Gone with the Winnebago PT 2

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I'm Kate Winkler Dawson.

I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime.

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Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes.

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Hey, Paul.

Hey, Kate.

How are you?

I'm doing well.

I left you with a big cliffhanger.

I feel like several cliffhangers from

last week.

The story of Ruth Fernandez, there was a lot.

What do you remember?

I'm going to make you do the summary.

What do you remember about this case from last week?

Well, I remember that

a fraudster, Tony, had gotten into a relationship with Ruth.

They were both in their 40s, Tony being about six years older.

And then as the relationship progressed from 1971 to 1974, it appears that it fell apart.

Ruth had gone to Texas for about a month and complained to her daughter, or was it a friend?

Both.

She complained to a lot of people, I think.

Okay, so I complained that the relationship was in shambles.

Meanwhile, Tony had convinced Ruth to give him power of attorney and he starts selling off some of her assets.

It sounds like land.

And then when she gets back into town, he convinces her to go on a camping trip.

And they stop at a restaurant.

They have a few drinks.

Everything seems fine.

As they drive up closer to the campsite, he stops off at a timber company and some witnesses see them.

Nobody's concerned about the way that Ruth and Tony are interacting.

And then they go up to the campsite and around 8.30 that night, Tony is now calling a couple of restaurants saying Ruth has walked off by herself.

And he's concerned about her and is wondering if people at the restaurants have seen her.

And then he calls Washington State Patrol and changes his story and says that Ruth has driven off in their RV Winnebago and they happen to have a Jeep with them or a similar type of SUV and he's driving that.

And then ultimately he is with Ruth's future son-in-law and they're driving and they see some skid marks on a logging road and look over the edge and there's a crashed RV and the future son-in-law goes down and finds Ruth's body away from the RV further down the slope and she's dead.

You're hired.

You need to do all my summaries from now on.

That was excellent.

Better than I could have done.

And it proves that you've been listening, which is just a bonus for me.

That's fantastic.

I always listen to you.

You got it all right.

He takes the SUV back, made some phone calls, takes the SUV back to Auburn.

She's not there.

He takes the future son-in-law with him.

Now, this is where things get a little complicated.

So Donald had said he saw skid marks on the road, and that's why he gravitated towards this section.

She was found 100 feet down from the embankment.

You know, she's got signs of trauma to her head and to her stomach.

So when investigators show up, to come look, they immediately zero in on the conditions of this logging road.

Now, let me ask you, logging road, does that mean dirt or does that mean pavement or could it be either?

I don't think it means pavement.

I think it's either dirt or maybe gravel, you know, depending on the type of traffic they're expecting.

So that's where, again, I'd love to see photos of this, you know, these skid marks.

And then, you know, is it in the dirt?

Is it in the gravel?

Is it just, you know, the skid marks going over the edge, or are there skid marks leading up to where the Winnebago went over the the edge because that would indicate that there is some either some type of speed depending on if it's upslope or downslope.

Okay, well, I'm sorry about the photos.

My apologies.

I know you would think we would have some scene photos here, but we don't.

We're just going to have to go off what the investigators say and what Anne Ruhl says, who did pretty extensive research on this.

So the inconsistencies are with the skid marks.

So Donald had said, I mean, I don't know how he describes skid marks, but he said this is the reason I looked down the embankment.

The investigators sort of there's inconsistencies with whether or not they see skid marks nearby.

What everybody agrees on is there's a big rock four inches tall that is near the edge of the embankment.

And I think what the presumption is is that she was driving, her wheel hit this rock, it spun her off.

Maybe she was going too fast and it was getting dark anyway, or was dark at this point, and it sent the RV down the embankment.

There's no real consistent source that says there were definite skid marks.

How would skid marks work on a dirt road to begin with?

Yeah, well, first you said that there was a real tall rock and you said it was four inches.

I mean, is that enough if you hit it with an RV tire, a big tire, is that enough to make it kind of veer off?

No, no, no, not

in an off-road capacity.

If it's just four inches tall, you might, you know, feel the bump, you know, for sure.

Like where I go out here in Colorado, I have boulders that are four feet tall that are on the side of some of the roads I go on, right?

You know, if I were to hit something like that, that could cause my Jeep to take an impact and may affect my course on the road.

Four inches wouldn't do anything I wouldn't expect.

But when you start talking about the skid marks on this road, is this, you know, this is where, okay, do we see, if it's a dirt road, are we seeing where tires have locked up and you have this, you know, true skid marks because, you know, the person driving is trying to stop the RV before it goes over the edge, but fails to do that.

Or are we talking about a scenario if this is a dirt road and it's logging, oftentimes you'll have the heavy equipment, like these big scrapers that will come along in order to maintain the road

and you'll see the dirt gets piled up on the side of the road before it goes down the embankment.

And do you have a scenario where you don't necessarily see the dirt being disrupted because the tires have locked up?

What you see is you see the driver and passenger side tires going through this softer mound of dirt where they shouldn't be going

as the Winnebago is going over the side of this cliff.

It comes down to, and I know where the scenario is going to go, is was Ruth really driving?

And did this scenario occur where she's slamming on the brakes, you know, and then fails to be able to maintain the Winnebago on the road versus was she already dead or unconscious?

And the Winnebago is allowed to drift off the road with her in there.

And that's, again, the skid marks become kind of critical because it's kind of hard for an external person outside of Winnebago to apply brakes, you know, to make it look like or simulate that this Winnebago is traveling at speed and the wheels lock up and just fail to keep the Winnebago on the road.

Well, what investigators say and what Ann Ruhl records in her book is that

the markings on the road indicate that no one had stomped on the brakes as some desperate attempt to keep it from plunging over.

And it actually seemed like the Winnebago was not moving very quickly on the road.

That's what their investigators are saying.

So, whatever the skid marks Donald thought he saw, whatever that description is, investigators, when they get out there, say, this is not some RV going at a high rate of speed and she makes a mistake, or a deer jumps out in front of her and she's slamming on her brakes.

This is something else.

So I don't know if that helps.

And we'll have a little bit more information in a bit, but it does not convince investigators that she, if she were driving, is the cause of this accident, that this was an accident.

They become immediately suspicious based on her body, the road, and what's inside the RV.

Or rather, what is not inside the RV.

There's no blood.

There's no nothing.

There's no blood, no torn flesh, no hair.

She had been wearing a loosely woven blouse that would have like caught up on something during this terrible, you know, bucketing down the steep hill, but her blouse had no tears in it.

There were no snags in it.

There's no blood, as I said, inside the RV.

Investigators say there are no signs that a body was tossed around inside the RV at any point, even though this thing is completely crunched up at the bottom of this embankment.

You know, now the question is going to be: at what point during this RV

going over the embankment, could Ruth have been thrown out?

If she's thrown out very early, then it's possible you're not going to have the blood staining and other types of tissues and the clothes tearing, as they're describing, inside the RV, because her body is out before the RV is really impacting

as it's tumbling down.

And this is where autopsy is critical.

Well, I got it, buddy.

Okay.

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Okay,

so there is a post-mortem exam and it is in Seattle, which is probably good news for us.

Medical examiner, which is great news for us.

So let's talk about the condition of the body and then her blood alcohol level.

Or which one?

Do you care?

It really doesn't matter because, you know, I'm going to be assessing the totality of the findings, the toxicology, in addition to what types of injuries and other things that the pathologist is observing.

Okay, so there's three things that we need to talk about.

So we'll do the injuries to her body because we just talked about the fact that there doesn't seem to be anything tossed around really inside this crunched-up RV.

We'll talk about the blood alcohol level of Ruth, and then we'll talk about how the RV is positioned and kind of what year it's in, because I think all of that is important.

Okay, medical examiner, who is a guy named Dr.

Donald Ray, he looks at Ruth's body shortly after it's recovered.

He says that there were no lacerations on her.

The skin was not broken.

She had minor bruises and abrasions on her arms and legs.

He said that there was an injury to her abdomen, which looks like it was struck with some sort of a blunt object, and there was a skull fracture.

And that's what they think is what killed her.

And most of the other injuries were superficial.

He says this is not what you would expect from somebody who was thrown out of a vehicle.

You would have had many other injuries.

So what do you think about this so far?

There's some

injury to her abdomen, crushed skull, but everything else is just sort of scrapes.

And the medical examiner is saying, no way this woman was thrown going down an embankment out of an RV with all of this brush and these trees around.

Yeah, and it's also assessing geology, if you will.

know, is this a very rocky area?

She's separated from the RV.

She's downslope a distance from where the RV came to rest.

What is her body going to be hitting?

You know, of course, there's going to be the side of the slope.

There's, you know, maybe bushes and different trees, not knowing, you know, how veg, you know, what the vegetation type is here.

But then were there also lots of rocks?

And minimally, I would be expecting with a body that is having to tumble, likely, you know, if she fell, I don't even know how far down is, you know, the RV from the road.

Are we talking 10 feet?

Are we talking 100 feet?

Do you have any of that type of information?

Well, what they had said was she was found not far from the wreckage, about 100 feet down the embankment.

So I'm assuming that's what, 100 feet down from the road?

That's where she was.

And how steep?

Like, what could her body have fallen?

You know, I'm

trying to figure out, is this a scenario where she fell, you know, she free-falled 50 feet before impacting something, or is she just kind of rolling down this slope?

I'll describe it better for you.

So we've got the road.

It is described as a steep, rocky embankment off the shoulder.

It's a slope or a cliff, which goes into what they call a ravine.

So it's definitely going down.

It's definitely like a cliff slope.

Her body is 100 feet down the embankment.

The RV is 300 feet down the embankment.

So she goes first, and then the RV keeps going down past her.

Okay.

Does that make sense?

Yep.

Nope, for sure.

It also tells me that there aren't a lot of big, tall trees, like pine trees, that's catching the RV, you know, right after it goes over the slope.

So sounds like both the RV and Ruth were able to tumble to their final resting spots.

This type of tumbling on Ruth would most certainly be causing a fair amount of abrasions on various surfaces of her body.

The lack of lacerations, you know, a laceration technically is when there's been kind of a blow with a blunt object on the surface of the skin that causes the skin to split.

I'm not sure without seeing the scene if I would be expecting to see true lacerations if she's just tumbling and she's not impacting rocks like she's falling and having these massive impacts against the rocks.

The skull fracture,

again, that's going to be dependent upon what is the cause of the skull fracture.

Does it look like it's

something that could be caused from the way that she's tumbled down?

It's kind of a tweener, you know, and this is part of the complexity of

assessing this type of case is, is there anything?

You know, let's say there, I'm going to be very obvious here.

Let's say her throat is cut.

That becomes easy.

But when you have her injuries that, you know, could be caused by her tumbling down this slope, then this is where now it's relying upon Dr.

Ray's observation, who's going, these do not appear to be consistent with what, you know, the idea of this is an accidental, she's thrown from the vehicle and is tumbling down this particular terrain.

At this point in time, I have to rely on Dr.

Ray to and his conclusion and say, okay, well, if he's drawing that conclusion, that's something which will now lend suspicion as to, okay, what truly did happen to Ruth?

And then now it's, okay, what's going on with the Winnebago?

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Before we get to the Winnebago, which is interesting, let's talk about Ruth and her blood alcohol level because as you can imagine, the defense is going to be all over this.

I don't know anything about blood alcohol levels.

I probably should know more.

But it's at about 0.15.

Okay.

But it could have been as much as 0.24 at the time of her death because he thinks she lived about an hour and a half before she died.

Now, I don't know how he knows that, but those are the two pieces of information that are new for you.

0.15 to 0.24.

This is a high blood alcohol level.

Of course, everybody's familiar that typically here in the United States, what is considered to be too impaired to drive is the 0.08%.

The 0.15 is, of course, almost double the legal driving limit in most states here.

So she's ingested a fair amount of alcohol.

Now, it sounds like we know she had a few cocktails earlier in the day.

4.30-ish,

but it doesn't sound like she drank enough to get her up to a 0.15

at that that restaurant.

And most people at a 1.5

are visibly intoxicated.

It's pretty obvious, unless you are a very tolerant drinker, a 0.15 is a significant alcohol level.

So she leaves the restaurant and then at some point she likely is consuming more alcohol.

And that's where, you know, obviously interviews with Tony.

What did you guys do when you get to the campsite?

How much did you have to drink?

Investigating the Winnebago or the crime scene.

What's the source of the alcohol that's in her system to try to correlate that?

I kind of disagree with the pathologist saying that she could have been as high as a 0.24

and her just laying there.

Typically, on average, people will burn off roughly about an O2 per hour, and it can vary from person to person.

You know, so to say, well, she laid there for an hour and a half, so she dropped from a 0.24 down to a 0.15, I don't agree with that.

I would say if she's alive and she's eliminating the alcohol in her system, she maybe max would have been around a 1.7.

And for the average person, like for 150-pound male to be up at a 1.7, generally it's like an O, you rise up about an O2 per drink.

So now you are taking a look at somebody who's had 150 pound male, you know, roughly eight and a half drinks all at once.

Wow.

You know, and typically what happens, of course, is you drink over time.

And as you drink, you're also eliminating.

So for Ruth to get up to a 1.5, and she's, I'm assuming she's a more petite woman.

She's not 150 pound, like a 150-pound male.

Let's say she would rise per drink 0.03.

You know, now she had, you know, roughly five plus drinks in her system

at the time that they tested her.

And she likely had more than that.

And a drink is, you know, a 12-ounce beer, a standard glass of wine, or a shot of 100-proof spirit.

You know, that's generally how we define these drinks.

So she would have had a fairly significant amount of drinks in her system prior to her ending up dead.

Aaron Powell, and she would have been the one to do this, right?

I know that sounds like a silly question, but with drugs, we know that there are cases where people inject victims with heroin, different drugs to kind of set this up as an overdose.

But you can't do that with alcohol.

I mean, this is a significant amount of alcohol.

So she probably at the campsite between 4.30 when somebody last saw her and 8.30 when Tony starts making phone calls.

Between this time, she drank a significant amount of alcohol, probably on her own accord.

It's really tough to have somebody ingest alcohol.

You know, the idea of, let's say, injecting pure ethanol into somebody's body, that seems a little far-fetched.

So, I would say, yeah, she probably voluntarily drank this alcohol.

And then now this is going, okay, what happened between 4.30 and 8.30-ish?

Yeah.

And her kids have said, yeah, she drank.

She didn't have a drinking problem, they believed, but that she was not somebody who would turn down alcohol necessarily.

And probably she's up at this campsite with this miserable guy wanting to kind of take it all away and drinking a lot of alcohol.

So you can see where this is going.

This is a defense.

She drank a lot at the campsite.

She got in the RV.

He didn't leave for another 20 or 30 minutes.

She ends up off the embankment, thrown out of the car, drunk driving accident, steep hill.

She shouldn't have been doing it.

And that's where we're going to land, except some weird things.

So tell me what you think about this.

The RV is crumpled after this crash because it's 300 feet down this embankment, this rocky embankment.

According to a report from the Associated Press, the vehicle, the RV, is in park and the emergency brake is engaged when this is discovered.

Let me just tell you this one little bit and then you can go back and address that if you want.

So there was a mechanic who had serviced this RV that they rented before the Fernandez's picked it up.

And he says that the vehicle was in poor condition, that it had a dead battery and a loose fan belt.

But the company says we did plenty of work on it.

It was just fine when we lent it out to them.

What does it mean that it's in park and that the emergency brake is engaged?

It most certainly is suspicious.

This is where, you know, anything involving vehicles, and there's a question about the vehicle's mechanics and whether or not the various hypothetical scenarios of what happened could occur with the way the vehicle is found.

And this RV, I don't know what its mechanics are in terms of the parking.

It sounds like it had automatic transmission.

And typically when you put something in park, there's actually a metal barrier that prevents, you know, the wheels from turning.

You know, it's very different.

I have manual transmission in my Jeep, and I don't have a park.

You know, I have to rely on the emergency brake.

So, you know, this is where

how is this vehicle in park with the emergency brake on?

How could it end up over the slope as it did?

Do Do you have

the ability to, could you expect Ruth, as let's say she's recognizing that this vehicle is possibly going to go over the edge, is she pulling up on the emergency brake?

Is she slamming the transmission park in order to be able to get it to further come to a halt because the brakes themselves aren't slowing it down?

You know, that seems a little bit far-fetched.

Is it possible that,

let's say, a third party, Tony, you know, could have Ruth unconscious or dead inside this RV or

and have it just teetering on the edge, you know, and have it, it's in park with the emergency brake on and it's over on the edge just enough to where it eventually just slides right down.

And now you've got the scenario.

I would have expected it to have been in gear with the emergency brake off where she went over the edge.

Is this a flat part of the road?

Is it downslope?

Or is it it must be either flat or down versus up?

I think it's flat.

No, I don't think it's up.

I think it's flat.

Okay.

I'm just trying to envision myself being outside an RV.

You know, let's say the driver's door is open and I want this huge vehicle to go over the edge.

I mean, that's risky in and of itself.

You know,

so how would Tony be able to get this RV over the edge if it is in park and the emergency brake is on?

You know, and this, again, is working with experts and trying to figure out, is that a possibility?

But it is suspicious that it is in park and the emergency break is engaged.

Yes, it's really suspicious.

And, you know, as this case gets going, her daughters are panicking because he has now inherited her estate, which is $250,000 to $400,000, millions of dollars now.

So in 1976, they take Tony to civil court.

over the estate.

And there are witnesses at these proceedings, these medical experts who call into question, of course, whether Ruth died in an accident or whether she was a victim of homicide.

And the judge comes away feeling that, you know, it's clear that Fernandez, Tony Fernandez, killed his wife.

There are no criminal charges yet, but they're coming.

53-year-old Tony then is blocked from getting his wife's estate.

He is kicked out of their Auburn home.

And of course, he goes on and on about this being a hoax and a fraud.

And the stepdaughters are out to get him.

But the King County prosecuting attorney gives Tony much more to worry about because he has now launched these criminal charges against Tony for his wife's death in 1978, four years after she died.

So it's a huge amount of media attention.

Of course, Anne Ruhl writes part of her book about it.

He's framed as a gold digger, which it sounds like he was.

I'm surprised you haven't asked about this.

She has so many assets.

This seems minor to me, but he had taken out a $100,000 accidental death policy on her two months and six days before her untimely death.

And it sounds like he forged her signature on that document.

And she had other life insurance policies totaling about $84,000.

I mean, this guy, that's a lot.

No, for sure.

You know, and it's always suspicious when you see a policy taken out that is, you know, contemporaneous to the time of the death, you know, and

so why is he taking out that accidental death policy?

You know, it's just that's a red flag.

It's circumstantial, you know, but it most certainly kind of adds up to the totality of what's going on.

He's interested in her for her financial assets.

He's doing everything he can so he can control her financial assets by getting power of attorney.

He's got the past criminal history of fraud.

You know, everything adds up to where, okay,

he's planning on, on, you know, several months ahead of time by taking out this policy.

He's already in his mind going to be killing Ruth, and he's going to be the beneficiary of that policy.

So he's planned this for a while.

You know, I've often wondered, and maybe you have the answer to this, about these accidental death policies.

How often do these insurance companies investigate these types of deaths?

I guess it's clear.

on the majority of them that these truly were accidents.

But obviously, this is not the first time that this has come up, that somebody's taken out a policy like this, and then the person becomes a victim later on.

Aaron Powell, well, I most certainly don't have the volume of exposure to say how often the insurance companies, let's say, don't disperse the funds.

I do know in select cases I've had involvement in, that insurance companies, they do pay attention.

They're not just going to willy-nilly pay out tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars if there's any chance that the death was something that is not covered by policy, let's say suicide, or if the beneficiary is the suspect in a homicide, they're going to hold on to their money.

You know, so that's where, you know, in this particular case,

the criminal side of it is, was it an accident or was it homicide?

At a certain point, the insurance company may end up, especially if this drags out long enough and there's no criminal charges.

You know, they may request from the, you know, the investigating agency or the district attorney, hey, do you think the beneficiary is responsible or not?

Is there going to be criminal charges down the road?

But at a certain point, if it's still no criminal charges, then I think they're going to pay out, you know, and then maybe try to recoup the money if all of a sudden criminal charges are filed.

But I just don't have enough

experience to be able to say exactly how this all plays out.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: Well, speaking of premeditation, it turns out that Tony has been telling friends and family that Ruth had been experiencing health problems in the months before the crash, which included blackouts and memory lapses.

So he's been saying this before her death.

Of course, the daughters are saying,

no, we don't think so.

We've never heard of this before.

And then Ruth's doctor says this is BS.

She was in great health.

So he is, you're right, continuing plot beforehand.

We can talk about what the prosecutor says he thinks happened, and we can also talk about, you know, what the motivation was, because it sounds like there's actually a couple of motivations.

Yeah, and maybe before that, you know, I still go back to the blood alcohol level and Ruth, was there any evidence, you know, and did Tony make any statements as to, you know, where is Ruth getting this alcohol?

It sounds like it was something like they were drinking at the campsite, and she got in and decided to go home, and he didn't stop her because she had driven an RV before.

And then that was that.

This was a drunk driving accident.

Nobody is saying this happened on purpose.

No one, it seems to be saying that she was accosted and somebody else set this up.

It just sounds like she drank a lot with Tony at the restaurant and at the campsite and then got in and made a mistake.

Yeah, because, you know, right now, my thought is, is Ruth was killed at the campsite.

And that's the homicide scene.

You know, and so that's where, you know, I'm wanting to know what kind of activities were occurring at the campsite.

How thoroughly did they process this campsite?

She has a skull fracture.

Did she have any external bleeding at all?

Nope.

Not what the ME says.

No.

It sounds like he did a pretty good job setting this up as an accident.

I know he's made some mistakes, but the DA is nervous about this.

Yeah, because it is tough with exactly the injuries that she does have.

It's hard to pull out something that you can say this was done by a person versus her body going down the the slope.

And if she wasn't externally bleeding and you have no, you know, bleeding at the campsite or, you know, within the Jeep or within the Winnebago, that's not in a location where you'd expect Ruth to have any bleeding inside the Winnebago as a result of the fall.

You know, bodies can, you know, you think bodies tumbling inside this huge RV can actually be shifting all throughout this RV potentially.

But if she's only 100 feet down and this RV is 300 feet down, if this was an accident, she's ejected very quickly.

You know, so I would not expect her to have been tumbling all throughout this RV.

So that's where if there was no blood in the RV or if there was blood in the RV and she had some bleeding injuries, then that would be suspicious.

And that maybe is a homicide scene.

But yeah, this is it's a tough case from a physical evidence and a crime scene reconstruction aspect.

Okay.

Well, let's talk about what the DA thinks happened.

He says Tony bludgeoned her to death.

He does not say where, but we're assuming at the campsite campsite would probably be the smartest place to do it.

That he managed to get the Winnebago to go over the cliff without anybody inside.

And then he left her body near the wreckage, you know, 200 feet from the wreckage, hoping to make it look like she had been involved in a fatal accident.

And this is what they think the scenario is.

There were other scenarios floated that Ann Rule went through, but this was the one that the DA was going with.

And this is what we assume happened, right?

I don't have a problem with that hypothetical.

I just kind of wonder, why not just leave or put her body in the Winnebago and somehow push the Winnebago over the embankment?

You know, that

would be something that I think would be easy versus now you're seen potentially at risk, you know, from somebody driving by holding a body.

Right.

Right.

So I don't know.

I mean, I think either could be a possibility.

I agree that I think just out of the

practicality of it, that she is somehow killed at the campsite with a blow to her skull in a way that does not fracture her skull, because it doesn't sound like any of her other injuries, unless this blunt force trauma to the abdomen caused significant internal bleeding, but it doesn't sound like that.

That was found at autopsy.

So, kind of a, I would say there was a blow to her head with a probably a large, somewhat softer object that did not cause a laceration, but was able to put enough force on her skull to cause the skull fracture.

And then he is able to get her out there.

And I think if he's not putting her in the Winnebago, he's making two trips, I think.

You know, because he's going to need a vehicle to get away from that location.

Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.: And Rule summarized the, I would say, we'll call this four very popular opinions, which all seem reasonable in some weird way to me.

So here's what has been floating around the courthouse and in the newspapers, the theories that have been kicked around.

One, that Ruth was distraught and drunk and accidentally drove off the cliff without even applying the brakes of the motorhome and her body fell out halfway down.

So let me just do these four and you can tell me what you think.

Number two, Ruth drove deliberately off the cliff and her body was thrown out halfway down.

Three, someone bludgeoned and beat her, pushed the motorhome off the cliff, and flung Ruth down after it, or someone carried her body to make it look like she had been in an accident, so was able to carry her body down this embankment and kind of place her where they wanted to place her.

This sounds to be similar to what the prosecutor was saying.

And four, was the most interesting one to me.

Someone pushes the Winnebago over the cliff and then talks Ruth into going down to help retrieve the valuables and then kill her right there.

I mean, I don't know.

Your look is the same thing I felt internally when I heard that one.

So what do you think about these four theories?

But this is what's floating around.

I'm really not liking them, any of them.

And again, I have to see the side of this cliff, but somebody carrying Ruth, who minimally I'm assuming, is weighing 100, 120 pounds, down the side of this cliff and placing her body there, I don't buy that at all.

I think, you know, there'd be an assessment.

If she were to be pushed off the edge, her body just kind of dumped off the edge of this, would it have been able to tumble or slide down to where she was at?

And

if so, that seems like the most likely way that her body ended up there.

You know, the ejection out of the Winnebago is an absolute possibility.

The problem that I'm really struggling with is how do you get this Winnebago over the edge, which obviously it was.

It went over the edge, but it's in park with the emergency brake on.

How is that done?

You know, the only thing I can think of is you literally, whoever has got this Winnebago drives it all the way up to the, you know, the point of no return is able to get out, you know, puts it in park and the emergency brake on.

And then just maybe on the outside, you know, it's teetering just enough to where now you're able to kind of, you know, give it enough of a shove.

And is it possible the Jeep was used to shove it?

Where now you have, you have a, you know, the power of the Jeep.

I mean, this Winnebago is just absolutely torn up.

So any contact the Jeep makes, you know, in terms of paint transfer or dents or anything to the Winnebago would never necessarily be considered, you know, in this scenario.

It's just like all the damage to the Winnebago must have come from the thing.

And now that I'm literally thinking out loud, now that I think about it, I think that's the most likely way to be able to do that is you get that Winnebago close enough to the edge, and then you just take your Jeep and you slowly push it over.

And now you've got the power of a Jeep to be able to get this huge Winnebago over the edge while it is still in park with the emergency brake on.

And I would think you're crazy.

That's too much exposure.

But this is a very rural area.

Logging road, middle of nowhere, narrow.

Nobody's going to be driving this at night.

No, I mean, there's always a chance somebody could drive by.

That's the risk the offender takes anywhere they're at, right?

But the location, and they've been to this location before, it sounds like.

He's got some familiarity with this

area.

The likelihood of somebody driving by at this time of night sounds like it would be very unlikely.

I've been out in the middle of the day on roads.

I don't see anybody for hours, right?

So I think

it's easily accomplished.

And now I think about it, I'm liking it.

I don't know about was Ruth pushed over the edge after she had been killed or was Ruth ejected out of the Winnebago, but I like the idea of the Jeep being used to push

this large vehicle that's in park with the emergency brake on over the edge.

I think that's probably the most likely scenario.

And there's no way that the emergency brake would have somehow slowed down the momentum of the wheels, or is it like literally gravity just pulling it down?

It doesn't matter whether there's the emergency brake on once it's in motion going down the embankment.

So this is also now taking a look at the structure of the Winnebago.

I'm assuming this in the 1970s, and I'm envisioning a Winnebago in which the very heavy engine is, let's say, in the front of the vehicle.

You park this Winnebago with the front wheels just right up on the edge.

And you've got the weight of the Winnebago is right there in front.

And now you get behind it with the Jeep and you just push.

And that will cause, once you get that heavy front of the Winnebago over the edge, now you can see where it's going to teeter.

And the front is going to now go and just everything, you know, the mass is going to cause, going to pull this Winnebago over the edge.

And that could potentially explain these skid marks.

If those were true skid marks, to where now you have a big vehicle that's in park being pushed, you're going to see some disturbances that look like skid marks going over the edge.

If you think about the Winnebago, I don't know exactly what model year this Winnebago is.

Based on just a quick research, it looks like the engine could be in front.

And so therefore, you could have this heavy, heavy mass that's in front.

So imagine the Winnebago being pushed from behind by the Jeep until that engine, that heavy engine, gets over the edge.

And now that Winnebago could just tip and tumble.

Even if the engine is in the rear of this particular make model, the Winnebago, the Jeep just has to push it so much further off the edge.

And then the whole thing is just going to end up ultimately going.

It's just a soft dirt edge in all likelihood where this thing went over.

So I really like the idea, considering the condition of the Winnebago, the mechanics, it's in park, the emergency brake is on, that you use the power of this Jeep to push this large vehicle over the edge.

That is what makes sense to me.

Okay.

I was thinking about the theory that he carried her down or somebody kind of carried her down to place her in the right spot.

And it occurred to me, sometimes I don't think it's useful to show, you know, photos of the alleged killer and the victim, but it occurred to me it could be useful with this.

So I'm going to show it to you.

Here is a photo of like it looks like an anniversary or there was a champagne toast.

So you see Tony on the left and Ruth on the right.

Yeah.

I don't know if their sizes are significantly different.

She does not look like a petite woman to me, and he does not look like a large man.

I don't know if it would be that easy for him to take her down in this precarious cliff embankment scenario that people are talking about.

What do you think, though?

I I don't think it would be easy at all.

And again, it's, you know, what does this terrain look like?

But still, to carry a body, I always bring up, you know, we talk about, let's say, a petite woman's body, 100 pounds.

Well, pick up a hundred-pound bag of cement, it's heavy, and now make that this floppy dead body that's still 100 pounds.

It takes strength to be able to do that.

You know, this is going to be hard to carry across flat land over tree trunks and through

bushes and stuff like that, let alone to try to navigate downwards on a slope that you yourself might fall down.

Yeah.

Without seeing it, I have to couch my opinion.

I think it would be more likely to discard the body from the top because that's what we see with body disposals.

They're usually disposed of in remote locations off of sides of roads that have a a steep embankment.

Why?

Because they slide down the embankment and the offender doesn't have to do a lot of work.

I agree.

Why make things harder on yourself, I guess?

Prosecutor says, of course, motive is money, but he is having an affair, sleazebag that he is.

So add that in there, too.

She was right to suspect that.

Let's see.

Moving through, the defense puts on its case also.

They say she drank a lot.

She got into an RV.

He shouldn't have let her go.

He did.

She drove off the edge.

This was just a really bad accident.

By the way, Ruth knew everything that was happening with selling off the land and signing off on things.

She wasn't bothered by it.

She trusted Tony.

And the biggest thing that the defense latches onto is that the prosecutor couldn't say, and you've said this, how she died.

There's no bloody rock.

They don't have a weapon.

The prosecutor just said they believed she was killed and they couldn't even say where.

And that is what the defense is saying.

How do you know, based on scratches and a cracked skull, that the accident did not cause this?

And that is the problem that the prosecutor is having.

That's what they're trying to overcome.

No, for sure.

And this is where my guess is Dr.

Ray, the pathologist's testimony, could be critical in this case.

You know, first, I'm assuming he ruled homicide as the manner of death from Auto.

Okay.

So now he has to get on the stand and he has to justify that ruling of homicide.

His observation saying, based on his experience, that the extent of her injuries or lack of is not consistent with a body having fallen the distance it did.

And that this is more consistent with being killed.

blunt force trauma causing the skull fracture, and then the body was slid down the side of the embankment or tumbled down, but it really didn't have like huge boulders or trees that it's bouncing off of.

And I could see where this would set up a battle of experts because another pathologist would come in and say, oh, this is entirely consistent with her, you know, being ejected from the Winnebago, having accidentally driven it off.

You know, so it is, that is a tough thing.

But I think the pathologist's testimony probably was key in this case.

And how convincing was his testimony to the jury?

Yeah, and let's stick with that.

So the defense puts on a guy who is a physician, a well-known physician named Dr.

F.

Warren Lowell.

And he says that he thinks the injuries to Ruth's abdomen were caused by her pressing against the steering wheel during the impact of the fall.

She was in the vehicle.

This is what he thinks happened, and she got ejected out of it and, of course, hit her head on something coming down the embankment.

And that was that.

The prosecutor cross-examines him and says, Are you saying there is no possibility that she was murdered, let's say, by having a man hold her by the hair after she drank a lot of alcohol and slamming her head against a rock.

And Dr.

Lovell said, I can't say that that didn't happen.

I'm just telling you what I believe.

Another physician got on the stand, not for the defense, but for the prosecutor, that said, those scratches and the bruises on her arms look like defensive wounds to me.

They do not look like even the brush of some dead body being rolled down the hill.

So you're right.

Big battle of experts here.

No, for sure.

And, you know, I think the idea of her head being slammed against a hard surface like that would likely produce a laceration.

But imagine her head being slammed against,

say, the carpeted floor inside the Winnebago or on, you know, kind of a softer dirt area where there's significant force, maybe enough force to cause this internal skull fracture, but it doesn't cause the splitting of the skin that we see, you know, what's called the laceration.

I can see that as being a scenario, you know, and whether or not, let's say Tony is the one that is slamming her head against something, does he recognize that he's killed her?

He's obviously planned this, you know.

He's, in essence, has rendered her unconscious in his mind, and now he

has the ability to manipulate her body in order to set up this scenario of an accidental driving over the edge.

You know, fundamentally, you know, there's circumstances with what Tony was doing leading up to Roos' death that point to his interest in her being dead.

The accidental death policy taken out two months before is huge.

And then the mechanics of the Winnebago.

It's in park.

The emergency brake is on.

How does the defense explain that?

I would want to hear from mechanical experts.

to say, okay, with the Winnebago tumbling down the side of this

cliff, is there a way for these mechanical objects, both of which could be

shifted into park and the emergency brake put on?

Is that a possibility?

Is it even a likelihood?

And my guess is, you know, having some mechanical background is like, no, that just doesn't add up.

So why did he do that?

To keep control of the Winnebago so that it doesn't go over the edge before he has a chance to do everything he needs to do?

Is that why he did those two things, setting the brake and putting it in a park?

Yeah, well, let's say he's the one and he's the one that's driving it up to the edge.

He doesn't want to be trying to step out of this large vehicle, you know, and possibly being caught up, you know, going over the edge himself.

Yeah.

You know, he's got the Jeep that can push it over the edge.

Well, let's talk about some, in my opinion, some pretty prejudicial stuff that comes up.

So, the prosecutor eventually submits some evidence in the form of a transcript from that federal trial.

So there was a conspiracy.

He did have a business partner.

That kind of comes into play, not really regarding paperwork.

Two violent incidents happened regarding these fraud charges.

One, he is in a car with a lumberman who owns a bunch of land that Tony was interested in.

And Tony and the guy are talking.

They're in Tony's SUV.

Tony loses control of the vehicle and bails out as it careens off the road and fell down a 20-foot embankment before crashing into a tree with this lumberman inside, who survives and finds paperwork later on that's been forged, selling all of this stuff to Tony, Fernandez.

So the prosecutors bring this in.

I thought this sounded prejudicial, but they're obviously saying this is a guy with violent tendencies who did something very similar.

So what do you think about that?

Yeah, that.

I mean.

I can see where you draw the conclusion where it's prejudicial.

However, most certainly in evaluating this case and looking at Tony's past, the investigators must have run across that.

And they're going, okay, he's tried this once before.

And he did this while he was driving and bailed out.

Now, why the change?

Why wouldn't he be driving to Winnebago and bailing out in this scenario?

Well, he learned from the last one.

Bailing out of a moving vehicle probably was not fun, which also speaks to him putting it in park and the emergency brake on to ensure that he doesn't, you know, get caught up in a moving vehicle again.

Well, then he tries something else, also coming from this fraud trial.

He had met up with another lumberman in Canada, and the guy said that they got into a conversation about a timber deal, that, you know, he wanted to buy some timber land there.

He and Tony were going to talk about making a deal.

And he said that he remembers lighting a cigarette and talking to Tony, and then everything went dark.

He woke up beside a railroad track with a horrible headache.

Railroad workers took him to a local hospital.

His wife later finds a contract between her husband and Tony, as well as a receipt for $40,000.

And somebody, Tony, we're assuming, called an Oregon bank and said, you know, I want to get, I need to get $40,000 transferred out of Bill's account into this account that he had opened up for this deal.

So he's making a deal while this guy is unconscious in the hospital.

I'm assuming thinking that he killed him.

So now he's tried to kill two different people and it didn't work.

And obviously with Ruth, he wanted to make sure it was going to work.

Yeah, he's showing a pattern of behavior.

I'm kind of curious as to what drug he gave that second guy.

Yeah, me too.

And how he administered it.

But this is all adding up.

You know, there's, I think Ruth's case stands alone with the circumstantial and the physical evidence, even though there is the weakness of how was she exactly killed.

I think her case stands alone.

But now you consider his past history and he's basically has done the same thing twice before.

He's showing a willingness to attempt to kill.

in order for financial gain.

And everything is, I mean, it's the same.

It's the same pattern.

And I don't understand why he didn't go to prison for these violent acts.

I mean, it was fraud where they got him.

I guess there wasn't enough evidence.

I don't know enough about those two cases, but good Lord.

I mean, this just seems like a huge amount of horrible incidents is violence following this guy.

And obviously, this was not stuff that was reported.

And Ruth must have only known about the fraud, and that was it.

Oh, absolutely.

You know, if he's not charged with the, the, I don't know if you want to call them attempt homicides for these two other business associates, then that's never entered into the fraud trial, and that's never reported in the newspapers.

It's looking like it's strictly just financial fraud versus, oh, he's willing to kill his business associates and take advantage of the opening that creates in order for him to have financial gain.

And I visualize this happening in 2024 and somebody on Reddit or some message board hearing about this from somebody, somebody, even if this doesn't, these two incidents of violence don't enter into the fraud trial, this would have gotten out somewhere.

We would have been, if this were my mom, I would have been Googling this guy backwards and forwards, paying some service to do background checks.

I think if this were a different era, they would have known a lot more information and maybe Ruth would have gotten out of this, but who knows?

Aaron Powell, no, for sure.

You know, today versus the 1970s 1970s is an entirely different era when it comes to being able to gather information.

It's so unfortunate.

Well, actually,

I guess I should ask you, so what did the jury find?

Guilty, thank goodness.

Okay.

Okay, good.

So I'll just tell you, life without parole, and he serves almost 20 years.

He serves 18 years and he has a heart attack and dies in prison.

Okay.

And that's the end of that.

He never admits any involvement.

The reality is, this is a type of predator, and he's not your sexually motivated predator like the types of cases that I typically go after.

But his behavior, his greed, causes him to pursue inflicting violence on others.

He's showing that willingness to kill for his own financial gain.

You know, and in many ways, when we talk about serial killers, and there are female serial killers, one of the primary reasons females kill in a serial fashion is for financial gain, right?

And so in many ways, he has that kind of psychology.

He just happens to be a guy.

And boy, he could have gotten away with this.

I'm glad he didn't.

But this is one of those cases where you just kind of go, it is the battle of the experts.

And thank goodness they believe the right experts.

Well, Anne Ruhl, it sounds like, did a great job on this case.

It was part of a compilation of stories in that book that I mentioned.

This was a case I would not have heard of had I not known that this was something that came up in her book.

And the purpose for a lot of us who write about true crime, in my case, historical true crime, is to shine a light on cases that a lot of people might not have known and really to illuminate something about society or about a new forensic tool or circumstances.

And again, this is from the 70s and we just see this repeated over and over and over again.

So, next week, we're off for a well-deserved break.

But I will see you here in two weeks.

Well, as always, I'm looking forward to it.

This has been an exactly right production.

For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com/slash buried bones sources.

Our senior producer is Alexis Emerosi.

Research by Maren McClashin, Allie Elkin, and Kate Winkler-Dawson.

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