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[Music] sometimes it's the simplest action done without much thought that ends up
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setting off a chain of events that will change numerous lives such was the case on a warm August afternoon when a group
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of 14-year-old boys were wrestling with each other in the cold water of the kar River 17's Olivia lavoyce joins us live
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at Hart Park tonight with what she's learned today Olivia greeny the discovery was made here this weekend
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when a group of teens found a portion of a human arm from the elbow down with the
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hand still attached this comes 3 weeks after a child found a portion of a human leg out at Lake one a Vista officials
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really can't say much about either body parts but one thing's for certain this situation is highly unusual and of
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course very suspicious the boys were in a part of the river where the water was calm
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enough to wait into one of the boys felt something brush up against his leg at first he jumped and moved away but when
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the object once again floated towards him and touched his foot he decided to see what it was and pulled up a heavy
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black bag from the river floor one of the boys yelled there might be money or maybe even gold inside one investigator
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said they were just young kids with a wild imagination thinking they'd found treasure I have to think 99% of people
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probably wouldn't have gone after the bag they just let it pass by continuing Downstream but these boys didn't
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as one boy pulled up the bag he wasn't quite sure what he was looking at until he pulled it out and realized he was
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holding a human arm the bag was filled with rocks whoever put it in the river intended it to stay at the bottom hidden
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unlike the leg in the lake this was clearly a crime see when the leg was found investigators said it was possible
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that it had detached from the body naturally from decomposition the arm in the river
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however was clearly an act of dismemberment and therefore considered a homicide here's Bailey's Mom
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Jane when the arm was found we didn't know whose that was so we're like does the leg and the arm go together are they
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two different people when the leg in the Lake was found Cheryl and her family didn't
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strongly consider it could belong to Micah it seemed too small but from the little information we could get about
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the arm in the river it it seemed possible it belonged to an adult man I remember talking with
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Lance and and I think he said it and it's so true he said I thought we I thought we feared the
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worst I thought we feared that he was dead and now all of a sudden it became now we're worried that he's been chopped
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[Music] up I'm Olivia Lavo and this is the Bakersfield 3 [Music] I needed to know is that Bailey is mAh
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you know his moms are going frantic is that our baby it was just very I don't know how to describe it
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it's like you're just walking through it and doing what you have to do to get through it and you
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have breakdowns and you're horrified and sometimes you're like oh please God let
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this be my daughter so we can find them and then you feel bad for thinking that cuz
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I never wanted Bailey to be dead at this point Micah had been missing for 5 months and Bailey for four
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for Jane and Cheryl the not knowing where their children were and what had happened to them had been agonizing but
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then not knowing if the body parts belong to their children opened them up to a special kind of crippling maddening
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misery as they were told the DNA results wouldn't be anytime soon when you're sitting in the middle
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of it and you just want to know is that my son is that my son and they tell you it's going to be a year or more can't
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really give you an idea cuz they're so backlogged cuz they got file folders full of information and baggies and bags
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and God knows what and we aren't the only family in line a whole year full of people waiting in
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front of us and now there's a whole two however many year behind us we're all just this sequence of body parts or
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bodies that are trying to be identified and that just broke our heart just broke our
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heart being faced with waiting a year or more for the DNA results was the last straw for Cheryl Jane and Dy who had
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already seen so many cracks in the Justice system we just found so many so many things that we as moms felt
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were broken I think we all just knew that we we couldn't let our our children we couldn't let their stories end with
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this kind of final note we had to use this to help ourselves help each other and help
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[Music] others they decided investigating their children's cases wasn't enough enough
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they wanted to change the entire system and they began with taking on three Monumental issues the first was issues
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with secret witness a nonprofit that operates an anonymous tip line as well as allocates reward funds to certain
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unsolved cases in an effort to get people to call in with tips we find out when we ask for rewards oh wait a second
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there there is no money and we haven't had any money for rewards in years the second issue was the DNA testing wait
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times and the third was that Kern County didn't have the specialized equipment needed to thoroughly search waterways
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for bodies their first step was going to the Kern County Board of Supervisors meeting
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let me just say as a crime reporter covering a Board of Supervisors meeting was sort of my worst nightmare no
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offense to any local politics reporters out there the meeting feels endlessly long roughly 6 hours during which
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supervis visor go over County budget issues and then there's public comment where just as it sounds members of the
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public can bring their complaints or concerns to supervisors usually the comments are to the average person
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probably pretty boring I want the sidewalk near my house fixed I want there to be more bus drivers for the
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schools things like that even though Kern County is ridden with crime I'd never heard of anyone coming to the
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supervisors to demand action as it pertained to violence certainly never a victim's family until one day at the end
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of a long session the three moms Dawning Bakersfield 3 t-shirts and holding large
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poster boards with their children's faces walk towards the podium could you give us your name for the record please
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Cheryl holson bake our purpose here today as part of this terrible club that we're calling Bakersfield
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3 my son went missing first and we believe my family and I believe that it's connected to the two other women
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and their families behind me we noticed on your agenda that you are considering or have considered a grant partnering
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with a grant from the Department of Justice that would help improve DNA processing times I would beg you to
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please consider that and move forward with it there are at this point two different human remains we still don't
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have DNA evidence back from them to suggest whose child it may or may not be James's mom D then took the floor
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talking about the issues with the secret Witness Program that Services Kern County the women learned early on that
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their children's cases could not have rewards because the funding just wasn't available and they also heard from
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people who told them they tried to call in an anonymous tip and had issues getting through to an
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operator secret witness was supposed to be a Lifeline for families in their situation and it was hardly functional
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as it turned out at that point the organization was flat broke it had little over $1,000 and organizers at the
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time said that money was more or less saved to pay the phone bill as a reporter I had encouraged people to call
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in tips to the Anonymous hotline hundreds of times by that point I had no clue the program was in such rough shape
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until the mothers exposed it they have their website that had not been updated since
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2012 and with my friend standing behind me we learned that the majority of the links were broken lastly Bailey's Mom
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Jane spoke to the board her voice was shaky as she tried to keep from breaking down one of the main things is we need
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to have funding for the equipment to search the waterways instead of having to borrow from to Larry County to search
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for these body parts in the rivers in the lake that we're still waiting on DNA for all these months later wondering if
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it's my daughter or if it's Micah or who it is um so desperately need funding for
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that you know it shouldn't take months to find out if an arm or a leg is your daughter or your son um because what
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we're dealing with is very hard it's harder than knowing if they're dead because it's not knowing that drives you
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crazy and what you think's happening to them some of what you know is happen happen to them and you just want to find
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them and bring them home and if they're in the water or out in the desert you want to go get your child and bring them
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home thank you ladies for coming forward this morning our hearts break for you with the tragedies that you have endured
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and I admire your courage to come forward and try to help us find a way to do something positive out of the
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tragedies tragedies that you've endured so we we will take to heart what you've said and explore what some options are
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supervisor Perez uh thank you chairman hearing from you this morning uh is absolutely
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horrifying in a way that there are no words for really and um I can't imagine what you have been through and what you
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are going through it is uh utterly horrifying to say this is shocking uh is a gross understatement
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the degree to which you are educating us and the community is priceless seeing a supervisor cry at a
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meeting was unheard of but so was this entire situation of the moms bringing these issues out in public like this the
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only female supervisor on the board letia Perez said she wanted to pledge $10,000 to the secret Witness Program
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thank you I'm sure that we all cannot imagine I cannot imagine uh what you are experiencing thank you for being here
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and I think this body really cares about what you're experiencing so I think we need to take action fast um thank
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you the other supervisors quickly followed suit pledging in total $40,000 to secret witness as it turned out it
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was the first time the program had gotten a sizable donation in 6 years but the moms didn't stop there they
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still had to fix the two other issues of the DNA testing times and the lack of equipment to search the river and Lake
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well what do you mean we we have to borrow equipment that's better than what we have we have to borrow that from
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another County well wait what wait a minute and all of a sudden we're talking about okay how do we fix or how do we
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help a public agency gather the resources to get equip that's better than what we have
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now that's when we decided to raise money to buy the equipment and make the public aware that we need
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this together the three moms were a force United driven Relentless as they always said fight like a mother and I
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think we learned early on if we stick together we can do this better more often than not the three of the them
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were together if one of them had a meeting with law enforcement the other two would show up that's just sort of
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how they operated as one and they bonded in a way that most of us could probably
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never understand because we know exactly what you're going through you're not going crazy because you're having these
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weird thoughts where you're like oh I'm going to go on the internet and look what decomposing bodies look like at
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this many months in the water and this m long and you know we can talk about that
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to each other and we have very odd conversations for most people most people would think them very
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odd and I think because we we know that our our children knew each other it feels
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like we were meant to work together and we were meant to be a team as a team they began working with
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other victims families who didn't know how to advocate for their loved ones cases but the moms now being referred to
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is the Bakersfield three moms had become experts in the few months they hadd been
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working together that fall I'd see them at court with other families there to hold their hand show support and be an
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advocate of sorts around this time I was working with a woman who'd been brutally
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attacked raped her throat slit left for dead in a field only to be discovered the next day by a traumatized
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maintenance man the woman was left with severe brain damage and post-traumatic stress and as a result she was living in
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squalor and conditions utterly unfit for any human being as I reported it the moms were some of the first people to
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reach out to help Cheryl and her other son Luke actually came to the woman's house with me and helped clean it out
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dead mice cockroaches and all I remember after a long day of cleaning Cheryl then
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took to organizing the woman's photographs and putting them into a photo album so she could look back at
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her happy memories whenever she wanted Cheryl said working with other victims and victims
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families was fulfilling and a welcome distraction from their personal hell they were living in but no matter how
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much they filled their schedules the wait for the DNA results on the leg found in the lake and the arm in the
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river was consuming particularly for Jane I tried to keep Jane calm uh calmer I mean how can you keep anybody
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calm and who wants to wish that that's their loved one found you don't but when you your mama
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gut tells you that your daughter really isn't with us anymore you know it's just it's so
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conflicting but you want your nightmare to be over or part of your nightmare always went to the lake you
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know and fought to get it drained in the community said drain the lake clean the
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lake see what's in there it killed Jane knowing the rest of a woman's body potentially her
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daughter's body was in the lake and seemingly nothing was being done about it so she made it a point to talk to
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just about anyone who would listen about how unsanitary the lake was and how much
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it needed to be drained even when they didn't want to hear it which was likely the case for hundreds of people who
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gathered that fall for the fishing dir among the hopeful fishermen there was Jane handing out
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flyers reminding people of the body part that was found out here and that the body hasn't been
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recovered whether or not it's mic or Bailey we don't know whose body part it is and they're out here having a fishing
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tournament reminding people not to eat the fish you know Jane's audio is from a Facebook live video she did on the
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Bakersfield 3 Facebook page she then directed her phone camera to the area where she'd been going daily for several
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months by that point so this is the little I guess the beach where the lake washed up in July
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and the little 5-year-old girl was playing with it this is a lake that they have signs that say you can't swim in
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because there's so much bacteria and pollution so you know hey why not straighten it clean it up the water
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there is so dirty and murky you could be just ankled deep and not be able to see
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your feet part of Jane's daily process involved taking a long stick and poking around at the bottom of the man-made
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lake to see if she'd find anything that felt like it could be another body part who carries a stick around in their car
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you know to go look for a dead body at the lake that's what my reality is now Cheryl Micah's mom knew what that
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was like to be doing something you could never dream you would have to do and for
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there to be really no words to describe it such as when the Corner's office asked her to give a DNA sample they
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could use to see if the arm in the river matched her bloodline it seems like it would be a
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really straightforward process the whole DNA swab thing but every time I've ever
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had it done I've broken down it's just it's just like saying you know bone of my bone Flesh of My Flesh
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you know it's just that whole I I'm giving you part of my body so that you can see if if my son who is
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part of my body is if this is part of me if that's part of me is the body part that you hauled out of a river part of
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me having to give the swab in the first place felt nightmarish enough knowing the answer would take possibly a year or
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more was simply unacceptable to the mothers we knew that there was technology out there and they were right
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the technology came to light after a horrific wildfire that fall in Paradise California I read an article about this
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company Andy who volunteered to set up a lab and send volunteers with New Rapid DNA technology
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to match DNA and to help those loved ones find their family members in the rubble of that
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fire their technology could take just a portion of a bone and as long as there was a living
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family member that they could attempt to match it to they could say within a certain range
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of you know certainty that this was their loved one and so I called Jane and die and I'm
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all read this newspaper article read this news article this company can do this with a chip off of a
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bone in days they can do that in days why are we waiting why are we waiting a year or
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more can't really tell you when it's going to happen about whether these remains are Micah's or
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Bailey's then the rage and anger starts flooding in so Jane being Jane because this is
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who she is she's like I'm calling them I'm calling them and she did she talked to them and they said sure we'll come
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we'll do it having Andy rapid DNA on board was a big breakthrough after several months of
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an agonizing wait it seemed Cheryl and Jane would finally get answers did either set of remains the leg found in
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the lake or the arm in the river belonged to their children but like with every everything in this case there was
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never much time to focus on just one thing something else shocking was about to [Music]
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happen the timing I just I was trying to do the math in my head I just was like this girl has to know
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something that's next time on the Bakers field 3 [Music]