This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI AM six forty, The Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. We have a bit of a true crime Friday coming up about detectives investigating a student at UCLA's murder have uncovered a bit of a twist in the case. This is a murder that goes back to nineteen ninety and had all the markings of one of those occult type martyrs, complete with Manson family type connections.
So we'll talk about that. Also a feel good story about what a retired firefighter has been up to.
All Right, So, yesterday something happened at Dodger Stadium, and I'm not talking about the padres Win. Something happened yesterday morning specifically, and while we were on the show here, we got a bunch of televisions in all of the local stations. We're running with a story about ice agents that had shown up at the parking lot at Dodger Stadium, State or whatever.
Bit of a timeline. Nothing happens inside a vacuum. The Dodgers had remained silent as all of the protests were going on. The Dodgers, who are a very pro immigrant organization, and to say the least as you could possibly say. They had the national anthem sung last week, the singer sang it in Spanish. She told that she she told somebody so TikTok that she was told not to do so, we don't know by whom. And then the story became, well, she was told you shouldn't have done that after the fact,
or what have you. The Dodgers kind of got wrapped up in this white You didn't say anything about the protest, and now you told her she couldn't sing in Spanish, which is in the opposite of what the Dodgers would
would do, you would think in normal circumstances. So they were already dealing with blowback from that, and then they came out and said that they were going to make this major announcement about something beneficial to the immigrant community, standing alongside the immigrant community, some sort of announcement of how they were going to maybe I don't know, pour money into the cause. I'm not sure what it was.
But that was the backdrop of us getting reports yesterday around this time that ice officers were turning up in the gates outside of Dodger Stadium and that they were denied entry, they were trying to enter. That's when a handful of protesters showed up and there was some sort of confrontation.
So there's two images, and again it feels like nobody was really trying to suss out the truth of what was going on.
There's two images.
One of them is of several vehicles, including unmarked white vans, unmarked in that they don't have a logo of whichever agency is driving them, that were using a parking area outside Dodger Stadium, not the parking lot, as a meeting place to just get together before they go and execute some immigration enforcement what do you call it in immigration enforcement operations?
Whatever?
If I'm not mistaken, and I'm not because I go there all the time. The fire department has a huge piece of property there. They actually I believe lease their parking area to Dodger Stadium for game days. Anyway, it is a big area for that fire facility. So if there needed to be a staging point for other law enforcement, that would be a likely place to do so that had nothing to do with Dodger Stadium.
Yeah, it basically ends up the Vinscully Gate is where they were first.
The main gate that everybody knows.
There's plenty of roadway there before you actually get to the gates to get into the parking lot, and that's what they needed. They needed space to get together to plan whatever they were going to do. Apparently one of the vehicles that they were in broke down something like that.
They carry out their immigration enforcement operations in Hollywood, and then after that they went back to Dodger Stadium the E gate, which is that one that is closer to the fire facility there, and they said that they were using that space again to process some of the people that had been picked up earlier in their immigration enforcement operations.
Protesters are the ones that then saw them and.
That's when they put up That's when the cameras came out, although there were cameras there already because of what you said was the announcement that was supposed to come from Dodgers' management.
Dodger Stadium was not targeted.
Agents were never inside the parking lot until they left, and the Dodgers apparently allowed them to use a different exit gate because the path to leave was blocked by protesters. It was not Immigration and Customs enforcement, and I know that that may be splitting hairs. But if you're going to get information wrong, it's going to throw a lot of the argument out the window. Apparently it was Customs
and Border Protection. Yes, it does fall under Department of Homeland Security, but it is a clear distinction between the two agencies.
They have been working in hand.
They have been working hand in hand, but that that was again to be clear, they weren't doing any operation at Dodger Stadium, and I'm frustrated by people who think that they would, or remember last week there was a discussion that they were going to be showing up at Sofi Stadium for the soccer match that took place at Sofi.
Why in the world would an agency like that put itself in a position to be completely surrounded by fifty thousand people who would be upset if they're trying to get one or two guys out of there.
That's the part I don't quite understand.
You think that they're so dumb they would set foot at Dodger Stadium knowing that that crowd would overwhelmingly against them. That's not what they do. That is not what they do, and they're not going to sit in the parking lot and wait for people to look brown and then arrest them.
Federal agents were not trying to get into Dodger Stadium. They were not trying to raid Dodger Stadium. They were using an adjacent parking lot. The Dodgers did not Lee, did not ask federal agents to leave Dodger Stadium. They asked them, Hey, this is a distraction.
Can you leave the.
Parking lot or just move along with your day. That's what happened. It was. The spin is that they were trying to Ice was raiding Dodger Stadium, and the Dodgers turned them away, said no, not on our watch. Like it's all way more dramatic than it actually was.
They would show up at eight thirty in the morning for a seven first to raid. Yeah, come on so again. Stan cast and team president did say that because of the finger quotes activities earlier in the day, we continue to work with our with groups that were involved with our programs, but we are going to have to delay today's announcement while we firm up some more details.
We will get back to you soon with the timing.
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Well, we have a bit of a true crime Friday to tell you about. And to do so, we have got to go back to June of nineteen ninety. At the time, a common theme in the zeitgeist was a cult, a cult inspired Mayhem, darker spirits. The serial killer, the Nightstalker, a Satanist. Professed Satanist had been sentenced to death a year before. People were still talking about it. The McMartin pre school molestation case was in the news slogging through
the course at the time. If you're unfamiliar, this was a case that just created mass hysteria about what was going on in local preschools. There were claims of ritual abuse of and the children were kind of coached into lying about it, and not even so lying about it. You know how kids are, They're very suggestive. It changed the way children, I believe were interviewed in any sort of law enforcement process, if I'm not mistaken. So this
was very much top of mine a cult. And so when some local teenagers were in just you know, they were just exploring a pitch black tunnel above Chatsworth Park and found a young man's body, the first conclusion that was jumped to was occult motives. The victim in the tunnel was identified as a twenty one year old USLA UCLA student majoring in astrophysics. His name was Ronald Baker, and he was killed on June twenty first, which was a day considered holy by occultists, and this was a
site where they were known to congress Gate. Look no further than the graffiti outside the tunnel.
Yeah, there's a couple of things that would point to this being Satanist or a cult or something. He one, for one thing, had a pendant that had a pentagram on it.
In the bedroom of his apartment.
There were books on witchcraft, there was a pentagram decorated candle, a flyer for a mystic circle, which is a group devoted to shamanism, and a lot of I mean, the conclusions were easy to jump to. Student killed on Solstice may have been sacrificed. The Times had a headline slain man frequently visited site of the occultists. But the detectives
learned that this guy, that's not what he was about. Yeah, he was into Wicca, but they said he was a really sweet guy, just detested violence in any way, adamantly against Satanism, and arguably the occult at the same time. So they said, well, maybe he had changed. I mean, maybe that may have been one of the things that would explain why he was there, that he had gone to the dark side.
Something that was not very explainable was the fact that the toxicology test showed he was heavily drunk when he died. Well, this guy was an introvert, like you said, shy, he was maybe a light drinker at best. So what happened there.
Well, there was also the ransom calls.
Ronald Baker's dad started getting phone calls demanding one hundred thousand dollars in exchange for his son's life.
Now, he had roommates at the time who turned out to be both military veterans, both roommates in their early twenties as well. They had been the last people known to see him, last known people to see him alive, and they were each other's alibi. They said they had dropped him off at a bus stop in Van Eyes, that he had planned to join his friends, his mystics circle friends for the solstice. No signs of any animosity between the roommates. In fact, one of the guys, Duncan Martinez,
the killed guys that Duncan was his best friend. He helped carry his casket. He spoke with the memorial service. He said his friend was never really physically strong, like a lot of guys I know, but he was the friendliest, sweetest guy. Why you would mention that I will do that for you at yours, I'll be like, you know what, the strongest guy I've ever met, But he was nice. It's so weird, right, his voice filled with emotion, Martinez
is did at the service. He said about his dead friend, he would talk to anybody, be there for anybody at the drop of a dime. And I just hope that it's something I can get over because I love him. It's hard to think of a time without Ron.
Okay, but there's a weird thing that happened when Ron Baker's dad. Remember He's getting these ransom demand calls. When Baker's dad told the roommates about the ransom calls, they said, oh, you know what, We'll go look for him at Chatsworth Park. Well wait a minute, I mean they knew that that was one of the places he wanted to go, But why would they assume that a kidnapper took him there. That was one of the logical things and probably the first real crack in their story.
There was another troubling detail that emerged earlier on and it was that Duncan Martinez, the best friend, had cashed a check that the dead kid had given him for one hundred and nine dollars, but an excerpt an expert determined that the dead Kid's signature was forged. I'm trying to do Keith Morrison again. Is it working? Probably not.
You're getting close. It is closer.
We'll sell you the rest of the story doing Paul Harvey. Now, is that working? When we return White Guys, you.
Know you're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI AM six forty.
The Apple snooze is now adjustable. And what the snooze function on your Apple phone? Oh, on your iPhone? So if you use it, which I do, you know that it gives you nine minutes and that's it. Actually thought it was eight minutes. I guess it's nine minutes and that's it. You can't adjust it. Well, now, for eighteen years you couldn't adjust it. Now you can. You can even adjust it for as many as fifteen whole minutes.
Snooze to me. I used to love it, and now I feel like it's just so detrimental because I'm awake when the alarm goes off, and I'm like, I don't want to wake up, so I hit the snooze and then I fall right back to sleep, and then I've got to go through the whole rigamarole again. I think it throws things off to a detriment.
I don't have an option to change the time of this news.
Do you have the OIS twenty six running?
I do not.
Okay, that's what you need to do. It's in beta right now. Ah, it's in beta, so it's not ready yet, Okay, but it's coming. It's a coming.
General Mills, by the way, latest US food company to remove the artificial dies from its portfolio of products. The food giant says it's going to remove artificial colors from all of its US cereals and all school foods K through twelve school foods by the summer of next year.
So we're talking about the murder of Ronald Baker, a twenty one year old UCLA student found in the Chatsworth Park tunnel. Some people called it the Manson Tunnel. By the way, because Manson and his disciples had lived nearby at the Spawn Ranch. The spray paint over the tunnel even read with big white block letters Holy Terror and nineteen ninety. As we pointed out, it was very big. A cult culture was very big in the zeitgeist. People were talking about it. Nightstalk are still in the news.
The McMartin mess was still in the news. It was a couple of years before the Craft came out. Anyway, Witchcraft and all of that very much talked about in pop culture. So this guy UCLA student twenty one years old, turns up dead inside this tunnel, and everyone is very upset.
The father is upset, the roommates are upset, both Army veterans, by the way, and the roommates started to raise a couple issues because the dead kid's father had been getting these ransom calls, and so the roommates kind of said, all right, we'll take care of it. We'll go looking for the guy that's making the calls.
Right that, they were going to look in Chatsworth Park, which raised the question, how would you know that that's where he was. They also found that one of the roommates had cashed a check that he said came from Ron Baker, but figured out that Baker's signature had been forged. So Martinez, one of the roommates, agrees to this polygraph test. The test showed deception, if you will, and he took off, gone for about eighteen months, finally turned up in Utah,
arrested for lying on a passport application. Was trying to reinvent himself and when he was asked about all of this, assured that his statement could not be used against him. He finally talked and he said this was all Nathan's idea.
The other roommate that.
They'd been watching an old episode of Dragnet about a botched kidnapping. They're both, like you, said, military. They said they could probably do a better job. So they lure Ron Baker to the park with a case of beer and say there's girls on the other side of this.
We'll meet some chicks there.
That's when the other roommate, according to this roommates, stabbed the dead kid with a Marine Corps k bar knife that this roommate had lent the other roommate. The dead kid apparently begged for his life and that went nowhere.
Martinez then told his roommate Blaylock, to finish the job. Said I told him to make sure that it was over because they didn't want Ron to suffer. He also admitted to disguising his voice to make those ransom calls to Ron's father for the one hundred thousand dollars.
He even admitted the whole story it doesn't click with me either. The dead kid's oldest sister, in a recent interview at the time, said they ruined their lives and all of the family's lives with the stupidest crime. The occult narrative obviously a red herring, wanted to throw the police off the scent of the real culprits and the real motive. They set the thing up for summersaulticts because they knew that he would go out celebrating the solstice.
Blaylock was charged with murder, and detectives knew that both of them were responsible for it, but Martinez stayed free until he gets arrested for robin a sporting good store in Utah and then claims a guy put him up to it by threatening to expose his real role in the murder down in California, and he put him at the scene of the death while downplaying his guilt. But the detective said that was really the first time that legally they were able to put him in the tunnel.
So jurors found both of these guys guilty of first degree murder, both of them sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
Both yes. Then in June twenty twenty, the dead kid's sister was startled to come across a news article reporting that Newsome had intervened to commute the roommate sentence, making him eligible for parole, and no one had told her. The Governor office said at the time that Martinez, the roommate who routinely lied, called the father with the ransom calls the whole bit that he had committed himself to
self improvement during his time in prison. Not only had he helped to he failed to help his roommate at the time. If you believe the story that the other roommate was stabbing this guy, but in fact urged the other roommate to finish him off, like you said.
And don't forget, we haven't said. We haven't used George Gascone's name here in a long time. But George Gascon had a policy that forbid prosecutors from advocating for victim's families before parole boards, and this was the case, so the victim's sister had to speak for herself. But the parole boards sided with Martinez and he got out of prison April of twenty one.
Nathan Blaylock still behind bars.
Great and basically all of the family members, all the detectives, they all say that both of these guys are equally responsible for Ron Baker's death.
Old enough to show their evil and truly mean it, and now thank you, thank you. Apparently you kill people, you plan a brutal killing like that, and you take a couple of self help classes inside and boom, you're out, while the prosecutors or the DA's get to or the governor gets to live in his gated community.
Ye all right, we have a good.
Story coming up. Do you want a good story coming out?
Sure?
Which one?
Okay? Well, I have a feel good story about Peyton Manning and Tom Brady, or you can choose the retired firefighter who has found a new hobby in retirement to help the greater good.
I also have a good sports story for next hour two, so we can do both of those.
If you want, we'll do them all. How about that white You's back.
We're here for a while.
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI.
This is Kevin from Kila Vista and I am recovering from skin cancer surgery the past two days. I just want to say thank you for bringing smiles and lefter to me. Take care of your skin and I love your show.
Thanks, that's awesome. Thank you, Kevin. And he makes a strong point. What's that sunscreen?
Okay?
Mom? Jeez I We were talking earlier today as well about the Minnesota state lawmakers who were shot by that crazy guy who showed up to their door.
That just goes to show Gary that you do have low tee because you'd be a little girl and be like, oh, okay, open the door.
Yes, I'd be like, yo, but you want at two am?
Open up?
No, if it's urgent, I'll see you guys tomorrow at the police station.
Have a good night.
That's how you would have handled him.
That's how he should have handled it.
You guys are idiots.
You're an idiot. First of all. If a cops bang on your door at two am, it's not because they have a parking ticket or something to settle with you. That's an administrative thing where you'd show up the police station for not that you would do that for a parking ticket. But you know you're catching my dreads. It's probably because there's some sort of standoff in the neighborhood.
I ask listen, I love the I love the Bravado. When it's ten o'clock in the morning and you're not woken up out of a deep.
Sleep, that's you know what, when you have low TI. Sometimes I do no, no, like he does.
Love the show. You never opened the door ever. Never open the door. You don't say anything. You don't let them know that your home. Never open the door. You don't turn lights on, because if the person is there to inflict harm, how do they know that you're actually home?
Yeah?
You can actually, yes, I could do that with your with your was a video doorbell, you could say, hey, we're not home.
I don't know what, but I got an alert on my phone.
No, and that is accurate, and that is correct, And that's a way to avoid getting shot by somebody in personing the police nine times. I'm just saying me, if I'm woking up in the middle of the night, coming out of a sleep and I hear police, my first impulse is going to be to go open that door.
I just know myself. You assume something's wrong. Yeah, and you've been taught. I mean, I know that a lot of people haven't been taught that, but you've been taught your whole life to trust the police.
I don't have any reason not to.
Uh.
John Zito Junior thought he had put his career as a first responder behind him, but one time out in the mountains in Arizona, he here's the echo of gunshots, and he follows the sound to a guy under a sleep underneath a bush who had fired the bullets as a last Hail Mary distress call. The guy was out of water, he was suffering heatstroke and pretty much figured this is my last.
This is it.
If nobody comes from the sound of gunshots, I'm dead.
And there he was.
Zito approached him, gave him water, carried Colt Johnson about three miles off the trail back in May of last year, before he drove Johnson's car about twenty miles to the nearest store to buy him gatorade. He said that would rescue was one of the most dramatic of John Zito Junior's mission. Since retiring as a firefighter, he has now been saving hikers on those very difficult trails that wind through the state of Arizona. He picked up hiking as
a retirement thing. Four to five days per week. He's out there, always carries extra water bottles, always has trail mix and granola bars and electrolyte tablets and ankle braces in his backpack so that he could give them out if they're ever needed.
That's really cool, I mean, because you have such a sense of per as a firefighter. I would imagine for thirty years or however long your career is such a sense of purpose of helping people when they need you most. And for him to do this in retirement while doing something that he loves, I think is wonderful because people are dumbasses, and who knows that first and foremost firefighters.
This is kind of a funny story.
He grew up or was serving as a firefighter in Tampa, visiting his son in Phoenix and goes to the Grand Canyon and loves it, stays longer than he wanted, ends up getting his own apartment, and one time while he's hiking Camelback Mountain a couple of years ago, I don't know when, near the end of twenty twenty three, so
still warm in Arizona. He stops at one point because he's tired, fatigued, and he's embarrassed, so he pretends to take a photo on his phone, and a woman walked by and realized that he was in a little bit of distress, and she asked if he was okay, and he said that motivated him to get in shape, to get in condition for these tough trails.
Yeah, and then was doing those hikes four or five days a week. That's pretty good story.
That's so true though. That's such like a real life situation. If you're like winded on a trail and you're like, I'll just make it look like I'm taking a picture. Well, I catch my breath.
Eighty four year old grandma goes by you and she's like, are you okay? You don't look so good? All right, swamp watch when we come back. You've been listening to The Gary and Shannon Show. You can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio lap