6. Cold Pricklies

But Santa Cruz Island is actually in the jurisdiction of Santa Barbara County, so that's why when Candy Henman wanted someone to investigate Fred, she called the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Department and they took her call. Candy's tip put the accidental drownings of Verna and Doug in a new, uncomfortable light.

What if their deaths were not an accident. Verna and Doug were about to be cremated, so the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Department put a hold on their cremations and brought their bodies back to Santa Barbara to be autopsied again in secret. The date is January nine, nineteen eighty one.

The location is the Cottage Hospital, Morgue. This is the re autopsy examination of a white female adult identified as Verna Joe Roller R O E H L E R. The body has been previously autopsied on January three, nineteen eighty one, by doctor Craig Duncan of the Ventura County Medical Examiner Corners Office, commencing section of bone. There were

too many similarities to ignore. Two wives dead in the water for no clear reason, and Fred the only witness in both cases with a story that didn't really stand up to interrogation. But this time there was a second victim, a child. This will be the re autopsy examination of a white male child identified as Douglas Johnson. What if Fred had killed them all, Verna, Doug and Jean and was about to get away with it again. I'm Dana Goodyear and this is Lost Tells Episode six, Cold Prickles.

Three months after Vernon and Dog died, Fred was arrested at home in Malibu. I was stunned. Here's Fred's recollection of what happened that day. I got the kids off the school, and I had taken a shower, and I was in The phone rang and so I said hello, and there was no answer. So then a little later the doorbell rang, so I walked downstairs and opened the door and there's three guys with guns aimed at beat

and they said, we're here to arrest you. They handcuffed me and put me in the car and that was basically it. They drove him to the Malibu station and read him as rights. He was being held on two counts of homicide, one for Verna, one for Doug. I never thought it would get to that point, you know, because, like I say, I had answered all their questions. I had met with them three times. My family had talked to them. The people on the boat had talked to them.

You know, I couldn't imagine anything that had been left unsaid. You know, we didn't have fights, there were you know, there was there was nothing going on. So when I got to the substation, they put me in a tank by myself. So then that night, Fairfield, my brother and sister in law all showed up at the place at the substation and were there when when I walked out, and they said are you okay? And I said how you know how the girls and Ron said, you know,

don't worry about it. We were taking care of that. So that was the last discussion I had with them that night. Then they drove me to Santa Barbara. That night, Fred was taken to the Santa Barbara County jail and he never saw Sea Level drive again. Throughout the spring of nineteen eighty one, the Malibu rumor mill was cranking. The search warrant Affidavit was the hottest read in town, and it was juicy, full of details about Jean and her affair with Fred's sailing buddy Dick Fell, thawing about

guns and hot tubs, and especially Fred's explosive temper. Neighbors were talking to each other and to the police. One Malibu woman had seen Verna at the market basket a month or two before she died, and Verna told her she was unhappy in her marriage. Someone else had seen Fred leaving Verna's house through the back door at eight am, just weeks after Jean's death. The neighbor who drove the kids home from school after Verna did said that when she dropped them off, she saw Fred lurking when she

pulled up. This is Kathy Pullis, a Malibu mom whose son, a friend of Dougs, was also coached by Fred. She's being interviewed by a private detective hired by Fred's defense team since January. This is the tip of the terror. And immediately there was the division, No, who couldn't have done that? Yeah, and yes he probably did, Yeah he probably didn't. I mean I have those feelings. Some days I think he couldn't, couldn't possibly. In another days I think,

but what if he did? You know? And everyone had an opinion or three about Fred Rayler? Did he kill Verna and Doug? What about Jean? Was it greed opportunism? Or was he a psychopath masquerading as a Malibu dad? And you have to understand Malibu is very very much a small town. We also think you'd be very sophisticated. But the fact is they were Nazi and this is the talk of the town. Or it has been. The allegation that Fred had murdered Verna and Doug, the investigator said,

was largely based on circumstantial evidence. Fred's character was going to be a major topic. The arrest opened a rift in Malibu. You are either with Fred or against him. Fred's friend Mark Hatrick told me the divisions caused by the case drove him and his wife Beth to leave Malibu. All of the moms that are all you know of

a certain level economic level and involved in that. You know, they all get together and they all talk, so there's there's sort of a gossipy group, and you know, right away they started all of these theories about well, you know, Jane's first wife died, and you know, that's pretty suspicious. And I think in a whole lot of ways, that's you know, a whole lot of ways. That's why we've you know, we've we left is because we just that was going to be an open wound with two sides

that forever. That's just in that town. By the spring of nineteen eighty one, the gossip was so intense that a group of Malibu people wrote a letter to the editor of the Malibu Times begging for fellow residents to withhold judgment until after Fred's trial. They signed it Neighbors for Fairness to Fred Rayler. Carol, Jean's sister, told detectives Fred could be quote a class a charmer, quote so unbelievably charming at times, but Carol and others said Fred

also had a nasty side. His whole affect could change in an instant. This is a colleague of Fred's from the naval base at point magoo talking to an investigator can be a very likable, charming individual, especially if I think if he wants to be accusing to be charming thoughts right off, very charming person. I think you can also blank at you blank so he you know he did this or that he has a capacity. Dennis O'Gorman

also worked with Fred. He told an investigator that went Fred lost his temper look out and he just flew off the handles, the nostrils flaring red in the face, called me all kinds of four letter words, and he started screaming and ranting and raving and yellow man his like like a madman. He's going to completely office off his tree, just completely out of control. He was literally like a like a madman. Fred, he said, was so loathed at work that one guy had a picture of

him blown up and turned into a dartboard. But he also said that somehow it was hard to stay mad at Fred. Even today, I can't dislike Fred. I mean, even if I really worked out all day long and I convinced myself of all the nancy things he did and stuck myself with kin to remember all the things he did to me, and I was just ready to

kill him as as he walked in the door. I know, I know that when he walked from that door with a big silence face a couple of woody remarks that we could sit down in a beer together and and not be friends, but I just couldn't. It's strange. It's already having medium to understand what I'm saying, but he can't use a real charmer and putting back of my mind, I know I would never work with him again because he hasn't changed to bid. He has no respect for anyone.

People are just pawned. They're just tools. So Fred was smart and calculating, and he used people like pawns and they didn't always even register the abuse. Among people in Malibu, Fred Rayler was known to run a tight ship. This is an interview Beth Hetrick gave an investigator. She taught

with Erna and is married to Fred's friend Mark. You guys con siderally film of a guy in the journi of music school Christopher Clover plays because it was their strictness, but also that love and there's a lot of that was bred with the kids. Not everyone in Malibu got the Captain von Trapp thing. Sure they noticed how incredibly well behaved Fred and Verna's kids were, but maybe they were too well behaved. It was a little creepy. Fred

came from a pretty tight, disciplined family. I mean, he's a Midwesterner really, and you know, we know what Midwesterners are like. You know, they're a little bit up tight. They have their own somewhat blinkered vision of life. I mean, I'm not saying this in a derogatory fashion. I'm saying this in the fashion of the let it all hang out Malibu crowd viewed it. This is our chival tape of Ivor Davis, a British journalist who was friends with

Fred and Malibu. They coaches kids soccer together and he was one of the neighbors. For fairness to Fred Rayler. It seemed to him that Fred was the victim of a cultural misunderstanding my evaluation if you like, which I mean, here is a man Fred who didn't quite fit in Malibu, in newly affluent community where you do your own thing, okay, And he disciplined his children and people, you know, people said, my god, discipline your children, that's you know, you don't

do that. He alienated some people, I think from my observations, who had been friendly with Werner by kind of pushing them out when he married her, and and by edging these people out, they took an instant dislike to him, or they bluted dislike him. So something like this comes along, a terrible tragedy like this, and people say, well, Fred was kind of weird anyway, and this is what happened

justifies our impression. He was not the run of the mill guy, and the fact that he did discipline his kids was believable or not something of a negative factor in that community. Fred's approach to parenting set him apart and made him vulnerable to criticism, and it was a bit extreme. When I visited Fred's daughters in Colorado over the summer, they were full of stories about Fred's unusual discipline.

Heidi pulled out a brick wrapped in a piece of paper with a little monster face drawn on it and the words cold Prickly in Fred's handwriting. The brick was part of Fred's punishment system, how he kept those kids so perfectly in line. It was the flip side of the warm fuzzies, the rewards you got for good behavior. The sisters explained how it worked. So I told you there was an actual story, like a book about cold prickles and warm fuzzies and how you feel when you

like punch your sister in podsicleed prickly or whatever. And so he took this brick like a house red brick and covered it in brown paper and drew a cold prickly on it. And then the punishment was he would dole out how much time you had to spend carrying this brick around. And I only have a memory of having it one time, and Heidi had to take it to like soccer practice. That was the punishment. You had to carry it and you couldn't set it down. It was just that it was a concrete reminder of what

you did. I remember going to the bathroom with it on my lap, like I can't put it down. I'm gonna get in trouble if I put it down. The other thing the kids had to do when they were bad was run. So those idyllic runs on the beach, some of those were done under duress. Like inside our kitchen cover there was our names and then there'd be tick marks, and for every tick mark, you had to run, and we ran as a family. But then if you had tick marks, you had to like run afterr tick marks.

They'd run up and down. Let choose a beach, rain or shine. There is a story of me being out there by myself, running crying, and the neighbor called dad and was like, Fred, do you know Kirsten's out on the beach And she's like, yeah, she's working off her punishment. But he could see me from the porch or whatever. And also that was back in the seventies when parents weren't helicopter parents. Kim, the sisters agreed, was misperfect. Here's Kirsten.

Kim never had the brick. Kirsten was the baby, so not in trouble as often Hidie and Doug they were the middle kids. And then Hide and Doug had the brick a lot, and let's just say the two of them became excellent runners. Doug especially was spirited, all boy. Fred once said, full of energy. Go go go tell about Doug's mischief a little bit. I mean, I can't I do remember one time it was funny. He was like decided to run away and he's like, okay, you know,

my dad said okay, and he packed some stuff. I don't even think he made it very far, but like they would just they just loved us. They're like, all right Sea, you know, because of course he didn't run away, like walking the beaches of Malibu, poor me, you know, and he did. I think it just went down to our friend's house and then you know, came back. But I don't know. It wasn't you know, we were just argumented. It was just kids stuff, Like there was no brawls

or anything major. It was just silly stuff. So sass. Like I think there was a lot of sass, and there was a little bit of I mean, Dad's told stories about how I would even be sassy or braddy to Verna and it would and Doug would give Dad attitude and they would have this like, well your little you know, Angel did this, and well you're a little I just did this. But so there was a bit of sass. Go. It wasn't any that was a specific dynamic.

Kirston as sassing Verna and Doug assassing Fred, and it came out of another dynamic that Kirston was Fred's favorite and Doug was Verna's. Doddie Menville, one of the family's neighbors in Malibu said that Kirston's privileged position with Fred and Dougs with Verna was a thing in the marriage. She talked about it with an investigator. Yeah, they they had so two initial thing prime kid or pek or something like that. She may have shared that was somebody else.

It was some initial that an ears while I guess even when kids are a moment might go PK or something like that if they felt the other one was being joy to their own favorite child. Fred even complained about Verna's relationship with Doug when he was at work.

This is Dennis O'Gorman in an archival interview. From time to time he'd make mention, I say, of the boy, you know, but the boy didn't want to eat that or whatever, And then she'd make a special meal for him, or he always got some sort of special treatment, or sometimes he would get on the boy's case because the boy was spoiled so damned Lott and she'd be if she stood up for any of the kids. She would stand up for the boy before she was snapping the

rest of them. The caeral thing. All these stories, they were starting to paint a picture of Fred, one that would be presented to the jury. Carol Jean's sister even got in on this. She felt moved to write a letter to the Santa Barbara Detectives. In it, she said that Fred often humiliated Doug. Once Doug disobeyed him by jumping out of their inflatable before it was all the way to shore. When Fred got hold of Doug, he kicked him. Doug, Jean's sister wrote to the detectives was

quote a tortured little boy. This fall, I met up with a childhood friend of Dougs in Malibu. We met at the parking lot of the Trncus Market, an upscale mini mall on pH Okay, my name's John Lytell. I grew up with Dougie Johnson and there are all the families out here in Malibu until about nineteen Fan of nineteen eighty nineteen eighty one, and then John is Patty's son, so he literally grew up with Doug sharing Vernas Duplex on Broadbeach Road. He's a surfer and a sailor and

now and La County Sheriff's deputy. I've been a sheriff for twenty over twenty one years, since June twenty one years and with the county for La for twenty two years. But in nineteen eighty one, he was eight years old and Doug's best friend. I'd asked him to take me around his old neighborhood. He got into my car, which is a Volvo Total Mom car. This fun a little and it's like one of the best cars ever to smuggle in smuggle drugs because this farrior. So there's my

finger there, yeah, and that my foot. My other hand is about foot below it. It's like all foam in there, and they'd scrape it out and load it with happy stuff happy. We pulled onto pH and stopped at the intersection with Broadbeach Road. So is this like your turn into your childhood? Yeah, Broadreach and then there's one at the north end too. The Starbucks is in here, that's for sure. And trinkets didn't look that nice to market. It's kind of junky old store. There's no surf shop.

There's no of these boutique shops there. We found a parking spot on the side of Broadbeach Road, just past where a private security guard was posted up. Down the road on the left was Verna's old house, where John had lived as a kid through the slats of the fence. You could see a big grassy yard edged with flowers and trees, and the ocean sparkling in the near distance. Sea Level Drive plunges off Broadbeach Road toward the ocean. It's blocked from car traffic by an electric fence, but

there's a pedestrian gate. I think see that tree right there, Yeah, it's just the top of it. That's when we climbed all the time, and my dad had to come get us out of the tree. So that story gets told so many times at my at any of our family gatherings, because whenever we talk about Deuggie, my sister always brings it up. How my dad had We had like a stuck up in the tree, and Dougie is like telling us to our helper. We were saying help because we

could climb up, but we couldn't climb down it. We followed Sea Level down as it turned parallel to the shore. The waves crashed against the wild beach where Fred and Verna's children used to do their runs. We're looking for three one, six, eight five. John was having a moment. It was almost like he was dreaming, like I don't remember the house as being this big. And that's funny because do you think as a little kid everything would be bigger now? But now it's it's everything just looks

gigantic to me. This is weird. I haven't been down here since though I've never I've been down to this street, even on duty or anything like that. We stopped in front of a large contemporary house with an agave garden and board formed concrete retaining walls. So I remember this yard though. This yard was here and there was like a there's like a kid play structure. And then this John said Doug's death traumatized him and altered the course of his life. When his dad told him the news,

he didn't understand at first. I don't think I talked for three days. It was weird. I don't think I ate for a bunch too. It's just weird because it was like Kevin, like part of your soul ripped out. They lived here and then they lived in that house with us up at l unit, so it was almost like you was a little brother, or like a brother, not even a little brother. Yeah, do you feel like you think about him or talk about him now? I've had a couple of days where like if I hear

a song, I'll end up crying. It would be like a John Denver song, maybe Country Road or something like that. It's just something that hits your heartstrings. When he was a child, John said Fred had made him uncomfortable. I was a little bit afraid of my dad. But when I went over to other people's houses, I didn't think I'd have to be afraid their dads, but I was. You try to forget the stuff that makes you the most scared when you're a kid. So I don't like,

I remember his face one hundred percent. That'll never go out of my brain. The feeling in the railer home, he said, was oppressive, no levity, no laughter. I believe there are evil characters at play, and I believe they're good people. So and I've known that since I was a little kid. So when you walk into a place and you feel evil, you just know it's there. It's not like you're seeing ghosts or anything like that. You just feel like you can feel energy. And I'm not

trying to be like new age or metaphysical. You could just feel it. I was going to ask if Fred was your introduction to evil. Is that what you're saying I don't understand his thinking at the time, and when I look back at it now, I'm like, yeah, that was that's pretty evil. Doug's death, he said, had shaped him right down to the decision to become a cop. So I think we had Douggie and I had both wanted to be on that path of being a good guy,

not not being an opportunist, of being the hero. I guess. So when that happened, Um, I don't know, it just it follows you your whole life. Psychologically, for me, it was like a challenge, and I think based back on what happened here and wanting to make sure the good guys protect the little ones or protect the innocent. I don't know. Maybe maybe Dougie had an effect on that, because, like I said, I won't if Dougie's dead. I gotta be the other half of them. Honestly, I gotta live.

John stepped away for a second to collect himself. His life's over. I gotta live. I gotta live two eyes. So it's hard. It's like I have to just bring him with me everywhere. He's right here, and he's always here. He's always here. Every every decision I make, and stuff like that I know he's I mean, it might not be like something that I put my head and I'm like, Okay, what do you think, Dougie. It sound like an imaginary friend. It's just he's there. He doesn't know the details of

what happened to Doug They still elude him. What he believes is a jumble of what he overheard the grown ups whispering about when he was eight and things he's read online. And that's a big part of why I wanted to talk to him, because he has an emotional investment in the case and knows the players, and he has a detective's ability to help make sense of all the contradictions. First, I had to get him up to

speed on what the first autopsy showed. He didn't even know about them, and when I told him about the accidental drowning determination, it really threw him. I know you're about the messgy, but from a law enfortion of perspective, I would love to know more because there had to be something more for them to come to that conclusion. It was noisy on the streets, so we went back to the car and sat there for a minute. I could feel him bracing himself, so how do they die drowning,

just straight drowning. They're not gonna just drown That's what I mean. They're not gonna just like, oh, we're done swimming, We're gonna just die. That just doesn't Both of them could swim, so unless they were knocked unconscious, unless they were or what I think. Okay, the story to me is total bs. First off, there's a rip or whatever it is, a rip or undertow whatever could pull them.

Nothing's pulling them down. It's if anything, it's shooting at him away from wherever they are, like there's an eddy or something like that, where they're not actually stuck in that area. So for them to say float, it's not hard unless they're knocked out. But if they were knocked out, there's trauma. John pulled out his phone and zoomed in on a map of Santa Cruz Island. Even to think about it makes me kind of sick. It makes me ill. So, but I know what people do, and I know what

people will go to to get stuff done. Nobody saw him kill him, Nobody saw the boat flip over, right, So it's like for the innocent side of it and the guilty side of it, nothing's seen. How did that happen? How is that possible for happen? Yeah, I don't know. I would have to go out there and take a look at it. But look, we don't have to wait for you to be able to Captain Doug has no grave sights, and John had never seen where his best

friend died. Right there, sitting in the car with me, he decided that he needed to go to Bird Rock. There was just too much that didn't make sense. John Lighttell is confused today, just like everyone in Malibu was confused back then because the evidence was confusing, contradictory. And then doctor Craig Duncan, who did the first autopsies, had observed no signs of trauma. The second secret autopsies, they

told a drastically different story. Doctor DeWitt Hunter, the medical examiner in Santa Barbara, agreed that the condition of Verna and Doug's lungs was consistent with drowning, but he also saw evidence of trauma. The Santa Barbara detectives were in the room and the whole procedure was filmed. On Verna, doctor Hunter observed head trauma, not sufficient to kill her,

but bruising, which was curious. After re examining Verna, doctor Hunter turned to Doug and his findings were extremely disturbing. According to doctor Hunter, there was significant bruising on the back of Doug's head. Obviously, the scalp has been shaved of all the hare. Now doctor Hunter can reflect the scalp back and show underlying areas of echymosis on both the inferior aspect of the scalp, as well as the ox of put and the base of the skull now

being pointed out by the tip of a scalpel. Once again, the echymosis or bruising, doctor Hunter said, was quote consistent with trauma immediately prior to death, as if by magic. The Santa Barbara autopsies revealed powerful physical evidence in a case where there had been almost none. The new findings led the detectives to believe that Fred Raylor had rendered

his victims unconscious then held them underwater. This would line up with the stories they'd hear about Fred, that he was tricked, harsh and quick to anger, that he resented Doug, and that he'd been violent with Jean, his first wife. A lot of people in Malibu had deep seated suspicions about Jean's death, they thought Fred had killed her and covered his tracks so cleverly that the coroner had ruled

her death an accident. Now the detectives were looking into the so called suicide of Verna's first husband, Bill Johnson to see if Fred could have what pushed him off the roof of the building in Westwood. They were even digging into an old story from Point Magoo about a diver who drowned while using Fred's equipment. Could the diver be a possible fifth victim? Was Fred Railer a serial killer?

But the question of motive for the deaths of Verna and Doug that lay inside the house at sea level drive in papers tucked away in desk drawers and secreted in a silver case under the desk in the living room. Papers the Day believed that showed Fred was living in a beachfront house of cards and that he needed money fast coming up on the next episode of Lost Hells,

there's something here that's just not adding up well. When they were saying that, oh, you're you know I was broke, I said, well, the thing you didn't search when you tore up my house was you didn't go into the deep freeze I had a faith in there with thirty grand cash in about five thousand and travelers checks in it, and they were sort of stunned. And then they asked the detective easy and looked in the deep freeze, and he said, of course he hadn't. That's next in episode seven.

Love or Money. Lost Tales 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.