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[Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to true crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
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on stitcher premium called off the record alright captain that's enough of the business everybody gather round
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grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime we discussed three murders yesterday and unfortunately there will
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be more today we start off with knurl Renfro who was a 50 year old millionaire his business Gold Coast Realty and
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investment was booming Renfro was not out in fact none of his friends had any idea that he was gay mmm
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he apparently liked to hang out in the company of young men entertaining them at his home or at his mountain cabin on
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December 19 1982 Renfro was hosting eighteen-year-old John Oren Biggs who answered an ad place by Renfro for a
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live-in caretaker for his house this was a house and a modest but nice neighborhood of Bakersfield but this
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house was noted for its fortress-like bars on the windows and neighbors said that the shades were always drawn anyway
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Renfro and Biggs were playing pool and Renfro made a pass at bigs Biggs said he let it go but when it happened again a
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few minutes later Biggs grabbed a fire poker and bludgeoned Renfro forty times over the head Biggs was then rifling
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through the house looking for cash and then he stole renfro's car and went and picked up a friend
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this is 18 year old William Blake kinship the to return to the house and stole a safe but were later very
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disappointed when they found the safe contained nothing of value the Biggs was arrested and charged with renfro's
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murder his defense was a variation of the quote gay panic defense they alleged that Renfro was a pervert and Biggs
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attack on him was prompted by renfro's advances it turns out and it appears that knurl Renfro had a history he on at
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least three prior occasions lured young men to his house using the ad for employment made advances and then
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actually raped one of these men his house was found to be missing interior door knobs the doors required a deadbolt
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key to open them so one could not always leave of their own free will once inside it's kind of like the Bundy
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method that they used in his car but inside his house Renfro appears may have been a violent sexual predator Biggs was
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ultimately convicted for killing him but only for voluntary manslaughter and he served only three and a half years even
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though he had a rap sheet going back eight years this is going back to when he was about 11 years old he didn't get
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a double charged for manslaughter plus well robbery my notes only state that he was convicted of voluntary manslaughter
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it might not have press charges if they stole a safe and there was nothing in it
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though so that's a possibility well his rap sheet going back to when he was 11 this included things like assault
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and battery shooting at police extortion robbery and burglary Wow so this is viewed as basically a slap on
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the wrist and it did outrage many people at the time particularly gay rights activists who believed that Biggs got
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off easy because simply because Renfro was okay then yeah but see here's here's the
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issue again we have we have a case where somebody ends up murdered and then we have robbery and some other things that
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went down during the commission of that murder we have allegations that are brought
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forward against the man who is is now dead and unable to defend those allegations it's this is a whole big
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messy story and around that same time we have William kayak he threatened shot and killed two gay neighbors after some
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kind of confrontation and it appears he did so simply because they were gay right that's a crime yeah yeah so this
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has a similar outcome tie AK was convicted of only involuntary manslaughter of one of the men despite
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having threatened to kill them and then bragging about it afterwards one writer said of the result quote this case would
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reinforce a national impression of Bakersfield in Kern County being a place where violence against gays is tolerated
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and quote in the wake of these verdicts the state attorney general was convinced
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to take a look at whether homosexual victims of violent crime were being shortchanged in Kern County well they
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were alone they were for a long time in history 60 seventies eighties it seemed that there was a contradictory history
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in the Kern County justice system some killers of gay men got light sentences despite the law & order' approached Kern
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County prided itself on while some well-connected powerful gay men escaped scrutiny or got off easy despite having
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sex with minors it's really a situation where you see all this going on and you have to I mean you can only throw your
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hands up in the air and go what is going on here right what truly is going on here
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then we have Attorney General John van de Kamp he established a commission on racial ethnic
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religious and minority violence Los Angeles attorney Thomas Coleman headed up the investigation of the bigs in the
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tie act trials in which the defendants received light sentences allegedly because of the homosexuality of the
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victims Coleman said quote what you're talking about is corruption whether the victim is gay or not the presence of
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sexual orientation as a factor has in the past at least given the appearance of unequal treatment and quote after
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studying the situation he established a campaign against hate violence and encouraged stiffer penalties for cases
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involving violence against certain groups including gays it was a start but it did not address the systemic problem
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embodied by the Lords of Bakersfield yeah and this is gonna heat up too because one of that activists and one of
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the people leading this charge for stuff stiffer penalties is actually going to be murdered Marshall Jacobson was a 48
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year old millionaire real estate and criminal defense attorney in Bakersfield and he spoke in front of the Kern County
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Crime Commission urging these harsher sentences for criminals who perpetrated violent crimes against homosexuals
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Jacobson himself was gay and known to frequent the Bakersfield Greyhound bus station apparently this was a popular
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meeting spot for men and where Eddie buck had also been known to frequent Bakersfield police knew about Jacobsen
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and had looked into allegations of sexual misconduct made by an underage boy but charges were never filed then at
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the bus station he met Randy Ray back in it was 19 years old and this man went on
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to live with him for eight months Jacobsen provided food lodging and a job including tuition for school but
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required sex in return man a sugar daddy beckon wasn't gay and he said later that he was disgusted
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by the relationship but he needed a roof over his head he resented Jacobson and he broke the house rules
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in fact he skipped school two days in a row when this happened Jacobson kicked him out and back and
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left the house he returned a week later demanding entry into the home and even climbing over the back fence hmm then he
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went inside the unlocked sliding doors once inside he stabbed Jacobson in the stomach ten or eleven times and then he
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proceeded to rob the house he drove Jacobson's car full of stolen goods all the way to Los Angeles and he sold the
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car then he tried to escape to Mexico but he was turned in by a friend of Jacobson's who he had called for help
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here the lenient sentencing ran out back and got life without the possibility of
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parole but again it was a case of an older man surrounding himself with young men and one who ended up killing him and
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yeah this is gonna bring us to the year of 1998 so depending on who you talk to a number of years passed before any more
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murders occurred this seemed to have anything to do with the pattern surrounding possible members of the
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lords of Bakersfield as you said captain 1998 we have Syd Sheffield who was a prominent education and health activist
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in town he was found stabbed to death in his mobile home the murder weapon was a
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knife and he was robbed police discovered that he was leading a secret life one that did not go with his public
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image at the time he was promiscuous very social and was said to have no enemies and possibly was last seen with
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a young man in a cowboy hat at a local bar this case to this day remains unsolved and to be perfectly fair and
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transparent no one is really sure whether it has a connection to the Lords of Bakersfield are not but
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it's often brought up during those discussions yeah it's a similar situation this is again we have a tough
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time figuring out what cases to include and what not to include and again depending on who you talk to that can
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change drastically so let's go to 2002 because this is where things really really start to fall apart okay we have
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57 year old Bakersfield Assistant District Attorney Stephen Towser he had a public image of
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the caring do-gooder the public servant a Good Samaritan who took a drug addicted youth under his wing this kid
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was a lance Hillis who knew Stephen since Lance was 5 years old his father Chris worked for Steven Towser as a
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District Attorney investigator after he spent several years in the Bakersfield Police Department Towser was gay it was
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considered an open secret and he seems to have fixated on this young man Lance who was under the age of 18 when tall's
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er started grooming him got involved with meth at the age of 16 and was not welcome at his home at his parents home
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because he was doing drugs Tawes er took advantage of this situation and offered Lance a safe haven
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a place where he could stay at first Lance stayed at toddlers home for several months but he told a friend he wasn't
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comfortable there and he was there just for the food and for the clothes and for
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a place to sleep now he would leave but he would always end up going back to tall tzer's home this mostly when money
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ran out for the drugs that he had it seemed like is one of his only options once in a while when he left he would
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take one of tossers cars to which Stephen taller would call police but would never end up pressing
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charges for a stolen vehicle the police knew that tall's er was spending a lot of time with this young man when Lance
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finally got his own apartment tall's er co-signed the lease and it doesn't seem like anybody's really sure how Lance was
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actually paying the monthly rent but you don't have to use much of an imagination
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throughout to come up with an idea so speculation of course was tall's er was paying and he was a regular visitor
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to Lance's home Tawes er continued to supply Lance with food credit cards lodging a car and a
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friendship such as it was yeah he was providing them with a little F and s well Lance continued into a downward
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drug spiral he was stealing he was crashing cars and he was injecting drugs into his veins
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his family was extremely anxious among other feelings for him to kick this drug habit they actually wanted him sent to
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jail they thought that this would be truly the only way to break the cycle of addiction that really had had a hold on
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this guy right so tosser used his assistant district attorney influence to get Lance off any time he was charged
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with stuff so Lance would just be facing rehab rather than facing jail time gone
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this is I mean it's not that far of a stretch to look at this situation and go like but this is like sexual trafficking
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in a sense you know by by enabling this person or possibly giving them the money
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for drugs maybe you're not injecting it for them but you're basically creating the situation now that you have a addict
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that they're dependent on you for drugs are dependent on you for financial situations and then you're there you're
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using them for sex I mean that's well it's also believed that not only was Lance being sent to rehab because of
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taller rather than Jail but it's also believed that like any time there was a chance that Lance was going to encounter
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a tough judge in one of these charges that he would conveniently have the case moved to a different court so again he
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could just get rehab so this happened repeatedly to the incredible frustration of lances family whenever Lance was in
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rehab halls er was a regular visitor even when Lance assaulted a worker at one of the rehab facilities tall's er
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had the incident buried Chris Hillis knew taller for years both in his role on the Bakersfield Police Department and
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at the DA's office and because he had done extensive renovation work at Steven Tyler's home he was getting desperate to
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save his son Lance he had Lance arrested in an attempt to save him from his meth
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and heroin addictions already a man with a temper who had been written up for the
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use of excessive force five times as a police officer he lost it when he was confronted with the reality that Stephen
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tall's his relationship with his son was far from that of a mentor relationship but was really a sex for drugs and money
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arrangement the Hillis family realized that tosser had preyed upon their teenage sons desperation for drugs and
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abused him Chris Hillis confronted tall's er in August 2000 and demanded to know what the obsession was with his son
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this ended in a violent confrontation which we have Chris who ends up hitting tosser and then calling the Sheriff's
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Department when the responding officers arrived he's telling them that tosser was inappropriately involved with his
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son Lance the Sheriff's Department refused to file a report rallying around the district attorney the assistant
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district attorney tosser ended up with a black eye and nothing else when Lance continued to be
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arrested for drugs and thanks to tossers intervention to be sent to rehab instead
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of jail rain the Hillis family truly felt that their hands were tied and that this man corrupted their son and there
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was little if anything that they could possibly do about no way he corrupted their son and now he's corrupting the
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system which is consistently enabling their son yeah and because their son is an adult and when a lot of this is going
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down it gets complicated for them to step in and try to get involved or you know take the reins and really steer
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what's going on here now Lance's grandfather did just that he was a former bakersfield police officer his
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name's dawn Hillis he recommended to lances probation officer in January of 2001 that Lance should do six to nine
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months in jail just to get him cleaned up Lance's brother a probation officer for Kern County himself agreed to this
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and multiple probation officers continually recommended jail for Lance but tall's er continued to intervene and
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once again Lance avoided jail time in July of 2002 Lance was enrolled in progress house this is a rehab facility
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in Sacramento this time Lance escaped from the rehab house he stole a car and he crashed into a truck unfortunately he
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died instantly during this accident this was on August 7th 2002 this ripped up his family overcome with grief and rage
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Chris Hillis Lance's father murdered Stephen tosser on September 13th Tawes er was found dead in his garage
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with a knife sticking out of his head the Hillis family believed that if it were not for Stephen tosser then their
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son Lance would still be alive yeah initially the father denied being involved eventually pleads guilty to the crime
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and he is hit with ten years for involuntary manslaughter right for voluntary manslaughter
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voluntary manslaughter and which is gonna be a little bit different because the other charges
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those guys were getting about three years he's gonna get ten mm-hmm yeah Chris Hillis got out of prison in 2013
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he runs a drug rehabilitation facility in Bakersfield called Lance's Haven now the tall's er Hillis case brought to the
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forefront some of the old wounds dating back to the late 70s and early 80s to the time when multiple murders of male
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predators occurred by the hands of younger victims but now it was 2002 a different time what was overlooked back
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then was recognized in 2002 as pedophilia yeah illegal sex with minors and an old boy network of corruption and
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cronyism that tall's er had continued to get away with using his considerable power and influence to control the life
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of this young man to do him favors with big strings attached was shocking and disturbing and the fact that so many in
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positions of public service and influence looked the other way was horrifying they didn't protect lance Hillis instead
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they handed him back over and over again to a predator the case gave rise to the
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expose in the californian that dredged up all the old Lords of Bakersfield tales and people realized that much of
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those old legends were rooted and truth [Music] take coloring your hair at home to the
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that's grove dot CEO slash garage all right cheers everybody and make sure you don't be a douche canoe go to the store
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page and okay pick up a koozie or something Hat the Hat is awesome there's there's actually some hats
00:28:24
there's several awesome think of the Hat I'm sorry I'm just lost in this whole story I mean I'm like swimming through
00:28:31
the madness of what what this could be or what it completely is not you know what I mean yeah all right well here's
00:28:40
the difficult thing is what was happening wasn't recognized correctly on what was actually happening mm-hmm and
00:28:50
then but but does that mean because of all these basically you have murder victim was actually victimizing
00:29:04
somebody before him or accused of doing some right and all those murder victims are of gay orientation more is it
00:29:16
pedophiles and there's a big difference and then on top of that just because they're of power doesn't mean they're
00:29:25
necessarily connected mm-hmm and you know what we're going to get to some some bigger things regarding this story
00:29:32
here in just a second but really truly captain I feel like there's a hundred different angles that you could look at
00:29:40
this story from and I'm not certain that any of them are well the correct angle to approach it from there's a lot of
00:29:46
angles that you don't want to look at this that's true so but but the major point of the story is to buy the Hat Yes
00:29:55
No get the Hat did the Hat alright let's get into one time Bakersfield District Attorney Edie jiggles chris willis says
00:30:06
that he begged those are his words I begged jiggles and multiple phone calls to and letters to take steps to
00:30:16
rein in his second-in-command which was Stephen tosser was talking about Willis and get him away from his son Lance
00:30:24
Hillis Giles response was that Lance is an adult and in interviews when asked about the scandal that culminated in
00:30:34
tossers murder jegos insisted that tall's er was like a godfather to Lance who saw the young man as quote a project
00:30:43
and who only had Lance's best interest at heart the district attorney for Kern County is a powerful position right but
00:30:55
he this guy also seems a little bit like a [ __ ] so what he's stating he's the prosecutor right it's a district
00:31:05
attorney they technically both can be prosecutors okay so the district attorney his
00:31:12
second in control as saying to him hey you did wrong here right and he's saying now I did not do anything wrong
00:31:21
that's where in these situations it makes you wonder is it just because of the high power they're in or is it the
00:31:31
money right is he protecting the person because of the high power or the protecting the person from the money but
00:31:39
either way it seems like this district attorney is a little bit of a [ __ ] again it goes back to two all the
00:31:48
different angles that you could look at this from to where you could also make the argument that what EDD jangles is
00:31:55
saying is the truth that Lance was an adult and that I mean we don't know how much he may have known or what he did
00:32:05
know and was turning a blind eye to right the the the thing here is when this man retired after more than 25
00:32:15
years as a DA at jiggles famously boasted that during his tenure Kern County had the highest per capita prison
00:32:23
commitment rate of any major California County his mission was a law-and-order crime policy sort of ironic since the
00:32:33
Lords of Bakersfield in many cases seem to be allowed to do their thing with virtually no legal consequences and this
00:32:41
did occur to under his watch right several of them should have been prosecuted for rape statutory rape and
00:32:49
crimes against children district attorney Edie jiggles was in office since the early 80s and it's the opinion
00:32:56
of many that jiggles was complicit in helping brush the Lords of Bakersfield scandal completely under the rug mm-hmm
00:33:05
he may not have just been looking the other way he as you pointed out may have actually helped to protect some of those
00:33:12
people that should have been prosecuted jiggles is best known for his campaign that he initiated in the 80s to root out
00:33:20
child sex abuse right so with all these rumors going on about the lords of Baker
00:33:25
fields and - investigating this they're gonna go after the middle class well lower middle
00:33:34
class citizens okay for so-called satanic ritual child sex abuse in my last station that this is so bizarre was
00:33:43
not actually happening so jiggles put 26 people these were teachers and even parents in some situations behind bars
00:33:52
on felony child sexual abuse charges this all during the 1980s this was during the period of a national child
00:34:01
sex abuse panic where daycares and schools were accused of horrific abuses of kids this was sort of a satanic panic
00:34:11
involving children now under jiggles 26 convictions were secured on what is arguably 0-2 little evidence of these 26
00:34:23
convictions 25 were actually eventually overturned kern county has paid out over
00:34:31
nine million dollars in wrongful conviction settlements a 2008 documentary called witch-hunt narrated
00:34:39
by sean penn details this story actually believe a Sean Penn was one of the producers on this as well and to be
00:34:48
clear it wasn't that there was little to no evidence what a lot of in these lot of these situations were happening or is
00:34:56
that they're rounding up these kids and basically giving them to just confess to
00:35:02
anything but not ever coming up with the story themselves so they could cohost all these stories and all these
00:35:11
allegations basically at a thin air right they didn't bother to go find any evidence to back up these right
00:35:18
accusations or these stories by by children and so what this leads to is all of these well 25 of the 26
00:35:29
convictions being overturned and then in 1999 a Pulitzer Prize winning book entitled mean justice a true account of
00:35:37
a town's terror a prosecutor's POW and a betrayal of innocence exposes jiggles tactics including presumption of
00:35:47
guilt manufacturing or embellishing evidence persuasive interrogations prosecutorial misconduct despite all of
00:35:57
this jiggles continue to be reelected and Bakersfield embraced its role as the poster city for the quote tough-on-crime
00:36:07
movement its mock slogan was come for vacation and leave on probation laws better than their last slogan come on
00:36:17
vacation but only if you have some money and your of power so what does all of this have to do with the Lords of
00:36:26
Bakersfield legend well what's being pointed out here and has been pointed out by many is that the LA comeup da
00:36:34
seems to have overlooked the activities of various businessmen politicians and social elite that were going on right
00:36:43
under his nose many believe he was complicit in shoving the Dana Butler murder and the Glen Fitz situation his
00:36:52
likely involvement in that murder under the rug by refusing to prosecute and investigative reports by Rolling Stone
00:37:01
magazine stated that many Bakersfield residents concluded that jiggles child abuse campaign was possibly intended to
00:37:09
divert attention away from illicit sexual behavior of the city's ruling elite right a former investigator for
00:37:18
the DA's office under Jacobs told the magazine Rolling Stone magazine that the 1980s molestation trials were simply
00:37:26
jiggles allies among the Lords of Bakersfield covering their tracks by going after other people now we should
00:37:36
mention here that Robert Mistral the the man that we've mentioned a lot throughout this case yeah he actually
00:37:46
named Jay geils as one of the men who sexually abused him I'm going to step in for a little
00:37:54
and throw my own two cents in here on this this might my humble opinion if you will mmm-hmm it seems to me and I talked
00:38:07
to a friend about this who agreed we were discussing this case and it just it seems like Robert Mistral while I
00:38:14
believe him on some level it seems like he has just spewed out so many names over the course of all of this it just
00:38:22
doesn't seem plausible that they were all sexual abusers of children at some point at some point you really got to
00:38:32
question these allegations now ed jiggles retired from the DA's office in 2009 and he's never been prosecuted for
00:38:43
all of the wrongful convictions he inflicted upon innocent people right which is pathetic so the legend of
00:38:53
the Lords of Bakersfield truly it's it's just a vague specter of predatory alliances and abuses of power mm-hmm to
00:39:05
me and to others I got to say man it doesn't seem that there is real tangible punishable ring of abuse of men it seems
00:39:17
more like this might be a wink-wink Association and a look the other way type of Tolerance yeah it's a difficult
00:39:28
situation here because one you know he's naming what 150 possible predators you know the average predator I don't know
00:39:39
the Zach number but I know it's high 200s of roughs rough estimated victims a predator would have so if you have 150
00:39:50
possible predators in that area we'd probably see then 20 thousand victims and why aren't we having more of these
00:39:58
victims come forward and [Music] and present this so I think but then it's it's a sticky situation no pun
00:40:09
intended with the Lords of Baker fields because it you wonder a couple things one is it these people on power that are
00:40:18
using this sick fetish of pedophilia to control each other and have one have something on top of
00:40:27
each other right have something over the other person to can to be able to control them or blackmail them or is it
00:40:34
just there protecting these predators because of wealth or their their position of power so it becomes and I
00:40:45
would lean to the latter to then that it's some giant group with some giant conspiracy if that makes any sense at
00:40:57
all well I know I think it does and it's only because because I've been you know
00:41:02
waiting in these weird waters for for a while now and really trying to come up with an answer myself and thinking that
00:41:09
you know what the more I look at this case and the more that I dive into these different avenues that go off the main
00:41:16
road of this case here that I think that I'm going to find my answer unfortunately I didn't like I said
00:41:22
there's also other cases that that some consider to be connected to this and I may not have gone down the right road
00:41:31
off of off of the main road yet to find that but in the end my my general opinion is the look there was illegal
00:41:42
activity going on we can't deny that we also can't deny that there were plenty of murders going on as well down but
00:41:49
there's also a situation where some people may just not have known everything that was going on or known
00:41:55
what was at the root of a murder or at the root of of this whole mess and and therefore didn't take actions against
00:42:04
any of that you know there is a certain there's one thing to turn a blind eye to
00:42:11
something and there's another to just be blind to it and not know what is going on and I think in this
00:42:19
situation I was really going to try to avoid giving my my personal opinion but I think that I think I've walked down
00:42:30
that path enough where I think I got to try to to give this some kind of conclusion if I say we're good we'll
00:42:39
stop here okay exactly buy the Hat look it's it's very difficult with so many characters misdeeds and variables to
00:42:48
really figure out and state what was really going on in Bakersfield for all these years was there in fact an
00:42:56
underground network hiding in the shadows and pulling strings and were these murders many of them still
00:43:02
unsolved connected to the legend of the Lords of Bakersfield from where I sit after reviewing this whole mess mm-hmm I
00:43:11
see a name that is repeated throughout this story and a general theme that seems to follow him this is Robert
00:43:19
Mistral by his own admission and others he had a horrible childhood he was selling himself at a young age trading
00:43:27
sexual favors to men for money drugs and anything else to get him by and while of
00:43:34
course I find the actions and behaviors of the men who chose to employ him as illegal immoral and frankly disgusting
00:43:43
it's very tricky for me to go as far to call those specific situations abuse I understand he is a child and not of
00:43:57
legal age but to me it's somewhat appears that Robert was able to end this sex for hire
00:44:04
relationship at any time with these men and in fact did so when with the help of
00:44:10
another brutally murdered and robbed one of these men and could be suspected in another case as well mm-hmm so this
00:44:19
story obviously just I mean it's just full chock full of victims and a lot of predators Robert just might fit into
00:44:27
both of those categories I'm certain as for Glen Fitz the second murder that we discussed I have to
00:44:36
wonder if he is the outlier in this story was this like a budding Dean Corll situation or is it as simple as once his
00:44:48
wife passed and left him alone we have a sick man that turned his home into a playground for teenagers filled with
00:44:56
alcohol and they simply did not prosecute because they lacked the ability to do so right that there wasn't
00:45:05
something to cover this up they just didn't have the ability to prosecute him and therefore did not bring those
00:45:12
charges forward and had Fitz not died be it suicide or be it murder who's to say
00:45:19
that they wouldn't have drugged him in a court at some point for Dana's murder eventually I also went to state to the
00:45:25
double homicide committed by William tack who planned murdered and then bragged about doing so just because two
00:45:33
gay men were his neighbors that today likely would be prosecuted as a hate crime and it's very difficult to figure
00:45:44
out if those crimes had nothing to do with the quote Lords of Bakersfield or if the lack of proper punishment and
00:45:53
what should have been a death penalty case very likely does have something to do with it you know what I mean it's
00:46:00
it's it's tough to figure out if the Lords of Bakersfield are at work in some of these situations or if it's just
00:46:06
someone else interfering with justice for unknown reasons what I do think that we have is in fact a network of men who
00:46:14
frequented the same locations in search of similar entertainment they lived secret lives and desired the company of
00:46:23
young men and/or boys now keep in mind something very simple that we have to remind ourselves when we start to look
00:46:33
into conspiracies conspiracy theories and these pedophile rings and all these people possibly in cahoots with one
00:46:41
another anytime you have a per or persons committing illegal acts you will have those same people covering it
00:46:49
up whether it's they're covering it up for themselves or if they're helping someone
00:46:54
else and that's where it gets very difficult to truly discern what is going on in this situation and in other
00:47:04
situations that we look at is in fact there's no doubt that there's a cover-up it's just to what extent is that
00:47:12
cover-up how many people were involved is it just one person is it a whole army right of predators that are out there
00:47:19
it's there's no doubt to me that most of these men very likely knew each other again they frequented the same locations
00:47:28
they were in search of similar things you have to you just really have to look at this when when they all know that
00:47:37
their behavior in a lot of cases is wrong and illegal Jim and if we believe mr. Robert Mistral well then they very
00:47:49
likely formed a ring of corrupt abusers that protected one another and if they did that it's very hard to say what they
00:47:57
would not have been capable of doing yeah III agree that that's a possibility and you again you'd have to believe
00:48:04
Robert on some of this stuff but I think you'd have to back down the number of the accusations that he's probably
00:48:11
making Robert Mistral was released from prison earlier this year after serving 35 years he's now 52 years old he's
00:48:21
married and is hoping to start his life over again this after getting his GED while he was incarcerated although he
00:48:30
recognizes his complicity in the murder of Edwin buck he also recognizes that in
00:48:36
many ways he was not fully at fault for the circumstances that led him to the murder
00:48:42
well I just want to be clear in these cases that these older gentlemen are using drugs alcohol money all these
00:48:52
bribery's just because the child agreed to it agreed to their changement does not mean it's anything
00:49:00
less than child abuse and pedophilia agreed now as far as the legend of the lords of Bakersfield and the cases that
00:49:11
we have discussed today we have just simply an implication of a possible connection in my opinion and what we
00:49:20
have here is we have Robert price the journalist for the Californian who helped expose this sword underbelly of
00:49:27
Bakersfield he put it in a May 2019 article that the cases had the same ingredients quote a troubled and
00:49:37
compromised young man a persistent much older male sponsor and homicide try the Hat do we have any recommended reading
00:50:00
for this week we do this week we are recommending American predator by Maureen Callahan American predator the
00:50:08
hunt for the most meticulous serial killer of the 21st century and some of you may have guessed it this book is
00:50:18
about Israel Keyes so you'll want to check that out and you don't have to write that title down now
00:50:24
you can just go to our website we have a recommended page there you'll find a lot
00:50:28
of other books and other recommendations for you on that page true-crime garage comm again thank you guys so much for
00:50:36
listening and thanks for joining us in the garage every week your garage buddies and until next week be good be
00:50:44
kind and don't let it [Music] [Applause] Oh [Music]