Pushkin. I found out about the missing women through a Facebook post. I hike a lot, mostly around Los Angeles, and always alone. I don't like to talk where my heavy boots are rhythmically pounding the switchback trails. I use Facebook groups called things like Girls who Hike and Ladies who Hike LA for trail recommendations and safety tips. Sometime in the summer of twenty twenty, someone shared a news article in one of these groups and warned us all
against hiking alone. In Idlewild, a mountain town about one hundred miles from me, five women had gone missing in the past two months.
Idlewild is a really small community and a lot of people know each other there, so when people ended up going missing, it was this kind of it was odd.
This is Diana Fettter. She knows a thing or two about crime. She worked as a secret service agent for twenty three years investigating financial fraud. Diana was living in the Idleworld area when the disappearances began.
So when that started happening, you know, all of us girls were kind of saying, Okay, well, we're not going to go anywhere without somebody else if it's dark outside, just you know, bring somebody with you.
Idlewild is nothing like La. The town is tucked away in the San Jacinto Mountains. Its official mayor is a golden retriever named Maximus Mighty Dog Mulla third. Really that's the kind of town. It is a tourist playground, a mile high paradise offering an a dilic escape from the city. Its main street is lined by ice cream shops, kitch gift stores, and cute carved wood and bears. So all
these women disappearing was pretty big news. And because I'm a journalist, and because I just really wanted to know what happened, I figured I'd just start making some calls. It took me months, but eventually I managed to track down a friend, a granddaughter, a mother of every single missing woman, and I've found out what happened to them. One woman was elderly with dementia. She got a loss and her car was found abandoned on a steep mountain side.
Her remains were later discovered nearby. Three women were battling meth addictions. They'd run away from trouble, just packed up and left. There was an explanation for all of them except for one, a woman named Lydia Kenchilo Abrams, who was known as Dia.
When Dia went missing, it was a whole nother ballgame. I'm like, this is one of our own.
Dia was a woman whose story refused to be tied up in this neat little ending. She was a glamorous, sixty five year old widow of a millionaire with two kids in San Diego, horses and a ton of property.
Oh. I admired the heck out of her. Let me tell you. She's a woman who was confident about herself, always giving compliments to others, always telling other people they were beautiful and how wonderful they were. But at the same time, this petite woman could open up a can of wood bass like no one I've ever seen. She had no problem calling people out if she felt they were lying to her, or they were doing something wrong or not being good people, if that makes sense.
They seemed an unlikely pair. Diana is a motorbike riding, leather wearing Southerner who also calls herself Lady Fed and Dia the blonde, blue eyed Californian. But when they met, Diana says, they clicked immediately.
She was a private person and she wasn't one to make friends with a lot of people easily, so if she allowed you in her little circle, then she felt that you were worthy.
You know, when Dia went missing, idle world wasn't the same, not for Diana or another woman in town, Julie Stamford, along with Dea, they've made this little trio, this sort of girl gang, like the kind you'd see at high school.
Julie and I have spent hours and hours and hours going over every scenario that it could possibly be, and we came down to the same thing.
She did not leave ever on a court.
I've spent the past four years investigating what happened to Dea, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's this, we don't like unanswered questions. When someone goes missing, they leave a vacuum, and everyone left behind scrambles to fill that space with reasons why, or explanations of how to make sense of things, anything to achieve that neat little ending that I too was looking for when Dia went missing.
She didn't get to tell her own story. Her narrative has been crafted by friends, family, lovers, and yes, even enemies, and it's left to us to decide whose version of events we believe. This isn't just a story about Dea. It's also a story about everyone she left behind. I'm Lucy Sheriff, and this is Where's Dea? Episode one? You Cannot save me from all things? That wasn't much about Dea Abrams out there, Like her friend Diana said, she
seemed to be a private person. But I did come across a video by a local CBS reporter, David Godfredson. He'd interviewed a man named Keith Harper, who said he was DIA's fiance. It's a bit hard to make out David's questions in the video. It was twenty twenty, after all, so he was wearing a mask. But Keith diligently responds with short to the point answers, and you had plans to marry her?
Yes?
Twenty fourth of July, then, where Jackson hole lie on me.
Keith and the reporter were sitting across from each other at Bonita Vista Ranch, DEA's sprawling home. Bright green trees and sunshine filled the frame around Keith. He had a craggy, rugged face, the face of someone who's been out in the sun his whole life. Why do you want to Marryer?
She's an awesome person. She's the person that I have looked for all my life.
I watched his body language. His right blue eyes flitted around as he described his efforts to look for Deer. The interview was posted on YouTube. There were a lot of comments, and many of them were not sympathetic. Here's a couple. He knows way more than he's letting up. I don't trust that old man, and even this guy has the perfect opportunity to get away with murder. The reporter asked Keith if he had anything to do with DEA's disappearance.
Absolutely not.
How can you prove that? I can prove that because I love the woman, I have no reason to bring harm to her.
I love that woman.
I had to speak with Keith Harper myself. I struggled to find his contact details online and eventually I went up to Idleworld and asked around. There were a bunch of missing persons posters on wooden notice boards around the town. One of them had DEA's face on it. There were two numbers listed, one for a Julia and the other one for A Harper. Oh, hi, is that mister Harper? Yeah, Hi, my name's Lucy Sheriff. So I called him and I wondered, if you would be willing to talk.
To me quickly, What questions do you have?
Obviously I had a lot. We talked for almost an hour. I found out he likes to be known as Harper, and so from now on, that's what I'll call him. He told me he was still searching for Dea, and he was worried that she was going to be forgotten by the police, that she'd just become another cold case. The hardest part, he said, was not knowing.
You can deal with, yeah, if there is a death, or you can deal with she left on her own.
Cord is her choice.
You know.
I can deal with that.
I can deal with all of that, But not knowing.
The hollow.
You have a heart blind.
Harper was an open book. He didn't seem to be anything like the guy who'd appeared on the CBS interview. I remember feeling this immense sympathy for him. He sounded so heartbroken. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to not know.
And unless you've been here's something like that, you'll know her. Know, you'll never ever ever now because it leaves tip genyrk stomach and in your heart that never gets healed.
Harper told me, do you knew how to use a gun?
I keep going back. This was independent, she.
Was capable.
You know, I've watched her kill rattlers. I watched her kill five rattlers one day, and she has no clear now I mean the girl and next to one NA shoot it.
A glamorous blonde who carried a gun shot at Rattlesnake's and ran a sprawling ranch. I mean Dea kind of sounded like a badass. But over these years I've peeled back these layers, and she was a complicated character. Even now, it's like Dea refuses to be summed up in one neat sentence. She doesn't fit into any classic archetypes or tidy cliches. Every new person I've spoken to opened another
door to another possibility about what might have happened. Every conversation raised another version of events that didn't quite add up, another puzzle piece that didn't seem to fit. Deer disappeared on Saturday, June sixth, twenty twenty. I've revisited that one weekend over and over because everyone has their own account of how things went down at beneath a Vista Ranch, DEA's one hundred and fifteen acre gated mountain Paradise. I'm going to come back to these couple of days a
lot throughout the season, so pay close attention. The timeline of the day Deer went missing is spotty, to say the least, but there's one thing we know for sure. Around nine am on Saturday, June sixth, Dea went over to a neighbor's house to deliver cinnamon rolls. The door cam footage was later leaked to CBS.
Now, for the first time, we are seeing video of the former La Joya resident, recorded just hours before she vanished.
I watched the grainy picture in its eerie silence. Deer wearing an oversized, chunky black shirt, her long blonde hair loose, ringing on the doorbell, a box of rolls in hand. When Dea realizes her neighbor isn't going to answer, she puts the box on some kind of ledge next to the door. The whole scene is ringed with a black circular border, like I'm looking through a fish eye lens watching DEA's final known movements. Dea walks away, and that's it.
The one other thing I know for sure from that day is at around two thirty pm, Deer texted Diana, her motorcycle riding friend, about window cleaner recommendations because she was renting out some of her properties.
She was happy as heck.
We had her house lined up for Airbnb and we were getting hits on it.
You might be wondering why would the widow of a millionaire be doing the airbnb hustle, And that's a great question with a pretty complex answer that I'll fully get into later. All you need to know for now is that Dea felt she was not in a good place financially or by some accounts, emotionally. She was in a dispute with her children over the estate of her husband, who had died a few years prior. So on June sixth, Dea texted Diana, and I've seen those messages, and then
it all goes dark. That's the last evidence I have of what Dea did that day, because everything that happened on Saturday after that string of texts is according to Harper.
Hey, you know, it seemed to be a typical day, but I was pushing hard to get ready to go to Colorado. And so you know, we we were making sure that everything was being prepared. And I remember I was down in the meadal morning the metal, and it lunchtime, which was two o'clock for us because we didn't need breakfast. Health probably around Ken picking in it too. We had lunch, and she did it. Have you got a minute, I
can talk to you. And I wish that I had listened, because you know, she had talked about how she felt there was a risk with her children.
According to Harper and Diana, Deer was scared of her children. It was all to do with this battle over her late husband's estate. The kids wanted it all, and they might go to extreme lengths to keep not only all of their father's money, but Deer's multimillion dollar ranch. Two Also her friends told me.
And if anything, I can't pass that off, thinking that her children would not do anything to her. And she said, you have a minute, I can talk with you. And I said, hone can the cock to see me? I said, I've got the medal to do, and it's going to take me till dark. I find you're done. I leave
go back to the metal at four thirty. I did not get this text because I was on the tractor and I did not hear it, but she texted me at four point thirty and what she said is, Harper, you cannot save me from all thinges even if you believe you can you can.
You cannot save me from all things. Even if you believe you can, you can't. I've never seen this text. I've asked, but Harper told me the police took his phone and won't give it back. According to his version of events, he came in from mowing the meadow at seven fifteen pm and dere was nowhere to be seen. He thought she was out exercising her horses.
You know, I got well.
Call her, seeing what it tells you it.
I called and that I could hear her phone ringing upstairs. So I go upstairs, thinking she was up there because sometimes she gets migraines and she'll lay down. But she was not anywhere in the house, but her phone was plugged in, her purse was sitting on the kitchen counter.
He says. He then went to see if DEA's truck was outside.
And when the truck was still parked where it was, then I started the new a search of the properties.
Harper told me he searched other cabins and various sheds and storage units on the property, and that in the early hours of the morning, he stopped searching and went to bed. The next day, Deer was still nowhere to be found, making Harper the last person to see her alive.
You know, obviously, when you're the last person, I've always become the suster.
We'll be right back. Early on Sunday morning, when Harper woke up, Deer was still missing. Her phone, purse, and truck were all at the ranch. Harper says he continued his search immediately.
And that's when I went. I talked to the highway control and he said, harpe Gee, call the sheriff. And he said, I'll tell you what. They don't have to do anything for her. I'll be seventy hours before they act. Because people show up, they just disappear, and many of them come back within that timeframe, so they don't get really excited.
Before we get into what happened next, I want to take a minute to address the idea that you have to wait a certain amount of time to report someone missing. You've probably heard of it on a TV show or in a movie, but it's complete rubbish. You can report someone missing right away. After Harper spoke to the California Highway Patrol officer, news began to spread. Diana Fetta, DEA's friend, got wind that Harper was trying to get in touch with her.
So I was able to call him and I said, what's going on, because well, she didn't come home last night.
Is she with you? I said, no, she's not with me. But that's typical of Dea.
If she didn't want to go home, she'd either spend the night with a friend or she'd spent the night at her corner valley house.
At eight twenty four am on Sunday, a call was made from the ranch to the cops to report a missing person. I'm not sure him made that call, but the cops don't show until later the following day. Meanwhile, Diana rallied a search party, army veterans who belonged to her motorcycle club, DEA's Idlewild friends, and neighbors from a Christian youth camp across the road.
So it was pretty quick when people all started showing up. We all started making phone calls trying to get people to come over and help.
Some of the people who were searching, assumed Deer had gone off hiking and just hurt herself.
She's either up the hill, you know, walking up the hill and she got lot, or she could hurt herself and she can't come down.
But there was a growing list of clues that made this seem unlikely. Her phone and her guns were at the house, things she always took hiking, and there was something else that was very off. Deer's dog, Ruby was still there. Ruby was a mixed mutt white with black spots, colgy sized. She was ill too, on a very specific diet and lots of medication.
And that was the number one thing. She would never have left Ruby at all. She always took Ruby everywhere. I don't care where she went, even to her attorney's office, she brought Ruby. If she went to the store, she brought Ruby. If she was going to low she brought Ruby.
The search was well underway when DEA's thirty year old son, Clinton Abrams, showed up at the ranch with some friends.
And I had never met him before, and.
All I could think about is, I'm looking at this young guy that you know, looks like a college frat boy. He's not crying, He's not like overly emotional. Everybody went searching for Dia, he didn't do anything. He just stood there. So it was it was like, well, if my mom or my dad or my child or whoever was missing, I'd be out there. I'm not going to just stand here and wait for somebody to bring me news. But he just stood there like he wanted people to pity him.
You know, he didn't act like an individual who was worried about their mother's welfare.
Period.
I've spoken with Clinton, by the way, he described his actions that day very differently. You'll hear from him later on. But in the meantime, the search party had no luck finding any trace of Dea. Soon people began to disperse. Later that night, Diana says she got another call.
I had gone home and Harper was calling and he was upset, and I said, are you going to be okay? And he's like no. I said, do you need me to come out there? And he goes, do you mind? I said, no, that's fine. So I came out and I sat at the house and he was kind of like a zombie, you know, like acted the part of like something's long.
That night, Diana stayed over at the ranch. It's now Monday, June eighth, two days since Deer was last seen, and there was no sign of the cops. Any officer will tell you that the first forty eight hours is crucial in a missing person's case. It's when investigators have the best chance of following up on leeds because the information is fresh in everyone's minds. It's the best chance you have of finding somebody. And yet the cops wait until
Monday afternoon to arrive on the scene. And before they even get to the ranch, Harper says, they called him to say they were coming.
They call me and they tell me that they are gonna be there at age thirty in the morning. When they get there, they said, we will were shutting the lanes down and we will take over the church. If you got anything, you may want to get it mo because anything that's on the property will stay there.
I talked to three people who were there that day who all said the cops didn't show up until the afternoon, and when they finally did show, Diana says, they made some frustrating decisions.
Well, they immediately came onto the property and kicked everybody off.
You know, didn't look.
Around at anybody or say, okay, well who's the person that contacted the Sheriff's department, or Hey, who's Diana, or hey, who's this person?
They didn't even take my name.
Diana was especially upset because people started leaving without being questioned by the police.
What you know.
Yes, I was never a police officer, but I was. I'm a federal agent for twenty three beers, and I felt that the investigation could have been handled.
Better by the way.
I've spoken with other people who were on the ranch the day of the search and who said it took the Riverside sheriff Department three years to get in touch and ask them what they saw. Anyways, when the cops called off their search that night at ten thirty five pm, they handed over the keys to the entire ranch to Clinton and Chrissara, DIA's children. The cops left behind an affidavit and a search warrant for the ranch. I found something surprising in those documents. A second address was listed
Diana Fedder's house. I haven't been able to confirm with the cops whether they searched her property, she says they didn't. It did make me wonder why would they want to search her house. I also read through the list of all the items the potential evidence that the cops had confiscated. There was a netgear router, which, among other things, would have info about which cell phones were connected to the
Wi Fi and any activity from security cameras. There was a piece of toilet paper, a band aid, and tan bed sheets which the cops noted might have bloodstains on them. There were spent bullet shell casings, and lastly, two handwritten notes. I was desperate to know more about this evidence. Spent bullet casings, handwritten notes. It felt tantalizing to be this close and yet not know the significance of it all.
But the police won't share any more information. In fact, I've had little luck getting much of the cops at all. I've emailed, called, texted, and they've been so tight lipped about what happened that weekend and their investigation at large. It's been incredibly frustrating. You'd think the first person the cops would question would be Harper. After all, as he said himself, the last person to see a missing person alive is usually a suspect. But they didn't actually let
me make that clear. They couldn't question Harper because sometime on Monday morning, before the cops show up, Harper left. He took off for New Mexico in his white Ford motor home with Deer's dog, Ruby, who, according to DEA's friends, Harper didn't even like. I asked Harper about this.
Well, well, I had a cash bill I had to take care of. It was totally to be taken care of the week before, and we were going to do that when we were heading to Colorado in Arizona if I have a ranch there as well.
So to reiterate, he says he had a tax bill to take care of in Arizona and that's why he left two days after his fiance disappeared. But Harper gave Diana an entirely different reason. The morning that he left.
We were having coffee and.
We went over to the trail to take a look again to see if she could be over there, and he told me he had to go back. I think you said Arizona, New Mexico. I can't remember which state it was that he had to go back to. That part on blogging on but he told me about his probation.
Probation, Diana says, Harper told her he had to go and check in with a parole officer. I asked Harper about this too.
No, I heard that too, and I don't know where the hell she got that. I don't know where from when. When I was in Arizona, I was talking with the sheriff's office all the time until I was told by Diana that they had come and the ranch was closed.
He said he took his RV so he'd have somewhere to stay when he came back to California because the cops told him they were shutting up the ranch. I've done a lot of research, and I can't find anything that Harper would have been on probation for at that time, so that doesn't add up. That leaves the tax bill story, which is a little odd. Why would you have to drive hundreds of miles to go take care of a
tax bill? And why would it be so urgent that you have to leave two days after your fiancee Go's missing. As I waded into this story, I found that getting clarity on what might have happened to Dea that day was not so straightforward. Over the past few years, I've been down endless rabbit holes that have led nowhere and hit countless brick walls. They have been many times where
I've been close to walking away from this story. But What's kept me coming back to this, like some bad habit I can't quite kick, is the ridiculous amount of times I've shouted wait what out loud in my living room to myself after finding out some insane new piece of information. It's so hard to know who to trust because almost everyone I speak to seems to have something to gain from Deer's disappearance. Everyone wants their version of events to be believed to go down as the truth.
What happened to Dea has become one of those Internet who'd done it yarns that attracts armchair sleuths, a strange chorus of anonymous people on Reddit and YouTube, all obsessing over the evidence. I mean, I guess I've become one of them too. The theories of what happened range from plausible to wild speculation. I listened to all of them, hoping that somewhere in that pile of theories lies the truth, and knowing that very likely one of the people I'm
speaking to is lying. Coming up this season on Wednesday, people.
I didn't know were in our family home.
I had gone up there ever since I was a little kid, and now suddenly, you know, other people who I suspect had murdered her are moving in.
I said, well, this guy's acting really suspicious, and I have all kinds about where I's going off in my head.
There's something out right. We were showing Harbor the place, and we took them.
Down the road and looked, and you just.
Thought were every reason to harm her, But so did Hersara and Clinton.
Just because so much money's involved.
You can't trust anything, the man says at all.
Lake literally, he just he's allergic to the truth.
This story is getting ready to blow wide open. If you want some information, we can talk.
Where's Dear is written and hosted by me Lucy Sheriff. Our producer is Daphne Chen. Editing by Karen Shakerji, Production assistance from Joey Fish, ground fact checking by Lauren Vespoli. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Original score, sound design and mastering by Echo Shores. Where's Deer is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. Where's Deer was originally developed with Truly*Adventurous.