My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 327 - Double Mylar

Episode Date: May 19, 2022

This week, Georgia and Karen cover the disappearance of the Yuba County Five and the tragic Clydach murders. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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That's Georgia Hartstark. That's Karen Kilgariff. Those are your rights being taken away right in front of your eyes. Not like that? Did you want to start like that or not want to start like that? I can't remember. We could read discussion. We could beat around bushes for 25 minutes.

Or we could get to the... Or we could say, how's your week been? I watched a show. Fizzy Phillips was great in it. What else? I should have sent you in a condolences birthday balloon rather than a happy birthday balloon. Yeah, you know, Karen, for five seconds, can we focus on what's positive, which is today, technically two days before my birthday.

I had the doorbell ring at a weird time where I was like, what's... I was like, very immediately suspicious. Yeah. I ordered. No... No postmig. No ding-dongs. What could this be?

And I went to the door. And there was a beautiful bouquet with two... Not one, two balloons attached. Oh, I got the double Mylar. Oh, shit. Because it was like, do you want... You know, it's always the add-ons. Do you want to add this?

Do you want to add one Mylar balloon or would you rather add two? Two. And for a minute, I was like, I wonder if her dogs are terrified of Mylar balloons, like my cats are. But I was like, they'll deal with it. They're not. Okay. And who cares?

Truly, I'm the kind of pet owner and that's like, oh, are you scared of balloons? Too bad. They're my favorite fucking thing. I opened the door. First of all, let me just, let me flourish it up and describe these balloons. Because if you don't know, if you just started listening to this podcast, then you should know that I, one of the hosts, Karen Kilgarov, love balloons more than anything in the world.

I think they're the greatest invention of all time. I mean, I'll take a standard state fair balloon that still does plain old air. Those are great. These guys, these are like those at the grocery store, checkout line style balloons that never go down. Like tacky, you're going to have this for two months. Yes. Kind of sadly, we can slowly go towards the ground.

Doesn't make me sad. No. I love it. I love it. I'm like, what a gorgeous ballet. Please dance around this room at the slightest wind coming up. How about when there's a regular balloon and a balloon inside of it? That's a regular balloon.

Those double-deckers? They do that at Disneyland. They do. First time I saw that at Disneyland, I was like, that's the most gorgeous art I've ever seen in my life. Someone's brilliant. And then they put glitter inside of it. Like what more does one want in life?

Just to break those balloons, both of them in front of your sister's face when she's not expecting it. Okay. So one of my balloons is a happy birthday cupcake balloon that on first glance, like the top, it looks like it has a little candle in the top, but for a second, I thought it was the number six, like it's a six-year-old's birthday, which is even better. But then, because, you know,

Georgia Heartstark is nothing if not hip and modern, this second balloon has emojis all over it. Let me see it. I can't see it. Emojis? Also, those flowers don't look as good as they did in the picture. I will say that right now. I hate to say it, but they never do.

They're really pretty though. They're like, they're really, there's a ton of them. Okay, great. I got the big one. I got the double balloons. Brightly colored. No, it's really pretty. Great.

What emojis? A poop. Oh, there it is. Is there a poop emoji? Ah. No, there's no poop emoji. They're all really happy emojis, and some of them are kissing,

and some of them just have the cute cheeks. Cute. Yeah. It's a great birthday solo. It's my first, hopefully, of many birthday celebrations this week. That's what happens when you accidentally, A, get, think that your birthday is on the 10th, not the 11th, and B, the amazing company that I heard them from does it a day early.

I did it for tomorrow, and they're just like, we got you. You're going to be number one. You know what? You're going to get right in there. And like, also, I actually really respect a company that's like, we're selling a totally different product, but do you want to add a Mylar balloon? Like, yes, every time.

What kind of crappy chocolates do you think that a flower company has? I don't care. It's the thought. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. No one wants to deal with your crappy chocolates. Give two balloons. The effect is so great.

A fucking teddy bear. You can do a teddy bear. Shit. Could you imagine? No. Well, just wait till your birthday. You better give me a teddy bear. You won't have to.

Yeah. I walked into Trader Joe's, and they had, like, today. Today's Monday, the day after Mother's Day, because we record, what, a week early now? At least, yeah. Because it goes on other places. Yeah. And there's so much leftover Mother's Day accoutrements that,

like, nobody bought. It was so sad. Like, their displays were still up of Mother's Day stuff. Oh. Which is just that they just put anything pink and white in the store on these displays. And there were so many flowers left and so many, like, Mother's Day things, and it made me uncomfortable.

Like, you have to picture. It could mean anything. They ordered the wrong number or whatever. But it's like, I would immediately be like, ooh, a ton of moms didn't get stuff this year. Yes. And it was like, here's your cookout stuff for Mother's Day, or your brunch.

Like, here's what to make for brunch. If your mom is vegan, we got that covered too. Nope. No. No. Sorry. All those children of moms who shop at Trader Joe's are just like, yeah, forget you.

Yeah. No way. You're not getting any of this delicious pizza dough or whatever you can buy at Trader Joe's. That's the first thing I think of. Or those, like, rice balls in the appetizer section. There was a time when I only ate appetizers from Trader Joe's. That was basically.

Talking about arancini. Dad, that's right. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, now that I have an air fryer, that's all I fucking need is frozen appetizers. That's right. Girl. That's the key.

Do it. To get back in. Yeah. I have to get back in. Anyway, speaking of getting back in to our reproductive rights being completely trod upon. Speaking of getting back into an America that's not being run by a fascist Christian, right?

How are you? You know, what have you been watching on? Okay, it's called Girls Five Ever. Do you know what I'm talking about? I'm actually being serious. Is it for real? Yeah. It's ridiculous.

It's a TV show on Peacock that it's a comedy sitcom. And it's these five girls were in a girl band in the early 2000s. Oh, yes. And now they're getting back together, but they're all in their 40s. Yeah. Oh, wait. I feel like I've seen this poster before.

Yeah. Okay. Is that what you're talking about? Busy Phillips? Yeah. She's in the band. Yeah. She is so fucking funny in it.

She plays exactly who you think she play, but also Paula Pell is in it. Oh, yeah. And she's one of the girl bands. And then Renee Elise Goldsbury is in it as well. And Sarah Bareilles is in it too. So they're all like actually amazing singers, you know? Yeah.

It's super funny. And she, you know, it's, it's a Renee from Hamilton. So of course she like just belts it out randomly. Yeah. The same with Sarah Bareilles. Yes. Incredible. The great bragging our family is that Sarah Bareilles played

at Adrienne's brother's wedding because she's friends with Crane, who Dominic married. That's really, it's, you really have to know this family know what I'm talking about, but I'll never forget my sister went to their wedding and the next time I talked to her, she's like, Oh my God, this girl sang at their wedding and she had the best voice. She was so good and she's going to be really famous.

I was like, Oh, that's kind of sad that you're telling me that it's like a wedding in Nevada or whatever. And then she really, she's actually very famous. It really happened. She actually did bust out and become a person everyone thought she would. It's really funny.

Girls five ever. So stupid and corny and like, but like funny jokes like that. And I mean, listen, if you're down in a deep, deep hole of, um, that our country is shockingly going, going deeper into shit than we even thought it could be, then girls five of us. It's like, that's what you need.

Just to turn away. Yeah. Just look up from your phone for five minutes and watch. Yes. That, um, I'm trying to think really quick of something that I've watched that like I, I actually went back to arrested development again.

Oh yeah. Where I was just like, just anything, something familiar. I can't remember what, yeah. I need reliable familiar. Oh, okay. You can think I've gone insane. And you know what, perhaps I have and perhaps it's my right to do that.

The one I have left. Perhaps it's for the best. Oh yeah. So Mike Myers has a show on Netflix called the pentaverate. I've not heard this. He plays, it's basically like, it's a, it's a secret society of people. And he plays a bunch of the people in the pentaverate.

He's like plays like nine characters. Yeah. But he also plays this Toronto based older newscaster who's basically the man on the street. Like they've farmed him out and they're going to fire him. And he's like, no, this job is my whole life. And they're like, well, you have one more chance. Bring in a big story.

And so he stumbles upon this secret society. And he tries to make that his story. Yeah. It's actually the character he's playing is based on a real Toronto newscaster who then appears at the end. And I saw that part cause someone was like, oh yeah, you have to watch till the end cause that guy, the real guy actually shows up and I started crying.

Like wait, what? Cause it's really sweet and cute the way he plays him is so real. And I thought it was going to be, you know, I love Mike Myers. I'm the one that watched the love guru. Right. The morning it opened. Oh, we know. We've told that story a time or two.

But I thought this was just going to be kind of stupid. And for kids, it was making me lol the entire time. I watched like three episodes. It's super goofy and funny, but like his, the characters he plays are great. Okay. It's funny. It's a must.

Right. Right. Yes. And now that we're all going to move to Canada, we got to get used to the culture so we can get, get those accents going. Yeah. Get the boots.

Get the a boots. Now while you, what's their money called again? The loonies. Get your loonies and your toonies straight and meet us in Toronto, baby. I've said to bloonies as a joke so many times. I actually thought it was really called.

They were really called the bloonies and my friend, the Canadian Jake, I've got really mad. He was like, they're toonies, not the bloonies. The bloonies sounds like a pirate's money. Right. That's it. I liked it.

It's like you're in Goonies or something. Yes, exactly. I want to hold sunken boat full of the bloonies. Hell yeah. And you deserve it because you've been through enough. Enough already. Fucking birthday. It's my mother fucking two days before my birthday.

I just love how the balloons are just right here in the background. Just always watching. I saw them when we turned on zoom and I was like, shit, someone gave her the same thing as me. I was like, you're not original. Someone else went for the two fucking Mylar balloons. Shit.

I have that many friends. Oh, the balloons. It's three days before my birthday. The balloons should be arriving any minute. When the balloons start coming back, that brings track of balloons into my driveway. Baby. People are like, fuck the birds.

Fuck the birds. Fuck the birds. Fuck the birds and the bees. That's what my government is saying to me. I mean, practice no birds and bees, and that's the best way to not have to worry about your reproductive rights ever again, right? There's all the privacy issues.

Yeah. There's the HIPAA laws that they're trying to get rid of so that if you do something with your doctor, your job will know about it. Jesus Christ. It ain't right. Jesus Christ. That is right.

Jesus Christ would not be down with this, but you're doing it in this name of Jesus Christ. No. No. No. That's a complete that what they're doing in his name is an atrocity. It's dirty and it's wrong.

And I'm hoping he comes back because you know what? I feel pretty good. I feel pretty good about the score I've, I have a head marked up so far in my life. I don't think those people are going to stand a chance in front of the old JC. Please. Please.

Please. JC is not putting you on his dodgeball team. I'll tell you what. No. And that's just like the basics. Bringing you to heaven, which doesn't, isn't a concept that makes sense. Not happening.

To you. To you. Is that what you meant? Certainly not. To you. To you. He would rip that gold cross off your neck. If you're for these laws,

you're absolutely against Jesus Christ. You are. Did you hear my new rap? There it is. That was it. Okay. Sorry. This isn't helping.

No, no. So we're going to donate to abortion funds.org. Yeah. That's the national network of abortion funds. So just so you guys know, the national network for abortion funds has set up a donation fund that splits your donation between more than 80 abortion funds across the country.

So again, that's abortion funds.org. Do what you can. We're going to do $25,000. Though just because it feels pressing and important and we know that you know it's important. absolutely get localized in your community, start signing up at places, start getting involved. If you even just want to be the person that helps other people to figure out what they can do. There's marches. I bet you there's going to be a national strike, which would be so thrilling.

If you have money, give it. But what we all have time, we have energy, we have power. We're incredibly empowered people here in America. If you read the news, they're making it seem like things are over and like we're already all behind bars. Since some of us are not, those of us who are not should act and act now. Let's get pissed off everyone. Let's get fucking pissed. Yeah. This is quite a time. It's been building up to this time. People are so tired of shit like this. These answers of like, oh, I have a bunch of problems in myself. So what we're going to do is start restricting women's rights or restricting reproductive rights or restricting others.

As long as it doesn't look like me, throw them in jail, that whole mentality is just so unevolved. It's so disgusting. It's so dark and crazy and it has to be beaten. It has to be risen up against. We are the majority. That's the other thing. We're the majority. People are for abortion rights in this country. It's like 70%. And that's just a fact. So if you want to talk about a very active and vocal minority that somehow, like basically running in and changing laws, I mean, it's totally psychotic. It is. It is. It's a violation of human rights and we can't just sit by and watch it happen. It's going to change history. Well, they're putting us back to like the 1700s.

I mean, that's what's crazy. The craziest thing about it is just like what they're, it's not just they're taking away, like you can't rationalize it. People who feel like they might be moderates or people who feel like, I'm not sure how I feel, but it's not about that. This is about privacy laws. This is about human beings being able to do what they want to do. We're not fucking pilgrims. There's a reason we have evolved to this state. And it's because it's what the individual people and then the masses of people have demanded and have voted for and have been the majority of. It's not, this should be majority rules and it isn't. Your body autonomy should not be up for a vote

and for debate. And if you like, it's wild. I've never been in the position to decide whether or not to have an abortion. And it's none of my fucking business if someone else has and has gone forward with it. It's a personal decision that obviously these people who are trying to overturn Roe versus Wade have zero empathy and cannot even begin to understand the complexities of life. And it's just horrifying and sickening. Well, and also, let's be really honest, a lot of them absolutely do know. And a lot of them have had mistresses and side pieces and people that they've never seen again who have had abortions. So they're fucking hypocrites. And that's the truth of it deep down is that the reason abortion

is supported by the majority is because abortion is used by the majority. Abortion is a procedure that's common. It's a choice people make all the time. And sometimes it's a choice people have to make for medical reasons or just personal reasons or whatever. But these men pretending that they're in some kind of moral high ground to tell other people they can't do this thing, also do this thing. Right. And it's not about the abortion. It's about keeping people without money, keeping them poor. And obviously, it's become almost like a cliche that it's like, well, you refuse to help once the child is born. Yes. But you're insisting that this person have a child. It's a cliche, but it's fucking not. It's true. And there's no arguing outside of that. Yes. The bros need to

rise up. Yeah. The other 50% of the reason people get pregnant need to rise up. And they need to they need to get the shit and they need to start absolutely standing up. Yep. All right. I think that went well. We've gone far enough. Yeah. I think that's a great follow up to all the great TV shows we're watching. Looking for a better cooking routine with meal planning shopping and prepping handled. Hello Fresh has you covered. Hello Fresh makes home cooking easy and affordable so you can stay on track and on budget in the new year. Hello Fresh meals are convenient, seasonal and delicious. Stay cozy all winter long with classic comfort foods available weekly. Why stop with just dinner? Now you can enjoy Hello Fresh's expanded menu of quick lunch solutions, weekend

brunch, simple side dishes and amazing desserts. Karen January is going to be my month for Hello Fresh. I am so sick of takeout. I miss cooking so much. I haven't lifted a knife or a pan since like early fall. So I can't wait to get back in the kitchen and Hello Fresh makes it so easy and also makes it so that my food tastes good, which is hard to do on my own. It gives you everything, everything you need. So get up to 20 free meals with purchase plus free shipping on your first box at hellofresh.ca slash murder20 with code murder20. That's up to 20 free meals plus free shipping on your first box when you go to hellofresh.ca slash murder20 and use code murder20. Goodbye. What makes a person a murderer? Are they born to kill or are they made to kill? I'm Candice

DeLong and on my new podcast Killer Psyche Daily I share a quick 10-minute rundown every weekday on the motivations and behaviors of the criminal masterminds, psychopaths and cold-blooded killers you hear about in the news. I have decades of experience as a psychiatric nurse, FBI agent and criminal profiler. On Killer Psyche Daily I'll give you insight into cases like Ryan Grantham and the newly arrested Stockton serial killer. I'll also bring on expert guests to dive deeper into the details, share what it's like to work with a behavioral assessment unit at Quantico, answer some killer trivia and even host virtual Q&As where I'll answer your burning questions. Hey Prime members, listen to the Amazon Music exclusive podcast, Killer Psyche Daily in the

Amazon Music app. Download the app today. All right, well today I'm going to talk about the disappearance of five vulnerable men in 1978 and they're known as the Yuba County Five. Okay, do you know this? Well I know Yuba City. Yes. I have a comprehensive knowledge of all the central and east California counties. Yeah, so you know Yuba City, right? So I know Yuba City but I love Yuba County. All right, but here's the thing about this story, the Yuba County Five. It's also known as the American Dilatov Pass. Oh, remember that one where they all get snowed in on the mountain and what happened? Is it paranormal? Is it not? Yes, I do. All right, well the sources used in today's episode are two heavily used Los Angeles Times articles, one by David Smaller,

another by Kathleen Decker, an Associated Press article, a Washington Post article, by Cynthia Gourney, the Doe Network website, and a heavily used two-part Sacramento Bee, Karen's favorite bee. Hey. Article by Benji Eagle. It is actually a pure lit surprise winning newspaper. I am. The Sacramento Bee. Very high level newspaper. That's good. I don't know how to answer that. I'm sorry. I'm happy for them. Just take my brag. Take my brag for newspaper from a city I lived in for three years. But also I didn't listen to it but there's a full like season of a podcast called the Yuba County Five that just came out and also a book called Out of Bounds by Drew Beeson about the whole case. So if you want to dive deeper after my incredible

reporting on it. So here we are. It's the night of Friday, February 24th, 1978, and five young men head from their homes in Yuba City, California to see a college basketball game in nearby Chico, California. Your second favorite city in Northern California. Chico's got Chico State, which used to be the party college of the United States, not just California. Chico was party place where actually people would be like, yeah, don't go to Chico. Something bad will happen to you. Yeah. There's just vomit everywhere. Beer smelling vomit. Although I think I did. I can't remember if I went there and watched somebody else do stand up or I did stand up myself. It's all kind of a blur. But it was very fun. Sure. It's always fun at first. Yes, exactly. It always starts fun from

like 9.30 to 11 and then. Oh yeah. Go home. Yeah. And that's all Central California or Northern California. It's both kind of. It's like it's straight east. Okay. Should have looked that up, but I have an expert here to tell me. Right. I'll tell you and look, I'm pointing into the air. So that's how you know that I know. So basically Sacramento is directly east of San Francisco. Yeah. Like I think a couple hundred miles, like two hours or whatever. And then everywhere we're talking about, I believe Yuba County, Yuba City, Yuba County is all north of there. Okay. So like Chico, I know for a fact is like a couple hours north of. Okay. Why am I saying I know for a fact? I don't, but I'm from the drives I've been on. Sure. Directly north of Sacramento.

Okay. So the four of the five men are close friends and the fifth had just started hanging out with them recently, but they all got along really well. So let me tell you about these five dudes. So 29 year old William Lee Sterling, he's known as Bill and he'd spent some of his childhood in Napa State Hospital due to what his mother described as quote hyperactive, which was just like a blanket term. And I feel like in the seventies and eighties when the kid wouldn't conform to the, you know, society's needs of small children. Yeah. Like actually seatbelts and watching them. Right. Right. As an adult, he's diagnosed with a mild intellectual disability. Four of the five men are diagnosed with some level of intellectual disability. Okay. He lives with his parents,

Juanita and Jim in Yuba City, and he has a talent for bowling. I love bowling so much. Oh my God. And it's hard. I love it for one round. And then I suck at it and I go to the bar. And your arm hurts. Yes. My arm hurts and I go to the bar. The way we do it in Paloma is you just bring a pitcher of beer to where you're bowling. And then after a while you just start making the kids take your turn for you. That's what we do. What's one reason on the, on the list of do's and don'ts or like wanting to have kids, they bowl your turn. Yep. That's, that's the only thing on the list for me though. They bowl your turn. Yeah. He's right up there. Pros and cons. They run in to get your cigarettes for you. Yeah. One, two, they bowl your turn. Three, they can tell you

how to use TikTok. 24 year old Jack Charles Hewitt is known to his friends and family as Jackie. And like Bill, he also is diagnosed with a mild intellectual disability. He's quiet. He has an introverted personality. Jackie also lives with his parents in Marysville to the west of Yuba City. 32 year old Theodore Earl Weir is known to his loved ones as Ted. He has some developmental delays, which causes him difficulty in reading and writing. And he has a speech impediment. He's described as a very friendly guy with a talent for sports. And he lives with his parents in Marysville as well. And he and Jackie are like best buddies. And since meeting, you know, around 1970, they're rarely seen without each other. 30 year old Jack Madruga also lives with

his parents and the family resides in Marysville where Jack works on the family property. Jack's diagnosis isn't clear. He's considered at the time as a quote, slow learner. After graduating high school in 1965, he's drafted to the US Army for two years, but he's medically discharged in 1968 and returns home to live with his family. It's so true that like back then there were no specifics and everything was so strangely generalized. Yeah. Back then you could be in special ed classes for dyslexia or for if you had like bad eyesight. Right. There were so many either misdiagnosis or just like they kind of just didn't, I don't know. Right. Well, it's true. Cause in this, in one of the like, you know, articles from back then about this, the R word,

which is antiquated and we don't use anymore, linkedly given to all of the men in the story, just like, that's it. There's a word. That's it. We're using it. So the newest member of the group to this friend group is 25 year old Gary Dale Mathias. Gary grows up in Yuba city and plays football for his high school. But in his sophomore year, he ends up in the hospital after experimenting with hallucinogenic drugs. Yeah. Which happened to my dad too. Yeah. I think in the seventies it happened to a bunch of people because it was everywhere and no one knew what it was. Right. Or they took it and you lose your mind. There's no, yeah. I have a bad trip now on weed and I feel like I'm losing mine. Thought of being on acid

back then, you know, for so long after graduating in 1971, Gary enlist with the army and he's stationed in what was at the time, West Germany. Then on two occasions in February, 1973, he's charged with assault. One for battery of a peace officer and the other for an assault with intent to rape when he attacks his cousin's wife, which ends up being dropped via a plea deal. And he serves only around eight months in jail for that. By this time, Gary is using drugs regularly, which leads him to being diagnosed with schizophrenia. He receives a psychiatric discharge from the army on disability grounds. And in 1974, he returns home to live with his family and receives treatment in a local psychiatric facility. He has occasional run-ins with the law

due to his poor mental health. Gary continues experiencing episodes of psychosis requiring inpatient treatment. But by 1978, Gary is back living in the community and doing well thanks to his medication. And so by early 1978, he gets involved with a vocational program for people with intellectual disabilities called gateway projects. And it's here that he meets Bill, Jackie, Ted and Jack. The group's favorite thing to do together is watch sports or play sports. They're pretty much obsessed with sports. And they're all members of the gateway projects basketball team. And aside from Gary's issues that he's had with the law, breaking the law, the men are all known as polite, kind and, quote, nice young men who don't cause any trouble.

And actually, since he had been taking his meds regularly, Gary's physicians called him, quote, one of our sterling success cases. Okay, so the friends are close. And even though Gary's only been hanging out with them for a few months, they got on really well and they're always together. So back to the Friday night, February 24th, 1978, the friends had from Yuba City in Jack's white and turquoise 1969 Mercury Montego. They drive 50 miles to California State University in Chico, Karen's alma mater, to watch the game between UC Davis and Chico State. They start to head home around 10pm. They first stop at a little market in Chico to pick up snacks for the ride home. And this is the last confirmed sighting of them as all five young men vanish. The next

morning, Ted's mom wakes up at 5am and sees that her, you know, always punctual son hadn't arrived home the night before. She calls Bill's mother, who'd already called Jackie's parents, and she had been up since 2am herself, super worried. At 8pm that evening, Jack's parents called the police to report their son and his friends missing. It's extremely out of character for these young men to not come home. They're all really excited about their first basketball game with their team that they're in. It's scheduled for the day, the next day, the day after they disappeared. And so the parents know that none of them would miss it for anything in the world. In fact, some of them had put their uniforms out and were like, just so excited about this game. So they wouldn't have

just taken off. They also really don't have any cash on them and they're only wearing light coats. And again, it's like February, so it's still cold. So all the men still live at home, but they are, they do function well. However, if they're placed in a stressful situation, their ability to cope is diminished, as their parents say. Gary's family is particularly concerned because he requires medication to manage his schizophrenia. And Bill has only taken his $15 weekly allowance and some maps. And Jackie's dad tells police that his son doesn't like being away from home for long periods, especially not overnight. And, you know, they're all kind of vulnerable men and living at home, their parents are, no, this is very out of character for them. Yeah. So the case is led by Yuba County

under Sheriff Jack Beecham. And the first thing police do is search the route the men took to Chico through Yuba and Butte counties. And there's no sign of the group or their vehicles. That is until February 28th, four days after the boys disappeared, when the Montego is found by a Forest Service employee in an area known as Rogers Cow Camp. So very rural, mountainy. It's been abandoned on a dirt road, about a two and a half hour drive from Chico and 60 miles from Yuba City. So a very odd location, you know, considering where they're coming from and where they're going. Right. And so it's on a mountain in the Plumas National Forest. And investigators can't determine why the vehicle is abandoned as it's totally undamaged and operational. And when they jump

started, because there's no keys in it, there's still a quarter tank of gas left. So the car didn't break down. However, it's parked in about 10 inches of snow. But considering there were five, you know, strong young men there, they could have easily gotten it out of the snow. Right. There's no trace of the men or the car keys, the vehicles unlocked and one windows rolled down, which is strange too, because it's Jackie's car. He's obsessed with this car. The thought of him leaving the window down in the snow and walking away is just he would never do that. Yeah. Yeah. So insider food wrappers and all the stuff that they had snacked on from the basketball game. After the basketball game, there's no sign of violence or a struggle.

And for the next five days, law enforcement searches the area around the car, but comes up totally empty handed. And then there's a snowstorm that comes and dumps several feet of snow over the area. But they still search using horses, dogs, four wheel drives and helicopters and find not a trace. Okay. So then a Sacramento man named Joseph Shans comes forward with a weird story. He tells police that on the night the boys left the basketball game, he had been driving up the mountain to check on his cabin, but his car got stuck in the snow. When he tries to push his car out of the snow, he exerts himself so much that he starts to get a mild heart attack. Oh, yeah. So he decides to rest inside his car for the night until he can, you know, get some strength.

And then he tells police that around 11 30 that night, he's lying in his car and he sees headlights coming up behind him. Then a car parks behind him and with the headlights still on a group of people get out. And he says one of them seemed to be a woman holding a baby. But when he calls to them for help, they stopped talking and turned their headlights out. Later he sees more lights from behind him. And this time when he calls to them, they turn their flashlights off. He said that one of the cars was possibly a mercury. And the other was a pickup truck that was parked about 20 feet behind him and then continued down the road. Joseph's car is stuck near where the Montego is later found. So that's credible. He's having a mild heart attack. So he was in a lot of pain.

So it's possible that those were hallucinations from the pain of the heart attack. And he didn't see anything. Yeah, but it was a mild like he it wasn't really a heart attack because he didn't have a heart attack. He did. He later goes when he gets to the hospital, he's a little it's confirmed that he did have a mild heart attack. But his cars found in the same exact place where the Montego is found. So it makes sense that he would have saw something. Yeah, I just I guess that was my point is like, if you're, I don't know if I've ever heard of hallucinations as being a side effect of having a full blown heart attack. So the fact that you'd have a mild one and then be like, I'm hallucinating other cars doesn't seem very realistic.

And almost seems like he doesn't totally believe what he saw or like, right? Well, it is creepy and weird. Yeah. It's so far. I don't like it for sure. No, absolutely not. On March 3rd, another report comes in. And this time the men are said to have been seen in a red 1950s pickup about 40 miles northeast of Marysville out out front of a county store in Brownsville around 2pm on February 25th, the day following the game. The woman who is working in the store tells police that she saw two men at a phone booth outside the store, one of whom she identified as Jackie and two in the pickup and one inside the store. And according to the LA Times, the store's owner sees the men that day and the next day purchasing drinks and

snacks. But a police search of a 50 square mile area around Brownsville fails to turn up any leads and Jackie's brother, Tom, doesn't buy the story of his brother using the phone booth because he says that Jackie hates using telephones. And like when they're out and about, Jackie makes his brother make all the calls home or whatever. So he wouldn't have been the one to do it. He would have made someone else do it if it really was. Yeah. Right. Okay. So as the days go by, police are getting more and more concerned. And Sheriff Jim Grant tells the Associated Press, quote, I was up there myself one day and the only way I could get out was with a compass. It's very heavily forested country, rough and mountainous and rocky. Some places you can only get in on horseback. So this

is the fucking wilderness that they're in. Yeah. Eastern California is kind of wild country. It's really, there's not much out there anyway. Yeah. Yeah. And then in the snow, you know, terrifying. So by mid-March, detectives struggle to come up with a theory of what's happened to the group, but they can't rule out foul play. There's like not a fucking trace of them. So the Madruga family calls in a psychic and there's a reward for $2,600 from the families and other donors, but nothing is coming up at all. Ted's mother tells the LA Times that she thinks that the group has been abducted and is being held against their will. So on June 4th, 1978, almost three and a half months since the boys vanished, some motorcyclists are traveling

through the Plumas National Forest near the Daniel Zink campground and notice a awful smell coming from the vicinity of a forest service trailer. According to the Washington Post, when they go to investigate, they notice that a window had been broken in the trailer. And when the 60-foot trailer is entered by law enforcement, they find the body of a man. He's on a bunk and completely wrapped in bedsheets and the way in which the body is covered in the sheets, it indicates that someone else had wrapped him up after he died. His pant legs are pulled up to his knees and he's not wearing any shoes. And this is because the frostbite on his feet has turned gangrenous. On the table next to the bunk sits a partially melted extinguished candle, a leather

wallet, a beaded necklace, and a ring inscribed with Ted. And the man in the bunk is soon identified as Ted Weir. In the week following the discovery of Ted's body, law enforcement and some of the missing men's families conduct a massive search of the area because he's the only person found in the shed where the other four men, you know? Right. Okay. Around 11 miles from where the car was found, searchers find the partial remains of Bill Sterling and Jack Madruga. So I know, so 11 miles, I was like trying to figure out how long that would take to walk. And you can actually put that into Google and it'll tell you that at a normal pace, it takes either like from two hours to three and a half hours. And that's at a normal pace, but this is like mountainous.

So they walked for hours from the car. The men are less than 100 feet away from each other on opposite sides of the road. Jack is laying face up and has been dragged around 10 feet to the stream. The keys to the Montego are in his pants pocket. Bill's remains are scattered over a 50 feet area. The bodies are skeletonized and due to animal activity and the elements. So no cause of death can be determined. Yeah. So on June 8th, not far from the trailer, Jackie Hewitt's father finds his son's skeletal remains. No. I know. I know. That's horrible. Yeah. And his jeans and shoes are found as well, close by. He has to be identified by dental records and the coroner determines that Jackie died of hypothermia and exposure. According to the Washington Post,

about a quarter of a mile northwest of the trailer, three woolen forest service blankets are found near the road along with a flashlight. But there's no way of knowing how long they had been there and if it's, you know, has anything to do with the men. So according to the Sacramento Bee, analysis of Ted's beard growth. Okay, this is so creepy. Suggest he had survived from around four to six weeks after the group went missing. Oh, he had died from a combination of starvation and hypothermia. So he probably got to the trailer and couldn't walk anymore because of his legs. And so also when he went missing, he had weighed around 200 pounds. And when he's found, he weighs 120 pounds. Oh my God. Yeah. And Gary's sneakers are inside the trailer,

but there's no sign of Gary himself. So all the men have been found except for Gary Mathias. The location where the trailer is located is 20 miles uphill from where the car had been abandoned and deep in the forest. So I looked it up again and a normal 20 mile walk would take about five hours. So this is not normal, obviously. So they could have been walking, who knows, 10 hours in the snow to get from the vehicle to where the four bodies are found. The men would have had to traverse snow drifts of five to 10 feet deep. And they had light jackets on too, because they didn't think they'd be outside at all. A forest service snow vehicle had gone up the mountain the day before the group went missing. So it's thought that perhaps the men had gone up the hill

for like on their own free will. Maybe they thought the car had gotten stuck and they couldn't, you know, figure out a way to get it out of the snow. And so they saw some tire tracks and followed them thinking they must be leading to a cabin or, you know, somewhere we can call for help. So perhaps they followed the vehicle tracks. And then police surmised that as the men followed the tracks of the snow vehicle, they collapsed from exhaustion and die in the snow. And then Ted's death in the trailer itself is a total mystery altogether. Detectives determined that he got in through the broken window. But investigators can't understand how he could have died from starvation or exposure, because the trailer actually contained food, clothing, and stuff to

start a fire, including a butane tank. So there were supplies there that he could have survived off of. Except maybe by the time he got there, he was so exhausted and depleted and everything. Well, here's the thing. There were empty food cans on the floor of the trailer. So someone had found some food and eaten it, but then a storage cabin near the trailer is searched and there's around 30 prepackaged meals that have been taken. But according to the LA Times, another unlocked cabinet in the storage cabin contains enough dehydrated meals to keep all five men alive for months had they found it. So it's just this weird riddle. But the fact that it is untouched and they didn't take a lot of the food, only maybe what they

needed to survive, that behaviour is consistent with what Weir's family members described as a lack of common sense arising from his mental disability. Like, for example, he didn't understand the point of stopping at stop signs. And one night he had to be dragged out of his bed while his bedroom ceiling was burning in a house fire. And his train of thought was that he didn't want to get out of bed because he was worried that it would make him late to work the next morning. Just kind of a lack of the next steps to take care of yourself, in a way. Right. Well, right. It's a different kind of thinking, yeah. Exactly. So it's also hypothesized that believing the trailer was private property,

he feared that they would be arrested for stealing if they used anything found there. Law enforcement hypothesizes that either Jackie or Gary were in the trailer with Ted at some point, because remember, the other two were found together. And then when Ted dies, he's covered up, and then whoever is in the trailer with him leaves to go to try to find help. Yeah. Jackie's mother, Melba, doesn't buy the police theory about the men leaving the vehicle, because it just makes no sense to begin with why they left in the first place. She tells the LA Times, quote, things aren't right. The investigators want to say they got stuck, walked out like a bunch of idiots and froze to death. Why would they leave the car to go die?

There's no sense in that theory, but we can't figure anything that works out right. There's no rhyme or reason to any of it. The men's families are adamant that they weren't reckless in their decision making. It would never have wandered away from the vehicle in cold weather on their own accord. The official search is called off on June 19th, 1978, as police are no closer to determining where Gary is. So Gary is never found. He's never seen again. Oh, no. Yeah. So they don't know whether he survived for a period of time after the group was last seen. Some suspect that Gary killed or like is the cause of the death of all the men and he took off. So some people think he's still alive today. Yeah, but he couldn't. No. It's not Gary's fault

that people were starving to death. No. I mean, what happened is that he just got lost in the wilderness trying to find help for his friends. Yes. And Ted's boots were gone and Gary's sneakers were in the trailer still. So it seems like he just put on better shoes to go to try to hike and find help, brought some of that dehydrated food with him, you know. Yeah. So of course, everyone's blaming Gary because he had a history of violence and that he's more confrontational than the rest of his friends due to his diagnosis of schizophrenia. But Gary's counselors insist that Gary had been diligently taking his meds and he only acted out when he wasn't taking them. But former Sheriff Jack Beecham tells the Sacramento Bee he not only thinks the men didn't go up the mountain

voluntarily, but that Gary has something to do with it. But without any further clues or evidence, the theories are all the families and investigators have to this day. As the years go by, the men's parents start to pass away and there's no one but siblings left to keep the case alive. Theories abound, of course, including foul play. Some think that maybe other men from the basketball game, you know, chased them out of town and confronted them for whatever reason. I mean, there's just all kinds of theories about it. Yeah. One of the theories is that, you know, it's wilderness out there. So they took a wrong turn on their way home. It's dark. They ended up lost. Maybe they got out of the car to, you know, be in the woods or whatever and heard the dude having a heart attack yelling

for them freaked out and ran. That's one of the theories. Or maybe one of them ran and they all got out because they're not going to leave their friend behind and all got lost. Yeah. Which seems most likely to me. But there are so many unanswered questions and weird clues and like what is a red herring and what is not. I mean, it's one of those reasons where the story is always, you know, on Reddit on those threads of what's one story that you think has a lot of red herrings or what, like if you could see any cold case solved or answered, what would it be? And this one always comes up. Sheriff Jack Beecham tells the Sacramento be, quote, I very much regret that we were unable to find those children in time. I think he means, and they were children, but I'm also convinced

that we did everything in our power to locate them and find out what happened. And that is America's Dialetov Pass, the Yuba County Five. Wow. Also, so one of the red herrings I keep thinking of is the guy having the mild heart attack. Yeah. Which is just so weird in of itself. But then he said that one of the groups of people he saw a woman was holding a baby. Yeah. But they were 20 feet away from him behind him. So who knows how he's looking at them. He's also in the process of having a heart attack. True. In the dark. Yeah. With headlights supposedly, you know, flashing in his face. Yeah. So who knows. But I just think he was there. And he also said he thought he saw a mercury, which is what they had. Yeah. So it does seem like there

was something going on and he just didn't get it right for whatever reason. Well, and that makes a lot of sense if there's like a moaning man laying in a car where they don't expect them to be. Yes. But also, why did they, like, how did they get to that spot? I think, and I saw like a map online that's like, it's this one little off ramp that if you didn't know the area very well, and you, you know, it was late at night, whatever, maybe you can't see as well in the dark, you could have taken it pretty easily and gotten lost. You know, it's not like there were McDonald's and stuff along the way. It was like a baron. Yes. You know, road, as you know. So it seems like they realized they were lost, stopped the car, maybe to get their bearings, maybe someone had a

pee, whatever. And from their chaos or the car got stuck, maybe it was more stuck than it was when they found it. And so they left to go try to find help and just disaster. That's crazy. Yeah. So there's just no answer. But I mean, yeah, that's not five men disappearing in the wilderness is such a, you know, there's a lot of questions that are unanswered in the story. Yeah. Yeah. Good one. Thank you. Yeah. All right. Yeah. The story I'm going to do this week is also bad, turns out on the true crime podcast. All bad all the time. All bad all the time. Isn't that just the way we like it? This is the famous, basically case out of

whales from the late nineties. It's the clinic murders. I don't know if you've ever heard of this. It's truly awful. So let's see, we start, it's 427 a.m. on Sunday, June 27th, 1999. And firefighters are called out to a house in clinic in South Wales, UK. It's a village with a population of about 7,000 people. Firefighters arrive at a two-story home on Kelvin Road. The streets lined with these basically homes that are like, they're called semi-detached. A lot of families, everybody is familiar with their neighbors. You know, it's a small town. So when the firefighters arrive, there's neighbors are outside because no one knows whether or not the people that live in the house are inside or not as it's burning. It takes the fireman

about eight minutes to put the fire out and start searching this molding property. When they go inside, they find on the upstairs landing the bodies of 34-year-old Mandy Power, her two daughters, 10-year-old Katie, and eight-year-old Emily. Yep. So they bring those bodies out onto the front lawn. And when the paramedics go to resuscitate Mandy to check for vitals or whatever, they see that she's been severely beaten all around her head, but especially in her face. Oh my God. And the two little girls also have very severe head injuries and face injuries as well. It's very really brutal. Yeah.

Brutal attacks. And then inside the house, they find the body of Mandy's 80-year-old mother, Doris Dawson. She's still laying in bed upstairs. Doris has also been beaten. She's covered in blood and she was disabled. So she used a walker. She had had a really bad brain hemorrhage and she was basically being taken care of at home. This whole family was massacred. Oh my God. All four people are declared dead at the scene. Mandy Power, her full name is Amanda Jane Dawson. Her maiden name is Dawson. She was born in 1965 in Wales and she grows up with her four siblings, Margaret, Julie, Sandra, and Robert. Mandy leaves school when she's 16 years old. Then she meets a guy named Michael Power. They start dating. And basically Mandy's

she's beloved. She was the life and soul of the party is the way she's described. Her family loves her. All of her friends think she's great. In 1986, when she's 20, she marries Michael Power and they move in with Mandy, 68-year-old mother at the time, Doris, whose widowed needs at home care because of the brain hemorrhage, the brain injury. But Doris is very well known in the community for being a really resilient woman and a really kind. So she clearly had been through a bunch, but she was also very beloved. So in May of 1989, Michael and Mandy welcomed their first child, Katie, and exactly two years later, they have their second daughter, Emily, and by all accounts, Mandy's a loving and devoted mother. So the couple buys their own home. In

26-year-old Mandy takes a part-time job as an aged care nurse. Michael works as a baker. So Mandy is working part-time taking care of people and then she has to come home and take care of her own mother at home. Eventually, the couple's conflicting schedules, because Mandy works nights and Michael works early mornings, causes them to grow apart so they get a divorce in 1997. Mandy is devastated, but she and Michael actually remain friends, probably because they have their daughters. They stay on good terms. Now that Mandy's a single mom who's working part-time and taking care of her two daughters and her mom, she is going to have difficulty paying the mortgage. So she's essentially forced to move into the three-bedroom rental property on Kelvin Road with her daughters

and her mother that eventually they're all found at. So Mandy prioritizes basically now that she's like a single working mom and she's kind of got all this responsibility, a lot of stuff going on, a lot of stresses in her life. She knows she needs to get out and do stuff out of the house for her own mental health. There's women's rugby is very popular there and the local team is doing very well. So she starts going to those games and making new friends and she enjoys some much needed socializing. This is what happens leading up to the murders. At one point, Mandy tells her friends and family that she has cervical cancer and she's going to have to go through treatment. The problem is that she actually doesn't have cancer. So no one ever finds out if she did it for attention

or she did it so people would donate and help support. But basically it got around that it wasn't true. And one of Mandy's best friends is another Mandy, a woman named Mandy Jewel who will call MJ for clarity from here on out. So when MJ finds out about this weird lie, she just stops talking to her friend. And what MJ doesn't know is that Mandy has been sleeping with MJ's partner, David Morris, 39 year old David Morris, behind MJ's back. Rumor has it that he's physically abusive, that their relationship is volatile and he's got a record. He's not the greatest person in the world. So then he really hates that Mandy and MJ are friends, obviously. And he gets really pissed at Mandy when he finds out, when MJ tells him about the lie she told about having cancer.

So he's a liar, cheating on his partner with a woman and then now he's mad at her for lying. Sure, makes total sense. So on the evening of Saturday, June 26, 1999, Mandy picks up a job babysitting and she takes her two kids with her. And later that night, while Doris is home alone laying in bed, an intruder breaks into the house and attacks her. She's bludgeoned to death with a four foot pole. And then the killer. So while he's attacking Doris, he hits one of the lights in her room and it causes all like a short in the house. And so after he murders Doris, he goes downstairs to the fuse box and fixes the lights and then hides in the house so that when Mandy and the girls come back, he is there waiting for them. So they don't know that anything's

happened. A taxi drops Mandy and her daughters off at 11 48 p.m. And then she goes, they all, you know, go to get ready for bed. Mandy's up in her bedroom and the intruder like sneaks up, attacks her, sexually assaults her, tries to strangle her. She fights him off and she runs into her mother's room where her mother's already been murdered. So the assailant follows her, attacks her. She falls to the ground. She hits her head on a piece of furniture on the way down. And this is when now he's got her down. And basically this is where he beats her to death with it. He is the same four foot pole that he is killing everyone with. And then this is very triggering and a really disgusting detail. But basically once he murders her, he strips her

naked and then he finds a vibrator and inserts it into her body post mortem, which is just horrifying, just defiling a victim. It's really extreme. Oh my God. He then goes and kills the children in this basically just as horrifyingly first eight year old Emily is murdered, then 10 year old Katie. And afterwards he drags Mandy's body into the bathroom to wash the body. Then he drags all three bodies of the little girls and their mother onto the upstairs landing. He washes their clothes in the shower and then, yeah, and then starts trying to start fires around the house. Why? It's crazy. I mean, it's someone that just makes sense of it. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's really beyond it's the details of this are so disturbing and so awful. Somewhere

around two to two 30 in the morning, the killer puts newspapers around Doris's body and tries to set it on fire. It doesn't work. They try to set another fire in Mandy's bedroom. They go downstairs. They try to start a fire in the living room. And the last fire tempted is in the kitchen. And it's around 345. And that's the one that actually takes off and burns and ends up causing the fire department to come. So the one of the first officers on the scene is Detective Inspector Stuart Lewis. But for some reason, he only spends a few minutes there. He then goes off duty and fails to secure the crime scene. He reports the incident as a fatal house fire, but he doesn't inform his superiors that it's also suspected that a family has been murdered and that arson has been

attempted to cover it up. So none of that is is reported. That's like for the next group of people to discover and and write up essentially. Yeah. So the kitchen, as I said, is the most damaged from the fire. The rest of the house is basically intact. The firemen when they went inside could see that there was blood everywhere. It was on the walls and doors and on the floors, on the furniture and on the ceiling. The upstairs landing is horrible. It's a gruesome place. And that's where the the actual murder weapon, the bloodied pole is left on that landing. The bathtub is filled with bloody water. There's a handprint in blood that's found on the living room carpet. There's a sock found in Mandy's bedroom that's stained with blood and it's a men's sport sock.

The other police believe it to have been warned by the killer while he was rampaging essentially. And then on the floor of Doris's room, they find men's nine karat gold neck chain. It's 20 inches long and it is stained with Mandy's blood and it also has tiny flecks of paint on it. So it's clear to the investigators that the killer planned this attack to a degree but not meticulously planned where they brought the weapon themselves. They believe that weapon was found at the house. And like trying to cover it up but didn't take some obvious evidence with them. Right. It was not in control. It doesn't it doesn't seem. But they do believe that whoever killed the family knew the layout of the home. There's no sign of forced entry but the fire in

the kitchen does destroy a lot of evidence. There's one thing that's clear to the investigators and that's the amount and the extent of Mandy's horrible injuries indicating that she is the primary target of this and that these poor little girls and Mandy's mother are just the collateral damage of somebody trying to kill Mandy. It's horrifying. Okay. So this four foot fiberglass pole it weighed over two pounds and it had basically been at the house since the family moved in. The little girls would play with it like it was a baton. So it was one of those things where it was something someone picked up like when they were there which is really weird. And there's no fingerprints on the murder weapon but there is DNA from an unknown male on that murder weapon.

And that same DNA is also found on two used matches on Mandy's watch and the clothes Mandy was wearing when she was attacked. So the police look into Mandy's background and at first they don't understand why anyone would want to kill her or her family. She isn't under financial pressure. She isn't involved in criminal activity and everyone they talk to describes her as being happy go lucky and fun loving and a woman who's really devoted to her family. So despite investigating and community appeals for information there are no arrests for 12 months on this case. But when terrifying to live in that neighborhood. Horrifying. For those 12 months. Oh my god. So police then they get a witness sketch of a man that was seen in the area around the time of the

murders and when they release it people start talking because the likeness is undeniable. That cop who left the crime scene within minutes the night that the fire started his name was Inspector Lewis and his identical twin brother Sergeant Steven Lewis both look exactly like the police sketch. Oh. Or I shouldn't say exactly. They look exactly like each other and they both look like the police sketch. Oh shit. They're identical twins and they're both police officers. Yeah. And then Steven Lewis has a wife named Allison and Allison herself was a police officer. They actually met in police training. But she had had since left the force. And when Allison hears about the murder of Mandy and her family she's so grief stricken that she tries to take

her own life. What. And then she's admitted to a psychiatric hospital for treatment. And this is basically how they find out that since November of 1998 Allison and Mandy had been having an affair. What. So just a tiny bit into that. So basically Allison and Steven Lewis had met in police training. They got married in the late 80s. They had twin girls in the 90s. Allison left the police force and then she started playing rugby and she was so good at it that she ended up playing for the women's Welsh international team. Basically that's she met Mandy when Mandy started going to the women's rugby games in Swansea. And apparently they hit like they met and it was like they kind of fell in love. It was very passionate. Allison would later describe the week

before Mandy's murder as quote the happiest they had been. Yeah. So Allison was making plans to leave her husband Steven. She believed that she had been living a lie and she really saw a future with Mandy and she really wanted to start a life with her. And she would later tell a reporter Mandy was always kind, loving, tried to do her best all the time and enjoyed her life and her children. She had so much to give and she had so much to live for. Allison gives her DNA for all of the DNA testing that they're trying to do. It does come up as a match of DNA found on Mandy's thigh. But obviously they were in a relationship. Stuart Lewis tells police he quote can't remember where he was between midnight and 1 17 a.m. on the night of the murders. Even though he was the

most senior police officer on duty that night. Yeah. So during the time of the murder, Stuart's out on patrol. He's driving around in an unmarked police car, a red Peugeot. And this car matches the description of a vehicle scene in the area that night. And when officers search for the vehicle log for that car that Stuart was driving, they find that it's gone missing. And he also failed to complete his notebook records from that night. So basically it's almost a year after the murders when police finally speak to Mandy's neighbor, Louise Pugh, who tells police that a few days before the murders, she hears Steven Lewis outside of Mandy's house and he's shouting, if you don't keep away from my fucking wife, I'm going to kill you. Okay. What's up? Right.

So they put taps on Lewis's phones and although Stephen and Allison have an alibi for that night because they had a family barbecue and then they basically went to bed, Stuart Lewis doesn't have a solid alibi. He finished work and then he claimed he didn't see his brother or his brother's wife that night. His alibi is very vague. And then in early July of the year 2000, Allison and Steven are arrested on suspicion of murder. What? Allison too? Yes. And Stuart is also arrested and charged with perverting the course of justice. So essentially all of those coincidental kind of pieces of evidence start to add up and also they don't have anybody. So they arrest them. When Steven's interviewed by the police, he at first denies

knowing anything about his wife and Mandy's relationship. He also denies shouting at Mandy outside her house and threatening to kill her. He later admits that, well, yes, he did tell Mandy to stay away from Allison. It was just a quote unquote joke because the women were intoxicated and he said him and Allison later laughed about it. So seems a little contradictory. Allison ends up getting released on bail. But of course, because of the affair that she was having and the at the time homophobia, she's hounded by the media and the public in a way that Steven and Stuart, of course, are not at all. But Steven is suspended from his job with the police. No criminal charges are brought against them in the end. What? All three

of them, nobody. There's no actual charges ever brought. What? Right. Stuart's investigated by the police complaints authority. And in 2000, their findings are released. And they say that Stuart gave false statements about his actions at the scene, saying that the entries in his statements are lies and designed to deliberately mislead. But they can't really prove that beyond a reasonable doubt in court. So basically, Stuart just gets disciplinary offenses and then is suspended from the force. But he comes back later. And then in January of 2001, Allison, Steven and Stuart are all officially cleared of any criminal involvement. So it's kind of like somebody that looked like them may have been there, or maybe the car they're driving or whatever, but

nothing is. But what about the DNA and the paint flicks? The paint flicks are on the necklace that were found. Okay. The DNA was because they had a relationship. But there's other DNA, too. Oh, there's other DNA. I'll tell you. Okay, God, thank God. I was like, this is cold. I'm going to cry. No, no. So then the police get some information. And so this is actually going back to MJ, the other Mandy and her partner, David Morris. So a friend of a cousin of David Morris's tells police that just after the murders, David confided in him that he'd had sex with Mandy the day before she was killed. So he claims that he had his broken gold neck chain with him because he was taking it to be repaired, but he accidentally left it at Mandy's house. So he tells his cousin he's

worried that police will suspect him of being the killer because of that. So his cousin buys him a new neck chain identical to the old one. And then David tries to kind of damage it so that it looks old and worn. What? Yes. So the police take this information, they start looking around, they look into David Morris's background, and basically he becomes a suspect. And then in March of 2001, he's arrested. Okay. So just to tell you a little bit about David Morris, these Welsh names are amazing. So he lives in a village called Craig Kefen Park, but it does not look like Craig Kefen Park at all. Right. But I guess that's how it's pronounced. Sounds like a guy who works in HR. Yes, exactly. It's just a mile and a half away from clinic.

David basically started his criminal career when he was 14 years old with both petty and violent offenses like robbery, burglary, theft, actual bodily harm. By adulthood, David's racked up two dozen convictions, 1987, when he's 25. He's sentenced to four years in jail after attacking a woman throwing her over the hood of her car and then snatching her purse. So he's not messing around. In 1997, when David's 35, he breaks into his neighbor's home and attacks his neighbor with an iron bar. Oh. The man's bludgeoned so badly he has to get 66 stitches. Holy shit. So David is supposed to go to trial for that assault, but witnesses are so scared to testify that the case ends up falling apart. And by this point, David is working as a laborer and sometimes as a scrap

metal dealer. He is by then divorced from his ex-wife, who he has three daughters with. So police learned that the night of the murders, David was out drinking at a local pub called the new inn with MJ, his girlfriend. And that pub is only a 15 minute walk from Mandy's house. According to David, he and MJ got into an argument at the pub and she gets so angry that she leaves. Witnesses say they heard David talking about Mandy calling her evil. And then they also saw that he was wearing the 20 inch gold neck chain at the pub before he left around 1130. So according to David, he tells police that he walked home from the pub, which should have taken him 15 minutes. But when he gets home, he remembers how mad MJ is. So he decides he's not going to go

in and instead he decides to walk to Swansea, which is over three miles away because that's where his parents live. So on his walk there, it starts to rain. So he changes his mind and walks home and he gets home between three and four a.m. David claims it takes him three and a half hours for this whole walk because he's drunk. MJ tells police that she thought David got home between 1030 and 11 o'clock at night, but she didn't see him come in. When police go test David's story about walking that far, the 3.2 mile walk, they completed in 55 minutes. So it does not take three and a half hours, even if you're drunk. David tells police that he didn't initially tell them about his relationship with Mandy because he was afraid he was already in trouble with MJ and having problems

with her and he didn't want to make that any worse, he claims. And then he admits that he did have sex with Mandy the day before she died. He also tells the police that the unidentified gold chain that was found at the crime scene is not his and then he shows them the one he's wearing. But when police finally test the blood stain gold chain from the crime scene, the flecks of paint underneath the blood stains on the chain match the paint on David Morris's kitchen cupboards. Motherfucker. So he's arrested for the four murders of the Dawson Powers murders and days before the trial, he finally admits that the gold chain found at the crime scene is his. He now says it's broken. He left it in the kitchen at Mandy's house after going there for a coffee

the day before the murders. So the prosecution argues that that night of the murders after the pub closed around 1130, David was still angry. He went to Mandy's house. He was heavily intoxicated and under the influence of amphetamines. And when she refused to have sex with him, he went on a murderous rampage basically and then amidst that violence, his gold chain is stained with blood and ends up on the floor. There's no mention in this trial of Steven Lewis's alleged death threats to Mandy. In fact, David Morris's legal team doesn't even know about any of that happening. Weird. Yeah, it's not disclosed. MJ tells the court that she didn't know what time David got home the night of the murders. She does say she knows she let him in, but that's

different than her original statement to the police. Weird. Yeah. So a fingerprint expert tells the court that the bloody handprint on the carpet in the living room is not David's. And the defense claims that if David walked 15 minutes from the pub to Kelvin Road, there wouldn't have been time for him to kill Doris, then fix the fuse box downstairs, and then lay in wait for Mandy and the girls. Oh, fuck. Right. They also claim that the idea that David killed the family out of rage directly contradicts the evidence indicating that the attack was somewhat planned. So the male DNA found that the crime scene had not been matched to David and is in no way brought up at this trial. They just don't talk about it at all. Weird. Before the trial concludes, Steven Lewis, who

has now been reinstated in his job as a police officer and his ex-wife, Allison, received public apologies from the lead prosecutor. Wow. On June 28, 2002, 40-year-old David Morris has found guilty of all four murders, Mandy Powers and her daughter, Katie and Emily, and her mother, Doris Dawson. And he is sentenced to four life terms. The judge recommends that he served at least 32 years. So then in November of 2003, a BBC documentary airs, and it's called Fair Cops, question mark. And it questions the conduct of the police involved in this investigation. That's now kind of up in the air of like, was this done correctly? Is the right person in jail for it? What about these cop brothers, essentially? Yeah. And there's some like missing pieces that haven't been properly

fit into place. At this point, Steven Lewis and his wife, Allison, are now divorced. That relationship has ended. In 2005, David's conviction is quashed on appeal. It turns out that during his trial, his defense lawyer was the same person that Allison and Steven Lewis used when they were arrested. Oh, no. So that's a conflict of interest, and they order a new trial. Okay. So now it's May of 2006. David Morris is retried at the Newport Crown Court. It's argued that David nursed a particularly strong antipathy towards Mandy Power because of the falling out with MJ. That August, a jury again finds 44 year old David Morris guilty of four counts of murder for a second time. He receives a whole life sentence, and the judge instructs

that he should never be released back into the community. So in 2007, he appeals again. His sentence is reduced to a minimum of 32 years before he can be eligible for parole, but he refuses to participate in any prison programs which require him to admit guilt. So around this time, there's a guy named Brian Thornton. He's a senior lecturer in journalism from Winchester University, and he starts reviewing this case file. He thinks there's something not right about the, basically about the whole case. And as he searches documents, he discovers a doctored police document that attempts to cover up the revelation that Steven Lewis was the person who had threatened Mandy. So in 2014, it comes out publicly that on the

morning of the murders, a police informant told detectives that Mandy and her family were being threatened by Sergeant Steven Lewis over the intimate relationship Mandy had with Allison. But this information was basically doctored by the police when it was reprinted for court purposes. So the actual information never made it through. Yeah. Brian also discovers in his citizen sleuth investigation that a specific DNA test called the YSTR test wasn't conducted on numerous items of crime scene evidence containing traces of male DNA. The test specifically targets male DNA and is useful in detecting and analyzing male DNA. Bizarrely, the test was conducted on other items from the murder scene. Basically, they tested it on things that didn't have any

male DNA on it at all. In December 2014, it's announced that criminal cases review commission, which is the independent body that looks into basically claims of miscarriages of justice, they deem that they can potentially review the case against David Morris because of all this other stuff that's being discovered. But then for after looking into it for four years, this CCRC rules that it won't refer David's case for a review on the basis of no new evidence being identified. The media doesn't let this story go. And the idea that David Morris could possibly be innocent just keeps getting brought up. So in October 2020, BBC Wales releases a documentary called The Clitic Murders Beyond Reasonable Doubt. And in that program, several

witnesses driving in the Kelvin Road area at around 2 to 2.30 in the morning in the night of the murders say that they saw men resembling Stuart and Stephen Lewis. One witness called his tip in during the investigation, but no one ever called him back. Nor did they ever hold a lineup that included Stephen Lewis until 15 months after the murder. In November of 2020, South Wales police speak to the witnesses identified in the documentary, but none of the information that they provide ends up undermining David's conviction. Two months later in January of 2021, the South Wales police announced an investigatory assessment of the case at the request of David Morris's lawyers. So basically, they're asked to retest some of the forensic evidence. But while the review is

underway, David dies in prison on August 20, 2021, at age 59. His family gives permission to obtain a blood sample from his body to help with that forensic review, which is incredible of that family. So samples from separate areas of the sports sock that were found in, I believe, Doris's room are reexamined using the YSTR testing. And the results show that it's more likely than not that the person who contributed the DNA found on the sock was David or a close paternal line male relative. So that's the sock that was covered in blood. So it's like that's, it was the sock that basically someone was wearing while the murder was taking place. So it does match him, after all. Yeah. So this is the first time that DNA evidence directly links David to the murder

scene. In October, 2021, the authorities officially announced that the DNA evidence on the sock supports David Morris being the killer. You wish you'd have definitive like a period at the end of it, you know, as someone who just talked about how much I'm fascinated with cold cases. I'm like, no, but I need the answer to this. Yeah, I know. Well, and this is like the source, as I was reading this through, it's like, this source is always a question mark, because if you have somebody that works in a police department is the highest officer, you know, working that day, that's actually indirect conflict with the murder victim, that's a problem like all the way through. Definitely.

Even if they just showed up or were like, yep, test everything on me, I will be there, I'll be in the lineup, whatever. But that clearly wasn't happening. And yet, the DNA proves that it was David Morris that was in the house. It's just so weird too, in cases like this, where it's like, you know, it's not a stranger, there's not no suspects, there's multiple, and you're like, who wants to do this the most? Because clearly, these are all people who want her to be dead. Right. You know, it seems like it should be open and shut, test the DNA, you know, test fingerprints, but it's not always that clean.

It took a long time. Yeah, that's right. It isn't. So Stuart Lewis, who's now retired on a police pension, he released the statement once all of that evidence was actually found saying, it is too late to fully exonerate my name, the damage has been done, the negative impact on myself and my family over the last 22 years has been severe and long lasting. Many will still believe there is no smoke without fire. And even though David Morris has died, intense ongoing media speculation about his guilt and public debate as to who killed Mandy, Doris, Emily, and Katie continues, which I think is very strange. Like it's been a mystery for so long that it's like people don't want it to be solved,

or they can't accept, I'm sure his family can't accept it because it's horrible and they don't want to. But yeah, so the power family, that's Mandy's, you know, Mandy's family, they do their best to keep the victims at the forefront of the public's mind. They say in a statement, our much loved ma'am, our sister Mandy and nieces Katie and Emily were cruelly taken from us in the most horrific way anyone could imagine. The person responsible for these horrific crimes was David Morris. The loss and grief our family went through and continues to go through is heartbreaking and affects so many aspects of our lives. No family should ever go through what we have and still do. It hasn't been helped by the constant campaigns, protests, incorrect media

reports, make-believe books, and TV programs that have misled some of the public into believing that David Morris is innocent. They have blatantly ignored proven facts and replaced them with misinformation to hide the truth. Scientific testing has come a long way in the last 22 years and the police confirmed that there was scientific evidence of David Morris on the sock. And sadly, Morris' family and supporters are refusing to accept these latest findings done by an independent forensic laboratory, which is what they called for. We now feel that this is the time that they accept that Morris murdered our family and finally let them rest in peace. And the saddest and most important fact of this brutal case remains that the Dawson and Power families lost three generations

in a single night. And that's the horrible story of the clinic murders. Wow. Just. I mean, truly, truly horrendous. I feel like with cases like this where it's like there's been corruption and there's been mishandling by many different, you know, on many different levels. When an answer finally comes, no one wants to believe it because what if it's just another misleading thing? So when there's something so definitive as DNA on a sock with blood on it, there's still a way people can, you know, insist that it doesn't mean what it's supposed to mean. You know what I mean? No one wants to accept it. Right. Well, and also I think that the beginning of that story, and I can't imagine if it's like a village of 7000 people. And then it's this horrific, it's a mass

murder, right? It's four people killed at one time. I mean, that's, it's a family side. Yeah. It's insane. It's just like beyond belief. Totally. It's so violent. It's so crazy. It's children. Yeah. It's horrible. And then the dirty like dirty laundry that comes out of that. Right. Right. She's having an affair with her friend's partner, quote unquote. Right. She lied about having cancer for reasons no one can figure out like that. The idea that that is even in the story like is just, we know that because some reporter went and dug it up. Right. It's just victim blaming or giving you a reason why she brought this on herself when really it's like, you know, someone murdered this woman and her children and elderly mother. But then, but kick it up

a hundred notches by revealing a gay love affair. Right. So, you know, all the people who would want to already be pointing at her and being like Harlett, you slept with several people. Well, now they've got this new, the newest wrinkle. Totally. It's about as salacious and horrifying as anything. Absolutely. Then of course they won't let it go. Right. Right. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah. So crazy. So the sources for this story, there's an article from The Guardian written by Steven Morris. There's an article written by Tom Bedford for Wales Online. And there's an article by Nino Williams from Wales Online, Paul Turner from Wales Online, David Mercer for Sky News, Katie Weston for the Mail Online. There's a handful of BBC News articles. The Mail on Sunday,

there's an article by David Rose. David Rose from Schitt's Creek. Steven Morris and David Rose. Yeah. Everybody. Well, wow, that was an episode. Hey, look, here's what's important, I think. You need to reach out. You need to talk to friends as often as you can. You need to talk to smart adults as often as you can. I saw an unbelievable TikTok video today of a woman just kind of talking about what's behind all of this that made me feel so much better and feel so proud. There are young people that are so together that are getting information out to other young people and don't fall for any of the people saying it's inappropriate to protest here, there or wherever. You got to fight for your rights and they're coming for your rights.

And this is a fight and it's real. Yeah. Luckily, we're up for it. Yeah. Well, well, we got to lock arms. That's the thing. People have to, the infighting has to stop and the critical, like everybody needing other people to be wrong so they can feel right has to stop and there needs to be unification. There needs to be like true collaboration. Stay strong and don't give up. Definitely. Well said. And stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? This has been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Hannah Kyle Crichton. Our producer is Alejandra Keck. This episode was engineered and mixed by Stephen Ray Morris.

Our researcher is Gemma Harris. Email your hometowns and fucking her a's to myfavoritmurderatgmail.com. Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at myfavoritmurder and Twitter at myfavoritmurder. Listen, follow and leave us a review on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget you can listen to new episodes one week early on Amazon Music or early and ad free by subscribing to Wondry Plus in the Wondry app. Goodbye.