The Mills Family Murders Pt. Two

February 26, 1980. Berkeley, California. 51-year old Al Mills, his 40-year old wife, Jeannie, and Jeannie’s 16-year old daughter, Daphene, are all shot to death, execution-style, in their home. Jeannie’s 17-year old son, Eddie, is left unharmed inside his bedroom, but claims he did not hear the murders take place. Years earlier, the Mills family had defected from the Reverend Jim Jones’ infamous cult, the Peoples Temple, and become outspoken advocates against them. Following the Jonestown Massacre, rumours circulated that surviving members of the cult were going to target the family as revenge. However, investigators suspect that Eddie was the actual perpetrator and make an unsuccessful attempt to charge him with the crime 25 years later. Did Eddie Mills murder his own family, or were they victims of an assassination by outside intruders? This week’s episode of “The Path Went Chilly” explores an unsolved triple homicide and its potential connection to the Jonestown saga.

Additional Reading:

Support the show: 

Patreon.com/julesandashley

Patreon.com/thetrailwentcold

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeannie_Mills

https://people.com/archive/the-mills-family-murders-could-it-be-jim-jones-last-revenge-vol-13-no-11/

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/BERKELEY-Man-jailed-in-family-slayings-from-25-2557794.php

https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2005/12/09/son-wont-be-charged-in-1980-slayings/

https://archives.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2015/11/12/yesterdays-crimes-peoples-temple-hit-squads-and-jonestowns-last-victims

https://www.sfweekly.com/news/yesterdays-crimes-jonestown-was-just-the-beginning-for-one-peoples-temple-family/https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/articles/199203/the-truth-about-jonestown

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Welcome back to the Path Went Chile for part two
of our series about the Mills family murders. Robin, do
you want to catch everyone up and what we talked
about in our previous episode.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Well, this is a very unique mystery because it actually
has a tie into Jim Jones and the in his
cult and the infamous Jonestown massacre. The victims in question
are fifty one year old Al Mills, his forty year
old wife, Jeanie, and his sixteen year old stepdaughter Dapien,
who was Janie's child from a previous marriage. They had
been prom members of the Jonestown cult for many years,

(01:03):
but decided to break free and became outspoken advocates against them,
and after the Jonestown massacre occurred. During Jim Jones's death tape,
he pretty much threatened Genie, saying that she was partially
responsible for what happened, and he said that surviving members
of the People's Temple were going to get revenge on them.
In nineteen eighty, Al, Genie, Daephene, and Janie's seventeen year

(01:26):
old son Eddie from a previous marriage. We're all living
together in Berkeley, California, but someone came into their home
one evening and murdered al Jeanie and Daphene in the
main bedroom, and turned out that Eddie was inside his
own bedroom the entire time, but he always maintained that
he did not see or hear anything unusual. Of course,

(01:46):
this made investigator suspicious and they started looking at Eddie
as the prime suspect. And he did have a small
trace amount of gunshot residue on his hands, but it
was really not big enough to conclusively say with any
certainty that he fired a gun, and the actual murder
weapon was never found. Eddie eventually moved to Japan, started
his own family, and moved on with his life, but

(02:07):
in two thousand and five, he returned to the United
States in order to visit his family, and the authorities
decided to take him into custody, but they could only
hold him for forty eight hours and ultimately decided that
the evidence was not strong enough to file charges and
proceed and take him to trial, so he was ultimately
let go and the investigation has remained at a standstill
ever since. So to this day, opinions are still sharply

(02:30):
divided about whether or not Eddie was the perpetrator. Or
if the Mills family was murdered by surviving members of
the People's Temple, but it's also possible that they were
murdered by someone else and we just don't know who
it was, so the crime remained shrouded in mystery, so
we won't delve too much into this, but it's quite
fascinating to read accounts from former People's Temple members who

(02:52):
managed to defect from the cult and were successfully deprogrammed
once they met the Millses and stayed at their Human
Freedom Center. There's one particularly interesting account from a survivor
named Niva Sly Hargrave, who had become drawn to Jim
Jones after witnessing heel a blind woman in a wheelchair
so that she was supposedly able to walk and see again.

(03:13):
While when Hargrave went to the Human Freedom Center, Genie
put her in touch with the woman who had been
in the wheelchair. She was another People's Temple defector and
revealed that the whole healing scene had been faked, which
helped convince Hargrave that everything about Jones and his cult
were alive. But while Genie undoubtedly helped number people and
did a lot of good with her work. It must

(03:34):
be reported that her methods did make her some enemies
as well. In an article published in the March ninth,
nineteen eighty one edition of the San Francisco Examiner, Lowell Striker,
a psychologist who had worked with the Mills at the
Human Freedom Center, stated quote, when our relationship was good,
it was very, very good, and when it was bad,
it was horrid end quote. Indeed, Striker could see similarities

(03:58):
between how Genie operated the HEU Human Freedom Center and
how Jim Jones operated the People's Temple, and said quote,
When Genie saw I can no longer be used to
help her achieve her ambitions, which were fame, riches and
personal recognition, she turned against me, which, unfortunately was a
pattern she had with many people. She could meet a person,
trust him, invite him to trust her, work with him

(04:20):
to achieve a goal, then feel he didn't understand the goal,
then turn an almost crusade against him. It was a
very socially productive pattern when the target was Jim Jones,
but when it was a personal friend like myself or others,
it was another matter. She brought terrible habits with her
from the Temple, Vindictiveness, paranoia, and secretiveness, backstabbing, basically call

(04:41):
games end quote. It's also worth noting that during his
time at the Human Freedom Center, Striker said that he
often saw Eddie hanging out there watching his portable television,
and this is how he described him. Quote he was
totally withdrawn, but not sullen or angry, just quiet and polite.
The kid I saw was not capable of killing his parents.

(05:01):
End quote. Now I'm not sure if Striker's comments have
any relevance to the actual murders, but they bring up
an intriguing possibility, which we'll talk about momentarily.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
This is so interesting, and it's almost there's some empathy
and compassion for Genie. She was in an abusive organization
for years where there was spiritual abuse, where abuse was
a way of survival, both taking it and giving abuse
to your fellow members, including your own family members. So
even though she was able to defect, those psychological effects

(05:33):
have a lifetime influence on you. And so, you know,
I think there's got to be an overall look and
understanding of where she came from, what she was trying
to do, and they could have been a mix. There
could have been a desire for fame and selfishness and
kind of these different desires, but there also had to
have been people she really did help, because she knew

(05:54):
what it was like to leave, to leave a religious
organization that had hurt you, and to kind of nowgate
trying to rebuild a life. So I guarantee you there
was a good with the bad, given what she escaped.
And I don't know, it's very interesting there, And I
found it ironic when he says I looked at this kid,
and it's not someone who could have killed his parents

(06:15):
or capable of killing his parents. I don't think people
like to think about it, but I think almost everybody
is capable of doing absolutely horrific things based on triggers,
whatever devices you have or devices you have in your life.
I think we're all capable of both incredibly good things

(06:36):
and incredibly bad things. And I always kind of have
to chuckle when people are like, oh, never, this person
could never do that. I went, yeah, I think we
all could. What we do we have a motivation to,
is there something like is it something that we could
do and not literally not want to live anymore? Those
kinds of things. Maybe not, but I think most humans

(06:57):
are capable of extreme good and bad.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
I think you nailed it, But I also think that
it makes people incredibly uncomfortable to think that their child could,
given the right circumstances, murder them. So it's a lot
easier to be like, this kid could never do it,
because then they don't have to confront the idea that
it's possible that anybody is capable given the right circumstances.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
And like you said, Triggers and Lowell Striker's comments, I
think he was trying to plant the seeds that because
Genie did a lot of good but also did a
lot of bad, that she could have potentially made other
enemies who had a motive to kill her, even if
they were not affiliated with the People's Temple. But even
though he described her as someone who looked like that,
she was pursuing fame and fortune, and over the year

(07:40):
she went on tour and wrote a book and did
a lot of interviews. But we mentioned in our last
episode that in the months prior to the murders, she
pretty much said that we're going to stop doing this
because we want to live a normal life for the
first time in quite a long time. We just want
to be a family and stay out of the spotlight,
So it does seem like Genie, even if she did
kind of have these tendencies where you wanted fame and fortune,

(08:01):
was about to put them behind her and just start
living a life of normalcy. But who knows if before
that she had made any enemies who may have had
a motive to kill her and the rest of her family.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
The one thing which seems clear about this crime is
that it was a personal one, as nothing was stolen
from the house, so whoever did it, their only goal
was to murder one or more members of the family.
The most common theory which was floated around during that
time period was that the Millses were the victims of
a hit squad consisting of surviving members of the People's Temple.

(08:34):
Investigators never found any evidence that these hit squads actually existed,
and if they did, well, then this probably would have
been their only crime. If you search online, you'll find
a list of suspicious deaths where conspiracy theorists believe that
they are possibly linked to the People's Temple, and the
Mills family murders are often included on them. But the

(08:55):
important thing to note is that all of the other
deaths took place before the Jonestown massacre. There don't seem
to be any other suspicious deaths which took place after
Jonestown which have a tangible link to the People's Temple,
so this doesn't sound like a particularly efficient hit squad.
The way they were portrayed, these People's Temple assassins were

(09:16):
supposedly on a suicide mission, as they would have no
other purpose in life besides killing as many of their
enemies as possible before they were stopped. Yet, the only
people on the Temple so called hit list who wound
up dead were the Millses, and they weren't killed until
a full fifteen months after the Jonestown massacre. I think

(09:37):
it's safe to say that the People's Temple hit squad
was nothing more than a myth, though of course, that
doesn't rule out the possibility of the crime being committed
by someone who had a connection to the cult. That's
why we brought up the interview with Lowell Striker because
it opens up an interesting alternative theory. What if the
perpetrator was someone who Genie had worked with in the

(09:58):
past but at a major fall out with As a
hypothetical example, let's say this person was a former People's
Temple member who joined the Human Freedom Center, but then
their relationship with Genie turned bad and they felt alienated
by her. In response, they could have decided to invade
the Mill's residence and commit these murders. Of course, that's

(10:18):
all pure speculation, but as far as I can tell,
the investigations never turned up any promising suspects besides Bettie.
But the point is that by nineteen eighty both Genie
and her husband had become recognizable figures after sharing their
experiences with the People's Temple. So there's no shortage of
people who might have had the motive to kill them,

(10:38):
and they didn't necessarily have to be an assassin from
a hit squad.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah, not at all.

Speaker 3 (10:43):
And when you actually started to describe that, it makes
sense that someone who let's say, had escaped the People's
Temple and this abused this trauma. Maybe many people of
their family were murdered down in Guyana. So let's assume
they've already suffered significant trauma and loss under the of
Jim Jones and the fellow members. And then they get

(11:03):
out and they go and turn to Genie for refuge,
and in their mind, she's exploiting people, she's looking for fame,
she's also abusive, and could they see her as an
extension of Jim Jones and have a trauma response to
that and say she's got to be stopped before she
continues to traumatize more people. I don't think that's the case,

(11:26):
but it's another thing to think about instead of just oh,
we want to execute all of our enemies, what if
they viewed her as someone continuing almost the abuses that
they were taught with in the cold.

Speaker 2 (11:37):
And if this is what happened, it could provide a
potential explanation for why Eddie was spared if he is
completely innocent, where all they cared about was Genie. They
didn't so much care about Al or the two children.
So if they came into her bedroom and Al and
Da Fiene just happened to be there, they could have
been killed because they were witnesses. But because Genie was
the primary target, this person didn't bother checking the other rooms,

(11:59):
and that could explain why Eddie survived on scathe. So
one alternate theory which has been presented is that the
original target was actually Timothy Stowen, as Joan also mentioned
his name on his infamous death tape when he implied
that his surviving followers were going to seek revenge. Long
story short. Even though Stone had been Jones's right hand man,
the relationship fell apart when Stone's infant son, John was

(12:21):
born and Stowin signed AFFI David, which stated that Jones
was the child's biological father. This began a lengthy custody
battle between Stowe and Jones, which lasted several years, and tragically,
John wound up being poisoned during the Jonestown massacre. At
the age of six. Stone became such an outspoken opponent
against the People's Temple that he worked together with the

(12:43):
Millses to form the organization Concerned Relatives of People's Temple members.
Jones reportedly felt so betrayed by Stowe's defection that he
ordered his followers to write out detailed fantasies about murdering
him anyway. Stowe had lived with the Millses at their
cottage in Burger for a time, which is why it's
been theorized that perhaps Stowin was the intended target and

(13:05):
the perpetrator mistakenly believed he was still living there. However,
I think this theory is completely undermined by the fact
that Eddie was left unharmed. If the killer entered the
residence with the express purpose of murdering Stowin, you think
they would have checked every room to look for him.
And if Eddie is telling the truth about being inside
his bedroom the entire time, then it makes zero sense

(13:26):
that the intruder would murder his family across the hall
but not bother to enter Eddie's bedroom to see if
Stowe was there. No, it seems pretty cut and dried
that Al Genie or perhaps even day Feen were the
intended targets, because after they were killed in the main bedroom,
the shooter didn't seem concerned about anything else. Another big
unanswered question is whether day Fiene just happened to be

(13:48):
in her parents' bedroom when she was shot, or did
she hear the shots and come running in there, or
did the perpetrator find Dayfeen in her own room and
bring her into the main bedroom before shooting all three
of the victims. Again. If that's what happened, it's very
odd that they wouldn't have even bothered to check Eddie's room. However,
Al Jeanie or both of them were the intended targets.

(14:09):
An intruder may not have cared about killing their children,
but since Dayfien just happened to be in the bedroom
at that time, they had to shoot her too because
she was a witness.

Speaker 3 (14:19):
Do you think there was a robbery component to this.
It's pretty brazen. It's in the mid evening. This isn't
a time you would think that everyone's going to be
asleep that you could go in there and you know,
maybe get out without anyone noticing. I'm pretty sure they
knew people were there, and it sounds like I don't
often have like my kids and stuff in my bedroom,

(14:40):
so especially like teenage kids. So I'm wondering if they intruded.
They came in, they're like, you know, give me the safe,
give me this whatever they're looking for, and they push
everyone into the master bedroom because typically jewelry, money, things
like that would be stored in the parents' bedroom. And
then when there's a confrontation or something, and that's when
they execute the three of them, and then holy cow,

(15:03):
this robbery went bad. We need to get out of here.
And so Eddie's just happens to be sound asleep through
the whole thing and doesn't get awoken, nor do they
look through rooms, because maybe the intended idea was there's
something in that home they wanted and it ended up
in a triple murder instead, and they rushed out.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
That is true. It was reported that nothing appeared to
be stolen and there was no ransacking, but I guess
it could be a possibility that that was their intention
when they went in there, and once they killed someone,
they panicked and ran out of there without stealing anything.
We mentioned in our last episode that the Millses were
known for keeping the front door unlocked so that their
children's friends could come and go as they pleased, so

(15:43):
they easily could have entered the home without causing any damage.
And then when maybe, like you said, they asked for
a safe to be opened, or they were looking for
some valuables that weren't located there. It could be a
case where whatever they wanted was in a safe deposit
box at the bank, and when the Mills didn't hand
over what they wanted, and that's what things escalated into violence,
And this is why the perpetrator fled the scene without

(16:05):
stealing anything.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
One of the most ironic things about this case is
that if you looked into the backgrounds of both Eddie
and Dayphen, most people who knew the family would have
said that Dayphene was a much more likely candidate to
have committed the crime, as she apparently had a volatile
relationship with her parents at times. Like Eddie, Dayphene often
had problems in school and clearly had difficulties adjusting to

(16:30):
a normal life after spending her childhood in the people's temple.
Following the murders, one of Dayphine's friends claimed that she
briefly had run away from home two months earlier and
came over to her house crying, where she showed a
red mark on her cheek and said that her stepfather
slapped her. We mentioned in our last episode, the police
recovered a recording of a phone conversation in which Daiphine

(16:51):
told a friend that she would get the family's house
after she killed her parents. Though I get the impression
that it was nothing more than a silly, sarcastic comment
from a Jada teenager. Even if it wasn't, the evidence
clearly shows that this crime was not a murder suicide.
I guess another possible theory is that Dayphene could have
been the intended target. All along and her mother and

(17:12):
stepfather were just collateral damage. I would really like to
know more details about this ex boyfriend of Dayphien's who
claimed that he saw three men running out of the
mills residence on the night of the crime, before they
fled the scene in a Pontiac Granam driven by a
fourth man. This witness's name has never been released publicly,
and he's not mentioned during most accounts of the case,

(17:33):
as we only found out about him through some newspaper
articles which were published in the months following the murders.
I know police did not consider him to be a
credible witness because he had a history of troubles with
the law, and while he did pass a polygraph test,
there's pretty much been no further mention of him after
that unless investigators found compelling evidence to completely discount his story.

(17:55):
It's odd that it isn't given more credence because this
is the only eyewitness count which places outside intruders at
the Mills's residence. Of course, if you want a really
off the wall theory, perhaps this guy committed the murderers
because he wanted revenge on date been for their breakup,
and then fabricated the story about the men in the
car in order to take the heat off himself. But

(18:16):
that obviously is just wild speculation.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
I think that's a definite possibility, but I think it's
a low one because, like you said, he you know, yes,
he had a history with trouble with the law, but
he sounds like another I mean, he's a young kid.
I think he just seems like someone who's struggling through
life and has this breakup. I don't see that as
a motivation to go kill three people. And in fact,

(18:41):
the fact that he passed a lie detector test, Yes
they're not admissible in court, but they can reveal a
lot of information to police. So while he is able
to not only say I wasn't involved, but also this
is what I saw, and that passes a lie detector test,
it's definitely something that needed to be explored. They end
up focusing and I believe only on the son Eddie,

(19:02):
and you have somebody here. Yes, his background's questionable, but
you went ahead and polygraphed him anyway, and the information
he shared past that polygraph. So shouldn't that be an
equally fair observation to say we're going to go down
this road and look for who these three people could
be in this type of car, and who the driver
might have been.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
Yeah, it really does seem like the whole situation reeks
of tunnel vision, because regardless of whether or not Eddie
was the killer, it seems like right from the outset,
law enforcement settled on their theory that Eddie murdered his
family and that was the only angle that they were
going to look at. So when we have this eyewitness
account which places other people in the Mills home, it

(19:43):
seems like they're saying to themselves, well, this kid has
troubles with the law. He's not a reliable witness, so
we're just going to completely discount it, even though if
he is telling the truth, then this leans towards someone
else other than Eddie being the killers.

Speaker 1 (19:57):
And I think if you're going to apply the same
logic that like a teenager is capable of murder and
they could have those similar motivations, then they should have
done their due diligence just to eliminate the boyfriend or
dug in a little bit deeper. I agree with Ashley.
I think the probabilities low that he's the one that
committed the crimes, but I think that because we know
nothing about his background, and because we know nothing about

(20:19):
him except what he says that he saw and that
he dated day Feene, I think there's a myriad of
possibilities that we just aren't privy to the information.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
However, another piece of evidence which seems to support the
intruder theory and has only gotten mentioned in a handful
of newspaper articles, is the claim from Eddie's half sister Linda,
that she received an anonymous phone call from someone informing
her that al and Jeanie had been killed. At least
one source stated that the call took place at around
nine thirty pm, which is around the same time police

(20:50):
were someone of the scene. So assuming that Linda is
telling the truth, the caller had to have had some
inside knowledge, and since Linda said the caller was a female,
this rules out the possibility of it being Eddie. So
who was this woman and how did she know about
the murders. It's worth noting that when Eddie was arrested
in two thousand and five, Linda publicly expressed her belief

(21:11):
that he was innocent, and if she really did receive
that anonymous call, then you can understand why Linda would
be inclined to feel this way, since it leans towards
someone else being the killer.

Speaker 3 (21:21):
That's incredibly interesting. By nine thirty thirty minutes after the
bodies are discovered, it's not going to be on the
news and it's not going to be widespread information. Next
to Ken probably hadn't been notified. And so the idea
that she gets this phone call from a woman. I'm
assuming they tried to trace the calls. This isn't like
nineteen forty, you know, did they get any information there?

Speaker 2 (21:45):
Unfortunately, I don't have that. I mean, I've seen a
lot of cases from the early nineteen eighties or seventies
where there's a key piece of evidence is a phone call,
but you never find out if they verify phone records
to see where the call originated from. So I don't
know if they didn't have the technology back then, or
maybe because they were so focused on Eddie and thought

(22:05):
he was the perpetrator, maybe they just completely ignored this
lead altogether.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
I think we were about ten years ahead of easy
phone tracing technology because I think it became I mean,
correct me if I'm wrong with either of you guys, know,
but I think in the nineties it became like a
given that police had access to that technology, but in
the eighties it feels like it would have been rather rudimentary.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
Yeah, I have heard of some cases from the eighties
where they did use that technology, but I think it
would depend on the location and the police department and
if they had the technology to do that and the
resources at that time. So I could go either way.
I mean, I know that Berkeley was a fairly large city,
but I couldn't say with any certainty if they could
trace phone calls back in nineteen eighty.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
So now we have to talk about Eddie himself, who
quite frankly, seems to be a bit of an enigma.
At the time of the murders, he dropped out of
high school and was mostly spending his time helping his
stepfather remodel old homes as student rentals. Of course, Eddie's
childhood and the People's Temple would be difficult enough because
of the abuse that he was forced to endure, but

(23:11):
another thing which must have had a devastating psychological effect
was the fact that he grew up alongside a number
of other children in the temple who were friends of his,
and a lot of them wound up losing their lives
during the Jonestown massacre. That obviously played a role in
making Eddie a quiet, with drawn teenager, But if he
displayed any red flags which suggested that he was capable

(23:32):
of murdering his family, it doesn't sound like anyone ever
said anything. We also don't know much about Eddie's life
after the crime took place, except that he got married,
had two children, and eventually moved to Japan. So if
Eddie is guilty, he seemed to have no issues moving
on with his life after committing an act of familicide.
The main evidence against Eddie is the traces of gunshot

(23:55):
residue which were found on his right hand, but you
have to remember that it was a pretty chroscopic amount.
It certainly wasn't enough to charge him with the murders
at the time, though if he wash or wiped his
hands after firing a gun, that might explain why the
amount wasn't bigger.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
There's been a.

Speaker 1 (24:11):
Lot of debate over the years about the reliability of
gunshot residue was evidence, as the presence does not conclusively
prove that someone fired a gun. In fact, there's even
one documented wrongful conviction case in which an innocent man
named Sebaine Burgess spent nearly twenty years in prison for
the murder of his girlfriend based solely on the presence

(24:31):
of gunshot residue on his hands. It turned out this
GSR had actually transferred onto Burgess's hands while he was
cradling his girlfriend's body, so his conviction was overturned after
the evidence was proven to be scientifically unsound. While I've
never seen any indication that Eddie touched his family's bodies
after they were killed, that could provide one potentially innocent

(24:53):
explanation for how GSR transferred to his hand. This type
of transfer can also occur by touching surfaces which have
been contaminated by GSR, or even something as simple as
shaking hands with another person you fired a gun earlier
that day. We're not saying that's necessarily what happened in
this case, but if there's no corroborating evidence to implicate

(25:13):
Eddie besides microscopic traces of GSR, then I can understand
the reluctance to charge him with this crime.

Speaker 2 (25:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (25:20):
Absolutely, I mean you have to think about it. I
love the idea of a simple handshake with the police
officer they're like, hey, son, wake up, you know, and
he's crying. Let's say he's upset that he just found
out his family dies, and an officer puts his arm
around him and shakes his hand, and it's like, you know,
hang in there, buddy, we're gonna be okay. That alone
could account for that. Or if Eddie, let's say, walks
by and you know, near where the event happened and

(25:44):
brushes against the wall or the door or something like that,
it could have easily transferred there. So oh man, it's
just really it's this kind of dual thought.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
For me.

Speaker 3 (25:55):
Eddie was the target of the police investigation, so obviously
you're like, well, you know, there was a re they
had suspicion. He's in the home he quote doesn't hear anything,
but neither do the neighbors. He seems to sleep through
their murders, and his poor grandmother finds the deceased family
members and then him sleeping. So it seems odd. But

(26:15):
then you step back and you also have a lot
of grief for him, because if he is not the
one who did this, and he is the one who
four decades has been the one the police say, that's
our only suspect that we have. In fact, they arrest
him at some point when he lands back on American soil.
There's a lot of empathy there of saying, my god,
he really he's suffered enough, and there's got to be

(26:38):
another another avenue you could at least pursue in tandem
with Eddie.

Speaker 2 (26:43):
Yeah, as we're going to talk about, this became the
subject of a cold case investigation decades after the fact,
which is what led to Eddie being arrested. And while
it's unclear what new evidence they may have found against him,
it really does seem like they have not wavered from
their original belief that Eddie was the killer, even though
there was pretty much much almost zero evidence against him
other than the small traces of GSR. But theoretically, let's

(27:06):
say that Eddie did this, he would then have to
leave the house and dispose of the murder weapon before returning,
and he obviously did a pretty thorough job. Since the
police searched about a dozen different properties and never found anything,
that's certainly not impossible. But again, we're talking about a
seventeen year old kid, not a criminal mastermind. It's also
unclear if they checked Eddie's clothes for gunshot residue. By

(27:29):
his own admission, Eddie took a long shower that night,
which would have given him an opportunity to clean up
potential evidence. And if it turned out that he also
threw his clothing into the washing machine shortly before the
bodies were discovered, then yes, that would look very suspicious.
But again, I don't see any indication that his clothing
was tested. I've seen a map of the layout of
the Mills residence and it looks like they had two bathrooms.

(27:52):
The one more Genie's body was found was adjacent to
the main bedroom, but the second bathroom was in the
hallway next to Eddie's room. E's have been specifically stated
at what point during the evening Eddie claimed he took
a shower. If the murders took place while he was
inside the shower, then I actually believe he might not
have heard the shots, and if he then went straight
to his room without looking through the doorway of his

(28:14):
parents' bedroom, he might not have noticed his family was
lying dead inside. However, the intruder would have had to
pass the bathroom in order to reach the bedroom, so
what they have not heard the sound of the shower
and checked inside there.

Speaker 3 (28:27):
Well, also you got to think if it was like
we talked about earlier, where someone came in, let's say
as an intruder, or they were looking for money and
they didn't get what they wanted. Let's say Dad became confrontational.
Let's say Mom tried to you know, push them or
take the gun out of their hand or something like that,
and they end up shooting them. And there's a panic.
Even if they knew there's somebody in the shower, there's

(28:50):
clear evidence that that person that has no way of
knowing they were in there or identifying who they are.
So they're just like, you know, forget it, and they
run out the front door, out the door, and so
I could see them being aware that he's in there,
and because the water is still running, there's no risks
to them. And they said, oh my god, we didn't
come here to kill someone. We just killed three people.

(29:11):
And off they go.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
And what if they're interrupted, if like they think that
somebody could have heard them, seen them, and they planned
on being there longer, and they might have planned on
ending Eddie's life, but because he was in the shower,
they had to hurry and end the lives of the
people who were there and had seen their faces, and
then they rushed out without him, And like, they would
have had to have happened really fast if that was

(29:33):
the case, because what is the typical time that a
teenage boy takes in the shower, like what like eight minutes?

Speaker 2 (29:39):
Yeah, so it could be a thing where they hear
the shower running. But they figure, well, if he's in there,
then obviously he can't identify us. He's not a witness,
and they figure it might be an even bigger risk
if we go into the bathroom and kill him. So
if they left the house in a panic, then they
probably could have figured, well, we're not going to worry
about the person in the bathroom because we're still going
to get away with it.

Speaker 1 (30:01):
This same logic applies if Eddie was inside his bedroom
watching television while the murders took place. Theoretically, the volume
could have been loud enough to drown out the gunshots.
But wouldn't the intruder have been able to hear the
television from outside and entered the bedroom to check. We
read an article about this case published in a nineteen
ninety two issue of Psychology Today magazine which stated that

(30:24):
Eddie had also been listening to a stereo in his
bedroom with headphones on. If true, this would explain how
Eddie could have conceivably not heard the gunshots without making
any noise to attract attention. But we've not seen that
detail about the headphones mentioned in any other source, including
the dozens of newspaper articles written about these murders, so

(30:44):
I can confirm if that particular detail is true. In
Eddie's defense, none of the other neighbors or residents in
the area reported hearing gunshots that night either. The murder
weapon was a twenty two caliber pistol, which does make
some noise, but there are some YouTube videos out there
about people putting a suppressor on a twenty two before
firing it, and the sound really wasn't all that loud

(31:07):
at all. So if an intruder used some sort of
silencer when they fired these shots, then it isn't quite
as hard to believe that Eddie might not have heard it. Well.
There were no signs of forced entry. The Mills's neighbors
confirmed that it wasn't uncommon for them to leave the
front door unlocked, so it's not completely implausible that an
intruder could have just walked into the house and committed

(31:28):
these murders without Eddie noticing.

Speaker 3 (31:31):
Yeah, I think it's really possible. I mean, I'm in
the if I'm in the zone and I'm singing in
the shower and things like that, I don't hear the
baby cry, I don't hear things. My bedroom door shut,
there's the you know, I'm in the shower, the water's running.
Sometimes you're making noise yourself or you know, so I
could absolutely.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
See him not hearing.

Speaker 3 (31:49):
And then again, I I'm going back to could the
daughter have been the target? If there's these three men,
is it possible that she just shared information with the
wrong people? You know that she know she was in
a vulnerable position with a group of people that she
thought might have cared about her. Was expressing things, could
have disclosed my parents have this at the house, or

(32:11):
you know, my parents are loaded. Could there have been
something where she accidentally shared confidential information or something that
made her family vulnerable and they came in and again
attacked for some reason, maybe not even being the main
goal to hurt somebody, but maybe she recognized them, and
you know, then they freaked down and they thought that

(32:33):
they had to kill them. I but I do believe
Eddie could have not heard the sounds for sure.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
Yeah, I mean, it is possible that all these murders
have nothing to do with the People's Temple, nothing to
do with Jonestown or Al or Genie. And like you said,
maybe Da Fien was the intended target, or she shared
information about her parents storing valuables in the house. And
because law enforcement was so focused on the People's Temple
angle and was so focused on Eddie, this particular angle

(33:00):
just slipped right through their fingers. And that's why no
one has popped up on the radar as a suspect
of personal interest as long as the perpetrators have managed
to keep quiet about it for the past forty five years.
But if Eddie was the perpetrator, his plan was rather odd.
After disposing of the murder weapon, he shuts himself inside
his bedroom until his grandmother arrives and discovers the bodies.

(33:22):
I know it's not uncommon for killers to deliberately arrange
things so that independent eye witnesses discover their victims' bodies,
But did Edy know beforehand that his grandmother was going
to be visiting the cottage at that particular time of night.
I mean, what if she had decided to show up
while he was outside disposing of the murder weapon. Again,
this is an inexperienced kid, not a criminal mastermind, but

(33:43):
you'd think a guilty person would try to concoct a
better cover story. Then I was directly across the hall
of my bedroom while my family was shot, and I
didn't hear anything. In terms of potential motive, Eddie did
wind up inheriting over two hundred thousand dollars from his
family's estate, though he did not actually receive any of
that money until over three years later. Now, Alan Jeanie

(34:04):
had arranged things so that their estate was divided equally,
as all of their children were from previous marriages rather
than with each other. This meant that when the assets
were dispersed, Eddie wound up getting the largest portion since
he was Genie's only surviving heir, whereas Al's three children
had to divide up his portion of the estate, which
is why they got smaller amounts. The point is that

(34:25):
it's unclear if Eddie would have even been aware how
much money he was entitled to receive following these murders.
So I can't be certain if that would have been
his primary motive. I guess an alternate possibility is that
Eddie could have gotten someone else to kill his family
and get rid of the murder weapon when they left. So,
even if the eyewitness account of the three men leaving
the house and Linda's story about the anonymous phone call

(34:47):
are accurate, that just means that there were others involved
in the crime and Eddie is still guilty. But then,
why would anyone agree to murder Eddie's family on his
behalf as a seventeen year old. It's not like he
would have had mone much money to pay them. So
as it stands, we do have a few reasons to
be suspicious of Eddie, but not much actionable evidence which
could be used to prosecute him in court.

Speaker 3 (35:10):
Yeah, he'd have to be a pretty sophisticated individual and
be someone who could hide a severe mental illness from
his family. But remember, all of his family supports him
after the deaths. In fact, he's living with relatives and
an uncle I believe, right, or a brother.

Speaker 2 (35:27):
Yeah, it's half brother, which was Al's son from a
previous marriage.

Speaker 3 (35:30):
Right, Okay, And all the family members are defending him
and things of that nature. If there was even a
hint that you had some kind of mental illness where
you didn't care about other people, you had this ability
to probably do something pretty dark and not care. I
feel like the family would pick up on that when
he resides with you, when he lives with you, when
you watch his grief journey. He's a kid, So to

(35:54):
be able to hide that and to have mastered how
to be incredibly manipulative and dark seventeen to conceal murders
and any kind of elaborate plans that would be wild
to me. And how devious do you have to be
to allow your poor grandmother to walk in the house
and find her child deceased along with her grandbaby and

(36:17):
in law, you know, daughter or son in law, daughter
in law. That's that's sick that you would be like, hey,
you know what, I'm just gonna let her find their
deceased bodies and not just deceased an executed, you know,
three loved ones. So that adds depravity to the case.
If you think that Eddie's the one who orchestrated it,
he's going to harass another person in the family via

(36:40):
a phone call he's going to get the grandmother to
walk in and have this tragedy occur for her, and
then he's going to be able to live out a
life where he doesn't reflect any kind of behavior that
indicates he's capable. It's quite advanced at starting at age seventeen.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
I think the fact that the family supports Eddie speaks
really highly for him, especially when you factor in the
situation where we know that when inheritances are involved, people
can get really weird about money in the best of circumstances,
But when there's a family that's deceased and you believe
that your biological parent has been murdered by your half brother,

(37:18):
then you're likely to tell law enforcement. And the reasons
would be twofold, probably because you want justice, and the
second might be because you're hoping to get a larger
stake of that inheritance. But they not only stood by him,
they had him living with them, So I think that
says that they don't believe that he's capable of that.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
I definitely think it says a lot that they didn't
turn on him after the inheritance was split up, because
Al's children could have easily said, hey, it's not fair
that he's getting a bigger piece of the pie. He's
getting more money than us, and used as an excuse
to point the figure at him and accuse him of murder.
But by two thousand and five, when Eddie was being
arrested and charged with the murders, they were still defending
him after all these years, which I like you said,

(38:00):
I think says a lot.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
Not sure the Berkeley Police Department would have reopened the
case and decided to arrest Eddie twenty five years after
the fact if the only evidence they had was a
microscopic trace of gunshot residue on his hand. They must
have dug up something else to implicate him. But whatever
it was, it doesn't sound like it was strong enough
for the District Attorney's office to charge him. After Eddie

(38:23):
was released from custody, it was interesting to read an
interview in the San Francisco Chronicle with Russ Lopes, the
cold case investigator who built the case against Eddie. Lopes
was brought out of retirement by the Berkeley PD to
specifically investigate their older cold cases, and he also worked
on the unsolved nineteen seventy murder of a Berkeley police
officer named Ronald Sukamoto. Much like the Mills case, Lopes

(38:47):
was certain he'd figured out who the guilty party was
in the Sukamoto murder and submitted the case to the
Alameda County District Attorney's office, but they did not feel
the evidence was strong enough to file charges. So when
the same thing happened with Eddie, Lopes got incredibly frustrated
and stated, quote, even if you're not absolutely one hundred
percent sure you'll win at the trial, you take it

(39:09):
to trial and let the jury decide. Weaker cases have
gone to trial end quote. Well, the problem is that
trials cost time and money, and prosecutors don't like to
bring cases to court if they don't believe they have
a good chance of winning, especially since you can't try
someone a second time if they're found not guilty. Eddie
steps sister Linda believed that Lopes had major tunnel vision

(39:33):
and refuse to consider looking at other suspects, stating quote,
I think he's power trippling personally, I think he's taking
advantage of his power end quote. Well, without knowing the
full details of the case that Lope submitted to the DA,
I have no idea if Linda's statements are accurate. But
I'm willing to acknowledge that there may have been tunnel
vision from the very beginning. And since Eddie was the

(39:55):
only one who survived the massacre, police refuse to believe
that anyone else was the killer.

Speaker 3 (40:01):
Yeah, I think when you look at it, it's Eddie's
the easy choice. Eddie's the one that you go, oh
my gosh, this is a kid. Remember it's the seventies
and love and all this other peace and love and drugs.
But law enforcement doesn't like these people that use drugs
and things. Weed was a bigger deal back then than
it is now. And so they come to this triple murder.

(40:22):
They see a kid who says, hey, I was stoned.
I was hanging out in my bedroom. Didn't hear anything.
There's got to be a quick frustration and a quick
sense of doubt to say, there's no way you slept
through the execution of your family. And we know that
there are many ways that could have happened. But for
a law enforcement officer, I could see this quick jump

(40:43):
to no reason you would have been spared, no reason
you would have been able to sleep through this, And
so that quick on the scene assumption then kind of
derails any other focus on anyone else you have Linda,
And Linda is the one who actually got the phone call.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
Am I correct? Yeah, that's correct.

Speaker 3 (41:02):
Okay, So Linda gets this phone call from a woman
thirty minutes after the family's been executed, before anyone would
possibly know that this had occurred. So to her, there
is such a deep, fiery conviction inside of her that
Eddie didn't do this. Someone was able to take information
from someone call me and know how to find me

(41:27):
and tell me that my family had been killed. And
then poor Eddie has to deal with the consequences in
the guilt that he's the only survivor in that home.
And so again I think I understand the jump to
a conclusion a rush like how that naturally occurred. But
when you step back that story that the ex boyfriend

(41:47):
saw people leaving, that he named a type of car,
that he passed a polygraph with the information he had provided,
and that Eddie doesn't have anything else, but that's tiny
traces of gunshot residue. You know, you can wash your
hands and still have gunshot residue on there. And so
the fact that it's possible he just simply shook hands

(42:07):
with someone and had this minute trace. I just don't
think it's Eddie. The more I listen to this, I
don't think it's Eddie because again, the number of family
members he had to so laxadaisically not mind that they
were going to be traumatized for the rest of their life.
His poor aunt gets his phone call to be told
that her family was executed. The poor grandmother walks in

(42:29):
and finds her three loved ones executed. He has to
deal with the relationships with all the surviving people, and
he stays deeply engaged in the family. If he killed them,
take your money and leave and don't be integrated with them.
But he stands beside his half siblings and he's working
with them through his grief, living with them, growing with them.

(42:51):
So I just don't see him staying that tightly entwined
with them if he was the one who caused all
of this in the first place.

Speaker 2 (42:58):
Yeah, rest lopes is and really rubbed me the wrong way.
This idea that, well, it's a weak case, but we
still should have taken him to trial. But if you
think about well that happened, like you would have people
like Linda testifying about the phone call from the woman,
and if they were able to track down Dayfied's ex boyfriend,
they could have got him to testify about the men
seen running away from the residents and climbing into a van.

(43:20):
So that would have created a lot of reasonable doubt.
And I have a feeling that Eddie would have been
acquitted with the evidence that they had now. So the
fact that Lope still thinks that they should have gone
to trial and potentially jailed an innocent man is shows
that he had serious tunnel vision. And it's a good
thing that they elected not to file charges. One of

(43:41):
the reasons it's so easy to place all the focus
on Eddie is because the investigation has failed to uncover
any compelling alternate suspects these past four decades. But what
if Linda is right and the police have just refused
to consider other suspects, causing them to let the real
killer to slip through their fingers. You could be skeptical
of Eddie's story all you want, but it's not impossible
that an outside intruder could have entered the residence and

(44:03):
murdered the rest of his family while he was in
another room. I hate to say this, but I'm really
not sure where I stand on this case. Every time
I feel certain that Eddie must have been the perpetrator,
I start wondering about how he managed to get rid
of the murder weapon and pull this off without leaving
any damning evidence behind. I do think that the rumors
about People's Temple hit squads are bunk, but the crime

(44:25):
does still have the ear marks of her professional hit.
And since the Millses were high profile figures with no
shortage of potential enemies, I can see someone else committing
this crime. All I know is that the story of
Jim Jones, the People's Temple, and the Jonestown massacre has
become so iconic and larger than life that this tragic
epilogue to the story is somewhat overlooked. Was Jonestown actually

(44:48):
a factor in these murders or is it nothing more
than a red herring. Whatever the case, if you happen
to have any information on the unsolved murders of al
Jeanie and Daphene Mills, please contact the Berkeley Police Department
and at five one zero nine to eight one five
nine zero zero. That's five one zero nine eight one
five nine zero zero, Jules Ashley, any final thoughts in

(45:10):
the case.

Speaker 3 (45:11):
This one's an interesting one. When you add the intrigue
of Jonestown and the People's Temple being part of the
Mills' backstory, it's really this kind of a fanatical interesting
case right where you say, Wow, this family was in
one of the most tragic, horrific historical cults we've ever seen.

(45:33):
They escaped it, and then as they're declaring that they're
kind of done with this pursuit of being known as
you know, defactors and survivors of the People's Temple, they say,
we're done, we want to move on, we want a
new life. They lose their life in a tragic execution
of three of the four family members in that house. Again,

(45:54):
my heart is it's torn because I understand why police
would suspect Eddie, but I also don't see the sophistication
and the ability to live a life that doesn't draw
suspicion to him by people who know him best. So
because of his family's support, and because of not just

(46:15):
the support, but evidence that the aunt was called by
a woman, that the ex boyfriend was came forward, and
that I saw people actually leaving the house, here's where
they were, here's what they were driving. Those kinds of
things make it where there's no way you could do
what the district attorney said and say, listen, we should

(46:36):
have taken it to trial anyway. How that's how wrongful
convictions occur, because beyond a reasonable doubt that can exist
here you have light residual gun shot residue on his hands,
and that the kids slept through this execution. He also
could have been in the shower at the time. I'm
leaning towards, for whatever reason, maybe known to the family

(46:57):
or not, that these individuals came into the home, wanted something,
and pushed the family into the master bedroom. Again, I
don't typically see teenagers sitting with mom and dad on
their bed in their bedroom. You know, maybe mom and
daughter in the bedroom and dad on the couch. Maybe
you know, dad and son in the bedroom looking at

(47:18):
something and mom on the couch, But very rarely do Dad,
me and the kids hang out in our bedroom. So
I think they were forced into the bedroom looking for
something of value. They didn't get what they want, or
they were spooped or overwhelmed, and they shot the family
and then they ran. They didn't have time to worry
about Eddie. They didn't look for Eddie, they didn't hear Eddie,

(47:39):
or they knew that he was preoccupied. So that's where
I'm leaning, and at the end of the day, if
that is true, the trauma and continual trauma that Eddie
has gone through is horrific. He's already suffered abuse, he
was part of the whole People's Temple as well with
his family, and so he gets out of that, he
loses his family, and then while he's growing his own family,

(48:00):
it's arrested and is facing charges of executing his family.
So it's a case that is very overwhelming emotionally when
you think about what these individuals had already gone through.
They'd lost their lives and then the trauma doesn't stop.
So it would be fascinating to learn if there's information
out there. It was quite a while ago, but you
never know. It takes one phone call, it takes one

(48:21):
piece of evidence coming out, and so I would be
thrilled to see. Is there a connection of People's Temple.
I leaned towards no, and honestly, it points away from
Eddie because in this case, what kind of vindication would
that be for him to say. For so many decades
people have assumed it was me and it wasn't.

Speaker 1 (48:42):
I'm eighty percent leaning towards the theory that you just
put forward, that it isn't leaned to the people's temple.
It wasn't Eddie. It was random intruders or people who
may have known them, but they were looking for something
of value. There's a reason that they were all in
one bedroom. I think that it's a fluke that Eddie
was able to survive through it, and then it's unfortunate

(49:02):
with the GSR that it somehow got on his hand.
I just don't see this profile. Yeah, he had difficulties,
but would he be this killer of his family Because
we saw him move on, have a move to Japan,
get married, have a child. It doesn't seem like he
would have been all that disturbed and his family stood
by his side. And I really do think that that

(49:23):
speaks highly of him, and I think it speaks highly
of his family as well, that they were so loyal
to him in the face of so much judgment. But
also it could have been more of a financial windfall
for them if they turned on him, if they truly
believed that he was capable of that, and they just didn't.
They thought the investigator had tunnel vision. And I hate

(49:44):
to say it, but it seems like that is a possibility.
I mean, with the other case that he had and
it didn't have the resolution that he hoped that it did.
It seemed like he was throwing as much at the
wall as he could and he was hoping something would stick.
And I am compassionate for somebody putting in a lot
of effort after they've retired and not getting the results
that they want. But you can't try to throw everything

(50:06):
at somebody who might be innocent without focusing on who
else could have done it. I think it's just lazy
and really easy to say Eddie's the guy because he's
the one surviving family member, But the evidence is so
weak that I just lean away from Eddie being responsible.

Speaker 2 (50:24):
I remember first learning about this case several years ago
because I included it in an article I wrote for
Lispers dot com, and after reading just the basic summary,
I thought, Okay, Eddie had to have done this. It
just seems so illogical that he would be left alone
in his bedroom while his entire family was killed and
claimed that he didn't see or hear anything. But once
I started researching this, when I covered it on the

(50:44):
trail went cold about five years ago, it seemed less
likely that Eddie was the perpetrator because it means he
would have to do this dastardly crime at age seventeen,
get rid of the murder weapon, leave no evidence behind
besides small traces of gunshot residue in his hand, and
then go on to cool his surviving half siblings and
live a normal life for the next several decades and

(51:06):
move to Japan, start a family, have children of his own,
and then just commit no other crimes or cause no
other trouble. So as implausible as a story may sound,
it does seem more likely that the Mills family were
killed by intruders who overlooked Eddie. But I really don't
know what the actual motive could have been. I really
don't believe it was anything to do with the people's temple.

(51:26):
I think the whole hit squad was a myth, and
the fact that this took place fifteen months after the
Jonestown massacre makes me think that there's no real connection.
So I think they were killed for other reasons, but
I just don't know what it was if it had
something to do with Dave Fiene, or if maybe it
was a robbery gone wrong, maybe the intruders were looking
for something inside the house. But I do think that

(51:49):
there is credible evidence plenty to outside intruders, like the
phone call that Linda received, and also the eyewitness sighting
of the three men exiting the house and climbing into
a van. So whoever it was, if there were multiple
people involved, it sounds like they did an effective job
at keeping their mouths shut and got very lucky that
the police focused entirely on Eddie so that they could

(52:10):
just slip under the radar. I mean, so much time
has passed at Eddie is now in his early sixties.
I hope he has lived a happy life. I don't
know if he's still in Japan, but obviously, even before
his family was killed, he had to undergo a lot
of trauma growing up in the People's Temple and having
to experience a lot of abuse living in a cult.
So I hope he has lived in peace, and the

(52:32):
fact that he has never lost the support of the
rest of his family I think speaks volumes. But yeah,
just a very weird case and an odd epilogue to
one of the biggest tragedies of all time. But in
the end, I do think that Jim Jones and the
whole Jonestown massacre and the People's Temple were nothing more
than a red herring