2. Quiet No Longer

eighty one, he was a forensic pathologist. Graduated from medical school in nineteen sixty nine that I went to Baltimore to complete my training under Russell Fisher, who was really the grandfather of forensic pathology, or a major figure. And he saw the case of Verna and Doug as uncomplicated. It's a standard autopsy of a standard drowning case, and handled in that fashion with fairly fresh bodies and obvious drowning results. There was clearly evidence of water drowning, lungs

being full of water. I had the autopsy reports with me and we went through them together. It didn't take long the very little one on Douglas's body in terms of external markings up. I've Verna over here, so this is Verna. See no trauma, very little evidence of any trauma at all on Verna's body, same with Douglas, other than what I would anticipate in a struggle to prevent one from drowning, not a struggle with another human, just at other than the injury of drowning. There were no injuries,

no indication that Verna or Dug had been attacked. And I contend that there was no evidence of homicide in the initial autopsies, as evidenced by no assault wounds clubbing on the head with an oar, etc. And no defense wounds bruises, fractures on the arms, which would be just human nature to do in the event of an attack. It was simple, he said. No trauma, no assault of wounds, no homicide. Doctor Duncan declared Verna and Doug's deaths accidental.

That determination freed Fred as next of kin to proceed with his funerary plans. They drowned on Friday, the autopsies happened on Saturday. On Monday, he'd have a memorial for Verna and Doug at the Malibu Methodist Church, followed by a reception at the house on Sea Level Drive. Meanwhile, he arranged to have the bodies moved to a mortuary in Los Angeles and scheduled them to be cremated on Wednesday,

January seventh. Then their ashes would be scattered at sea, and Fred would begin to put back the pieces of his life as the single father of three young girls. Or that's what he assumed. I'm Dana Goodyear and this is Lost Hills episode two, Quiet No Longer. Fred slept alone in his and Vernah's bed. In the morning, he'd have the awful task of telling Verna's daughter Kim, and his daughters Heidi and Kirsten that Verna and Doug would not be coming home. They remember it how he sat

them down and started methodically going through it. Yeah, he told us. And it was hard because it's like hearing a story that you do not want to know the ending two. And he didn't just start off. He started off telling us that they were out on the boat and the dog had jumped into the water. But it's you know, we're just waiting. He didn't just come out and say it. And then you know. He told us it was shocking. That's Heidi. We met up over the

summer at Heidi's house in Colorado. Kirsten was there too, and so was Kim. Fred they said, had gone through the story in order, the Dog, the Birds, the dory, overturning the attempts at CPR. Here's Kim, but he did start from the beginning of what had happened and walked us through each step and then told us that they were God. The three sisters are incredibly close. Add to that, they all look a lot alike. Even though Kim, Verna's daughter from her first marriage, is not blood related to

Heidi and Kirsten, the similarities are uncanny. Same straight, dark hair, same long oval faces, same vivid dark eyes. Oh, people have asked if we're triplets. I mean high and I get twins all the time, and then when the three of us are together they ask if for triplets. Kim says this was going on even back when Vernon Doug

were alive. And then there were times when my mom would take us out and she might have like all four of us, and somehow it would come up that we were a blended family, you know, in the very beginning, and then who were the two biological siblings? And I think a lot of times it was sometimes was it you and Doug? Doug and I would get matched the time.

It's strange, but the sisters remember that time right after Vernon Doug died as weirdly sweet, the three girls and Fred at home eating food dropped off by the neighbor ladies, figuring out how to cope. I have a lot of good memories of the three of us and Dad and the chokes about all the freaking castrolls. He would just pull something out because all the women were bringing over casseroles,

so we're like, well, this is our dinner tonight. He rearranged their rooms so the girls could all sleep together. Kim and I had a bedroom downstairs, and Kirsten and Dug upstairs. And then after the accident, he built us a triple bunk bed so we were right off the kitchen, right next to his room, and I remember just being in there one time and he was in the kitchen doing the dishes, like listening to Divo and just like

singing along. It was like another little lifetime of happiness because I felt like we all got it together and we were like, you know, a family again, the little lifetime wouldn't couldn't last. And I still don't remember the timeline of when we didn't know they were men coming to talk to my dad periodically and we didn't know what that was about. The men coming to see Fred were detectives from the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department. They

specialized in homicides. Fred Railer is a waterman. Before prison, the water was his life, which is kind of surprising given where he grew up in Centerville, Indiana. You know, that's funny. I was always interested in water. As a kid. He became obsessed with the new sport of scuba diving. My parents put a pool in, which was sort of rare back in Indiana in the days. It was very helpful, and I actually bought a scuba tank and a regulator after I read some of Jocastos stuff and watched him

on television. So I taught myself to swim on around and clean the pool without killing myself. And so that's basically how I really got fascinated with it. Later during college, he taught swimming. When I was at Purdue, one of my electives was water safety instructors, so they actually taught us the Red Cross methods for teaching swimming, and when I came back, actually did swimming lessons in our pool

for a lot of people. And then when I left, I left my Red Cross hat and instruction books, and my mother started teaching swimming and she taught swimming for several years. After college, he got his job at Point Magoo working as an engineer for the Navy, and the Navy sent him to as scuba school in San Diego. The reason for diving was most of our trouble was with stuff underwater. It would either leaked, or it wasn't

connected right, or you know, something was going wrong. So they sent me basically to scuba school, and then that allowed me to work with Navy diver to help install things and also take pictures of them, and you just see what was going on. The Navy started sending him to the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai. They actually had an underwater range, which is like a series of microphones spread out underwater and they can track surface ships

and submarines and things. Fred oriented his whole life around the water for a while. He even lived on a houseboat called home in the Channel Islands Marina in Oxnard. He had a little side business there cleaning the bottoms of sailboats for race days. That's where he met one of the winningest skippers in the harbor, Dick felt On.

So we did crazy things for sport. We had a friend who was a Navy pilot on helicopters, and we used to go to San Nicholas Island, which was sixty miles offshore, and I could do some jobs out there because we had some weather stuff out there, So I'd go out there on the weekend and he would actually drop us out of the helicopter in really nice spots where we could get lobster and things like that. The Channel Islands were Fred's playground before they became the place

his wife and steps on died. One of the things the detectives from Santa Barbara were struggling to figure out was how someone with Fred's water experience had failed to save a child in a life preserver. They first showed up at Sea Level Drive five days after Verna and Doug died. It was eleven am on Wednesday, January seventh, the day Fred had scheduled Verna and Doug's creamations. Fred greeted them cordially. I thank both of your names. Their names were Claude Tuller and Fred Ray. Ray did most

of the talking. He gave the impression that the last place he wanted to be was in Malibu bothering a grieving husband. He was reassuring, if disingenuous. He failed to mention that he had a taper quarter running living explain this Tokay. Santa Cruz Island, Ray said, was part of Santa Barbara County, so the deaths were in their jurisdiction. Our problem is this is that we were we received a phone call because we're supposed to ski because it was in Santa Barbara County. He was going to need

Fred's help clearing up a few murky details. To be honest with you, Fred, we really don't know what much about what's going on, and 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, uh, we're kind of like thrown into it after the fact. We don't know Yah, Yeah, how it was ruled. If it's accidental or if it's

intentional or whatever. We don't know that parts we know it certainly looks like it it was accidental, and so we we are only looking into it to ascertain what the circumstances or what happened. If you understand Detective Ray said, it certainly looks like it was accidental. That's because there was barely any physical evidence, just Fred's story and a

whole lot of head scratchers. The only thing that I would suggest that maybe we do is so you know, remind you that that if if there's anything wrong with this at all, that you know you have certain rights too. So I don't know if it's necessary at that point, but certainly I would want to make your work every every that you have. Plus, I'm sure there's going to he mentioned that there might be some civil problems associated

with the drownings. But I'm sure that there's gonna be a lot of legal things that you're going to have to, you know, consult with, don't you think, say you read Fred his Miranda rights, I should remind you that you do have the way right to remain silent, and anything you say cannon will be used against you for a while amazingly, Fred went ahead with the interview without his

lawyer again just for awareness. You know, I'm Fred. It's gonna really it will be difficult to talk about this, I remarked when I I first heard about on the on the movies want a Transity. Fred seemed eager to please or form a rapport with the detectives. You know, we've had a service for both of them Monday, and we had friends over afterwards, and a lot of my friends are really into sailing and the ocean, and all those things were marked over and over that how many

times have you dumped a boat? And everybody just got a little angry and got back in and everything was fine, he said. Doug, whom he referred to as his son, was very comfortable in the water. That's part of the things that I find, you know, as perverse as it is, is that my son was a good swimmer. He had just mastered standing up on a boogie board. I mean he's small, He was a small boy, but very agile, and it was a good swimmer. He was practically babbling

answering questions the detectives hadn't even asked. But I think part of the thing that got him, was the fact that he was wearing a life jacket, that he was trapped underneath the boat. Cool was he talked him to the boat. Well, and again that's something that I can only surmise because initially I was trapped up the boat. They had a camera and the camera strapped got hooked in the door locked. I drew a picture of that. I don't know if he's familiar with the boat. It

was a sixteen foot shock rolling doory. Yeah, I saw the boat, Yes, I did. Next, Ray wanted to know about any objects that were in the boat with them, clues that could corroborate the locations in his story or work to contradict them. Did you have anything in the boat other than than the three of you, I mean, any were you carry and saying which is or cults or no we had The answer was no. But Fred took the question as an invitation to back all the

way up to the purchase of his sailboat months earlier. Well, let me let me go back. I guess the easiest thing is to really start in the beginning about September August or September of last year. We really had a desire to get a boat. We thought we went we were to a point where we could really take off and do some sailing. As it sounded like he wanted

the detectives to be happy for him. We just felt so fortunate, I mean, so it was really just like a real gream come true that we could get the boat. And then we spent just about every weekend sailing or initially just day sailing or with friends, then finally going out to the island, and he made an er trips out there. Then he started talking about Lady the beagle. We had just gotten a dog about maybe a month. I'd have to look at the records, but maybe a month.

For two months ago, the whole family want a dog, and I was sort of against the dog one because we had a boat and we had four children. I felt they could ted each other. They really needed it and we didn't need something else that they care of. But they won, and we got a little beagle puppy, and we had taken her in the car and we'd taken her up and spent the night on the boat that we never had her out. So one of the reasons for the trip was one my parents were here.

From the end, I seem like I'm rambling. So we were all aboard and we got underway in the morning. My mother actually sailed the boat all the way over, and then we put the sails down, and then my wife takes the both handles the helm at that point, and we put down a bow anchor and the stem anchor. The detectives let him talk and talk until he pretty much talked himself out. I think I'm going to pick some tea. Can I get you some instant coffee? I

got the happy Fred needed a break. What little coffee wasn't hurt. The hidden tape recorder capturing the interrogation wasn't the only secret Ray and Tyler were keeping from Fred. Doug Inverna had not, in fact been cremated that day. Unbeknownst to Fred, their bodies were sitting in cold storage at the mortuary, waiting for a deputy from Santa Barbara

to pick them up. How to Judge's search warrant, that deputy would bring the bodies back to Santa Barbara, where they'd each undergo a second secret autopsy, which would tell a very different story about what happened at Bird Rock. After Fred returned with the coffee, Detective Ray took charge of the conversation. Basically, you're not sure what time it was when you went out in the d from your boat. No,

the best you know it was after lunch. You know, it's probably and again it's probably between one and one thirty somewhere under there, okay. And then you rolled out and buy the rocks. From the point where you had the accident, you could still see your boat where it was anchored. Yes, how far off of that rock would

you see? Your word, Probably twenty to thirty feet. When the accident had Fred had told the detectives that the purpose of being in the open ocean in the doory was to take a picture Doug and Lady with bird, rock and Perseverance. How are you going to take the picture now you wanted the picture? Yeah, where I was going to be sitting. I had been sitting on the floor on the boat, or and my son was going to be holding the dog, and the picture would have

been looking from this point over his shoulder. You would have seen the rocks and the birds. He would have been in the foreground the rocks and the birds, and then Perseverance would have been in the background. But that didn't really square. Was that kind of close to take a picture of the rock. I mean, just because of the size of the rock, even that kind of close to get it into photograph, I don't really understand. I

guess your question. In other words, if you're going to take a picture of of say he's your son, you know, I am you sitting here with a camera and you want the bolt in the background and the rock to the side. Well, to see that it's a rock, if you're so close to it's all, even the seas it's a big wall, well you have to, I guess, really look through the camera and see what the field of you is in the camera, because it's not a wide angle,

it's a it's a narrower type of her thing. I was basically listening to her as to where she wanted the boat. We had rode out and we had stopped, and Verna said, okay, so this should work. Thank we're rewards this lot of work here. So I brought the oars in the boat and I slipped off the seat down into the floor so her back would have been towards us here, and she was sitting on a cushion, and she had another cushion up in this v excuse Fred, the newly single dad was juggling. Yeah, all right, No

she went with grandma. Wow. I don't know what they would have the tell okay, oh, so she would have been sitting with her back to us. Ray wanted to know about Doug's condition after the doory flipped. What was his clothes? His eyes were open? What's he breathing? Could you too? No, he wasn't breathing, just flity, you know, it was just running from his mouth. He wasn't he wasn't shaking, he wasn't wretching. What color was involmit again? Yellow? It's almost like you could see the corn chips and

stuff that he had had for lunch. Detective Ray knew Fred had a lot of ocean experience. To the ocean here, you've been around the ocean boast you are so. Came to California in nineteen sixty six and my first job, the Navy appointment. Do basically been near the water and ever since. Was this your first sailboat? It was my first sailboat. I'd had two houseboats before that, and I crewed on a number of sailboats, the biggest. The interview went on for hours until it was six o'clock at night.

The detectives were still asking Fred questions while the kids were popping in and out. I'll be up. By the time the detectives were done with Fred, the tone had shifted. They were less reassuring and Fred was less chummy. Somehow, we need to figure out if there's a way we could figure out to make sure that there was no foul play or easy like that. This Ray handed the baton to his colleague Claude Teller. Well, it's a couple

of ways. If you're willing to the polygraph examination. Sure, yeah, I think I would probably have to talk to my attorney and then find out just exactly what, you know, what really I should be doing before you take a polograph. I think I really and I really need to talk to him before, you know, just Lord knows, you're sure going through a lot. Now, we understand. We were just hoping, because you know, there's no way to tell one we

or another right now. We're just hoping there's some way that we could make it easy, shortened everything happen, you know. I think sometimes almost come down to that anyway, because I don't know if Verna and dougeat Insurance insurance. So that's what this was all about. Yes, so we'll have to we'll have to come to some type of resolution. They're very likely before they'll settle its way. But were they both insured? Yeah, our family was insure. Has it happened.

There were life insurance policies on both Verna and Doug fresh ones. They've been finalized in the weeks before their deaths, and the policies were substantial, with an additional payout in the case of accidental death. The second secret autopsies would never have happened had it not been for a Malibu woman named Candy Henman. Candy had been a close friend of Fred's first wife, Jean, and she had serious concerns

about Fred. I wasn't at liberty to say anything to anybody because it's such a small town and small group of people, and I didn't want to make some accusation or say anything that. I just didn't want to do that, So I kept quiet about it and just thought things would all things would unravel and everybody figure it out. But when she heard that Verna and Doug had drowned, she was beside herself. That's when I said, I am quiet no longer I don't care if I become persona

non grata for all the community. I was not going to keep quiet. Candy started making calls. It was very urgent. They were scheduled to be cremated, and I said, hold hold it, hold everything. You got to do some kind of investigation. I think there was a murder committed. Kentty wasn't trying to gossip, burstling mud. She was on a crusade. I was determined that day that I was going to make sure that somebody hailed him accountable, somebody was going

to realize that there's a monster out there. Before they closed the case on Verna and Doug, she told the cops they needed to find out what happened to Fred's first wife. Coming up on the next episode of Lost tells marriage in Malibu looked a little different in the seventies, but there there there was a group who, like me, had never slept with any body else before we got married. It was just you just didn't do it. And so there was a little bit of a freedom for some

people to you know, get intimate with other people. It was open marriage, and it ended in a couple of divorces. That's next in episode three, The Shallow End, Part one. Lost Hills is written and reported by Me Dana Goodyear. It's created by me and Ben Adair and produced by Western Sound and Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to Pushkin plas and you can hear the whole season add free and get

early access to the final two episodes. Find Pushkin plos on the Lost Hills show page in Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin dot fm.