from newspapers, from reporters, and
(09:02):
I just what is this. They summoned him back to
Lost Hill station, where a group of deputies quickly ushered
him around the side. So I drove around the back
and there must have been fifteen guys in uniform that
came up, and there were a lot of guys that
were just like volunteer kind of guys wearing sheriff's deputy
(09:24):
sheriff's stuff. There was a sargeantie, remember, and there was
a detective and they had a handful of dowels and
they have different diameter, and they put the dowels into
the hole. And that was Sergeant Twoey Wright and his
search and rescue team. Sergeant Wright saw this shooting as
another one of the near misses and believed that whoever
(09:47):
had done it had also likely killed Tristan Boudet. They
were trying to figure out the trajectory of the bullet.
The trajectory was important investigating the BMW shooting. Sergeant Wright
had found that hill the suspected shooting mound on the
park side of the canyon road. He was wondering if
(10:07):
whoever shot the test had fired from the same elevated spot,
and later, after the Woolsey fire had burned a bunch
of brush away, he went back and searched there and
found nine millimeter casings. But back in June twenty eighteen,
Ian says, the deputies were being secretive by what I gathered.
(10:32):
They didn't want to tell me anything. They were trying
to usher me away from the car most of the
time and have somebody else asked me questions while they
were putting the dolls in and stuff. But I was
Ian says he did hear one thing loud and clear,
and it confused him in the months ahead, when he,
like everyone else in Malibu, kept hearing the Sheriff's departments
(10:53):
say there was no connection, no relation, no link among
all these violent crimes. He overheard Sergeant Wright and the
deputies say that he Ian was the eighth victim in
an ongoing shooting spree that had just turned deadly. I
(11:17):
believed they said that I was number eight, and I thought,
what's that mean? When I might number eight? And then
a little later they said that is it Tristan, Yeah,
that he was number nine. This was the thinking of
(11:37):
a faction inside Lost Hill Station. They didn't yet know
who the canyon shooter was, but they believed that he
was out there for a year and a half. They'd
been telling the department, but the department wouldn't listen. The
Tesla shooting had been the Sheriff's Department's last chance to
intervene before the murder, and they missed. Captain Bissarah is
(12:21):
inviting me to come and see him at Lost Hill Station. Yes,
of course I want to come. It'll be my first
time behind the mirrored glass. He's a generous host. He
takes me around to meet the detectives. He takes me
outside to the parking lot so I can see the helipad.
There's a pile of scat right on the seal mountain Lion.
(12:45):
Maybe I look around at the dry, empty hills over
the ridge. Is that steep slope where Rowda made his camp?
How did it take them so long to find him?
Captain Bissarah is babbling on about how cops hate journalists.
How if I'm ever going to find out what I
want to know about this investigation, I'm going to need
to build some trust. He thinks I should meet as
(13:07):
many deputies as possible, go out with them, see Malibu
through their eyes. He suggests, I going to ride along
with the beach team. Okay. Rowda told me in a
letter that he hasn't been to Malibu's beaches in years,
(13:28):
since the mid two thousands, but it's worth a try.
So I spend a morning weaving in and out of
sunbathers on a quad. There was an incident regarding paparazzi's
in Matthew McConaughey near a paradise cove, and there was
an incident where a paparazzi was assaulted and his property
(13:52):
was vandalized, thrown in the water, his camera. And then
we had some pirates guys that were dressed in pirate
outfits that were at zooma seven in the parking lot
that were smoking marijuana in their car. They said they
were in a band, so they've dressed like fires. There's
smoke at weed in their car. That was back when weeds.
I mean, you're still not supposed to smoke in public,
(14:14):
but it was more of a big deal back then.
This job's fun because you just drive around and watch everything.
(14:40):
M M, it's Bassarah. He tells me he's arranged today
with Malibu Search and Rescue Sergeant Toy rights old team.
I head back to the station and climb into a
Search and rescue SUV. Search and Rescue played a pivotal
(15:01):
role in the route investigation. They found a lot of
evidence and assisted in the capture operation. I've been trying
to get on their radar for months, so UM for
the team. We drive around for hours looking at the
beautiful ocean views. The guys tell me some stories. A
(15:22):
gentleman called the sheriff station and thought, there's a woman
being attacked on a trail. This is Mark Hollander, a
medical officer was Search and Rescue was He was wondering
if she was being beaten or raped. Was very concerned.
We came out there, did a big search, found no
evidence of anybody on the trail, any evidence of a
woman that was attacked. Um. One of our team members said,
(15:42):
you know, I believe that when mountain lions are in heat,
they put out a sound very similar to a woman screaming.
So he went onto Google and was able to get
the recording of this sound, which does sound like a
woman screaming for help, actually saying help, help, help type
thing very similar. He's not wrong, this is a recording
(16:06):
I found, so we as a fall if we went
to the gentleman's house who reported it, and played that
tape for him and said, is this what you heard
that night? And he goes, oh my god, Yes, that's
the exact sound I heard. Did you find did you
find the woman? Did she? Ohsh okay? We said, actually know.
(16:28):
The sound you're hearing is a malon lion and heat.
It's a good story, but they're not telling me the story.
Did you get what you needed? Basarah asks, totally. I lie.
I've been at this for weeks, driving all over Malibu,
wasting time, getting the run around, looking out the passenger
(16:49):
side window, watching the stone walls stream past. Then I
get a number for a retired Lostills detective named JT. Manuel,
(17:13):
and he agrees to meet me at a park about
five miles from the station. He knows all about Lieutenant Royal. Yeah,
he's very intelligent, extremely intelligent mentally and his never give
up at ititude. I mean, he's relentless. He knows Sergeant
(17:34):
Right too well. Two, he's a hunter, so he's a
good tracker, and he worked narcotics wherever. He's a very
smart guy. Detective Manuel is a big guy with blue
eyes and a Steelers baseball cap. We sit down on
a bench by the playground. You know, a lot of stills.
(17:55):
It's different that way, where you got to work a
lot harder to find the bad guys because they're not
all over the place and the crime rates usually are
not that high in this area, so you've got a
kind of be a hard worker to get things accomplish.
He was a detective at Lost Hill Station for twenty
(18:16):
five years. He reported directly to Lieutenant Royal. He heard
about near Missus one through three, the early shootings in
Malibu Creek State Park, from Lieutenant Royal. Lieutenant Royal's very
hands on supervisor, so he, you know, he made sure
we were briefed about it. And then near Missus four
(18:36):
and five happened on the Canyon Road. I think a
lot of us believed there was a pattern between three
and four. Definitely. By five, definitely we knew we had
a shooter out there. Lieutenant Royal and his detective started
chasing down everything, even though, as Sergeant Wright told me,
his superiors in the department weren't giving him much support.
(19:00):
Lieutenant Royal was looking for a pattern and looking at
people in the area, and we were all going off
of leads or suspicions and everything else. He was starting
to develop potential suspect names, potential people of interest who
(19:21):
may have been somewhat radical, radical behavior and all that.
So we were definitely looking at different individuals possibly possibly
could be an area. They were looking for someone they
just didn't know who. It's very hard to find people
(19:44):
in the hills. There's all kinds of people living in
the hills that you don't know about that you stumble
across or you get a phone call on, and it
truly is if you're looking for one individual without a
lot of go on, it can be like a needle
in a haystack. We did not have a lot of leads.
(20:08):
I asked him if they were starting to develop a
psychological profile. Yeah. I just thought the person was definitely
somebody disturbed who had some kind of anger towards the
public at large. Did you start to think at any
point that maybe the anger was toward law enforcement personally?
(20:30):
That crossed my mind, Yes, But I think more more
than anything, I thought this guy was just seriously out
to hurt somebody, lone wolf type of guy. Did Routa's
name come up at that point. I think with Routa,
I think that came up probably after they saw the
(20:52):
tape with him burglarized and the gun. This conversation has
definitely helped me understand how and when Anthony Rowda became
a suspect. But I wonder if he can speak to
the other thing that's puzzling me, the investor instigation into
Sergeant Right and Lieutenant Royal. I don't think it was fair.
(21:13):
I don't think it was right, and I don't think
it was warranted. Two deputies or two people from Lost Tills,
which is commonly thought of as a slow station, went
out and basically found a murderer and stayed persistent and
collected some important evidence. And I don't know if personally
(21:36):
that rubbed somebody the wrong way or they felt like
it made him look bad. But I can't really give
an answer to the motives of it. But it just,
like I said, neither one of them deserved to be punished.
They deserved to be rewarded. I know a lot of
(21:59):
people were thinking that these two guys got screwed for
working on working extremely hard, and like I said, it
just did not make sense. So according to Detective Manuel.
It wasn't that they did something wrong, it was politics.
(22:19):
But who did they piss off? Who is that powerful?
(23:00):
I make a plan to visit CC Woods. She knows
a ton about the Sheriff's department and is leaser focused
on Lost Hills. All this stuff, the exile of Sergeant
Wright and Lieutenant Royal, the investigations into their police work,
It all happened under the leadership of her friend, Sheriff
Alex Vieneueva. Cecie gives me directions to a fifteen million
(23:24):
dollar Malibu beach house. It belongs to another friend of hers.
I drive up to find her in the garage doing
her laundry because it's eight million degrees two miles up
the canyon, and I didn't want you guys to melt.
And I'm always here. Actually this is I literally come here,
hang out with my girlfriend. I do my laundry in luxury,
(23:46):
and I work swear work. We walk inside and the
ocean fills every window. There's a pool, a gym, a
massive tank filled with rare jellyfish. We sit down in
the private movie theater and she launches right into a
discussion of Sheriff Vienneueva so my relationship with Alex okay,
(24:08):
she's crazy about him. When his retriever died, she posted
a picture of him, his wife, Vivian, and the dog.
I love you, she wrote. She says there's a lot
of speculation about her closeness to Sheriff fian Aueva. You know,
it started professionally when you're in a high profile situation,
(24:30):
which with me started with the Malibu Creek State Park shootings,
and that just kind of put my name all over
the world and it still continues to. So when you
form a relationship with somebody professionally during a very excuse me,
during a very profound life changing time, so the people
(24:56):
who are meant to stay in your life will stay,
and the people who are not meant to stay in
your life are not going to. WHOA. This conversation is
getting weirder by the minute. I think they just look
at me because of this cute little blonde thing, you know,
this mouthy, little big boob blonde thing, and they think
that like that's enough that to sway the Sheriff's like opinion,
(25:17):
which is bullshit. And it's like, you know, I want
to protect my ass too by not allowing people to
think that I would ever use my sexuality to get somewhere,
because I don't. I use facts, facts, truth, data, whatever.
So anytime Ceci says, Sheriffian Aueva is doing exactly what
(25:40):
she wants, cleaning house at Lost Tails station. Holy shit, Okay,
good Lost Tales and bad Lost Sails. Let's go to
the bad Lost Tails. Bad Lost Tails has been around
for a very long time. That dark cloud just hung
right over that station. You want to talk about continuing
(26:02):
the rogue cop mentality, That's what was happening at that department.
In twenty nineteen, a captain she really disliked had taken
over at Lost Hills. At this point, I'm really fucking
sick and tired of that househole, Okay and everybody else.
He's a cock blocker over there. She wanted Sheriff Vienneueva
to get rid of him, and she says she made
(26:24):
it clear she would send Vienneueva pictures of the captain.
I would draw a red circle around his head. It
bexed through. I couldn't help myself. I'm like, I want
that fucker. God. The guy she's talking about was captain
(26:44):
at the time of the Kobe Bryant helicopter crash, so
that wasn't good. And CC was upset about a sexual
assault investigation where the victim was a college student in Malibu,
so she pushed to get the captain canned and then
for Chuck Bassarah to get his job, which he did.
From what I heard rumor on the eighth floor is
(27:07):
that and Alex did that. Every captain in the department
crossed their legs and protected their man. CC clearly finds
this all exhilarating. So now as soon as that happen,
(27:29):
like two months later, one of the deputies comes up
to me. He's like, oh, hey, CC, blah blah blah.
You know, I just wanted you to know that, like
at least half the station is scared to death of you.
I'm like, that means half the station's not doing their job, Okay,
So you let them know. If I catch them, I
(27:50):
will put them on blast. Okay, whether it's an article
or whatever it is, I'm going to make sure all
the right people know. So they should be scared of
a watchdog. They should be. She says she's looking out
for sheriff in a way of his best interests and
going to war with his enemies. He's not a fan
(28:10):
of these people who are making the department look bad.
Who is she talking about? I'm going to say Royal
and right or not in his on his good boy list.
You know, I may not. I really don't. There are
some ten thousand deputies in the LA Sheriff's Department. How
(28:31):
would Alex Vieneueva even be aware of two former Malibu cops.
Detective Manuel said there were some politics. Did Sergeant Wright
and Lieutenant Royal somehow piss off the sheriff or did
they piss off CC? Or These things now one and
the same. But I'm no different than an activist who
(28:55):
uses my platform to affect change. So that's what I do.
And because Malibu is so well known, Alex knows that
basically if we fart over here, it's gonna make global news. Okay,
speaking of which, she's got a new article in the works.
(29:17):
It's going to be a bombshell. Cecie checks the time
she's got to go. I'm gonna go see Vivian Vienneueva.
So there's like a dispatcher's lunch over at um Dukes.
So I'm gonna go meet with those guys anyway, She's
on her way to a lunch with Viennueva's wife, Vivian
at Dukes, that surfer themed restaurant on pch So, first
(29:42):
the sheriff and now his wife. I guess everyone loves
the energy out in Malibu. Captain Bassarah isn't done with me.
(30:07):
He keeps calling. He wants to know how I'm getting on.
He's chipperer as usual, but they're starting to be a
frantic edge to his patter. You really need to find
out the truth, he says. He tells me that Sergeant
Wright and Lieutenant Royal are causing him trouble. Actually, he says,
(30:32):
the right and Royal thing is like shit, and I
can't keep it off my boots. He says, he's stepping
in it, tracking it all over his carpet. What they
botched the investigation? He tells me. They're giving the defense
a defense. He says, they're helping Anthony Rowda. There's a
(30:57):
pair of top secret reports detailing all the ways Sergeant
Wright and Lieutenant Royal allegedly screwed up the internal affairs
reports about their police work. Captain Bassara says, to put
him in an envelope, write my name on it. He's
going to tape it to the bottom of his desk,
and if he's killed in the line of duty, I
should come to Lost Hills and claim it. It's Captain
(31:23):
Bassarah again. I'm driving on PC, the ocean on my left,
mountains on my right. He's going on and on about
the screw ups in the router a case. I know
what he thinks of right and Royal, or as he
calls them, Tweedledee and Tweedledum. But what about the other cops?
Ty Berry, the major crimes lead who showed up at
(31:46):
route's early hearings, and Daniel Morris, the homicide detective who
witnessed Tristan Bodette's autopsy, The ones with records of misconduct
which I got from the DA's office. The dirty cops.
I realize I've never asked him about those guys, Barry
and Morris, He says brightly. I do know them. We
(32:06):
were deputies together twenty years ago. We're like minded, he says,
we understand each other. All of a sudden, I feel
kind of sick, disoriented. I'm remembering this weird moment that
(32:27):
happened when Bassarah was first showing me around the station.
He asked if I wanted to see the jail. I
did for sure. I knew Routa had spent time there,
so Bassarah asked the jailer for the keys. He led
me to a cell with a cot along one wall.
I walked in and as I was looking around, I
(32:48):
heard the sound of clanking metal. He was closing the door,
and then, still smiling, he locked me in. Lost Hills
(33:34):
is written and hosted by me Dana Goodyear. It's produced
by Western Sound and Pushkin Industries. For more information about
my investigation, follow at Lost Hills Pod on social media.
Up next episode seven, Morning Light
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