September 22, 2025 • 31 mins
"State officials have probably noticed an increase as well as an unusual distribution of Medfly infestation in Los Angeles County since March 1989. This was no coincidence."
The Mediterranean fruit fly, better known as the medfly, is about as unassuming as an insect can get. But the pest, native to sub-Saharan Africa, comes with enormous stakes. The medfly can infest more than 200 plant species, proving to be a nightmare for farmers everywhere. For farmers in California, though, they're an existential threat. That's why state officials treat every sighting like a five-alarm fire.
California has been fighting medfly invasions since the mid-1970s, throwing everything at them in an attempt to save their billion dollar agricultural industry. But in 1989, a strange outbreak of medflies were reported in Los Angeles and Orange counties. They appeared in clusters, as if they'd been placed there on purpose. Before long, a mysterious group calling themselves "The Breeders" claimed responsibility for this act of eco-terror...
Research & writing by Amelia White
Hosting, production, and additional research/writing by Micheal Whelan
Learn more about this podcast at http://unresolved.me
If you would like to support this podcast, consider heading to https://www.patreon.com/unresolvedpod to become a Patron or Producer
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/unresolved--3266604/support.
The Mediterranean fruit fly, better known as the medfly, is about as unassuming as an insect can get. But the pest, native to sub-Saharan Africa, comes with enormous stakes. The medfly can infest more than 200 plant species, proving to be a nightmare for farmers everywhere. For farmers in California, though, they're an existential threat. That's why state officials treat every sighting like a five-alarm fire.
California has been fighting medfly invasions since the mid-1970s, throwing everything at them in an attempt to save their billion dollar agricultural industry. But in 1989, a strange outbreak of medflies were reported in Los Angeles and Orange counties. They appeared in clusters, as if they'd been placed there on purpose. Before long, a mysterious group calling themselves "The Breeders" claimed responsibility for this act of eco-terror...
Research & writing by Amelia White
Hosting, production, and additional research/writing by Micheal Whelan
Learn more about this podcast at http://unresolved.me
If you would like to support this podcast, consider heading to https://www.patreon.com/unresolvedpod to become a Patron or Producer
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/unresolved--3266604/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
This episode contains graphic content that may not be suitable
for all ages. Listener discretion is advised. If you or
someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available,
call or text nine eight eight, or chat with someone
at nine eight eight lifeline dot org. Those outside of
the US, reach out to someone at your local crisis
(00:24):
center or hotline. Please do not suffer in silence.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
There's another national economic story today. It concerns a tiny
insect which is threatening the health of California's multi billion
dollar agricultural industry. Today, efforts got under way to try
to prevent the spread of the destructive fruit fly.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
The Mediterranean fruit fly, better known as the medfly, is
about as unassuming as an insect can get. Barely a
quarter inch long, yellow brown with speckled wings and irridescent
little blue eyes doesn't look like much, but, as men
everywhere will assure you, size doesn't always tell a full story.
A single female medfly can lay hundreds of eggs just
(01:09):
under the skins of fruits and vegetables, and when those
eggs hatch, the larva chew through the flesh until there's
nothing left but rot. What starts as one tiny bug
can quickly turn into a plague. Native to sub Saharan Africa,
the medfly doesn't belong in the Western Hemisphere at all,
but it does have a bad habit of hitching rides
in luggage and on imported produce, occasionally slipping into places
(01:33):
like Florida, Texas, or California. And when it does, the
steaks are enormous. This isn't just some backyard nuisance. Medflies
can infest more than two hundred plant species citrus, peaches, grapes, tomatoes, peppers,
you name it. For farmers, they're a nightmare for California,
(01:53):
with its sprawling orchards and vegetable fields, they're closer to
an existential threat. That's why state officials treat every medfly
sighting like a five alarm fire. Even a handful of
flies in a neighborhood can trigger quarantines, crop restrictions, and
multimillion dollar eradication campaigns. California has been fighting these invasions
since the mid nineteen seventies, but in nineteen eighty nine
(02:16):
something different happened. Los Angeles and surrounding counties suddenly lit
up with infestations, not just a few neighborhoods, but a
whole patchwork of communities. The flies weren't spreading the way
they normally do. They were appearing in clusters, as if
placed there on purpose. And then came the letter from
a group calling itself the Breeders, claiming responsibility for what
(02:39):
they called an act of ecological retaliation. This wasn't just
another outbreak. It was California's first brush with something scarier,
eco terrorism. This is the story of the California medfly attack.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
This is the army California is sending into the suburbs
south of San Francisco to route the invader, threatening the
state's twelve billion dollar agricultural industry. Five hundred conservation workers
are going house to house, stripping the trees of all fruit,
which serves as the host to the Mediterranean fruit fly.
(03:21):
The medfly, as the pest is called, plant its eggs
under the skin of the fruit, where the contamination is
invisible as the maggot devours the fruit from the inside.
The state has tried to kill the species with ground
spring of pesticides and even mating sterile males with females.
Nothing has worked. Soldiers in the latest attack were given
a sendoff by Governor Jerry Brown, who predicts that if
(03:43):
the infestation spreads, the impact could be nationwide.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
It could mean several hundred million dollars in economic loss.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
And it can have a major impact in the availability
of fruits in vestments. And of course, California produces twenty
five to fifty percent many of the US to be
belie throughout the.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Country of local governments here have prohibited aerial pesticide spraying,
so for the next month, these workers will try to
remove and destroy every single piece of root in this
contaminated area.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
To understand why the state panicked, you have to understand
California's relationship with agriculture. By the nineteen eighties, the state
had become the nation's produce aisle, its Mediterranean climate and
vast irrigation networks, turning out everything from oranges and peaches
to lettuce and grapes. Farming was worth tens of billions
a year, and when you counted the ripple effect shipping, processing, exports, etc.
(04:38):
It powered a huge chunk of the state's economy. A
pest like the medfly threatened all of it. The insect
could ruin at least twenty two of California's stable crops,
effectively turning orchards and vineyards into compost piles. Worse, if
the fly ever became established permanently, the fallout would not
stop at the farm gate. Other states and counties would
(04:59):
slam the door on California's produce, fearing the bug would
hitch a ride in shipments. The result would be constant infestations,
endless pesticide use, and potential trade bands that could gut
the entire industry. For that reason, California's policy was simple,
zero tolerance. Any sign of a medfly meant an immediate
(05:20):
and aggressive eradication effort. Most of the time, the flies
probably arrived the same way they still do, smuggled fruit
or travelers unknowingly carrying infested produce in their luggage. Throughout
the late nineteen seventies, inspectors caught small infestations almost every year.
The state would set traps, impose quarantines, and deploy countermeasures.
(05:42):
One of the main tools was the sterile insect technique,
where labs turned out male medflies, sterilized them with radiation,
and then released them in massive numbers. The sterile males
mated with wild females and no viable eggs were produced.
Slowly but surely, the population would collapse. But by nineteen
eighty California faced something much bigger. That summer, both the
(06:05):
Bay Area and the Los Angeles regions saw infestations spiral
out of control. By nineteen eighty one, millions of larvae
were turning up in backyard fruit trees. The thread of
embargoes on California crops loomed. Losses were estimated in the
tens of millions. The federal government began leaning on the
state to do more, and so Governor Jerry Brown, not
(06:27):
exactly known for his love of pesticides, authorized a desperate measure,
aerial spraying of malathion. Suddenly, California neighborhoods found themselves under
nighttime air raids from fleet of helicopters missing a syrupy
insecticide bait. Officials insisted it was safe, but residents were horrified.
The smell hung in the air, cars were spotted with residue,
(06:49):
and people complained of both headaches and nausea. Protesters railed
against what they saw as chemical warfare in their own backyards.
Lawsuits flew. At one point, d official even drank a
glass of diluted malatheon on camera to prove it would
not kill him. It didn't, though it also did not
win over many doubters. The campaign was controversial, but it worked.
(07:11):
After months of repeated spraying in the release of overall
billion sterwile flies, the nineteen eighty one outbreak was declared
over The price tag was estimated at roughly one hundred
million dollars. From then on, aerial spraying of malathion became
California's go to response. Whenever medflies showed up. Throughout the
nineteen eighties, infestations would flare, and helicopters would return, spraying
(07:34):
malatheon over both farmland and suburbs. By the late nineteen eighties,
the whole process felt routine. The flies appeared, the state, sprayed,
crops were saved, and everyone moved on. But in nineteen
eighty nine, the routine broke down. What started as a
few trapped flies in Los Angeles soon ballooned into a sprawling,
illogical outbreak that left scientists baffled and residence furious. At first,
(08:11):
nineteen eighty nine did not look much different from the
other years. In early summer, inspectors checking traps in Los
Angeles County started finding medflies. A few turned up near
Alesian Park, just north of downtown. By July, thirty four
had been captured in that area alone, not a massive number,
but enough to set off alarms. State officials quickly declared
(08:33):
a seventy square mile quarantine zone and brought back the helicopters.
One night in August, the low thrum of rotors returned
as malathion bait ranged down over fourteen square miles of
Los Angeles. Forty million sterile medfly mails were released to
follow up. For Californians who had lived through the nineteen
eighty one crisis, it felt like deja vus. The drill
(08:55):
was familiar. Find the medflies, spray the neighborhoods, rolled out
sterile inside, lift the quarantine, and the clear victory. There
was no reason to think nineteen eighty nine would play
out any differently. But the summer dragged on, and instead
of subsiding, the problems spread. By late September, inspectors had
trapped a medfly in Whittier, miles from the original Alesian
(09:17):
Park cluster. Then more flies appeared across the Los Angeles basin.
By October November, they weren't just in La anymore. They
had crossed over into Orange County. Every time a new
cluster was detected, the helicopters expanded their grid, inspectors, stripped
fruit from trees, set out more traps, and tried to
stay ahead of the spread. Before long, the outbreak wasn't
(09:38):
a cluster at all, but a region wide invasion. At
its peak, more than two hundred and thirty square miles
across Los Angeles and Orange Counties were under both quarantine
and repeated pesticide drops. By year's end, as the Los
Angeles Times put it, the battle against the Mediterranean fruit
fly had become an open war for farmers and agricultural officials.
(10:00):
This was a worst case scenario. Eradication costs were exploding.
By the end of the campaign, the state would spend
around sixty million dollars, making it the second most expensive
medfly fight in history. Even worse was the possibility that
California might lose control completely. If the fly became established,
it could cripple trade, force farmers to soak their crops
(10:22):
in pesticides, and leave the state's billion dollar produce industry
in tatters. Meanwhile, southern California residents were once again enduring
nightly flyovers and chemical mists. Public meetings grew tense. Officials
repeated that malathion in its diluted form posed no health risk,
but many people weren't buying it. They had lived through
(10:43):
years of these air raids, and patients was already thin.
The parents worried about their children breathing in the spray.
Gardeners claimed that their coypons and backyard pets were dying,
and a creeping distrust began to set in. They began
to wonder was this cure worse than the disease. On
the other side of the debate, growers and farm groups
(11:04):
were furious that the state wasn't being aggressive enough. They
demanded faster, eradication, harsher quarantines, really, whatever it took to
save the spring nineteen ninety harvest. Agriculture was too important
to gamble with, they argued, and the medfly was too
dangerous to let linger. By December nineteen eighty nine, one
thing was clear. This outbreak was unlike any the California
(11:27):
had ever seen. Hundreds of adult flies had been trapped,
as many as in the previous fifteen years combined, and
yet field crews searching trees and fruit baskets kept coming
back empty. Normally, a medfly invasion would leave plenty of
evidence fruit teeming with maggots, but in nineteen eighty nine,
larva were strangely scarce. Inspectors would pull apart fruit from
(11:50):
infested neighborhoods and find nothing. Even more puzzling was the
sex ratio. Traps were catching mostly females when normally they
would be pulling in more mails, and the flies weren't
showing up randomly. Time after time. They were caught just
outside of boundaries of areas that had already been sprayed.
Every time the helicopters declared his own clean, a new
(12:11):
cluster would appear just beyond it, forcing the quarantine map
to keep expanding outward. Scientists began to admit what they
hated to say out loud, that none of this made sense.
The spread wasn't natural, it did not fit the usual
biology of the medfly. Something or someone was influencing their pattern.
(12:32):
And just as those doubts were bubbling to the surface,
a mysterious letter landed in the mailboxes of California officials
and newspapers. It was signed by a group calling itself
the Breeders. That's after the break. On December third, nineteen
(12:59):
eighty nine, as officials scrambled to make sense of this outbreak,
a letter started showing up in mailboxes across California. It
arrived at the office of Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley,
at the desk of a few state senators, and in
the newsrooms of the Los Angeles Times and the Fresno
b Two typed pages, single spaced, unsigned, except for a
(13:19):
name at the bottom that felt almost like a punchline.
The contents, though, were anything but funny. The writers claimed
responsibility for the medfly invasion. Whoever this was, wrote, state
officials have probably noticed an increase as well as an
unusual distribution of medfly infestation in Los Angeles County since
March nineteen eighty nine. This was no coincidence. The mysterious
(13:42):
letter writer said that this outbreak wasn't natural, It was sabotage.
This was a campaign of deliberate pest releases carried out
by eco terrorist angry at California's malathion program. According to
the letter, the group had smuggled medfly eggs and larvae
into southern California, or that year began rearing them in
captivity and then released pregnant females across the region. Their
(14:06):
goal was to overwhelm the state's eradication campaign, bankrupting the
aerial spray program and forcing California to abandon chemical warfare
against the environment. Their tone was mocking, even triumphant. They wrote,
our position is absolutely non negotiable. Every time the copters
go up to spray, we'll go into Virgin territory or
(14:26):
old medfly problem areas and release a minimum of several
thousand blue eyed medflies. We are organized, patient, and determined.
The threat was clear, either stop spraying or will spread
the flies into California's agricultural heartland. And as I mentioned before,
the letter closed with the simple ominous sign off the breeders.
(14:48):
The reaction was immediate. Law enforcement headed the letter to
the LAPD's criminal conspiracy section and to the FBI. We
are absolutely treating this as a threat, said LAPD tenant
Helen kidder its extortion. She said, whether the writers were
pranksters or genuine saboteurs thread alone was a crime, but
(15:09):
were they real That was the question. Some officials were
openly skeptical, calling this letter a hoax. The outbreak had
already been underway for months before the letter arrived. Could
a group of anonymous activists really be breeding and releasing
fruit flies on such a large scale. It seemed far fetched,
and yet the outbreak's peculiarities fit uncomfortably well with the
(15:32):
breeder's claims. The pattern of flies showing up just outside
of sprayed zones, the skewed toward females, the lack of
larvae and fruit. All of it was consistent with someone
seating adult insects into the environment, rather than a wild
population breeding on its own. The letter even mentioned that
they had been releasing pregnant females after spray missions, which
(15:53):
lined up with what inspectors were seeing on the ground.
By mid December, California's own Medfly Scientific Advisory Panel US
openly debating whether the infestation could have been human made.
Newsweek ran a story quoting officials who described the outbreak
as illogical and defying explanation. Suddenly, the idea of an
agro terror campaign did not seem so outlandish. The breeders,
(16:15):
whoever they were, never followed up. There was never a
second letter, no phone calls, no manifesto, Beyond those two pages,
they did not explain how they had gotten the flies, specifically,
though smuggling them in from Hawaii or abroad would have
been relatively easy in those days. They did not claim
ties to any known group. They did not ask for money,
(16:36):
just an end to the aerial sprang, and after that
one December letter, which they mailed to officials and publications,
they disappeared in early nineteen ninety Desperate for answers. The
USDA even placed to classify ad In the Los Angeles
Times Personal section. They wrote, breeders, if you're for real,
send one of your little friends we want to talk,
(16:58):
called John at US. For those who found this, it
was a bit of a surreal moment, federal officials essentially
begging eco terrorist to pick up the phone if anyone
ever did nothing about it was made public. Once the
Breeder's letter surfaced, the outbreak was no longer just an
(17:19):
agricultural crisis. It was a criminal case. The LAPD's Criminal
Conspiracy Section took the lead, with the FBI and USDA
investigators in tow. They started out with what was obvious,
the letter itself. Forensic labs combed over the pages and envelopes,
for fingerprints, trace fibers, anything that might tie it to
a center. Officials were cagy about what, if anything they found. Publicly,
(17:43):
no leads ever emerged from that analysis. Meanwhile, detectives tried
to match the strange geography of the infestation with possible
human involvement. Surveillance was quietly deployed in neighborhoods where fresh
clusters of flies kept appearing. But how can you catch
someone in the act of releasing insects? Even if you
had plainclothes officers on every block, it's hard to spot
(18:03):
someone with a jar of flies in their jacket. In
late December nineteen eighty nine, LAPD Commander William Booth told
the press investigators had made some progress, but refused to elaborate.
That vague hint only fueled rumors. Was it an environmental extremist,
a disgruntled agriculture employee, maybe a rogue student from one
of California's many entomology programs. The speculation spiraled. What investigators
(18:29):
did know was that the breeder's threats hid a nerve,
Whether reel or fake, The letters forced officials to consider
the unthinkable that someone might weaponize a bug no bigger
than a finger nail to hold California's food supply hostage.
As one agricultural official later admitted, whether it was real
or not, we had to respond as if it was real.
(18:50):
By early nineteen ninety, the medfly infestation was still raging.
Helicopters kept flying, quarantines kept expanding, and in February, the
USD bought a classify that in the Los Angeles Times
the one I mentioned a few minutes ago, it read
like a plea more than a sting. Authorities were essentially saying,
will negotiate, Please call us. If the breeders saw the ad,
(19:13):
they did not take the bait. They never responded. No
one was ever caught smuggling flies, no lab was ever
exposed as a source, and no arrest were made. In
the end. What ended the outbreak wasn't a breakthrough in
the investigation, but a tactical shift in pest control. By
March of nineteen ninety, California finally gave up on the
(19:34):
endless malathion sprang and leaned almost entirely on sterile insect technique.
Millions of radiation sterilized males were released over Los Angeles
and Orange Counties. Slowly, the medfly population collapsed by November
of nineteen ninety, sixteen, exhausting months after it began, The
medfly outbreak was officially declared over. It was the last
(19:55):
major medfly crisis California has faced to this day. All
incursions have happened since, but nothing on that scale. The
helicopters sprang malathion at night never returned in that sense
the breeders, whether they were real or imagined one. As
for the criminal case, it simply withered away. No suspects
(20:16):
were ever publicly named. The FBI backed away once it
was clear no federal terrorism charges were coming, but California
lawmakers did not forget. In June of nineteen ninety, the
state passed a bill making it a felony to deliberately
import or spread the Mediterranean fruit fly before then believe
it or not doing so was only a misdemeanor. The
(20:36):
laws spelt it out plainly. Any person who wilfully and
knowingly imports, into, or transports or ships within this state
a Mediterranean fruit fly is guilty of a felony. This
was a direct response to the breeders. Airports and postal
centers beefed up inspections more fruit was seized at the borders,
but the breeders never resurfaced. We'll be right back after
(21:00):
another quick word from our sponsors. With the infestation beaten back,
but the case unsolved. The question has lingered for decades, who,
if anyone, was really behind it. Without arrest or hard evidence,
the breeder's letter became a kind of Russ Shark test. Investigators, scientists,
and journalists of all floated theories, but none have led
(21:23):
to any definitive answers. One explanation is the most straightforward.
The breeders were exactly who they said they were, an
eco sabotur cell small, secretive and furious about aerial malathion spring,
and they decided to fight pesticide with pest. The anomalies
of nineteen eighty nine certainly fit their story. The way
(21:43):
medflies popped up just beyond spray zones, the overwhelming number
of females being trapped, the scarcity of larva in the fruit,
All of this could point to someone deliberately seating adult flies,
especially pregnant females, and two targeted neighborhoods. If that's true,
then California was hit with one of the first successful
acts of entomological sabotage in US history. The breeders forced
(22:06):
a sixty million dollars eradication campaign, drove the state away
from malatheon spraying, and proved a point about how fragile
the food system really is. The problem is there's no
hard evidence. There were never any arrest, there were no
labs busted, No one was ever caught red handed. Entomologist
noted that breeding and distributing thousands of medflies would have
(22:27):
required skill, space, and an almost absurd level of luck.
As one USDA scientist said at the time, we don't
see any hard evidence that the letter writer has the
wherewithal to do what he has threatened. It's one thing
to boast in a letter, it's another to pull off
a region wide outbreak. So that brings us to the
second theory that the letter was a hoax and the
(22:48):
outbreak was natural, just strange. Under this view, the breeders
never existed. They were just opportunists, maybe alone crank with
a typewriter who took credit for a bad year. Agricultural
officials publicly blamed illegal fruit imports in nineteen eighty nine,
the same culprit that they always cited travelers bring in
a mango or guava from an infested region, it carries
(23:11):
eggs or larvae, and suddenly Los Angeles has a problem.
Southern California is a bit of a hub for global travel.
It is entirely possible that multiple introductions happened at once.
Seating the widespread outbreak, and in fairness, medflies had shown
up almost every year since the mid nineteen seventies. Nineteen
eighty nine was extreme, but not impossible. Officials remembered a
(23:33):
similar prank letter surfacing during the nineteen eighty one crisis,
quickly dismissed as fake. Why couldn't the breeders be the
same thing, just timed better? Years later, some analysts would
argue exactly that that the letter was unlikely to have
actually been carried out, and the medflies themselves had hardly
been in hiding. A third theory, perhaps more controversial, comes
(23:56):
from UC Davis entomologist James Carry suggested the outbreak wasn't
sabotage or a fresh import, but rather a re emergence
of medflies that had never really left. In his view,
earlier eradication campaigns in the nineteen eighties might not have
killed every last insect a few survivors could have persisted
in backyard fruit trees, lying low until conditions allowed them
(24:18):
to multiply again. Carrie even mapped old infestation sites against
the nineteen eighty nine hotspots and found that they overlapped
suspiciously well. He stated, is it just a coincidence exactly
the same time, at exactly the same place. I just
can't buy it. If true, that would mean that the
medfly had established itself in California long before the state
(24:39):
admitted it. For years, officials insisted the pest was never resident,
that every outbreak was an isolated incursion. Admitting otherwise would
have been political suicide. But Carrie's theory linkers as a
reminder that sometimes nature is more stubborn than paperwork allows.
There were some other, more exotic ideas. Some wondered if
an insider at a stere fly rearing facility had slipped
(25:01):
up or even sabotage debatch so fertile flies were released
instead of sterile ones. Others mused about motivations outside of environmentalism,
maybe a disgruntled farmer or competitor, or even a government
ploy to justify more funding. None of those ever really
gained traction, so the debate still sits where it did
in nineteen ninety. Was the medfly crisis of nineteen eighty nine,
(25:24):
the result of eco terrorist with a grudge, a hoaxer
with good timing, or simply nature doing what it does best,
reminding us that it doesn't care about our borders or
our billion dollar industries. By the end of nineteen ninety,
(25:49):
the helicopters were gone, the quarantines were lifted, and officials
declared victory. The medflies were once again evicted, but the
bigger question whether the INFAI station had been natural or
man made, was never answered. The breeders vanished as suddenly
as they appeared. It was as if they had dissolved
into thin air, leaving only that one typed manifesto and
(26:12):
a year of chaos in their wake. California lawmakers tried
to make sure it would not happen again. In June
nineteen ninety, the state made it a felony to deliberately
import or spread medflies. Inspectors at airports and postal facilities
tightened their checks, agricultural departments doubled down on preventative trapping,
and perhaps more significantly, California abandoned the idea of mass
(26:35):
aerial malaffion spring for good, as I touched on just
a moment ago. From the mid nineteen nineties onward, the
state has relied almost entirely on sterile insect technique and
ground based measures, approaches that were less controversial, more sustainable,
and frankly, more palatable to a public still bitter about
the nightly chemical showers of the nineteen eighties. In that sense,
(26:56):
the breeders real or not, got what they wanted. The
helicopters carrying malathion never came back. The case against this
group has stayed cold, though yet the memory of the
outbreak has linkered in agricultural circles as a cautionary tale.
In two thousand and one, after the anthrax attacks, federal
biosecurity officials even revisited the breeder's letter as an example
(27:19):
of how vulnerable the food system could be. Agro Terrorism,
a term barely used since nineteen eighty nine, suddenly entered
the national lexicon, and the medfly mystery from California was
cited as one of the few real world cases to
point to. Decades later, this story remains unsolved, where the
breeders a genuine eco terrorist cell that has successfully forced
(27:42):
a policy change through biological sabotage. Were they pranksters exploiting coincidence,
or were they never involved at all, with Mother Nature
doing the dirty work while humans bickered about who to blame.
Without evidence, we may never know. What we do know
is that California, learned from the ordeal, built one of
the most vigilant pest monitoring systems in the world, trapping
(28:04):
millions of flies annually to catch even the smallest incursion,
And in the year since, medflies have still appeared a
handful in Dixon in two thousand and seven, a cluster
in two thousand and eight, a few in Los Angeles
as recently as twenty fourteen, but each was stamped out quickly.
None have ever again reached the scale of nineteen eighty nine. Still,
(28:24):
the specter of the breeders hangs over every new detection, because,
whether they existed or not, they forced California to confront
something that It doesn't take bombs or bullets to terrorize
a state. Sometimes all it takes is a handful of bugs.
As of this recording, the story of the nineteen eighty
nine California medfly attack remains unresolved. Thank you all for
(29:08):
listening to another episode of Unresolved. I'm going to keep
the end credits brief again for this one because I
was originally planning to cover another story, that of the
three Decker girls who were murdered in Washington State, believed
to be murdered by their father, Travis Decker. I had
a full script written, but a couple of days before
I went to record, there was a major news update
(29:28):
and that story maybe in the process of resolving itself.
So instead I pivoted to this one, which was in
the process of being written and almost fully complete. I
kind of put it into high gear and finished it myself,
but I hope you enjoyed it. It was an interesting,
strange mystery, and we should be back with another full
length episode next week. However, I would like to think
Amelia White, who wrote and researched the brunt of this episode.
(29:52):
I've been your host, Michael Wheelan, and I will be
back with another full length episode next week. Until then,
I hope you all stay safe, stay healthy, and I
will talk to you. Come and come.
Speaker 5 (30:53):
And come.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
Co co
Speaker 5 (31:35):
Co Cot
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for all ages. Listener discretion is advised. If you or
someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available,
call or text nine eight eight, or chat with someone
at nine eight eight lifeline dot org. Those outside of
the US, reach out to someone at your local crisis
(00:24):
center or hotline. Please do not suffer in silence.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
There's another national economic story today. It concerns a tiny
insect which is threatening the health of California's multi billion
dollar agricultural industry. Today, efforts got under way to try
to prevent the spread of the destructive fruit fly.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
The Mediterranean fruit fly, better known as the medfly, is
about as unassuming as an insect can get. Barely a
quarter inch long, yellow brown with speckled wings and irridescent
little blue eyes doesn't look like much, but, as men
everywhere will assure you, size doesn't always tell a full story.
A single female medfly can lay hundreds of eggs just
(01:09):
under the skins of fruits and vegetables, and when those
eggs hatch, the larva chew through the flesh until there's
nothing left but rot. What starts as one tiny bug
can quickly turn into a plague. Native to sub Saharan Africa,
the medfly doesn't belong in the Western Hemisphere at all,
but it does have a bad habit of hitching rides
in luggage and on imported produce, occasionally slipping into places
(01:33):
like Florida, Texas, or California. And when it does, the
steaks are enormous. This isn't just some backyard nuisance. Medflies
can infest more than two hundred plant species citrus, peaches, grapes, tomatoes, peppers,
you name it. For farmers, they're a nightmare for California,
(01:53):
with its sprawling orchards and vegetable fields, they're closer to
an existential threat. That's why state officials treat every medfly
sighting like a five alarm fire. Even a handful of
flies in a neighborhood can trigger quarantines, crop restrictions, and
multimillion dollar eradication campaigns. California has been fighting these invasions
since the mid nineteen seventies, but in nineteen eighty nine
(02:16):
something different happened. Los Angeles and surrounding counties suddenly lit
up with infestations, not just a few neighborhoods, but a
whole patchwork of communities. The flies weren't spreading the way
they normally do. They were appearing in clusters, as if
placed there on purpose. And then came the letter from
a group calling itself the Breeders, claiming responsibility for what
(02:39):
they called an act of ecological retaliation. This wasn't just
another outbreak. It was California's first brush with something scarier,
eco terrorism. This is the story of the California medfly attack.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
This is the army California is sending into the suburbs
south of San Francisco to route the invader, threatening the
state's twelve billion dollar agricultural industry. Five hundred conservation workers
are going house to house, stripping the trees of all fruit,
which serves as the host to the Mediterranean fruit fly.
(03:21):
The medfly, as the pest is called, plant its eggs
under the skin of the fruit, where the contamination is
invisible as the maggot devours the fruit from the inside.
The state has tried to kill the species with ground
spring of pesticides and even mating sterile males with females.
Nothing has worked. Soldiers in the latest attack were given
a sendoff by Governor Jerry Brown, who predicts that if
(03:43):
the infestation spreads, the impact could be nationwide.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
It could mean several hundred million dollars in economic loss.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
And it can have a major impact in the availability
of fruits in vestments. And of course, California produces twenty
five to fifty percent many of the US to be
belie throughout the.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Country of local governments here have prohibited aerial pesticide spraying,
so for the next month, these workers will try to
remove and destroy every single piece of root in this
contaminated area.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
To understand why the state panicked, you have to understand
California's relationship with agriculture. By the nineteen eighties, the state
had become the nation's produce aisle, its Mediterranean climate and
vast irrigation networks, turning out everything from oranges and peaches
to lettuce and grapes. Farming was worth tens of billions
a year, and when you counted the ripple effect shipping, processing, exports, etc.
(04:38):
It powered a huge chunk of the state's economy. A
pest like the medfly threatened all of it. The insect
could ruin at least twenty two of California's stable crops,
effectively turning orchards and vineyards into compost piles. Worse, if
the fly ever became established permanently, the fallout would not
stop at the farm gate. Other states and counties would
(04:59):
slam the door on California's produce, fearing the bug would
hitch a ride in shipments. The result would be constant infestations,
endless pesticide use, and potential trade bands that could gut
the entire industry. For that reason, California's policy was simple,
zero tolerance. Any sign of a medfly meant an immediate
(05:20):
and aggressive eradication effort. Most of the time, the flies
probably arrived the same way they still do, smuggled fruit
or travelers unknowingly carrying infested produce in their luggage. Throughout
the late nineteen seventies, inspectors caught small infestations almost every year.
The state would set traps, impose quarantines, and deploy countermeasures.
(05:42):
One of the main tools was the sterile insect technique,
where labs turned out male medflies, sterilized them with radiation,
and then released them in massive numbers. The sterile males
mated with wild females and no viable eggs were produced.
Slowly but surely, the population would collapse. But by nineteen
eighty California faced something much bigger. That summer, both the
(06:05):
Bay Area and the Los Angeles regions saw infestations spiral
out of control. By nineteen eighty one, millions of larvae
were turning up in backyard fruit trees. The thread of
embargoes on California crops loomed. Losses were estimated in the
tens of millions. The federal government began leaning on the
state to do more, and so Governor Jerry Brown, not
(06:27):
exactly known for his love of pesticides, authorized a desperate measure,
aerial spraying of malathion. Suddenly, California neighborhoods found themselves under
nighttime air raids from fleet of helicopters missing a syrupy
insecticide bait. Officials insisted it was safe, but residents were horrified.
The smell hung in the air, cars were spotted with residue,
(06:49):
and people complained of both headaches and nausea. Protesters railed
against what they saw as chemical warfare in their own backyards.
Lawsuits flew. At one point, d official even drank a
glass of diluted malatheon on camera to prove it would
not kill him. It didn't, though it also did not
win over many doubters. The campaign was controversial, but it worked.
(07:11):
After months of repeated spraying in the release of overall
billion sterwile flies, the nineteen eighty one outbreak was declared
over The price tag was estimated at roughly one hundred
million dollars. From then on, aerial spraying of malathion became
California's go to response. Whenever medflies showed up. Throughout the
nineteen eighties, infestations would flare, and helicopters would return, spraying
(07:34):
malatheon over both farmland and suburbs. By the late nineteen eighties,
the whole process felt routine. The flies appeared, the state, sprayed,
crops were saved, and everyone moved on. But in nineteen
eighty nine, the routine broke down. What started as a
few trapped flies in Los Angeles soon ballooned into a sprawling,
illogical outbreak that left scientists baffled and residence furious. At first,
(08:11):
nineteen eighty nine did not look much different from the
other years. In early summer, inspectors checking traps in Los
Angeles County started finding medflies. A few turned up near
Alesian Park, just north of downtown. By July, thirty four
had been captured in that area alone, not a massive number,
but enough to set off alarms. State officials quickly declared
(08:33):
a seventy square mile quarantine zone and brought back the helicopters.
One night in August, the low thrum of rotors returned
as malathion bait ranged down over fourteen square miles of
Los Angeles. Forty million sterile medfly mails were released to
follow up. For Californians who had lived through the nineteen
eighty one crisis, it felt like deja vus. The drill
(08:55):
was familiar. Find the medflies, spray the neighborhoods, rolled out
sterile inside, lift the quarantine, and the clear victory. There
was no reason to think nineteen eighty nine would play
out any differently. But the summer dragged on, and instead
of subsiding, the problems spread. By late September, inspectors had
trapped a medfly in Whittier, miles from the original Alesian
(09:17):
Park cluster. Then more flies appeared across the Los Angeles basin.
By October November, they weren't just in La anymore. They
had crossed over into Orange County. Every time a new
cluster was detected, the helicopters expanded their grid, inspectors, stripped
fruit from trees, set out more traps, and tried to
stay ahead of the spread. Before long, the outbreak wasn't
(09:38):
a cluster at all, but a region wide invasion. At
its peak, more than two hundred and thirty square miles
across Los Angeles and Orange Counties were under both quarantine
and repeated pesticide drops. By year's end, as the Los
Angeles Times put it, the battle against the Mediterranean fruit
fly had become an open war for farmers and agricultural officials.
(10:00):
This was a worst case scenario. Eradication costs were exploding.
By the end of the campaign, the state would spend
around sixty million dollars, making it the second most expensive
medfly fight in history. Even worse was the possibility that
California might lose control completely. If the fly became established,
it could cripple trade, force farmers to soak their crops
(10:22):
in pesticides, and leave the state's billion dollar produce industry
in tatters. Meanwhile, southern California residents were once again enduring
nightly flyovers and chemical mists. Public meetings grew tense. Officials
repeated that malathion in its diluted form posed no health risk,
but many people weren't buying it. They had lived through
(10:43):
years of these air raids, and patients was already thin.
The parents worried about their children breathing in the spray.
Gardeners claimed that their coypons and backyard pets were dying,
and a creeping distrust began to set in. They began
to wonder was this cure worse than the disease. On
the other side of the debate, growers and farm groups
(11:04):
were furious that the state wasn't being aggressive enough. They
demanded faster, eradication, harsher quarantines, really, whatever it took to
save the spring nineteen ninety harvest. Agriculture was too important
to gamble with, they argued, and the medfly was too
dangerous to let linger. By December nineteen eighty nine, one
thing was clear. This outbreak was unlike any the California
(11:27):
had ever seen. Hundreds of adult flies had been trapped,
as many as in the previous fifteen years combined, and
yet field crews searching trees and fruit baskets kept coming
back empty. Normally, a medfly invasion would leave plenty of
evidence fruit teeming with maggots, but in nineteen eighty nine,
larva were strangely scarce. Inspectors would pull apart fruit from
(11:50):
infested neighborhoods and find nothing. Even more puzzling was the
sex ratio. Traps were catching mostly females when normally they
would be pulling in more mails, and the flies weren't
showing up randomly. Time after time. They were caught just
outside of boundaries of areas that had already been sprayed.
Every time the helicopters declared his own clean, a new
(12:11):
cluster would appear just beyond it, forcing the quarantine map
to keep expanding outward. Scientists began to admit what they
hated to say out loud, that none of this made sense.
The spread wasn't natural, it did not fit the usual
biology of the medfly. Something or someone was influencing their pattern.
(12:32):
And just as those doubts were bubbling to the surface,
a mysterious letter landed in the mailboxes of California officials
and newspapers. It was signed by a group calling itself
the Breeders. That's after the break. On December third, nineteen
(12:59):
eighty nine, as officials scrambled to make sense of this outbreak,
a letter started showing up in mailboxes across California. It
arrived at the office of Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley,
at the desk of a few state senators, and in
the newsrooms of the Los Angeles Times and the Fresno
b Two typed pages, single spaced, unsigned, except for a
(13:19):
name at the bottom that felt almost like a punchline.
The contents, though, were anything but funny. The writers claimed
responsibility for the medfly invasion. Whoever this was, wrote, state
officials have probably noticed an increase as well as an
unusual distribution of medfly infestation in Los Angeles County since
March nineteen eighty nine. This was no coincidence. The mysterious
(13:42):
letter writer said that this outbreak wasn't natural, It was sabotage.
This was a campaign of deliberate pest releases carried out
by eco terrorist angry at California's malathion program. According to
the letter, the group had smuggled medfly eggs and larvae
into southern California, or that year began rearing them in
captivity and then released pregnant females across the region. Their
(14:06):
goal was to overwhelm the state's eradication campaign, bankrupting the
aerial spray program and forcing California to abandon chemical warfare
against the environment. Their tone was mocking, even triumphant. They wrote,
our position is absolutely non negotiable. Every time the copters
go up to spray, we'll go into Virgin territory or
(14:26):
old medfly problem areas and release a minimum of several
thousand blue eyed medflies. We are organized, patient, and determined.
The threat was clear, either stop spraying or will spread
the flies into California's agricultural heartland. And as I mentioned before,
the letter closed with the simple ominous sign off the breeders.
(14:48):
The reaction was immediate. Law enforcement headed the letter to
the LAPD's criminal conspiracy section and to the FBI. We
are absolutely treating this as a threat, said LAPD tenant
Helen kidder its extortion. She said, whether the writers were
pranksters or genuine saboteurs thread alone was a crime, but
(15:09):
were they real That was the question. Some officials were
openly skeptical, calling this letter a hoax. The outbreak had
already been underway for months before the letter arrived. Could
a group of anonymous activists really be breeding and releasing
fruit flies on such a large scale. It seemed far fetched,
and yet the outbreak's peculiarities fit uncomfortably well with the
(15:32):
breeder's claims. The pattern of flies showing up just outside
of sprayed zones, the skewed toward females, the lack of
larvae and fruit. All of it was consistent with someone
seating adult insects into the environment, rather than a wild
population breeding on its own. The letter even mentioned that
they had been releasing pregnant females after spray missions, which
(15:53):
lined up with what inspectors were seeing on the ground.
By mid December, California's own Medfly Scientific Advisory Panel US
openly debating whether the infestation could have been human made.
Newsweek ran a story quoting officials who described the outbreak
as illogical and defying explanation. Suddenly, the idea of an
agro terror campaign did not seem so outlandish. The breeders,
(16:15):
whoever they were, never followed up. There was never a
second letter, no phone calls, no manifesto, Beyond those two pages,
they did not explain how they had gotten the flies, specifically,
though smuggling them in from Hawaii or abroad would have
been relatively easy in those days. They did not claim
ties to any known group. They did not ask for money,
(16:36):
just an end to the aerial sprang, and after that
one December letter, which they mailed to officials and publications,
they disappeared in early nineteen ninety Desperate for answers. The
USDA even placed to classify ad In the Los Angeles
Times Personal section. They wrote, breeders, if you're for real,
send one of your little friends we want to talk,
(16:58):
called John at US. For those who found this, it
was a bit of a surreal moment, federal officials essentially
begging eco terrorist to pick up the phone if anyone
ever did nothing about it was made public. Once the
Breeder's letter surfaced, the outbreak was no longer just an
(17:19):
agricultural crisis. It was a criminal case. The LAPD's Criminal
Conspiracy Section took the lead, with the FBI and USDA
investigators in tow. They started out with what was obvious,
the letter itself. Forensic labs combed over the pages and envelopes,
for fingerprints, trace fibers, anything that might tie it to
a center. Officials were cagy about what, if anything they found. Publicly,
(17:43):
no leads ever emerged from that analysis. Meanwhile, detectives tried
to match the strange geography of the infestation with possible
human involvement. Surveillance was quietly deployed in neighborhoods where fresh
clusters of flies kept appearing. But how can you catch
someone in the act of releasing insects? Even if you
had plainclothes officers on every block, it's hard to spot
(18:03):
someone with a jar of flies in their jacket. In
late December nineteen eighty nine, LAPD Commander William Booth told
the press investigators had made some progress, but refused to elaborate.
That vague hint only fueled rumors. Was it an environmental extremist,
a disgruntled agriculture employee, maybe a rogue student from one
of California's many entomology programs. The speculation spiraled. What investigators
(18:29):
did know was that the breeder's threats hid a nerve,
Whether reel or fake, The letters forced officials to consider
the unthinkable that someone might weaponize a bug no bigger
than a finger nail to hold California's food supply hostage.
As one agricultural official later admitted, whether it was real
or not, we had to respond as if it was real.
(18:50):
By early nineteen ninety, the medfly infestation was still raging.
Helicopters kept flying, quarantines kept expanding, and in February, the
USD bought a classify that in the Los Angeles Times
the one I mentioned a few minutes ago, it read
like a plea more than a sting. Authorities were essentially saying,
will negotiate, Please call us. If the breeders saw the ad,
(19:13):
they did not take the bait. They never responded. No
one was ever caught smuggling flies, no lab was ever
exposed as a source, and no arrest were made. In
the end. What ended the outbreak wasn't a breakthrough in
the investigation, but a tactical shift in pest control. By
March of nineteen ninety, California finally gave up on the
(19:34):
endless malathion sprang and leaned almost entirely on sterile insect technique.
Millions of radiation sterilized males were released over Los Angeles
and Orange Counties. Slowly, the medfly population collapsed by November
of nineteen ninety, sixteen, exhausting months after it began, The
medfly outbreak was officially declared over. It was the last
(19:55):
major medfly crisis California has faced to this day. All
incursions have happened since, but nothing on that scale. The
helicopters sprang malathion at night never returned in that sense
the breeders, whether they were real or imagined one. As
for the criminal case, it simply withered away. No suspects
(20:16):
were ever publicly named. The FBI backed away once it
was clear no federal terrorism charges were coming, but California
lawmakers did not forget. In June of nineteen ninety, the
state passed a bill making it a felony to deliberately
import or spread the Mediterranean fruit fly before then believe
it or not doing so was only a misdemeanor. The
(20:36):
laws spelt it out plainly. Any person who wilfully and
knowingly imports, into, or transports or ships within this state
a Mediterranean fruit fly is guilty of a felony. This
was a direct response to the breeders. Airports and postal
centers beefed up inspections more fruit was seized at the borders,
but the breeders never resurfaced. We'll be right back after
(21:00):
another quick word from our sponsors. With the infestation beaten back,
but the case unsolved. The question has lingered for decades, who,
if anyone, was really behind it. Without arrest or hard evidence,
the breeder's letter became a kind of Russ Shark test. Investigators, scientists,
and journalists of all floated theories, but none have led
(21:23):
to any definitive answers. One explanation is the most straightforward.
The breeders were exactly who they said they were, an
eco sabotur cell small, secretive and furious about aerial malathion spring,
and they decided to fight pesticide with pest. The anomalies
of nineteen eighty nine certainly fit their story. The way
(21:43):
medflies popped up just beyond spray zones, the overwhelming number
of females being trapped, the scarcity of larva in the fruit,
All of this could point to someone deliberately seating adult flies,
especially pregnant females, and two targeted neighborhoods. If that's true,
then California was hit with one of the first successful
acts of entomological sabotage in US history. The breeders forced
(22:06):
a sixty million dollars eradication campaign, drove the state away
from malatheon spraying, and proved a point about how fragile
the food system really is. The problem is there's no
hard evidence. There were never any arrest, there were no
labs busted, No one was ever caught red handed. Entomologist
noted that breeding and distributing thousands of medflies would have
(22:27):
required skill, space, and an almost absurd level of luck.
As one USDA scientist said at the time, we don't
see any hard evidence that the letter writer has the
wherewithal to do what he has threatened. It's one thing
to boast in a letter, it's another to pull off
a region wide outbreak. So that brings us to the
second theory that the letter was a hoax and the
(22:48):
outbreak was natural, just strange. Under this view, the breeders
never existed. They were just opportunists, maybe alone crank with
a typewriter who took credit for a bad year. Agricultural
officials publicly blamed illegal fruit imports in nineteen eighty nine,
the same culprit that they always cited travelers bring in
a mango or guava from an infested region, it carries
(23:11):
eggs or larvae, and suddenly Los Angeles has a problem.
Southern California is a bit of a hub for global travel.
It is entirely possible that multiple introductions happened at once.
Seating the widespread outbreak, and in fairness, medflies had shown
up almost every year since the mid nineteen seventies. Nineteen
eighty nine was extreme, but not impossible. Officials remembered a
(23:33):
similar prank letter surfacing during the nineteen eighty one crisis,
quickly dismissed as fake. Why couldn't the breeders be the
same thing, just timed better? Years later, some analysts would
argue exactly that that the letter was unlikely to have
actually been carried out, and the medflies themselves had hardly
been in hiding. A third theory, perhaps more controversial, comes
(23:56):
from UC Davis entomologist James Carry suggested the outbreak wasn't
sabotage or a fresh import, but rather a re emergence
of medflies that had never really left. In his view,
earlier eradication campaigns in the nineteen eighties might not have
killed every last insect a few survivors could have persisted
in backyard fruit trees, lying low until conditions allowed them
(24:18):
to multiply again. Carrie even mapped old infestation sites against
the nineteen eighty nine hotspots and found that they overlapped
suspiciously well. He stated, is it just a coincidence exactly
the same time, at exactly the same place. I just
can't buy it. If true, that would mean that the
medfly had established itself in California long before the state
(24:39):
admitted it. For years, officials insisted the pest was never resident,
that every outbreak was an isolated incursion. Admitting otherwise would
have been political suicide. But Carrie's theory linkers as a
reminder that sometimes nature is more stubborn than paperwork allows.
There were some other, more exotic ideas. Some wondered if
an insider at a stere fly rearing facility had slipped
(25:01):
up or even sabotage debatch so fertile flies were released
instead of sterile ones. Others mused about motivations outside of environmentalism,
maybe a disgruntled farmer or competitor, or even a government
ploy to justify more funding. None of those ever really
gained traction, so the debate still sits where it did
in nineteen ninety. Was the medfly crisis of nineteen eighty nine,
(25:24):
the result of eco terrorist with a grudge, a hoaxer
with good timing, or simply nature doing what it does best,
reminding us that it doesn't care about our borders or
our billion dollar industries. By the end of nineteen ninety,
(25:49):
the helicopters were gone, the quarantines were lifted, and officials
declared victory. The medflies were once again evicted, but the
bigger question whether the INFAI station had been natural or
man made, was never answered. The breeders vanished as suddenly
as they appeared. It was as if they had dissolved
into thin air, leaving only that one typed manifesto and
(26:12):
a year of chaos in their wake. California lawmakers tried
to make sure it would not happen again. In June
nineteen ninety, the state made it a felony to deliberately
import or spread medflies. Inspectors at airports and postal facilities
tightened their checks, agricultural departments doubled down on preventative trapping,
and perhaps more significantly, California abandoned the idea of mass
(26:35):
aerial malaffion spring for good, as I touched on just
a moment ago. From the mid nineteen nineties onward, the
state has relied almost entirely on sterile insect technique and
ground based measures, approaches that were less controversial, more sustainable,
and frankly, more palatable to a public still bitter about
the nightly chemical showers of the nineteen eighties. In that sense,
(26:56):
the breeders real or not, got what they wanted. The
helicopters carrying malathion never came back. The case against this
group has stayed cold, though yet the memory of the
outbreak has linkered in agricultural circles as a cautionary tale.
In two thousand and one, after the anthrax attacks, federal
biosecurity officials even revisited the breeder's letter as an example
(27:19):
of how vulnerable the food system could be. Agro Terrorism,
a term barely used since nineteen eighty nine, suddenly entered
the national lexicon, and the medfly mystery from California was
cited as one of the few real world cases to
point to. Decades later, this story remains unsolved, where the
breeders a genuine eco terrorist cell that has successfully forced
(27:42):
a policy change through biological sabotage. Were they pranksters exploiting coincidence,
or were they never involved at all, with Mother Nature
doing the dirty work while humans bickered about who to blame.
Without evidence, we may never know. What we do know
is that California, learned from the ordeal, built one of
the most vigilant pest monitoring systems in the world, trapping
(28:04):
millions of flies annually to catch even the smallest incursion,
And in the year since, medflies have still appeared a
handful in Dixon in two thousand and seven, a cluster
in two thousand and eight, a few in Los Angeles
as recently as twenty fourteen, but each was stamped out quickly.
None have ever again reached the scale of nineteen eighty nine. Still,
(28:24):
the specter of the breeders hangs over every new detection, because,
whether they existed or not, they forced California to confront
something that It doesn't take bombs or bullets to terrorize
a state. Sometimes all it takes is a handful of bugs.
As of this recording, the story of the nineteen eighty
nine California medfly attack remains unresolved. Thank you all for
(29:08):
listening to another episode of Unresolved. I'm going to keep
the end credits brief again for this one because I
was originally planning to cover another story, that of the
three Decker girls who were murdered in Washington State, believed
to be murdered by their father, Travis Decker. I had
a full script written, but a couple of days before
I went to record, there was a major news update
(29:28):
and that story maybe in the process of resolving itself.
So instead I pivoted to this one, which was in
the process of being written and almost fully complete. I
kind of put it into high gear and finished it myself,
but I hope you enjoyed it. It was an interesting,
strange mystery, and we should be back with another full
length episode next week. However, I would like to think
Amelia White, who wrote and researched the brunt of this episode.
(29:52):
I've been your host, Michael Wheelan, and I will be
back with another full length episode next week. Until then,
I hope you all stay safe, stay healthy, and I
will talk to you. Come and come.
Speaker 5 (30:53):
And come.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
Co co
Speaker 5 (31:35):
Co Cot
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