August 13, 2024 • 39 mins
Another death at Bonita Vista ranch raises questions about Keith Harper and prompts a closer look at his past relationships with women.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
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 Dea Apple
podcast show page or visit pushkin dot fm slash Plus.
(00:41):
Now onto the episode. Just to warn you before we start,
this episode contains descriptions of sexual assault and violence. Last
(01:02):
time on Where's Dea?
Speaker 3 (01:05):
We were pushing ardently to have or removed as trustee
cause to me and to my sister, we felt that
it was quite obvious that he had some involvement in
DIA's disappearance.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
He had every reason to harm her, but so did
Chrissara and Clinton.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Just because so much money is involved.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
They please steps they believe that they believe if she
was hurt.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
In the fall of twenty twenty one, a woman named
Jody Newkirk was working on the Benita Vista ranch. This
was over a year after Dea was last seen. It
seems like Jody was a kind of jack of all trades.
She handled the horses, cleaned, and did general handy woman stuff.
For Keith Harper.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
That's true.
Speaker 5 (02:04):
Oh you did, Like I mean, I could really think
that there was nothing dead young a.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Right, Yeah, this is.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
This is a video from a local photographer who Jody
took on a tour of the ranch. As far as
I can tell, the photographer is shown in a dyllic
setting with no hint of what's happened here before or
what is soon to come. In the video, Jody is
wearing a strapless red, white and blue striped tank top,
(02:36):
baggy jeans, and chunky work boots, and his skin has
a nice natural tan. Jody and the photographer walk up
a gravel drive. There's a white RV parked underneath a
pine tree, a large metal butterfly seat, and an outdoor gym.
They go up to an old log cabin. The entrance
(02:58):
is flanked by wooden horseheads. Inside the cabin is dark
and crowded, teeming with trinkets.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
So yeah, it's got a barbecue, NiFi outdoor fire.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
It's great view.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
God, I love it here, Jody says. She offers to
cut the photographer a deal on rent in exchange for
new photos to advertise the ranch for events. There was
a lot going on up there renovations, a new bridge
being built, and Harper was even hosting wedding ceremonies.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
So yeah, it's always.
Speaker 5 (03:35):
Good to have kind of like yeah, yeah, you know style,
you know, look at it.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yes, Around three months after this video was taken, Jody
was found dead on the ranch. Before I get too
deep into who Jody was and how she ended up
dead on Benita Vista Ranch, I want to explain why
(04:05):
I'm telling you about her. It's not just because this
is another tragic, unexplained event that deserves some airtime, or
because it provides another shocking twist in this strange story.
I'm telling you about her because it's a chance to
peer inside Harper's relationship with another woman. In fact, that's
(04:29):
really what this whole episode is about. Harper's relationships with
other women. Their stories made me question whether Harper and
DEA's relationship was really as picture perfect as he said
it was. I haven't been able to speak with Dea.
She can't tell me what Harper is like as a
(04:50):
lover or a partner or even a friend. But these
other women they can. I'm Lucy Sheriff, and this is
where's Dea? Episode four, Don't Go there alone. Kelly Berkowitz
(05:24):
Trotter is Jody Newkirk's sister.
Speaker 5 (05:27):
Oh, I sweetheart, and I'm talking to my friend Lucy.
We're talking about Auntie Jody.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Kelly explained to me that Jody hadn't always been the
happy and confident woman I'd watched in the photographer's video.
For years, Jody had struggled with drug addiction, in particular meth,
and she'd done some things that strained her relationship with Kelly.
Speaker 5 (05:52):
My sister stole my identity many years ago, and she
actually was arrested for it, and not by my doing
at all, but she was caught, and she she was
going to have to serve like Gil diamond stuff.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
But Kelly says that Jody was working on trying to
get clean.
Speaker 5 (06:15):
And it's crazy. I digress a little bit here, But
on the twenty third of December twenty twenty, she and
I had a very loving, healing conversation about all of that,
where she apologized to me.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Harper told me he'd hired Jody to work on the
ranch because she was renting out one of DEA's properties
and she was behind on payments. Jody could do some
work to make up the missing rent. But Kelly told
me that Jody and Harper met through a dating site,
which I found interesting because that's how Harper said he
(06:57):
met Dea. Regardless, by the time Jody was working at
the ranch, it seemed like she was on track.
Speaker 5 (07:05):
You were on such good terms and so much closer,
and there was like a Jody was a hardcore drug addict,
so as close as one can be with someone who
is who is in that kind of state of mind.
(07:27):
And she was trying a lot, you know, of different
things to get herself clean, as she always had been
since she was fifteen years old.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
The day Jodie died, Kelly was on holiday in a
remote cabin in the woods, and so it took her
a while to get sell service.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
It was driving rain that day, just such a terrible storm,
and I saw that I had a bunch of myssed
calls from my brother in law, Lindsay.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Lindsay is Jody's ex partner, and Kelly told me that
he and Jody were best friends, ride or die friends.
Speaker 5 (08:21):
So when I saw that, I immediately knew something was wrong,
and I was able to call him from my daughter's phone,
and basically I just remember standing there in this cabin
with my daughter and one of my closest friends.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Sorry, okay, hey, your time.
Speaker 5 (08:59):
Oh and yeah, Lindsay said that Jody had been in
an accident. She rolled over in an ATV. And I
(09:19):
was like, oh my god, is she okay? And he said, no,
she's not.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Lindsay had heard the news about Jody from Harper.
Speaker 5 (09:35):
We didn't know anything about Dia. We didn't know anything
about Harper. We were kind of on this crazy spin
we were spinning.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Kelly would soon come to learn a lot about Keith,
Harper and Dia Abrams, in part because Jody kept a
detailed journal during those short few months she was living
at the ranch. After Jody's death, Kelly sent me pictures
of the journals she'd found in JODI's belongings. Jody's journal
(10:12):
entries are written like letters. A lot of them are
addressed to Harper. The first entry that Kelly sent me
is strangely written to Harper and Dea. I ask my
producer Daphne to read some extracts.
Speaker 6 (10:29):
Dear Dea and Harper. So, even though we never met,
I really feel a bond with you. I hope from
the bottom and all of my heart that you realize
that I truly have you and yours, all of your animals,
friends and home possessions, and even Harper's best interests at heart.
I do honestly think you will be coming home. I
hope you'll like me.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Jody's handwriting is erratic. It's big, looping, and in the
same journal entry she'll use two or three different pens,
red bull point and then a thick black sharpie. There
are a lot of capital letters and exclamation points. The
rest of her letters are all addressed to Harper, and
from Jody's writing, it sounds like her relationship with Harper
(11:12):
was more than professional.
Speaker 6 (11:14):
I need to vent I'm losing my mind. I realize
that you sure can act like you like me a
whole lot when you want me, but I really don't
matter that much to you. I feel like you're a dog,
a high class jigglow. Anyhow, you really do sleep with
as many females as you can, and you tell oh
girls what they want to hear, and you tell them
all basically the same thing. I really am feeling very
strange about the always going to miss me comment in
(11:36):
the text a few days ago. I don't like the
way that sounds not a bit. It's weird. Fuck you, Harper.
What we had wasn't really all that to you. I know,
Anna or Patricia, but you know what, I would have killed,
died given my right arm for you, even if you
don't deserve it. I know who you are. I loved
love you anyway. You will see when I'm gone, and
(11:58):
I'm already gone, goodbye.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
I don't know how much of what Jodie writes is
objectively true, but harpersur things differently.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
It came and rented a place on Toolbox, and I
met her, and she was having trouble pain for her rent,
and she asked if she could come and work to
help cover it from the expenses of her.
Speaker 7 (12:35):
And then, what was your relationship like with Jody? And
I asked, course, because obviously she.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Had the journal energy which suggested that you may have
been in a romantic relationship with her.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
Never not even not even not even Robert if it
was close to that.
Speaker 7 (12:56):
But what was your What was your relationship like with her?
Speaker 4 (13:00):
It was a working relationship, That's.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
What it was.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
The Journal and Trees aren't dated, so I don't know
exactly when Jody was writing those entries. It seems clear
to me though, that things weren't great up at the ranch,
at least from Jody's perspective, and on the twenty third
of December, they got much much worse. Sometime around five pm,
(13:34):
Harper called nine to one one. I have the coroner's
report that explains what happened. Next, an officer with a
California Highway Patrol arrives at the ranch. He finds Harper
giving CPR to Jody. She's lying on the ground, pinned
down by an ATV. The paramedics arrive, but it's already
(13:58):
too late. They declare Jody dead at the scene. The
highway patrol officer noted that there didn't seem to be
any trauma or injuries consistent with a rollover. Traffic vision,
(14:23):
he found Harper's account of what had happened to Jody suspicious.
Harper's version goes like this, On that day, December twenty third,
Jody decided to go out on an ATV to cut
down a Christmas tree. It was raining really hard that evening,
but according to Harper, Jody went out anyway.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
And we had had eleven inches of rain that day.
I said, that's a his poor idea I said, the
trails are extremely muddy, slip, but she was very persistent
that she wanted it.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
So she goes up.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
She comes back. There's an actual circles you can see
the machine makes and then.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
I tips so and then Harper says he found Jody
lying in the mud, pinned down by the off road vehicle.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
We do CPR, I do CPR, N nerve for about
twenty minutes until they he actually show up with a paramedic.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Kelly, Jody's sister, told me that at some point Harper
managed to reach Lindsay, Jody's ex, and Lindsay then relayed
the tragic news to Kelly. Kelly called around hospitals, trying
to find out where Jody's body was and what exactly
(15:49):
had happened. She reached the coroner, who told her that
Jody was still on the dirt track, lying next to
the ATV. In fact, the responders left Jody's body outside
covered by a tar paul in for hours.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
They told me that they were still up there because
of the sleep and the hail. It was so bad
up there that they couldn't move her body, and I
was freaking out.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Kelly was desperate for more information. Finally she tracked down
someone at the Riverside Sheriff's office.
Speaker 5 (16:35):
And I'll never forget that. She just immediately went on
the defensive about how it's an open investigation, they don't
know anything yet and it could jeopardize things to tell
me anything.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
The details were still so murky. Eventually she heard from Lindsey,
Jodie's ex partner, that there might be more to the story,
and so they began their own investigation.
Speaker 5 (17:11):
Lindsey had said that he went on the internet and
he found a thing about the ranch that Jodie worked on,
and he told me the story of Dia, and I
was like, what the actual fuck.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Kelly got Harper on the phone. She wanted answers, and
Harper gave her a disturbing account.
Speaker 5 (17:38):
So he was like in the conversation telling me exactly
what she sounded like as he was trying to like
it was fucked up.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
I'm sorry, I didn't realize that she was still alive
when Harper got there.
Speaker 5 (17:59):
I don't know if she was or not, but he
said that she made like a gurgling sound when he
was giving her soupr But you can't trust anything the
man says at all. Like you can pretty much just
you know, just take out a sharpiet and just cross
(18:21):
out every yeah thing he says, like literally, he just
he's allergic to the truth anyway. Not I don't want
to get into into the weeds on the conversation with him,
but I got off the phone going, Okay, this guy
killed my sister.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
To be quite clear, there is no evidence proving this,
and Harper has denied having anything to do with Jodie's death.
But it was this feeling that Kelly had about Harper
that made her determined to get hold of the autopsy report,
which the cops didn't want to release, but she continued
(19:08):
pressuring them. It took nearly a year, but the cops
finally unsealed it. We'll be right back. In the fall
(19:42):
of twenty twenty two, the Riverside Sheriff's Department finally unsealed
Jody Newkirk's autopsy report. You might remember, Harper had said
that Jody was crushed by an ATV, a story that
seemed suspicious at the time to the highway patrol officer
who attended the scene. When Jody's sister, Kelly finally got
(20:05):
ahold of the report, she learned what the coroner had
found to be the cause of Jody's death acute methamphetamine toxicity,
in other words, an overdose of myth. The coroner found
a glass pipe in Jody's pocket, but for the manner
(20:26):
of death, the coroner wrote undetermined because there was quote
no evidence to determine if Newkirk administered the drugs to
herself or if someone else administered it to her. So
we know what killed her, but we don't know how
the myth got into her system. I did find one
(20:53):
other interesting thing in the report. Alberto Lrero, the lead
investigator on DEA's case, makes an appearance. He tells the
coroner that he couldn't rule out foul play either the
cops and Harper, but he was never arrested, and as
far as I can tell, there was no further action
(21:15):
over Jody's death. Jody's sister, Kelly, joined the growing list
of people frustrated with Riverside Sheriff's lack of action.
Speaker 5 (21:25):
Oh, they didn't care. They didn't even want her cell phones.
What Nope, they didn't even do a search for it.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
But Kelly did find out the police had interviewed Jody
a couple of weeks before she died, Kelly said Jody
had filed a police report claiming her horse had been stolen.
It's a weird, complicated story, surprise, surprise, but Kelly said
investigator Alberto Lurero later told her what had happened.
Speaker 5 (21:57):
And the police told me that she came down there
and they took her into an interview room with a
camera and they filmed the thing, and that's when they
were telling her about Dia and Harper and telling her
to leave. And Lorero said she was told. I don't
(22:20):
know if he's told me that he had told her directly,
but he told me. I don't understand why she wouldn't listen.
Why didn't she leave? I don't understand she was told.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
I asked Lorero if this interview with Jody had ever
taken place. He told me he didn't remember. Eventually, Kelly
held a memorial service for her sister. She hasn't gotten
the answers she was looking for, and it's something she
still struggles with today. During our last phone call, right
(22:52):
before we hung up, Kelly gave me a piece of advice.
I had told her I'd been considering going up to
the ranch before Jody had died. He's invited there, and
I almost went ormost, don't go alone.
Speaker 5 (23:07):
If you go, bring men with you.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
I had been so curious to see the ranch, to
get a feel of where Dea lived and who she was,
And now I felt like I'd be taking this risk
going up there alone. I felt like I couldn't shrug
off my reservations anymore, so I decided not to go.
(23:38):
A couple of months after Jody's memorial service, in May
of twenty twenty two, Harper appeared in court in Colorado.
It had nothing to do with Jody or dear. In fact,
it was over an incident that had taken place about
ten years prior, and Harper was appearing in court because
(23:58):
he wanted to be removed from the sex offender registry.
In twenty eleven, Harper was convicted of groping two women
on a snowmobill tour. He used to run an outdoor
adventure business in Colorado. Harper pled not guilty to the charges.
(24:19):
He spent a year in a county jail, had to
complete a sex offender treatment program and register as a
sex offender until twenty twenty five. Harper went to the
Colorado court in twenty twenty two to see if he
could be removed from the registry a few years early.
He maintained his innocence and said he grabbed the women
(24:41):
because they were about to fall off from the snowmobile,
but his court petition went nowhere.
Speaker 7 (24:48):
I wonder what.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Else was in Harper's past, So I dug around, and
it turns out there is more, a lot more. That's
after the break. I'm going to tell you about two
(25:25):
other women who Harper had relationships with. The first woman
is someone all called Sarah to protect her privacy. In
two thousand, an investigator with a local DIA's office in
Colorado filed an affidavit to obtain an arrest warrant for
Keith L.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Harper.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
The investigator said he had probable cause to believe Harper
had committed four felonies, including first degree sexual assault and
second degree kidnapping. In his report, the investigator wrote up
a detailed description of Sarah's allegations. I got a copy
of it through a public records request. Sarah accused Harper
(26:11):
of physically and sexually assaulting her one time during an argument,
Harper allegedly grabbed her by the throat and threw her
to the ground. Sarah described another disturbing incident that culminated
in rape. There's one other part of the report I'm
going to read where the investigator summarizes a third incident.
(26:35):
Sarah told him about the report, says quote, she stopped
resisting because she knew if she continued, Harper would kill her.
She told me that she could not breathe and that
Harper was so angry she believed that he would kill her,
and then tried to cover the whole thing up somehow.
(26:57):
Harper then began pushing her down the hall, still holding
his hand over her mouth and nose. When they arrived
near the bedroom, she told me she stopped struggling completely
because she thought to herself, I'd better stop fighting or
I'm going to die. According to court records, she got
(27:18):
a restraining order against Harper. There were multiple hearings before
the trial. From what I can gather reading through the
court documents, Sarah, the main witness, tried to withdraw the charges,
but by that point it was in the DA's hands.
They were the ones filing the charges against Harper. Sarah
(27:41):
stopped cooperating. The DA's prosecutors tried to subpoena her to
appear in court. Eventually, the judge decided Sarah shouldn't testify
the doing so would cause her quote permanent impairment. I
reached out to Sarah to see if I could speak
with her, but didn't hear back. The prosecution's case fell apart. Eventually,
(28:09):
Harper was only charged with third degree assault. He played
guilty and was convicted on that charge. He was put
on probation for a year and had to enroll in
domestic violence classes. I asked Harper about all of this.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
It was dropped and the court finally relieved the fact
if I would agree to just take a class at
the end, that those charges would be dismissed.
Speaker 7 (28:40):
Okay, okay, So are you saying that you've.
Speaker 4 (28:45):
Got to realize that what's that? No?
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Carry on? I was going to say, you've got.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
To realize that there was I had a business involved
that she was going after.
Speaker 8 (28:58):
You're thinking she would stabricating what happened because she wanted to.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
Get oh, well, without a question, that's how she would
have gotten a access to the business.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
I felt uneasy after talking with him. He always sounded
so sure, so convinced of his narrative, like when he
explain what happened to Jody, it was like there was
no room for any other perspectives or possibilities.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
It was his.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Truth or nothing. And then I found another woman, someone
who was in a serious relationship with Harper for many years.
She told me she wanted to share her experience, but
to protect her identity, we're not disclosing her name, and
we've distorted her voice. When they first met, Harper was charming, flirtatious, cheeky.
(29:55):
She told me he had a charisma which was almost
impossible not to fall for. I wondered if this had
been DEA's experience. Too long story, sure, He wanted me,
how does it feel talking to me about him?
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Do you do?
Speaker 7 (30:13):
You talk about it much?
Speaker 1 (30:14):
What you went through? And I get there and a
not I'm shaking all over.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
She told me in deep detail about her relationship with Harper,
how they met, how he courted her, and then how
the relationship soured. There was one particular fight she told
me about.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
He chased me through the house, He got up and
would run some more, and he backed me against the
wall with his forearm in my throat. Well, and that
he was very angry. And that's a close close you know. Yeah, yeah,
(31:01):
it's so much bigger than I am. Yeah, here's a
lot of nan that takes no. Mmmm, he does not
accept And now.
Speaker 7 (31:15):
Does he tell the truth? Is he? Is he a
trustworthy person?
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Here? I have that conversation on what about telling the truth?
I have to see no.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
No.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
I don't know if it's marciuses, but for the longest
time he told me he was a Dea agent.
Speaker 7 (31:48):
He told me that too. Actually, when I first started
speaking to him.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
He was Neville Ding.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
I couldn't help going over those words. He is not
a man that takes no. He does not accept a no.
It reminded me of how much Harper had pested me,
me and Kelly Snyder to take on DEA's case. I
have spoken with former partners of yours who have described
(32:20):
instances of you allegedly being violent. And then you put
that together with whatever happened on the snowmobile, plus the
fact that Dea is missing, plus the fact that Jodi
Nukirk died on the.
Speaker 7 (32:34):
Ranch, and I'm sure you can understand that there is
a pattern.
Speaker 4 (32:42):
Of events, and you have you have poof those of pants,
even though they are spoken of they're true.
Speaker 7 (32:54):
I was not there, so I cannot say.
Speaker 9 (32:58):
No.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
No, if there's violence, what what truth did you have
that violence secured? There's actually please reports? You have those
in your hands?
Speaker 7 (33:10):
Yes, I have a police report in my hands.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
And what does this say? Specifically?
Speaker 8 (33:17):
It said that you were sexually violent. It said that
you grasped somebody around their neck.
Speaker 4 (33:34):
Okay, and that went the cord and what happened with it?
Speaker 2 (33:38):
We spend some time going back and forth on this.
He continues to deny that there's any truth to the
allegations of violence, that the court didn't hold him accountable
for all the charges and therefore they're not true.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
I mean, well, then stick with them facts and don't
stick with accusations.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
I was intrigued whether deer knew about all of this.
Of course, there's no way to really tell, but I
did ask Harper.
Speaker 7 (34:07):
So was your relationship that you had with the different
from the previous relationships you've had.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
I don't understand that question.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
What would be different in the relationships?
Speaker 1 (34:25):
We had an excellent relationship.
Speaker 4 (34:26):
That's all I can tell you.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Okay, okay, And is there anybody else?
Speaker 4 (34:35):
No?
Speaker 8 (34:35):
No, no, carry on.
Speaker 4 (34:37):
Noll Ida was well aware of my past. We discussed
that in full detail long before we started dating.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
To be clear, even with all this information about Harper's past,
there's nothing that holds him responsible for anything that may
have happened to Dea. And while I was busy digging
around in Harper's past, events in the present day were
still unfolding. You might remember from the last episod that
(35:10):
Abram's kids sued Harper to get him removed from Deer's trust. Well,
in December of twenty twenty two, a judge appoints a guardian,
an independent, objective legal guardian, to represent Deer's interests in court.
Although Harper still remains a trustee of her estate, and
(35:31):
the judge also passes a settlement agreement between Harper and
the two kids, it feels like an uneasy sort of truce.
It's all based on the fact that in California, if
someone is missing for five years, they can be declared
legally dead. And so on sixth of June twenty twenty five,
(35:53):
five years to the day that Deer was last seen,
the state of California will presume her dead, and when
that happens, all of her assets, the Benita Vista Ranch,
her antiques, her jewelry will be divided into three parts.
(36:17):
Twenty five percent will go to Clinton, twenty five percent
to Chrossara, and fifty percent to Harper. Yes, Harper would
get double what each of Deer's kids receive. There's just
one caveat.
Speaker 9 (36:33):
If any one of the parties, them or me, the
kids or me would found guilty of her disappearance or
had anything to do whether he disappearance are dead, we
would get nothing.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
If the kids are found to be involved in DEA's disappearance,
they get nothing, And if Harper is found to be involved,
he gets nothing. This language in the court settlement, which
was drawn up and agreed to by all three of them,
almost seems to incentivize Harper, Chrissara, and Clinton to pinde
(37:10):
his disappearance on each other their narratives. Their version of
events becomes worth something because there's a reward for having
one version of this story being held up as the truth,
a multimillion dollar award, because if one of them is
(37:30):
found responsible for Deer's disappearance, the others walk away with everything.
Speaker 4 (37:37):
You know, when the outcome gets not it hits the
making of the moment.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Next time on Where's.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
I don't give too much credit to Keith Harper. I
don't think he's a criminal mastermind.
Speaker 5 (38:17):
The consensus was among my staff it was like, look,
I think we just got called over to put all
kinds of footprints everywhere, to just damage their crime scene.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
Basically, 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.
(38:49):
Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Original score, sound design
and mastering by Echo Shaw's Where's Dea is a co
production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. You can listen to
(39:17):
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
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
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 Dea Apple
podcast show page or visit pushkin dot fm slash Plus.
(00:41):
Now onto the episode. Just to warn you before we start,
this episode contains descriptions of sexual assault and violence. Last
(01:02):
time on Where's Dea?
Speaker 3 (01:05):
We were pushing ardently to have or removed as trustee
cause to me and to my sister, we felt that
it was quite obvious that he had some involvement in
DIA's disappearance.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
He had every reason to harm her, but so did
Chrissara and Clinton.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Just because so much money is involved.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
They please steps they believe that they believe if she
was hurt.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
In the fall of twenty twenty one, a woman named
Jody Newkirk was working on the Benita Vista ranch. This
was over a year after Dea was last seen. It
seems like Jody was a kind of jack of all trades.
She handled the horses, cleaned, and did general handy woman stuff.
For Keith Harper.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
That's true.
Speaker 5 (02:04):
Oh you did, Like I mean, I could really think
that there was nothing dead young a.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Right, Yeah, this is.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
This is a video from a local photographer who Jody
took on a tour of the ranch. As far as
I can tell, the photographer is shown in a dyllic
setting with no hint of what's happened here before or
what is soon to come. In the video, Jody is
wearing a strapless red, white and blue striped tank top,
(02:36):
baggy jeans, and chunky work boots, and his skin has
a nice natural tan. Jody and the photographer walk up
a gravel drive. There's a white RV parked underneath a
pine tree, a large metal butterfly seat, and an outdoor gym.
They go up to an old log cabin. The entrance
(02:58):
is flanked by wooden horseheads. Inside the cabin is dark
and crowded, teeming with trinkets.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
So yeah, it's got a barbecue, NiFi outdoor fire.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
It's great view.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
God, I love it here, Jody says. She offers to
cut the photographer a deal on rent in exchange for
new photos to advertise the ranch for events. There was
a lot going on up there renovations, a new bridge
being built, and Harper was even hosting wedding ceremonies.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
So yeah, it's always.
Speaker 5 (03:35):
Good to have kind of like yeah, yeah, you know style,
you know, look at it.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yes, Around three months after this video was taken, Jody
was found dead on the ranch. Before I get too
deep into who Jody was and how she ended up
dead on Benita Vista Ranch, I want to explain why
(04:05):
I'm telling you about her. It's not just because this
is another tragic, unexplained event that deserves some airtime, or
because it provides another shocking twist in this strange story.
I'm telling you about her because it's a chance to
peer inside Harper's relationship with another woman. In fact, that's
(04:29):
really what this whole episode is about. Harper's relationships with
other women. Their stories made me question whether Harper and
DEA's relationship was really as picture perfect as he said
it was. I haven't been able to speak with Dea.
She can't tell me what Harper is like as a
(04:50):
lover or a partner or even a friend. But these
other women they can. I'm Lucy Sheriff, and this is
where's Dea? Episode four, Don't Go there alone. Kelly Berkowitz
(05:24):
Trotter is Jody Newkirk's sister.
Speaker 5 (05:27):
Oh, I sweetheart, and I'm talking to my friend Lucy.
We're talking about Auntie Jody.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Kelly explained to me that Jody hadn't always been the
happy and confident woman I'd watched in the photographer's video.
For years, Jody had struggled with drug addiction, in particular meth,
and she'd done some things that strained her relationship with Kelly.
Speaker 5 (05:52):
My sister stole my identity many years ago, and she
actually was arrested for it, and not by my doing
at all, but she was caught, and she she was
going to have to serve like Gil diamond stuff.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
But Kelly says that Jody was working on trying to
get clean.
Speaker 5 (06:15):
And it's crazy. I digress a little bit here, But
on the twenty third of December twenty twenty, she and
I had a very loving, healing conversation about all of that,
where she apologized to me.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Harper told me he'd hired Jody to work on the
ranch because she was renting out one of DEA's properties
and she was behind on payments. Jody could do some
work to make up the missing rent. But Kelly told
me that Jody and Harper met through a dating site,
which I found interesting because that's how Harper said he
(06:57):
met Dea. Regardless, by the time Jody was working at
the ranch, it seemed like she was on track.
Speaker 5 (07:05):
You were on such good terms and so much closer,
and there was like a Jody was a hardcore drug addict,
so as close as one can be with someone who
is who is in that kind of state of mind.
(07:27):
And she was trying a lot, you know, of different
things to get herself clean, as she always had been
since she was fifteen years old.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
The day Jodie died, Kelly was on holiday in a
remote cabin in the woods, and so it took her
a while to get sell service.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
It was driving rain that day, just such a terrible storm,
and I saw that I had a bunch of myssed
calls from my brother in law, Lindsay.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Lindsay is Jody's ex partner, and Kelly told me that
he and Jody were best friends, ride or die friends.
Speaker 5 (08:21):
So when I saw that, I immediately knew something was wrong,
and I was able to call him from my daughter's phone,
and basically I just remember standing there in this cabin
with my daughter and one of my closest friends.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Sorry, okay, hey, your time.
Speaker 5 (08:59):
Oh and yeah, Lindsay said that Jody had been in
an accident. She rolled over in an ATV. And I
(09:19):
was like, oh my god, is she okay? And he said, no,
she's not.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Lindsay had heard the news about Jody from Harper.
Speaker 5 (09:35):
We didn't know anything about Dia. We didn't know anything
about Harper. We were kind of on this crazy spin
we were spinning.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Kelly would soon come to learn a lot about Keith,
Harper and Dia Abrams, in part because Jody kept a
detailed journal during those short few months she was living
at the ranch. After Jody's death, Kelly sent me pictures
of the journals she'd found in JODI's belongings. Jody's journal
(10:12):
entries are written like letters. A lot of them are
addressed to Harper. The first entry that Kelly sent me
is strangely written to Harper and Dea. I ask my
producer Daphne to read some extracts.
Speaker 6 (10:29):
Dear Dea and Harper. So, even though we never met,
I really feel a bond with you. I hope from
the bottom and all of my heart that you realize
that I truly have you and yours, all of your animals,
friends and home possessions, and even Harper's best interests at heart.
I do honestly think you will be coming home. I
hope you'll like me.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Jody's handwriting is erratic. It's big, looping, and in the
same journal entry she'll use two or three different pens,
red bull point and then a thick black sharpie. There
are a lot of capital letters and exclamation points. The
rest of her letters are all addressed to Harper, and
from Jody's writing, it sounds like her relationship with Harper
(11:12):
was more than professional.
Speaker 6 (11:14):
I need to vent I'm losing my mind. I realize
that you sure can act like you like me a
whole lot when you want me, but I really don't
matter that much to you. I feel like you're a dog,
a high class jigglow. Anyhow, you really do sleep with
as many females as you can, and you tell oh
girls what they want to hear, and you tell them
all basically the same thing. I really am feeling very
strange about the always going to miss me comment in
(11:36):
the text a few days ago. I don't like the
way that sounds not a bit. It's weird. Fuck you, Harper.
What we had wasn't really all that to you. I know,
Anna or Patricia, but you know what, I would have killed,
died given my right arm for you, even if you
don't deserve it. I know who you are. I loved
love you anyway. You will see when I'm gone, and
(11:58):
I'm already gone, goodbye.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
I don't know how much of what Jodie writes is
objectively true, but harpersur things differently.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
It came and rented a place on Toolbox, and I
met her, and she was having trouble pain for her rent,
and she asked if she could come and work to
help cover it from the expenses of her.
Speaker 7 (12:35):
And then, what was your relationship like with Jody? And
I asked, course, because obviously she.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Had the journal energy which suggested that you may have
been in a romantic relationship with her.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
Never not even not even not even Robert if it
was close to that.
Speaker 7 (12:56):
But what was your What was your relationship like with her?
Speaker 4 (13:00):
It was a working relationship, That's.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
What it was.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
The Journal and Trees aren't dated, so I don't know
exactly when Jody was writing those entries. It seems clear
to me though, that things weren't great up at the ranch,
at least from Jody's perspective, and on the twenty third
of December, they got much much worse. Sometime around five pm,
(13:34):
Harper called nine to one one. I have the coroner's
report that explains what happened. Next, an officer with a
California Highway Patrol arrives at the ranch. He finds Harper
giving CPR to Jody. She's lying on the ground, pinned
down by an ATV. The paramedics arrive, but it's already
(13:58):
too late. They declare Jody dead at the scene. The
highway patrol officer noted that there didn't seem to be
any trauma or injuries consistent with a rollover. Traffic vision,
(14:23):
he found Harper's account of what had happened to Jody suspicious.
Harper's version goes like this, On that day, December twenty third,
Jody decided to go out on an ATV to cut
down a Christmas tree. It was raining really hard that evening,
but according to Harper, Jody went out anyway.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
And we had had eleven inches of rain that day.
I said, that's a his poor idea I said, the
trails are extremely muddy, slip, but she was very persistent
that she wanted it.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
So she goes up.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
She comes back. There's an actual circles you can see
the machine makes and then.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
I tips so and then Harper says he found Jody
lying in the mud, pinned down by the off road vehicle.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
We do CPR, I do CPR, N nerve for about
twenty minutes until they he actually show up with a paramedic.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Kelly, Jody's sister, told me that at some point Harper
managed to reach Lindsay, Jody's ex, and Lindsay then relayed
the tragic news to Kelly. Kelly called around hospitals, trying
to find out where Jody's body was and what exactly
(15:49):
had happened. She reached the coroner, who told her that
Jody was still on the dirt track, lying next to
the ATV. In fact, the responders left Jody's body outside
covered by a tar paul in for hours.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
They told me that they were still up there because
of the sleep and the hail. It was so bad
up there that they couldn't move her body, and I
was freaking out.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Kelly was desperate for more information. Finally she tracked down
someone at the Riverside Sheriff's office.
Speaker 5 (16:35):
And I'll never forget that. She just immediately went on
the defensive about how it's an open investigation, they don't
know anything yet and it could jeopardize things to tell
me anything.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
The details were still so murky. Eventually she heard from Lindsey,
Jodie's ex partner, that there might be more to the story,
and so they began their own investigation.
Speaker 5 (17:11):
Lindsey had said that he went on the internet and
he found a thing about the ranch that Jodie worked on,
and he told me the story of Dia, and I
was like, what the actual fuck.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Kelly got Harper on the phone. She wanted answers, and
Harper gave her a disturbing account.
Speaker 5 (17:38):
So he was like in the conversation telling me exactly
what she sounded like as he was trying to like
it was fucked up.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
I'm sorry, I didn't realize that she was still alive
when Harper got there.
Speaker 5 (17:59):
I don't know if she was or not, but he
said that she made like a gurgling sound when he
was giving her soupr But you can't trust anything the
man says at all. Like you can pretty much just
you know, just take out a sharpiet and just cross
(18:21):
out every yeah thing he says, like literally, he just
he's allergic to the truth anyway. Not I don't want
to get into into the weeds on the conversation with him,
but I got off the phone going, Okay, this guy
killed my sister.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
To be quite clear, there is no evidence proving this,
and Harper has denied having anything to do with Jodie's death.
But it was this feeling that Kelly had about Harper
that made her determined to get hold of the autopsy report,
which the cops didn't want to release, but she continued
(19:08):
pressuring them. It took nearly a year, but the cops
finally unsealed it. We'll be right back. In the fall
(19:42):
of twenty twenty two, the Riverside Sheriff's Department finally unsealed
Jody Newkirk's autopsy report. You might remember, Harper had said
that Jody was crushed by an ATV, a story that
seemed suspicious at the time to the highway patrol officer
who attended the scene. When Jody's sister, Kelly finally got
(20:05):
ahold of the report, she learned what the coroner had
found to be the cause of Jody's death acute methamphetamine toxicity,
in other words, an overdose of myth. The coroner found
a glass pipe in Jody's pocket, but for the manner
(20:26):
of death, the coroner wrote undetermined because there was quote
no evidence to determine if Newkirk administered the drugs to
herself or if someone else administered it to her. So
we know what killed her, but we don't know how
the myth got into her system. I did find one
(20:53):
other interesting thing in the report. Alberto Lrero, the lead
investigator on DEA's case, makes an appearance. He tells the
coroner that he couldn't rule out foul play either the
cops and Harper, but he was never arrested, and as
far as I can tell, there was no further action
(21:15):
over Jody's death. Jody's sister, Kelly, joined the growing list
of people frustrated with Riverside Sheriff's lack of action.
Speaker 5 (21:25):
Oh, they didn't care. They didn't even want her cell phones.
What Nope, they didn't even do a search for it.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
But Kelly did find out the police had interviewed Jody
a couple of weeks before she died, Kelly said Jody
had filed a police report claiming her horse had been stolen.
It's a weird, complicated story, surprise, surprise, but Kelly said
investigator Alberto Lurero later told her what had happened.
Speaker 5 (21:57):
And the police told me that she came down there
and they took her into an interview room with a
camera and they filmed the thing, and that's when they
were telling her about Dia and Harper and telling her
to leave. And Lorero said she was told. I don't
(22:20):
know if he's told me that he had told her directly,
but he told me. I don't understand why she wouldn't listen.
Why didn't she leave? I don't understand she was told.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
I asked Lorero if this interview with Jody had ever
taken place. He told me he didn't remember. Eventually, Kelly
held a memorial service for her sister. She hasn't gotten
the answers she was looking for, and it's something she
still struggles with today. During our last phone call, right
(22:52):
before we hung up, Kelly gave me a piece of advice.
I had told her I'd been considering going up to
the ranch before Jody had died. He's invited there, and
I almost went ormost, don't go alone.
Speaker 5 (23:07):
If you go, bring men with you.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
I had been so curious to see the ranch, to
get a feel of where Dea lived and who she was,
And now I felt like I'd be taking this risk
going up there alone. I felt like I couldn't shrug
off my reservations anymore, so I decided not to go.
(23:38):
A couple of months after Jody's memorial service, in May
of twenty twenty two, Harper appeared in court in Colorado.
It had nothing to do with Jody or dear. In fact,
it was over an incident that had taken place about
ten years prior, and Harper was appearing in court because
(23:58):
he wanted to be removed from the sex offender registry.
In twenty eleven, Harper was convicted of groping two women
on a snowmobill tour. He used to run an outdoor
adventure business in Colorado. Harper pled not guilty to the charges.
(24:19):
He spent a year in a county jail, had to
complete a sex offender treatment program and register as a
sex offender until twenty twenty five. Harper went to the
Colorado court in twenty twenty two to see if he
could be removed from the registry a few years early.
He maintained his innocence and said he grabbed the women
(24:41):
because they were about to fall off from the snowmobile,
but his court petition went nowhere.
Speaker 7 (24:48):
I wonder what.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Else was in Harper's past, So I dug around, and
it turns out there is more, a lot more. That's
after the break. I'm going to tell you about two
(25:25):
other women who Harper had relationships with. The first woman
is someone all called Sarah to protect her privacy. In
two thousand, an investigator with a local DIA's office in
Colorado filed an affidavit to obtain an arrest warrant for
Keith L.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Harper.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
The investigator said he had probable cause to believe Harper
had committed four felonies, including first degree sexual assault and
second degree kidnapping. In his report, the investigator wrote up
a detailed description of Sarah's allegations. I got a copy
of it through a public records request. Sarah accused Harper
(26:11):
of physically and sexually assaulting her one time during an argument,
Harper allegedly grabbed her by the throat and threw her
to the ground. Sarah described another disturbing incident that culminated
in rape. There's one other part of the report I'm
going to read where the investigator summarizes a third incident.
(26:35):
Sarah told him about the report, says quote, she stopped
resisting because she knew if she continued, Harper would kill her.
She told me that she could not breathe and that
Harper was so angry she believed that he would kill her,
and then tried to cover the whole thing up somehow.
(26:57):
Harper then began pushing her down the hall, still holding
his hand over her mouth and nose. When they arrived
near the bedroom, she told me she stopped struggling completely
because she thought to herself, I'd better stop fighting or
I'm going to die. According to court records, she got
(27:18):
a restraining order against Harper. There were multiple hearings before
the trial. From what I can gather reading through the
court documents, Sarah, the main witness, tried to withdraw the charges,
but by that point it was in the DA's hands.
They were the ones filing the charges against Harper. Sarah
(27:41):
stopped cooperating. The DA's prosecutors tried to subpoena her to
appear in court. Eventually, the judge decided Sarah shouldn't testify
the doing so would cause her quote permanent impairment. I
reached out to Sarah to see if I could speak
with her, but didn't hear back. The prosecution's case fell apart. Eventually,
(28:09):
Harper was only charged with third degree assault. He played
guilty and was convicted on that charge. He was put
on probation for a year and had to enroll in
domestic violence classes. I asked Harper about all of this.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
It was dropped and the court finally relieved the fact
if I would agree to just take a class at
the end, that those charges would be dismissed.
Speaker 7 (28:40):
Okay, okay, So are you saying that you've.
Speaker 4 (28:45):
Got to realize that what's that? No?
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Carry on? I was going to say, you've got.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
To realize that there was I had a business involved
that she was going after.
Speaker 8 (28:58):
You're thinking she would stabricating what happened because she wanted to.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
Get oh, well, without a question, that's how she would
have gotten a access to the business.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
I felt uneasy after talking with him. He always sounded
so sure, so convinced of his narrative, like when he
explain what happened to Jody, it was like there was
no room for any other perspectives or possibilities.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
It was his.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Truth or nothing. And then I found another woman, someone
who was in a serious relationship with Harper for many years.
She told me she wanted to share her experience, but
to protect her identity, we're not disclosing her name, and
we've distorted her voice. When they first met, Harper was charming, flirtatious, cheeky.
(29:55):
She told me he had a charisma which was almost
impossible not to fall for. I wondered if this had
been DEA's experience. Too long story, sure, He wanted me,
how does it feel talking to me about him?
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Do you do?
Speaker 7 (30:13):
You talk about it much?
Speaker 1 (30:14):
What you went through? And I get there and a
not I'm shaking all over.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
She told me in deep detail about her relationship with Harper,
how they met, how he courted her, and then how
the relationship soured. There was one particular fight she told
me about.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
He chased me through the house, He got up and
would run some more, and he backed me against the
wall with his forearm in my throat. Well, and that
he was very angry. And that's a close close you know. Yeah, yeah,
(31:01):
it's so much bigger than I am. Yeah, here's a
lot of nan that takes no. Mmmm, he does not
accept And now.
Speaker 7 (31:15):
Does he tell the truth? Is he? Is he a
trustworthy person?
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Here? I have that conversation on what about telling the truth?
I have to see no.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
No.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
I don't know if it's marciuses, but for the longest
time he told me he was a Dea agent.
Speaker 7 (31:48):
He told me that too. Actually, when I first started
speaking to him.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
He was Neville Ding.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
I couldn't help going over those words. He is not
a man that takes no. He does not accept a no.
It reminded me of how much Harper had pested me,
me and Kelly Snyder to take on DEA's case. I
have spoken with former partners of yours who have described
(32:20):
instances of you allegedly being violent. And then you put
that together with whatever happened on the snowmobile, plus the
fact that Dea is missing, plus the fact that Jodi
Nukirk died on the.
Speaker 7 (32:34):
Ranch, and I'm sure you can understand that there is
a pattern.
Speaker 4 (32:42):
Of events, and you have you have poof those of pants,
even though they are spoken of they're true.
Speaker 7 (32:54):
I was not there, so I cannot say.
Speaker 9 (32:58):
No.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
No, if there's violence, what what truth did you have
that violence secured? There's actually please reports? You have those
in your hands?
Speaker 7 (33:10):
Yes, I have a police report in my hands.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
And what does this say? Specifically?
Speaker 8 (33:17):
It said that you were sexually violent. It said that
you grasped somebody around their neck.
Speaker 4 (33:34):
Okay, and that went the cord and what happened with it?
Speaker 2 (33:38):
We spend some time going back and forth on this.
He continues to deny that there's any truth to the
allegations of violence, that the court didn't hold him accountable
for all the charges and therefore they're not true.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
I mean, well, then stick with them facts and don't
stick with accusations.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
I was intrigued whether deer knew about all of this.
Of course, there's no way to really tell, but I
did ask Harper.
Speaker 7 (34:07):
So was your relationship that you had with the different
from the previous relationships you've had.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
I don't understand that question.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
What would be different in the relationships?
Speaker 1 (34:25):
We had an excellent relationship.
Speaker 4 (34:26):
That's all I can tell you.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Okay, okay, And is there anybody else?
Speaker 4 (34:35):
No?
Speaker 8 (34:35):
No, no, carry on.
Speaker 4 (34:37):
Noll Ida was well aware of my past. We discussed
that in full detail long before we started dating.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
To be clear, even with all this information about Harper's past,
there's nothing that holds him responsible for anything that may
have happened to Dea. And while I was busy digging
around in Harper's past, events in the present day were
still unfolding. You might remember from the last episod that
(35:10):
Abram's kids sued Harper to get him removed from Deer's trust. Well,
in December of twenty twenty two, a judge appoints a guardian,
an independent, objective legal guardian, to represent Deer's interests in court.
Although Harper still remains a trustee of her estate, and
(35:31):
the judge also passes a settlement agreement between Harper and
the two kids, it feels like an uneasy sort of truce.
It's all based on the fact that in California, if
someone is missing for five years, they can be declared
legally dead. And so on sixth of June twenty twenty five,
(35:53):
five years to the day that Deer was last seen,
the state of California will presume her dead, and when
that happens, all of her assets, the Benita Vista Ranch,
her antiques, her jewelry will be divided into three parts.
(36:17):
Twenty five percent will go to Clinton, twenty five percent
to Chrossara, and fifty percent to Harper. Yes, Harper would
get double what each of Deer's kids receive. There's just
one caveat.
Speaker 9 (36:33):
If any one of the parties, them or me, the
kids or me would found guilty of her disappearance or
had anything to do whether he disappearance are dead, we
would get nothing.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
If the kids are found to be involved in DEA's disappearance,
they get nothing, And if Harper is found to be involved,
he gets nothing. This language in the court settlement, which
was drawn up and agreed to by all three of them,
almost seems to incentivize Harper, Chrissara, and Clinton to pinde
(37:10):
his disappearance on each other their narratives. Their version of
events becomes worth something because there's a reward for having
one version of this story being held up as the truth,
a multimillion dollar award, because if one of them is
(37:30):
found responsible for Deer's disappearance, the others walk away with everything.
Speaker 4 (37:37):
You know, when the outcome gets not it hits the
making of the moment.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Next time on Where's.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
I don't give too much credit to Keith Harper. I
don't think he's a criminal mastermind.
Speaker 5 (38:17):
The consensus was among my staff it was like, look,
I think we just got called over to put all
kinds of footprints everywhere, to just damage their crime scene.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
Basically, 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.
(38:49):
Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Original score, sound design
and mastering by Echo Shaw's Where's Dea is a co
production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. You can listen to
(39:17):
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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