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Detective Rick Jackson, a decorated LAPD detective and a key inspiration in the development of Harry Bosch, delivers a shocking and immersive look into the one case he could never let go. In June nineteen ninety, Ronald Baker, straight a UCLA student, was found repeatedly stabbed to death in a tunnel near Spawn Ranch, where Charles Manson and his followers once lived. Shortly thereafter, Detective Rick Jackson and his partner Frank Garcia were assigned the case. Yet the facts made
no sense. Who would have a motive to kill Ron Baker in such a grisly manner? Was the proximity to the Manson ranch related to the murder? And what about the pentagram pendant Ron wore around his neck? Jackson and Garcia soon focused their investigation on Baker's two male roommates,
one black and one white. What emerges is at once a story of confounding, betrayal, and co hearted intentions, as well as a larger portrait of an unbattled Los Angeles, a city in the grip of the Satanic panic and grappling with questions of racial injustice and police brutality in
the wake of Rodney King. Rick Jackson, the now retired police detective who helped inspire Michael Connolly's beloved Harry Bosch, along with co writer Matthew McGoff, take us through the events as he and his partner experienced them, piecing together the truth with each emerging clue. Black Tunnel White Magic is the true story of a murder in cold blood, deception and betrayal, and a city at the brink, set
forth by the only man who could tell it. The book that we're featuring this evening is Black Tunnel, White Magic, a murder, a detective's obsession, and nineties Los Angeles on the Brink with my special guest, retired detective and author Rick Jackson and journalist and author Matthew McGoff. Welcome to the program. Thank you very much for this interview Rick Jackson and Matthew McGough.
Thank you very much, Dan, Thank you, Dan, happy to be here.
Tell us about the genesis of this book, Matthew, how you got involved with Rick Jackson and why you wanted to be involved in this story.
Well, for Rick, the story obviously goes back quite a bit further than me. It's a nineteen ninety murder case. And I first met Rick time around twenty ten, twenty eleven or so. At the time, he was still an active LAPD detective working in the LAPD's Cold Case homicide unit, and I was a reporter doing some research on a pretty notorious LAPD cold case, but also about the cold case unit itself. This was research for what became my book,
The Lazarus Files. So even though Rick wasn't directly involved in that case, he was one of the LAPD detectives who I interviewed and got to know while I was doing that reporting, and we became pretty quick friends, and I don't know, after a year or so, Rick came to me and said that there was a story and a case that he had worked earlier in his career that he considered one of the most interesting cases of his career, and that he always thought it would make
a good book, and he'd always dreamed of writing a book, and would I be interested in working on a book project about this case with him and Frankly Once he told me the story, it's a really unusual case and story. I hadn't heard of any case quite like it. But what particularly drew me to it as I learned more about the case was this was a really thorough, diligent investigation that Rick and his partner Frank Garcia conducted. And Dan, you know, because I was on your show to discuss
my previous book. Yes, that investigation was not an exemplary investigation. So for me, the opportunity to kind of look at the other side of the coin and tell the story of how a murder investigation should be conducted.
And if it was.
Your family member, you know who is who was a victim of a crime like this, you know what kind of kind of investigation you would you would hope to receive into what happened. And so it was a mix of all of those things. My friendship with Rick, my interest in the story, the opportunity to write about an interesting time in the history of Los Angeles, and and to sort of present this investigation as a case study of how it should be done.
It.
Rick's pretty humble and maybe wouldn't describe it the same way, but that's that's how I.
Saw it.
Now.
Matthew tell Us also there was fears of Satanism and a cult in America in nineteen ninety, and you say this is on the heels of a hoarded Satanic killings and also including the Manson murders in nineteen sixty nine. So tell us the mood in nineteen ninety regarding Satanism and the occult in general.
Well, it's important to remember, you know, this is it's not that long ago in terms of the passage of time, but it was a different time. And in nineteen ninety things that are part of the zeitgeist now but maybe not so fresh and present, were much more present in
nineteen ninety. So I'm speaking, for instance, of the Manson murders in the summer of nineteen sixty nine, that was only you know, that was that was much more recent crimes like the Nightstalker Richard Ramirez, who there were a lot of Satanic aspects and elements of the crime spree
that Ramirez engaged in that. Again, we're very fresh in the public's mind, and there was a great deal of media coverage the McMartin preschool cases, another kind of vector in all these different cases that now, in hindsight, looking back with the benefit of a little time since then, people recognize that they call it the Satanic panic because were these really widespread fears to some degree stoked by the media, popular culture. You can trace some of the
threads back even to the film The Exorcist. Just a lot of fears about Satanism, satanic worship, human sacrifice, all of these concerns that looking back it seems pretty clear were overblown, but at the time were front and center in terms of what people would think about and fear when they turned on their TV and saw the local news or even the national news.
You take us to June twenty, nineteen ninety and there's fourteens had a railroad tunnel that is known or at least associated with the Manson family because it's near the Spawn movie ranch, so it's known that it's associated with Manson and this railroad tunnel tell us Rick about the call that they get the police get on June twenty first, from fourteens.
It was actually, you know, like one point thirty in the morning. These fourteens decided to kind of they didn't want to go home. They wanted to keep having a good time. And they were roughly sixteen to nineteen years old, and two of the boys, the two boys rather, had been to the tunnel before and they thought it was cool, and they told the girls, and the girls thought it was kind of creepy, but it sounded icing and enough
for them to go. And as they got closer, they started hearing the stories about They heard that, you know, witchcraft and different occault philosophies, and sometimes the train went through when you were inside of the tunnel and you hugged the wall and got the rush of that. So they were all up for it. They start walking into the tunnel and they go in, you know, and it's
pitch black. It's even pitch black during the day once you get it kind of curved, so the entrance is once you get past where you can see either entrance, it's pitch black even during the day, and you need artificial light, which they had cigarette lighters. And they're walking
through the tunnel. Two young girls were especially afraid, but were drawn to it, and sure enough they come upon what turns out to be a twenty one year old young man that has been stabbed many many times, a lot of blood, his throat's been slit, and I almost liken it probably too. Their reaction was probably like in a cartoon where they jump up and they're running before they even hit the ground again. And it terrified them. And they didn't know if anybody he was still in
the tunnel that had done this. They just be lined out and one of the men young men went down and knocked on a few doors. The first door so didn't even answer. They wouldn't even answer the door, probably not knowing who this is in the middle of the night. But eventually paramedics and police were called to the scene. He was definitely already dead, had no idea on him. He was wearing a pentagram around a twined necklace around
his neck. He was carried as an unidentified body at John Doe number one thirty five, which is that means one hundred and thirty fifth John Doe intake for deaths in the calendar year so far and the local division at that time LAPD. I think they had eighteen divisions beyond that now, but every unit had their every division had their own homicide unit. So initially the Devonshire Division Tectives, which handled that part of the northwest area of Los
Angeles City. And it's up in really a pretty cool setting. It's boulders, beautiful boulders, sandstone boulders, and it's almost like I think Matt described it in the book as looking like bedrock, kind of bedrock from the flintstones, I should say, and he went. So they began investigating the murder of
this unidentified young man. My partner and I, Frank Garcia, We worked out of headquarters and we worked a specialized homicide called the Major Crime Investigation Section, and we handled serial cases, high profile cases, particularly involved cases, and then also helped out divisions that were very busy. So we didn't get this eventually for a few days because some of the circumstances that followed the discovery of the body.
June twenty. First, you write that about two hours before the teens found the John Doe and the tunnel, that Yale and Kay Baker got a call. Yes, and they had a son named Ron and a daughter named Patty, and both of them didn't live at home at that time. Now, this family was not wealthy, but they were religious. And you say that the father took the call about eleven fifty. What was said in that call.
Basically, the message was from a mail who seemed to be using a disguised voice, and he referred to Gail Baker as mister Baker and said, we have your son. We want one hundred thousand dollars. Do not call the police, and we will be in touch a later point. Get the money ready. Basically that's the message. So he's obviously shocked. His wife was already in bed. He told his wife, who was you know, He went in and woke her up. He had been dozing in a chair out front, watching
the news out in the den. They immediately called their the apartment where Ron Baker lived. He was a twenty one UCLA student living with two friends. Where they said Ron wasn't home. He had gone to Ucla to meet with the group, a group that he was associated with, a club kind of called the Mythtic Circle. He hadn't come home yet, so mister Baker said, well, when he comes home anytime, haven't give me a call. Mister Baker.
Because of many reasons thought it was a joke, so they retired for the evening, and then the next day a second call came in the next mid morning, a second call came in from the same person and mister Baker talked to him as well, and he repeated the attempt to get money and said where they were holding Ron?
Baker, the investigation that you're talking about is unbeknownst to homicide detectives that this kidnapping and the unidentified body in the tunnel are unrelated. How do they get to know that these two cases are related.
Well after the second call mister Baker. Initially the first call he made was to the roommates again and said did Ron come home? And they said no, and so he says, well, I'm going to call the police. And what happened then is two detectives from downtown handle a kidnappings like this ransom calls. So two downtown detectives had no idea that to Devin Geer, homicide detectives were handling
the murder of a John Doe. There was no connect up yet and this is Friday morning, so they both are working independent investigations kidnapping and the murder, and it wasn't till two days later when they were making calls around to local hospitals in the corner's office that the description of the John Doe matched the description of Ron Baker's napping and it became known that, in fact, the identification was made that the John Doe was in fact Ron Baker, and that's when Frank Garcia and I got
the call to take over the case, the kidnapping part of it as well as the murder obviously because they were connected. So that's where we come in Sunday night, I think it was June twenty fourth, we had out. The first thing we do is head to the corner's office to view the body and to find out whatever we can, and then we went to the victim's mom and dad's house to make the notification, which is always the worst of the worst things you can do as a police detective.
Now you talk about that, Baker's two roommates were interviewed by LAPD detective Craig Rudy, right, and they also looked around Ron's room. So what did they garner from that initial interview and also what did they find in Ron's room at that apartment.
Well, yeah, we interviewed Rudy. Once we took over the case, we met with Rudy, talked to him and he had been sent out there to do a crime report for the kidnapping for ransom. On that investigation, he interviewed the two roommates. They explained that on the night where the incident occurred, they were going out. The two roommates were going out drink beer and discuss Nathan. One of the guys is Duncan Martinez. The other guy is Nathan Blaylock.
One white. Duncan Martinez is actually white his true name. He wasn't Hispanic his true name. It was an adopted step father's name. And then Nathan Blaylock was black. And they were the two roommates. And they said that Ron said he wanted to go to Ucla to visit and make get together with friends to celebrate the summer soultstice.
He was in Dewicca, which is a very tame occult philosophy harmony and nature, you know everything, people living in harmony with each other, and it centered on a nature based philosophy. No Satanism or sacrifices or anything like that at all. But he was going to get together with some of his friends from this group called the Mystic Circle, which is a registered on campus club at UCLA at the time, and so they dropped them off at the
bus stop. Ron did not drive. He had bad luck driving and decided to start taking buses everywhere, and so they dropped them off the bus stop and then they went and did their thing, and they came home about ten thirty or so eleven o'clock and Ron wasn't back, which didn't surprise them. They confirmed that mister Baker had called about the two ransom calls, one that evening and
one the next morning. So he took the statements from them, and then he went and looked in Ron's room and he saw that it was filled with, you know, different posters about WICCA or you know, the United Nations flag, and a lot of books on occult philosophies and witches and different types of ac cult that centered around WICCA. And that was basically it. You know, we recorded it and submitted that report, which we eventually got.
Let's lose this as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now, Rick, how do you proceed with this? You have this detailed step by step process that you have to go through as a homicide detective, but also you're very wary of all of the elements that you're able to gather and learn as you progress with this investigation. You talk first with Duncan Martinez about Ron and some of the things that happened that night.
So the next day, Monday, we start the fresh case. The night before, it was strictly the corner's office and the family notification, and we didn't even talk to the family a whole lot because there were stunned and we knew we'd get back to him eventually to you know, once things settled a bit and get more information, because on something like this, what we needed to do is know as much as we could about Ron, not just
from his friends, but from his family. And obviously families don't always know the same information about people that their close friends know, so we needed to talk to both sides of that equation. And so we went out that Monday afternoon and went up to the tunnel with the the original detective so they could walk us through and point out what was where and so on and so
forth regarding the evidence. But then we went over to the apartment building, which is in a little area called Van Eyes out in the San Fernando Valley and that's where the three of them lived. And it was a two bedroom apartment Nathan Blaylock one room. It wasn't there. He had gone out to Riverside the day before. He
spent a couple of days with his girlfriend. Then he was going to a pre plan family reunion in Detroit and Duncan was there, and there were two young women there that were friends of Ron, and they were, you know, frantic, you know, where's Ron. It's been a couple of days. They'd been calling friends trying to find out if anybody had heard from Ron. You know, they were very stressed. And so I interviewed the two women and Frank. At some point no I interviewed one one of the women,
Frank interviewed one, and then he finished before me. So he started talking to Duncan in a room. We separated them all and spoke to them on their own, and Duncan was very helpful, very gracious, gave what information he could about Ron and what he'd been doing to try to, you know, find maybe what happened or where he might be. But there was one thing that bothered Frank that he was told by Duncan, and it was just one of those things that kind of like doesn't totally make sense.
And what that was was Duncan and Nathan, according to Duncan, on Saturday morning, when he was still missing, as far as they knew, allegedly, they had gone out to Chatsworth Park where this railroad tunnel is, to look for Ron. And Frank right away asked Duncan, well, why are you going and he says, well, we went there because Ron liked to go there, and we searched around and he says, well, did you go up to a railroad the railroad tunnel?
And he says no, we kind of went up there, but then we decided not to go in the park was too big, and then we were going to go to UCLA, but the UCLA campus so big, so we just went home. Frank said to Duncan, why would you go to a place that the victim liked to go when he's actually being kidnapped by somebody. He's been kidnapped, you know, kidnappers don't just take you to a place
you like to go. It just hit Frank wrong, and Dunk and explained it away the best he could, and then when Frank told me about it after that interview, when we were driving back to downtown to go to the station, I played the devil's advocate a bit and said, well, you know, who knows, maybe they just were frustrated, they didn't know what to do. Let's go over there and just look around. You know, we're just trying to come
up with something to try to help. So I played that way, but it still we both thought it was unusual, but it wasn't anything directly incriminating regarding Duncan, but it was interesting.
It just seemed odd because if you're a kidnapping victim, the kidnappers don't take you places that you like to go. You don't have a choice where they're going to take you. So at that point in time, when Ron Baker was a missing person, not a murder victim yet, as far as any of his friends would have known, it just didn't land right that they would go looking for their missing friend somewhere that he'd liked to go on his own where his body was actually found.
Get to you get to the point where Duncan has asked to submit to a polygraph exam, and this is an interviewer Gorely and he wants asked him some questions, So how does Duncan fair at this polygraph? And you also talk about Rick that even though that's inadmissible at court at trial, that you still find it in an effective tool and why Yeah.
And it was a couple of weeks later when we did other investigative stuff. It wasn't like we right there after. Duncan said that one statement, Sure are other things that bothered us that started coming into our investigation that you know, like we need to eliminate these guys as being involved. And we hadn't talked to Nathan Blaylockley. I think we had a short conversation on the phone, but we offered Duncan a polygraph, and I just wanted to see how partly is how is he going to react to it?
You react to being asked that? And he was very sure, no problem when you want to do it, And so we scheduled it. It was actually in the first few days of July, so we'd been into the case for a couple of weeks. Did the gory when he came out, and he's a civilian employee, he's a polygraph examiner and Duncan showed up and submitted to the test. He did four runs on the test and failed miserably in literally every category of pertinent questions they called him. There's control
questions like what's your name? Is your name Duncan Martinez?
Yes?
No.
Then there are the ones were you present when Ron was killed? Did you yourself kill Ron? Do you know who killed Ron? Just the pertinent questions? Every one of those he failed miserably, and so we interviewed him. We had to give him his rights at that point. The rights had to actually be given by Gorley before the polygraph, and he waived his rights, but he was steadfast in his denial to both Gorley, who confronted him with the results of the test, and to Frank and me. We
were at a standstill. We did not have enough to arrest them, obviously, you know, just on the based on the polygraph results, you don't have probable cause for that.
But we now were more centering on the relationship about Duncan and Nathan had with Ron and looking at them as potentially involved because if one of them, if one of them was involved, and both of them were involved because they were together when they left, they could not account for their time other than their own alibis that they were out drinking and talking and then came back and went to a party at the apartment building and so, and we still had not talked to Nathan. He was
still in Detroit. So we now had a focus, but we were not We were looking at there were other things that were going on that really we don't get too involved into the book part of it, because you know, it took time and this already is a you know, a four hundred plus page book, and but there were other people we looked at and eliminated. But now the center stage was kind of Martinez and Blaylock Rick.
If I can just jump in and correct if I misspeak, because you were there.
But part of what.
Was interesting about the dynamic was not only were there some odd things that just didn't fit together and made you maybe suspicious of Duncan, but on the flip side, there was there was no indication of any sort of animosity that you were getting from other friends, of any sort of roommate problems, no sense of any sort of a motive. Duncan new Rom's family quite well.
Well.
He actually delivered a eulogy at Ron's funeral so it was not as if there was any sense of bad blood or anything that made you focus on these guys as bad actors. It was more just a couple of strange things that Duncan had said, and then importantly that by their own account, they were the last people to be with Ron to see him alive, and so from a detective's perspective, it was imperative that you eliminate them as suspects, and that that was difficult to do because
it was really their word. And now with this polygraph that Duncan had failed, you saw that his word maybe wasn't worth very much.
You know. In the book goes obviously into much more detail. There were factors. Every time we had tried to eliminate those two before the poly you know, it was it would point right, this doesn't follow, This goes more into the guilty cantor, and we do the next one. And we were trying to eliminate them in so many ways because nothing made sense. Why would they do this? There was no animosity other than just basic roommate problems. And you owe more on the TV bill because you know,
you got these extra channels or whatever. It was just little stuff, but not and Duncan always just said those guys, these two guys are my two best friends. Ron and Nathan are my two best friends. And they don't even met Nathan a few months back at the Renaissance Fair, and they'd become fast friends. And then that's where the three of them end up in an apartment. Ron had as a single he was living near by himself and wanted a couple of roommates to differ costs while I
was in college. That's how all came together. And so it just didn't make sense from a mode of as you're getting more information and verify it.
So Duncan and Nathan say that they drop Ron off and he went to meet his friends at UCLA. You and your partner, Frank went to UCLA interviewed people there. No one saw Ron arrive, no one had plans with him to meet, and so again there's something that's not adding up. You're learning as you try to verify things that Duncan told you that something is not right here, although you know yet what that might be.
Now it's important to interview Nathan, and so by telephone. He has a girlfriend named Diane Henderson. Obviously you wanted to you did speak to Diane Henderson as well. She was at the apartment that night on the couch when they returned, just as you had mentioned prior to going to this party upstairs in the apartment. But you say there was imperative to speak to Nathan, Now, what was his demeanor?
Like Frank had spoken to him briefly a few times on the phone and kind of just corroborate the basic story about and being dropped off and so, but we needed to be sitting across the table for him to get a read on him. And so we go out to where he and Diane live in Riverside County and we interviewed Nathan first. He's very a light, cordial, not defensive at all, welcoming, you know, just he had He told his story and it was pretty consistent with Ron,
you know, I mean Duncan. It was pretty consistent with Duncan's story. There were no really major differences. They might recall dropping him off maybe on a different corner something like that, but you know, minor stuff. We actually were
asked to leave the house we're interviewing him. It was Diane's father and he said, you guys have been talking too long and so we asked him, and they followed us down to the shaff Station local share station and we interviewed him a little bit more, and we interviewed him after Diane talked to us, So we went back and interviewed Nathan again just to clarify some things. Dying it said, and as we're driving home that night, and
I'll never forget this. It's a quote, but I know it's Forbade him and Frank Garcia, who was very seased, and he had more time in the job than I did. He worked major narcotics and dealt with, you know, a lot of undercover situations where he had to be smooth and cool, and he he's a really good people person and knows how to read people. He says, I don't know, man, he goes, if if that guy's lying to us, He's
the coolest motherfucker I've ever dealt with. And so that went into my mind indelibly right at that day, at that time, and so when that chapter came up, that's the that's what I wanted to call it. And I have to say, just on a side note, one of them, and I've told not this many times. One of my favorite things writing this book was coming up with chapter titles that some don't even make sense until you read the You read the chapter and you know whether it's
a terminology that's used or a quote or whatever. I really literally enjoyed that and anyway, but yeah, so we now talked to both of them. We still we're at a standstill. We asked Nathan to take a polly and he said, no, you didn't trust him, which is a common response for people and even people sometimes that aren't involved in it. You know, we later determined but he wouldn't.
He wouldn't submit to one. I don't know they ever, They never acknowledge whether Duncan somehow got a message to him, because they really weren't talking that much once he left for Detroit and then was living out in Riverside County. Whether anybody knew that Duncan or whether Nathan knew that Duncan had failed the polygraph, but you know, we weren't going to get that with Nathan.
And I would just chime in that even though Duncan is is failing a polygraph and Nathan is refusing to take a polygraph, these are not adverse aerial interactions that you're you're having with these guys, Rick, there no cooperative seem as if they want to help, consenting to answer a question, multiple interviews. So again that's not typical I understand from you when you're you know, interviewing suspects, they often don't want to talk correct.
Yeah, no, there they were easy to deal with, very welcoming up to that point, and Nathan continued to be that way. Duncan it changed a little bit after the poly That was kind of the dynamics we had with both of them.
You write about Duncan and is seemingly cooperation, but you talk about that he retains an attorney named Jim Barnes, and and then Jim Barnes sends a letter. So what do you think Duncan speaks to Jim Barnes And what why is reason why Jim Barnes is representing Duncan.
Well, once, once he took the polygraph and was questioned and then invoked his rights. He then that same evening he allowed us to search his car, gave us consent to search his car, and we were looking for trace evidence or blood because whoever did this it had to almost had had a lot of spillover of blood onto the person or persons who were involved in this right major major stab wounds, slice throat, close contact, wrestling around, things like that. So you'd expect to find blood in
the car. We would, we would think that the blood, there would be blood traces in the car, and we found nothing. But shortly thereafter his parents told him he should not take the polly. He did. Then he realized he probably shouldn't have as well, and so he retained Jim Barnes as a private attorney represents him. And we got a letter from Barnes basically saying, you know that he still was willing to cooperate, but Barnes needs to
be present. Go through me. The letter said, you know, go through Jim Barnes before you reach out to Duncan. He's not a flight risk. If you decide you're going to arrest him for anything, please let me know and I'll surrender him. That kind of letter. And I knew Barnes from actually I was working a case a trial at that time with Barnes, but he had initially started going through Frank Garcia, and he didn't know why it was necessarily connected to the Duncan Martinez case. While we
were in trial on a totally unrelated case. So it's kind of aronic, small world kind of situation. But anyway, yeah, so we were now kind of shut off from Duncan Martinez at that point.
You write that July twenty fourth, at one thirty am, Garcia gets a call from Lydia Archibald, the friend of Nathan and Duncan. What does she have to say? What does she report?
Well, Lydia was that she was asleep that night, and so this is about what five weeks after the murder. Her phone goes off, but she's because she's in the dead sleep. She doesn't reach her phone until just as the answer machine goes off. So the answering machine, as we had back in those days, starts recording and it picks up this conversation that we're able to listen to it later, and basically it's Duncan kind of whispering something like, Lydia,
they got me, four guys got me. I'm in a warehouse I think in North Hollywood, and let Garcia know
what's going on. Oh, and then the phone goes dead, so she freaks out, calls LAPD twenty four hour number, and they rouse Garcia from my sleep and he does the same me, and we respond to the location and we listen to the tape, and right away, because of several things that had been happening recently with Duncan's behavior and some of the stories he was telling, it just seemed like doesn't pull water as being a legitimate But you can assume that and you can't not act on
it like it's actually happening, because if it is true, his life's at stake, obviously, So we start an investigation on Duncan's phone call and his potential kidnapping, and we go through all the notifying information so that police, if they see his car, they'll you know, it's involved in a possible kidnapping. We start doing phone traps on the
phone of Lydia's house. We're doing what we can technologically and investigatively to try to locate Duncan as soon as possible, including contacting his friends, contacting his parents, contacting Nathan, and nothing's going on. He's disappeared basically off the face of
the earth. And so that starts, you know, we have to put the Baker investigation on the back burner, the murder part of it, and now you know, working on what happened to Duncan and if he did stage this, why and what was going to go beyond his initial call about the kidnapping, what was going to take place from there? So again a b a big bizarre twist.
That Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now you're right in the midst of all of this. A historic event, very negative event for Los Angeles and America itself. March third, nineteen ninety one, the Rodney King police chase and assault. And you experienced these riots personally, don't you. You and Frank, yes.
Yeah, we were part of the team that eventually investigated the criminal investigation against the officers. You know, we weren't the leads on it, but we all you know, there were twelve ifs in our unit, and we are all tasked to do different things in the investigation. I ended up searching the officers lockers for their uniforms that were wearing that either batons or shoes, things of that nature. And so there were different, you know, fragments of the
investigation that our whole unit was working on. And then we were also put in uniform in case any problems occurred. At least for a few days anyway, I believe eventually with the riots that came after the not guilty verdict, we were in uniform for a few weeks, maximum deployment everybody.
And Dan.
It was something again that was another element that drew me to the story is if you think about the time span, it's like a six year time span that the events in this case take place. The murder is nineteen ninety and the trials eventually happen in nineteen ninety six. And if you look at that time span, it's Rodney King, it's the LA riots, it's OJ Simpson, the OJ Simpson trial, all of these events that are are traumatic events for
the city. Racial tensions are being inflamed, suspicion of the police is skyrocketing, and then you know, you have people who are maybe not directly involved in these events that are making the headlines, but certainly present and involved in
the peripheral ways that Rick started to describe. So some of the ways that race end up influencing the case are pretty nuanced, but on another level, these themes are really present and emerging during the life of this case and ultimately do end up having some impact at least on strategy approaching trial and things that Rick and Frank and ultimately the prosecutors in the case needed needed to be aware of and we're concerned about for good reason.
Yeah, this, the Baker killing was not a racial killing, but there were definitely racial aspects to the case with one white suspect and one black suspect, which I don't have cases with that kind of a situation many times, but just without getting into great detail, things started happening where there was some concern about the white suspect and
the black suspect being treated differently. That plays out for a few years eventually, and how a jury would look at this, especially with the recent history in Los Angeles with you know, the the trial of the white officers or I shouldn't say white non black officers because one who's Hispanic, and then the the divisiveness of the O. J. Simpson trial. So you had to be aware of how potential jurors would look at that kind of dynamic in our case as we move forward toward trials.
You're right about January twenty first, about a year after these well over a year from these or less than a year from these riots, Garcia gets a call from Jim Barnes, Duncan's defense attorney. What does Duncan want? As he conveyed through his attorney.
Duncan wanted to talk to us now he'd been gone. We had nose. We did make a determination during the investigation of his kidnapping that he in fact was not kidnapped and showed up at his natural fathers in Kentucky and then was using an alias and then was looking to change his change his name again, even though we had no evidence to connect him to our murder. You know, we believed he was involved now, especially with this kidnapping situation,
but we had nothing to arrest him. We could not put him in the park or the tunnel of the night of the murder, neither one of them. But basically he Barnes says, you know, I can't tell you where he is right now, but he wants to talk with you guys and cooperate and maybe have some kind of a deal in this situation. And we didn't know, We didn't know what that was, We didn't know what the
story was going to be. But we eventually did meet with him shortly after that initial phone call from Jim Barnes, to Frank Garcia, but he had been he had been missing for a year and a half and we didn't know where he had been.
You call this king for a day, and with that were some conditions on him speaking. So what were those conditions.
The agreement between the DA's office, who had to arrange this kind of a situation from legal reasons, and the defense attorney Barnes, was that Duncan could tell us what
he wanted to tell us. We will listen Duncan. There was an indication Duncan knew what happened and would be willing to give that to us for some kind of consideration potentially, and that anything he told us could not be used against him or anything he told us about other people's knowledge of maybe what he told them about this his involvement in this case could not be used because we want to interview them to corroborate the story.
So we met. We determined before Barnes told us where he was that he was in Salt Lake City slash Park City, Utah. So the agreement was made to go and listen to what he had to say. We obviously
recorded everything. The deal was presented on tape. This is the agreement we have, and we went and probably sat with him for three hours that night in Salt Lake City jail because he had been arrested using an alias for a crime that he committed in Boston, Massachusetts, where he had lived for quite a while over a year
after fleeing Los Angeles. So now it really gets even more convoluted, and Duncan is there's more history of Duncan being Duncan, as I call it in the book, because he kept having these you know, I don't know what's the good term to describe crazy events happening in stories that he would be telling about his past to people that he now met along the way in this flight from Los Angeles.
So tell us about the decision, the discussion about utilizing Nathan apart me Duncan to testify against Nathan.
Yeah, so he told us the story of what he has happened. He removed himself a lot from the main thrust of the wrongdoing. I mean, he admitted certain things, but Nathan was, according to him, the soul stabber, and there was some kind of a plan to pull off kind of like a perfect crime. They had seen something on television, the two of them, Nathan and Duncan, and they kind of expounded on that and expanded their thoughts about how they could get away with it and do
it better. And that's what it really came down to, this bizarre motive, which Duncan said, I didn't think it was really going to happen. So the agreement that we came up with is we have to be crazy not to listen to what he said. We may be able to move against Nathan strictly because we had now have information, and we had ideas in our mind how we could get more information by using Duncan to have conversations with Nathan.
Some people looked at that like, you know eventually later like you're using the white guy to get the black guy. And that's part of what Matt and I were talking about. But Duncan was the one that came to us. If Nathan would have come to us, we would have been glad to use him to get Duncan. It just the way it played out, so anyway, that was the agreement. We knew Duncan was going to have credibility issues to testify.
We needed much more than Duncan telling what happened on the witness stand, because he had come up with these crazy like he'd been to the Middle East in the Marines and done assassinations, and they were following him and trying to get back at him for taking out a general in the Middle East, and just craziness and many,
many stories. And so we knew we could not rely on him alone to really tell a jury what happened, because who's going to believe a guy like that without other evidence, right, So we created a plan based on that original interview that had been negotiated as a King for a day interview. In other words, you tell us what happened. We can't use it against you, but we can use it to go out and do further investigations
to try to pull the case together. So that's sometimes if they were talking to a woman, it's Queen for a day, talking to the mail, it's King for a day. So that became the title of that chapter.
And Rick, just just to clarify, there was another important condition that was part of this deal, which was that Duncan had to tell you the truth, how to tell you and Frank the truth, but also that he could not and should not talk about the case with other people. Yes, could only be speaking to to to you guys, so that that's part of the deal moving forward with you and Frank deciding to try to use Duncan's cooperation to implicate Nathan. But Duncan's not really out of the woods.
It a lot depends on on whether he keeps his word.
Yeah, And the deal was we potentially could use you as a witness. It was never we are going to use you and this is what we will give you. Sentence wise, there were talk There were the discussions between Barnes and the DA, the man named Ernie Norris who was a veteran DA that was really helping us with the case. There was some discussions, but nothing had formulated. Is this is a guarantee. There was no immunity. It was like immunity for the day and immunity for when
we used Duncan in the future. But there was no immunity like we are never going to prosecute for your help, prosecute you for and that's a benefit for your cooperation. We're not going to do that. We can't give that because we didn't know what he was going to say. He could have said I did the stabbing and then you know, you've given the guy immunity for it, so
you don't you would never do that. But yes, the key thing, especially for Duncan who has a ox A lot, is you do not tell other people about this because they could be used against you. That's not part of this deal. So that became a big issue.
Eventually, Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now, Rick, tell us about Frank Garcia. You say that he retires from the LAPD in January nineteen ninety three, but you call him and ask him for one day more, and that's the interview Nathan on February seventeenth. Tell us about this stratgener that you go into this interview with and what do you and how do you get this information from Nathan?
So basically what happened is, prior to Frank's retirement, we had three times where Duncan either met him in person or talked to Nathan on the phone where we recorded those conversations and they talked about the case and their concerns. They hadn't seen each other in years since way back just after the murder happened, and Duncan had been on the run, and now he's calling because he's concerned about things,
and he tells certain things to Nathan. Then they start talking about the case and we get some really good stuff that we know we're going to eventually file on Nathan. Nathan was in prison for an unrelated bank robbery he did a couple of years after the murders, and so those are all recorded good evidence. We go up Frank and I go up. I call him at his new work place after he retired, he took another job, and I just told him, I need you for one more day.
And because it was the Frank and I together that had the bond with Nathan, and if I would have brought in another investigator there, you know, it might have not worked. If something started going sideways with me in the interview as far as I wasn't connecting and talking with him, the new guy would not know the case to really talk. So it was Frank and me that needed to do this together. And basically he went through the whole thing again and denied it and told the
same story. And then we said we had somebody to telling us that he was involved, and we had picked out just a few short little clips of those recorded interviews, and he said he wanted to hear who it was, and I said, well, let you listen to the tape of this person telling us that you were involved. And we played those and his head dropped and he didn't talk for a bit. He knew that, you know, he
had been outed by Duncan. He knew some of the things he had said, you know, incriminating himself on those conversations. And eventually he confessed to the killing and he said he was really the stabber, is basically what it came down. So eventually he was charged with Ronbaker's murder, and I think that was in nineteen ninety three or four. I think it was ninety three. But Duncan's still out there. You know, we had no evidence that Duncan was even
in the park. The evidence we could officially that was admissible evidence. We had nothing, so we were proceeding against Nathan.
You write about a message on your desk from Salt Lake City Detective Jim Pryor December thirteenth. Yes, pardon me, yes, So tell us about this call from Detective Jim Pryor.
Yeah. It was an early Christmas present. So I call and I know Duncan's in Salt Lake city area. He's
actually he's a University Utah student majoring in film. And I call Prior, knowing it's got to be something to do with Duncan, and so he tells me that a few days earlier, Duncan had broken into a sporting good shop late at night and was preparing to steal a bunch of items, including a mountain bike, but the door was locked from the inside and the alarm went off, and a witness saw him breaking in and breaking a
window and called the police, and he was arrested. Inside. Still, he tried to blame somebody else or saying by saying that this guy put him up to it, and if Duncan didn't do the burglary for him, he would turn him over to the school authorities because of his involvement with this murder case that he said he knew about that according to Duncan. Anyway, he was arrested. So right away I realized this is my opportunity. So I told Prior, tell him you try to get a hold of me.
Call Duncan back, tell him you try to get a hold of me. Tell him you know it's not making sense. Duncan basically said, you know, you know, I was kind of involved in this thing in LA and so this guy had information and that's how he pressured me. And I said, well we need more than that. Go back and talk to him again and try to make sense to tell him, you try to make sense of this so you can talk to the DA's office in Salt Lake City, who's going to prosecute him on a burglary.
So Duncan lays out the whole story to him, it's admissible evidence, tells the you know, the whole thing, being in the park, being in the tunnel. He even goes as far as saying when Nathan did the stabbing, Ron was so suffering that Duncan told him to finish him off,
and that's the slit throat. So that's you know, now we know have I know of no doubt in my mind that Duncan's going to be charged with the murder because he had violated obviously the do not talk to anybody else policy, and here he is using it to try to get out of another charge. So eventually Duncan was charged as well by Marsha Clark, the DA that would leave the case shortly thereafter because of the O. J.
Simpson case, there was a deal offered to Duncan if he were to plead guilty. What was that offer and what was his response and what was his attorney's advice.
Yeah, eventually, after he's arrested the DA's office they actually dropped two levels from murder with special circumstances of lying away in financial gain, which gives you a life without parole sentence, which literally means that in most and most
of the times where people get that sentence. Duncan was offered a second degree murder because he had cooperated, and he eventually rejects it, which I felt he should, because I thought a jury would hate him when they heard the when they heard the case, and no matter how much he says I wasn't involved, that we had so much evidence against him to show that he was involved and in the planning of it that I thought a
jury would convict him quickly anyway. But they denied, and he rolled the dice and then eventually lost when he was eventually convicted and Nathan had been convicted the year before. They had been tried separately because evidence against one wasn't evident since another, and there was too convoluted of a tale to connect each one of them separately, so we tried them separately.
You write about a very dramatic trial where Nathan takes the stand, but you also explained that all along that Duncan Martinez had had a private attorney, whereas once Nathan was charged, he had a public defender, which makes a difference.
It does, and you know, not always because public defenders try a lot more cases. You know they're being pulled in too many different directions because their case load is probably higher. But a good public defender can be great. I know some. I know some, and I respect some of them because they're doing their job. But yeah, there are advantages as well to hand pick your attorney, so that was an issue.
There is a discrepancy, I think in the resources that Duncan had available to him and that Nathan had available to him. And you see that during the trial in terms of the representation that they have. But you'll also see it again in terms of what unfolds later in the case. The most recent events and I guess the final twist in a story with so many twists.
So Nathan is convicted and he is sentenced to life without parole, and Duncan is offered and Duncan is offered a deal and refuses that deal. Tell us about what's the result of that trial.
Yeah, So shortly thereafter when he refused that deal, so the charge of stayed. He was charged and tried for life without charge for the murder with the special circumstances which would qualify him for one of two things to death penalty, which was already going to be off the table that they were not going to charge him with death penalty, So the only sentence he could receive if he was convicted was life without parole, which in nineteen nine tinety six he was convicted of that and was
sentenced to the wife without parole. Name is Nathan.
So and part of what was interesting about the process of writing this book with Rick was at the time that we started, that was where that was the lay of the land. Nathan and Duncan had both been convicted of the same offense and both had the same sentence, and so there was a certain symmetry in terms of even though they had different roles during the murder, they were judged by a jury in court to be equally culpable and that they should face the same sentence. So
when Rick and I began writing this book. That's where we thought the story would end. Things didn't turn out that way.
No, for sure.
You had been in correspondence with Patty Baker Ron's sister. Yes, and then she contacts you a little while after this and to your surprise some startling information regarding Duncan Martinez.
Yeah, it was. I think it was twenty twenty. I got a called fairly late at night, so and she left to voice me. I didn't know who it was, and I didn't listen. I did listen to it that night, but I didn't call her back because I wanted to check some things. Basically, she said she heard that Duncan had his sentence conmuted via the clemency process by Governor Newsom, along with twenty four to twenty five other people, and I verified that online and called her the next day.
She had read about it in the newspaper. Even though she was listed with the Victims' Rights situation. She was listed to be contacted if anything changed with his status, and she wasn't, so she had no idea. She just happened to come across in the newspaper, which is a
pretty awful way of finding out something like that. Yes, and then so we started the investigation of how this could have happened, and he applied for clemency Governor Newsom for reasons we still don't know because they would not their investigation, they said, was the investigation that was done for Governor Newsom was considered not you not available to the public. How he came upon this weighty decision or the detectives or the DA's office, we had to be transparent,
but basically they did not have to be. So we still don't know the full extent of what Governor Newsom saw. But some of the information he cited in his clemency was inaccurate or definitely incomplete, So we still have no idea. We were never consulted as the prosecution agency. The DA's office was never consulted as the prosecution agency. We do know that somebody interviewed Duncan Martinez and they got his side of the story, and that might be the only
person that was interviewed. We don't know because they wouldn't share that with us. Yeah, it was it was a shock when we learned what it was seemingly based on and how easily.
Well and it was also it was also a fair accomplay because by the time Patty even became aware of of of of what happened, the governor's signature was already on the piece of paper.
It was.
It was done.
There was no hey, we're thinking of doing this. You found out when the world found out?
Yeah, it was. It was pretty matter of fact. I think that chapter is called a shallow die for the truth, which I think really really catches it. It just there was no thoroughness in what was done to make, like I said, a very weighty decision, you know, on this brutal murder, but two guys that took advantage of a situation with Really it wasn't like it was a spontaneous thing, an argument or you know, you know got out of hand or you know. It's just it was crazy to premeditate something like that.
So well, clemency is not a bad thing in and of itself, but the process should be fair. And so that I think is what animated me in trying to write about this, because there's still a lot of questions that the Ron's family has and that we have about how exactly this went down and why did it go down the way.
That it did, and you really disagreed with these decisions and wrote to Governor Newsome and others just voicing your disagreement with this decision to parole Duncan.
Martinez, Yeah, I did you know a jury hurt all the evidence. Duncan been offered a much less sentence, which didn't mean he might not still because it's fifteen years to life for a second degree murder. If he screwed up in prison, he could still be in just like an l WOP or life without parole, call an l WOP. You know, he rolled the dice and lost, and now he's getting the benefit of the governor who really had
not the whole story, which is nonsensical. It's not like we're talking about the guy that a burglary or you know, stolen vehicle or something like that. I mean, he shattered a family's lives and took the ability for Ron Baker, who was a brilliant young man. You know, he was a straight A student at Ucileian. What was his astrophysics I think his major was. I mean, just it just
it's strange. And again, clemency is okay in the right circumstances, but it needs to be well researched and it definitely was not anyway, So eventually he was paroled. He's living outside of a prison now. As matter of fact, he served parole. He was told they were told he was going to serve three to five years on parole where if he messed up he could go back, and they
dismissed that after one year, so he walked out. He was on parole for a year and now he's totally a free man with no accountability to report to parole or anybody else. He's just living out there. So anyway, yeah, I.
Want to thank you both Matthew McGuff and Rick Jackson for coming on and talking about your extraordinary Black Tunnel, White Magic, a murder, a detective's obsession, and nineties Los Angeles at the brink. For those that might want to look at this case further, could you refer us to a website and do you do any social media at go ahead. Yes, we do have a website for the book where most importantly we have quite a few appearances
at bookstores really all over the country. So people should visit Black Tunnel Whitemagic dot com and there's a full rundown of various events that we have not only here in LA, but elsewhere in California and on the East Coast and in the Midwest. So we hope some of your listeners will come out and see us in person.
Yeah, and there's going to be more added. There's still ending appearances we're going to be making at other cities throughout the country, and in particular I think there's going to be some in New England.
Fantastic.
Yeah, all the information on that will be at Black Tunnel whitemagic dot com.
Sounds fantastic. I want to thank you once again Matthew McGough and Rick Jackson for Black Tunnel, White Magic, a murder, a detective's obsession, and nineties Los Angeles at the Brink. Thank you so much for this interview, and you have a great even and good night.
All right. Thank you, Dan, Thank you Dan, Thank you so much. Bye bye.