Episode 6: “Spoils of War”

Pushkin last time on Where's Dea?

I think we just got called over to put all kinds of footprints everywhere and to just damage the crime scene basically.

You know, in my opinion, they've always known it was a month because the video shows that. Why the video that was here at the range.

One day, about three years after Dea went missing, the Riverside Sheriff's Department made a dramatic move around a police cars swarmed beneath a Vista ranch. A white and green sheriff's helicopter flew above. Local CBS news reporter David Godfredson rushed to the scene to report the unfolding events.

Neighbors woke up early Sunday morning to the sound of a sheriff's helicopter flying over Dia Abrams Ranch near Idlewild.

The cops demanded through a loudspeaker that Keith Harper come outside. They handed him a search warrant and on a large trailer. The cops carted in a heavy back home, presumably to dig.

Did you hear what happened a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, yeah, they went in a helicopter and all that, you know, which was like ray.

Finally Julie Stanford is DEA's longtime Idle Wild friend. When I spoke to her in octob twenty twenty three, the cops had just searched the ranch for her. It felt like a glimmer of hope.

They must think out because how could they go there in today? Did the helicopter and all the police?

Hopefully they have something.

This all happened three years after Dia disappeared. I couldn't help but wonder what information the cops had that made them search the ranch again. They would have had to show probable cause to get that search warrant, that a crime had likely occurred on the ranch and that evidence of the crime was going to be found there. Though when I tried to get a copy of the warrant from Riverside Superior Court, they told me there wasn't one for that date and redirected me to the one from

The food is in my truck and the waters in my truck.

I have a case of water on the boat, and I have a fifty five gallon cooler on the boat.

You might remember Kelly Snyder from an earlier episode. He's the former Dea agent who runs Find Me, the nonprofit that searches for missing people.

You didn't get the word that I brought five hundred bottles of water.

Right around the time the police showed up at the ranch. Last year, Kelly, Harper and some others embarked on a search for Deer's body.

Keith you ready.

I was out of the country, so one of my producers, Jacob, tagged along instead. The team was going to search the same lake the cops had searched years earlier with their sonar equipment and divers, although the FINMI group was focusing on the shoreline of the reservoir rather than the murky lake bed. And actually this was Harper and Kelly's second time going to this particular part of Lake Hemmett. They'd gone three months earlier with cadaver dogs and there'd been

Here, and when you have three dogs showing interests in this same exact area, then that's telling you something to indicate that more than likely there's human remains in this vicinity.

But it wasn't just the dog's reaction that brought them back to this spot. Like I mentioned before, Kelly's network of psychics share coordinates of where they thought deer could be buried, and this spot in Lake Hemmett was one of them, so they felt like this place had potential. On the first search, though they couldn't reach the area where the dogs showed interest.

The hall is approximately thirty to forty feet deep and at a time, we didn't have the dog's harnesses to lower them into the area. This time, we brought our boat and we're going to approach the area from the lake, and then the dogs can walk easily into the hole where we believe that dea abrams remains are either buried or somewhere in that vicinity.

This time around, they approached the spot from two different angles. The dogs and their handlers go by boat, Harper, Kelly and Jacob go by land, hiking towards the embankment.

The next one.

You see where that rod's coming down from the telephone pole.

Yeah, that's what I was zeroing in on.

The search team reaches the shore and the dogs do their thing. After some time, the dog handler's hike over to Harper and Kelly to give them an update. Their dog soul detected something.

Full alert from soul. I got a full alert from sol.

If you've got a full blown alert, then.

Then that is a body.

But there's.

The cadaver dogs alerted to some kind of human presence. But as one of the dog handlers points out, the dog could be picking up on anything with a trace of what's referred to as human decomposition. Basically the sentences emitted by human remains.

Don't you ass panties, diapers, campons.

We're all over this lake without digging, there's no way to know exactly what's there, and Kelly won't dig without the cops present, and so reluctantly they have to stop there. Kelly will take note of their coordinates and send them over to the cops, hoping they'll return to the site and continue the search. Kelly and Harper are disappointed, to say the least, and somewhat surprised. They look down the embankment towards the lake at a washout of fallen trees and debris.

I would have given money on this spot, though, I mean that to me, that's just perfect.

But see where I would I would do it right down in here.

But how do you get there?

Well, there's a trail.

I know there's a trail, but holy shit, you're carrying a body, Keith.

Throughout this search, Kelly has been on and off the phone with one of his psychics. She's been advising them on where she thinks Dia is buried.

I would tell her to.

Summon Stea if she's a better one sea, if she can.

See us Kelly calls his psychic one last time, just in case DIA's given her any extra guidance.

Pretty much, she said, Dia didn't come to her.

God damn it.

Ah she asked her to. And that was what two three hours ago.

Ship.

I feel ten times more and better if we just do without one sch.

Harper has fixated on one particular spot that the psychics pinpointed and that he previously marked with flax. He wants the dogs to search it again.

I just don't want to pass up an opportunity that could well.

Yeah, I understand where you're coming from, but that's not where the dog showed interest. That's the only reason I would say would discount it. That it would be not necessarily a waste of time, But.

It's just if you have if you have someone a psyche telling you that it's in between certain flags and it's all in this area, would it hurt to spend another hour or two just search in the general area one more time?

But Harper is vetoed, and so the search party and Jacob DeCamp back to Benita Vista Ranch to try and unpack the and have so much needed lunch.

Can I get some fricken bread here pretty soon, he's working on it.

Man, dude, calm down.

One of the dog handlers takes out his phone and shows the group a video of the spot where the dog alerted. Harper gets agitated.

Okay, that was that a location of where the body was.

It was a location of something.

I do.

I don't need to hear this, well, need to hear more specific. Do we have a location where we believe that she is.

We have a location where we believe something is that's putting active.

Under a bol it's a boulder.

I cannot say that that is a body and but human decom I mean, my dogs are trained to alert on a tube, a fragment of a bone, any blood tissue.

So in your opinion, there's something.

Something, something putting decomp off.

Finally, Harper seems to give up.

So my understanding is that we're going to file a report. We're not going back out right. We're done.

I don't think there's much we can do in that area. I mean that we haven't already covered, unless we've got new areas to search.

I debriefed with Kelly a few months after the search. He was still confident that deer is buried in that lake Hemett's spot where the dog alerted. He tells me he sent a second report to the Riverside Sheriff's Department. But as far as I know, they've not taken any action.

They have not gone back to search for our dogs, who incidentally, never, never, never mist say that there's something human where they alerted two of our dogs, our best dogs, And as far as we know, they have not gone there.

As I say these words, Dea is still missing. We can't even say whether she's dead or alive. It's easy to get caught up in the chaos of DEA's story, people turning on each other, wild theories that are almost too wild to believe. There is, after all, a special kind of ugliness that rears its head when money's involved. But I keep coming back to the fact that at the center of all of this is a woman who one day in twenty twenty just suddenly disappeared from her

Well, the way I structured it was that the reward was going to be the bait and it would be made manifest that he was involved in my mother's disappearance, and he wouldn't get anything, and we'd have the case solved and we'd have him removed.

Right. So was it your idea then, to because there's that really interesting caveat where if one party is found to have an involvement, everything goes to the other party. Was that your suggestion?

Yeah?

That was me.

Oh wow, Okay.

That was my little trap strategy.

But it backfired. Despite his efforts, Clinton has never been able to pin anything on Harper, and now Harper is in Lyne to get fifty percent of his mother estate. It was a gamble, Clinton admits, and now he regrets it. He gambled too much.

Ah, and I couldn't believe that I compromised with Yeah the devil.

When that little trap didn't work, Clinton tried something else. He attempted to work with Harper directly. Harper sent me a screenshot of their conversation, and this is what Clinton texted him. Harper, you want to deal. What is the deal? Clinton? I want you to flip on all the others. I can get you off free. This can't stay secret. Forever you are getting older. I'm not after you for anything related to Dea. We can work out finances so you are happy if you have real information on what happened

This is what?

You know?

I thought originally he was asking to kind of work together. And then what I got the more I got into it, what he's asking it's for me to come forward and and kind of tell him that I'm responsible, and then he has something to.

Go back to law enforcement with. You know, It's what I kind of got.

Clinton insists that he was just trying to get information out of Harper. Either way, Harper does not fall for Clinton's booby trap. It all feels like a strange loop, but it's almost satisfying. These two sides who've been at war trying to pin the blame, okay, still trying to pin the blame on each other, coming together to try to work out some kind of deal. Despite all of Clinton's strategizing, nothing really seems to happen to Harper until

The purpose was determine the value? What is the value finally of the property and anyway to judge the spook He said, yeah, it looks like you weren't tending the list it And I said, no, I was not, And anyway, that's how I got removed from trustee.

Eventually, Harper packs his bags and leaves. Even though he's removed as trustee, it doesn't affect him potentially getting half of Deer's assets. I call him as he once more is doing that long long drive from Idlewild across the deserts of Arizona into New Mexico.

I left the lands today.

Wow, how does that feel?

You know, to deal with the tough, tough, tough thing.

But the situation you.

Get either you work with the court or you work against them, and they can they can take away all your privileges, you know. Oh, after long consideration, can't. Some time, I decided to leave. And so my concern is this that if I'm gone, they will never work at finding her.

I keep imagining Benita Vista Ranch now that Harper's gone, those impressive Western style gates locked and chained shut, deers antiques gathering dust, the endless land stretching towards the mountains, slowly growing wild. I wonder how Dea would have felt her pride and joy, her home sitting empty. Soon it could be sold to some stranger who will probably fit it out in that modern dude ranch style, and every

It was unbelievable.

It was unbelievable seeing just to see our our nephew.

This is Peggy Kenchlo dear sister.

And if any anything came out of this tragedy, it's this that we have. That we have our nephew back. We have him, we have him back. He's our kid. You know, I'm sorry about whatever horrible thing happened to my sister. I am, but we have my nephew back.

Peggy's trying hard to move on despite the toll it's taken on her and her family.

It's an emotional Katrina, you know it came in it washed everything out.

She's not the only one who felt like things fell apart when dear disappeared.

It's been a four years of NonStop obsession of the mind and the gravitational pull that I cannot seem to extricate myself.

From no matter how hard I try. I just have to.

Have to do something to always try and move the ball forward.

Thanks to his years of research, Clinton's developed a theory about Harper and about what happened to his mother.

To me, he's pulpable, he's guilty, but he's also serves as the patsy, as the fall guy and its low hanging fruit. He's the easy, easy guy to pin this on. And I think there are so many other people involved and so many other people who know. And I think as long as law enforcement doesn't pursue those other angles and ask, you know, deeper questions, I don't they'll ever solve the case.

Clinton doesn't believe that Harper is solely to blame for DEA's disappearance.

Yeah, I don't give too much credit to Keith Harper. I don't think he's a criminal mastermind. I think he did buffoon.

I think focusing too much on him, it just it's just too narrow of the perspective.

His theory is that a motorcycle gang took Dear, an underground, sinister intelligence operation that has access to high tech surveillance equipment. He believes Harper struck a deal with this gang. Let's go with your theory for a minute. If she's kidnapped and she's killed by somebody who isn't Harper, what is the motive, Like, what are they getting out of it?

They're getting one hundred and fifteen acre ranch.

And millions of dollars in antiques, jewelry, and I think the actual property was desired. I think there was a I think there was a deal amongst multiple people to.

Split the spoils of war, so to speak.

Clinton believes this gang would be able to access DearS assets through Harper, but there is of course no evidence to prove this. When I first interviewed Clinton, we met in San Diego, out in the open at a coffee shop, but that's the last time we met face to face

I've received a tremendous amount of harassment. Well, I've had buried pornography left on my mailbox. I've received unmarked packages that contain very obscure threats and also direct threats. I've had loud motorcycles that have basically, you know, kind of followed me and stocked me for a number of years.

Clinton is adamant that the same people who killed his mother are out to get him.

I believe it was, you know, a message to me, you know, we can get to you too, And I truly understand that it, you know, sounds crazy to most people.

I don't know whether Clinton is paranoid or if he is truly being harassed by some kind of gang. But he was sent this really crazy package. I've seen pictures of it. The envelope didn't have proper postage, so it was likely hand delivered. On the front, it said important information about Lydia Kenschloe Abrams. There were all these court documents inside about rich people who disappeared in mysterious circumstances

Extremely concerned, very concerned, And have you.

Thought about just stopping your search?

Yeah?

I have.

I don't know if I can move on so long as we don't have answers. So frustrating is that I know that people know, but they just won't say.

The fact that half of Deer's estate will go to her maybe maybe not fiancee Keith Harper would be a bitter pill for me to swallow.

It's never been about to me what I get, but the principle that he gets fifty percent, when I know that he knows what happened to her and is involved is disgusting.

My mother always told my sister and I, this is for you kids, This is for you.

Know.

I'm building this for you guys. I hope you cherish it.

And I know she poured her heart and soul into that property to an extreme extent and just loved it wholeheartedly. And the fact that it's going to be liquidated just instantaneously and split amongst all parties breaks my head. Art and the fact that Keith Harper, in my view, a scumberg, gets fifty percent. I'd rather go to anybody but him.

It's strange to think back to when I first started investigating Deer's disappearance. I was so desperate for Leeds to speak to someone who knew her, and I got what I wanted. I've had these two men who knew her well bombarding me with theories that feel so big, so outlandish, that they can't possibly be true, can they. When I first interviewed Harper, he told me he didn't know what

How long are you going.

To keep until she is bobbed forward?

And that could happen in the next.

Of what weeks?

So let's say, let's say body is found.

Do you feel confident that a perpetrator is also going to be brought to justice?

Yeah, okay, I think once they've put Clinton under investigation, he will prayer.

For now. Harper is living in Colorado, although he still owns his eighty five acres of land in a remote corner of Arizona. He's filed a motion to get half a million dollars out of Deer's estate. Half, he says, is to compensate for the time he spent working on the ranch. The other half is paying that money, he says he put into the ranch while he lived there. As for Julie Stamford, she felt like Idlewild changed after her friend went missing. It didn't feel like this safe,

It just an't judge that I couldn't rescue her at this time. That was skin killing me, is that I couldn't rescue her this time.

At first, Julie was stuck between theories.

So to me, the viable suspects are the kids or Harper all along, I thoughted toe to one of those.

Julie remembers a telling remark dea mate sometime after Dia had changed her trust to include Harper. She can't remember if Dia told her first hand or if she heard it from a mutual friend, but what.

She said when she did the paperwork, she goes, here's your damn rant, Harper.

Wow.

Yeah, Like she was blugging her for it. I think he just wanted stuff.

He always wanted that.

It's memories like this that caused Julie to change her mind about Clinton and Chrissara and turn her attention to Harper.

There mull be no reason for the kids to do anything George, because they were already asked the will. So my basic feeling now, I didn't want to take this in the beginning because I liked Harper because Harper was helping Dia. But that's not the feeling I have about him now.

I think Harper is.

Responsible for DIA's disappearance, and I frankly am afraid of him.

Can I record this conversation?

You can always record the conversation and nothing to hide.

Right before we release this series, I gave Harper one more call with so many fingers pointed at him. I felt like I needed to talk to him again, and I questions of my own. I wanted to ask. Even in our conversations over the years, I've noticed discrepancies in things that you have told me, contradictions, and so it doesn't look good. I've got to be honest, it doesn't look great.

Then why are you talking to me there?

Because I'm I'm a journalist, and it's my job to get all.

Sides of that, bring out, bring out specific things.

Let's start at that yet.

Okay, So I brought out specific things. I asked him if there was something more to his friendship with Diana fetder No. I asked him why he changed his story about the security camera footage on the ranch.

I was advised by the attorney that I was to examine that, but I was not to say anything until after the investigation was completed.

I asked him about leaving town so soon after deal went missing.

I have told the multiple times why I leave to pay a tax bill?

Was what was happening?

What was happening On the day that that investigation was to happen, the.

Cops were going to show up and search the ranch.

They were going to come up and sew sarrants. They had called and they said we will close the ranch down when we arrived. Any vehicle that you have on the property must be removed or we'll say what would you do?

So, if you knew how this was going to play out and you were going to be suspected, would you have stayed?

I didn't suspect that.

I thought we were dealing with a missing person.

Harper has an answer for all of it and insists everything I've been told is pure speculation.

Where the fat you'd think that facts would have come in the play. Facts doesn't play anything.

It's strictly speculation.

And that's what drives me crazy, is people speculate and it becomes fact.

And perhaps he has a point. As far as I know, there is no hard evidence. So it seems like the only way this thing is going to get resolved is if her body is found.

Exactly. That's why we're moving in here to get that done. Okay, Well, and if I would builty of her murder, would I move ahead and try to find her body? And shall have? I've been investigating that from the very beginning, Yes, I am.

Harper is pushing to go back to the spot where the search dogs alerted this time to dig since, as far as Harpeneau's the Riverside Sheriff's Department hasn't.

So they should be held accounnable for what they have not done. Since this case should have been solved in the first year and a half, it has gone on for now four and that's a year.

His frustration with the police is palpable, and he's not the only one either. The Riverside Sheriff's Department has made some puzzling decisions throughout this case. I've heard this from nearly everyone I've spoken with, like Julie for example.

And it's the police That's what made me angry is they never wanted to interview any of us that were closed up, so it seemed like they didn't follow through it that dune in some aspects, and that was very maddening.

Carmen Ibanez, DEA's neighbor, who runs the Christian youth camp, said something similar. She told me Detective Alberta Lorero, the lead investigator on DEA's case, took three years three years to interview her.

I mean, I've been talking more by more people like you and other people than I have been talk to by police, and you know, it's just it's kind of sad, you know, I try to be nice. But the rest of my staff say, is police incompetence because why wouldn't you Why wouldn't you just talk to the neighbor. Isn't that the first people you want to talk to. You would think that they'd be more more effort put into it.

I've also been frustrated by the Riverside County Sheriff's Department. I've tried desperately to find out what leads, if any, they have, but they've declined to confirm any information about the investigation. So I'm left with a bunch of what ifs. What if the cops had shown up sooner, would we know what lay beneath the dirt the deer's dog, Ruby laid down on and wouldn't budge from what was in Harper's r V that Diana says was searched. Was the

Everybody hears everything, so that's the thing that's the word spreads really quickly. Even though that people pretend like they don't know anything. Everybody knows about everybody.

Yeah, so it kind of makes it even more strange that nobody seems to know what happened.

Exactly.

I mean, it's very frustrating, I just for the sake. I mean, I don't care what she's done in her life. I don't think anybody deserves that.

I've been wondering how I can wrap up this story after four years of reporting, when I know I'll always have a few niggling questions at the back of my mind. That's the problem. When you report a story about someone who's not here to tell their version, You're left with that vacuum. You're left trying to appear at a blurry picture that will never quite come into focus. There is