August 20, 2024 • 34 mins
A neighbor who searched for Dia agrees to be interviewed. Keith Harper tells a new story.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin last time on weds Dear.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Dia was well aware of my past.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
We discussed that in full detail not long before we
started dating.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
You can pretty much just take out a sharpiet and
just cross out every yearn thing he says Lake literally,
he just he's allergic to the truth.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
He is not a man that takes no. He does
not accept no. Have any one of the parties, Damn
or me, the kids or me was found guilty of
her get appearance or had anything to do, whether disappearance
(01:12):
or dead, we would get nothing.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
One thing that's been bothering me throughout my reporting is
my struggle to find an objective voice. I trained at
a very traditional journalism school. Our professors drummed into us
the importance of being objective, unbiased, of stating the facts.
Almost everyone I've spoken to has some kind of agenda. Okay,
(01:50):
maybe not Peggy, dear sister, but everyone else has been
smeared with accusations or cloaked in suspicion. I was getting
pretty frustrated. Was there anyone who could be an objective outsider?
And then I met Carmen Ibugnez deep conversations.
Speaker 5 (02:10):
I would text her whenever I would hear gunshots or
screams over there, and I said, Dia uk, and She's like, yeah,
it was a coyote. Oh it was a rattlesnake or
you know, things like that. That's what I would do.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Carmen runs a Christian youth camp just down the road
from Beneatha Vista, DIA's ranch. She wouldn't go as far
as calling herself a friend of DEA's. She'd heard Dea
had a temper, so she tried to keep her distance.
Speaker 5 (02:36):
And so that's why I always had a healthy sense
of boundaries with her, because I'm like, you know, I
care about your dogs, I care about your animals, I
care about you. But we're you know, I wasn't like
friends with her like per se.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Carmen remembers the last time she spoke to Dea. It
was about two weeks before Dia disappeared. She says Dea
was extremely upset about something Clinton and Chrissara had done.
Speaker 5 (03:01):
She was crying. You know what happens. We hold them
in her arms and all of a sudden they turn
on us. They want everything, Karma, they want everything. And
I thought, okay, Dia, I know how you are. You
know you're kind of dramatic as well. You know, I'm
thinking in my mind, what have you done?
Speaker 1 (03:16):
It wasn't the first time Dea had complained about her kids,
but Carmen says she tended to exaggerate, so.
Speaker 5 (03:23):
I kind of took everything she said with the assault
because I knew she was dramatic. I thought, Okay, let's
let's let's find out what's truth is about.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Regardless of what Carmen thought of Dea, when she heard
her neighbor was missing, she gathered her staff and leapt
into action.
Speaker 5 (03:42):
So you know, I am a Christian and we're a
Christian camp, and so I care about people, even if
they're not nice.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Carmen was the perfect person for this kind of job.
Speaker 5 (03:57):
For our summer camp, we have to practice drills for
fires and also for missing camp or drill we say
in case somebody, we can't find somebody, and we time
ourselves and we do searches in every building. I mean,
so we kind of know how to do searches for
people who are missing.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Right.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Carmen told me her version of what happened the weekend
Dea went missing, and it felt like a breath of
fresh air because finally I had an impartial version of events. Finally,
I felt like I was holding a piece of the truth.
Speaker 5 (04:41):
We honestly got Okay, she probably went hiking and just
injured herself. That was the main you know, that's what
we've done. We're gonna go find her. We will find her.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
I'm Lucy Sheriff, and this is Where's Dea Episode five.
The strangest thing when Carmen and her staff showed up
(05:16):
to Benita Vista Ranch on that Sunday in twenty twenty,
the day after Dia disappeared, they expected to be greeted
with open arms, but that's not exactly what happened.
Speaker 5 (05:29):
It was the strangest thing. You know, you would think
Harper would have said, hey, thank you for coming. It
was almost like we were like in the way kind
of thing. It didn't feel like that we were.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Welcome, regardless of the chilly welcome. Carmen got straight to work.
Speaker 5 (05:50):
We got a megaphone from our camp, We got all
kinds of tools from our camp just to take with us,
and I was using it to yell out for Dia basically,
and a lot of people were out there, and at
one point I became very frustrated. Because I thought, well,
what's going on? And then I, you know, I'm feeling
like we're just there's no direction to this right.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
At some point, Carmen called a friend of hers who
worked at the Sheriff's department.
Speaker 5 (06:18):
I stood on a rap because there's no signal, and
I say, hey, why aren't you here? Said Carman, we
can't be out there till tomorrow. Anyways, you know it's
forty eight hours.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Oh yeah, that forty eight hour thing. Again, it's funny
that someone who works at the Sheriff's department would say that,
because Riverside's own standards manual specifically says the officers shouldn't
wait before acting on a missing person's report. They're supposed
to begin investigations right away. I did reach out to
(06:52):
the Sheriff's department to ask them about this discrepancy and
many other things, but I did not get any response.
Back to Carmen's phone call, she told her friend she
thought Harper was acting suspicious. He didn't share any details
that could help with the search, like which places he'd
already checked.
Speaker 5 (07:12):
They said, I have all kinds of red flags going on, then,
just all kinds of warms going off in my head.
I said, there's something not right, I said, and I said,
I'm usually right about these things.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
There was also something else, calm and.
Speaker 5 (07:23):
Noticed he's writing around on acquad with this woman who
I don't know who she is, which is Diane Fetter.
To me, it looked like there was something going on
between them.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Clinton has mentioned this to me too, that he and
his private investigator thought Diana Fedder, DIA's friend may have
been romantically involved with Harper, to be very clear, though
Harper and Diana both deny this. Eventually, one of Carmen
(07:53):
and DEA's neighbors mentioned something incredibly useful. The ranch was
covered in security cameras.
Speaker 5 (08:01):
And she was like, there's not a place here that
Dia has not wired with a camera. She was like,
and I know that because I just thought the other
day I was feeding the animals, and she was like,
she would talk to me through the cameras. She said,
so there's got to be something that shows us what
happened yesterday.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
And because common is common, she sent him one of
her IT guys to check them out.
Speaker 5 (08:22):
So he went inside and he couldn't get it to
come up in the server to turn on. He couldn't
get it to boot up. Basically, he thought that somebody
had tempered with it and had damaged it so they
couldn't wow, you know, he said, something happened here. I
don't feel comfortable going back in there by myself. I
(08:42):
feel like I'm at a crime scene and I'm putting
my fingerprints all over the place.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Another member of Common's group went to search the meadow.
She told Common what she saw. Ruby DEA's faithful dog
had followed her and went straight up to a patch
of fresh dirt.
Speaker 5 (09:03):
She said, a dog laid down right there on the
fresh shirt. We turned around and he didn't want to leave.
It's almost like it was like maybe she was there,
she said, the dog but did not want to leave.
We finally kind of coaxed her back and got her
to go back with us.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
When Carmen and her staff got back from being out
in the heat, they wanted to make sure to check
every building on the property before they left. There was
one last place Carmen wanted to search, Harper's white Ford
motor home.
Speaker 5 (09:37):
I said, I just need to have everybody because I
kind of wanted to take over at that point and said, well,
somebody needs to go and look, and then they came
back and they said what.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
And so nobody offered a key. Nobody no.
Speaker 5 (09:51):
And that's the thing I was like, that's when I
started just getting Really that was a Sunday when we
were all just like, you know, this does not feel good.
We were just that was just like the final confirmation
we just need to wait for the cops to get
here kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
You know.
Speaker 5 (10:07):
The consensus was among my staff it was, look, I
think we just got called over to put all kinds
of footprints everywhere and to just damage the crime scene. Basically.
That's how we felt at that moment. And so we laughed.
And that was the final thing that just stuck in
(10:27):
my head. Why couldn't we get into that motor home.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Calm and return the next day on the Monday with
homemade missing person's leaflets in hand? But by then Harper
and his motor home were gone. He was on his
way to New Mexico.
Speaker 6 (10:48):
And I'm like, why would you lead?
Speaker 5 (10:50):
So this is your girlfriend. You're supposedly distraught about her,
right I would be. I was distraught even if and
I wasn't that post idea. You know, I'm thinking, how
can I be more upset about this than you. You know,
how is this that?
Speaker 2 (11:03):
This is?
Speaker 5 (11:04):
That is not right? How did he just take off?
Speaker 1 (11:09):
That weekend of searching, Carmen kept tabs on the ranch.
Diana and Harper held DEA's power of attorney, although nobody
else seemed to know this yet. When the cops had
finished their search, they turned over the ranch keys to
DEA's children, who locked the gate. But one night, soon
after the search, Carmen noticed a car heading up the
(11:32):
road towards Benita Vista Ranch.
Speaker 5 (11:42):
So I saw Kara go over there, and I went
over there is excuse me, what are you doing?
Speaker 1 (11:46):
To calm and surprise it was Diana Fedder.
Speaker 5 (11:50):
That's the one time that I thought, oh my goodness,
what the heck is this woman doing here. I don't
think anybody, I said, I don't think anybody's supposed to
be over here. Said nobody's supposed to be here. She
was like, I just I just can't get a few
things from the truck, something for the animals.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Carmen had called the Sheriff's department as soon as she'd
seen the car, and when an officer showed up, she
went back home. Carmen brought up so many things, but
there was one thing she mentioned that to this day
still stands out to me. She told me what Harper
(12:26):
said he'd been doing during the window of time Deer
went missing.
Speaker 5 (12:32):
So the story of what he was doing on Saturday
kept changing. When we were there that day on Sunday
to SERGEI said he had been burying brush in the meadow,
like burying brush, what the heck? And then later on
he changed his story too, I was mowing the meadow.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
This, by the way, is Harper's only alibi that he
was out mowing the meadow. Speaking with Carmen brought me
back to the immediate aftermath of Deer's disappearance. I felt
like I was seeing those crucial first days in a
new light. But my conversation with her also raised a
(13:12):
lot of questions about Harper and Diana. More on that
after the break, I found a whole story about Diana
(13:52):
Fedder taking stuff out of Deer's truck. So bizarre it
was at night, the ranch had been locked shut, and
Harper was away. What was she doing there? Incidentally, Diana
had actually told me the whole truck story before, without
me even asking about it. The first time I spoke
(14:13):
to her.
Speaker 7 (14:16):
Let's see, so the Sheriff's department ended their thing on Wednesday,
because that's today.
Speaker 6 (14:23):
I went back to get the canned dog food for Ruby.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Ruby, remember is DEAs doc who had gone with Harper
on his trip to New Mexico. Also, he didn't take Ruby.
Speaker 7 (14:38):
In the end, he did, but he didn't have the
proper food. And I was you know, I wasn't aware
of the proper food that she was supposed to be
being fed.
Speaker 6 (14:47):
And they said, well, she always kept cans in her truck.
Speaker 7 (14:50):
So I went back to go get the cans to
figure out what kind of medicated food she was eating.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
This interview happened early on in my reporting, before I
knew about all the weird twists and turns. But after
I spoke with Carmen, I felt I had to call
Diana back.
Speaker 8 (15:08):
I wanted to run through some more of these questions.
So I've spoken to Carmen and I just wanted to
run Oh was that the neighbor?
Speaker 9 (15:21):
Yes?
Speaker 6 (15:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
This time Dana gave me a more detailed account about
the night she went to DIA's truck. She told me
she went to the ranch with a friend. I mentioned
finding the dog food again along with something else.
Speaker 10 (15:36):
And I told this to the police. Offer Ellie went
to the truck and the windows were down. We opened
the door, the alarm went off, and we grabbed two balls,
thigh balls, a leash, uh, some tand of food from
(16:02):
the car. And on the flank feet was a scape
like the up a lock bop mm hmm. And when
I when I opened it, there was a gun in there.
Speaker 6 (16:16):
Oh.
Speaker 10 (16:17):
I'm like, okay, why is there a lock box on
the front feet with a gun? And why did the
police not take it with them? So I leave my
friend and we go out fine, and I guess that
was Carmen and her husband. They were walking their dog
or walking and they should well we heard a lot,
so yeah, we needed to get dog food, so Ruby
(16:40):
and we showed them everything, and then I locked up
the weapon and then told the police about it.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
So to recap Diana found one of these guns India's
truck Ondia's ranch, which by that point I'm guessing was
a potential crime scene, and she took it. Diana said
it was for safety reasons, so why didn't.
Speaker 10 (17:07):
I did not feel un comfortable a loaded weapon sitting
in the front seat of my friend's vehicle with the
windows there on property where nobody is staying. You know
that anybody could come on. I'm like, no, no, no, no,
So what.
Speaker 6 (17:23):
Happened to it?
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Oh?
Speaker 6 (17:26):
For the weapon?
Speaker 10 (17:27):
Yeah, I told the police about it, and then Hartwork
said that he wanted the weapon and I said it
fine in my faith, and he goes, no, I want
to keep all of thea's property on the property. And
I'm like, okay, well, what can I say?
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Now?
Speaker 10 (17:46):
I can't tell him. I'm not going to give it
to him. I mean, because now you know, technically he's
in charge. So I let the police know that I
had to give him the weapon.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
By many accounts, dear did own a lot of guns.
I tried to find out what happened to that one.
Harper says he doesn't have it anymore, and the police
didn't respond to my questions about it. In general, Diana
disputed a lot of what Carmen told me, particularly about
(18:20):
her and Harper.
Speaker 6 (18:22):
Harper and I have never been in a relationship. I
met him. I think it's been twice before Dia disappeared. Yeah,
he's just a Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
While I had Diana on the phone, I wanted to
ask her about some of Clinton's allegations. He believes that
Diana had something to do with Dear's disappearance and that
she was working with Harper. He's been pretty adamant to
me that you're involved somehow.
Speaker 10 (18:57):
Yeah, he's told the police that, and he's told everybody else.
Just because you happened to be asked by a friend
to help them, there is state or what have you
when you ask, does not automatically make you the bad guy.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Diana denied having anything to do with Dear's disappearance.
Speaker 10 (19:23):
I mean, I can understand, you know, like if something
happened to somebody's spouse, the person they could look to
is the other spouse, you know, and I can understand
why they would consider it at first. But there's no gain, Yeah,
none at all, you know, I mean the I mean
(19:43):
there's no money, there's.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Nothing, Diana said. There's no value in DEA's trust. Dear
was so in debt. Diana said that her estate is
pretty much worthless. This is hard for me to verify
because the legal guardian of Deer's estate won't tell me
anything about DEA's financial situation. But according to court records,
(20:07):
Deer's estate could be worth millions regardless. A couple of
years ago, Diana withdrew as DEA's trustee anyway, giving up
any claim on DEA's assets. And there was one last
thing that Diana told me that directly correlated to something
Carmen had said. I asked Diana why Carmen wasn't allowed
(20:32):
to search the RV. Diana was surprised and said the
r V had been searched.
Speaker 6 (20:37):
It was searched twice. It was searched on.
Speaker 10 (20:41):
Uh Sunday, and it was searched again on Monday before
he departed in it.
Speaker 6 (20:47):
But there was nothing in it, nothing that way to concern.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
And then she told me this, The only thing.
Speaker 10 (20:55):
That conswer was the r V was parked in the field,
in the horse field, okay, and Harper had told the
police that he was mowing the field.
Speaker 6 (21:10):
When she supposedly disappeared. Yeah, and he could look because
it was up to their knees.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
So first Carmen tells me howp had changed his alibi
from burying brush in the meadow to mowing it. And
then Diana tells me that the grass was definitely not moan.
That's really interesting about the meadow.
Speaker 10 (21:38):
That's pretty good, great, And he apparently was out there
for hours mowing the meadow. Well, I can tell you
right now that the amount of time that he said
he's spent in the meadow mowing, it's in collect m
He said he was out there for almost six hours.
(22:02):
There's no way in heck he could have been out
there for six hours unless you took an OAP.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
I couldn't help wondering where were the police in all
of this? Have they checked out Harper's alibi? I don't
know if they did, But what I did learn is
that Harper wasn't exactly concerned about alibis, because it turns
out he claims he's known all along exactly what happened
(22:33):
to Dia, and he'd seen it all unfold on the
security camera's tapes. We'll be right back. In May twenty
(23:41):
twenty three, around Memorial Day, three people broke into Benita
Vista Ranch. According to a police report, they stole some
power tools, an old car, and a tractor. They were
arrested at the ranch and later pled guilty. The reason
I'm telling you about this is because it's after this
(24:03):
burglary happens three years into our interviews that Harper suddenly
mentions something new, something he has never told me before.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
I'm stuck. I'm stuck with what we do once we
find her. You know, obviously, you know, in my opinion,
they've always known it was a murder because the video
shows that. And why they the video that was here
at the lange that was taken. Oh, well, I.
Speaker 6 (24:41):
Don't know anything about that video.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
What video is that? Yeah, we had surveillance on the
area in which she was assaulted.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Basically, this man, who I've been speaking to for three
years by this point, is suddenly telling me about a
security camera which captured Dea being kidnapped. And he's never
ever mentioned this before. In fact, he told me this
(25:14):
in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
I always believe that she was going to a safe song,
so I always felt that she laughed that. I always
felt that she would contact me and let me know
that she was fine. The contact never comes.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
That same year, right before I was thinking of visiting
the ranch, Harper told me something else. He told me
the security cameras hadn't captured anything.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Yeah, you know what, I'll take you upstairs and show
you the cameras.
Speaker 5 (25:44):
How how they do not see what happens is beyond.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Me and lie.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
And when he finally does mention the videotapes to me
all those years later, he describes in detail what he
watched on this footage. He launches into this wild chronicle
about dear being kidnapped.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
It takes place between the main house and what we
call the cabin, which is across the street from the
main house. They surround her as she's coming. They do
not cause they do not communicate. They just surround her
(26:29):
and that's where the big guy halts off and hits
her to the side of the white cheek.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
He tells me that Deer's attorney called him after Deer
went missing and told him to watch the security camera footage.
I tried to double chat this with Deer's attorney, but
in the middle of all of this he died so
I couldn't. Harper also tells me the detective Alberta. Lerero
of the Riverside County Sheriff's Department has seen the footage too.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
He's been asked if who they were and why they
haven't been identified. He claims that the video is not
clear enough to do facial recognition on it.
Speaker 8 (27:14):
But have you seen have you actually physically seen this video,
Yes you have, and when did you watch it?
Speaker 2 (27:25):
When we were doing the actual search for her, her
attorney called then asked me to watch it, and then
after I had given it, he said, you know, just
he said, he said, you know, I should have taken
a copy. I didn't.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
So, just to recap, I've been speaking to Harper for
years by this point, and it's only after that Memorial
Day Burglary happens that he brings up these videotapes. He
told me that the people who burgled the ranch in
twenty twenty three were the same people he watched on
video kidnapping Dea in twenty twenty.
Speaker 9 (28:06):
There were three burglars that can they as saying description
of those who killed her almost identical in height, weight
and size.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
It was hard to reconcile all of this with what
Carmen told me. According to her, her it guy couldn't
access the security footage on Deer's ranch. He said someone
had tampered with it. Detective Lrero also told me that
no such tape exists. There was one more strange aspect
(28:42):
about Harper's new theory. It lined up with information from
some of Kelly Snyder's psychics, who work with his Missing
Persons organization. They said that three people, two men and
a woman, were responsible for Deer's disappearance. We heard this
from Kelly Snyder back in episode three.
Speaker 9 (29:03):
They were all saying the same thing independently, which was
that she was murdered. She was murdered by three people,
two males and a female. She was taken and you know,
killed and buried and basically that was it.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
So is Harper just taking what Kelly's psychics said happened
and sort of mishmashing it with the people who burgled
the ranch. It wouldn't be the first time that he
treated the psychic's information as hard fact. Ultimately, Harper believes
that the three people in the footage are part of
a drug trafficking motorcycle gang and that they're heavily involved
(29:51):
in DEA's death. Oh and that Clinton hired them. I
couldn't help, but wonder is Harper simply making all of
this up. If he's lying, it would call his entire
narrative into question, and most importantly, his alley that he
was mowing the meadow when Deer disappeared. I have been
(30:14):
told by somebody who was at the search that weekend
deer disappeared, that your alibi changed, that you first said
you were burying brush in the meadow, and then you
said you were mowing the meadow, and then two people
in one.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
I said, I said rushing or mowing.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
And people have said that the meadow wasn't moaned, that
the grass was long.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Well, the meadal the medal, which you got to realize,
is where the horses go out and feast. That is
approximately five acres. The meadow goes on for probably a
mile and a half. So did I mow all of
the medal?
Speaker 1 (30:58):
No?
Speaker 3 (30:59):
I mow what we use and what is planted in grass,
not what is brush.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
There's no way I'll ever know if the meadow was
moan or not. But in any case, Harper is adamant
that at some point Deer's body will be found.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Once we find, for I think without question we will.
Then we need to address the issue with the Sheriff's
department of why Clinton Abrams was never interviewed or interrogated.
He becomes the main suspect in all of our investigations.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Clinton says that the Riverside Sheriff's Department has questioned him
and he's actually spent the past few years deep in
an investigation of his own. He's taken all of his
interviews and tape recordings and documents and finessed his theory
of what he believes happened to his mother. The deer
(32:04):
was taken and killed by a gang coming next time.
(32:36):
On the season finale of Where's Dia.
Speaker 6 (32:40):
It's an emotional Katrina.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
You know it came in.
Speaker 6 (32:44):
It washed everything out? Okay?
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Was that? Was that a location of where the body was?
Speaker 6 (32:50):
There was a location of something I do I don't need
to hear.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Well, I need to hear more specific.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
Do we have a location where we believe that she is.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
I think there is a deal amongst multiple people to
split the spoils of war, so to speak.
Speaker 10 (33:08):
Neighbors will look up early Sunday morning to the sound
of a Sheriff's helicopter flying over Dia Abrams Ranch near Idlewild.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
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
(33:56):
and mastering by Echo Shaw's Where's Dea is a co
production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
Speaker 6 (34:19):
Where's
Speaker 1 (34:20):
Dea was originally developed with Truly*Adventurous.
Pushkin last time on weds Dear.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Dia was well aware of my past.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
We discussed that in full detail not long before we
started dating.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
You can pretty much just take out a sharpiet and
just cross out every yearn thing he says Lake literally,
he just he's allergic to the truth.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
He is not a man that takes no. He does
not accept no. Have any one of the parties, Damn
or me, the kids or me was found guilty of
her get appearance or had anything to do, whether disappearance
(01:12):
or dead, we would get nothing.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
One thing that's been bothering me throughout my reporting is
my struggle to find an objective voice. I trained at
a very traditional journalism school. Our professors drummed into us
the importance of being objective, unbiased, of stating the facts.
Almost everyone I've spoken to has some kind of agenda. Okay,
(01:50):
maybe not Peggy, dear sister, but everyone else has been
smeared with accusations or cloaked in suspicion. I was getting
pretty frustrated. Was there anyone who could be an objective outsider?
And then I met Carmen Ibugnez deep conversations.
Speaker 5 (02:10):
I would text her whenever I would hear gunshots or
screams over there, and I said, Dia uk, and She's like, yeah,
it was a coyote. Oh it was a rattlesnake or
you know, things like that. That's what I would do.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Carmen runs a Christian youth camp just down the road
from Beneatha Vista, DIA's ranch. She wouldn't go as far
as calling herself a friend of DEA's. She'd heard Dea
had a temper, so she tried to keep her distance.
Speaker 5 (02:36):
And so that's why I always had a healthy sense
of boundaries with her, because I'm like, you know, I
care about your dogs, I care about your animals, I
care about you. But we're you know, I wasn't like
friends with her like per se.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Carmen remembers the last time she spoke to Dea. It
was about two weeks before Dia disappeared. She says Dea
was extremely upset about something Clinton and Chrissara had done.
Speaker 5 (03:01):
She was crying. You know what happens. We hold them
in her arms and all of a sudden they turn
on us. They want everything, Karma, they want everything. And
I thought, okay, Dia, I know how you are. You
know you're kind of dramatic as well. You know, I'm
thinking in my mind, what have you done?
Speaker 1 (03:16):
It wasn't the first time Dea had complained about her kids,
but Carmen says she tended to exaggerate, so.
Speaker 5 (03:23):
I kind of took everything she said with the assault
because I knew she was dramatic. I thought, Okay, let's
let's let's find out what's truth is about.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Regardless of what Carmen thought of Dea, when she heard
her neighbor was missing, she gathered her staff and leapt
into action.
Speaker 5 (03:42):
So you know, I am a Christian and we're a
Christian camp, and so I care about people, even if
they're not nice.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Carmen was the perfect person for this kind of job.
Speaker 5 (03:57):
For our summer camp, we have to practice drills for
fires and also for missing camp or drill we say
in case somebody, we can't find somebody, and we time
ourselves and we do searches in every building. I mean,
so we kind of know how to do searches for
people who are missing.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Right.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Carmen told me her version of what happened the weekend
Dea went missing, and it felt like a breath of
fresh air because finally I had an impartial version of events. Finally,
I felt like I was holding a piece of the truth.
Speaker 5 (04:41):
We honestly got Okay, she probably went hiking and just
injured herself. That was the main you know, that's what
we've done. We're gonna go find her. We will find her.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
I'm Lucy Sheriff, and this is Where's Dea Episode five.
The strangest thing when Carmen and her staff showed up
(05:16):
to Benita Vista Ranch on that Sunday in twenty twenty,
the day after Dia disappeared, they expected to be greeted
with open arms, but that's not exactly what happened.
Speaker 5 (05:29):
It was the strangest thing. You know, you would think
Harper would have said, hey, thank you for coming. It
was almost like we were like in the way kind
of thing. It didn't feel like that we were.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Welcome, regardless of the chilly welcome. Carmen got straight to work.
Speaker 5 (05:50):
We got a megaphone from our camp, We got all
kinds of tools from our camp just to take with us,
and I was using it to yell out for Dia basically,
and a lot of people were out there, and at
one point I became very frustrated. Because I thought, well,
what's going on? And then I, you know, I'm feeling
like we're just there's no direction to this right.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
At some point, Carmen called a friend of hers who
worked at the Sheriff's department.
Speaker 5 (06:18):
I stood on a rap because there's no signal, and
I say, hey, why aren't you here? Said Carman, we
can't be out there till tomorrow. Anyways, you know it's
forty eight hours.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Oh yeah, that forty eight hour thing. Again, it's funny
that someone who works at the Sheriff's department would say that,
because Riverside's own standards manual specifically says the officers shouldn't
wait before acting on a missing person's report. They're supposed
to begin investigations right away. I did reach out to
(06:52):
the Sheriff's department to ask them about this discrepancy and
many other things, but I did not get any response.
Back to Carmen's phone call, she told her friend she
thought Harper was acting suspicious. He didn't share any details
that could help with the search, like which places he'd
already checked.
Speaker 5 (07:12):
They said, I have all kinds of red flags going on, then,
just all kinds of warms going off in my head.
I said, there's something not right, I said, and I said,
I'm usually right about these things.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
There was also something else, calm and.
Speaker 5 (07:23):
Noticed he's writing around on acquad with this woman who
I don't know who she is, which is Diane Fetter.
To me, it looked like there was something going on
between them.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Clinton has mentioned this to me too, that he and
his private investigator thought Diana Fedder, DIA's friend may have
been romantically involved with Harper, to be very clear, though
Harper and Diana both deny this. Eventually, one of Carmen
(07:53):
and DEA's neighbors mentioned something incredibly useful. The ranch was
covered in security cameras.
Speaker 5 (08:01):
And she was like, there's not a place here that
Dia has not wired with a camera. She was like,
and I know that because I just thought the other
day I was feeding the animals, and she was like,
she would talk to me through the cameras. She said,
so there's got to be something that shows us what
happened yesterday.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
And because common is common, she sent him one of
her IT guys to check them out.
Speaker 5 (08:22):
So he went inside and he couldn't get it to
come up in the server to turn on. He couldn't
get it to boot up. Basically, he thought that somebody
had tempered with it and had damaged it so they
couldn't wow, you know, he said, something happened here. I
don't feel comfortable going back in there by myself. I
(08:42):
feel like I'm at a crime scene and I'm putting
my fingerprints all over the place.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Another member of Common's group went to search the meadow.
She told Common what she saw. Ruby DEA's faithful dog
had followed her and went straight up to a patch
of fresh dirt.
Speaker 5 (09:03):
She said, a dog laid down right there on the
fresh shirt. We turned around and he didn't want to leave.
It's almost like it was like maybe she was there,
she said, the dog but did not want to leave.
We finally kind of coaxed her back and got her
to go back with us.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
When Carmen and her staff got back from being out
in the heat, they wanted to make sure to check
every building on the property before they left. There was
one last place Carmen wanted to search, Harper's white Ford
motor home.
Speaker 5 (09:37):
I said, I just need to have everybody because I
kind of wanted to take over at that point and said, well,
somebody needs to go and look, and then they came
back and they said what.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
And so nobody offered a key. Nobody no.
Speaker 5 (09:51):
And that's the thing I was like, that's when I
started just getting Really that was a Sunday when we
were all just like, you know, this does not feel good.
We were just that was just like the final confirmation
we just need to wait for the cops to get
here kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
You know.
Speaker 5 (10:07):
The consensus was among my staff it was, look, I
think we just got called over to put all kinds
of footprints everywhere and to just damage the crime scene. Basically.
That's how we felt at that moment. And so we laughed.
And that was the final thing that just stuck in
(10:27):
my head. Why couldn't we get into that motor home.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Calm and return the next day on the Monday with
homemade missing person's leaflets in hand? But by then Harper
and his motor home were gone. He was on his
way to New Mexico.
Speaker 6 (10:48):
And I'm like, why would you lead?
Speaker 5 (10:50):
So this is your girlfriend. You're supposedly distraught about her,
right I would be. I was distraught even if and
I wasn't that post idea. You know, I'm thinking, how
can I be more upset about this than you. You know,
how is this that?
Speaker 2 (11:03):
This is?
Speaker 5 (11:04):
That is not right? How did he just take off?
Speaker 1 (11:09):
That weekend of searching, Carmen kept tabs on the ranch.
Diana and Harper held DEA's power of attorney, although nobody
else seemed to know this yet. When the cops had
finished their search, they turned over the ranch keys to
DEA's children, who locked the gate. But one night, soon
after the search, Carmen noticed a car heading up the
(11:32):
road towards Benita Vista Ranch.
Speaker 5 (11:42):
So I saw Kara go over there, and I went
over there is excuse me, what are you doing?
Speaker 1 (11:46):
To calm and surprise it was Diana Fedder.
Speaker 5 (11:50):
That's the one time that I thought, oh my goodness,
what the heck is this woman doing here. I don't
think anybody, I said, I don't think anybody's supposed to
be over here. Said nobody's supposed to be here. She
was like, I just I just can't get a few
things from the truck, something for the animals.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Carmen had called the Sheriff's department as soon as she'd
seen the car, and when an officer showed up, she
went back home. Carmen brought up so many things, but
there was one thing she mentioned that to this day
still stands out to me. She told me what Harper
(12:26):
said he'd been doing during the window of time Deer
went missing.
Speaker 5 (12:32):
So the story of what he was doing on Saturday
kept changing. When we were there that day on Sunday
to SERGEI said he had been burying brush in the meadow,
like burying brush, what the heck? And then later on
he changed his story too, I was mowing the meadow.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
This, by the way, is Harper's only alibi that he
was out mowing the meadow. Speaking with Carmen brought me
back to the immediate aftermath of Deer's disappearance. I felt
like I was seeing those crucial first days in a
new light. But my conversation with her also raised a
(13:12):
lot of questions about Harper and Diana. More on that
after the break, I found a whole story about Diana
(13:52):
Fedder taking stuff out of Deer's truck. So bizarre it
was at night, the ranch had been locked shut, and
Harper was away. What was she doing there? Incidentally, Diana
had actually told me the whole truck story before, without
me even asking about it. The first time I spoke
(14:13):
to her.
Speaker 7 (14:16):
Let's see, so the Sheriff's department ended their thing on Wednesday,
because that's today.
Speaker 6 (14:23):
I went back to get the canned dog food for Ruby.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Ruby, remember is DEAs doc who had gone with Harper
on his trip to New Mexico. Also, he didn't take Ruby.
Speaker 7 (14:38):
In the end, he did, but he didn't have the
proper food. And I was you know, I wasn't aware
of the proper food that she was supposed to be
being fed.
Speaker 6 (14:47):
And they said, well, she always kept cans in her truck.
Speaker 7 (14:50):
So I went back to go get the cans to
figure out what kind of medicated food she was eating.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
This interview happened early on in my reporting, before I
knew about all the weird twists and turns. But after
I spoke with Carmen, I felt I had to call
Diana back.
Speaker 8 (15:08):
I wanted to run through some more of these questions.
So I've spoken to Carmen and I just wanted to
run Oh was that the neighbor?
Speaker 9 (15:21):
Yes?
Speaker 6 (15:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
This time Dana gave me a more detailed account about
the night she went to DIA's truck. She told me
she went to the ranch with a friend. I mentioned
finding the dog food again along with something else.
Speaker 10 (15:36):
And I told this to the police. Offer Ellie went
to the truck and the windows were down. We opened
the door, the alarm went off, and we grabbed two balls,
thigh balls, a leash, uh, some tand of food from
(16:02):
the car. And on the flank feet was a scape
like the up a lock bop mm hmm. And when
I when I opened it, there was a gun in there.
Speaker 6 (16:16):
Oh.
Speaker 10 (16:17):
I'm like, okay, why is there a lock box on
the front feet with a gun? And why did the
police not take it with them? So I leave my
friend and we go out fine, and I guess that
was Carmen and her husband. They were walking their dog
or walking and they should well we heard a lot,
so yeah, we needed to get dog food, so Ruby
(16:40):
and we showed them everything, and then I locked up
the weapon and then told the police about it.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
So to recap Diana found one of these guns India's
truck Ondia's ranch, which by that point I'm guessing was
a potential crime scene, and she took it. Diana said
it was for safety reasons, so why didn't.
Speaker 10 (17:07):
I did not feel un comfortable a loaded weapon sitting
in the front seat of my friend's vehicle with the
windows there on property where nobody is staying. You know
that anybody could come on. I'm like, no, no, no, no,
So what.
Speaker 6 (17:23):
Happened to it?
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Oh?
Speaker 6 (17:26):
For the weapon?
Speaker 10 (17:27):
Yeah, I told the police about it, and then Hartwork
said that he wanted the weapon and I said it
fine in my faith, and he goes, no, I want
to keep all of thea's property on the property. And
I'm like, okay, well, what can I say?
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Now?
Speaker 10 (17:46):
I can't tell him. I'm not going to give it
to him. I mean, because now you know, technically he's
in charge. So I let the police know that I
had to give him the weapon.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
By many accounts, dear did own a lot of guns.
I tried to find out what happened to that one.
Harper says he doesn't have it anymore, and the police
didn't respond to my questions about it. In general, Diana
disputed a lot of what Carmen told me, particularly about
(18:20):
her and Harper.
Speaker 6 (18:22):
Harper and I have never been in a relationship. I
met him. I think it's been twice before Dia disappeared. Yeah,
he's just a Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
While I had Diana on the phone, I wanted to
ask her about some of Clinton's allegations. He believes that
Diana had something to do with Dear's disappearance and that
she was working with Harper. He's been pretty adamant to
me that you're involved somehow.
Speaker 10 (18:57):
Yeah, he's told the police that, and he's told everybody else.
Just because you happened to be asked by a friend
to help them, there is state or what have you
when you ask, does not automatically make you the bad guy.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Diana denied having anything to do with Dear's disappearance.
Speaker 10 (19:23):
I mean, I can understand, you know, like if something
happened to somebody's spouse, the person they could look to
is the other spouse, you know, and I can understand
why they would consider it at first. But there's no gain, Yeah,
none at all, you know, I mean the I mean
(19:43):
there's no money, there's.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Nothing, Diana said. There's no value in DEA's trust. Dear
was so in debt. Diana said that her estate is
pretty much worthless. This is hard for me to verify
because the legal guardian of Deer's estate won't tell me
anything about DEA's financial situation. But according to court records,
(20:07):
Deer's estate could be worth millions regardless. A couple of
years ago, Diana withdrew as DEA's trustee anyway, giving up
any claim on DEA's assets. And there was one last
thing that Diana told me that directly correlated to something
Carmen had said. I asked Diana why Carmen wasn't allowed
(20:32):
to search the RV. Diana was surprised and said the
r V had been searched.
Speaker 6 (20:37):
It was searched twice. It was searched on.
Speaker 10 (20:41):
Uh Sunday, and it was searched again on Monday before
he departed in it.
Speaker 6 (20:47):
But there was nothing in it, nothing that way to concern.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
And then she told me this, The only thing.
Speaker 10 (20:55):
That conswer was the r V was parked in the field,
in the horse field, okay, and Harper had told the
police that he was mowing the field.
Speaker 6 (21:10):
When she supposedly disappeared. Yeah, and he could look because
it was up to their knees.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
So first Carmen tells me howp had changed his alibi
from burying brush in the meadow to mowing it. And
then Diana tells me that the grass was definitely not moan.
That's really interesting about the meadow.
Speaker 10 (21:38):
That's pretty good, great, And he apparently was out there
for hours mowing the meadow. Well, I can tell you
right now that the amount of time that he said
he's spent in the meadow mowing, it's in collect m
He said he was out there for almost six hours.
(22:02):
There's no way in heck he could have been out
there for six hours unless you took an OAP.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
I couldn't help wondering where were the police in all
of this? Have they checked out Harper's alibi? I don't
know if they did, But what I did learn is
that Harper wasn't exactly concerned about alibis, because it turns
out he claims he's known all along exactly what happened
(22:33):
to Dia, and he'd seen it all unfold on the
security camera's tapes. We'll be right back. In May twenty
(23:41):
twenty three, around Memorial Day, three people broke into Benita
Vista Ranch. According to a police report, they stole some
power tools, an old car, and a tractor. They were
arrested at the ranch and later pled guilty. The reason
I'm telling you about this is because it's after this
(24:03):
burglary happens three years into our interviews that Harper suddenly
mentions something new, something he has never told me before.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
I'm stuck. I'm stuck with what we do once we
find her. You know, obviously, you know, in my opinion,
they've always known it was a murder because the video
shows that. And why they the video that was here
at the lange that was taken. Oh, well, I.
Speaker 6 (24:41):
Don't know anything about that video.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
What video is that? Yeah, we had surveillance on the
area in which she was assaulted.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Basically, this man, who I've been speaking to for three
years by this point, is suddenly telling me about a
security camera which captured Dea being kidnapped. And he's never
ever mentioned this before. In fact, he told me this
(25:14):
in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
I always believe that she was going to a safe song,
so I always felt that she laughed that. I always
felt that she would contact me and let me know
that she was fine. The contact never comes.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
That same year, right before I was thinking of visiting
the ranch, Harper told me something else. He told me
the security cameras hadn't captured anything.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Yeah, you know what, I'll take you upstairs and show
you the cameras.
Speaker 5 (25:44):
How how they do not see what happens is beyond.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Me and lie.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
And when he finally does mention the videotapes to me
all those years later, he describes in detail what he
watched on this footage. He launches into this wild chronicle
about dear being kidnapped.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
It takes place between the main house and what we
call the cabin, which is across the street from the
main house. They surround her as she's coming. They do
not cause they do not communicate. They just surround her
(26:29):
and that's where the big guy halts off and hits
her to the side of the white cheek.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
He tells me that Deer's attorney called him after Deer
went missing and told him to watch the security camera footage.
I tried to double chat this with Deer's attorney, but
in the middle of all of this he died so
I couldn't. Harper also tells me the detective Alberta. Lerero
of the Riverside County Sheriff's Department has seen the footage too.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
He's been asked if who they were and why they
haven't been identified. He claims that the video is not
clear enough to do facial recognition on it.
Speaker 8 (27:14):
But have you seen have you actually physically seen this video,
Yes you have, and when did you watch it?
Speaker 2 (27:25):
When we were doing the actual search for her, her
attorney called then asked me to watch it, and then
after I had given it, he said, you know, just
he said, he said, you know, I should have taken
a copy. I didn't.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
So, just to recap, I've been speaking to Harper for
years by this point, and it's only after that Memorial
Day Burglary happens that he brings up these videotapes. He
told me that the people who burgled the ranch in
twenty twenty three were the same people he watched on
video kidnapping Dea in twenty twenty.
Speaker 9 (28:06):
There were three burglars that can they as saying description
of those who killed her almost identical in height, weight
and size.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
It was hard to reconcile all of this with what
Carmen told me. According to her, her it guy couldn't
access the security footage on Deer's ranch. He said someone
had tampered with it. Detective Lrero also told me that
no such tape exists. There was one more strange aspect
(28:42):
about Harper's new theory. It lined up with information from
some of Kelly Snyder's psychics, who work with his Missing
Persons organization. They said that three people, two men and
a woman, were responsible for Deer's disappearance. We heard this
from Kelly Snyder back in episode three.
Speaker 9 (29:03):
They were all saying the same thing independently, which was
that she was murdered. She was murdered by three people,
two males and a female. She was taken and you know,
killed and buried and basically that was it.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
So is Harper just taking what Kelly's psychics said happened
and sort of mishmashing it with the people who burgled
the ranch. It wouldn't be the first time that he
treated the psychic's information as hard fact. Ultimately, Harper believes
that the three people in the footage are part of
a drug trafficking motorcycle gang and that they're heavily involved
(29:51):
in DEA's death. Oh and that Clinton hired them. I
couldn't help, but wonder is Harper simply making all of
this up. If he's lying, it would call his entire
narrative into question, and most importantly, his alley that he
was mowing the meadow when Deer disappeared. I have been
(30:14):
told by somebody who was at the search that weekend
deer disappeared, that your alibi changed, that you first said
you were burying brush in the meadow, and then you
said you were mowing the meadow, and then two people
in one.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
I said, I said rushing or mowing.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
And people have said that the meadow wasn't moaned, that
the grass was long.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Well, the meadal the medal, which you got to realize,
is where the horses go out and feast. That is
approximately five acres. The meadow goes on for probably a
mile and a half. So did I mow all of
the medal?
Speaker 1 (30:58):
No?
Speaker 3 (30:59):
I mow what we use and what is planted in grass,
not what is brush.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
There's no way I'll ever know if the meadow was
moan or not. But in any case, Harper is adamant
that at some point Deer's body will be found.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Once we find, for I think without question we will.
Then we need to address the issue with the Sheriff's
department of why Clinton Abrams was never interviewed or interrogated.
He becomes the main suspect in all of our investigations.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Clinton says that the Riverside Sheriff's Department has questioned him
and he's actually spent the past few years deep in
an investigation of his own. He's taken all of his
interviews and tape recordings and documents and finessed his theory
of what he believes happened to his mother. The deer
(32:04):
was taken and killed by a gang coming next time.
(32:36):
On the season finale of Where's Dia.
Speaker 6 (32:40):
It's an emotional Katrina.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
You know it came in.
Speaker 6 (32:44):
It washed everything out? Okay?
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Was that? Was that a location of where the body was?
Speaker 6 (32:50):
There was a location of something I do I don't need
to hear.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Well, I need to hear more specific.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
Do we have a location where we believe that she is.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
I think there is a deal amongst multiple people to
split the spoils of war, so to speak.
Speaker 10 (33:08):
Neighbors will look up early Sunday morning to the sound
of a Sheriff's helicopter flying over Dia Abrams Ranch near Idlewild.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
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
(33:56):
and mastering by Echo Shaw's Where's Dea is a co
production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
Speaker 6 (34:19):
Where's
Speaker 1 (34:20):
Dea was originally developed with Truly*Adventurous.
Host
Lucy Sherriff
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Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.