1. Mr. Malibu

sea caves with names like Shipwreck Cave and Limbo. On the north side of the island, a couple hundred feet into the ocean, there's a huge, white, spattered rock with a sheer cliff face. It's called bird Rock for obvious reasons. Bird Rock has its own sea cave, a tall chamber with walls that are covered in green algae. It's mysterious and cool, but once you know the story of Fred Railer, it's impossible to look at the sea cave or any

part of this beautiful island the same way again. On January second, nineteen eighty one, Railer, a thirty eight year old man from Malibu, was pulled out of the water on the open ocean side of Bird Rock, along with his wife, thirty six year old Verna Johnson Railer and her son, his stepson, eight year old Doug Johnson. Verna and Doug were soon declared dead. Fred was cold, but other than that fine, His pulse was steady, his breathing

was normal. He appeared to be unscathed. Fred said their rowboat, a sixteen foot orange story, overturned and he had done everything possible to save his wife and stepchild. He was the sole survivor and the only witness. For many, many months, we were just trying to figure out what happened and is there any truth to Railer's story. That's a criminalist

named doctor Dwayne Mose. At the time of Verna and Doug's deaths, he worked for a California state crime lab, and eventually we decided there was no truth to it at all. We could not substantiate anything he said, but we could substantiate alternatives. And as I saw this going on, it all came together in my head as a story.

Doctor Mose is an expert in crime scene reconstruction. When he found out about the sea cave inside Bird Rock, he wanted to investigate and I said, I want to go inside, and I looked around at the rocks, the height of the cave, and that's when another piece of the puzzle fell in place. That's what I turned to the people in the boat and I said, this is where it happened. It did not happen out there in the ocean. It happened in this cave. The cave, he said,

was spacious and secluded, and it's tall and narrow. It's tall enough so that a man can take an oar to a rowboat, swing it high, and bring it down on an object with some force. My theory is that he rowed the boat into this cave with the intention of killing both of them. He would have started with Verna catching her off guard. Verna was in the bow and Douglas was in the stern, and Railer was sitting where a rower would normally sit, and he was in

the middle. So while Verna would be looking forward to defend the bow of the boat against the rocks, Railer could easily pick up an oar, swing it hit her on the head. Then he would have turned to Doug. I believe that Douglas Johnson sprang from the stern of the doorway onto Railer in an attempt to protect his mother, and I believe that Railer took Douglas by the head slammed the back of his head twice into the edge of the seat where the seat met the inside surface

of the hull. Verna was petite, one hundred and fifteen pounds, Doug only fifty something. Fred was six feet two. First thing in the morning. He could have easily overpowered them, knocking them out, Moses says, so he could finish them off. He then threw, pushed, or carried both of them overboard

and drowned them. He then exited the cave, and it would have been difficult to get both bodies back in the boat, so I think he pushed the boat out of the cave and then took the two bodies and swam around on the other side of Bird Rock, where he was found and taken out of the water by the people on this boat that was passing by. That explained so much, explained all the damage to the hull of the dory, explained while there was no witnesses to what went on, it just made it easier to do

what he did. By the way the oars for the Dory were never recovered. They were lost somewhere somehow in the ocean. But this is just a story, albeit a powerful persuasive one. It's a story that a lot of people have come to believe is true. It's a story that helps send Fred Rayler to prison. But Fred's story that he was trying as hard as he could to save his wife and stepson, that he was a rescuer, not a murderer. His story has a few supporters too. To this day, I do not believe he did this.

That's Verna's sister, Julianne, Verna's mother, went to her grave convinced of Fred's innocence. And Verna's daughter Kim, who lost not only her mother but also her little brother Doug, she believes Fred too, So do his two daughters, Heidi and Kirsten. They all maintain that Verna and Doug died in a tragic accident. And it's not just the family. There are legal experts who leave Fred's case was a miscarriage of justice. This is Justin Brooks, director of the

California Innocence Project. Well, it looked to me like the kind of case where a person was convicted based on bias. This summer, I got access to an archive of recorded interviews, investigation reports, and court filings. They led me into a forgotten world Malibu in the late seventies and early eighties, when the consummate family man was accused of horrible crimes, and Malibu itself was the motive. I'm Dana Goodyear and this is Lost Hills. This is Season two, Dead in

the Water, Episode one. Mister Malibu. Fred Railer is an inmate at the California State Prison in Lancaster. He's serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the murders of his wife, Erna and his stepson Doug. For the past few months, he's been calling me most days, usually at eight thirty am sharp, just after I've dropped off my kids at school. Good morning, Hi, Fred, how

are you? His daughter Kirsten put us in touch. She's forty seven, the youngest of the sisters, and she doesn't have a family of her own. She's devoted her adult life to freeing her father. In the time since I started talking to Fred, he's been given a diagnosis of kidney cancer, and the project of getting him released has become even more urgent. For his kids. Fred has told his story a thousand and one times. He's written it down, recorded it into a polygraph machine, sworn to it on

the witness stand, committed it to memory. So the story has a plot in quality, like an old horse that's been led around the ring too many times. On January second, nineteen eighty one, the family set out early from Ventura Harbor on Perseverance, their fifty foot sailboat. It was a Friday, the first weekend of the new year. Much of Fred's extended family was on board, his mother and father, and his brother and sister in law, who were visiting from

Indiana for the holidays. His wife, Ferna, the four kids they had between them, ages six to eleven, and the family dog, a six month old beagle puppy named Lady. They crossed the channel to Santa Cruz Island. Verna steered Perseverance into the anchorage to the east of Bird Rock. Around noon. They had lunch. Then Fred's brother and his wife took an inflatable dinghy to the island, bringing the two older girls with them. Kirsten was only six, and she was told to stay back with her grandparents and

take a nap. That left Fred, Verna and Doug. Fred says an idea popped into Verna's head. We had to puppy aboard the first time, and Verna suggested that we go out and maybe take some pictures with the dog and Douglas and the boats and things. Verna, he says, had a specific shot in mind, Doug holding Lady in front of Bird Rock with perseverance in the deep background. So Fred, Verna, Doug, and Lady piled into the orange story.

Fred made sure dog grabbed a life jacket. Fred had on a float coat buoyant but not life saving, and Verna didn't have any kind of floatation device. He rowed them around the north side of Bird Rock, the open ocean side to the spot Verna chose approximately thirty feet off the rock. In the anchorage, the water had been glassy, but out here it was rougher, and they were also effectively alone. So we had just gotten passed what they called bird Rock, and we're getting ready to start lining

things up. According to Fred, Verna was in the bow, the front of the boat. He was in the middle, sitting on the bottom of the boat with his knees over the seat. He had his back toward Verna and was facing Doug, who was in the stern the rear of the boat. Verna had been holding lady with the dog's name, and she passed them to me, and then

I passed the dog to Douglas. When the dog got very enamored with the birds that were on the rock and got excited, and no sooner head he got ahold of the dogs, and the dog started to go over the side. Lady, he says, lunged for the birds, and Doug lunged for Lady, toppling halfway out of the dory. So Douglas started to go for the dog too, and then I had one of the dog's legs and then I fall a bump in my back, and I was

probably Verna trying to help as well. And with that final accidental jolt from Verna, Fred says, the dory flipped. Then the boat went over, and when I was underneath it, I got tangled and got stuck underneath the boat. It was terrifying, he says. Between the bow and stern lines and his camera strap and the strings on the hoodie of his float coat, he was caught. He couldn't find an air pocket and he couldn't breathe. I actually thought I was gonna die under there because I couldn't get

my head away from the seat. And when we were I was underwater, so my head was up against his seat and I couldn't get loose, and I kept trying, and finally I did get loose. When he surfaced, he says, he looked around and spotted Ferna. Then I saw her on the bow of the boat with sort of like one arm on the on the overturned portion. She was like she was sort of holding on. Her eyes were open,

but unseeing. He swam straight to Doug. Doug was in bad shape, listing in the water near the Doory's stern. I noticed Douglas was off just a few feet away, but he wasn't saying anything. The waves Fred says were splashing in Doug's face, so I got to hold his doug us and then I noticed that he was vomiting and wasn't really responding. So I cleared the vomita and I tried getting some air into him. Carrying Doug with one arm, he swam back to Verna. He tried giving

them both CPR. They didn't respond. I was so stunned. I didn't really know what to do it it was way too far to swim back to Perseverance. He was desperate to get to land. The dory was overturned and it was basically floating to the south away from us, and so I tried to go over to the rock, bird Rock itself. Meanwhile, Lady had somehow clawed her way onto his shoulders. So he swam that way with Verna under one arm and Doug under the other and the

puppy riding piggyback. But Bird Rock was not to be there salvation. And when I got to the where the rock was, the bird Rock, there was a blow hole, which is like a cavity where the water goes in and then it shoots the water out. So we had to swim past that. That side of bird Rock is a sheer cliff some sixty feet tall, craggy covered in barnacles, no place to get footing. But somehow Fred says he

was able to get Lady onto bird Rock. And then I pushed the dog up on the rocks, and I was trying to get a handhold so I could pull Vernon and dug out of the water right now into the rock, but I couldn't. It was January, the water was fifty degrees and they'd been in it, according to Fred's timeline, for something like an hour. They were bundled up, water logged by now. Fred had on jeans of a lore shirt and the float coat. Vernon was wearing pants,

a blouse, sweater, and a brown and orange nylon ski jacket. Doug, Fred later noted, was dressed like Charlie Brown going out to play in the snow. Underneath his life jacket, he was wearing a bulky winter sweater and parka and a pair of jeans. Near the rock, the waves surged to four feet. There's three heads bobbed up and down. They were exhausted, near death, or maybe in Vernon and Doug's case, already dead. And then I knew, I was thinking. I knew that if I didn't, if we didn't get help,

soon all three of was gone down. Finally, Fred says he saw a sailboat and yelled for help. They heard me, and then they came over to where I was and threw me a rope. We got. Vernon and Douglas were pulled up on board their boat. And then as I was trying to get get up the ladder. My aggs were shot, and then they winched me aboard, And the next thing I really knew was I woke up in the helicopter. He woke up into a nightmare. His wife was dead, his stepson dead. I'm gonna ask you point

blank about Verna and Doug. Did you kill Verna and Doug? I did not to Fred. Verna was perfect. Their life together in Malibu was a dream. Why would he have killed them and ruined everything? You have to imagine Malibu when the tailors lived there, same epic beaches, bathed in the same magic our light, but with practically no one on them. It was the seventies. The innocent, squeaky clean gidget era of the nineteen fifties was over. The coke

fueled eighties were just roaring into view. Malibu was on the cusp of becoming the maximalist fantasia it is today, one hundred million dollars mansions and Lamborghinis and Birken bags at the beach, But not yet. There were celebrities, but

they were low key, laid back cool. Movie star Ali McGraw lived out there with her young son and her movie star husband Steve McQueen was nineteen seventy two, and we rented a house on that fantastic broad Beach, which at the time was the widest swath of perfect sand. I love, I loved it, and it provided my son with an incredible childhood. Their house, a rental on Broadbeach Road, was a street away from the railers. And she doesn't

remember this, but Fred coached her son in sports. All of us had funky little houses left over from the fifties. You know, sand dunes in front of the house and the kind of flowers that only grow where there's sand. My house was a funky little clapboard house, really small, three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a small kitchen, a living room facing the ocean. It was when I rented it, an absolute horror of brown wood inside, shag carpeting, brown kitchen appliances.

Back then, the celebrities had privacy. Nobody came out there to photograph Steve or Goldie Hawn or Sylvester Stallone. These are people artists and directors and musicians. Half of the rock stars had second homes there. There was a freedom to do whatever. There were tons of drugs. I didn't do drugs at that point, but yeah, of course, I mean it was the most amazing moment in Los Angeles music. I never met Bob Dylan and he's still out there. But there, you know, there was Neil Young, there were

most of the Eagles. There was you know, Peter Paul and Mary and Chris Christofferson, him and the band. You know, all of Robbie Robertson's crowd were out there. Robbie Robertson had moved his family there sight unseen, into Sam Peck and Pau's house in the Malibu Colony because his friend David Geffen told him to the night that we arrived there thing And I was sitting there with my wife and then we heard this ungodly screaming from a woman.

So we jumped up and we ran out to the front door, trying to figure out what was going on. What was that? And we should call the police, we should what should we do? We're running back and forth, but the screaming keeps going on and on until it becomes like an odd thing and odd screaming. And as it turned out, our next door neighbor was Diane Cannon, the actress, and she was practicing primal scream he set up a studio in a former bordello called Shangola overlooking

Zooma Beach. Everyone recorded out there, the band and Bob Dylan, we just we found this to be kind of like a sanctuary that you could be invisible as well as be around some of the most famous people in the world. It was a very unusual and great combination. The seventies became pretty crazy, and there was a lot of drugs and a lot of everything going on, and when you're just in the middle of something, it seems very natural,

seems very normal, so you just participate. You just hang out and say, oh, everybody's doing it, this is cool. But most of the people in Malibudan were pretty normal, and the electricians and the school teachers and the movie stars all sent their kids to the local elementary school. What was extraordinary about it was in that time, I have to call them, real people lived there. It was just people who did every sort of job you can imagine,

and it was so normal. So of course the sea there then was clean and beautiful, and the kids swam in it every single day after school. It was maybe the last moment that a middle class family could live beachfront in Malibu. Before long, even Ali McGraw got priced out. The house she was renting got put up for sale. I couldn't afford to buy it, and so a big entertainer bought it, took every single thing down off of the property, and is currently on the market for sixteen

million dollars. Back then, Malibu was fun and it was sexy, and it was a little out there. It wasn't really yet on the map, at least not in the way it is now. But it was also changing, getting flashier, fancier, faster, and I was losing my fascination with the place because it was changing. This vibe that it was there before started evolving into different people and it didn't have the same charm, didn't have the same quality of coolness with

all of these wonderful people. The drugs had changed, and that changed everything. I don't know. In the beginning, it felt fun and more inclusive and friendly, and later on, you know, with hard drugs, I mean, that's all it takes you. You know, you go from a social drugs through hard drugs and ain't social anymore. And there was

a new crowd in town. It was a combination of some people with money and drug dealers, and you kind of scroungy people, and there was even It went from being this shangril world out there, this bit of paradise, into a feeling of it just felt dirty all of a sudden. Soon the middle class, the real people, would be edged out. People like Fred and Verna. She was

a teacher's aid. He was a civilian employee of the naval base at Point Magoo, highly educated with the Masters from Berkeley in naval architecture, but a government employee making government money. They were raising four kids and what was quickly becoming one of the most expensive communities in America. It would have been hard to compete, let alone hang on,

but the Railer family had something very valuable. They owned a house on Sea Level Drive, a private, gated street that dead ends at one of the prettiest beaches in Malibu. Their house was large and ugly, covered an orange shag, but Fred was fixing it up, building a roof deck with panoramic ocean views. He knew what they had and if they played it right, they might be able to ride this wave of real estate and money and get

to live in Malibu forever. Fred and Verna bought the house on Sea Level Drive in the fall of nineteen seventy seven. They were a new couple in love, and they had a powerful connection. Fred was a widower. His wife, Jean, the mother of Heidi and Kirsten, had died the year before, and Verna was a widow. Her husband, Bill Johnson, the father of Kim and Doug, had also died by suicide. People whispered lovely. Verna's hair had turned prematurely silver. The

kids were all little. Heidi and Kirsten needed a mom, Kim and Doug needed a dad. Fred was attractive, thick, curly, dark hair, a little broody, a catch, and Verna. Everyone in Malibu loved Verna. They found each other and it worked. I think a lot of people envied Fred and Verna. You know, they were the perfect story of yours, mine and ours. That's Mark Hetrick, an old friend of the family that I talked to recently. His wife, Beth, and

Verna taught together at the elementary school. Mark was a carpenter. He was helping Fred with the roof deck and they all hung out a lot. He kind of could do anything. I mean, he wasn't a professional contractor or a carpenter, and he wasn't afraid to, you know, take the roof off of his house and put a deck on it. You know, he could weld, and he you know, he was a mechanic. I mean, he could just do all these things. He was just very mechanical and very engineering.

As a family, they were athletic and outdoorsy, always hiking or getting in the ocean. They were a hundred percent involved in their children's lives. You know, Verna was in the teacher's assistance in their classes, and you know, Fred was there for all of the kids all the time, and Verna was there for all the kids all the time. And I mean they were the parents that every kid would want, and their family was just the most important thing to him. Mark told me he and Beth looked

up to Fred and Verna. They were the picture postcard Christmas postcard family of just you know, two very handsome, intelligent people with four kids that were just delightful. Those were the kind of kids that we wanted to have and the kind of the family that we wanted to have. Fred and Verna seemed pretty unimpressed by the wealth and glamor of Malibu. They weren't your you know, your real upscale Malibu people that had a Hollywood connection, you know,

or a movie industry of connection. Because Fred and Verna, you know, they were you know, they were pretty settled, solid, you know, upper middle class family living there that m you know, had this wonderful piece of property and they were you know, and it was a wonderful place to live in, a wonderful place to raise kids. Fred in particular did not seem concerned with appearances. You know, he was sort of not your average Malibu guy, you know. I mean, he wasn't trying to be mister Malibu. So

was Fred affected by the whole Malibu glitz and glamour. No, not at all. Fred, you know, he didn't really care about that stuff. He was a family man living his values, and there wasn't a lot of that going around Malibu at the time. Here's another friend in an interview with investigators.

We've seen so many people our age that sort of the man goes through this sort of midlife crisis where they're sort of insecure and concerned with material things and girlfriends, you know, driving a poor and chasing girls, and you know, sort of where their family is a drag on him, and there were an awful lot of people like that alboat, and you know, Fred couldn't be more different than that.

Like a lot of engineers, Fred was logical and analytical, and he was highly competent, especially in the water on the sailboat. He was meticulous about safety. Here's Mark Keatrick again in an archival interview. The kids always had their life jackets on if they weren't in the cockpit, and they had to ask an adult permission to get out of the cockpit and go anywhere else on the boat.

Anytime they were ever rowing around in the dinghy, whether it was in the harbor or whether it was over on the island, they couldn't go out of shouting distance at the boat. Mark sailed with Fred a lot and was in several harrowing situations with him. But whatever was going on, he said, Fred kept his composure, never never raised his voice, never shattered or got angry. Man was extremely calm and in situations that were potentially dangerous or scary,

remain calm under pressure. Fred's extensive training in the water had taught him this. But that quality of composure of not succumbing to panic or hysteria, it hadn't helped him say Verna and Doug's lives. Fred was the only survivor of the dory incident, the only human survivor. The day after Verna and Doug drown, Lady the beagle puppy was rescued from Bird Rock. Here's Tony Clinch, an experienced tailor

who knew the waters around Santa Cruz Island. Well, he's telling an investigator about how he found Lady hiding under a shrub. Were not supposed, Bob, that's how we spotted the dogs. Das dog. Maybe that's begle. It would seem a bittersweet footnote to the tragic story. Fred's heroic efforts in the water had not been a total waste. At least he was able to save his dog, But the fact of Lady that she was improbably alive, opened up

a seam in Fred's story. Fred said he swam from where the dory capsized over to Bird Rock, carrying Verna and Doug with Lady on his head. Clinch didn't buy it. With the current and the wind, just no, what I could he have? He couldn't have in front the dog couldn't have made it a shore. Then the claim that he hoisted Lady up onto bird Rock and Lady scrambled

up at Suli. I would define that the line of even being could have scaled and faced Cliff must If Fred was telling the truth about where they capsized, what he did where he swam, then Lady should be dead. But Lady was alive. Fred's sailing buddy Dick had picked her up from Tony Clinch, and soon Lady would return to Sea Level Drive and provide a small bit of comfort to Kim, Heidi, and Kirsten because they began their

lives without Verna and Doug. Lady's inexplicable survival that was just one of the things that made the police suspect Fred's story was the invention of a murderer. Coming up. On the next episode of Lost Hills, detectives come knocking. They have a lot of questions for Fred. To be honest with you, Fred, we really don't know what much about what's going on. We have no idea of well, I can't say we had no idea. We do have an idea of what happened out at the island, but

everything is really sketchy. So we're kind of like turn into after the fact, somehow we need to figure out if there's a way we can figure out to make sure that there was no file play or easy like that's next in episode two. Quiet No Longer Lost Hills is written and reported by Me Dana Goodyear. It's created by Me and Benedair and produced by Western Sound and Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus and you can hear the whole season add free and get early access to

the final two episodes. Find Pushkin Plus on the Lost Hill Show page in Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin dot Fm.