4. The Shallow End, Part 2

up for a five day basic training course. There would be lectures and guided meditations, and she hoped to come away with clarity. Fred was in a long haul in Hawaii, overseeing a bunch of knuckleheads trying to dig a trench on the ocean floor. His marriage to Jeanne was at an all time. She told her friend Barbara Warner that she'd already broken things off with Dick. It was just too destabilizing given how volatile things were with Fred. What

possibly was the camp more than affair? And not possibly could camp or all hostituation better pull out of that because becoming a little fright and they decided to which they did do. Jean filled out her Lifespring forms in big loopy handwriting. Her main goal was to decide quote whether or not to dissolve my marriage of seven years unquote. She was also hoping to disentangle herself emotionally from Dick.

She noted that the affair had been going on for three years, but that she'd stopped the physical part of the relationship three months earlier, and one more thing, the affair was not the reason she was doubting her marriage. Life's encouraged people to tune into exactly what they wanted to rest back control of their lives and experiences. Through meditation and insight training, they would realize they weren't lost. They already had the answers. The answers were inside them.

The first step is to create a vision. A vision brings the future to life and provides a structure for laying new track. Declaring your vision is an act of freedom which releases you from the past. Jean was hoping that Lifespring would be transformational, and it was so much so that soon after completing the basic course, she signed up to do the advanced The clarity she'd been after she'd found it, she was dialed in on the life she wanted. How would your relationships be different if you

lived your life based on your own heartfelt vision. What concern Forget what she'd said about moving on from Dick. She'd meditated on it, and she knew she wanted him back. The number one thing she wanted to work on it. The advanced training was quote setting myself up for my future with Dick fell Tholen. Unte Number two was quote getting out of my marriage as pleasantly as possible. Unquote. She continued, in full blown fantasy and self actualization mode.

Quote I will eventually be married to Dick, have his present three children, and will totally be happy. Of course, I plan on him attending Life Spring unquote. She flew her daughters to the Midwest and dropped them off with Fred's parents. She had the answer. It had been inside her all along. Now she just needed to execute the plan. I'm Dana Goodyear and this is Lost Hills, Episode four, The Shallow End, Part two. Life Spring was founded in nineteen seventy four by a man named John Hanley. Life

Spring was slick and corporate self actualization for yuppies. Participants would pay several hundred dollars for a training, which was five days of lectures, group work, and meditation. There's a whole network of these training programs that were all kind of the same approach, which was, take people who are really vulnerable, who are looking for some meaning in their life or trying to put themselves together, bring them together in a big room, tear them apart, bring them down

to just zero, and then rebuild them. This is Mark Fisher, an editor at The Washington Post who wrote about Life Spring in the eighties. He actually went through the basic training as a reporter. The cell is you've got all kinds of problems in your life, you're really not happy. We're going to guide you to understanding who you really are, what you're about, and how you can succeed in every

way that you want to live. Spring would consider it an honor to assist you in creating and implementing your vision. Our commitment is that you experience a profound shift and your ability to relate to yourself into others. It says, we're going to get rid of all the stuff that weighs you down, that makes you unable to be happy, unable to succeed, and once we trash that, we're going to get to the core of who you really are, which is something good, and we're going to build on that.

Lifespring was different from some of its competitors and fellow children of that world of training, in that Lifespring was much rougher, especially in its early years. It was an often brutal kind of approach. There were confrontational encounters involving personal insults and humiliation, but then on the other side of that, there were guided meditations that could be extremely powerful.

You're in a room with a couple hundred people and everyone closes their eyes and there's some soft music and you're taught to relax, and it almost kind of a kind of a hypnosis procedure, and then the leader, the trainer, tells you a story, a very emotionally evocative story, usually about something in someone's childhood that gets people really heary, and you get this sort of group cry going on in the room, and you build as the music builds

to a moment of extraordinary catharsis, and it's kind of a weep arama, and it's a hugely powerful moment in the room. For some people, it was great. For others, it was devastating. One of the trainees told me when I was in the program that Lifespring was an enema of your emotions, and for some people that's enormously dangerous, and that's where some of the casualties come from. That was Lifespring's term for people who had tremendous emotional and

physical damage from the program. They called them casualties. They also called them wackos and basket cases, and those were their terms for people who suffered really ill effects from the Lifespring training. By the early eighties, dozens of trainees

had sued Lifespring. Six trainees had died. At the end of each training, the trainer would have to file what Lifespring called incident reports, and those would describe trainees who became panicky, who had visions or regress to the womb, and so some of those people ended up in psychiatric hospitals, and some of them became suicidal. After trainings, people sometimes experienced a Lifespring high, a kind of manic state that

could spiral precipitously into depression. Many trainees lost extreme amounts of weight. Weight loss was actually kind of a promise of the program, an outward sign of self mastering. Jean was always slim five eight one hundred and twenty pounds, but in the weeks between her basic training and the advanced she was down to one O nine. Then Fred says she dropped it under a one hundred hounds and she started saying strange things about out of body experiences

and seeing the future. She would say things to me like, you know, I don't have to look in the rearview mirror of the car anymore, because I know when there's a car behind me, And I would say that's fine, but for me, Heidi and Kirsten and you, would you please look in the room mirror before you James, Wayne's just to confirmed, would you already believe? Gene was nagging him to try Lifespring to make the divorce go more smoothly,

and he had noticed some benefits. She'd become more loving toward the kids, he wrote, and also quote less materialistic. She tried to sell the Jaguar after she wrecked it and had it fixed, and then I finally gave up and said, Okay, sign me up. I'll go too. And so I was scheduled to do that, and I think November or December of that year. In early October, right after Jean completed her second life Spring course, Fred returned from Hawaii to celebrate Jean's birthday. A few days later,

Jean wrote to her sister Carol. Her tone was giddy. Carrol was into Life Spring too and knew the lingo. Jean confided that she'd done some extracurricular meditating and quote asked if I would see Dick this year. Got a yes answer, so I proceed to ask when the answer, Jean wrote, came in a vision involving white specks and the number twenty two. Then she wrote, out of nowhere, she'd started singing sleigh bells ring? Are you listening? Did that mean she'd be with Dick by Christmas? As for Fred,

it seemed like problem solved. It's all out with Fred and I, she wrote. He came out and asked where we stood, so I laid it all on him. He had tears in his eyes, but the whole situation is progressing fantastically. He's terrifically understanding. Just knew it anyway, but wouldn't admit it to himself. She told her sister they'd planned to do the divorce cheaply through UCLA aid. They'd

still spend holidays together and share childcare. She told another friend that Fred had unexpectedly conceded to her on every point. They'd sell the house, split the money, and she would be free. He even told her she could have custody of the kids. Of course, it would mean a shift in lifestyle. She told her friend Patty Letell that supporting two households in Malibu on their salaries would be out

of the question. Here's Patty speaking to an investigator. And another thing that she told me is that they split up the moment they could apt to beach at Halls. I think that he, you know, he liked living near anything like the house separately. That's what she told me. She's to be back getting her roommate. You know, I'd have to get to tell to live in an engine or truly lived yeah or whatever. In the letter to her sister, Jean explained that Fred would be moving out

soon to a rental property they owned an Oxnard. Coincidentally, it was four blocks away from Dick and Linda ville Thowen's house. I guess that's the way it's supposed to be, she wrote. Around this time, Jean's friend Candy Henman says she ran into Jean at the bank. She said she finally made her decision and I was so proud of her and happy for her that she was going to leave. She says that Jean told her her marriage was over

and that she would soon be free. This whole time, Fred says he and Jean were not on the brink of divorce. He was not about to move out. They were working things out for him to stay. So add that to the list of things he says Jean's friends got wrong. No choking, no violence, no imminent divorce. Oh, and the gun, which Jean reportedly moved over to Verna's house. Fred later wrote, quote, my only pistol was still in my house on Calpine when Jean died on October fifth,

nineteen seventy six. Jean turned thirty four ten days later, on October fifteenth. She left the house early to fly a turnaround to Chicago. All the way from la to Chicago and back in one long, twelve hour stretch. So she flew to Chicago and then flew back in the same day. And so she got back that night. After Hyden had his surgery, their older daughter, Heidi was in the hospital getting her tonsils removed. Fred had spent the

day with her there. Heidi had to stay at the hospital that night, after Jeane got home from Chicago and they put their toddler, Kirsten, to bed, she and Fred had the evening to themselves, and Jean asked me to go ahead and turn on the hot tub, and she had already poured a glass of wine, and I carried the other wine out to the to the tub. Fred liked the hot tub hot. He cranked it up to one oh four, one oh five, he says, and got in.

He filled his glass and started to drink. Jean was still inside talking on the phone with a friend, a pretty normal conversation for Jean in those heavy days when she believed she had psychic powers. She told her friend she'd tried to see what her friend's X was up to the next time she meditated. Then, according to her friend, Jeane said she had to go. Fred was waiting in the hot tub, and she said, you know how he

gets when he has to wait. Fred says he and Jean finished the bottle of wine together in the tub, and I was out there when she came out, and we sort of killed off that bottle. Jean wanted more wine, he says, and asked him to go inside for another bottle and change the baby while he was at it. He left her in the hot tub and went to Kirsten's room. So it was a fairly warm night, and you know, like the windows in Kirston's bedroom were open.

Everything was quiet. We had a German shepherd that was ours, called utah Uta, and then we had we had basically inherited a docun from the people across the street, the Morgansterns. Their little docun mail was named Geronimo, and he was infatuated with Uta, who was a female. So they hung out together and sometimes he stayed over there and with us. So I went in and changed Kirsten, and then I

got another bottle of wine. And when I walked out, there was Uta and Geronimo both with their paws on the edge of the pool, and Jeane was floating face down in the pool. And I was stunned. I just you know, it was just the wrong picture. I couldn't imagine that Jeane. He said, I had left the hot tub and walked ten or twelve feet over to the swimming pool, and now she was faced down in the shallow end. He said he found her with her arms spread wide and floating on the surface. So I pulled

her out and yelled for our neighbor. Their bedroom was closest to our property line, so he heard me and I said, you know, Paul Leon Quick Leon Morgenstern, a spleen surgeon at Cedar SINAI was awakened by a knock at the door around ten forty five. He put a bathrobe on over his pajamas and hurried to the railers, where he found Fred giving Jean's CPR by the side

of the pool. They were both naked. He came over and helped me with the CPR, and then the fire department game and loaded us up and took us to the hospital. When they left for the hospital, Jean's heart was beating, but she wasn't breathing. She was comatose. Yeah, she was. She was breathing with the machine to start with, or later. I think she was on the eventI latter, but she you know, she didn't come out of the coma.

She was. She looked like she was sleeping. And you know, when I would sit with her an older hand, her hands were warm, it would be just like she was sleeping. And what was going through your mind during that time sitting with her? Oh? Everything in the world, all the way from you know what happened? How could this have happened?

Why didn't the dogs bark? I could only assume that she had told them to be quiet, or else they would have been barking if she should have been if I think, if they would have sensed that she was in distress, they would have been barking. I never really understood that, and then I didn't get much sleep that first night. I vaguely just sat in the waiting room and cried, when did you know in your heart she was going to die? Well? When the neurologist was a

young man, very nice. He basically said, took us to one side and said, look, you know, this is considered brain death. Jean was taken off the ventilator on October twenty first. The official cause of death was pneumonia as a result of drowning in the family pool. She had no other injuries, and, just like with Erna, Fred was the only witness unless you count the family dog. The LA coroner said Jean's death was an accident, no foul play, but there were plenty of people who had their doubts.

One of the doctors who treated Jean at the hospital later said he felt suspicious of Fred. He didn't understand why this woman had drowned. Her family and friends felt the same way. Jeanne was an excellent swimmer, a good athlete in general. It was the small details that didn't sit right. For instance, there was talk that the shock of going from a very hot tub into a cold pool could have somehow contributed to her death, but plunging in the pool did not seem like something Jeanne would do.

The begging convenience. I have never owned Jane in my life to jump in a pool. We lived right across the pool and we were an apartment. I am from a life of me. I'll never figure that one out. How she got in the pool. That's Barbara Warner, her old roommate, and the dogs. Their presence in the story seemed odd, unbelievable to people who knew the family. I thought it was an unusual because here had always put the dogs tight up. Patty Littell didn't understand what the

dogs were doing at the pool in the first place. Yeah, because they were tied up by the back door. And I could be wrong when I always got the impression that the cred wasn't too crazy about the dogs. And after his wife dies, I think one of them got killed and the other was given away. Fred had Jean cremated and he scattered her ashes at sea, though her family was afraid to go on the water. Jean's parents held a memorial service on land. Barbara Warner remembered Fred's

behavior at the service as noticeably strange. After the memorial service, I went through the reception and he he had me very tightly, and that I have to talk to you. I have to talk to you. And I said fine, told me as fine, and virtually told me who ate him? What halfen? That? At least that was hand rendered what happened? Um, As I think back on at the time I was, I was, of course, I was so emotionally upset. At the time, I thought, oh, okay, wonderful. You know that

doesn't tell much. Um. I really think he had that story so down pat He rattled it off so bad with so little emotion that I thought there's something wrong with him. But see, in my mind I always thought something was wrong with him anyway, So I was preconditioned, and I think he had to make sure I was buying his story. And I believe that to this day that he had to be sure. I wasn't going to question thank you, It's going on to Candy Henman, there

was no question as to his guilt. When I knew for sure that he did do it was when I went to Jean's funeral and he walked up in his hole. Everything around him seemed black, dark, and his face, his look, his everything was just darkness, and I knew without a doubt that he had done it. He just looked wicked, an evil funeralists, dark face in my face and coming over and being friendly and chatty, and I was thinking, you're a murderer. Why are you even talking to me.

Jean's sisters, Carol and Linda, were the most unnerved. Carol later said she'd reached out to the District Attorney's office to ask them to investigate, but the office scared her by saying that Fred could sue for defamation of character. She gave it up. There was one more person who was deeply disturbed by all of this, Verna Johnson, the

woman who would become Fred's second wife. Michelle Williams went to see Verna when they found out Jean was in a coma in the hospital, Verna, Jane's very closest friend at that time in Vernon eye rolls. Verna's husband, Bill had been an electrical contractor. He'd died less than a year earlier after falling from the roof of an eighth story building in Westwood where he was working. He had been depressed and it looked like a suicide, but no

one really knew for sure. I went down and sat with Verna because I knew how close she was to Jane, and Vernon had losses. Verna was really spooked. The whole thing with Jean reminded her of some of the exercises from the Life Spring training. Jean couldn't stop talking about

guided meditations involving water and death. When I went down to talk to Vernon that night that Jeane, you know, or the night after whatever Jane had become unconsciously, you know, I had drowned, Verna told me that Jeane had gone to this Life Spring weakened and that Jane had told Verna that she had imagined her own death over a water, and that troubled Vernon. Now that Jean had drowned. It was an eerie resonance, and one Fred would circle back

to repeatedly. He noted that Jean had spoken about a guided meditation she'd done in her Life Spring workshop that was focused on death and dying. She told him she'd envisioned a quiet pool of water and a tombstone with no date on it. Jean believed she could see the future, and it turned out she could with one small caveat. She thought the vision meant she would never die. Candy Henman didn't stay mad at Fred for long. She noticed he did have some good attributes. Tall, good build, dark hair,

just a handsome man. She thought an adventuresome friend of hers, Gail Carmichael, might like him, despite the drama over Jean's death. He was. He was very attractive, and he had such charisma, and she also was that way. Nothing scared her. I had told her what I thought had happened prior, but

that everybody else thought he was innocent. Everybody in town was just so upset over what happened to Jean, and nobody had any idea that it was related to Fred, and everybody at that time was touting how wonderful he was. Fred told an investigator how Candy had played matchmaker with Gail. And let's be clear This is Fred's version of their wild first date shortly after Jean died. She said, you know, when you're ready to ask them to get back in

the circulation so forth. But me now, she said, well, why don't you consider coming over dinner? And I said, okay, I said, this is a kids think, But the kids she said, oh yeah. So I went over with the kids. And so I went over and this blond parking hour of the forward lady pulls up her pink Cadillac said, bll whatever, the hear was brand new win. She got out of kind of lights. Your still warm, So I said, you know the light you still watch? She said, you

had a Carlton A long time. A minute. Things like that went on. So we went in and had a fairly still initial type of things. She's smoked and I don't smoke, and it's one of those things. And she seemed to be a little bit of loop and I was a little bit apathetic, and well, eating went on, and as the liquor we got quicker and more or less. Uh you know, we had wine to start with, and we had warm fuzzies, which is like a cappuccino type

of the thing went cool in it and cream and everything. Yeah, they were wonderful and and we had a little bit of marijuana, a couple of joints, and then the rest of it got really great until we were taking each other's clothes off and we can thrashing about under the coffee table. I'm going on, I don't really believe this is going on, and the other people have already left, and the kids are obviously already in Bedess just you know,

in the three hours of the morning. And we tried to get in in the hot time, in the hot time, it was too hot. What could you get in? I'm like a screwed up the promise. So we drove up to my place and spent the rest of the morning and so forth. I guess it was probably around new when she finally went. And I can still remember saying, do you think we know each other well enough that

I could get your phones pretty call you? And we talked a lot that morning about our lives and where we were coming from and all these stypes things, And it was very unusual, I mean, needless to say, to have it happened like that. And then Gail fred said introduced him to her psychiatrist, doctor Paul remis, and she was telling me that she was in therapy with an

analyst who was really good. Thought that I should do that because the guy was a really an interesting person, and I he started taking Wednesdays off, he told the investigator. So I was taking off Wednesdays every wee and I would go down and see Gail and have an omelet with her when he would normally have sex, and then in the afternoon I would go over and have my head worked on by a remiss and I would go home in the afternoon. Tough schedule, quite nicely. I actually

know what the cost schedule. It would be a brush and she had a hot tub. According to Candy, the relationship ended abruptly, and she said that at one point they weren't having conversation. And I think this is after she had seen him one or two times and they were intimate one morning, and he said, have you ever done anything that you couldn't change and you felt bad

about but you could never change it. She thought he was confessing to killing his wife, and she just said she just froze with that and did not go on anymore with that conversation, and was pretty sure that what I thought was right and she didn't see him anymore. But Fred says that's not true. There was a different reason things didn't work out with Gail. It was just

too much to juggle. The hard part was trying to keep Gail and Verna separate in a physical sense and in a mental thing, trying to really decide which of these two people I really wanted to pursue my life with. Very heavy. Fred was in a dilemma because just months after Jean's death, he wasn't only seeing Gail, he was dating Verna too. Coming up on the next episode of Lost tells Verna's sister has concerns. I said, are you

sure things you know are okay? And she said yes, she said, friend and I have talked at length about it. He's gone over the bass me. But I'm just concerned to my sister because I thought, you know, I don't want her to get involved with something good, you know, would be terrible from apart later on, that's next in episode five, Who Would You Take? Lost Tails 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 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 Hills Show page in Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin dot fm.