Legend in His Own Mind: Rampage Killer in California

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Mark (00:00):
Walking away from his truck, the warrior instinctively

(00:02):
checked his gear, right forearmbrushing against the butt of a
pistol, concealed under hisbaggy coat.
Badge on the chain, hangingheavy inside his shirt against
his chest, left coat pocketweighted with spare magazines.
This operation called forstealth and the risk of a fight
was low.
No vest, no bulky radio, nohelmet and no boots.

(00:24):
This would be in and out.
Gone in the dark.

Marcy (00:27):
Welcome to Crime Raven; true crimes, real life stories
from law enforcement and issuescrime fighters face.
This podcast highlights crimesresearched by retired Detective
Sergeant Mark Rein, usingpublicly available information,
court records and personalrecollections.
Content may be graphic,disturbing, or violent.
Listener discretion is advised.

(00:49):
Suspects are considered innocentuntil found guilty in a court of
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(01:11):
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That's free access for 30 daysat audibletrial.com/crimeraven.
We'll also put the link in theshow notes.

Mark (01:30):
The warrior parked his truck just off the curb at the
west end of the condo complex.
He was familiar with the layouthaving scouted it twice in the
last two days.
One was confirmation that thetarget still lived there.
The second surveillance.
It did not surprise him to findout that well, it was a nice
place.
The towers housed condos andbusinesses that surrounded
courtyards, exercise areas,restaurants, and cafes.

(01:53):
The meticulous pocket communityis squarely located in the
middle of Irvine, the largestplanned city in the United
States.
To the warrior the effect wassimultaneously attractive and
repulsive.
He wasn't the kind of person whocould live there with the
beautiful people, but part ofhim lamented that fact.
Walking away from his truck, thewarrior instinctively checked
his gear, right forearm brushingagainst the butt of a pistol,

(02:16):
concealed under his baggy coat.
Badge on the chain, hangingheavy inside his shirt against
his chest, left coat pocketweighted with spare magazines.
This operation called forstealth and the risk of a fight
was low.
No vest, no bulky radio, nohelmet and no boots.
This would be in and out.
Gone in the dark.

(02:37):
The warrior walked confidentlydown the sidewalk in front of
one tower.
Up ahead, the cafe attached tothe parking garage seemed almost
empty.
It was late afternoon on Sunday,super Bowl Sunday.
He figured that most of thepeople lived in these buildings
were busy socializing, watchingthe game or otherwise
distracted.
The Warrior knew that the targetwas away.

(02:59):
Pre-Operation Intelligence andsurveillance were very useful
things.
He walked confidently past thecafe and into the side stairwell
of the parking garage.
Based on his observations, thesecurity officers were for show
only.
They lazily repeatedly orbit thebuildings and the golf cart.
You could set your watch bytheir rounds.
Knowing this, he felt at easeimmediately upon leaving the

(03:21):
sidewalk.
The warrior kept a casual paceas he climbed to the second
floor and walked out onto theopen upper deck of the garage.
Satisfied that the lot wasmostly empty, and the target car
hadn't returned.
He settled himself in an alcovethat allowed him to observe the
ground floor entrance and thesecond level parking deck.

(03:43):
As the sun set against theresidential towers, he watched
the windows and the balconiesabove.
The lights were coming on upthere, but no one was visible or
out enjoying the brisk eveningair.
If somebody called him in, hehad the badge and tell them just
enough to dissuade them fromblowing his operation.
A little after 7:00 PM, theWarrior's patience was rewarded.

(04:07):
The white Kia Optima flashed byon the street below, turning
into the garage.
He listened as the car movedacross the first floor, strained
up the ramp before emerging intothe open air on the second
level.
It did not surprise him to seetwo occupants.
In the dim light, he couldn'ttell for sure, but it looked
like the target was in thepassenger seat.

(04:27):
It was go time.
The warrior was nonchalant inhis approach.
A normal guy out for an eveningwalk.
It didn't matter.
No one was paying attention.
The car's dome light was on.
They were talking, laughinginside.
The black guy was behind thewheel.
The Asian woman beside him waspretty, her blue dress,
attractive, even in the mutedinterior lights.

(04:49):
The scene of happiness andnormalcy gave the warrior a pang
of envious desire.
He pushed back on the jealousyand replaced it with disdain.
He fought to suppress a grin andhead shake.
Typical, he had caught thecampus cop slippin'.
The warrior drew his pistol andmoving up close to the passenger
window, pulled the trigger againand again, almost emptying the

(05:11):
magazine.
Bright flashes, loud pops, andvaporizing glass.
The assault was so sudden anddevastating, neither man or
woman managed to cry out.
They just slumped forward.
Their instinctual response tothe sudden onslaught was only to
turn slightly.
When the shooting stopped, ahush silence rushed in
enveloping the scene.

(05:31):
The warrior lean closer, tryingto see past the gun smoke that
hung in the air like a fog.
As he looked through the jaggedholes, bullets made in the
passenger window, there was ashocked stillness inside.
Bodies, languidly shifted.
Maybe a quiet moaning, achuffing gasp.
But he had to be certain.
Again, he lifted his pistol.
This time with precision aim.

(05:52):
He placed a bullet in the backof each head just to be sure the
message was clear.
The specially fitted pistol mademore sound than he had hoped.
Echoing through the courtyard,he scanned the buildings above.
Saw no movement, no onlookers inthe windows.
There were no sirens.
The warrior walked away withpurpose, retracing his steps

(06:13):
using intermittent shadows tohis advantage.
He needn't have worried.
He made it back to the Titanwithout hearing sounds of alarm.
Still no approaching sirens.
He disappeared into theCalifornia night.

Marcy (06:30):
Irvine, California is in the Los Angeles basin just south
of the city of Los Angeles.
Irvine has a less urban fieldthan its larger neighbor.
It's the largest plannedcommunity in the country and
boasts verdant parks, desirableneighborhoods with excellent
schools and low crime.
On the evening of February 3rd,2013, the discovery of two of

(06:53):
its residents shot to death in acar, disturbed the reputation of
Irvine being a great, safe placeto live.
The victims were youngprofessionals who died outside
their apartment, an exclusivecondominium complex in the heart
of the city.
The murder scene was on thesecond floor of one of the
complexes, parking garages.
A resident returning home ataround 9:00 PM parked near the

(07:16):
bodies.
That level of the parking garagewas open and in full view of the
much taller residential andoffice buildings that lined one
side of the multi-buildingcomplex.
The 9 1 1 caller, anotherresident noticed a white Kia
Optima parked nearby with thedamaged window.
Fearing theft, the person walkedover and discovered the bodies

(07:37):
of a man and a woman slumpedover in the front seats,
obviously dead.
No one from the surroundingbuildings reported the shooting
when it occurred, but theoccupants with units facing the
interior of the complex werewitnesses to the aftermath.
First patrol units arrived,lights and sirens announcing the
event.
They secured the scene andblocked the interior roads.

(08:00):
Next came the crime scenetechnicians with their
processing equipment in tow.
Shortly behind them, thehomicide detectives.
To the residents of thisnormally tranquil neighborhood,
it looked like an invasion.
The nervous neighbors asked eachother, did you see anything?
Did you hear anything?
No one had.
Most said they were here andthey were watching the Super

(08:21):
Bowl.
Some where out avoiding watchingthe Super Bowl.
The idea that anyone could bemurdered right in their midst in
Irvine was unsettling.
To the detectives that caughtthe case, the facts were
unusual.
This wasn't the kind of placethey normally saw people dead in
a car.
That was often in parks, atstoplights, on streets and in

(08:43):
the seedier areas on theperiphery of the city.
This scene was far from typicaland that raised troubling
questions.
How was it that someone couldfire more than a dozen, nine
millimeter rounds in a place asexposed as this, and no one see?
The obvious answers weredisturbing.
Silencer?

(09:03):
Was this a hitman?
The Optima's windows were acloudy mess.
Spidered out, penetrated at manypoints, jagged holes, allowing a
glimpse of the grizzly sceneinside.
A young black man slumped behindthe wheel.
A young Asian woman beside him.
Both shot too many times tocount, but what was apparent is

(09:24):
that they were each finishedwith a coup de grace in the back
of the head.
All the shots had been at closerange, the shattered glass edges
peppered with telltale blackresidue.
What was the crime about?
Looking at the woman, herclothing was nice.
Her dress, before it became ahorror mapping, the flow of

(09:46):
blood from her wounds to thepull of gravity had been a
pretty powder blue.
She had jewelry on, whichincluded a large diamond ring.
The man's watch wasn't stolenand there was other property in
the car.
Probably not a robbery.
It looked like an ambush.
It was a properly parked car,and it didn't seem like either

(10:08):
of the victims had moved afterthe shooting started.
They quickly identified thevictims.
The detectives were stunned tofind that they were working on
the murder of a fellow officer.
The man was 26 year old keithLawrence, an officer with the
University of SouthernCalifornia.
It turned out that the secondvictim was 28 year old Monica
Quan who coached the women'sbasketball team for California

(10:30):
State University Fullerton.
Monica and Keith shared anapartment in the complex and had
just been engaged to marry a fewdays prior to their murders.
The detectives spread out togather information about the
setting and the victims.
None of the building's residentsadmitted to knowing anything
about the shooting.
No one knew of any problembetween the residents or why the

(10:53):
couple might be targeted?
A check of the parking garageaccess log revealed that Keith
had driven into the garage at7:30 PM.
The 911 call came in at 9:10.
Detectives scoured Keith andMonica's lives for clues about
why they were targeted.
They came up with nothing forKeith.
He was well respected at theuniversity and hadn't had any

(11:14):
major problems, personal orprofessional.
The same was true for Monica.
She was the daughter of aretired Los Angeles Police
Department Captain.
Monica's father, Randall Quancould think of nobody who wanted
to hurt them.
The only anomaly for Monica wasthat a man had called into
Monica's office at theuniversity with unusual

(11:35):
questions.
He asked where Monica and herteam would stay for a recent
away game.
The staff member who took thecall said the question seemed
stalkerish.
The caller hung up when asked toidentify himself.
With no strong leads, thedetectives expanded their search
to include random crimes in thearea.

(11:56):
There had been no suspiciousreports of weapons brandishing
or road rage leading up to theincident.
They also looked at the victim'sfamilies.
Randall Quan, Monica's dad, hadbeen involved in gang
enforcement and after retirementhad become a lawyer representing
police officers.
None of the gang cases seemed tobe related and nothing jumped

(12:17):
out at them about Randall'slegal clients, at least not from
the recent past.
In the first 48 hours followingthe Irvine's double homicides,
detectives had many questions,but few answers.
The morning after the Irvinemurders, 100 miles south in

(12:38):
National City and just north ofthe Mexican border, the janitor
of an automotive repair shoplooked into the dumpster in the
alley and saw many items thatlooked like military gear.
The worker reported the find tolocal police.
The responding officer expectedto see old, worn out, worthless
stuff, but was surprised to seenew items that included

(13:01):
ammunition, a ballistic vest,leather duty belts, holsters, a
collapsible baton, an officer'snotebook, and a blue LAPD
uniform.
The uniform had a name tagattached.
The name was Dorner.
Inscribed in the notebook weretwo handwritten names and badge
numbers.
Dorner 37381 and Evans 31050.

(13:27):
A broader search of the dumpsterdown the alley revealed other
valuable equipment including atactical helmet, a military
backpack, and a nine millimeterpistol magazine with bullets.
After he recovered the equipmentfrom the dumpster, the officer
guessed that someone had stolenthe property from one of his
colleagues working in the bigcity to the north.

(13:49):
He called LAPD and was told thatDorner was no longer a police
officer, but that he could speakto the patrol sergeant, Teresa
Evans.
Evans told the officer that shedidn't know why the equipment
would be in a dumpster inNational City.
Dorner was assigned to her as atrainee, but was fired from LAPD
several years prior.
The officer thanked Evans forthe information, hung up and

(14:11):
logged the items into the policedepartment's property room.
At the time of the phone callfrom National City pd, Theresa
Evans was 48 and working patrolon swing shift.
Mention of the name Dorner wasalarming to her.
They had history and it wasn'tgood.
Christopher Dorner had beenTheresa Evans trainee six years

(14:35):
prior.
They worked the west side of LAnear the water.
Dorner hadn't been a modelrecruit.
In the academy, he was amarginal student, and at one
point he shot himself in thehand.
On the street, theresa hadserious reservations about
Dorner's ability to do the job.
He didn't possess an aptitudefor the subtle and diplomatic

(14:56):
communication skills that goodcops develop.
He was overconfident to thepoint of being unsafe.
Worse, he couldn't handleconstructive criticism, an
essential attribute closelyassociated with humility that
are the keys to success as apolice officer.
As the training periodprogressed, Theresa noticed and

(15:17):
documented that Dorner wastemperamental and angry to the
point of being unstable.
He kept a running tally of eventhe smallest lights, and as a
black man, seemed to attributeevery difficulty in his life as
stemming from racism.
When Teresa voiced her concernto Dorner, he was defensive.

(15:37):
As Dorner failed to respond totraining, and her critiques
became more pointed, Dornerfought back.
He went to internal affairs andfiled a use of force complaint
against Teresa.
In the complaint, Dorner claimedthat while on a call, she
repeatedly kicked a handcuffedsuspect in the chest and face.
Because of the complaint, theyput Teresa on desk duty where

(16:00):
she remained for a year whilethey investigated.
The investigation was thorough.
Several police officers andcivilians were present on the
call where the kicking incidentwas alleged to have occurred.
None of them substantiatedDonner's complaint.
To the contrary, they alldismissed it as a fabrication.
At the conclusion of the review,the LAPD disciplinary board made

(16:23):
a stunning move.
Their decision was to reinstateOfficer Evans to full duty and
dismiss Dorner from the policedepartment.
This was based on theinvestigator's findings that
Dorner had filed the complaintagainst his field training
officer as retribution for poortraining scores.
Six years later, Therese Evanswas feeling anxious after just

(16:45):
hearing Dorner's name.
When he was fired, Theresathought Dorner was the kind of
guy who would try to exact somekind of revenge.
That hadn't materialized in theintervening six years.
But she would've been happy tonever hear his name again.
She had no idea why his gearwould turn up in the dumpster in
San Diego.

(17:06):
Theresa was uneasy as she workedthat night.
Being placed on desk duty for ayear had been a painful time in
her career.
She ruminated about it forhours.
Back at the station, as theshift was coming to a close, she
heard two officers talking aboutformer lapd Captain Randall
Quan.
One of the officers needed legalrepresentation on something and

(17:28):
Quan's name came up.
Another officer said that Quanwouldn't be available because
his daughter had just beenmurdered.
The conversation suddenly heldTeresa's full attention.
The last time Theresa had seenRandall Quan, he was working as
the legal representative forDorner during the complaint

(17:48):
process.
She knew that when Dorner hadbeen fired, he blamed his
lawyer.
Dorner's belief was that Quanhaving been an LAPD Insider, had
betrayed him.
Teresa didn't believe incoincidences.
She reached out to Randall Quan.
Upon hearing Donner's name, Quanstarted talking about how crazy
he thought his former clientwas.

(18:10):
He characterized Dorner ashaving a hero syndrome, meaning
that he could do no wrong, andany conflict would be by
definition caused by evil forcesarrayed against him.
He was skeptical that Dornercould be involved in the murder.
The relationship seemed obscure,particularly because it was six

(18:30):
years in the past.
Theresa's next call was toIrvine Police, and she was soon
connected to the detectiveleading the murder
investigation.
Teresa filled the detective inon what she knew.
Admitting it seemed like a longshot, but the not believing in
the whole coincidences thing isa common sentiment among good
cops.

(18:50):
The investigator, agreed thatthe information could be useful,
and promised to follow up.
To the Irvine detectives workingthe double homicide, the Dorner
tip from LAP D was as good alead as they'd yet had.
The information played into oneof the risk possibilities named
on day one.
The murders could be retributionfor something that Monica's
father was involved in at LAPD.

(19:13):
Still, the Dorner thing seemedpretty stale to have erupted so
violently.
Detectives started withbackground.
Aside from being dismissedduring field training at LAPD,
dorner looked great on paper.
There was no criminal record forhim.
He was a Navy veteran.
He had a house in Las Vegas andowned a Nissan pickup truck.

(19:35):
He had a mother and sisterliving in the LA area.
There were two items that drewthe investigator's attention.
One, they had involuntarilyreleased Dorner from the Naval
Reserve duty just two daysbefore the murders.
Two, dorner owned severalfirearms including a nine
millimeter Glock, the same makeand caliber used on the murders.

(19:59):
Glock nine millimeter was afairly popular weapon, but that
two was worth follow up.
When the Irvine detectives madeit to National City to inspect
the cache of Dorner equipment,they discovered that video
existed for the alley where thedumpsters were located.
On the video, a man matchingDorner's description could be

(20:19):
seen coming and going from aNissan Titan pickup truck to
dispose of the property.
This happened early Mondaymorning, and if related, it
would've been only a few hoursafter the shooting a hundred
miles to the north.
One detective noted a weirdfact.
The dumpsters that Dorner usedwere in full view of the
National City Police Departmentheadquarters.

(20:41):
He wondered if Dorner waslooking for a confrontation.
As Irvine police wereconsidering their new suspect,
law enforcement officers acrossSouthern California began
passing around a disturbingsocial media post.
It wasn't long before it came tothe attention of LAPD Brass.
The over 10,000 Word documentbecame known as Dorner's

(21:03):
Manifesto.
Parts of the document wereludicrously silly.
In the rambling diatribe, Dornerthanked his knee surgeon,
criticized President Obama andopined expertly on the first
lady's hairstyle.
He commented on currentcelebrity scandals, including
Charlie Sheen and Bill Cosby.
He ordered Governor ChrisChristie to go on a diet and

(21:25):
forgave General David Petraeusfor his human failings.
Dorner alluded to his beliefthat he was going to die and
listed the TV shows and movieshe was sorry to miss: the
Walking Dead, Shark Week and theHangover three.
Other parts of the letter weresad.
Dorner felt that because he hadgrown up in areas where he was

(21:47):
the only black person, he wasconstantly enduringly under a
racist attack by the people andorganizations around him.
He asserted that this had beentrue through school, through the
Navy, and worst of all LAPD.
The most important parts of themanifesto were dangerous, even
deadly.
The diatribe included a threatto wage unconventional and

(22:10):
asymmetrical warfare on LAPD ofall ranks, their associates, and
their families.
He admitted to killing KeithLawrence saying he never
imagined that he could be a copkiller, but was driven to it.
He asserted that his actualtarget in the shooting was
Randall Quan's daughter.
When they read Donner's threats,the LAPD command took the risk

(22:31):
seriously and jumped intoaction.
They compiled a list of staffthreatened by name, and then
added those determined to beprobable targets.
The first list was three dozenpeople.
The second, included over 100people who needed intensive
protection.
They sacrificed specialty policeunits for these assignments.

(22:52):
Within two hours, hundreds ofLAPD officers were crisscrossing
Southern California to intercepttheir assigned protectees.
A few days after the murders inIrvine, the gear dump and the
manifesto, San Diego police weresummoned to Southwestern Yacht
Club for an unusual call.
That evening, an 81 year oldman, Carlos Caprioglio was

(23:14):
relaxing on his yacht when a manwalked up the dock.
There was nobody else around,but Carlos wasn't worried.
Crime was rare in that part ofSan Diego, particularly at the
marina.
The first thing Carlos noticedabout the big man who was
stepping aboard his boat wasthat he was gripping a black
semi-automatic pistol likesomeone who knew how to use it.

(23:35):
The uninvited guest promisedCarlos that he wouldn't get hurt
if he took the big man toMexico.
He decided cooperation waspreferable to being shot.
As Carlos started the engines,the big man began untying the
dock lines.
Later, Carlos would tell thepolice he didn't think the guy
knew anything about boatingbecause he just threw the ropes
loose in the water.

(23:55):
As Carlos put the engine intogear, one of those ropes
immediately became fouled in thepropeller and killed the engine.
The big man became angry,demanding carlos immediately fix
the problem.
Carlos explained that thetangled rope was a significant
and lengthy repair, and offeredhis car keys, urging his captor
to take the car.
Clearly frustrated the big manbound Carlos' hands and feet,

(24:18):
stole his cell phone and fled.
It took Carlos a couple of hoursto free himself and summoned San
Diego Police.
After he gave a statement, theofficer showed him a photo.
Word went out across policedepartments in Southern
California.
Dorner was trying to sneak intoMexico.

(24:38):
The manifesto and murders lit afire with Southern California
law enforcement and stimulated amassive all hands manhunt and
protection effort.
At the Los Angeles Task ForceCenter, local, state and federal
investigators shared informationand divided up the work that lay
ahead.
They brought in psychologists topredict what Dorner's next steps

(24:58):
might be.
One of the first tasks was aworkup on Dorner's life, which
meant talking to his friends andfamily.
The friends who were closesttold investigators that Dorner
had two sides to hispersonality.
He could be a courteous,considerate, and caring friend
one day, and callous and evencruel the next.
The friends that lasted thelongest knew that you didn't

(25:20):
insult or cross him.
Dorner was a guy who kept atally of even the smallest
slights, and could lash out inunexpected ways.
A recent friend and a woman whorented a room in Dorner's House
said their platonic relationshipwas solid at first.
Dorner was someone she couldconfide in and thought he was

(25:40):
dependable.
One night, Dorner called herinto his home office and began
showing her photos of him and agirlfriend having intercourse.
The roommate interpretedDorner's actions as a buildup to
a proposition, but she didn'twant to be involved in that way.
When she fled from the room,Dorner's reaction was to freak
out.

(26:01):
He began screaming at her,demanding that she pack up her
belongings and leaveimmediately, which she did.
Another longtime friend, DelaniJackson, was a San Diego police
officer who knew Dorner sincehigh school.
Delani said he often visitedDorner at his home in Las Vegas.
When the Navy released Dorner,Delani went to Vegas to console

(26:22):
him.
he discovered a friend who wasnow hostile.
Dorner told Delani that he neverwanted to see him again,
bringing up perceived instancesof disrespect, some from the
very distant past.
Because Jackson was a policeofficer, the investigators
questioned him about Dorner'sweapons.
Jackson told them that Dornerhad many semiautomatic rifles

(26:44):
and pistols, and that over thelast year had purchased
silencers for some of them.
The detectives opined that thosepurchases were to prepare for
the current events.
They also thought that thesilencer information answered
the mystery as to why no onecalled in the Irvine shooting.
One of the big early questionsabout Dorner was whether his

(27:05):
Navy training gave him theexpertise to make good on his
threats.
He promised to bring the kind ofgorilla warfare waged by special
units like Navy Seals and ArmyGreen Berets.
The answer was that while Dornerhad weapons training in the
Navy, it was about perimeterdefense, not the special warfare
tactics that he threatened inthe manifesto.

(27:26):
The story of Dorner's almostcomedic attempt to Shanghai and
octogenarian only to be foiledby a rope seemed to lessen the
threat.
The psychologist who analyzedDorner's mental state made
ominous predictions.
They said that Dorner's writingand actions indicated a man who
expected to die, who felt thathe had nothing to lose and was

(27:46):
therefore extremely dangerous.
They warned that they shouldmeet any attempt by dorner to
surrender with caution.
He was the type who might wannago out in a blaze of glory.
As guidance, the psychologistcautioned that the public
messaging should avoid labelingdorner as crazy.
They suggested that trying toenter into dialogue about the

(28:07):
termination process might buytime to locate him.
In response to that analysis,LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, who is
a named Target in the manifesto,publicly released that he would
personally lead a review ofDorner's termination file.
In the early morning hours ofFebruary 7th, 2013, a tow truck

(28:30):
driver getting gas in the LAsuburb of Corona recognized
Dorner in the Titan truck as itslowly drove past.
Not by coincidence, he was ableto flag two LAPD cops sitting
for one of the protectiondetails.
The citizen alerted the officersjust as Dorner's truck circled
into view.
The officers immediately gaveChase as Dorner fled onto the

(28:52):
nearby highway.
The patrol car was considerablybehind Dorner's truck and no
backup had arrived when thefugitive abruptly took an exit.
As the patrol car followed downthe off ramp, Dorner set up an
ambush at the bottom.
He fired dozens of rounds intothe LAPD car, clearly disabling
it before fleeing back onto thehighway.

(29:15):
Miraculously only one of the twoofficers in the car was hit by
Dorner's rifle fire.
And that was a simple grazewound to the scalp.
Dorner riddled the patrol carwith armor piercing rounds,
rendering it inoperable.
The victim officer could notcall out on the radio, which
caused confusion among covercars racing their way.
That communication delay wouldbe costly.

(29:39):
A few minutes after the shootingin Corona, Riverside police
officer Michael Crane and hisrecruit, Andrew Tachias stopped
for the red light at theintersection of Magnolia and
Arlington Avenue.
The night was quiet and chilly,with patchy ground fog drifting
across the roadway.
It was Tachias' last day offield training.
Crane, the 6'3" former Marinehad high regard for his student,

(30:03):
and both regretted the end oftheir time together.
Suddenly the cruiser'swindshield glass exploded
inward.
The two officers barelyregistered what was happening as
round after round, poured in onthem.
The source of the gunfire was anoncoming vehicle that had pulled
through the intersection againstthe red light, stopping a few
feet away from the cruiser.

(30:25):
The shooter loosed more than adozen rounds from his rifle.
The telltale shot patternsrecorded in the glass made clear
the shooter's intent to kill theoccupants.
When the echo of the shotssubsided, the ravaged police car
rolled slowly, silently forward.
Officer Michael Crane, an 11year veteran of the Riverside
Police Department and father ofa 10 year old son and four year

(30:47):
old daughter, died instantly asone bullet pierced his badge and
then destroyed his heart.
Behind the wheel and on the sideof the car, most directly hit
with gunfire, officer Tachiasbegan a fight for survival.
Someone had grievously woundedthe recruit officer in the side,
back, legs, and arms.

(31:07):
A cab driver who had stopped atthe same light, ran over to the
patrol car, shifted it intopark, and shouted into their
radio, pleading for help.
Later, the cabby confirmedDorner was the shooter.
The officer safety bulletinabout Dorner shooting at LAPD
and nearby Corona was receivedtoo late to warn the officers in
Riverside.

(31:28):
the Corona and Riversideshootings further set law
enforcement and residents ofSouthern California on edge.
Before the Dorner story had beenmore of a curiosity on the
evening news.
After the murders and themanhunt were regional and
national top stories.
The coverage only became morefrenzied when an LAPD source
leaked the manifesto to cnn.

(31:53):
The shootings happened in theearly hours of February 7th.
Later that morning, Sheriff'sdeputies in Big Bear Lake, a
mountainous area, 100 miles eastof Los Angeles, responded to an
old forestry road on the side ofa mountain for a report of a
burning truck.
When the flames were out, thedeputies confirmed it was
Dorner's Titan pickup truck.
It looked like he hadintentionally torched the

(32:15):
vehicle after it had gottenstuck in deep snow.
The truck contained charredremnants of several weapons,
ammunition, and camping gear.
The discovery kicked off thelargest manhunt in the Sierra
Nevada Mountains anyone couldremember.
Checkpoints blocked major accessroads in and out.
Search teams, dogs andhelicopters, scoured the
hillsides and buildings fordays.

(32:37):
There was no sign of dorner onFebruary 8th, ninth, 10th, or
11th.
The lull stretched lawenforcement to the max.
They didn't have the luxury ofonly focusing in the big bear
area.
Dorner could be anywhere.
In fact, witnesses had reportedseeing him in various places
around the country.
A package sent to AndersonCooper of CNN added to the

(32:59):
drama.
The box contained an lap Dchallenge coin, a memento given
to Dorner by former LAP D, chiefWilliam Bratton.
The coin was recognizabledespite having been perforated
several times by rifle rounds.
By February 12th with still nosign of the most wanted man in

(33:19):
California, a sense of normalcywas creeping back into the big
bear area.
Signs of the manhunt were stilleverywhere, but locals were
starting to believe that Dornerhad either frozen to death on a
mountain side or left the areaall together.
The morning of February 12th wasthe day that Jim and Karen

(33:40):
Reynolds, a semi-retired couplewho managed a 13 room hotel just
down the road from where Dornerdumped his truck, restarted
cleaning out rooms.
At noon, the couple opened thedoor to Unit 2 0 3 and found
themselves face-to-face withDorner.
The fugitive ordered them intothe room at gunpoint and closed

(34:02):
the door behind them.
Once inside, Dorner bound thecouple using zip ties.
Jim Reynolds wondered how thefugitive could have been hiding
out in one of their rooms theentire time.
He quickly pieced the timelinetogether.
He and Karen had been cleaningrooms on the day dorner had
burned his truck.
That happened just up the hill,maybe a five minute walk.

(34:26):
Dorner had slipped into the roomand locked the door.
Jim and Karen each thought theother had secured it because
there was no sign of forcedentry.
From room 2 0 3, Dorner hadwatched the massive search
unfold.
Up the street he could see thevehicles and helicopters
arriving and departing thecommand post.
The room also had cable tv, soDorner would've also been able

(34:48):
to monitor the news.
A few minutes after he took theReynolds hostage, Dorner decided
it was time to leave.
He took the couple's car keys,loaded up his gear, and drove
away.
The getaway car was a purpleNissan Rogue.
Once they were sure Dorner wasgone, it took Karen Reynolds a

(35:08):
little over 15 minutes to freeherself from the zip ties.
She found her cell phone anddialed 911.
The call came into dispatchcenter just before 12:30 PM
Within minutes, officers fromthe multi jurisdictional task
force were locking down the bigbear area.
They had been searching fordays, and even the officers who

(35:30):
weren't from the area were nowwell oriented.
A bright purple SUV should be aneasy spot.
Several officers were hastilysetting up a roadblock on
Highway 38 when the suspectvehicle tucked up behind two
school buses drove past theirlocation.
When he saw officers scramblinginto their cars to pursue,

(35:50):
dorner turned into a residentialarea.
The officers combed through theneighborhood.
They found the Nissan where thedriver had lost control and
crashed into a stand of trees.
No one was inside.
On a nearby street, a mandriving a Dodge pickup slowed
for a stop sign and foundhimself looking into a face he
had seen so many times on flyersand tv over the last week.

(36:13):
The fugitive aimed his rifle atthe man and ordered him out of
the vehicle.
As Dorner was trying to slipback out onto the highway, one
of the police units recognizedhim.
A hail of gunfire went in eachdirection, but no one was hit.
Dorner sensed that the massivesearch party was converging on
his location, so he drove offthe roadway, ditching the truck

(36:34):
behind a log cabin.
The police teams, realizing theyhad their quarry hemmed in,
began cordonning off thesurrounding blocks.
The buildings in the area wereprimarily unoccupied vacation
cabins.
A few minutes after Dorner waslast seen San Bernardino,
sheriff Detective Alex Collinsparked his vehicle on a roadside

(36:54):
and ventured along the slope'sshoulder.
The truck had yet to be foundand everyone was spreading out,
trying to locate it.
From his vantage point on theroad he was scanning the slopes
above him when he saw a flash.
Dorner's first bullet rippedthrough Colin's face, shattering
his upper teeth, splitting histongue, and destroying half his

(37:15):
lower jaw.
The second hit him below hisleft knee, the third and fourth
blasts through his left arm andchest.
Deputy Jeremiah McKay wasstanding close to Collins when
he collapsed onto the road.
McKay instinctively followed hispartner down and crawled to
cover behind their vehicle.
A helicopter swooped overhead.

(37:35):
The pilot witnessed the shootingbut was unclear where the rounds
were coming from.
McKay tried to give adescription which required him
to look at the cabin.
As he was transmitting to thehelicopter Dorner fired a shot.
The bullet entered the top ofMcKay's chest at a downward
angle, killing him instantly.
As the two deputies lay in theroadway, other officers were

(37:58):
carefully guided into theperimeter positions around the
cabin by the helicopter crew.
With the interior perimetersecure, a hasty rescue plan came
together.
After several failed attempts,the rescue team members were
able to deploy enough smokegrenades to allow the extraction
of the casualties.
They confirmed Deputy McKay wasdead while Detective Collins was

(38:19):
medevaced to the nearest traumacenter.
The siege of the cabin lastedseveral hours.
The officers tried tocommunicate from behind cover,
but Dorner did not respondexcept with gunfire.
in some of these exchanges, lawenforcement fired tear gas
canisters back, but it was clearthat Dorner was not ready to
surrender.

(38:39):
During one particularly longperiod of silence.
The officers wondered if Dornerhad taken his own life.
Shortly before 4:00 PM anarmored vehicle with a grapple
attachment arrived.
The operator drove up to thecabin and ripped a section of
the wall away exposing part ofthe interior of the house.
Dorner apparently fearing a SWATteam entry, deployed his own

(39:00):
smoke grenade probably from thebasement.
As the February sun sank low onthe horizon the decision was
made to deploy canisters of CSgas into the cabin.
These canisters are moreeffective than tear gas used
earlier, but they had anignition source that if left to
burn, could light the house onfire.
Despite the risk, seven Cscanisters were shot into what

(39:22):
remained of the structure.
A few seconds later, a singlegunshot sounded from inside the
cabin.
Dorner didn't come out.
The officers watched as white Cspoured out and created noxious
clouds around the cabin.
Still no dorner.
After a few minutes, the whitecloud began to turn gray, then

(39:42):
black.
Soon flames licked up the walls,progressing until the entire
structure was fully engulfed.
The next day, charred humanremains were removed from what
was left of the cabin'sbasement.
An autopsy revealed that thelast gunshot herd was the sound
of Dorner putting a ninemillimeter bullet through his
brain.
Ballistics confirmed that thesame weapon was used in the

(40:03):
murders that killed KeithLawrence and Monica Quan.
An AR 15 found in the cabin wasmatched to the shooting scenes
of Michael Crane, Andrew TachiasJeremiah McKay and Alex Collins.
Transitioning to the discussion,Mark, how did this get on your

(40:26):
radar?

Mark (40:28):
Well, this case caught my attention for several reasons,
because it involved police andLAPD in particular.
I wanted to understand whetheror not this was an LAPD
organizational issue or if itwas primarily the offender or
what was going on.

Marcy (40:45):
Talk about your interest in lAPD.

Mark (40:48):
I have an interest in history in general, and that
extends to, how policing hasevolved over time, to what
exists now.
LAPD actually plays a largedisproportionate role in the
development of modern organizedand professional policing.
Some people hearing that, mightthink about, some of the well
known problems that the mediahas covered over the last 50

(41:09):
years involving LAPD.
And I'm not in any way trying tosay those problems aren't legit.
But what is true is despite theproblems, a lot of that
organization, the training andprofessional standards that
departments follow across theregion, across the Western,
United States were developed in,Southern California and at LAP
D.

(41:30):
I think for the most part, ourprofession is better for that
advancement.

Marcy (41:38):
Why do you think lAPD had such a role in the development
of modern policing?

Mark (41:43):
Well, I think part of it's just because of sheer need.
The population of SouthernCalifornia in particular has
exploded.
People there wanted professionalpolice departments instead of,
crazy guns slingers.
Part of that is the Hollywoodeffect.
Dating back into the early, 20thcentury television shows
popularized the image of thestraight arrow, l LAPD officer,

(42:06):
l lapd, detective they becameAmerica's cops.
That image has tarnished inrecent years, but it hasn't
entirely gone away.
It's kind of an enduringfiction.
What I can say is that manyaspects of my job were improved
over the latter half of the 20thcentury with contributions of
members from that policedepartment and systems, of

(42:29):
operation that were developed inCalifornia.
One of the ones that comes tomind is generally integrated
field training program.
That's a good example.

Marcy (42:38):
Explain a little bit about what the field training
program is.

Mark (42:42):
Okay.
I don't wanna go too deep intoit cuz it, you could take
forever.
In general as a police recruit,and I'm speaking mainly for
professional, kind of medium tolarge size departments, a
recruit goes through anextensive hiring process, which
could have a lot of elements,where you could be weeded out.
A physical evaluation, physicalagility evaluation,

(43:03):
psychological evaluation,testing to make sure you can
write and read.
There are a bunch of tests yougo through.
Then you're hired and put into apolice academy.
All states do certified policeacademies now that have a list
of things that their studentshave to learn, right?
To be certified as a police,officer in that particular
state.
The California, police OfficerStandards Council, is one of the

(43:25):
leading states to develop, andone of the first states, to have
developed those standards.
In my case, I was hired, and putinto a, police academy and I
think, I can't remember what myacademy was like, 16 or 20
weeks.
It was a fairly lengthy process.
I think now the Anchorage PoliceDepartment Academy is like 25
weeks.
And there it's kind of the, thebook learning, aspect of

(43:48):
training.
There's a whole lot to learn.
Not all of it's book learning.
That's where you do the rangeand you learn about the law and
you learn how to write policereports and how to conduct
investigations.
But that's all kind of classroomstudy.
You do, get in, fake fights withother recruits and people they
bring in.
But it's not the actual streetwork.

(44:09):
So after you graduate from theacademy, almost all professional
police departments put their newrecruits from certification in
the academy into a fieldtraining program.
When I did field training, itwas you spent one month with a
succession of three fieldtraining officers who were
experienced officers who hadbeen selected to train you.

(44:32):
And this is basically on the jobtraining.
In my process, the official nameof my, process, we used what's
called the San Jose model.
One month each with a successionof three field training
officers, and then you returnback to your primary field
training officer for a checkoff,basically that, field training
officer evaluates whether or notyou've progressed enough to
actually become a certified workon your own, police officer.

(44:56):
And eventually you became an FTOor field training officer.
Can you describe what that piecewas like from the trainer
perspective?
Field training officers areselected from, officers who've
worked the street, I think was,selected when I had four years
on.
They, pick people who, know whatthey're doing, and have an
interest in training newrecruits and hopefully have an

(45:16):
interest in making sureprofessional standards are
maintained.
There's a training process forthe training officer also.
You're paired with an officerthat, if you've got a good field
training program, they try andpick an officer that they think
will do a good job with aparticular trainee.
If they see a deficiency with atrainee, they try and pair with
an officer they think we'll beable to, help with that

(45:39):
deficiency.
If you're the primary fieldtraining officer, you get a guy
or a woman for four weeks, thenthey go off to two more, two
additional field trainingofficers, and then that you get
'em back for checkoff.
Field training is a intenseprocess.
As a trainer, you're trying tomake sure that this person is
going to do a good job.

(45:59):
Knows what they're doing, hastaken in the information, at the
academy, and now can apply it onthe street.
This can be a very complicatedthing because, you've done a lot
of, theoretical, instruction,and now you have to adapt that
onto, and that theoreticalinstruction sometime can be very
black and white, but now you'vegotta adapt that information to

(46:20):
what you're seeing and whatpeople stories you're telling.
You have to be able to discern,well, is this a domestic
violence situation?
Does it apply under the law oris it simply an assault?
And there's a lot morecomplicated things you have to
do, than just that.
But applying what you've learnedis sometimes difficult and
sometimes, trainees can't do it.

Marcy (46:37):
You had trainees with varying levels of experience and
aptitude, and backgrounds.
Talk a little bit about that.

Mark (46:44):
You'd get people that had never considered being a police
officer prior to going to theacademy, and now are coming out
and really kind of wide-eyed,because the book learning and
the in the academy thing ismore, what they've experienced
in the past and now on thestreet things are, can be very
chaotic.
The people that had noexperience prior hadn't really.
Thought about being a cop theirwhole life oftentimes took some

(47:07):
time to catch up.
I would say my best recruitsimply because he had a lot of
experience coming to me.
Actually was an LAPD officer,had worked there for a while,
and had quit there and come up.
And so I got him and he was likea gift, as a field training
officer because, I didn't haveto show him a lot.
I basically had to orient him toour procedure, what we did, and
how it was maybe different fromwhat they had.

(47:27):
So there was that big, swath ofdifference.
You could get somebody who'svery competent, even somebody
who had no experience that wasvery competent and picked up
things quickly.
And then you'd have people thatjust weren't doing well and were
not picking up things quicklyand had big problems.
One of the biggest things is ifyou have somebody that, isn't
officer safety conscious.

(47:48):
That is one of the fatal flaws.
If you're not gonna protectyourself or other people as you
go through the job, if you'redistracted by what's going on
around you, then you can't be apolice officer.

Marcy (48:00):
Well, I seem to recall that you sometimes were
specifically given recruits thatthey thought were having
problems around officer safety,where you could try to help
figure out if the problem wasfixable or if it was a fatal
flaw.
When you had a recruit withserious problems, I would
imagine it got pretty tense inthe car.

Mark (48:17):
Yes.
It could be.
For some trainees, this is theirlifelong goal is to be a police
officer since they were a littlekid.
If it isn't going well in fieldtraining, You can see the, they
can sense the incoming.
You have to basically documenteverything you do during a day
as a field trainer.
you'd document all the trainingand the experience you have, but
the reason for that is at theend, if you're not going to make

(48:38):
it, we have to have documentedthat we tried the kind of
remediation efforts we wentthrough and documented exactly
why we could not sustain yourcareer as a police officer.
You had recruits that got on thestreet, and it wasn't what they
thought it was gonna be, andthey realized over time that
this just wasn't for them.
we had officers being shot, wehad officers that were, killed

(49:00):
on duty.
And when you have recruits thatcome into that environment, even
the ones that hadn't actuallygone to some of these horrible
calls, it's big news in thecommunity.
They start evaluating whether ornot they really wanted to do
this.
Their families start reallyevaluating whether or not they
want their loved one to do this.
And sometimes they decide toleave, which I saw.

Marcy (49:27):
Do you think that folks that are having problems, do you
think that they're realizingthat the job is not for them?

Mark (49:37):
Yes.
I mean, there's some recruitsthat have, that are
introspective.
We had a guy way back.
I'm dating myself here, but, wehad a guy who came from
Department of Correctionsorganization.
And, he just wasn't picking itup and he decided that he was
gonna leave.
And at that time, there were,computer chips, different
speeds.
A low end computer chip was a 286, and then you had 3 86, and

(49:58):
the Pentium chip, right?
Well, this recruit at the time,he decided this just wasn't the
job for him because he wasn'tpicking it up.
Said, I guess I'm just a 2 86 ina Pentium world, And he quit.
So that's kind of sad, butthat's, sometimes you, they just
realize it's not something, youhave to have a personality, that
goes along with this job.

(50:19):
You have to be flexible andadaptive.
And that's just not everybodycan do it.

Marcy (50:26):
Do you think this is what happened with Dorner?
I mean, the guy was in the Navy,he seemed really squared away,
but, but he also didn't seem tobe introspective enough to
recognize where his shortcomingswere.

Mark (50:39):
Yeah, I had problem recruits and problems we tried
to fix.
I never had a recruit like Rebeland go to internal affairs as
retaliation.
I can see how that happened.
The emotions can get very high.
Sitting in a car with a guy,where this is happening is not a
comfortable thing for eitherperson.
These are people sometimes thatthey don't make it, they're just

(50:59):
crushed.
FTO is when you really can seehow adaptive a person is.
Can they take what they learnedin that Calm Academy class and
apply it, in the chaos of thestreets?
You often see somebody that didjust fine at the academy and
can't function well on fto.

(51:23):
About dorner, one thing I knowis that people with serious
mental illness, can get along inthe world well.
they say that a significantnumber of our top business
people are narcissists,psychopaths, sometimes even
sociopaths.
but here was a guy who's playingto his image.
like he's a duck swimming on apond.
Above water is just a picture ofserenity.
Well below those feet arepaddling like crazy.

Marcy (51:45):
Yeah.
But I think we all have a littlebit of that where, what we
present is not necessarily ourinternal turmoil.

Mark (51:51):
Sure.
but for a person like Dorner,it's on steroids.
He's a guy who could not handlefailure.
He didn't believe he could fail.
And a guy like that, thatfacade, it can implode and as a
facade falls away.
I knew a guy professionallywhere everything seemed fine.
working with him regularly, Ithought he was a good person.

(52:14):
But women who I associated withon the job, told me, that guy's
a creep one said, if that guywas in an elevator and he
stepped on, well, I get off.
I kinda logged that away and Ilater had a professional
experience with that guy.
Well, it turns out the ladieswere right.
He had major issues in themorals department.

(52:34):
Thinking about that story cameback to me when I read about
Dorner, his personal friends,who they talked about his
groomed persona, and how it fellaway.
And he really wasn't what he waspretending to be.
In the investigation, Imentioned that, he had a high
school friend and roommate.
There were others, particularlywomen he dated.
Who knew Dorner could be kind ofJekyll and Hyde type of guy.

(52:57):
From my perspective, the hero inthis story is Teresa Evans, the
fto, like I said a little bitearlier, when you sit in a car
with a trainee for a month, yousee them the, how they deal with
the chaos and how they deal withstress.
And you can get a feel, you geta sense of what they're really
made of.
And my hat's off to Evans.
She took her job seriously.

(53:18):
As a lot of FTOs do, the path ofleast resistance there is just
to rubber stamp a trainee andmove'em on the, but the burden
is you come to an understandingthat you're the last gatekeeper
before a cop is loosed on thecommunity.
Theresa Evans saw how defectivedorner was, whether he is
ex-navy or not.
She saw, she sensed what he wasin his core and she did what he

(53:43):
could to give him the boot.

Marcy (53:47):
Doesn't his termination, based on the complaint that he
came forward with, have thepotential to cast a chilling
effect on, others speaking out.
There's a risk that it couldlook like a whistleblower issue
or reinforce the belief, uh,that cops protect bad cops.

Mark (54:03):
Yeah, and that happened here.
There are a lot of detractorswith lapd.
They were gonna jump on that andsaid, Dorner is the righteous
dude.
That's why he did that.
Why he filed the use of forcecomplaint.
that kind of complaint,particularly from an internal
source was a pretty deviousmove.
No one's saying Dorner is a dumbguy.
He did this smart.
L LAPD has been in the wake of,several use of force scandals

(54:27):
and they're sensitive to thatkind of complaint.
And Dorner used that issue,because he knew it was gonna get
attention.
But if you look, he also used itagainst the entire department.
In the manifesto.
He knew what the soft spots wereand he tailored those complaints
to.
How he knew they were gonna bemost effective

Marcy (54:47):
When you investigate complaints, it seems like it
might be difficult to make adetermination about who's lying.
It's essentially a he said, shesaid situation a lot of times.

Mark (54:58):
Yeah.
Looking at this, and havinginvestigated complaints the
shocker is that they're able tocome to a solid conclusion on
Dorner's complaint.
Particularly looking atpotential politics that could
have played a part.
I did a lot of internalinvestigations as a sergeant.
I mentioned before I wasinvolved in criminal aspects
when I was a detective, but as asergeant, you investigate all

(55:18):
kinds of complaints that aren'tnecessarily criminal in nature
in a APD system, you couldconclude those investigations
with three findings.
those three conclusions couldbe, one sustained.
meaning that complaint was aviolation of policy and
procedure, and the officer didthe conduct being alleged.
The next one is exonerated,meaning either the officer

(55:39):
didn't do the alleged conduct ordid the alleged conduct, but
that conduct isn't a violationof policy.
And the last finding in the onethat's most troubling is not
sustained, meaning adetermination of whether the
officer did the alleged conduct,could not be determined.
Right?
The not sustained is kind of,it's just hanging out there.
It's unsatisfying because youdon't know.

(56:02):
You can't prove it.
Maybe the officer's doingsomething wrong and maybe not,
but we can't, determine one wayor the other.

Marcy (56:09):
Are you surprised that there was enough evidence to
prove that Dorner was actuallylying?

Mark (56:14):
I think that in this instance, there had to be
significant evidence that he wasmotivated to lie, and that he
did lie based on the people theytalked to, the hotel staff that
complained about the person thatTeresa Evans was supposed to
have kicked in the face, fromother officers that went to the
call.
It was an extensiveinvestigation and I think they,
they had enough informinformation and people put

(56:36):
giving, evidence in that case tosay she didn't do it and he's
lying.
I'm kind of surprised theydidn't come with it, not
sustained.
But like I said, that's just anaspect of, how much information
and evidence there must havebeen.

Marcy (56:52):
Once they determined that he lied, did they pretty much
have to fire him then?

Mark (56:56):
Yes.
In recent years, there have beencourt findings that require a
prosecutor to disclose anyinformation to defense attorneys
about any officers involved intheir case who have had
discipline for, honesty orintegrity related violations.
That was a legal finding, theresponse to this by prosecutors
were called Brady or, or Gigliolists.

(57:17):
There's basically a, if you areretained as an officer, you
actually potentially called aBrady officer, and you have to
be disclosed to the defenseattorneys on cases.
because you could endanger acriminal case.
So departments, when they makethis call, okay, we've
determined that an officer havelied.
They have to think about that.

(57:38):
Do we want this officer anywhereclose to our criminal cases?
You say you have a Brady officerthat's involved in a murder
defense attorneys are gonna makehay out of that.
In general, police departments,when they catch somebody lying,
they can determine they lied.
They fire'em.
The Brady thing has happened inthe last decade or so, maybe a
little bit longer than that, butfor my entire career, the
expectation was if you liedduring an internal

(57:59):
investigation, you probably willbe fired.
And I've known several peoplewho were subject to that exact
punishment for that reason.
That's a long way around sayingthat.
Yes, once the investigationdetermined that Dorner, lied,
they had to fire him.

Marcy (58:18):
What do you think about Dorner's manifesto?

Mark (58:22):
If you read it, it's long.
Like 20 to 30 pages long and itsounds like rantings, every once
in a while there's lucid stuffthat's like, Ooh, that's scary.
I remember a quote from the LAPDchief when this happened.
He didn't know him, but from hiswritings and what he heard
sounded like an injusticecollector, meaning that he's
someone who blames everyone elsefor his failings.

(58:42):
And having looked at this caseclosely, I think Beck was right.

Marcy (58:48):
Do you think Dorner was delusional?

Mark (58:51):
Hmm.
You know, the term legend in hisown mind?
There were problems from thebeginning.
He struggled through the LAPDAcademy, taking 13 months to
graduate.
It usually takes you six monthsto get through.
This means that he was allowedto recycle, during which time he
had discipline for fighting withtwo fellow recruits.
And he put a bullet through hisown hand.

(59:11):
I don't know how that happened,but that would be, looked at as
a big problem.
If you did that, you're trainedin firearms, you're trained how
to handle a weapon and how notto handle a weapon.
And if you put a round throughyour hand or anybody else, it's
a big, it's a big no-no.
I think that after Dorner wasfired, he had he bs'd himself
kind of into a corner where hehad to do something drastic.

(59:34):
He couldn't live with being toldthat, no, you can't conduct
yourself like this.
Three of the people he killedwere straight up ambushes, and
had no relation to what he wasblaming, for his problems in the
manifesto.
he's gonna wage unconventionalwar, against L lap.
P d he only succeeded in grazingthe head of one LAPD officer.

(59:56):
Everyone else was completelyuninvolved.
Here are my notes on Dorner war.
He terrorized an 81 year oldguy.
It would've been pathetic if itwasn't so cruel.
Why was he fleeing to Mexico inthe first place?
It doesn't seem like the warfarehe promised on Lap D.
when I think about getting toMexico, it seems like he's
woefully unprepared.

(01:00:17):
What kind of gear was he takingwith him?
He had he jump on a boat and go,I've seen nothing to suggest he
was Spanish speaker.
Would he have a south of theBorder support network?
I don't think so.
Say he runs to Mexico.
We get fugetives back fromMexico all the time, So I don't
know what he thought he wasdoing.
And especially murder suspectsare coming back from Mexico.
We'll be able to find you.

(01:00:37):
Also the fleeing to Big Bear iscrazy.
It was February, big Bear ishigh in the Sierra Mountains,
you know, man, there's snow.
He got his truck stuck in thesnow and I think he just luck.
Luck lucked into the unoccupiedopen ho hotel room.
This case is tragic.
Dorner himself is a tragicclown.

(01:00:58):
That plan of asymmetrical andunconventional, it sure was, but
not in a good way.

Marcy (01:01:07):
When you are a police officer, you're always on duty.
There are security issues thatyou address that maybe your
average family doesn'tnecessarily need to think about.
Talk about that for a second.

Mark (01:01:17):
Yeah.
Security is always a concern.
You start, you sit in the frontseat of police car and put
people in the back and take themto jail.
You get threatened on a regularbasis.
People you arrest promise youthey're gonna kill you or
they're going to do somethinghorrible to a member of your
family, usually your wife.
At first it's alarming and aftera while you get used to it, but

(01:01:39):
you, it be, it makes youvigilant.
As a police officer in acommunity, you are paying
attention.
Usually when you go out inpublic, you watch for people who
get that, I recognize you look,or people that look familiar and
you just can't place them.
And you keep an eye on whatthey're doing and where they're
going

Marcy (01:01:56):
to this day, everybody in our family knows and defers to
which seat you're gonna wannasit in at a restaurant.
And I tend to know where theexits are and kind of where the
majority of people are gonna bein a big room anticipating
what's gonna make youuncomfortable about situations.

Mark (01:02:13):
Yeah, if I go into a restaurant where I'm gonna sit
for a while, I try always toface the door with nobody behind
me.
And if there are people sittingbehind me, I look at them before
I sit down, and I watch peopleas they come in and out the
door.
Do they look pissed off?
Do they look like normal?
Do we make eye contact anddoesn't look happy?
If any of those things happen, Iwatch'em.

(01:02:34):
Now after retirement, I'm morerelaxed.
I was more vigilant when I wasworking.
But I pay attention to peoplethat ping my radar.
With the Dorner thing, theofficers who are most at risk
got a security detail.
Some refused it.
Family probably was part ofthose decisions.
If I was single, I would've beenlike, yeah, let that MFA come
after me.
But with the spouse and kids,softer targets, I bet none of

(01:02:58):
those guys, turned down.
The protection.
The two officers whose car wasshot up?
The ones in Corona, I thinkabout whoever that person was,
they were protecting, thatperson had to know, they dodged
a bullet knowing that they weregonna be the first LAPD target
in his string.

Marcy (01:03:16):
And you did mention that you would've done those
protection details a little bitdifferently.

Mark (01:03:21):
Yeah.
In the last half of my career, Iwas a big proponent of plain
clothes and undercover work.
That gives you an advantage asan investigator and enforcement
if the bad guys are guessingwhether you're there or not.
A lot of times when I do that,we'd have uniform cars laid back
somewhere to back up if we madean arrest or something.
You see things in plain clothesand not in uniform that you'll

(01:03:42):
never see in a marked car.
When they put marked LAPD carsin front of the, target's
houses, those guys are sittingducks, as evidenced by what
happened in Corona.
If that, I think it was a towtruck driver hadn't flagged
them, they probably would'vebeen killed like the Riverside
officers were.
If I was making the call onthat, I would've wanted the
security details to be in plainclothes in the building,

(01:04:04):
watching and waiting.
And who knows, maybe thoseofficers would've been gotten
lucky and, Dorner come, tries tocome in, they're awake, waiting
for him, and they would'vekilled him before he got to the
others.

Marcy (01:04:16):
Talk about your experience searching for a
dangerous subjects.

Mark (01:04:21):
Yeah.
As a police officer, you'researching for people all the
time.
and you have to approach eachsituation.
Like the guy had it's unknownrisk.
You don't exactly know howdangerous a person might be at
any given time.
You're cautious.
you just don't know whetheryou're searching for the rare
person that's gonna try andshoot you.
Two of my friends in separatetragic events, got really

(01:04:41):
unlucky during searches.
So you're always on edge.
You hear the stories.
Maybe, somebody like I did andpeople I worked with did.
You know that there are peoplethat you're hunting that will
try and kill you?
There was a call, I just arrivedin an area where an officer, a
friend of mine was chasing a guythrough a neighborhood and.
I was out on the street waitingto try and intercept and boom,

(01:05:03):
there's a gunshot.
And that guy, I didn't see theguy fire shot, but I heard it.
And the, as the guy jumped overa fence and ran across the
street, I was half a block awaywhen I heard the shot and the
dude sprinted across the street,just up the block from me.
Now that first officer who waschasing, who luckily wasn't
hurt, he and I have to go findthat dude.
Right?

(01:05:23):
And I can tell you, looking forthat guy, knowing that he had
just fired a shot, knowing hecould be hiding anywhere and
shoot at us before we saw him.
That was, that's scary.
That's, a difficult situation towork under.
That guy I'm talking about.
Luckily we didn't know it at thetime, but he fired the shot.
He jumped the fence, and as hejumped the fence, he lost the
gun from his hand and it wasdark.

(01:05:45):
That would've been nice to knowas we're hunting this guy that
he had lost the gun.
That guy ultimately we had adog, tracking team and, the guy
got bit, it was bad, and, hecould have surrendered, but he
was quiet and didn't surrenderand the dog bit him.
But it was a happy ending.
none of us got hurt.
Here's a story that comes backto my mind, like one of those,
like, I need to go change myunderwear after the call kind of

(01:06:06):
things.
I'm looking for a bank robberysuspect, and he took a bait
pack, which means we're able tohone in on him using a sensor.
But there's problem in this bigapartment complex and we can't
tell exactly where he is at.
So we're kind of looking aroundand I go to an apartment with a
door that's a jar when I knockand I'm like, okay, well, I go

(01:06:28):
in and I start to search and Idon't think he's there.
I think he's not there.
it's funny and scary when Ithink about it to this day.
I go into this dark bathroom andI pull back the shower curtain
on the tub and that guy islaying on his back in the
bathtub looking out up at mewhen I pulled the curtain open.

(01:06:53):
He caught me slipping.
And definitely if he had wantedto shoot me, he could've, and
I'm glad he didn't.
Yeah.
So looking for people, is scary.
Looking for anybody is scarysometimes because you don't
know.
But looking for somebody thatyou know, could very well use
the weapon, they probably haveto shoot at you, is scarier.

(01:07:15):
I once went to a shots firedcall.
And as I'm creeping in, I couldhear a guy firing.
I didn't know where he was, buthe was firing from a second
floor.
And bullets were skippingthrough tree branches above me.
T.
Every shot and, it's not alwayslike on tv.
I've been shot at a couple timeswhere I didn't really know where
the shots were coming from, andthat's a scary situation.

Marcy (01:07:39):
You mentioned that Deputy McKay sacrifice was so
significant because he knewDorner had skills and had just
seen his partner go down, but heleft his cover so that he could
get directions and make surethat the other officers in the
helicopter knew where this guywas.

Mark (01:07:57):
Yeah.
That's a point I wanted to make.
That, the times that wherepeople have fired shots, most of
the time we get lucky becausethe shooters are unskilled.
In this case, people that werelooking for dorner, knew he was
skilled.
He had obviously just shotsomebody.
Before he did that, the peoplehunting for him probably knew
that he was gonna at least getthe first shot off, which was

(01:08:18):
accurate.
And he did know how to use aweapon.
looking for a guy under thoseconditions, it takes a lot of
courage.

Marcy (01:08:27):
Now, you told me that the most scared you remember being
on duty was actually at the zoo.
Talk about that.

Mark (01:08:33):
Yeah, I was sent to Alaska Zoo in the middle of the night
because one of the Bengal tigersgot loose.
I was in Midtown.
I had a lot of time, as I'mdriving to get to the zoo, which
is in South Anchorage.
And my mind is racing like allthe ways this could go wrong.
All those nature shows I'd everseen with big cats tearing apart
prey.

(01:08:53):
And I'd imagine I'd be tastierthan a gazelle and not nearly as
fast.
But there again, luck was on myside.
The tiger, just happened towander back into his enclosure
before I arrived.

Marcy (01:09:06):
Oh, I do remember that call.
There were some bad shootingsthat happened that were somewhat
related to that hunt for dorner.

Mark (01:09:14):
On the night, the Dorner shot the L LAPD and Riverside
cars, two cars driven bycompletely unrelated civilians
were shot in separate situationsby police.
one of the vehicles of BlueToyota Tacoma occupied by two
Hispanic women who were, justdelivering newspapers.
And their truck was shot morethan a hundred times by eight

(01:09:36):
officers who happened acrossthem.
Delivering papers.
Luckily they were not injured,as they dove for cover, but
that's a horrible situation.
And the second unrelatedincident, police fired three
times through the frontwindshield of black Honda
Ridgeline, driven by a 38 yearold white male, completely
unrelated to dorner.

Marcy (01:09:57):
Those cars.
And those people didn't matchDonner's description at all.
So those officers were justfreaking out because of all of
the stress.

Mark (01:10:06):
The only answer to that has to be yes.
We cannot afford to makemistakes like that.
As police officers, they dohappen.
I'll tell a personal story here.
My mentor was murdered on duty.
I wasn't there.
I was a fairly new patrolmanjust in my mid twenties.
I had very little perspective onlife, and I felt like if a great

(01:10:28):
cop I respected could be killedlike that, what chance did I
have?
I was scared and I was reallypissed.
I never acted on the feeling,but I never forgot how on edge I
felt when I was on patrol afterthat for a long time.
Much later in my career as apatrol sergeant, I was less than
a mile away from an officer whowas ambushed by a car who was

(01:10:51):
driving past, That officer washit numerous times in the side
and chest.
And he had just been sitting inhis car finishing a call.
And the suspect drove by, shothim and sped away.
As it happened, myself and acanine officer were first to
arrive at that shooting scene.
And based on what I saw, Ithought the officer was gonna
die.
I helped get him prepped fortransport to the hospital and,

(01:11:13):
he looked like he was clinginginto life.
As the ambulance left, I was hitby that familiar emotion from
earlier in my career, fear, butoverwhelming anger.
Within the next 30 minutes asthe hunt for the shooter became
organized, and we startedprocessing the shooting scene, I
got calls from my lieutenantwho's not on duty.

(01:11:34):
My captain and the chief.

Marcy (01:11:38):
Was that normal?

Mark (01:11:39):
No, absolutely not.
But this is a very unusualsituation.
I talk to my lieutenant all thetime.
But chain of command in mydepartment was very important.
So to get a direct call from thechief or deputy chief was rare.

Marcy (01:11:52):
What happened?

Mark (01:11:54):
I briefed them.
They basically wanna know whatthe heck is going on, what
happened, what do you know?
so I briefed them, but I alsohad a recommendation in mind for
them, which they followed.
the officer who was shot wasvery well liked and respected on
the shift.
I told command, this is gonnahit the officers hard.
I would recommend that we doublethem up in cars and that's

(01:12:14):
something we never did.

Marcy (01:12:16):
So you mean two officers are riding in every car?

Mark (01:12:20):
Yeah, exactly.
I told them, this is ostensiblyfor safety, but just as
important.
I wanted the officers to be ableto monitor each other for
emotional overreaction.
That was an important part ofour training, that if you see an
officer going outta control, youhave to step in for everybody's
sake.
And on the night that officerwas shot, I wanted that for my
people.
I didn't want any of them to doanything they wouldn't feel good

(01:12:42):
about down the road or thatcould overshadow what had just
happened.

Marcy (01:12:47):
And before we move on, that officer lived.

Mark (01:12:50):
Yeah, He had a very long recovery.
But he did, but he survived.
That whole story is basically tosay that police officers must do
better than shoot up any carthey see, because they're
scared.
It has to be better, but I canunderstand how that would
happen.

Marcy (01:13:07):
what do you think about the announcement that doer's
firing was gonna be reexamined?

Mark (01:13:12):
I'm sure, and something I read said this, that the people
that were involved, all the wayfrom, Theresa Evans all the way
up to the people on the board,felt like the chief was stabbing
in the back, didn't trust them.
and on top of that, their liveswere being, threatened, but the
chief wasn't backing their,judgment.
And the other thing about thatis the critics who heard him say

(01:13:33):
that, I'm sure it seemed like,well, it's a mission of guilt.
Of course, L LAPD did somethingwrong with doers firing if
they're gonna, turn over andreview it that easy.
The chief did that based on,recommendations from the
psychologist, who said thatcould buy time.
And that's, maybe that woulddistract dorner or slow him down
from what he was doing.
And, to me that, that seems likeit's worth it.

Marcy (01:13:55):
What do you think about Dorner hiding out so close to
where he left his, burningtruck?

Mark (01:14:01):
I've been involved in a few large area searches that
were conducted rapidly.
You're gonna miss some things,but what you're hoping happens
is you get lucky.
I don't envy the tasks they had.
They had to be, assessing thelikelihood that he's there.
And they're trying to focus hisresources on, where he might be
anticipating to go next.
But I think some of theoverestimation of his abilities

(01:14:24):
caused errors there.
Like, they thought, this guy'sgonna jam outta here and get way
out of our perimeter.
And, like some, slasher movie,villain be everywhere.
You don't expect him to be.
But I think if you look at whathe actually did, it was too
much.
He didn't have the skills.
if I had to critique on whatthey did.
what I would say, based on mysearching, when they didn't spot

(01:14:45):
him right away, or get any,suspicious man moving across,
yards or whatever, or,properties, they should have
kept a fairly tight perimeterand like maybe a couple of
square miles and meticulouslygone through every property,
combed through, got in touchwith the owner, said, we gotta

(01:15:05):
search your place.
We gotta make sure he is nothere and gone through.
They would've gotten him becausehe went literally less than a
five minute walk down the streetand went to ground.
They would've found him in avery short time had they locked
a tight perimeter down and goneover it.
We do that.
When we look for kids, we got amissing kid.
We always start from the houselike, we have to look through
your house, because a lot oftimes we get'em right here.

(01:15:25):
They are gonna stay, they'regonna go to ground, they're
gonna be hiding and they'regonna fall asleep under the bed.
Now we have to make sure so wedon't search all over the place
for hours.
We had to start tight and workour way out.

Marcy (01:15:39):
When this manhunt was going on, did you think that
Dorner was gonna kill himself?

Mark (01:15:44):
Yeah, and the psychologists were right Dorner
was at the end of his rope Oncethe manifesto was released, you
really can see that.
but this whole thing was a slowmotion suicide.
I've said that a lot of theseevents, people do something,
crazy.
Like you hear a teacher thatkidnaps one of his students and
go, that's basically a end oflife type deal.
He's done something that, isgonna change everything a

(01:16:05):
suicidal event.
And that's what Dorner did whenhe, killed the two people.
That's it.
Everything else was going to endup the way.
It ended up with either somebodykilling him, him forcing
somebody to kill him, or hewould shoot himself, which is
what happened.

Marcy (01:16:21):
How do you feel about the decision to use those flammable
gas canisters to try and drivehim out of the cabin?

Mark (01:16:27):
Yeah, I'm sure that nobody in law enforcement, shed a tear
for him.
But it was controversial.
people that were detractors ofLAP p d and law enforcement in
general, who basically saidthat, they were trying to shut
him up.
He knew things and he would talkif he was captured, and we would
know things, right?
I don't think this guy knewanything that he hadn't released
and rambled about it in hismanifesto.

(01:16:49):
If he had said, I'm gonnasurrender, I'm gonna come out,
they would've taken him intocustody and sent him to prison.
Short of that, keep in mind hehad killed a guy right out in
front of the cabin, had badlyinjured, another one, and
would've killed any number ofpeople had he been able to, at
any point, short of himsurrendering, outright,

(01:17:10):
surrendering him.
This is a, what we call a greenlight situation, or a use of
deadly force authorizedsituation.
You get a shot at this guy, takeit.
Because who knows what he'sgonna do if you don't do that.
And from the perspective of thescene commander, he had to be
thinking, okay, so the sunsetting, it's gonna be dark.
He could take advantage of thedarkness and something chaotic
could happen.

(01:17:31):
He had to be thinking, I don'twant one more person hurt by
this guy.
and I think that with that inmind, Dorner had the choice
flammable gas going in, you cancome out buddy.
Come out, it's your choice orburn to death.
And, he decided not tosurrender.

Marcy (01:17:51):
Do you have information about some of this aftermath of
people that were injured?

Mark (01:17:57):
Yeah.
The, Riverside Police Officer,Andrew Tachias survived attack,
but was permanently disabled,doesn't have use of his arms.
He tried to return to the policedepartment for a short time on
administrative duty, but, latermedically retired and he had,
he, was championing, higherpension benefits for police
officers that are injured.

(01:18:19):
My pension, is depending on howmuch time you served in your
earnings and so forth.
And so when at the, if you're onfto when you're injured, your
benefits are pretty low.
I know that he and people thatsupport him have, lobbied
California and I don't actuallyknow what progress they've made,
for better benefits for peoplethat are injured.
Early in their career.
Detective Alex Collins, actuallyhas two brothers on the same,

(01:18:40):
sheriff's department.
he spent two months in thehospital and had to have,
seemingly endless surgeries.
Repaired the injuries that Idescribed when he was shot.
His head was, badly damaged,lower.
Part of his face and head werebadly damaged.
And legs and so forth, had pinsso lengthy recovery.
But he was able to returneventually to work in the

(01:19:01):
sheriff department'sintelligence division.
The two women whose car was shotup, by police, got a four and a
half million settlement for thecity of Los Angeles.
The couple, who was held hostageby Dorner and called in when he
stole their purple suv.
I loved it.
I love that.
It wasn't just a whitenon-descript car.
It was a purple, brilliantpurple.

(01:19:22):
We're gonna find that guy.
that couple got, the rewardmoney, for finding Dorner, which
is good.
And l LAPD publicly releasedtheir conclusions following the
review of doer's findings,basically publicly backing up
the board for his termination.

Marcy (01:19:41):
Still, there were people that supported Dorner during his
rampage.
They said that LAPD is a corruptorganization and that the people
he killed deserve to die.
What do you have to say aboutthat?

Mark (01:19:54):
The important thing to remember this story is not that
it's about an underdog herofighting back against a corrupt
organization.
That's what the crazy guythought.
the story here is about a manwith, psychological problems who
chose to become a murderer and athief.
Dorner stole their lives.
Completely innocent people.
And even if you buy the LAPD as,a corrupt organization, what

(01:20:16):
does that have to do with ayoung woman who coaches college
basketball?
what does that have to do with afield training officer in
Riverside, California?
Doners victims had dedicatedthemselves to public service.
He robbed their families of loveand support, and he took from
society the benefit of theirgood works.

Marcy (01:20:38):
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It helps us get better and ithelps other listeners find us.
Also, if you email us ascreenshot of your review or
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Send them tocrimeravenpodcast@gmail.com.

(01:21:01):
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(01:21:25):
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