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GameChanger [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
00:01:43
for listening I'm your host Nick and The Man Behind the glass is the captain and
00:01:48
we would like to point out that your fantasy football team is not as good as you think well guess what my team's name
00:01:54
is I beefed one no it's eat my ass it's good to be seen and it's good to see you
00:02:01
thanks for listening thanks for telling your [Music] cousin today we are sipping on blackback
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honey rye by the hardworking crew at Silverback Distillery this is rye whiskey infused with real honey laor
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pour it over some ice and it's smooth sipping here today in the garage my friend's garage grade four out of five
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bottle caps and this week's drinking was brought to us by these good friends right here first up we have a big cheers
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and big shout out to Elizabeth in witch Kansas and we have Jennifer in Calgary Alberta Canada and also in big beautiful
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Canada we have Sher mcgeo and the whole family listening in Newcastle Ontario Canada guess what Canada the garage
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loves you so much we are doing a Canadian garage tour in 2020 so thank you to everyone who helped with this
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week's beer fund and if you would like to help us raise enough money to actually follow through on that Canadian
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tour go to True Crim garage.com and click on the Donate button I am very excited to announce that we have some
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new merchandise in the store we have a beer glass set we have a hat we have bottle openers we have Koozies we have
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everything for your fall tailgating needs check out true Crim garage.com and also download the Stitcher app for all
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of our old episodes and check out our bonus EP episode out weekly on Stitcher premium called off the Record all right
00:04:05
Captain that's enough of the business everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true
00:04:15
[Music] crime we discussed three murders yesterday and unfortunately there will be more today
00:04:36
we start off with nurl Renfro who was a 50-year-old millionaire his business Gold Coast reality and investment was
00:04:45
booming Renfro was not out in fact none of his friends had any idea that he was gay he apparently liked to hang out in
00:04:56
the company of young men entertaining them at his home or at his mountain cabin on December 19th
00:05:04
1982 Renfro was hosting 18-year-old John Orin bigs who answered an ad placed by Renfro for a Livin caretaker for his
00:05:16
house this was a house in a modest but nice neighborhood of Bakersfield but this house was noted for its Fortress
00:05:24
likee bars on the windows and neighbors said that the shades were always drawn anyway Renfro and bigs were
00:05:33
playing pull and Renfro made a pass at bigs bigs said he let it go but when it happened again a few minutes later bigs
00:05:43
grabbed a fire poker and bludgeon Renfro 40 times over the head bigs was then rifling through the house looking for
00:05:53
cash and then he stole renfro's car and went and picked up a friend this is 18-year-old William blakenship the two
00:06:01
returned to the house and stole a safe but were later very disappointed when they found the safe contained nothing of
00:06:09
value bigs was arrested and charged with renfro's murder his defense was a variation of the quote gay Panic defense
00:06:20
they alleged that Renfro was a pervert and Big's attack on him was prompted by renfro's advances it turned turns out
00:06:30
and it appears that neural Renfro had a history he on at least three prior occasions lured young men to his house
00:06:41
using the ad for employment made advances and then actually raped one of these men his house was found to be
00:06:50
missing interior door knobs the doors required a deadbolt key to open them so one could not always leave of their own
00:07:00
free will once inside it's kind of like the Bundy method that that he used in his car but inside his house Renfro it
00:07:09
appears may have been a violent sexual predator bigs was ultimately convicted for killing him but only for voluntary
00:07:19
manslaughter and he served only three and A2 years even though he had a rap sheet going back 8 years this is going
00:07:27
back till when he was about 11 years old he didn't get a double charge for manslaughter plus you know
00:07:33
robbery my notes only state that he was convicted of voluntary mansaw they might
00:07:39
not have pressed charges if they stole a safe and there was nothing in it though
00:07:43
so that's a possibility well his rap sheet going back to when he was 11 this included
00:07:49
things like assault and battery shooting at police extortion robbery and burglary
00:07:55
wow so this is viewed as basic basically a slap on the wrist and it did outrage many people at the time particularly gay
00:08:04
rights activists who believe that bigs got off easy because simply because Renfro was
00:08:11
gay the yeah but see here's here's the issue again we have we have a case where somebody ends up murdered and then we
00:08:22
have robbery and some other things that went down during the commission of that murder we have allegations that are
00:08:29
brought forward against the man who is is now dead and unable to defend those allegations it's this is a whole big
00:08:39
messy story and around that same time we have William tyak he threatened shot and killed two
00:08:49
gay neighbors after some kind of Confrontation and it appears he did so simply because they were gay right it's
00:08:57
hate crime yeah yeah so this has a similar outcome tyak was convicted of only involuntary manslaughter of one of
00:09:07
the men despite having threatened to kill them and then bragging about it afterwards one writer said of the result
00:09:14
quote this case would reinforce a national impression of Bakersfield in Kern County being a place where violence
00:09:22
against Gaye is tolerated end quote in the wake of these verdicts the State Attorney General was convinced to take a
00:09:31
look at whether homosexual victims of violent crime were being short changed in current County well they were a long
00:09:39
they were for a long time in history 60s 7s ' 80s it seemed that there was a contradictory history in the kar County
00:09:47
Justice System some killers of gay men got light sentences despite the Law and Order approach Kern County prided itself
00:09:56
on while some well-connected powerful gay men escaped scrutiny or got off easy despite having sex with minors it's
00:10:05
really a situation where you see all this going on and you have to I mean you can only throw your hands up in the air
00:10:12
and go what is going on here right what truly is going on here then we have Attorney General John Vandy Camp he
00:10:21
established a commission on racial ethnic religious and minority violence Los Angeles attorney Thomas Coleman
00:10:29
headed up the investigation of The Bigs in the tiak trials in which the defendants received light sentences
00:10:37
allegedly because of the homosexuality of the victims Coleman said quote what you're talking about is corruption
00:10:46
whether the victim is gay or not the presence of sexual orientation as a factor has in the past at least given
00:10:54
the appearance of unequal treatment end quote after studying the situation he established a campaign against hate
00:11:03
violence and encouraged stiffer penalties for cases involving violence against certain groups including gays it
00:11:11
was a start but it did not address the systemic problem embodied by the Lords of Bakersfield yeah and this is going to
00:11:20
heat up too because one of the activists and one of the people leading this charge for stiff stiffer penalties uh is
00:11:27
actually going to be murdered Marshall Jacobson was a 48-year-old millionaire real estate and criminal
00:11:34
defense attorney in Bakersfield and he spoke in front of the karna County Crime commission urging these harsher
00:11:42
sentences for criminals who perpetrated violent crimes against homosexuals Jacobson himself was gay and
00:11:51
known to frequent the Bakerfield Greyhound bus station apparently this was a popular meeting spot for men and
00:11:59
and where Ed Buck had also been known to frequent Bakersfield Police knew about Jacobson and had looked into allegations
00:12:08
of sexual misconduct made by an underage boy but charges were never filed then at
00:12:15
the bus station he met Randy Ray backin who was 19 years old and this man went on to live with him for eight months
00:12:25
Jacobson provided food lodging and a job including tuition for school but required sex in return yeah he was a
00:12:34
sugar daddy beckan wasn't gay and he said later that he was disgusted by the relationship but he needed a roof over
00:12:43
his head he resented Jacobson and he broke the house rules in fact he skipped school two days in a row when this
00:12:50
happened Jacobson kicked him out and backen left the house he returned a week later demanding entry into the home and
00:13:01
even climbing Over The Back Fence then he went inside the unlocked sliding doors once inside he stabbed Jacobson in
00:13:10
the stomach 10 or 11 times and then he proceeded to rob the house he drove Jacobson's car full of stolen goods all
00:13:20
the way to Los Angeles and he sold the car then he tried to escape to Mexico but he was turned in by a friend of
00:13:30
Jacobson who he had called for help here the lenient sentencing ran out backin got life without the possibility of
00:13:40
parole but again it was a case of an older man surrounding himself with young men and one who ended up killing him and
00:13:48
yeah this is going to bring us to the year of 1998 so depending on who you talk to a
00:13:56
number of years passed before any more murder ERS occurred that seemed to have anything to do with the pattern
00:14:02
surrounding possible members of the Lords of Bakersfield as you said Captain 1998 we
00:14:09
have Sid Sheffield who was a prominent education and health activist in town he was found stabbed to death in his mobile
00:14:17
home the murder weapon was a knife and he was robbed police discovered that he was leading a secret life one that did
00:14:26
not go with his Public Image at the time he was promiscuous very social and was said to have no enemies and possibly was
00:14:35
last seen with a young man in a cowboy hat at a local bar this case to this day remains unsolved and to be perfectly
00:14:45
fair and transparent no one is really sure whether it has a connection to the Lords of Bakers field or not but it's
00:14:54
often brought up during those discussions yeah it's a similar situation this is again we have a tough time
00:15:02
figuring out what cases to include and what not to include and again who depending on who you talk to that can
00:15:09
change drastically so let's go to 2002 because this is where things really really start to to fall apart
00:15:20
okay we have 57y old Bakersfield assistant District Attorney Steven taler he had a Public Image of the
00:15:30
caring doood the public servant a Good Samaritan who took a drug addicted youth under his wing this kid was Lance Hillis
00:15:40
who knew Steven since Lance was 5 years old his father Chris worked for Steven tousser as a district attorney
00:15:52
investigator after he spent several years in the Bakersfield Police Department taler was gay it was
00:16:00
considered an Open Secret and he seems to have fixated on this young man Lance who was under the age of 18 when tulzer
00:16:10
started grooming him got involved with meth at the age of 16 and was not welcome at his home at his parents home
00:16:19
because he was doing drugs tuler took advantage of the situation and offered Lance a Safe Haven
00:16:29
a place where he could stay at first Lance stayed at toler's home for several months MH but he told a friend he wasn't
00:16:37
comfortable there and he was there just for the food and for the clothes and for
00:16:42
a place to sleep now he would leave but he would always end up going back to taller's
00:16:49
home this mostly when money ran out for the drugs that he wanted yeah it seemed like it one of his only options once in
00:16:57
a while when he left he would take one of tzer's cars to which Steven tulzer would call
00:17:05
the police but would never end up pressing charges for a stolen vehicle the police knew that tulzer was spending
00:17:13
a lot of time with this young man when Lance finally got his own apartment tosler co-signed the lease
00:17:20
and it doesn't seem like anybody's really sure how Lance was actually paying the monthly rent but you don't
00:17:27
have to use of an imagination well I tell you to come up with an idea so speculation of course was tuler was
00:17:35
paying and he was a regular visitor to Lance's home tuler continued to supply Lance with food credit cards lodging a
00:17:45
car and a friendship such as it was yeah he was providing them with a little FNS well Lance continued into a downward
00:17:55
drug spiral he he was stealing he was crashing cars and he was injecting drugs into his veins his family was extremely
00:18:09
anxious among other feelings for him to kick this drug habit they actually wanted him sent to jail they thought
00:18:18
that this would be truly the only way to break the cycle of addiction that really
00:18:23
had had a hold on this guy right so tuler used his assistant district attorney influence to get Lance off anytime he
00:18:35
was charged with stuff so Lance would just be facing rehab rather than facing jail time well
00:18:42
on this is I mean it's not that far of a stretch to look at this situation and go like
00:18:49
but this is like sexual trafficking in a sense you know by by enabling this person or possibly giving
00:18:59
them the money for drugs maybe you're not injecting it for them but you're basically creating the situation now
00:19:05
that you have an adct that they're dependent on you uh for drugs or dependent on you for financial
00:19:11
situations and then you're they're you're using them for sex I mean that's sex trafficking well it's also believed
00:19:20
that Not only was Lance being sent to rehab because of tuler rather than jail but it's also believed that like anytime
00:19:29
there was a chance that Lance was going to encounter a tough judge in one of these charges that he would conveniently
00:19:38
have the case moved to a different court so again he could just get rehab so this
00:19:44
happened repeatedly to the incredible frustration of Lance's family whenever Lance was in rehab tulzer was a regular
00:19:53
visitor even when Lance assaulted a worker at one of the rehab facilities tuler had the incident buried Chris
00:20:02
Hillis knew tuler for years both in his role on the Bakersfield Police Department and at the DA's office and
00:20:11
because he had done extensive renovation work at Steven taller's home he was getting desperate to save his son Lance
00:20:20
he had Lance arrested in an attempt to save him from his meth and heroin addictions already a man with a ER who
00:20:29
had been written up for the use of excessive force five times as a police officer he lost it when he was
00:20:37
confronted with the reality that Steven tzer's relationship with his son was far
00:20:42
from that of a mentor relationship but was really a sex for drugs and money Arrangement the Hillis family realized
00:20:50
that tuler had prayed upon their teenage son's desperation for drugs and abused him Chris Hillis confronted ER in August
00:21:00
2000 and demanded to know what the obsession was with his son this ended in a violent confrontation which we have
00:21:09
Chris who ends up hitting tulzer and then calling the sheriff's department when the responding officers arrive he's
00:21:17
telling them that tuler was inappropriately involved with his son Lance the sheriff's department refused
00:21:24
to file a report rallying around the the district attorney the assistant district
00:21:30
attorney tser ended up with a black eye and nothing else when Lance continued to
00:21:38
be arrested for drugs and thanks to tsar's intervention to be sent to rehab instead of jail
00:21:45
right the Hillis family truly felt that their hands were tied and that this man corrupted their son and there was little
00:21:53
if anything that they could possibly do about it yeah well he corrupted their son and now he's corrupting the system
00:22:00
which is consistently enabling their son yeah and because their son is an adult and when a lot of this is going down it
00:22:08
gets complicated for them to step in and try to get involved or you know take the
00:22:14
Reigns and and really steer what's going on here now Lance's grandfather did just
00:22:20
that he was a former Bakersfield Police Officer his name's Don Hillis he recommended to Lance's probation officer
00:22:28
in January of 2001 that Lance should do 6 to9 months in jail just to get him cleaned up Lance's brother a probation
00:22:36
officer for Kar County himself agreed to this and multiple probation officers continually recommended jail for Lance
00:22:46
but tuler continued to intervene and once again Lance avoided jail time in July of 2002 Lance was enrolled in Pro
00:22:57
progress house this is a rehab facility in Sacramento this time Lance escaped from the rehab house he stole a car and
00:23:07
he crashed into a truck unfortunately he died instantly during this accident this
00:23:13
was on August 7th 2002 this ripped up his family overcome with grief and rage Chris Hillis Lance's
00:23:24
father murdered Steven tuler on September 13th tuler was found dead in his garage
00:23:31
with a knife sticking out of his head the Hillis family believed that if it were not for Steven tser then their son
00:23:39
Lance would still be alive yeah initially the father denied being involved he eventually pleads guilty to
00:23:48
the crime and he is hit with 10 years uh for involuntary manslaughter right for voluntary manslaughter for voluntary
00:23:57
manslaughter and which is going to be a little bit different because the other charges those guys were getting about
00:24:03
three years he's going to get 10 mhm yeah Chris Hillis got out of prison in 2013 he runs a drug rehabilitation
00:24:13
facility in Bakersfield called Lance's Haven now the taller Hillis case brought to the Forefront some of the Old Wounds
00:24:22
dating back to the late 70s and early 80s to the time when multiple murders of male Predators occurred by the hands of
00:24:30
younger victims but now it was 2002 a different time what was overlooked back then was recognized in
00:24:40
2002 as pedophilia yeah illegal sex with Miners and an old boy network of corruption and
00:24:48
cronyism that tuler had continued to get away with using his considerable power and influence to control the life of
00:24:57
this young young man to do him favors with big strings attached was shocking and disturbing and the fact that so many
00:25:06
impositions of public service and influence looked the other way was horrifying they didn't protect Lance
00:25:13
Hillis instead they handed him back over and over again to a predator the case gave rise to the expose in the
00:25:24
California that dredged up all the old Lord of Bakersfield tales and people realized that much of those old Legends
00:25:33
were rooted in [Music] truth this show is sponsored by better help do you look forward to the holidays
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00:27:37
you you don't be a douche canoe go to the store Page and pick up a koozie or something today
00:27:44
the hat is awesome there's there's actually several hat there's several awesome things Pi up the Hat I'm sorry
00:27:50
I'm just lost in this whole story I mean I'm I'm like swimming Through The Madness of what what this could be or
00:27:58
what it completely is not you know what I mean yeah all right well here's the difficult thing is what was happening
00:28:07
wasn't recognized correctly on what was actually happening mhm and then but but does that mean because of all these um
00:28:20
basically you have the murder victim was actually victimizing somebody beforehand or accused of doing so right
00:28:31
and all those murder victims are um of gay orientation or is it pedophilia pedopiles and there's a big difference
00:28:43
and then on top of that just because they're of power doesn't mean they're necessarily connected mm and you know
00:28:51
what we're going to get to some some bigger things regarding this story here in just a second
00:28:57
but really truly Captain I feel like there's 100 different angles that you could look at this story from and I'm
00:29:05
not certain that any of them are the correct angle to approach it from there's a lot of angles that you don't
00:29:10
want to look at this that's true so but the but the major point of the story is to buy the Hat yes yeah get the Hat get
00:29:20
the Hat all right let's get into uh onetime Bakersfield district attorney Ed Jagel
00:29:28
Chris Willis says that he begged those are his words I begged Jagel in multiple phone calls to and letters to take steps
00:29:39
to reign in his second in command which was Steven tuler what you talking about Willis and get him away from his son
00:29:47
Lance Hillis M jael's response was that Lance is an adult and in interviews when
00:29:55
asked about the Scandal that call culminated in taller's Murder Jagel insisted that tuler was
00:30:02
like a Godfather to Lance who saw the young man as quote a project and who only had Lance's best interest at
00:30:11
heart the district attorney for karna county is a powerful position right but he this guy also
00:30:20
seems a little bit like a [ __ ] bag so what he's stating he's the prosecutor right
00:30:28
district attorney they technically both can be prosecutors okay so the district attorney his second in control is saying
00:30:37
to him hey you did wrong here right and he's saying no I did not do anything wrong that's where in these situations
00:30:48
it makes you wonder is it just because of the high power they're in or is it the money
00:30:56
right is he protect protecting the person because of the high power or they're protecting the person from the
00:31:02
money but either way it seems like this district attorney is a little bit of a [ __ ] again it goes back to to all the
00:31:11
different angles that you could look at this from to where you could also make the argument that what Ed jagels is
00:31:18
saying is the truth that Lance was an adult mm and that I mean we don't know how much he made have known or what he
00:31:29
did know and was turning a blind eye to right the the the thing here is when this man retired after more than 25
00:31:38
years as a DA Ed Jagel famously boasted that during his 10year Kern County had the highest per capita prison commitment
00:31:48
rate of any major California county his mission was a Law and Order crime policy
00:31:55
sort of ironic since the LA Lords of Bakersfield in many cases seem to be allowed to do their thing with virtually
00:32:03
no legal consequences and this did occur too under his watch right several of them should have been prosecuted for
00:32:11
rape statutory rape and crimes against children district attorney Ed Jagel was in office since the early 80s and it's
00:32:19
the opinion of many that Jagel was complicit in helping brush the Lords of Bakersfield scandal compl completely
00:32:27
under the rug mhm he may not have just been looking the other way he as you pointed out may have actually helped to
00:32:34
protect some of those people that should have been prosecuted Jagel is best known
00:32:39
for his campaign that he initiated in the 0s to root out child sex abuse right so with all these rumors going on about
00:32:48
the Lords of bakerfields instead of investigating this they're going to go after the middle class well l lower
00:32:57
middle class citizens okay for so-called Satanic ritual child sex abuse and molestation that this is so bizarre was
00:33:06
not actually happening so Jagel put 26 people these were teachers and even parents in some situations behind bars
00:33:15
on felony child sexual abuse charges this all during the 1980s this was during the period of a national child
00:33:24
sex abuse Panic where cares and schools were accused of horrific abuses of kids this was sort of a satanic Panic
00:33:35
involving children now under Jagel 26 convictions were secured on what is arguably zero to little evidence of
00:33:46
these 26 convictions 25 were actually eventually overturned Kar county has paid out over
00:33:54
$9 million in wrongful conviction Settlements a 2008 documentary called Witch Hunt narrated by Shawn Penn
00:34:04
details this story I actually believe uh Sean Penn was one of the producers on this as well and to be clear it wasn't
00:34:12
that there was little to no evidence what a lot of in these a lot of these situations were happening where they're
00:34:20
rounding up these kids and basically getting them to just confess to anything but not ever coming up with the story
00:34:29
themselves so they cohorted all these uh stories and all these allegations basically out of thin air right they
00:34:37
didn't bother to go find any evidence to back up these right accusations or these
00:34:43
stories by by children and so what this leads to is all of these well 25 of the 26
00:34:52
convictions being overturned and then in 1999 a pullit Sur prize-winning book entitled mean Justice a true account of
00:35:01
a Town's Terror a prosecutor's power and a betrayal of Innocence exposes jael's tactics including presumption of guilt
00:35:11
manufacturing or embellishing evidence persuasive interrogations prosecutorial misconduct despite all of this Jagel
00:35:22
continued to be reelected and Bakersfield embraced its role as the poster City for
00:35:29
the quote tough on crime movement its mock slogan was come for vacation and leave on probation well it's better than
00:35:38
their last slogan um come on vacation but only if you have some money and you're
00:35:45
of power so what does all of this have to do with the Lords of Bakersfield Legend well what's being pointed out
00:35:52
here and has been pointed out by many is that the lock them up da seems to have overlooked the activities of various
00:36:01
businessmen politicians and social Elite that were going on right under his nose
00:36:08
many believe he was complicit in shoving The Dana Butler murder and the Glenn Fitz situation his likely involvement in
00:36:17
that murder under the rug by refusing to prosecute and investigative reports by Rolling Stone magazine stated that many
00:36:26
Bakersfield residents concluded that jael's child abuse campaign was possibly intended to divert attention away from
00:36:35
illicit sexual behavior of the city's ruling Elite right a former investigator for the DA's office under Jagel told the
00:36:44
magazine Rolling Stone magazine that the 1980s molestation trials were simply Jagel
00:36:51
allies among the Lords of Bakersfield covering their tracks by going after other people now we should mention here
00:37:01
that Robert Mell the the man that we've mentioned a lot throughout this case yeah he actually named Jagel as one of
00:37:12
the men who sexually abused him I'm going to step in for a little bit and throw my own two cents in here on this
00:37:21
this my my my humble opinion if you will it seems to me and I talked to a friend
00:37:31
about this who agreed we were discussing this case and it just it seems like Robert mstell while I believe him on
00:37:39
some level it seems like he has just spewed out so many names over the course of all of this it just doesn't seem
00:37:46
plausible that they were all sexual abusers of children at some point at some point you really got to
00:37:56
question these allegations now Ed Jagel retired from the DA's office in 2009 and he's never
00:38:05
been prosecuted for all of the wrongful convictions he inflicted upon innocent people right which is
00:38:14
pathetic so the legend of the Lords of Bakersfield truly it's it's just a vague Spectre of predatory alliances and
00:38:26
abuses of power mhm to me and to others I I got to say man it it doesn't seem that there is real tangible
00:38:37
punishable ring of abusive men it seems more like this might be a wink wink Association and a look the other way
00:38:47
type of Tolerance yeah it's a difficult situation here because one you know he's
00:38:53
naming what 150 possible Predators MH um you know the average Predator I'm I don't know
00:39:02
the exact number but I know it's high 200s of roughs rough estimated victims a predator would have so if you have 150
00:39:13
possible predators in that area would probably see then 20,000 victims and why aren't we having more of these victims
00:39:22
come forward uh and and present this so I think but then it's it's a sticky situation no pun intended with the Lords
00:39:34
of bakerfields because you wonder a couple things one is it these people in power that are using this sick fetish of
00:39:44
pedophilia to control each other and have one have something on top of each other right have something over the
00:39:52
other person to to be able to control them or blackmail them or is it just they're protecting these Predators
00:40:01
because of wealth or or they're or their position of power so it becomes and I would lean to the latter
00:40:10
too than that it's some giant group with some giant conspiracy if that makes any sense at
00:40:20
all well no I think it does and and it's only because because I've been you know
00:40:25
waiting in these weird waters for for a while now and really trying to come up with an answer myself and thinking that
00:40:33
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
00:40:39
road of this case here that I think that I'm going to find my answer unfortunately I didn't like I said
00:40:45
there's also other cases that that some consider to be connected to this and I may not have gone down the right Road
00:40:54
off of off of the main main road yet to find that but in the end my my general opinion is that look there was illegal
00:41:05
activity going on we can't deny that we also can't deny that there were plenty of murders going on as well yeah but
00:41:13
there's also a situation where some people may just not have known everything that was going on or known
00:41:19
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
00:41:28
any of that you know there is a certain there's one thing to turn a blind eye to something and there's
00:41:35
another to just be blind to it and not know what is going on and I think in this
00:41:43
situation I was really going to try to avoid giving my my personal opinion but I I think that I I think I've walked
00:41:54
down that path enough where I I think I got to try to to give this some kind of conclusion at least I was going to say
00:42:02
we're good we'll just stop here okay see you next week bu the hat look it's it's
00:42:08
very difficult with so many characters misdeeds and variables to really figure out and state what was really going on
00:42:16
in Bakersfield for all these years was there in fact an underground Network hiding in the shadows and pulling
00:42:23
strings and were these murders many of them still unol connected to the legend of the Lords of
00:42:30
Bakersfield from where I sit after reviewing this whole mess mhm I see a name that is repeated throughout this
00:42:38
story and a general theme that seems to follow him this is Robert Mell by his own admission and others he
00:42:46
had a horrible childhood he was selling himself at a young age trading sexual favors to men for money drugs and
00:42:54
anything else to get him by right and while of course I find the actions and behaviors of the men who chose to employ
00:43:02
him as illegal immoral and frankly disgusting it it's very tricky for me to go as far to call those specific
00:43:13
situations abuse I understand he he is a a child and not of legal age but to me it somewhat appears that Robert was
00:43:26
able to end this sex for higher relationship at any time with these men and in fact did so when with the help of
00:43:34
another brutally murdered and robbed one of these men and could be suspected in another case as
00:43:41
well so this story obviously just I mean it's just full chalk full of victims and
00:43:47
a lot of predators Robert just might fit into both of those categories I'm not certain as for Glenn fits the second
00:43:57
murder that we discussed I have to wonder if he is the outlier in this story was this like a budding Dean Coral
00:44:08
situation or is it as simple as once his wife passed and left him alone we have a
00:44:15
sick man that turned his home into a playground for teenagers filled with alcohol
00:44:22
and they simply did not prosecute because they lacked the ability to do so right that there wasn't something to
00:44:29
cover this up they just didn't have the ability to prosecute him and therefore did not bring those charges forward and
00:44:38
had Fitz not died be it suicide or be it murder who's to say that they wouldn't have drugg him into court at some point
00:44:45
for Dana's murder eventually I also want to state that the double homicide committed by William tyak who planned
00:44:52
murdered and then bragged about doing so just because two gay men were his neighbors that today likely would be
00:45:01
prosecuted as a hate crime and it's very difficult to figure out if those crimes had nothing to do with the quote
00:45:12
Lords of Bakersfield or if the lack of proper punishment in what should have been a
00:45:18
death penalty case very likely does have something to do with it you know what I
00:45:23
mean it's it's it's tough to figure out if the Lords of field or at work in some
00:45:27
of these situations or if it's just someone else interfering with Justice for unknown reasons what I do think that
00:45:35
we have is in fact a network of men who frequented the same locations in search of similar entertainment they lived
00:45:44
Secret Lives and desired the company of young men and or boys now keep in mind something very simple that we have
00:45:54
to remind ourselves when we start to look into conspiracies conspiracy theories and these pedophile rings and
00:46:02
all these people possibly In Cahoots with one another anytime you have a person or
00:46:08
persons committing illegal acts you will have those same people covering it up whether it's they're covering it up for
00:46:15
themselves or if they're helping someone else and that's where it gets very difficult to truly
00:46:23
discern what is going on in this situation and in other situations that we look at is in fact there's no doubt
00:46:32
that there's a cover up it's just to what extent is that cover up how many people were involved is it just one
00:46:38
person is it a whole Army right of predators that are out there it's there's no doubt to me that most of
00:46:47
these men very likely knew each other again they frequented the same locations they were in search of similar things
00:46:56
you have to you just really have to look at this when when they all know that their behavior in a lot of cases is
00:47:04
wrong and illegal yeah and if we believe Mr Robert mistell well then they very likely
00:47:13
formed a ring of corrupt abusers that protected one another and if they did that it's very hard to say what they
00:47:20
would not have been capable of doing yeah I I I agree that that's a possibility and you again you'd have to
00:47:27
believe Robert on some of this stuff but I think you'd have to back down the number of the accusations that he's
00:47:34
probably making Robert Mell was released from prison earlier this year after serving 35 years he's now 52 years old
00:47:44
he's married and is hoping to start his life over again this after getting his GED while he was incarcerated although
00:47:53
he recognizes his complicity in the the murder of Edwin Buck he also recognizes that in many ways he was not fully at
00:48:02
fault for the circumstances that led him to the murder well I just want to be clear in these cases that these older
00:48:10
gentlemen are using drugs alcohol money all these briberies just because the child agreed to it agreed to their
00:48:21
Arrangement does not mean it's anything less than child abuse and pedophilia agreed now as far as the
00:48:31
legend of the Lords of Baker's field and the cases that we have discussed today we have just simply an implication of a
00:48:40
possible connection in my opinion and what we have here is we have Robert Price the journalist for the Californian
00:48:47
who helped expose this sword underbelly of Bakersfield he put it in a May 2019 article that the cases had the same
00:48:58
ingredients quote a troubled and compromised young man a persistent much older male sponsor and
00:49:06
[Music] homicide try the Hat do we have any recommended reading for this week we do
00:49:25
this week we are recommending American predator by maren Callahan American predator the hunt for the most
00:49:33
meticulous serial killer of the 21st century and some of you may have guessed it this book is about Israel keys so
00:49:44
you'll want to check that out and you don't have to write that title down now you can just go to our website we have a
00:49:49
recommended page there you'll find a lot of other books and other recommendations
00:49:54
for you on that page true Crim garage.com again thank you guys so much for listening thanks for joining us in
00:50:01
the garage every week your garage buddies and until next week be good be kind and don't
00:50:09
[Music] litter you can start your day off right when you find a professional on Angie to get
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