July 22, 2024 • 34 mins
In the summer of 2020, a woman named Dia Abrams disappears from her home near Idyllwild, California. Her family and friends gather to search for her but some of their stories don’t quite add up.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Before we get to this episode, I want to
let you know that you can binge the entire season
right now add free. By becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber,
you can hear every episode before they're released to the public.
Sign up for Pushkin Plus on the Where's Dear Apple
(00:36):
Podcast show page or visit pushkin dot fm slash Plus.
Now onto the episode. I found out about the missing
women through a Facebook post. I hike a lot, mostly
(01:00):
around Los Angeles, and always alone. I don't like to
talk where my heavy boots are rhythmically pounding the switchback trails.
I use Facebook groups called things like Girls who Hike
and Ladies who Hike LA for trail recommendations and safety tips.
(01:21):
Sometime in the summer of twenty twenty, someone shared a
news article in one of these groups and warned us
all against hiking alone. In Idlewild, a mountain town about
one hundred miles from me, five women had gone missing
in the past two months.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Idlewild is a really small community and a lot of
people know each other there, so when people ended up
going missing, it was this kind of it was odd.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
This is Diana Fetder. She knows a thing or two
about crime. She worked as a secret service agent for
twenty three years, investigating financial fraud. Diana was living in
the Idleworld area when the disappearances began.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
So when and that started happening, you know, all of
us girls were kind of saying, Okay, well, we're not
going to go anywhere without somebody else. If it's dark outside,
just you know, bring somebody with you.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Idlewild is nothing like La. The town is tucked away
in the San Jacinto Mountains. Its official mayor is a
golden Retriever named Maximus Mighty Dog Mueller the Third. Really,
that's the kind of town. It is a tourist playground,
(02:40):
a mile high paradise offering an idylic escape from the city.
Its main street is lined by ice cream shops, kitch
gift stores, and cute carved wood and bears. So all
these women disappearing was pretty big news. And because I'm
a journalist, and because I just really wanted to know
(03:00):
what happened, I figured I'd just start making some calls.
It took me months, but eventually I managed to track
down a friend, a granddaughter, a mother of every single
missing woman, and I've found out what happened to them.
One woman was elderly with dementia. She got and lost
(03:23):
and her car was found abandoned on a steep mountain side.
Her remains were later discovered nearby. Three women were battling
meth addictions. They'd run away from trouble, just packed up
and left. There was an explanation for all of them
except for one, a woman named Lydia Kenchilo Abrams, who
(03:46):
was known as Dea.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
When Dia went missing, it was a whole nother ballgame.
I'm like, this is one of our own.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Dia was a woman whose story refused to be tied
up in this neat little ending. She was a glamorous
sixty five year old widow of a millionaire with two
kids in San Diego, horse and a ton of property.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Oh. I admired the heck out of her. Let me
tell you. She's a woman who was confident about herself,
always giving compliments to others, always telling other people they
were beautiful and how wonderful they were. But at the
same time, this fetitue woman kid opened up a can
(04:35):
of whoopd bass like no one I've ever seen. She
had no problem calling the people out if she felt
they were lying to her, or they were doing something
wrong or not being good people, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
They seemed an unlikely pair. Diana is a motorbike riding,
leather wearing Southerner who also calls herself Lady Fed, and
Dia the blonde, blue eyed Californian. But when they met,
Diana says, they clicked immediately.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
She was a private person and she wasn't one to
make friends with a lot of people easily. So if
she allowed you in her little circle, then she felt
that you were worthy.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
You know, when Dia went missing, Idlewild wasn't the same,
not for Diana or another woman in town. Julie Stamford,
along with Dia, they've made this little trio, this sort
of girl gang, like the kind you'd see at high school.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Julie and I have spent hours and hours and hours
going over every scenario that it could possibly be, and
we came down to the same thing. She did not
leave over on a court.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
I've spent the past four years investigating what happened to Dia,
and if there's one thing I've learned, it's this, we
don't like unanswered questions. When someone goes missing, they leave
a vacuum, and everyone left behind scrambles to fill that
space with reasons why, or explanations of how to make
(06:18):
sense of things, anything to achieve that neat little ending
that I too was looking for when Dea went missing.
She didn't get to tell her own story. Her narrative
has been crafted by friends, family, lovers, and yes, even enemies,
(06:40):
and it's left to us to decide whose version of
events we believe. This isn't just a story about Dea.
It's also a story about everyone she left behind. I'm
Lucy Sheriff, and this is Where's Dea? Episode one? You
(07:03):
Cannot Save Me from all things? That wasn't much about
(07:25):
Dia abrams out there. Like her friend Diana said, she
seemed to be a private person. But I did come
across a video by a local CBS reporter, David Godfredson.
He'd interviewed a man named Keith Harper, who said he
was DIA's fiance. It's a bit hard to make out
David's questions in the video. It was twenty twenty, after all,
(07:49):
so he was wearing a mask. But Keith diligently responds
with short, to the point answers, and you.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Had plans to marry her.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
Yes, t fourth of July then where Jackson Hole lie
on me.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Keith and the reporter were sitting across from each other
at Bonita Vista Ranch, DEA's sprawling home. Bright green trees
and sunshine filled the frame around Keith. He had a craggy,
rugged face, the face of someone who's been out in
the sun his whole life. Why do you want to
(08:24):
marry her?
Speaker 3 (08:26):
She's an awesome person.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
She's the person that I have looked for.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
All my life.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
I watched his body language, his bright blue eyes flitted
around as he described his efforts to look for Deer.
The interview was posted on YouTube. There were a lot
of comments, and many of them were not sympathetic. Here's
a couple he knows way more than he's letting up.
(08:52):
I don't trust that old man, and even this guy
has the perfect opportunity to get away with murder. The
reporter asked Keith if he had anything to do with
DEA's disappearance.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Absolutely not. How can you prove that?
Speaker 4 (09:13):
I can prove that because I love the woman, I
have no reason to bring harm to her. I loved
that woman.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
I had to speak with Keith Harper myself. I struggled
to find his contact details online, and eventually I went
up to Idleworld and asked around. There were a bunch
of missing persons posters on wooden notice boards around the town.
One of them had DEA's face on it. There were
two numbers listed, one for Julia and the other one
(09:47):
for A Harper. Oh hi is that mister Harper?
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Hi, my name's Lucy Sheriff.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
So I called her analyst and I wondered, if you
would be willing to talk.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
To me quickly, what questions do you have?
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Obviously I had a lot. We talked for almost an hour.
I found out he likes to be known as Harper,
and so from now on that's what I'll call him.
He told me he was still searching for Dea and
he was worried that she was going to be forgotten
by the police, that she'd just become another cold case.
(10:28):
The hardest part, he said, was not knowing.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
You can deal with yeah, if there is a yeah,
or you can deal with she left on an OW
coord is her choice. You know. I can deal with that.
I can deal with all of that, But not knowing
and to hollow you have a heart blund.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Blow of the Harper was an open book. He didn't
seem to be anything like the guy who'd appeared on
the CBS interview. I remember feeling this immense sympathy for him.
He sounded so heartbroken. I can't imagine how difficult it
must be to not know.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
And unless you've been through something like that, you'll know her.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
Know you'll never have her, have her now, because it
leaves pip gen yourd stomach and in your heart that
never gets healed.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Harper told me, do you knew how to use a gun?
Speaker 3 (11:33):
I keep going back that she was independent, she was
she was capable. You know, I've watched her kill rattlers.
I watched her kill five rattlers one day, and she
has no clear I mean the girl and next to
one and shoot it.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
A glamorous blonde who carried a gun shot at Rustlesnake's
and ran a sprawling ranch. I mean, do it. Kind
of sounded like a badass. But over these years I've
peeled back these layers, and she was a complicated character.
Even now, It's like deer refuses to be summed up
(12:10):
in one neat sentence. She doesn't fit into any classic
archetypes or tidy cliches. Every new person I've spoken to
opened another door to another possibility about what might have happened.
Every conversation raised another version of events that didn't quite
add up, another puzzle piece that didn't seem to fit.
(12:35):
Deer disappeared on Saturday, June sixth, twenty twenty. I've revisited
that one weekend over and over because everyone has their
own account of how things went down at beneath a
Vista Ranch, DEA's one hundred and fifteen acre gated mountain Paradise.
I'm going to come back to these couple of days
(12:56):
a lot throughout the season, so pay close attention. The
timeline of the day Deer went missing is spotty, to
say the least, but there's one thing know for sure.
Around nine am on Saturday, June sixth, Dea went over
to a neighbor's house to deliver cinnamon rolls. The door
(13:18):
cam footage was later leaked to CBS.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Now for the first time, we are seeing video of
the former La Jolla resident, recorded just hours before she vanished.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
I watched the grainy picture in its eerie silence, Dea
wearing an oversized chunky black shirt, her long blonde hair loose,
ringing on the doorbell, a box of rolls in hand.
When Dea realizes her neighbor isn't going to answer, she
puts the box on some kind of ledge next to
the door. The whole scene is ringed with a black
(13:52):
circular border, like I'm looking through a fish eyelands watching
DEA's final known movements. Dea walks away, and that's it.
The one other thing I know for sure from that
day is at around two thirty pm, Dear texted Diana,
(14:14):
her motorcycle riding friend, about window cleaner recommendations because she
was renting out some of her properties.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
She was happy as heck. We had her house lined
up for Airbnb and we were getting hits on it.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
You might be wondering why would the widow of a
millionaire be doing the airbnb hustle? And that's a great
question with a pretty complex answer that I'll fully get
into later. All you need to know for now is
that Dea felt she was not in a good place
financially or by some accounts, emotionally. She was in a
(14:51):
dispute with her children over the estate of her husband,
who had died a few years prior, so on June sixth,
Dea texted Diana, and I've seen those messages, and then
it all goes dark. That's the last evidence I have
of what Dea did that day, because everything that happened
(15:12):
on Saturday after that string of texts is according to Harper.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Hey, you know, it seemed to be a typical day.
But I was pushing hard to get ready to go
to Colorado, and so you know, we we were making
sure that everything was being prepared. And I remember I
was down in the meadow mowing the medal and at lunchtime,
which was two o'clock for us because we didn't eat breakfast,
(15:39):
healths probably around ken I came in it too. We
had lunch and she did it. Have you got a
minute I can talk to you. And I wish that
I had listened, because you know, she had talked about
how she felt there was a brisk with her children.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
According to Harper, and Diana Deer was scared of her children.
It was all to do with this battle her late
husband's estate. The kids wanted it all, and they might
go to extreme lengths to keep not only all of
their father's money but DEA's multimillion dollar ranch too. Also
(16:22):
her friends told.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Me and if anything, I can't pass that off, thinking
that her children would not do anything to her. And
she said, do you have a minute, I can talk
with you. And I said, hon, can the talk to
see me? I said, I've got the medal to do
(16:43):
and it's going to take me till dark. If I
get done, I leave go back to the meddal. At
four thirty. I did not get this text because I
was on the tractor and I did not hear it.
But she texted me at four point thirty, and what
she said is, Harper, you cannot save me from all things,
even if you believe you can you can.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
You cannot save me from all things. Even if you
believe you can, you can't. I've never seen this text.
I've asked, but Harper told me the police took his
phone and won't give it back. According to his version
of events, he came in from mowing the meadow at
seven fifteen pm and Dea was nowhere to be seen.
(17:29):
He thought she was out exercising her horses.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
You know, I well, I'll just call her, see where
to tell she is? I call, and that I could
hear her phone ringing upstairs, so I go upstairs, thinking
she was up there because sometimes she gets migraines and
she'll lay down. But she was not anywhere in the house,
but her phone was plunged in her purse was sitting
(17:54):
on the kitchen counter.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
He says. He then went to see if DEA's truck
was outside.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
And when the truck was still parked where it was,
then I started the new a search.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Of the Harper told me he searched other cabins and
various sheds and storage units on the property, and that
in the early hours of the morning he stopped searching
and went to bed. The next day, Deer was still
nowhere to be found, making Harper the last person to
(18:30):
see her alive.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
You know, obviously when you're the last person, s always
become the suspect.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
We'll be right back. Early on Sunday morning, when Harper
(19:07):
woke up, Deer was still missing. Her phone, purse, and
truck were all at the ranch. Harper says he continued
his search immediately.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
And that's when I went. I talked to the highway
control and he said, Harper, g I'll the share this,
And he said, I'll tell you what, They're not to
do anything for her. I'll be seventy hours before they act.
Because people show up, they just disappear, and many of
them come back within that timetime, so they don't get
really excited.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Before we get into what happened next, I want to
take a minute to address the idea that you have
to wait a certain amount of time to report someone missing.
You've probably heard of it on a TV show or
in a movie, but it's complete rubbish. You can report
someone missing right away. After Harper spoke to the California
(19:59):
Highway Patrol officer, news began to spread. Diana Fetter, Dear's
friend got wind that Harper was trying to get in
touch with her.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
So I was able to call him. I said, what's
going on, because, well, she didn't come home last night.
Is she with you? I said, no, she's not with me.
But that's typical of Dea. If she didn't want to
go home, she'd either spend the night with a friend
or she'd spent the night at her corner Valley house.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
At eight twenty four am on Sunday, a call was
made from the ranch to the cops to report a
missing person. I'm not sure who made that call, but
the cops don't show until later the following day. Meanwhile,
Diana rallied a search party, army veterans who belonged to
(20:45):
her motorcycle club, Deer's Idlewild friends, and neighbors from a
Christian youth camp across the road.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
So it was pretty quick when people all started showing up.
We all started making phone calls trying to get people
to come over and help.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Some of the people who were searching assumed Deer had
gone off hiking and just hurt herself.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
She's either up the hill, you know, walking up the
hill and she she got lost, or she hurt herself
and she can't come down.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
But there was a growing list of clues that made
this seem unlikely. Her phone and her guns were at
the house, things she always took hiking, and there was
something else that was very off. DEA's dog, Ruby was
still there. Ruby was a mixed mutt white with black
spots and corgy sized. She was ill too, on a
(21:38):
very specific diet and lots of medication.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
And that was the number one thing. She would never
have left Ruby at all. She always took Ruby everywhere.
I don't care where she went given to her attorney's office,
she brought ruby. If she went to the store, she
brought ruby. If she was going to low, she brought ruby.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
The search was well underway when DEA's thirty year old son,
Clinton Abrams showed up at the ranch with some friends.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
And I had never met him before, and all I
could think about is, I'm looking at this young guy that,
you know, looks like a college frat boy. He's not crying,
he's not like overly emotional. Everybody went searching for Dia.
(22:31):
He didn't do anything. He just stood there. So it
was it was like, well, if my mom or my dad,
or my child or whoever was missing, I'd be out there.
I'm not going to just stand here and wait for
somebody to bring me news. But he just stood there
like he wanted people to pity him. You know, he
(22:52):
didn't act like an individual who was worried about their
mother's welfare. Period.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
I've spoken with Clinton, by the way, he described his
actions that day very differently. You'll hear from him later on.
But in the meantime, the search part, he had no
luck finding any trace of Deer. Soon people began to disperse.
Later that night, Diana says she got another call.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
I had gone home and Harper was calling and he
was upset, and I said, are you going to be okay?
And he's like no. I said, do you need me
to come out there? And he goes, do you mind?
I said, no, that's fine. So I came out and
I sat at the house, and he was kind of
like a zombie, you know, like acted the part of
(23:43):
like something's wrong.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
That night, Diana stayed over at the ranch. It's now Monday,
June eighth, two days since Deer was last seen, and
there was no sign of the cops. Any officer will
tell you that the first forty eight hours is crucial
in a missing person's case. It's when investigators have the
(24:07):
best chance of following up a because the information is
fresh in everyone's minds. It's the best chance you have
of finding somebody. And yet the cops wait until Monday
afternoon to arrive on the scene. And before they even
get to the ranch, Harper says, they called him to
(24:27):
say they were coming.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
They call me and they tell me that they are
going to be there at eight point thirty in the morning.
When they get there, they said, we will or shutting
the LANs down and we will take over the charch.
If you've got anything, you may want to get it mo,
because anything that's on the property will stay there.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
I talked to three people who were there that day
who all said the cops didn't show up until the afternoon,
and when they finally did show, Diana says, they made
some frustrating decisions.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Well, they immediately came onto the property and kicked everybody off,
you know, didn't look around at anybody or say, okay,
well who's the person that contacted the Sheriff's department, or Hey,
who's Diana, or hey who's this person. They didn't even
take my name.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Diana was especially upset because people started leaving without being
questioned by the police. What you know.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Yes, I was never a police officer, but I was
a federal agent for twenty three years, and I felt
that the investigation could have been handled better by the way.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
I've spoken with other people who were on the ranch
the day of the search and who said it took
the Riverside sheriff Department three years to get in touch
and ask them what they saw. Anyways, when the cops
called off their search that night at ten thirty five pm,
they handed over the keys to the entire ranch to
(26:09):
Clinton and Chrissara DEA's children. The cops left behind an
affidavit and a search warrant for the ranch. I found
something surprising in those documents. A second address was listed,
Diana Fedder's house. I haven't been able to confirm with
the cops whether they searched her property. She says they didn't.
(26:33):
It did make me wonder, though, why would they want
to search her house. I also read through the list
of all the items the potential evidence that the cops
had confiscated. There was a netgear router, which, among other things,
would have info about which cell phones were connected to
(26:54):
the Wi Fi and any activity from security cameras. There
was a piece of toilet paper, a band aid, and
tan bed sheets which the cops noted might have bloodstains
on them. There were spent bullet shell care, and lastly,
two handwritten notes. I was desperate to know more about
(27:19):
this evidence, spent bullet casings, handwritten notes. It felt tantalizing
to be this close and yet not know the significance
of it all, but the police won't share any more information.
In fact, I've had little luck getting much out of
the cops at all. I've emailed, called, texted, and they've
been so tight lipped about what happened that weekend and
(27:42):
their investigation at large. It's been incredibly frustrating. You'd think
the first person the cops would question would be Harper.
After all, as he said himself, the last person to
see a missing person alive is usually a suspect. But
they didn't actually let me make that clear. They couldn't
(28:06):
question Harper because sometime on my morning before the cops
show up, Happer left. He took off for New Mexico
in his white Ford motor home with DEA's dog, Ruby, who,
according to DIA's friends, Happer didn't even like. I asked
(28:27):
Harper about this.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Well, well, I had a tax bill I had to
take care of. It was supposed to be taken care
of a week before, and we were going to do
that when we were heading to Colorado. In Arizona, I
have a ranch there as well.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
So to reiterate, he says he had a tax bill
to take care of in Arizona and that's why he
left two days after his fiance disappeared. But Harper gave
Diana an entirely different reason. The morning that he left.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
We were having coffee and we went over to the
trail to take look again to see if she could
be over there, and he told me he had to
go back. I think you said Arizona, New Mexico. I
can't remember which state it was that he had to
go back to that port on bogging On, but he
told me about his probation.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Probation, Diana says Harper told her he had to go
and check in with a parole officer. I asked Harper
about this too.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
No, I heard that too, and I don't know where
the hell she got that.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
I don't know where I'm from.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
When I was in Arizona, I was talking with the
sheriff's office all the time until I was told by
Diana that they had come and the ranch was closed.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
He said he took his RV so he'd have somewhere
to stay when he came back to California because the
cops told him they were shutting up the ranch. I've
done a lot of research, and I can't find anything
that Harper would have been on probation for at that time,
So that doesn't add up. That leaves the tax bill story,
which is a little odd. Why would you have to
(30:14):
drive hundreds of miles to go take care of a
tax bill? And why would it be so urgent that
you have to leave two days after your fiance goes missing.
As I waded into this story, I found that getting
clarity on what might have happened to Deer that day
was not so straightforward. Over the past few years, I've
(30:38):
been down endless rabbit holes that have led nowhere and
hit countless brick walls. They have been many times where
I've been close to walking away from this story. But
What's kept me coming back to this like some bad
habit I can't quite kick, is the ridiculous amount of
times I've shouted wait what out loud in my living
(31:00):
room to myself after finding out some insane new piece
of information. It's so hard to know who to trust
because everyone I speak to seems to have something to
gain from Deer's disappearance. Everyone wants their version of events
to be believed to go down as the truth. What
(31:20):
happened to Dea has become one of those Internet Who'd
done it yarns that attracts armchair sleuths. A strange chorus
of anonymous people on Reddit and YouTube, all obsessing over
the evidence. I mean, I guess I've become one of
them too. The theories of what happened range from plausible
to wild speculation. I listen to all of them, hoping
(31:45):
that somewhere in that pile of theories lies the truth,
and knowing that very likely one of the people I'm
speaking to is lying. Coming up this season on Where's Dear.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
People I didn't know were in our family home.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
I had gone up there ever since I was a
little kid, and now suddenly, you know, the people who
I suspect had murdered her are moving in.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
I said, well, this guy's acting really suspicious, and I
have all kinds about warms going off in my head.
There's something out right. We were so hard for the place,
and we took him down the road and looked, and
he just saw Dahmer's signs.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
He had every reason to harm her, but so did
Chrissara and Clinton.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Just because so much money's involved, you can't trust anything
the man says.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
At all, Like literally, he just he's allergic to the truth.
This story is getting ready to blow wide open. If
he wants some information, We can talk.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Where's Dear is written and hosted by me Lucy Sheriff.
Our producer is Daphne Chen. Editing by Karen Shakerji, Production
assistance from Joey Fish, ground fact checking by Lauren Vespoli.
Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Original score, sound design
(33:38):
and mastering by Echo Shaw's. Where's Dere is a co
production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. You can listen to
(34:00):
all of Where's Dear right now add free by becoming
a Pushkin Plus subscriber fine Pushkin Plus on the Apple
show page for Where's Dear or at pushkin dot fm
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(00:36):
Podcast show page or visit pushkin dot fm slash Plus.
Now onto the episode. I found out about the missing
women through a Facebook post. I hike a lot, mostly
(01:00):
around Los Angeles, and always alone. I don't like to
talk where my heavy boots are rhythmically pounding the switchback trails.
I use Facebook groups called things like Girls who Hike
and Ladies who Hike LA for trail recommendations and safety tips.
(01:21):
Sometime in the summer of twenty twenty, someone shared a
news article in one of these groups and warned us
all against hiking alone. In Idlewild, a mountain town about
one hundred miles from me, five women had gone missing
in the past two months.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Idlewild is a really small community and a lot of
people know each other there, so when people ended up
going missing, it was this kind of it was odd.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
This is Diana Fetder. She knows a thing or two
about crime. She worked as a secret service agent for
twenty three years, investigating financial fraud. Diana was living in
the Idleworld area when the disappearances began.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
So when and that started happening, you know, all of
us girls were kind of saying, Okay, well, we're not
going to go anywhere without somebody else. If it's dark outside,
just you know, bring somebody with you.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Idlewild is nothing like La. The town is tucked away
in the San Jacinto Mountains. Its official mayor is a
golden Retriever named Maximus Mighty Dog Mueller the Third. Really,
that's the kind of town. It is a tourist playground,
(02:40):
a mile high paradise offering an idylic escape from the city.
Its main street is lined by ice cream shops, kitch
gift stores, and cute carved wood and bears. So all
these women disappearing was pretty big news. And because I'm
a journalist, and because I just really wanted to know
(03:00):
what happened, I figured I'd just start making some calls.
It took me months, but eventually I managed to track
down a friend, a granddaughter, a mother of every single
missing woman, and I've found out what happened to them.
One woman was elderly with dementia. She got and lost
(03:23):
and her car was found abandoned on a steep mountain side.
Her remains were later discovered nearby. Three women were battling
meth addictions. They'd run away from trouble, just packed up
and left. There was an explanation for all of them
except for one, a woman named Lydia Kenchilo Abrams, who
(03:46):
was known as Dea.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
When Dia went missing, it was a whole nother ballgame.
I'm like, this is one of our own.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Dia was a woman whose story refused to be tied
up in this neat little ending. She was a glamorous
sixty five year old widow of a millionaire with two
kids in San Diego, horse and a ton of property.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Oh. I admired the heck out of her. Let me
tell you. She's a woman who was confident about herself,
always giving compliments to others, always telling other people they
were beautiful and how wonderful they were. But at the
same time, this fetitue woman kid opened up a can
(04:35):
of whoopd bass like no one I've ever seen. She
had no problem calling the people out if she felt
they were lying to her, or they were doing something
wrong or not being good people, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
They seemed an unlikely pair. Diana is a motorbike riding,
leather wearing Southerner who also calls herself Lady Fed, and
Dia the blonde, blue eyed Californian. But when they met,
Diana says, they clicked immediately.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
She was a private person and she wasn't one to
make friends with a lot of people easily. So if
she allowed you in her little circle, then she felt
that you were worthy.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
You know, when Dia went missing, Idlewild wasn't the same,
not for Diana or another woman in town. Julie Stamford,
along with Dia, they've made this little trio, this sort
of girl gang, like the kind you'd see at high school.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Julie and I have spent hours and hours and hours
going over every scenario that it could possibly be, and
we came down to the same thing. She did not
leave over on a court.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
I've spent the past four years investigating what happened to Dia,
and if there's one thing I've learned, it's this, we
don't like unanswered questions. When someone goes missing, they leave
a vacuum, and everyone left behind scrambles to fill that
space with reasons why, or explanations of how to make
(06:18):
sense of things, anything to achieve that neat little ending
that I too was looking for when Dea went missing.
She didn't get to tell her own story. Her narrative
has been crafted by friends, family, lovers, and yes, even enemies,
(06:40):
and it's left to us to decide whose version of
events we believe. This isn't just a story about Dea.
It's also a story about everyone she left behind. I'm
Lucy Sheriff, and this is Where's Dea? Episode one? You
(07:03):
Cannot Save Me from all things? That wasn't much about
(07:25):
Dia abrams out there. Like her friend Diana said, she
seemed to be a private person. But I did come
across a video by a local CBS reporter, David Godfredson.
He'd interviewed a man named Keith Harper, who said he
was DIA's fiance. It's a bit hard to make out
David's questions in the video. It was twenty twenty, after all,
(07:49):
so he was wearing a mask. But Keith diligently responds
with short, to the point answers, and you.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Had plans to marry her.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
Yes, t fourth of July then where Jackson Hole lie
on me.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Keith and the reporter were sitting across from each other
at Bonita Vista Ranch, DEA's sprawling home. Bright green trees
and sunshine filled the frame around Keith. He had a craggy,
rugged face, the face of someone who's been out in
the sun his whole life. Why do you want to
(08:24):
marry her?
Speaker 3 (08:26):
She's an awesome person.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
She's the person that I have looked for.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
All my life.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
I watched his body language, his bright blue eyes flitted
around as he described his efforts to look for Deer.
The interview was posted on YouTube. There were a lot
of comments, and many of them were not sympathetic. Here's
a couple he knows way more than he's letting up.
(08:52):
I don't trust that old man, and even this guy
has the perfect opportunity to get away with murder. The
reporter asked Keith if he had anything to do with
DEA's disappearance.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Absolutely not. How can you prove that?
Speaker 4 (09:13):
I can prove that because I love the woman, I
have no reason to bring harm to her. I loved
that woman.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
I had to speak with Keith Harper myself. I struggled
to find his contact details online, and eventually I went
up to Idleworld and asked around. There were a bunch
of missing persons posters on wooden notice boards around the town.
One of them had DEA's face on it. There were
two numbers listed, one for Julia and the other one
(09:47):
for A Harper. Oh hi is that mister Harper?
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Hi, my name's Lucy Sheriff.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
So I called her analyst and I wondered, if you
would be willing to talk.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
To me quickly, what questions do you have?
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Obviously I had a lot. We talked for almost an hour.
I found out he likes to be known as Harper,
and so from now on that's what I'll call him.
He told me he was still searching for Dea and
he was worried that she was going to be forgotten
by the police, that she'd just become another cold case.
(10:28):
The hardest part, he said, was not knowing.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
You can deal with yeah, if there is a yeah,
or you can deal with she left on an OW
coord is her choice. You know. I can deal with that.
I can deal with all of that, But not knowing
and to hollow you have a heart blund.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Blow of the Harper was an open book. He didn't
seem to be anything like the guy who'd appeared on
the CBS interview. I remember feeling this immense sympathy for him.
He sounded so heartbroken. I can't imagine how difficult it
must be to not know.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
And unless you've been through something like that, you'll know her.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
Know you'll never have her, have her now, because it
leaves pip gen yourd stomach and in your heart that
never gets healed.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Harper told me, do you knew how to use a gun?
Speaker 3 (11:33):
I keep going back that she was independent, she was
she was capable. You know, I've watched her kill rattlers.
I watched her kill five rattlers one day, and she
has no clear I mean the girl and next to
one and shoot it.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
A glamorous blonde who carried a gun shot at Rustlesnake's
and ran a sprawling ranch. I mean, do it. Kind
of sounded like a badass. But over these years I've
peeled back these layers, and she was a complicated character.
Even now, It's like deer refuses to be summed up
(12:10):
in one neat sentence. She doesn't fit into any classic
archetypes or tidy cliches. Every new person I've spoken to
opened another door to another possibility about what might have happened.
Every conversation raised another version of events that didn't quite
add up, another puzzle piece that didn't seem to fit.
(12:35):
Deer disappeared on Saturday, June sixth, twenty twenty. I've revisited
that one weekend over and over because everyone has their
own account of how things went down at beneath a
Vista Ranch, DEA's one hundred and fifteen acre gated mountain Paradise.
I'm going to come back to these couple of days
(12:56):
a lot throughout the season, so pay close attention. The
timeline of the day Deer went missing is spotty, to
say the least, but there's one thing know for sure.
Around nine am on Saturday, June sixth, Dea went over
to a neighbor's house to deliver cinnamon rolls. The door
(13:18):
cam footage was later leaked to CBS.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Now for the first time, we are seeing video of
the former La Jolla resident, recorded just hours before she vanished.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
I watched the grainy picture in its eerie silence, Dea
wearing an oversized chunky black shirt, her long blonde hair loose,
ringing on the doorbell, a box of rolls in hand.
When Dea realizes her neighbor isn't going to answer, she
puts the box on some kind of ledge next to
the door. The whole scene is ringed with a black
(13:52):
circular border, like I'm looking through a fish eyelands watching
DEA's final known movements. Dea walks away, and that's it.
The one other thing I know for sure from that
day is at around two thirty pm, Dear texted Diana,
(14:14):
her motorcycle riding friend, about window cleaner recommendations because she
was renting out some of her properties.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
She was happy as heck. We had her house lined
up for Airbnb and we were getting hits on it.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
You might be wondering why would the widow of a
millionaire be doing the airbnb hustle? And that's a great
question with a pretty complex answer that I'll fully get
into later. All you need to know for now is
that Dea felt she was not in a good place
financially or by some accounts, emotionally. She was in a
(14:51):
dispute with her children over the estate of her husband,
who had died a few years prior, so on June sixth,
Dea texted Diana, and I've seen those messages, and then
it all goes dark. That's the last evidence I have
of what Dea did that day, because everything that happened
(15:12):
on Saturday after that string of texts is according to Harper.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Hey, you know, it seemed to be a typical day.
But I was pushing hard to get ready to go
to Colorado, and so you know, we we were making
sure that everything was being prepared. And I remember I
was down in the meadow mowing the medal and at lunchtime,
which was two o'clock for us because we didn't eat breakfast,
(15:39):
healths probably around ken I came in it too. We
had lunch and she did it. Have you got a
minute I can talk to you. And I wish that
I had listened, because you know, she had talked about
how she felt there was a brisk with her children.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
According to Harper, and Diana Deer was scared of her children.
It was all to do with this battle her late
husband's estate. The kids wanted it all, and they might
go to extreme lengths to keep not only all of
their father's money but DEA's multimillion dollar ranch too. Also
(16:22):
her friends told.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Me and if anything, I can't pass that off, thinking
that her children would not do anything to her. And
she said, do you have a minute, I can talk
with you. And I said, hon, can the talk to
see me? I said, I've got the medal to do
(16:43):
and it's going to take me till dark. If I
get done, I leave go back to the meddal. At
four thirty. I did not get this text because I
was on the tractor and I did not hear it.
But she texted me at four point thirty, and what
she said is, Harper, you cannot save me from all things,
even if you believe you can you can.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
You cannot save me from all things. Even if you
believe you can, you can't. I've never seen this text.
I've asked, but Harper told me the police took his
phone and won't give it back. According to his version
of events, he came in from mowing the meadow at
seven fifteen pm and Dea was nowhere to be seen.
(17:29):
He thought she was out exercising her horses.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
You know, I well, I'll just call her, see where
to tell she is? I call, and that I could
hear her phone ringing upstairs, so I go upstairs, thinking
she was up there because sometimes she gets migraines and
she'll lay down. But she was not anywhere in the house,
but her phone was plunged in her purse was sitting
(17:54):
on the kitchen counter.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
He says. He then went to see if DEA's truck
was outside.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
And when the truck was still parked where it was,
then I started the new a search.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Of the Harper told me he searched other cabins and
various sheds and storage units on the property, and that
in the early hours of the morning he stopped searching
and went to bed. The next day, Deer was still
nowhere to be found, making Harper the last person to
(18:30):
see her alive.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
You know, obviously when you're the last person, s always
become the suspect.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
We'll be right back. Early on Sunday morning, when Harper
(19:07):
woke up, Deer was still missing. Her phone, purse, and
truck were all at the ranch. Harper says he continued
his search immediately.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
And that's when I went. I talked to the highway
control and he said, Harper, g I'll the share this,
And he said, I'll tell you what, They're not to
do anything for her. I'll be seventy hours before they act.
Because people show up, they just disappear, and many of
them come back within that timetime, so they don't get
really excited.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Before we get into what happened next, I want to
take a minute to address the idea that you have
to wait a certain amount of time to report someone missing.
You've probably heard of it on a TV show or
in a movie, but it's complete rubbish. You can report
someone missing right away. After Harper spoke to the California
(19:59):
Highway Patrol officer, news began to spread. Diana Fetter, Dear's
friend got wind that Harper was trying to get in
touch with her.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
So I was able to call him. I said, what's
going on, because, well, she didn't come home last night.
Is she with you? I said, no, she's not with me.
But that's typical of Dea. If she didn't want to
go home, she'd either spend the night with a friend
or she'd spent the night at her corner Valley house.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
At eight twenty four am on Sunday, a call was
made from the ranch to the cops to report a
missing person. I'm not sure who made that call, but
the cops don't show until later the following day. Meanwhile,
Diana rallied a search party, army veterans who belonged to
(20:45):
her motorcycle club, Deer's Idlewild friends, and neighbors from a
Christian youth camp across the road.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
So it was pretty quick when people all started showing up.
We all started making phone calls trying to get people
to come over and help.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Some of the people who were searching assumed Deer had
gone off hiking and just hurt herself.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
She's either up the hill, you know, walking up the
hill and she she got lost, or she hurt herself
and she can't come down.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
But there was a growing list of clues that made
this seem unlikely. Her phone and her guns were at
the house, things she always took hiking, and there was
something else that was very off. DEA's dog, Ruby was
still there. Ruby was a mixed mutt white with black
spots and corgy sized. She was ill too, on a
(21:38):
very specific diet and lots of medication.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
And that was the number one thing. She would never
have left Ruby at all. She always took Ruby everywhere.
I don't care where she went given to her attorney's office,
she brought ruby. If she went to the store, she
brought ruby. If she was going to low, she brought ruby.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
The search was well underway when DEA's thirty year old son,
Clinton Abrams showed up at the ranch with some friends.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
And I had never met him before, and all I
could think about is, I'm looking at this young guy that,
you know, looks like a college frat boy. He's not crying,
he's not like overly emotional. Everybody went searching for Dia.
(22:31):
He didn't do anything. He just stood there. So it
was it was like, well, if my mom or my dad,
or my child or whoever was missing, I'd be out there.
I'm not going to just stand here and wait for
somebody to bring me news. But he just stood there
like he wanted people to pity him. You know, he
(22:52):
didn't act like an individual who was worried about their
mother's welfare. Period.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
I've spoken with Clinton, by the way, he described his
actions that day very differently. You'll hear from him later on.
But in the meantime, the search part, he had no
luck finding any trace of Deer. Soon people began to disperse.
Later that night, Diana says she got another call.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
I had gone home and Harper was calling and he
was upset, and I said, are you going to be okay?
And he's like no. I said, do you need me
to come out there? And he goes, do you mind?
I said, no, that's fine. So I came out and
I sat at the house, and he was kind of
like a zombie, you know, like acted the part of
(23:43):
like something's wrong.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
That night, Diana stayed over at the ranch. It's now Monday,
June eighth, two days since Deer was last seen, and
there was no sign of the cops. Any officer will
tell you that the first forty eight hours is crucial
in a missing person's case. It's when investigators have the
(24:07):
best chance of following up a because the information is
fresh in everyone's minds. It's the best chance you have
of finding somebody. And yet the cops wait until Monday
afternoon to arrive on the scene. And before they even
get to the ranch, Harper says, they called him to
(24:27):
say they were coming.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
They call me and they tell me that they are
going to be there at eight point thirty in the morning.
When they get there, they said, we will or shutting
the LANs down and we will take over the charch.
If you've got anything, you may want to get it mo,
because anything that's on the property will stay there.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
I talked to three people who were there that day
who all said the cops didn't show up until the afternoon,
and when they finally did show, Diana says, they made
some frustrating decisions.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Well, they immediately came onto the property and kicked everybody off,
you know, didn't look around at anybody or say, okay,
well who's the person that contacted the Sheriff's department, or Hey,
who's Diana, or hey who's this person. They didn't even
take my name.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Diana was especially upset because people started leaving without being
questioned by the police. What you know.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Yes, I was never a police officer, but I was
a federal agent for twenty three years, and I felt
that the investigation could have been handled better by the way.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
I've spoken with other people who were on the ranch
the day of the search and who said it took
the Riverside sheriff Department three years to get in touch
and ask them what they saw. Anyways, when the cops
called off their search that night at ten thirty five pm,
they handed over the keys to the entire ranch to
(26:09):
Clinton and Chrissara DEA's children. The cops left behind an
affidavit and a search warrant for the ranch. I found
something surprising in those documents. A second address was listed,
Diana Fedder's house. I haven't been able to confirm with
the cops whether they searched her property. She says they didn't.
(26:33):
It did make me wonder, though, why would they want
to search her house. I also read through the list
of all the items the potential evidence that the cops
had confiscated. There was a netgear router, which, among other things,
would have info about which cell phones were connected to
(26:54):
the Wi Fi and any activity from security cameras. There
was a piece of toilet paper, a band aid, and
tan bed sheets which the cops noted might have bloodstains
on them. There were spent bullet shell care, and lastly,
two handwritten notes. I was desperate to know more about
(27:19):
this evidence, spent bullet casings, handwritten notes. It felt tantalizing
to be this close and yet not know the significance
of it all, but the police won't share any more information.
In fact, I've had little luck getting much out of
the cops at all. I've emailed, called, texted, and they've
been so tight lipped about what happened that weekend and
(27:42):
their investigation at large. It's been incredibly frustrating. You'd think
the first person the cops would question would be Harper.
After all, as he said himself, the last person to
see a missing person alive is usually a suspect. But
they didn't actually let me make that clear. They couldn't
(28:06):
question Harper because sometime on my morning before the cops
show up, Happer left. He took off for New Mexico
in his white Ford motor home with DEA's dog, Ruby, who,
according to DIA's friends, Happer didn't even like. I asked
(28:27):
Harper about this.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Well, well, I had a tax bill I had to
take care of. It was supposed to be taken care
of a week before, and we were going to do
that when we were heading to Colorado. In Arizona, I
have a ranch there as well.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
So to reiterate, he says he had a tax bill
to take care of in Arizona and that's why he
left two days after his fiance disappeared. But Harper gave
Diana an entirely different reason. The morning that he left.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
We were having coffee and we went over to the
trail to take look again to see if she could
be over there, and he told me he had to
go back. I think you said Arizona, New Mexico. I
can't remember which state it was that he had to
go back to that port on bogging On, but he
told me about his probation.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Probation, Diana says Harper told her he had to go
and check in with a parole officer. I asked Harper
about this too.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
No, I heard that too, and I don't know where
the hell she got that.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
I don't know where I'm from.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
When I was in Arizona, I was talking with the
sheriff's office all the time until I was told by
Diana that they had come and the ranch was closed.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
He said he took his RV so he'd have somewhere
to stay when he came back to California because the
cops told him they were shutting up the ranch. I've
done a lot of research, and I can't find anything
that Harper would have been on probation for at that time,
So that doesn't add up. That leaves the tax bill story,
which is a little odd. Why would you have to
(30:14):
drive hundreds of miles to go take care of a
tax bill? And why would it be so urgent that
you have to leave two days after your fiance goes missing.
As I waded into this story, I found that getting
clarity on what might have happened to Deer that day
was not so straightforward. Over the past few years, I've
(30:38):
been down endless rabbit holes that have led nowhere and
hit countless brick walls. They have been many times where
I've been close to walking away from this story. But
What's kept me coming back to this like some bad
habit I can't quite kick, is the ridiculous amount of
times I've shouted wait what out loud in my living
(31:00):
room to myself after finding out some insane new piece
of information. It's so hard to know who to trust
because everyone I speak to seems to have something to
gain from Deer's disappearance. Everyone wants their version of events
to be believed to go down as the truth. What
(31:20):
happened to Dea has become one of those Internet Who'd
done it yarns that attracts armchair sleuths. A strange chorus
of anonymous people on Reddit and YouTube, all obsessing over
the evidence. I mean, I guess I've become one of
them too. The theories of what happened range from plausible
to wild speculation. I listen to all of them, hoping
(31:45):
that somewhere in that pile of theories lies the truth,
and knowing that very likely one of the people I'm
speaking to is lying. Coming up this season on Where's Dear.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
People I didn't know were in our family home.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
I had gone up there ever since I was a
little kid, and now suddenly, you know, the people who
I suspect had murdered her are moving in.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
I said, well, this guy's acting really suspicious, and I
have all kinds about warms going off in my head.
There's something out right. We were so hard for the place,
and we took him down the road and looked, and
he just saw Dahmer's signs.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
He had every reason to harm her, but so did
Chrissara and Clinton.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Just because so much money's involved, you can't trust anything
the man says.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
At all, Like literally, he just he's allergic to the truth.
This story is getting ready to blow wide open. If
he wants some information, We can talk.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Where's Dear is written and hosted by me Lucy Sheriff.
Our producer is Daphne Chen. Editing by Karen Shakerji, Production
assistance from Joey Fish, ground fact checking by Lauren Vespoli.
Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Original score, sound design
(33:38):
and mastering by Echo Shaw's. Where's Dere is a co
production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. You can listen to
(34:00):
all of Where's Dear right now add free by becoming
a Pushkin Plus subscriber fine Pushkin Plus on the Apple
show page for Where's Dear or at pushkin dot fm
slash plus
Host
Lucy Sherriff
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com