The Machete Murderer PT 1

Speaker 1 This is exactly right.

Speaker 2 CBS Thursdays. Don't miss the new season of the CBS original Matlock with Kathy Bates starring in her Emmy-nominated role.

Speaker 5 I lost a daughter, and someone at this law firm covered up the truth, so I'm gonna get justice.

Speaker 2 This season, the truth is coming out.

Speaker 7 Allies are telling all lies.

Speaker 8 Your life is still a mystery.

Speaker 9 Kathy Bates.

Speaker 1 Who the hell are you? Madeline Matlock?

Speaker 3 Matlock.

Speaker 2 CBS Thursdays at 9-8 Central and streaming on Paramount Plus.

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Speaker 5 Not all group chats are the same, just like not all Adams are the same.

Speaker 5 Adam Brody, for example, uses WhatsApp to plan his grandma's birthday using video calls, polls to choose a gift, and HD photos to document a family moment to remember, all in one group chat.

Speaker 13 Makes grandma's birthday her best one yet.

Speaker 5 But Adam Scott group messages with an app that isn't WhatsApp. And so the photo invite came through so blurry, he never even knew about the party.

Speaker 14 And grandma still won't talk to me.

Speaker 5 It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone.

Speaker 1 I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime.

Speaker 17 And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them.

Speaker 1 Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes.

Speaker 20 And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Speaker 1 Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens.

Speaker 12 Some are solved, and some are cold. Very cold.

Speaker 1 This is Buried Bones.

Speaker 21 Hey, Kate, how are you doing?

Speaker 1 I'm great. How about you? Is it getting colder there? It's October-ish.

Speaker 19 It's starting to turn.

Speaker 15 You know, Colorado is always up and down when it comes to the weather, but usually right around Halloween is when we can expect our first snow.

Speaker 1 So is the big weather, it has to be blizzards, right? Those are the big weather events. I mean, are there anything, is there anything that's so unusual?

Speaker 30 You go, it's never going to happen here, and it happens because we get that a lot in texas frankly sure well i would say when we first moved here in 2018 that's when we had this massive hail storm which totaled my wife's minivan we literally had the insurance company total it and buy her a new car

Speaker 14 we had hail the size of oranges that were coming down

Speaker 1 so it i mean crazy roofs were you know crushed all the tile roofs in the neighborhood looked like they were in a war zone and we're like is this what we're going to be experiencing all the time and it turns out well no i mean we get hail here routinely you see a lot of cars that get have a lot of dents and a lot of repair shops but not hail the size of oranges that was unusual when i was a kid and i think we've probably talked about this we had tornado drills all the time we didn't have active shooter like they do today we had pretty much tornado drills and that was it so you know i always thought we're going to get hit by a tornado and where i am in austin we've had small ones but we've never had what you would think about like in a Twister or Kansas, not as long as I've been around.

Speaker 45 Here in Colorado, I had to go pick up my oldest son.

Speaker 34 He flew in.

Speaker 46 It's like three years ago.

Speaker 28 I had to go up to the Denver airport.

Speaker 20 And we just happened to have massive windstorms with over 100 mile an hour gusts.

Speaker 43 And driving on the freeway, you see all these big rigs literally overturned.

Speaker 27 The wind is, you know, tipping them over.

Speaker 51 And it was, you know, I'm in a higher vehicle.

Speaker 24 I'm in a jeep, you know, which has a high center of gravity.

Speaker 23 And it gets a little bit scary.

Speaker 48 Like, am I going to end up on my side?

Speaker 1 What about California?

Speaker 55 Well, I lived there and I lived there since, what, about 1981, up until I retired.

Speaker 52 California weather is,

Speaker 30 it's kind of wimpy, you know, it just drizzles.

Speaker 57 It really is.

Speaker 27 I don't know.

Speaker 20 I get bored with California weather.

Speaker 1 Oh, my gosh. Move to L.A.
You see what happens to them in Alexis.

Speaker 12 It's going to give you an earful in a little bit.

Speaker 1 But I definitely understand what you're saying.

Speaker 1 Especially Northern California, Central California, definitely.

Speaker 24 Yeah, that's where, you know, here in Colorado, I just, I enjoy the, you know, the storms.

Speaker 41 They're, they're fun.

Speaker 1 Well, I meant this to be a transition to our story today, which is set in California. And we've done some California stories.
And I think you'll think this is an interesting one. So this is 1971.

Speaker 1 And you weren't even born yet, right, Paul?

Speaker 7 You weren't born in.

Speaker 56 I was three years old. Are you kidding me?

Speaker 57 You were the one that wasn't born.

Speaker 12 I'm trying to be complimentary, Paul.

Speaker 1 So 1971, and this is in Yuba City, so 40 miles north of Sacramento. Have you been to Yuba? Oh, yes.
I have never been to Yuba. Have you really? For crime stuff or for what?

Speaker 13 My ex-wife had some family that lived up in Yuba.

Speaker 20 And believe it or not, for a case that I've just stopped working this past year, I went up and met with the Yuba County Sheriff.

Speaker 56 I was recently there.

Speaker 1 Describe it now, and then we'll get into the story.

Speaker 43 Well, it's, you know, like you said, 40 miles north of Sacramento.

Speaker 36 It's in, you know, kind of Central Valley, California, so massive heat.

Speaker 24 That's that's one of the things that really stands out about anything within the Central Valley is the summertime is just miserable.

Speaker 33 It's probably, you know, I don't know how about Austin, but, you know, it's not unusual for Yuba to be up in the 110, 115.

Speaker 1 Okay, so that's normal for Yuba.

Speaker 41 Yeah,

Speaker 41 it's very hot.

Speaker 49 Of course, the geologic feature there is the buttes, these just two plateaued, call them mountains, you know, that you can see from forever, you know, so that's kind of cool.

Speaker 25 And then Yuba's got a very small town feel.

Speaker 68 It's not very populated, and there's a lot of little towns directly surrounding Yuba, like Marysville, Linden.

Speaker 62 And, you know, just, I would say, I guess I would say it's mostly agricultural.

Speaker 1 Yep. Well, let's go ahead and set the scene.

Speaker 1 So we talked about Yuba City. I spent some time, I've mentioned this before, in Modesto, California on the Gary Condit, the Chandra Levy case, which was almond country, and I'm assuming still is.

Speaker 1 So this is orchard country, and I'm assuming that's still the case in Yuba City.

Speaker 1 There were in the spring of 71, so this is almost 55 years ago, 18,000 acres of orchards, mostly peaches, but also prunes and plums and pears. So that is a vast amount of land.

Speaker 1 And of course, you know, with orchards come the workers, you know, who come in. And so we're talking about stories, I think, here of victims who are forgotten.

Speaker 1 And we talk about this all the time with killers, how, you know, they find the people who, in their minds, nobody loves or nobody will miss. And so they prey on those people.

Speaker 1 And I know that that's something that you've certainly dealt with before. Is there another case?

Speaker 1 And I mean, I know we know about sex workers and how they're preyed upon, but is there another case that you could think of where you just know somebody is attacking these people because they think nobody's going to look for them?

Speaker 30 Well, this is where anytime you have a transient population, you know, you're talking about Yuba.

Speaker 43 You know, this is an agricultural area.

Speaker 13 This is very much like the east end of my county.

Speaker 43 And this is where you get a lot of the Hispanics coming up from Mexico. They're separated from their family and they can be victimized.

Speaker 16 You see this also with

Speaker 68 people that ride the trains.

Speaker 25 another transient population. And there's several serial killers that took advantage of these transients on trains, victimized them, killed them.

Speaker 59 And, you know, the family has no idea that anything bad has happened to their loved one.

Speaker 1 Yeah, runaway kids, of course, would be another one. And so we're looking at that a little bit here.
You know, one thing to mention, and this is incredible.

Speaker 1 This area of Yuba City with all of these orchards, 18,000 acres worth of orchards, produced 40%

Speaker 1 of the world's canned fruit. So huge into 40%,

Speaker 1 huge industry. I mean, amazing.

Speaker 30 Yeah, you know, I didn't realize that.

Speaker 20 Vacaville actually had a big dry fruit industry there.

Speaker 28 And it was one company, but it was, you know, a significant employer in Vacaville.

Speaker 61 And I just think this is where you get to the, you know, the weather, you know, how dry, how hot it is, it's probably easy for them to be able to produce this fruit.

Speaker 1 Well, this is spring of 71. So let's go ahead and get into the story.
You know, again, sometimes we start with the killer, sometimes we start with the main victim.

Speaker 1 So we're going to start with the mystery part of it. So this is May 19th, 1971.
And there's a farmer named Goro Kayiho who owns the orchard.

Speaker 1 He is walking around and he notices that there is a very large but shallow hole in between some rows of peach trees. You know, he thinks maybe one of his workers did it.

Speaker 1 He's not sure, but he's not alarmed. So large, shallow.
When he comes back later in the day, and I don't know how long, but long enough for this to happen, it's mysteriously filled in.

Speaker 1 And because this is our show, we know what it is covering up.

Speaker 75 Okay.

Speaker 1 So, you know, he calls the police. He thinks somebody's burying trash in his orchard.

Speaker 1 But when investigators show up, they dig into the soil between the sixth and the seventh rows of these peach trees in this orchard and they find a rubber boot and a human foot.

Speaker 1 So this is a grave that measures six feet long and is only three and a half feet deep.

Speaker 1 We have not gotten into the, I don't know if it's the physics or the geometry of digging a grave, but six feet long, I mean, I would presume that would mean the body could lay long ways, you know, or be legs straight out.

Speaker 1 But three and a half feet deep seems really shallow. What do you think?

Speaker 76 Well, that's actually impressively deep for a typical grave.

Speaker 12 Okay.

Speaker 37 I will tell you, you know, both just having experience doing a lot of landscaping in my backyard, you know, generally you get down through

Speaker 54 maybe 12 to 18 inches of topsoil and you're hitting, you know, really hard pan dirt.

Speaker 30 And, you know, with the cases that I have worked where bodies have attempted to be buried, many of them, they don't get past 18 inches.

Speaker 54 And these shallow graves often have body parts sticking up out of them.

Speaker 60 Gosh, you know, so three and a half feet.

Speaker 12 This is a, I mean, that's a lot of work, you know, and I don't know in this crop type area how, you know, how much they till up the dirt in between the trees.

Speaker 46 Maybe it's looser soil than in other areas.

Speaker 43 Yeah.

Speaker 62 So I'm kind of impressed, but it was just a boot and a foot.

Speaker 41 There wasn't the rest of the body.

Speaker 1 So they see that sticking up first.

Speaker 1 Okay. And then they find the body of their first victim, and there are multiple victims here.
He is a middle-aged white man. He is wearing a calf-length gray overcoat.

Speaker 1 At first, when I saw calf, I thought like a baby, like a baby calf, and I thought, that's unusual. And then I thought some more.

Speaker 1 So the sheriff, who is a guy named, he's a deputy sheriff, his name is Steve Seislove.

Speaker 1 He says that, you know, he thought this guy would be hot because the temperature in Sutter County was peaking at a little over 75 degrees, which is winter for me.

Speaker 1 And I would wear a coat in that time, but I understand how he wouldn't. So that's what he's wearing.
So he's, you know, he's clothed and then he's buried in this grave.

Speaker 1 And they start looking for clues after that. So if you are the investigator, if you're size love on the scene, then you find this body in this orchard.
It's relatively secluded.

Speaker 1 You know, what is kind of the first thing that you're doing? Is it to ID or what?

Speaker 66 You know, there's a whole process in terms of doing, you know, a dig, and you need to do that, that process step by step in order to maximize recovery of the evidence.

Speaker 25 You know, fundamentally, you're documenting, you know, then you're starting to unearth the body.

Speaker 54 But the dirt that you're pulling out of the grave itself could potentially have smaller items of evidence.

Speaker 64 And so you need to have somebody that is sifting that dirt, as well as just paying attention to, well, how was this grave dug?

Speaker 46 Do you have shovel marks on the side?

Speaker 80 Is there anything unique that you can document?

Speaker 62 You know, some striated aspects that could possibly be tied back to the tool used to dig the grave.

Speaker 34 And then, of course, there's the body.

Speaker 28 And you process this body as you would if the body were dead inside a house in terms of trace evidence and, you know, documenting injuries and blood flows and insect activity.

Speaker 28 You know, there's so much aspect that you have to take into consideration.

Speaker 30 But identifying the body as quick as possible is ideal because you can't really start an investigation until you know who your victim is.

Speaker 30 But the other aspect of this is you have the owner of the property who saw this pre-dug grave

Speaker 51 and then later on saw it filled in with a body in it.

Speaker 76 Okay, so now you have a narrow time window in which somebody came into this location, was able to, you know, has access to the location to dig a grave, and then had, again, gained access in order to be able to put the body in there.

Speaker 30 So, now, do you have any witnesses?

Speaker 83 Do you have any farmhands, anybody that's working

Speaker 62 in the orchard area that could be witnesses saying, yeah, I saw so-and-so coming in and, you know, they

Speaker 37 had a tractor with them dragging something behind it or whatever it is.

Speaker 1 Go to, Paul, go to

Speaker 1 page 14. Paul, this is a scene, and, you know, you can see in the caption what they're saying.
And this might give you a good example or a good explanation for how soft the dirt is.

Speaker 1 Tell me what you see. They end up having to do this several more times.
How are they trying to locate these bodies according to this photo or this body or any more bodies?

Speaker 78 I'm looking at the photograph, which is taken, looks down a dirt road that is lined on both sides with, I'm assuming, are fruit trees.

Speaker 80 I can see what appears to be a car, possibly a law enforcement vehicle from that era down in the backdrop.

Speaker 49 And then along sort of the road itself, where you, you know, it's, it's a typical thing where you see two tire tracks, you know, and then you have some vegetation in the middle.

Speaker 25 And then there's two men, in essence, dressed in white t-shirts.

Speaker 48 you know, jeans are similar and shoes.

Speaker 28 And each one of them is

Speaker 53 holding, I'm going to just describe it as a rod-like object.

Speaker 60 Well, I know exactly what that is.

Speaker 39 That is a probe.

Speaker 3 And so one of the ways that we would use to find a body is you'd have a metal rod that's pointed at the thing.

Speaker 25 So you can actually push it down into the ground.

Speaker 12 And oftentimes, you would have, it'd be like T-shaped up at top where you could grab it and put your weight behind it to press this down into the ground.

Speaker 62 Well, if there is a grave in the area, you get a feel for how hard the ground is the deeper you go.

Speaker 56 But if you'd find an area where it seems hard and all of a sudden the probe just goes foom, you found an area in which

Speaker 14 the dirt, the ground underneath, is less dense.

Speaker 57 And this could indicate a grave location, or

Speaker 35 you could potentially have just gone into a body, but that's what these probe devices are used or how they are used.

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Speaker 10 A servant steps forward, delivering a bouquet of blood-red roses into Rose's hands. She smiles and lifts them to her face.
Rose collapses, the bouquet still clutched in her hands. The crowd panics.

Speaker 10 Screams and shouts echo across the room. Midnight's toast turned deadly.
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Speaker 1 Let me give you another example. A lot of the photos that we have are wonderful, but they're kind of described, I think they're conflating a lot of these orchards together.

Speaker 1 What I'm used to with, and people might correct me here, with Modesto are these sort of beautiful, really kind of clean-looking, small-ish almond trees, and they're perfectly lined.

Speaker 1 And I could never see see somebody burying a body there or keeping a body anywhere. You know, it's not, they're not secluded.
So, why don't you take a look at page 13?

Speaker 1 And I think that this is kind of an example, not only of a grave, but also the seclusion of it. I guess these are not as clean.
You know, it looks pretty secluded. And this is a peach orchard.

Speaker 48 Yeah, you know, I'm actually very familiar, you know, with like the almond orchards.

Speaker 63 You drive down,

Speaker 70 you know, from Northern California to Southern California, and you see all these almond orchards.

Speaker 36 You know, familiar with Modesto, I know exactly what you're talking about.

Speaker 59 In this photo, it is a photo which is showing a group of individuals.

Speaker 25 I'm not entirely sure.

Speaker 78 They don't all look law enforcement, but there is a grave in the dirt.

Speaker 67 You see

Speaker 13 dirt that has been piled up on one side of this.

Speaker 56 At this point, I can't tell you if they dug this grave as part of searching for victims or this was another one of these pre-dug graves that the offender had dug.

Speaker 44 And now they're looking at that.

Speaker 46 But to your point, the backdrop, you see the vegetation behind the individuals in this photograph.

Speaker 57 And it appears that this location is visibility of this location is probably quite restricted.

Speaker 51 And so now that could potentially explain how an offender could get into maybe an operating peach orchard and be able to dig a grave and then come back with a body and fill that, you know, basically bury the body.

Speaker 1 Let's look at one more photo because we talked about evidence that would be important, maybe buried with the body.

Speaker 1 So I don't know if this photo is connected directly with who will turn out to be, you know, our first victim, but I thought you would be interested in looking how, at looking at, I guess, at how they're collecting evidence.

Speaker 1 So look, Paul, on page 11.

Speaker 1 it technically is a different spot but i'm assuming look at the method is what i'm you know getting at right so what i'm looking at is a photograph of of three men one appears to be just standing off to the side um

Speaker 60 he's the supervisor and then you see you see

Speaker 62 you you see the

Speaker 67 the the two men that drew the short straw with screens

Speaker 53 and this is where

Speaker 28 the dirt is being sifted for evidence.

Speaker 35 So as dirt is being brought up out of the grave, that dirt needs to go through this sifting process.

Speaker 88 And oftentimes you're using different size screens from large to smaller ones, which allow you to be able to

Speaker 70 find larger items. And then of course you may have to find smaller items.

Speaker 56 And this sifting process is great for just general physical evidence.

Speaker 37 Let's say, you know, the killer threw a cigarette butt into the grave site.

Speaker 13 And this is how you can find a cigarette, but right now, I don't know what the condition of these bodies are.

Speaker 42 So sometimes if you have skeletal remains, the sifting process is necessary to find the small bones, the victim's teeth, depending if there's dismemberment or there's been, you know, some sort of trauma to the body.

Speaker 50 So it's truly an archaeological dig.

Speaker 84 It takes a lot of effort and a lot of time to competently and adequately dig up a body and process that crime scene for evidence.

Speaker 1 What do you think about the space in between?

Speaker 1 I was looking at the mesh, the screen that they were using, and I was thinking, that seems kind of big, but maybe it will catch what they need it to catch if there's anything in there. So

Speaker 36 you're asking about the size of

Speaker 56 the screen size itself?

Speaker 1 Yeah, like of the holes in between. Like, wouldn't teeth fall through those? I was starting starting to think, what are they really looking for?

Speaker 25 At least with what I can see in this photograph, it looks like they are dealing with a screen that has about, I would say, a quarter-inch opening.

Speaker 13 And so, this would be good for recovering just general physical evidence, recovering bone fragments.

Speaker 68 And it does allow the passage of the smaller particles of dirt and stuff.

Speaker 42 So now you can start to visualize, you know, not only do you have rocks or clumps of dirt that don't pass through, but this is where you can see the evidence that gets caught up with this size screen.

Speaker 25 Now, if you are finding things which appears, let's say

Speaker 77 this was a situation where a body's been burned, basically almost cremated, and now the body's been crushed up and you really, really want those teeth, in addition to recovering whatever bone fragments are there, then you need to follow up what you screen with at this size screen with a smaller size screen.

Speaker 64 But you can only go so small because at a certain point, the dirt doesn't pass through.

Speaker 14 It just clumps into the screen.

Speaker 43 And then I ran into a situation where we were finding skeletal remains out in the Thule's out off of the Sacramento River Delta.

Speaker 35 And so we had mud that we had to screen.

Speaker 42 And so now we had to have running water.

Speaker 78 So when we put the mud into the screen and now you have water

Speaker 56 to get the small particle, the clay and crap through the screen.

Speaker 25 So you can see, do I have any bone in this mass of mud?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, this seems like a nightmare scene to me.
They find a tire track, a wide truck tire track, and they make a plaster cast. Is that something that we do today? Is it useful in any way?

Speaker 62 Well, yeah.

Speaker 29 You know, there's, of course, when you're dealing with impression evidence out at a crime scene,

Speaker 56 it could be shoes, it could be tires.

Speaker 80 There's steps that you take in terms of documenting it.

Speaker 23 And photography with oblique lighting from multiple angles is really, really good.

Speaker 20 But then we would use a dental stone, which is really this fine particulate powder that you mix with water, and then you pour into the impression, like the tire impression, allow that to harden.

Speaker 51 And so, in essence, you are walking away with

Speaker 30 an exact replication of that impression evidence.

Speaker 42 And so this is what your tire,

Speaker 28 we had a guy that was an expert in shoes and tires.

Speaker 25 And so he has the photographs with lighting from different angles, and he actually has the tire impression in the dental stone to be able to compare to any suspect vehicle tires that are submitted.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, I was thinking, this is an orchard. Doesn't everybody have a truck around here? But we'll see.
This is helpful.

Speaker 29 Yeah, but that's important, though.

Speaker 30 You know, you need to know what is, you know, commonly operating in this area and then what potentially kind of doesn't look like it belongs.

Speaker 25 If something like that is there and it's right by the grave, then you'd probably focus in on that evidence.

Speaker 71 Yep.

Speaker 1 Okay, so the deputy sheriff is helpful in many ways, including he is able to identify our victim. His name is Kenneth Kinney.
White Acre. The deputy sheriff knows him because he's a wanderer.

Speaker 1 He calls him a wanderer, transient. Kenney was just somebody who was passing through town.
I don't think he broke the law, and that's how the deputy sheriff knows.

Speaker 1 I just think the deputy sheriff's job is to know when strangers come through town. So Kenny came through.
He had only recently come into the area from Palo Alto.

Speaker 1 He did have multiple arrests from public intoxication and robbery. And he had kind of gone back and forth between Washington State and California because he had some family there.

Speaker 1 And he also had been a truck driver at one point. So there's the victim.
I have a description of the injuries that happened to him. I'm assuming you'd like to know that next.

Speaker 12 Absolutely.

Speaker 85 At the Ivywood Gala, guests twirl beneath crystal chandeliers. The clock strikes midnight, and glasses are raised in a glittering toast.

Speaker 10 To Rose, the long-lost daughter of the royal family, may her return bring joy and light to us all.

Speaker 85 A servant steps forward, delivering a bouquet of blood-red roses into Rose's hands. She smiles and lifts them to her face.
Rose collapses, the bouquet still clutched in her hands.

Speaker 85 The crowd panics, screams, and shouts echo across the room. Midnight's toast turned deadly.
Among the glittering guests, the killer moves unseen. Who turned Midnight into tragedy?

Speaker 85 The next clue awaits. Download Solitaire Clash that's CLASH today on the App Store or Samsung Galaxy store and click on the Halloween case files.

Speaker 85 Do you dare to step into into the shadows and uncover what isn't meant to be found? Only those with razor-sharp wits will uncover the truth.

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Speaker 1 Kinney had been stabbed on the left side of his chest, piercing his lung and severing the aorta. And so this was about eight to ten inches through the chest.

Speaker 1 There's a cut behind the fifth finger on his right hand, described as a chop-style, a chop-type wound.

Speaker 1 There's a knife slice on the right wrist that penetrates to the bone, a knife slash on his left cheek, multiple head wounds, largest of which was four inches long and deep, cutting to the skull and into the cranial vault.

Speaker 1 And in this report,

Speaker 1 the physician estimated that the weapon was a 8 to 10 inch long blade. Let me stop there and then we'll talk about stuff that was found on the body, like just evidence from the body.

Speaker 53 Sure.

Speaker 62 Well, at least the injuries to his hands,

Speaker 29 that sounds consistent with defensive wounds.

Speaker 25 So the victim is aware he's being attacked.

Speaker 33 He's trying to ward off

Speaker 71 this offender who's armed with a knife.

Speaker 56 This four inch long

Speaker 25 sounds like an incisive injury, but it also penetrates through the skull.

Speaker 20 You know, that's a significant amount of force, you know, and I've got one poor victim.

Speaker 32 The knife was embedded inside his head, and it was left by the offender there.

Speaker 75 So knives will go through skull, you know, but this is this is indicating that the offender is attacking this victim.

Speaker 77 The victim is aware, and then ultimately, you know, the fatal stab wound

Speaker 82 going into, I think you said the chest into the aorta, you know, and so now once the aorta is penetrated like that, it's possible the victim bleeds out internally very, very quickly.

Speaker 1 Aaron Ross Powell, well, they are searching his body, and in the pocket, the deputy sheriff finds what he says is homosexual literature for the audio audience. I'm using quotes.
Homosexual literature.

Speaker 1 We don't hear about this again.

Speaker 1 You know, we're wondering, we have a new researcher, Allison, and she's wondering if this even really, if the size love the deputy sheriff didn't really know what he was talking about because it's not brought up later on.

Speaker 1 But that's what they say is on him. And then, you know, I have a little bit of a timeline, but, but that's basically it.
You know, he's just somebody who wandered in.

Speaker 1 It doesn't seem like he was somebody who worked on the orchard, but I asked Allison to look a little bit deeper into access because I know you're going to ask about access.

Speaker 1 And the orchard essentially is accessible to anybody. There are multiple roads.
It's not hard to get into. We can see how isolated it is.

Speaker 1 He might or he might not have worked on the orchard, but it wouldn't have been difficult for somebody to get there. And maybe he was eating peaches.
It's a peach orchard, you know?

Speaker 32 Sure.

Speaker 51 You know, if he's, if he's a wanderer and he, you know, needing some food.

Speaker 42 But, okay, so this homosexual literature, this is 1971.

Speaker 29 Things that are popping into my head is, is this a, you know, something that had limited distribution?

Speaker 56 Can this be traced back to a particular location in town or to maybe some other location outside of Yuba?

Speaker 81 Is it consistent with what is known about the victim?

Speaker 72 Part of my concern is, is there's a possibility that this is staged, that the offender planted

Speaker 12 this homosexual literature in a way to, at that point, point in time disparage who the victim was,

Speaker 68 you know, to throw law enforcement off of, you know, whatever leads.

Speaker 25 The timeline, I think, is also going to be important because we know we have a pre-dug grave.

Speaker 13 So when was this grave dug relative to the last time the victim was seen alive?

Speaker 42 You know, was this particular victim targeted?

Speaker 82 And, you know,

Speaker 87 the grave is dug, then the victim is lured to a location. I'm assuming there's no evidence that the victim was killed at the grave site.

Speaker 1 No, no evidence of that from what I can see.

Speaker 68 So he's killed elsewhere, and then the offender already has the grave ready to go.

Speaker 25 So he can dump the body, push the dirt in, and get out of there pretty quick.

Speaker 87 So that would indicate that the offender had pre-selected the victim.

Speaker 28 And is there a relationship between the two?

Speaker 30 So there's sort of questions, and I think that's the next thing I'd want to know is what timeline do we have about this victim?

Speaker 14 And I know with a wandering type of victim, it's probably scant.

Speaker 1 Here's the timeline for what happened with Kenny the day before.

Speaker 1 So, there were a lot of interviews with community members, and this is what they say. Now, remember, this is a guy who hasn't been in Yuba City very long, it's not like he has family there.

Speaker 1 The day before they discover his grave, Kenny was seen at one o'clock in the afternoon in Tierra Buena, which is between Yuba City and Sutter.

Speaker 1 Then, six and a half hours to seven and a a half hours later, people see him walking back toward Yuba City. So that's at night, 7.30, 8.30 at night.

Speaker 1 On the day of the murder, he was seen at 9 o'clock in the morning and he seemed to be heading back to the Bay Area where his siblings lived.

Speaker 1 So the last time people saw him was 9 a.m.

Speaker 1 when his body was discovered later in the day by the farmer.

Speaker 12 Is he hitchhiking?

Speaker 1 You know, he must have been hitchhiking. It doesn't say, but how else, how would he have gotten back to the Bay Area? Would he be walking?

Speaker 15 I mean, that's, that's a long walk. That's a

Speaker 1 maybe the train, maybe he hopped a train or something. I don't know what he was doing.

Speaker 19 Potentially hitchhiking.

Speaker 20 1971, hitchhiking, of course, was a big, big thing that was just common.

Speaker 80 No, this is interesting because at least with his timeline, so 9 a.m.

Speaker 27 on the morning that He's literally found in a grave later on that day.

Speaker 16 Yep.

Speaker 25 He's trying to get down to the Bay Area.

Speaker 42 And I'm going to say he's hitchhiking or something, but he's a victim of opportunity.

Speaker 84 How would an offender have known, you know, with Kenneth, his movement pattern like this?

Speaker 26 I have to consider the possibility that we've got an offender that is out there literally trolling for victims.

Speaker 62 Just like

Speaker 25 you have an offender that is going into a stroll area where sex workers are just trying to find somebody.

Speaker 28 This could potentially be an offender that is going, okay, here's a guy that needs a ride.

Speaker 28 And I've got, and this offender wants to do something to this man. Maybe it's of sexual nature.

Speaker 59 That's part, he's a fantasy-motivated offender.

Speaker 73 And he's already dug the grave.

Speaker 76 And he's going to try to get this, you know, victim isolated to do whatever and kill him and dump him in the grave.

Speaker 60 And, you know, this comes into, you know, even though

Speaker 71 is clothed,

Speaker 64 you know, is there a possibility that there was sexual interaction between this offender and Kenneth?

Speaker 42 And did they actually consider that?

Speaker 80 Chances are 1971 with a fully clothed male victim, probably not.

Speaker 42 But, you know, that's just something that's now, you know, that.

Speaker 39 that packet, that homosexual literature packet or flyer or whatever it is,

Speaker 58 that might be really significant to the offender himself.

Speaker 57 Like this could be something that the offender either planted or maybe the victim is somebody that exchanges

Speaker 42 sexual acts with men for money or for drugs,

Speaker 33 whatever his payment aspect is.

Speaker 1 This book or whatever it was, a pamphlet, doesn't come up later on in the story at all, but the media does talk about it. So

Speaker 1 there's some churn there, but it's also the media, you know, how how we work in the media. We pick up on the most salacious thing sometimes and amplify it.

Speaker 1 But I do think it's important to keep that in mind. So two days later, as they're investigating Kinney's case, the Sutter County Sheriff's Department gets a tip from an officer in nearby Marysville.

Speaker 1 And so two days later, there is a assault that happened. There's a survivor, but there's an assault that happens.

Speaker 1 The vicious nature of this assault in Marysville reminds the sheriff there of the vicious nature of what happened with Kenny. So I'll tell you what happened.

Speaker 1 The folks investigating Kenny's murder get a tip two days later because this was such a vicious murder.

Speaker 1 It reminded somebody in a different area not far from Yuba City of an assault that happened the year before.

Speaker 1 What happens is February 25th of 1970, and at one o'clock in the morning, there's a man named Jose Romero Rea,

Speaker 1 and someone at a bar/slash restaurant had beaten him and cut him with a meat cleaver at the restaurants called Guadalajara Restaurant and Cafe.

Speaker 1 Police describe the injuries with the meat cleaver so severe that they said, quote, the brain was leaking from one cut to the top of the head, and he survives this, this guy.

Speaker 1 I mean, that just seems unsurvivable to me, but maybe not.

Speaker 24 Yeah, Yeah, it all depends on what was what damage was done.

Speaker 45 Yeah.

Speaker 49 You know, we have people shot in the head and they survive and are able to live a decent life afterwards.

Speaker 63 So, is there any indication in terms of, I mean, was Raya just attacked randomly while at this restaurant, or did he get into some sort of argument with another male?

Speaker 36 You know, is this like a bar fight gone bad?

Speaker 1 There's not a lot of information on that assault and what the motive was, but they did clear the owner, Natividad Corona, who had been there, and there was a patron who did the attack in the bathroom and then left.

Speaker 1 I doubt he brought a meat cleaver with him, but I assume that, you know, this was something that the offender got at the restaurant.

Speaker 1 But this tip came in, and this is something that happened a year earlier. I think it was the meat cleaver aspect of it that tipped everybody off.

Speaker 1 And so, you know, they just keep that in mind for right now, what happened in Marysville.

Speaker 26 Sure.

Speaker 1 Okay, now we're five days after Kenny's body has been found. We're at a different orchard.
We've gone from peaches to prunes. I'm not a big fan of prunes.
Do you like prunes?

Speaker 13 I think I've had them once in my life.

Speaker 75 Maybe.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry. Don't give me any hate, you guys, if you love prunes.
I've never gotten into prunes, which is weird because I love plums. I love grapes, hate raisins.
So explain all that.

Speaker 63 You know,

Speaker 36 kind of, kind of the same, I guess.

Speaker 55 Really?

Speaker 70 I can't remember the last time I ate raisins.

Speaker 1 I'm not a raisin fan. But anyway, so now we're on a prune orchard, and we're going to talk about a picture in a second.

Speaker 1 So get your hand ready for the picture section here because I want you to see the vastness. I've seen big orchards, but these are massive.
So this is a different place. It's called Sullivan Ranch.

Speaker 12 Okay.

Speaker 1 And this is where we have a lot of activity happening. There is a tractor driver named Ernesto Garcia, and he's on the ranch.
He works for the ranch.

Speaker 1 This is five miles north of Yuba City, and it's May 24th. He's breaking, and there's another piece of info for you.

Speaker 1 He's breaking up the soil on the prune orchard, and he sees a large indentation in the ground between the seventh and eighth rows.

Speaker 1 He thinks that the farmhand responsible for irrigating the area skipped a row. And so, you know, somebody wasn't doing their job and there's an indentation.

Speaker 1 But the ground is soft and there's a shallow depression, which is about six feet by two or three feet deep. So I think there's no doubt that we've got a connection here.

Speaker 1 The next day, Garcia alerts his foreman, who is a guy named Ray Duron. I thought, the next day, why did he not alert somebody sooner?

Speaker 1 But Garcia actually waited because it was late in the day when he saw this indentation. And he had hoped that the foreman might say, oh yeah, this is, you know, this was a new game plan.

Speaker 1 Don't worry about it. And he didn't want to

Speaker 1 look like he was being paranoid, even though word had gotten around about what happened at the previous orchard. So he sees this thing and he goes, They can't be connected.
There's no way.

Speaker 1 So then Duron, the foreman, contacts detectives. They show up.
And in less than 10 minutes, they uncover a decomposed body.

Speaker 1 The person is wearing mismatched clothing: two pairs of pants, a plaid shirt, a sweater, a suit coat, and one shoe. He is in his 60s.
He's a white man.

Speaker 1 And then I've got the injuries, but you can imagine they're probably pretty consistent. So, you know, what do you think about this so far? Different orchard.

Speaker 41 Well, it's interesting.

Speaker 30 So, you know, first, addressing the indentation and the body is decomposed.

Speaker 28 I'm wondering if that body had been buried there for a significant period of time.

Speaker 63 And as the body decomposed, now what you have is the dirt that's on top of the body ends up kind of compressing the body as the body's decomposing.

Speaker 28 And so what may have been level land before, as that body decomposed, in essence, the dirt sunk down and now revealed the location of this grave site.

Speaker 56 That's one possibility.

Speaker 32 The mismatched clothing on the victim, you know, two thoughts on that is, again, are you dealing with a transient victim who, you know, is just wearing clothing wherever he could find articles of clothing and is just, that's what he's got on.

Speaker 58 But I think there's also the possibility of this, this victim is being redressed by the offender.

Speaker 24 And the offender has access for whatever reason to these articles of clothing.

Speaker 34 Two pants, a suit coat, one. what was it, one shoe or one boot?

Speaker 30 You know, that is odd.

Speaker 42 So at least that's what, you know, I can kind of discern from now.

Speaker 66 But obviously, there's got to be strong suspicion that this case is connected to the previous case, even though it's in a different orchard.

Speaker 1 So the person who did the autopsy is a guy named Dr. Clement.

Speaker 1 He says there is a stab to this man's chest that is so powerful it shatters the fifth rib and cuts into the left lung.

Speaker 1 His face is slashed on both sides, and there is a third cut at the nape of the neck. At the morgue, they find matches and a couple of Safeway receipts dated May 8th.

Speaker 1 This is May 25th, so you know, a couple of weeks ago. A box of snuff and two bars of soap and a razor.

Speaker 1 So this man seems to be definitely a transient, somebody who's kind of come in, a worker, who's come in and come out of town.

Speaker 1 Dr. Clements says that the cause of death is strangulation.

Speaker 1 The extent to which his bronchial tubes are filled with blood, however, make it impossible to determine whether the chest or the head wounds were more lethal.

Speaker 1 Okay, and the decomposition of the body places the time of death at one or two weeks earlier. And the victim's name turns out to be Charles Fleming.

Speaker 1 So if they're right, and you need to tell me first if you think that they could be right, if they're right, this man, Charles Fleming, is killed before Kenny was killed.

Speaker 1 And remember, this is 75-degree weather. That's kind of it.

Speaker 30 Well, as far as the injuries, if the pathologist is saying cause of death of strangulation, then he is seeing evidence in evaluating the neck that there's either hemorrhaging in the strap muscles of the neck, there's hyoid bone has been broken,

Speaker 76 there's a furrow around his neck.

Speaker 77 If there was a ligature that had been employed at some point, maybe there's patikia still present within the eyes, but the state of decomposition might prevent him from seeing that.

Speaker 83 I'm a little bit concerned with the emphasis on the amount of blood in these victims' lungs and that he basically drowned in his own blood.

Speaker 72 I don't think a pathologist would misinterpret, you know, but is there is it asphyxial, you know, versus strangulation?

Speaker 64 But I'm just going to assume this pathologist knows what they're doing.

Speaker 37 And so he's seeing evidence that, yes, this victim is strangled, But then the stab wound into the left lung, the one that fractured the fifth rib, now you've got the bleeding internally.

Speaker 79 And you see this, where now victims are literally, they're struggling to breathe.

Speaker 37 They're coughing up blood.

Speaker 78 And you start to see this, what we call expiratory patterns of blood as they are just struggling to get air in.

Speaker 15 It's miserable.

Speaker 42 I can't imagine going through something like that.

Speaker 20 However, from a sequence standpoint, it seems more logical that this victim is being attacked with the knife first.

Speaker 28 And then once the victim is starting to succumb to those injuries, the offender is finishing the victim off with the strangulation.

Speaker 54 That is what I would guess is the sequence of how that happened.

Speaker 24 Kind of the finding of the matches.

Speaker 62 the receipts.

Speaker 25 Those receipts are huge.

Speaker 34 You know, it sounds like Fleming is alive on May 8th and is somehow is contacted by the offender after that date.

Speaker 72 State of decomposition would probably suggest relatively soon in a few days after that May 8th date, but it also tends to suggest he is more of a transient type with the razor.

Speaker 60 So

Speaker 15 it's kind of similar victimology to the first victim.

Speaker 64 Yep.

Speaker 1 Why don't you go to your photos real quick and look on page two. I want you to see this flippin ranch.
It's 400 to 600 acres. I just, if I were a deputy,

Speaker 1 I would look at this and say, because now they feel like this is obviously a multiple murderer at this point. So, I mean, can you imagine trying to do a grid search or anything on this land?

Speaker 80 Well, you know, obviously, yes, this I'm looking at, it appears to be an arrow photograph showing sort of the primary structures on the ranch, maybe a residence, maybe some barns for tractor housing tractors and stuff.

Speaker 26 But on either side of where the structures are located, you can just see the sprawl of a very organized orchard, kind of like how you're describing the Modesto

Speaker 42 almond orchards.

Speaker 58 That's what this looks like.

Speaker 30 And so, yes, you know, if now the thought is, okay, we've got another buried body, how many more bodies are out here?

Speaker 65 The size of this orchard, if we're going to restrict ourselves to just this orchard, yes, that would take a very, very long time to search.

Speaker 18 However, it's because of the spacing of the trees, there's sort of a convenience aspect.

Speaker 46 You can utilize the row and column aspect of the trees to organize your search pattern.

Speaker 28 If you find something, you're able to very quickly designate, you know, where that, whatever you found, where that's located on this orchard.

Speaker 46 And you can easily walk through these trees.

Speaker 70 You know, when I've had to do some searching, oftentimes I'm having to push through.

Speaker 38 I can think one case where I'm pushing through poison oak on the side of a hill.

Speaker 40 I'd much rather search this orchard than go, you know, hunt, you know, for other bodies in poison oak.

Speaker 1 This is such a large space, but you're right. I mean, you could be a lot more organized on this kind of land.

Speaker 19 It's easy for dogs to run through this.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 absolutely. And different than the peach orchard seemed like a huge mess, but let's continue on.
So they stay and look around because, of course, they fear that there are more bodies out there.

Speaker 1 And I'm assuming that there are people at the peach orchard who are also looking for more bodies there. Around six o'clock on the 25th, same day,

Speaker 1 they discover a clearing near the Feather River on the Sullivan Ranch. And I have a photo of that if you want to see that.
In the clearing is another grave.

Speaker 1 There is also something we haven't seen yet, which is a 15 to 16-yard blood trail that leads across a road to a red blood-soaked patch of dry grass in the prune orchard.

Speaker 1 And there's dirt that's been sprinkled on the grass in an attempt to cover the blood. And there are shovel marks on the access road.

Speaker 1 And I had wondered if that's what happened with the first two, that those are actually the murder scenes, but he managed to cover up with loose dirt and stuff.

Speaker 12 Well, yeah, this

Speaker 37 third grave, you know, with the blood trail and then what sounds like, you know, blood, pooled blood, that would suggest, yes, you have a victim that's been killed, was laying at that location for some period of time and is then moved, leaving that blood trail over to where the grave is.

Speaker 67 And if you are seeing that, this sounds very recent.

Speaker 35 You know, you think about the dirt that's out there, you know, that blood is

Speaker 78 sticky.

Speaker 34 You know, as the dirt gets blown you know a lot of the the blood is going to just get covered up by that dirt it's just going to you know that dirt's going to stick to it i'm somewhat surprised but maybe not totally that the offender is isolating the victims out in his orchards and this is where he's killing them and burying them but with the first one though that that grave you know unless unless the offender and the victim, you know, the offender's got a knife to the victim's throat telling him to shut up as the witness, you you know, goes by, you know, it would suggest that he's pre-planning the location and where he's going to bring the victims, at least for body disposal.

Speaker 84 But it sounds like in this case, he brought the victim to the location where he's disposing the body, but the victim is alive.

Speaker 25 And then he kills the victim here.

Speaker 54 Why is he killing the victim?

Speaker 33 Is this robbery?

Speaker 25 But I think you potentially are looking at a fantasy-motivated offender.

Speaker 76 There may be a sexual aspect to what this offender is getting from his interactions with these males.

Speaker 1 Well, let's keep going. You know, they find a shoe print.
They make a plaster cast in the grave with this latest person. They find a cigarette butt, a small dark feather, and two folded receipts.

Speaker 1 And, you know, of course, when we say receipts, oh, that's that's, you know, maybe it'll be part of this timeline. They don't think it's something that's going to be key because

Speaker 1 they look at the body and it's very clear to the pathologist that these are wounds that have been inflicted in the last 24 hours. Okay.
He said, that is very clear.

Speaker 1 Is that based on the blood clotting or what?

Speaker 36 Well, it's going to be based off of his assessment of the condition of the body.

Speaker 25 Like you said, you know, we're talking about 75 degree temperatures during the day.

Speaker 64 It's going to drop to cooler temperatures at night.

Speaker 30 You're putting a body into a ground that is going to be cool, you know, so the body is being preserved somewhat.

Speaker 46 Now, 24 hours later, the pathologist is going to be taking a look at, well, is there any rigor present?

Speaker 44 You know, do I have full rigor?

Speaker 3 Do I have partial rigor?

Speaker 27 He's assessing the temperatures, the location, you know, the body in essence is in a, I wouldn't call it a refrigerated state, but is in a somewhat of a cooled state.

Speaker 18 But when he's looking at these wounds, he's not necessarily able to gauge, oh, you know, this wound was inflicted five hours ago versus 24 hours ago.

Speaker 18 He's taking in the totality of what he is seeing and saying,

Speaker 33 this is a fresh kill.

Speaker 1 Okay, well, let me tell you about the victim. They identify him.
He's a white male. He's 59.
His name is Melford Sample, and he has nine fingers, which I don't think comes into play, but there you go.

Speaker 1 He has been stabbed in the left chest, has a large, deep cut in the back of the head. The wounds appear to have been inflicted within the last 24 hours, as I said.

Speaker 1 Cause of death, according to this physician, is a skull fracture, massive compound, right temporal parietal bone. Does this fit in with the same pattern?

Speaker 25 Yeah, to a lesser or greater extent.

Speaker 78 But fundamentally, the offender is using a sharp-edged weapon, maybe a meat cleaver again, something where you've got this, what sounds like a deep cut to the back of the head.

Speaker 42 Then you also have the skull fractures, which at least there's not enough in what you provided to say

Speaker 25 is that a result of some sort of bludgeoning?

Speaker 54 You know, so maybe, or it could be a stomping.

Speaker 52 It almost sounds like this victim, you know, was this somewhat of a surprise attack, you know, where the victim's standing out there in the orchard, and now you have the offender says, you know, hey, what's that over there?

Speaker 63 And then pulls out a meat cleaver and brings it down into the back of his head.

Speaker 12 Fully clothed?

Speaker 1 It says it, yes.

Speaker 50 Okay.

Speaker 43 All the victims are white males.

Speaker 91 This victim, do we know, is he also transient?

Speaker 14 He is.

Speaker 36 And so I think, you know, going back to when you first started talking about this case and talking about offenders targeting victims that wouldn't be noticed if they go missing, right?

Speaker 80 So this offender is preying on a certain population, purposely preying on a certain population.

Speaker 37 And this is a population that doesn't have financial resources.

Speaker 36 Robbery does not seem to be this offender's motive.

Speaker 28 And now I'm thinking, okay, we do have a serial predator that's either he's sexually motivated, fantasy induced, or maybe he's, I'll use this term, missionary.

Speaker 30 He's got a mission.

Speaker 8 He has maybe a personal philosophy that somehow these men are representative of being opposed to what this offender's philosophy is.

Speaker 1 We've talked about this kind of case before where you have people who kind of had a vendetta, essentially, and they're seeking revenge. So we'll have to see where we land on this one.
Okay.

Speaker 1 So now we have, as far as victims, we have Kenny. Then we have an assault on Jose, who doesn't die, but has massive facial and brain injuries from the attack.

Speaker 1 We've got Charles Fleming. And then we go to, when we go to Feather River, we have Melford sample.
And now they're going to continue to spread out because they feel like this is a hot spot.

Speaker 1 And they are right. In 500 yards, the surrounding 500 yards, they find four more graves.
There's one that's 100 yards north and a cluster of three victims less than 400 yards south of the first grave.

Speaker 1 And some of these are John Does. I can tell you about, you know, some of these.
I mean, we'd be here all day talking about this, but everything is very similar. So we've got four more graves.

Speaker 1 There is a white John Doe, number one. He's been bludgeoned to death.
His shirt and sweatshirt are pulled up over his face and his arm. He's not wearing pants and his penis is exposed.

Speaker 1 It appeared that he had been dragged to his grave.

Speaker 1 And then I can tell you about the three other that were, you know, three other victims that were kind of in a cluster a little south of where this initial grave was.

Speaker 1 We've got three middle-aged white men, Donald Smith, John Haluka, and another John Doe. John Doe, number two.

Speaker 1 So Smith, the first guy, has his shirt and sweatshirt pulled up over his face and arm, and nothing on John,

Speaker 1 the man in the center, but the third body was extremely decomposed. They've all been stabbed in the chest and cleaved in the back of their heads.
And John Doe, too, is naked from the waist down.

Speaker 1 Everybody is a, is a, you know, a worker, transient worker.

Speaker 42 Sure, you know, and I think that, that kind of answers the question.

Speaker 8 There's a, a sexual sexual component to what the offender is doing to these victims.

Speaker 59 So he's a serial predator, fantasy motivated.

Speaker 1 Well, let's talk about where these guys are from real quick. So Smith and Haluka are

Speaker 1 workers that have been on orchards, but they're pretty different. Smith was from Kansas.
He was on his own on the road for a very long time. He had 97 arrests for drunkenness and misdemeanors.

Speaker 1 Haluka had kept to himself. He didn't drink.
He kept his money in his pocket. But, you know, they're on orchards, and that's the common denominator, right?

Speaker 1 He said he kept money in his pocket to avoid being arrested for vagrancy, to be able to prove he had money, it sounds like.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 76 Well, obviously, the offender is comfortable around these orchards.

Speaker 76 There's a reason why the offender is choosing orchards versus maybe more remote locations.

Speaker 44 You've got these four additional victims being found, and one of the victims is severely decomposed.

Speaker 28 So now that might provide some sequence information in terms of the order in which

Speaker 33 these various cases occurred.

Speaker 23 And then we go back to the Marysville bar that happened a year prior to the start of these bodies being found.

Speaker 45 And

Speaker 62 that may be related.

Speaker 30 I think it is significant that in that case, that's the only non-white male that is being attacked.

Speaker 25 And that was a Hispanic male, just I'm assuming, just based off of the name.

Speaker 8 You know, it comes down to

Speaker 63 who is that patron that attacked that guy in that restaurant?

Speaker 66 You know, and can you investigate whether or not he has any role in these homicides that are occurring on the orchards?

Speaker 1 Well, let me give you a couple of more victims here.

Speaker 1 It just keeps going. It's 7.45 p.m.
that night.

Speaker 1 It's starting to rain, but the detectives just found two more graves, different states of decomposition, and they're laid foot to foot near a fork in the road that leads back to the main part of this Sullivan ranch.

Speaker 1 There are two 62-year-old men, and one of them had his pants pulled down. They've both been stabbed and cleaved, like the other ones, both white.

Speaker 52 And they're buried right next to each other.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they're foot to foot is what it said. Near a road that leads back to the main road of the ranch.
What does that mean? And it sounds like very decomposed.

Speaker 59 But they're saying two different states of decomposition.

Speaker 44 Sounds like they're killed at different times versus both of them are killed at the same time and buried.

Speaker 64 So this, you know, there's a certain,

Speaker 33 I think, because there was a cluster of three.

Speaker 46 bodies that were near each other that you said before.

Speaker 25 You know, this is interesting just because I go to the Green River Killer case where Gary Ridgway purposefully put women's bodies in clusters.

Speaker 30 And when he was interviewed, the reason he did that is so he could remember where he had put them.

Speaker 23 And he would go back and visit these women's bodies.

Speaker 25 And I'm not going to go into any details, what he was doing with some of these women's bodies.

Speaker 46 But this is where, you know, I'm starting to wonder in this case, you know, are these grave sites so near each other because these are good body disposal areas and the offender is taking advantage of that?

Speaker 76 Or has the offender got a personal reason to put these bodies together like that?

Speaker 1 You know, these men are

Speaker 1 the consistency is they sort of belong on orchards. They've been on orchards, they've worked on orchards before.
But one of the men is not somebody who was a worker, a transient worker.

Speaker 1 He had lived in Marysville for 20 years, and he'd been working on orchards, and he had some security checks that he was caching.

Speaker 1 He was last seen getting into a yellow-looking Chevy panel van, and he picked up his last one on May 1st.

Speaker 1 And his friend alerted the police that there was a missing person.

Speaker 63 It was a Chevy van, a yellow Chevy van that had panels on it.

Speaker 84 Yep.

Speaker 14 It seems quite distinctive.

Speaker 46 This is a clue that I'm sure the investigators started marching down on.

Speaker 45 Yep.

Speaker 1 Yep. So now we're at 12.10 a.m.

Speaker 1 And after multiple hours of unearthing victims in the rain, they find three more, but they're exhausted. And they said, we have to be done for tonight.

Speaker 1 And so, you know, they end up leaving the three graves for the next day. So, this is all happening in one day.
And I lost count of how many they discovered.

Speaker 1 I mean, it, it, maybe six or seven, I think, in one day.

Speaker 12 In one day, yeah.

Speaker 25 No, that's, you know, they, they made the right call trying to, you know, first, I think with this type of crime scene, once it starts to rain, I think you're done.

Speaker 21 I think you have to call it a day and just wait.

Speaker 23 The worst

Speaker 80 for evidence, the worst for documentation, et cetera, is trying to process a crime scene in the rain.

Speaker 30 And then when you now get into where it's now nighttime,

Speaker 30 I don't care how good your lights are, you know, that you erect out there.

Speaker 29 It's not as good as sunshine.

Speaker 59 Yeah.

Speaker 91 So in essence, you know, they probably worked longer than they should have, but there's no reason to continue.

Speaker 53 They're making the right call.

Speaker 37 Let's do this right when we can see, and hopefully, the rain has stopped in the morning.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because they're not going to become suddenly more decomposed or lose anything.

Speaker 1 If they're buried on that land, they're safely buried for 12 hours.

Speaker 25 Yeah, I, in fact, I had a case, I at least started digging up a woman's body on Hell's Angels property.

Speaker 28 And this is within a year of me retiring.

Speaker 1 And I remember arguing with the homicide investigator because i said no we're done i this is a this is a body and we're going to get the crime lab out here to do a proper dig in the morning and this guy was lighting me up we're going to lose evidence this i was like no you're not nothing is going to change between now and in the morning and all we're going to do is screw things up if we keep doing this in the middle of the night well that's obviously smart and it seems like we have investigators who have it together because we do have a suspect you're right it is is connected to the assault that happened the year before.

Speaker 1 And, you know, we will talk about that and we will talk about sort of the ending and how many bodies they end up discovering next week.

Speaker 33 Okay, well, I look forward to it.

Speaker 29 This is a fascinating case.

Speaker 1 Good. I know.
Good serial killer case. You love them.
I'm spoiling you.

Speaker 1 I need to pace myself a little bit better.

Speaker 43 Well, this is great.

Speaker 29 Thanks, Kate.

Speaker 12 Okay. Bye.

Speaker 1 This has been an Exactly Right Production.

Speaker 35 For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com/slash buried bones sources.

Speaker 1 Our senior producer is Alexis Emorosi.

Speaker 25 Research by Allison Trouble and Kate Winkler Dawson.

Speaker 1 Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.

Speaker 13 Our theme song is by Tom Breifogel.

Speaker 1 Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.

Speaker 17 Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer.

Speaker 1 You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at Buried Bones Pod.

Speaker 62 Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked: A Gilded Age Story of Murder and the Race to Deco the Criminal Mind, is available now.

Speaker 1 And Paul's best-selling memoir, Unmasked: My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, is also available now.

Speaker 63 Listen to Buried Bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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