The following podcast contains explicit descriptions of violence, including sexual violence, that some listeners may find upsetting. Continue at your own risk. By the end of nineteen ninety two, the murder of Erik Kendrick, just over three months before, had become old news. I had resumed my duties as copy editor at the So Call Journal, which I was assured wasn't a demotion since I had never officially been promoted to reporter anyway,
but it sher felt like one. Glenn Sherman, the journal's star reporter, had written two follow up pieces to the one I wrote on Vera's death. Both of them focused on Vera's unorthodox lifestyle and honestly made it feel like she had it coming. One even suggested she may have committed suicide in the ocean, and that her injuries could have been caused by her body being battered around on
the rocks. When I worked up the nerve to ask Glenn about that angle, he took off his glasses, pinched the bridge of hiss, sighed deeply, and said, Courtney, sometimes you have to learn to play ball. I may have been young and idealistic at the time, but I was of the mind that journalism was about finding facts, not playing ball, and my opinion hasn't changed over the years. Well,
let's just say it hasn't changed much. The ball playing Glenn was referring to was a result of the pressure being put on him and the journal's editor in chief by city councilman Greg Langford, who wanted the story to fade away as quickly as possible. They wanted to keep the paper on his good side, and it seemed that Vera Kendrick wasn't a hill either of them was willing to die on, and I guess I wasn't willing to
die on that hill either. At the paper's holiday party, sherman asked me if, in addition to my copy editing duties, I wanted to shadow him. He'd been at the paper for fifteen years and had tons of sources all through
southern California and some national contacts. I would have been stupid to turn him down, even though I knew it was a whole thing he and his boss decided on to keep me close and keep me quiet, and it worked too, to my eternal shame, I kept my mouth shut for far too long, even as the murders kept on coming. I'm Courtney Barnes, and this is The Murder Years, Episode two. Pretend We're dead. Once the calendar flipped to
nineteen ninety three, I was kept pretty busy. I helped Glenn research and write about the inauguration of Bill Clinton in January.
My fellow citizens, today we celebrate the mystery of American renewal.
And the month after that, I helped him with a major story when terrorists bombed the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
At this hour, more than five hundred rescue workers are there on the scene of a massive underground explosion that ripped through the World Trade Center just after noon.
Today, killing six people and injuring one thousand more. It's weird to remember how big and scary that felt at the time, before we knew just how bad an attack on the Twin Towers would be. Later that year, in April, the FBI stormed the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas and sent it up in flames, killing seventy nine people, including twenty one children and the Colts leader David Koresh. I was eating lunch in Gerty's Diner when it happened.
Everyone in there was glued to the TV screen over the counter for hours, and it was all anyone talked about for weeks. With all that going on in the world, and with a new tourist season just ramping up, the death of a teenage homeless girl just didn't anymore with pretty much anyone, myself included. I'm ashamed to say.
It's not like we were doing nothing.
That's Damon Stokes, Sheriff of Delsoul County during the Domino Beach murders, who you met in episode one.
Council in Langford wanted us to keep it quiet, and we did, but I was still running down every lead I came across, like.
Stan Majors and who was Stan Majors.
Come on, Courtney, you remember Stan Majors. You can't write it that.
It's for our listeners.
Oh yeah, I forgot. You don't work in print.
Anymore, No one does.
Well, yes, you're right, okay, So Stan Majors.
Major waste of space is what we called them at the Sheriff's station. Lived in a trailer park about thirty miles inland from Domino Beach, almost right at the border of Riverside.
County, middle of nowhere.
You could say that, which is what Stan Majors wanted. Well, I don't know if you wanted it, but the state California didn't want him within twenty six hundred feet of a school or a city park, or anywhere.
Else the minor might be.
And why was that?
Because he was a registered sex offender, which is what put him on my radar in the first place.
In regard to the death of Arrick Hendrick.
In nineteen eighty five, Stan Majors, then twenty three years old, didn't take no for an answer from a young woman who caught his eye at a bar in North Hollywood. According to a transcript of his interrogation by the LAPD, he was ridiculed by his so called friends for striking out and decided to follow her out of the bar. When she left, he pulled her into an alley, hit her with his fists about the face and head until she was semi conscious, and then dragged her behind the
nearest dumpster. He had pulled her underwear down around her ankles. When another man came into the alley to urinate, Majors tried to run, but he was caught, beaten to a pulp, then arrested, tried, and sentenced to six years in prison. As it turned out, his victim was seventeen years old and had been in the bar with a fake ID, so Majors served every day of those six years. When he was released from prison, he found life on the sex offender registry kind of difficult, to say the least.
He moved to a much less populated part of the state, got a minimum wage job as an attendant and mechanic at a seldom visited gas station on a seldom traveled stretch of highway, where he lived a quiet, miserable little life.
I didn't have anything on him, mind you, other than his criminal history. And when you're investigating a violent sexual assault, it's just good practice.
To check him with the local sex offender.
Well that was it, That's all you had.
Well, he didn't have an alibi for the night Vera was killed. He probably didn't have an alibi for most nights of his life. Wasn't exactly mister popularity.
You know? Did you consider him a suspect?
Not a suspect. And I had no reason to charge him, even hold him.
He was a person. Event though I questioned him multiple times.
When was the first time I drove out to.
The filling station where he worked, and asked him some questions. The afternoon VARA's body was found. He was nervous, and you know, why shouldn't he be, even if he hadn't done anything wrong.
Excan's get nervous around cops? You know, it's understandable.
Anyway, he answered everything I asked him. Didn't make me get a warrant. When I asked if I could search his car and his trailer didn't find so much as a joint. A couple of weeks later, when we still hadn't come up with any suspects, one of my deputies brought him to the station to sweat him out in an interrogation room, and that was mostly done out of frustration, not because of any new evidence or anything. Again, he answered every question to our satisfaction, and we had no
choice but to let him go. In the end, we decided it wasn't too hard to get a hold of him if we needed him, but pursuing him any further just felt like a wasted time.
So in the weeks and months following Viera is murder. How much pressure are you getting from the city council.
Through the rest of nineteen ninety two, not too much. We were just pretty much alone to do our jobs. But by February or so of ninety three, they didn't want to hear a word about.
It from anyone.
By they, you mean Councilman Greg Langford.
Yeah, you know, my dad could have used his pull to help find Vera's killer. Instead, he used it to get everyone to shut up about it.
That's Connor Langford, whom you may remember from our last episode. Connor was one of the surfers who found Vera Kendrick's body, and he's also the son of city councilman Greg Langford.
I tried to get him to help. He said he was doing everything he could, but we both knew that was bullshit. He was doing everything he could to get dominant beach. Just move the fuck on.
You know, when I started working under Glenn Sherman at the Sokow Journal, one of the things he asked me to do was attend city council meetings and take notes. I didn't blame him for pawning that off on me. If I could have gotten someone else to go on my place, I would have. The meetings were usually excruciatingly dull.
There were some moments of levity or excitement provided by citizens who would go up to the podium to demand that books they didn't like be banned from schools, or for bikinis to be banned from beaches, or for bars to be forced to close by ten o'clock, that sort of thing. But if you were to condense every council meeting down to one line, it would have to be how can we bring more tourists to Domino Beach and squeeze more money out of them.
My father was angling to become mayor of Domino Beach. What's her face? Either retired or died?
What's her face? Being Deborah Charles, the eighty five year old mayor who would neither retire nor die for another six years.
But even that was only a stepping stone for him. He didn't give through fucks about Domino Beach. Once he served his mayor, he'd run for state office, then try to go national with the House of Representatives, and from there he'd weasel his way into somebody's cabinet and eventually run for president himself. And he thought I was delusional for trying to make it with my band.
He said that laid out his political ambitions like that.
Well not in so many words.
No.
The thing about my dad was if there was a bigger job with more power, he wanted it.
I see. So getting back to why he didn't want to help Salvera's murder, all.
Right, Well, with him, everything was all about perception. If he was responsible for it, it had to be motherfucking perfect. I'm in his family, which, yeah, I'm man enough to admit. I said to embarrass the son of a bitch every chance I got.
And his town too, right, Domeno Beach had to be the safest, cleanest, most lucrative tourist spot in California, or what he'd consider himself a failure?
Yeah, well, he'd never see himself as a failure. He never took responsibility for a goddamn thing. You Competitive, things weren't going his way, he'd find someone to blame for it.
Oh yeah, Langford blamed me for just about anything he could. If he wanted something cleaned up, he'd order me to do it, And when I'd say I needed the council to give me more resources, he'd get over wanting to get it cleaned up and settle for hiding it where no one would be able to see it.
You know you're talking about Domino Beach's heroin problem.
Yeah, the heroin problem.
In the early nineties, if Domino Beach was known for anything, it was good vibes and good times. It was a safe place occupied by safe people, doing mostly safe things, and having a great time doing them. A lot of that was because of where it was, far enough away from the big cities to feel like a vacation nation, but close enough to them to take advantage of all
the conveniences they provided. But in spite of what it looked like from the outside, Domino Beach had a heroin problem that rivaled that of any major city, at least on a per capita basis. After all, Domino Beach was only about an hour's drive from the Mexican border, but small enough that we didn't receive the scrutiny La and San Diego got. Anyway, we had drugs in Domino Beach, and wherever there are drugs, there are drug addicts.
The War on drugs was always a loser, but we did what we could to manage it. I mean, during the off season, the junkies would fade inland, which, to be honest, was fine by me if they wanted to waste their lives shooting up junk. As long as they were doing it in the privacy of their own homes and as long as they were not hurting anyone, wasn't a priority to me.
What about during the tourist season.
Well, that was different.
When the tourists came to town, the junkies would wander in and two they panhandle turn tricks, sell skunk weed to college students.
You know, in a way, they were just like the rest of us.
From April to August was when you had a chance to make your nut in Domino Beach.
So let's talk about Billy Boy Reeves.
Yeah, okay.
In July of nineteen ninety three, I had been shadowing crime and politics reporter Glenn Sherman for over six months, and I was starting to step out from under that shadow. I had figured out that part of the reason he kept tabs on me was because he read the article I wrote on Vera Kendrick and got nervous. He saw me as a good writer that the journal could hire for a lot less than what he was making. So it wasn't really a mentor protege thing. It was more
like a keep your enemies closer thing. So unless I was working directly with him, I wasn't getting any crime or politics stories to cover. During the summer, I wrote a lot of pretty superficial fair like covering the fourth of July five K fun run, or doing write ups on new bars and restaurants, and I got admit I enjoyed it. I was developing a style that seemed to play better with lighthearted stuff than all that doom and gloom.
So when Billy Boy Reeves was found dead in a dumpster on Wednesday, July twenty eighth, nineteen ninety three, it wasn't me who wrote the story.
Billy Boy Reeves had been in Domino Beach less than a year, and I had had him in lock up at least half a dozen times. He'd claimed to have come from San Diego on his way to LA and got distracted by the heroin.
Market in our sleepy little town so decided to stay.
Awhile, what do you mean he claimed to have come up from San Diego?
I mean, no one knew where he really came from or even what his real name was. Other than the rap sheet I had on him. There was no documentation he ever existed, and his body was never claimed.
Here's what I learned about Billy Boy Reeves. He was somewhere in the neighborhood of sixteen years old and completely on his own. Lord only knew how long he'd been hooked on heroin, but it had to be long enough that there was no limit to what he'd do to feed his addiction.
Prostitution goes hand in hand with illegal drugs anywhere you go. Junkies need their fix, and getting someone off in exchange for a few bucks is one of the easiest ways to make it happen. I picked up Billy Boy twice already since April of nineteen ninety three for solicitation. Well don't see propossessioned the wrong guy. Some spring break frat boy didn't like the fact that Billy thought he might
enjoy a little attention from another guy. Frat boy beat Billy Boy up pretty good, and I had him treated at the hospital instead of arresting him. I tried to help him see the error of his ways. But you know, I guess that was naive of me.
So Domino Beach wasn't without it, Sarah. For violent crime, of course not. We certainly didn't have it on the scale of a big city. But you know, people will be paid every year.
We had some fights, occasional sexual assault, although well you know.
I mean they were probably more than occasional, just underreported and under prosecuted.
It was a different time. It was wrong, and I never intentionally turned a blind eye to anything.
I'm not here about that, no.
But I could have made more of a difference. I mean, that is something I regret about my career.
I understand. But let's get back to Billy Boy Reeves.
Okay, So, like I said, in the six or seven months he'd been in town, I'd gotten enom as well as I knew any of our troublemaking element. So that morning when I got the call, I felt like I failed. I tried to help him, but I failed.
Billy Boy Reeves was found with his throat slit in a dumpster in the alley behind Bleach Blonde Betty's one of the more popular bars and music venues in Domino Beach. Triple Bees, as it was known to the locals, served some of the cheapest boos in town and could hold about three hundred sweaty mosh pitting kids. They had a cool stage and a great sound system, and during the peak of tourist season, hosted two or three bands a night, four or five times a week.
According to the autopsy, Billy Boy had been high on heroin at the time of his death, maybe even unconscious. We came to believe that his murderer helped him score, got him higher than he'd probably ever been in his life, and then once he was so out of it, he had no idea what was going on.
But that was later. You didn't think that at first, did you.
Well, No, like I said, Billy Boy was a troublemaker.
We'd assumed that he'd tried to get over on a dealer or a john and it just worked out.
Poorly for him.
Did you investigate?
Of course we did. I talked to every junkie in Delsol County. No one saw shit as usual. I did get one girl to tell me Billy Boy told her he was planning on hustling that night, but no one saw him with anyone. No one saw him get into a car or anything, or if they did, they didn't want to tell me.
So Billy Boy got swept under the ruck like Vera Hendrick.
I wouldn't say that it wasn't the same thing no one. No one thought those deaths were related, not.
At the time.
What no one noticed at the time was the clue that linked Billy Boy Reeve's death with the death of Vera Hendrick. There was a lot of graffiti in the alley where Billy Boy was found, so it would have been very easy to miss. But spray painted on the brick wall above the dumpster were the words just say no to individuality. In time, when the connection would be made, we would learn that this is a lyric from a song by the all female Los Angeles punk band L seven.
The title of the song Pretend We're Dead. If anyone had been paying attention, they would have seen a pattern for me. In less than a year, two people had been murdered in Domino Beach, with song lyrics left alongside their bodies, but no one was paying attention. The two victims were both homeless teenagers, forgotten by their families and easily dismissed by the town of Domino Beach.
Oh yeah, that junkie kid.
Wish you barely even heard about that.
That's Maya Morales again, girlfriend to Connor Langford. At the time of the murders of both Vera Hendrick and Billie Boy Reeves.
I mean, I practically lived at Triple B's during the summer when I wasn't working. Bartender would usually let me drink for free, long as I tip them good. And Connor's band played there at least twice a week, first set usually, but still.
So no one at Triple Be's talked about it, not really.
I mean, we knew a body had been found, but it wasn't like. Look, Jeff Franklin, the owner of Triple B's, he hired undocumented workers, okay, and it was one of them who found the body, and well, he ended up getting deported because of it. And Jeff considered.
It a pretty sensitive subject.
He didn't talk about it, and if anyone else did, he would shut it down and kick them out of the bar. To tell you the truth, we didn't even know it was a murder. You didn't, no, I mean, we just heard they found a dead junkie.
Back then. We all assumed it was an overdose.
And I guess everyone who knew better just let us believe that. The cops, the council, Jeff, everyone.
Was Connor's band playing that night the.
Night before the body was found.
Yeah, and were you there.
Yeah, but I didn't stay for the whole set. I had just gotten a second job at Gravel Records and I had to open the next day, so I did that early.
So I have a question.
You've asked me a lot of questions already.
This is a more sensitive question. Okay, shoot, Well maybe it's more of an observation than a question. It is strange that you were kind of connected to both the murders of Vera Kendrick and Billy Boy Reeves.
So I mean, I'll give you Veria. I knew or I slept with there a couple of times, and I'm the one who found her body. But the junkie kid.
You were a Triple Bees the night before his body was found.
So were a lot of people. Triple Bees was a popular spot. I'd never even heard of that kid before.
Not even I mean, like I said, I know this is sensitive, but you were using drugs pretty heavily at the time, weren't you, And he was very much in that world, and you didn't interact with him at all.
Back then. I was just spoking weed, dropping acid, doing a bump of coke every now and then. I didn't have to go Inland for that. Look, I didn't know anything about that kid when he was alive, and after he was dead, all I knew was that it was another thing my dad was trying to hide.
Nothing's wrong here.
Keep sending use of your college kids and credit card numbers, you know.
So the murder of Billy boy Reeves was seen as unconnected to the murder of Rick Hendrick. He was just another junkie who met with a bad end, and for a long long time, no one would think about Billy boy Reeves at all.
What we later came to believe, once things played out a little further, was that Verra Kendrick's murder was an impulse, maybe even accidental. Started off with some drunken grab ass, escalated to sexual assault, then rape, and then progressed all the way to her being strangled at death. And that might have been the end of it, but the killer got a taste for it. Maybe it was the power he felt taking a life. Maybe it was the simple fact he thought he could get away with it. But
whatever it was, he wanted to try it again. So he picked the easiest target he could find, drugged out kid.
With no family and no future.
In time, what I learned was that the murder of Billy Boy Reeves it was practice. Billy Boy was chosen, he was hunted. The killer made a plan and followed it to the letter. And when he was done, he discarded Billy Boy like he was nothing, threw him in a dumpster, a human.
Being except to the Domino Beach killer, he wasn't a human being. None of his victims were. Just look at the lyrics he chose to write near the bodies. For Vera, it was Polly wants a Cracker. Yes, the song is from the point of view of a rapist, but that's on the surface. Dig deeper and we see he was trying to diminish her humanity, comparing Vera his Polly to
a parrot. And with Billy Boy Reeves, it was just say no to individuality, as if Billy Boy wasn't an individual at all, just something to be picked up, used and discarded. And the killer wasn't the only one who saw them as less than human. Two homeless teenagers found dead and roughly eight months, within five miles of each other, and no one seemed to care. It wasn't even as if Councilman Langford covered things up he didn't have to. No one wanted to believe anything was wrong in Paradise.
No one wanted to believe something like that could happen to them or their sons and daughters. But things were about to escalate. Sheriff Stokes was right. The murder of Billy Boy Reeves was practice, and if the killer learned anything, it was that he wanted to take things much, much further. What happened next would shake Domino Beach to its very core. The Murder Years is a production of AYR Media and iHeartMedia.
Executive producer Elisa Rosen for AYR Media. Written by Tim Huddleston, directed by Alisa Rosen, Editing and sound designed by Tristan Bankston, Consulting producer Jean Chandil coordinator Olive Goldberg. Audio engineering and mastering by Justin Longerbean studio engineer Josh Hook. Original music by Nathan Bankston. Original concept developed in partnership with Anne Margaret Johns and Greg Spring. Executive producer for iHeartMedia, Maya Howard.
Performances for this episode by Erica Leniac as Courtney Barnes, Tom Virtue as Sheriff Damon Stokes, Alex Salem as connor Langford melon faxis as Maya morales